He tries to look away. I make his world only my face and pain. The part of me that imitates light goes quiet. There’s no light here.
“You’re Fisher’s…” he pants. “Or Rey’s?”
“Wrong ideology.” I take that thing from under the table—a box cutter—and flick it open. “I’m her friend. For the next ten minutes, that’s all I am.”
“Okay—okay!” He sucks air through his teeth, eyes rolling. “Two guys. One big, one wiry. Black jackets with yellow piping—Rey’s people, yeah, but… I didn’t say that. I didn’t—”
“You just did.” My mouth goes neutral. “Faces.”
“Beanie on the big one. Nose like it got broke and never healed right. Other had a scar up his neck, like a rope—thin, white. They had a duffel. Heard a thump. She… she said, ‘Don’t touch me.’ I heard it. I turned up the TV.”
“License plate?” I ask, though I know it’s a reach.
“I don’t—there ain’t—my window don’t face—”
Whatever.
I let him go.
“You did good,” I tell him. “Next time the TV’s loud? Turn it down and call someone.” I stand, scanning the room. There are cheap attempts at comfort everywhere. A calendar with naked women. A ceramic ashtray shaped like lips.
He’s not the best neighbor for a single girl in her twenties. Maybe if I were her boyfriend, I’d have done something about it. But I said it right.
I’m her friend.
That’s all I’ll ever be.
“You tell anyone I was here,” I add, “and the next person who knocks is worse.”
He nods so hard his face wobbles.
I cross the hall. Pull my phone. Dial Fisher.
I hate that my thumb knows his number by reflex.Especiallynow.
“Yeah,” he answers.
“I’m going to raid some of Rey’s boys. If I succeed, you’ll never see me again. If I fail, I’ve got a request.”
A pause. Then a low laugh, humorless. “You call to tell me you’re about to defect and then ask for a favor. You’re dumber than your hair color, kid.”
“I’m not defecting.”
“You just said—”
“I said you won’t see me again. That ain’t defection. That’s a fact.”
“We sent a message tonight,” he says. “You were there. That’s enough. Why the fuck do you want to escalate this? The shipment fire hurt them.”
I stare at the ceiling. Fisher will never get it. All he cares about is turf and power.
Fuck all that.
“If I fail,” I say, calm, “and they find me in a ditch or a river or a burnt-out car, give me a funeral. That’s my request. Not the crew bonfire and whiskey, not the boys pissing in the flames and getting high. A real one. Put me in a box and put that box in the ground with my name spelled right. Can you do that? My grandmother believed in funerals. Said the body deserved a goodbye because it did the carrying. I want to honor that, and you’re the only person I can ask.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is a rasp. “You don’t get to ask me that and hang up.”
“I just did.”
