Chapter 6 Unspoken Answers
Isaiah
The courtyard of the hotel on Rue St. Anne is small. It hosts one wrought iron table for two and a couple of wooden benches built around a huge, twisted sycamore tree whose branches hang overhead. The girls have closed the space off to their other customers, but still it seems too small for everything that must fill it.
I'm feeling claustrophobic, even though, right now, it's just me and Freddy. The Camels aren't doing much for the rising and falling of nausea in my gut. That's the after-wrath of the tequila gods. I brought it on myself, but the heat doesn't help either. I think I smell like liquor.
She's surprisingly collected when she comes out to us like royalty dressed down to face her subjects. She's so calm that I almost miss the gun in her hand. It's Charlie's gun and it looks obscene against her long and elegant lines. She always went for something smaller, more chic. Even so, it's not loaded.
Frederick's sharpening a straight razor against a whet stone, sitting at the table with his feet propped on the adjacent chair, feet he didn't offer to move so that I might sit, as if I'd want to sit so close to him. He glances at her over his dark, wire-framed sunglasses as she approaches, his smoky eyes electrified by the sound of metal scraping stone. There's something not right about him, but I suppose that's why we keep him around.
Her eyes drop to his dark hair, short and spiked in the very front. I watch her find his eyes as she would find the door to forgiveness, slowly, tentatively. Usually she'd smile at Freddy, but she doesn't have a smile today. The precious few moments of eye contact are heavy ones.
Then she sets the gun onto the glass tabletop with a clang. She knows how to clean a gun. She's known how to clean a gun since well before I met her five years ago. But there are some things in Maria's world that she prefers others to do for her. She likes for Freddy to clean her guns.
His eyes are sea gray next to the black shades, and the sad color washes down to the gun with a hard flash to his features. I've seen those eyes so blue they were frightening, but they're dull now. Yeah, it hurts for all of us, even the one who acts like he feels nothing.
She won't look at me. She fucked Josh. I know it from the way she avoids eye contact. It's not my business really, but Charlie would've been pissed. Her brother was always sternly against such a relationship between those two, for reasons that I never cared to ponder.
I've never acted like her brother, though, or her father, or anyone other than a partner. Ours has always been the type of relationship that develops between a young criminal powerhouse and a jaded veteran of the scene. It's still not my place to say anything, so I let it churn in my gut with the tequila.
I look to the blazing blue sky and drag the cigarette. It scratches along my throat, but that's a negligible feeling compared to having my insides torched.
“Thanks for getting everything together,” she says softly, voice so far from the hard commands on the phone last night.
She shoves her hands into her jeans pockets as she leans against the fence. The only remnants of desolation linger in the dark spaces under her eyes. She's pulled her long hair into a messy ponytail. Her brown skin is moist with the summer burn. She stands shaded by the old tree, staring vaguely toward the ground.
For a moment, I can't believe this girl could set a house full of people on fire. I think of the discreet, unmarked van that showed up to get Charlie's body. They didn't ask any questions. It's better not to know. I didn't even hear the arrangement Freddy made with them. I didn't care. I couldn't watch them take him. She'll never see his face again. I wonder if she's had that thought yet.
Tension shifts as Joshua joins us. He looks like hell, like she devastated him. His brown hair comes alive in the sunlight with a deep red infusion I never cared to notice before. He's grown it shaggy this summer, and has left it to dry in a wavy mess, tucked behind his ears. He's wearing wrinkled jeans and t-shirt, yesterday's grief. He might be a zombie. She's stolen his soul.
Better you than me, buddy. That's what happens when business and pleasure meet. That's all I can think as he takes a seat on the bench by the tree like a lovesick puppy. He won't look at us. Fucking kids. I stab my cigarette butt into a nearby flowerpot with a sigh.
“Things will get uglier from here, I imagine,” she says, voice strong and steady, cutting into everyone's thoughts.
Her softness is nowhere close. Any weakness has been carefully shoved out of sight. She's still staring at the ground.
She's like a darker version of Charlie, chocolate hair to his light, brown skin to his pale. No one ever believed they were related, but they were the closest siblings I've ever met. If you looked well enough, you could tell. They both had that long face and those deep eyes, meaningful expressions, and easy grace. They were both thin and cocky, and so easy to follow into the unknown.
She adds, “If any of you want out, I understand.”
My heart breaks again, as if the past twenty-four hours haven't been enough. We're all looking at her now, all caught up in the same disbelief. Nobody moves. I know she feels it. She stares intently at the stepping stones lodged into the tiny landscaping job like they'll help blunt the pain if
