He never did.
So I clasp my hands and mouth Thank You! at Celia before stashing the pills quietly in the back of my underwear drawer. It seems as good a time as any then to unpack my honeymoon bags into the empty dresser and closet. Celia helps, dusting out the drawers for me and cooing at my clothes as she pets them. “You’re a real snappy dresser,” she says wistfully. “I wish Frank would give me more of an allowance. Maybe we could go to the outlet stores sometime?”
“No time like the present,” I tell her with a grin. Celia might have more leverage than I do with Mikey. “That sounds like a great idea. We could go do lunch somewhere, then drive to the outlets and spend the afternoon spending our husbands’ money.”
She claps her hands, delighted, and then whirls off to the lounge room. “We wanna go out, Mikey,” she tells him. “Can you drive us?”
Mikey, who’s on the sofa reading an old copy of a Stephen King novel, shakes his head. “No can do, Mrs. D’Amato. I’m under orders to keep Mr. D’Amato here locked down.”
“It’s Mr. Donovan,” I say. “And Mr. Donovan needs to go out or he’ll fucking explode. Va bene?”
Mikey shakes his head again. “No bene, kid. Your husband’ll have me skinned alive if I don’t follow orders.”
I tilt my head, wondering if that’s hyperbole or just the plain truth.
Celia pouts and whines, but it has no effect on Mikey. I expect he’s used to it from his own old lady. Eventually she gives up, and says she’ll go grab lunch for us to eat it. There’s a deli on the corner that does a great salad, she says.
“Sounds good, babes,” I say. “No carbs in mine, okay?”
She’s thrilled that I seem to be a fellow keto disciple, and to get her out the door, I have to promise we’ll have an in-depth discussion about the best cauliflower recipes when she gets back.
“I’ll get something for you, too, Mikey,” she sniffs over her shoulder. “I guess.”
I just wanted Celia out of the way for a few minutes so I could take the edge off. If she knows I’m popping, she’ll want to as well, but I saw Celia in that state during the wedding preparations, and there’s no way Mikey won’t know what’s going on. I can handle myself better, and besides, I need something. I can see that yawning black hole opening up in front of me again and I need something to bring a bit of light in.
If this is how Luca thinks I’m going to live my life, he’s got to be crazy. I can’t be shut in like this, day after day without end, not in a place that makes me want to saw my own throat open with a butter knife. It’s fucking depressing is what it is, and I can’t be here like this and not have something to make it bearable.
I go into the bathroom, which is between the lounge and the bedroom, and after slamming and locking the bathroom door, I fish out the pills from my underwear drawer. There’s a full bottle, but they’re not as potent as I’m used to when I check the label. So I shake a bunch into my mouth, and then drink them down straight from the tap in the bathroom.
I even remember to flush the toilet as an alibi before I come out again, looking innocent as the Baby Jesus. But Mikey doesn’t even look up from his novel.
Celia comes back laden with bags and plastic bowls, and we spread our feast across the coffee table in the cramped living room-slash-kitchen, and the teeny-tiny card table that I guess doubles for a dining table. There’s no place to put anything bigger. Mikey takes his baloney on whole-wheat gratefully, and makes a home on the sofa, and Celia and I shuffle the card table over nearer to the sink, to talk carb ratios. She’s really into it, and I know nothing although I pretend to. The pills kick in pretty fast, so I’m reduced to nodding and smiling. Eventually Mikey turns on the TV to catch a Judge Judy rerun, and Celia gives me a narrow-eyed stare.
“Did you…” take something? She finishes by mouthing the words only.
I shrug. “Just a couple.”
“Oh, honey,” she whispers. “I meant to tell you before you took any, I put them in an old bottle, so what’s on the label is not what’s in the can, okay? They’re heavy duty. So you be careful with the dose, okay?”
I can barely nod my head this time. “Sure, babes. I’ll be careful.” It’s become really fucking hard work to lift the fork to my mouth.
“Honey, you don’t look so good,” Celia says nervously, and I feel like things are beginning to slide.
“M’okay,” I mumble, but the room seems to go topsy-turvy.
“Mikey!” Celia shrieks, and damn, Mikey moves fucking fast, has his gun out pronto. Then he looks at me and holsters it again just as fast and moves to catch me as I fall towards the floor.
The last thing I hear is Mikey muttering, “Shit, shit, shit—”
Chapter Twenty-Five
FINCH
I don’t like hospitals. I choose to take a firm stance against them.
Hospitals never helped no one that I know; once you’re in, you might as well kiss your ass goodbye, and when I die, I want to do it fully conscious with my feet on the ground.
So it’s a fairly fucking disagreeable experience to wake up in a hospital, let me tell you.
At least it’s dim in here. The beep beep beep of the monitors is insanely annoying, though, and I start looking around to see if I can turn them off. There’s a dark mass in the corner, but I can’t make out what it is. I
