“That’s the part that you aren’t going to like. Christmas Eve would be the last day.”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“Because of Christmas.”
“Could be doing it on Christmas Day too, if needed. Don’t got shit going on.”
“Didn’t Cosimo and Halle invite you to dinner?”
“Yeah. Miko and Max too. Didn’t take ‘em up on it, so if this needs to bleed into the holiday itself, that’s fine.”
“It shouldn’t. The truck should be emptied, unpacked, and wrapped before the presents make their way to the shelters on Christmas Eve.”
“Got it,” I agreed, taking the name of the charity, then getting up out of my chair.
“You don’t want to hang for a bit?” Lorenzo asked.
“Why?” I asked, getting a snort out of the boss.
“Alright. Well, keep me updated.”
“Will do,” I agreed.
I made my way back into the hall just as Lorenzo’s wife, Giana, moved past the doorway in the kitchen. I glanced back, catching sight of her red and green apron as she scooped cookies off of a silver sheet and onto the kitchen table where a couple of their kids were sitting. Across the surface were a dozen different kinds of sprinkles and frosting.
There was a strange tug in my chest that I didn’t have a name for before I turned, grabbed my jacket out of the closet, and made my way out the front door.
“You gotta be fucking freezing,” I said to the guard as the cold bit at my face.
“Jacket has built-in heat. Gloves too. And shoes.”
“Living in the future,” I said, yanking my coat’s hood up and heading down the street.
The snow was really kicking up, coating the road enough that even the cabs seemed to decide to wait until the plows came through before risking it.
A group of teens ran into the street, ducking down to grab handfuls of powder, forming it, then hurling it at one another.
It was all laughter and squealing.
Again, I felt like an outsider looking in. My own teen years hadn’t featured anything as lighthearted as a snowball fight. Hell, mychildhooddidn’t involve anything that easy.
Shaking those thoughts away, I ducked down into the subway to take me far away from Lorenzo’s multi-million dollar brownstone.
My building was identical to several others in the same general vicinity: tall, brick, ugly. The inside was no better. The linoleum had once been an off-white but was currently an almost uniform black. I was pretty sure the paint on the walls was still lead-based. And the elevator had been busted since I was a teenager.
I moved past a couple of kids who were taking a minute inside the building to warm up from being outside, scouting for one of the local street gangs, and started up the stairwell.
My feet crunched on wrappers and old food as I tried to sidestep the piles of rat crap.
“Fuck’s sake, man,” I said when I came upon a guy sitting on one of the steps, out cold with his face against one of the treads. Reaching down, I yanked him up by the back of his hoodie, watching his head loll to the side.
It wouldn’t be the first time I found a body in the stairwell. But when I held a finger under his nose, I felt his steady breath.
Not dead.
High or sloshed.
Either way, none of my fucking business.
