16
“What even is that?” Paolo peered at the spray-painted symbol that had appeared on the pavement outside the cafe. “Is it a compass or a clock? Why has it got no hands? Do you think they forgot? Fucking kids.”
Luis pretended not to hear and busied himself with the ketchup bottles, hoping Paolo was thinking out loud rather than starting an actual conversation. He’d been good about that in recent days, leaving Luis alone with his thoughts while Luis distracted him with his hands and mouth, but Luis could tell the oppressive silence was getting to him. That as much as he was trying to understand something he knew nothing about, it wouldn’t be long before he snapped, and there wasn’t a rim job on earth that would deflect him then.
Paolo shut the cafe door. It was early, not even opening time yet, so he bolted it and came up behind Luis. For once, he didn’t slide his hand over Luis’s back to warn him he was coming. He didn’t do anything. Just stood there for a long moment before he walked away, not realising that Luis could see him in the reflection of the window.
Luis closed his eyes, mourning the lost touch, all the while steeling himself against the wave of relief that flooded him that Paolo hadn’t made the connection between Luis and the pocket watch tattooed on the concrete outside, the faceless clock letting Luis know, as if he could forget, that his days and nights with Paolo were numbered.So just leave already.It was a no brainer. If Luis wasn’t surgically attached to Paolo, it would be easier to keep him out of the mess Dante was trying to make.
At least that’s what Luis told himself every afternoon when he left work before Paolo and went home. But by nightfall, the pull to be with Paolo was too strong. Three nights in a row found him on Paolo’s doorstep, too strung out to do anything but let Paolo lead him to bed where they slept, wrapped up in each other until it was time to do it all over again. That was the easy part, but then, everything about being naked with Paolo was easy.
The cafe opened for business. By lunchtime, the council had showed up and painted over the pocket watch with crude red paint, leaving a mess far worse than the simple etching.
Paolo returned to the cafe door and scowled at the workers retreating from the sudden rainstorm. “Since when do the council come out and cover graffiti so quick?”
“Gang signs,” a customer from the nearest table replied. “They painted over it at the train station too. Funny how they can find the money for that, but not to treat the drug addicts these gangs create.”
Paolo shot the woman a sharp glance. “How do you know it’s a gang sign?”
The woman shrugged. “They were all over Moss Farm until last week. My son said it’s a prison thing, something to do with lost years. I asked him how he knew those things and sent him to school with a bible in his bag, let me tell you.”
She said other words and Paolo replied, but Luis really didn’t hear them this time, not because he turned his back on them and couldn’t follow their lips, but because of his thundering heartbeat. His hands had been shaky since he’d come round from that beatdown with the iron bar. The doctors said it was anxiety, not brain damage, and as Luis flailed over the grill, he finally accepted they might’ve been right.
He dropped the tongs in the oil-filled frying pan. Cursed, and retrieved them, burning his fingers,again. At first he’d been numb to the pain, but not anymore. Everything hurt now, old wounds and new. The scar on his head throbbed, his damaged ear buzzed, and despair lanced his heart so hard his knees went weak.
The cafe door opened and closed. Luis mechanically cooked the orders in front of him. Paolo collected the plates. Luis hyper-focused on scraping the grill and didn’t look up until he realised no new order slips had appeared. He didn’t need to turn around to know the cafe was empty.
He glanced at the clock. It was a little after two.What the fuck?But he sensed Paolo’s presence behind him before his brain thought of an answer.
Again, Paolo didn’t touch him. Luis spun to face him to find he wasn’t close enough to reach. He was sat at the table by the door, his lovely face twisted into the same suspicion he’d thrown at Luis the first time he’d opened the cafe door. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“What?”
Paolo slammed his hand down on the table. “Don’t fucking do that.”
“Do what?”
Paolo stood with a screech of his chair on the tiled floor, and he was in Luis’s face before Luis could blink. “Don’t come at me with this bullshit that you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve been acting weird since your brother showed up, now there’s gang graffiti everywhere and you expect me to believe there’s nothing going on?”
“There isn’t graffiti everywhere. There’s one thing outside, and you said it yourself it was probably kids.”
“That was before I knew what it was and realised we saw three of them on our way here this morning.”
“It was dark this morning.”
“Street lamps exist, mate. And this is a city, not a remote village in the mountains.”
That morning, like every morning, Luis had been too engrossed in how it felt to hold Paolo’s hand to concentrate on his surroundings. They could’ve walked to the moon and back and he wouldn’t have noticed. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Even if that’s true, you saw the one outside, and you know what it means. I know you do; I saw it in your face when that woman told me.”
“Oh yeah? What else did you see in my face? Cos you seem to think it’s the fucking oracle.”
“Don’t get tricky with me. I know you’re freaking out about something. What did Dante want when he came in?”
“He didn’t want anything. If you’re so observant, you’d have seen that he didn’t eat anything.”
“Exactly. He came to see you. Why?”
