He dried his hands on a tea towel and forced himself to step out of the relative safety of the kitchen. The cafe was quiet. Paolo was sitting at a table in the corner, chewing on a pen as he frowned at some paperwork.
Luis shuffled over. “I’ll be off, then, unless you need anything else?”
“Are you coming back tomorrow?” Paolo didn’t look up as he spoke, but it felt like a trick question.
To answer yes was presumptuous, but anything else would make Luis seem like he didn’t give a shit. “Um, if you want me to?”
“You’re taking the piss, right?” Paolo dropped his pen on the table and swept his arm around the cafe. “I told you, this time most days I’m crying into the sink. I haven’t looked at the accounts in months. If you can show up a few days a week and give me a break from that, the job’s yours.”
“For real?”
“For real. I mean, we need to talk numbers and shit, and I don’t have time for that right now, but I can give you a call later so you can make your mind up?”
Luis’s heart sank. “I don’t have a phone.”
“Why not?”
Because the one I had six years ago is rotting in an evidence vault somewhere, and I don’t have the money to buy another one.“Haven’t got round to it yet.”
Paolo’s dark eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head sideways, studying Luis hard enough to make Luis squirm before he seemed to reconcile with whatever he was thinking.
He pushed his chair back with a screech that rattled Luis’s ears and disappeared into the kitchen. The minutes ticked by. Luis considered slipping out the front door and never coming back. He needed a job, but Paolo made him feel strange. One moment Luis was lost in his dark beauty, the next he was embarrassing himself over a plate of egg on toast.
Luis shuddered, the sound of the plate hitting the wall echoing in his head. In a world he didn’t hear enough of anymore,fuck, he’d heard that. Felt it too, in the pit of his stomach, as the food had splatted on the floor. It had been thirty-one hours and counting since he’d last eaten. Risking his precious cash on supplies depended on him getting a job.
Onkeepinga job.
With a heavy sigh, he dropped into a nearby chair just as Paolo emerged from the kitchen.
Paolo returned to his own seat and held out a battered phone. “You can borrow this if you like. Get yourself a SIM card from the Tesco Express down the road. You can get them preloaded with credit for a fiver. Text me the number later, and I’ll give you a call.”
“You’re lending me a phone?”
“I am. But it’s a piece of shit, so if you decide not to come back, you can bin it.”
Luis hadn’t held a phone in years. Inside, some prisoners had them smuggled in, but he’d tried to avoid those faces, even the ones Dante had instructed him to watch over. Luis rubbed subconscious fingers over the scar above his left ear. He’d grown his hair out to hide it, but sometimes it throbbed and burned like the devil had been stitched into his skull.
He took the phone Paolo held out, a foil-wrapped package, and the scrap of paper scrawled with a phone number. Paolo’s phone number. Of all the ways Luis had dreamt of scoring Paolo’s digits the previous night, none were the charity handout this was turning out to be.
The foil package was warm and smelt of bacon. Luis’s head spun. “What is it?”
“Bacon and egg bap. I made you one earlier, but you threw it at my head.”
“Sorry about that.”
Paolo shrugged. “Whatever. It was only a plate. Just do me the courtesy of letting me know if you’re not interested in the job, okay? I’ve got better shit to do than chase you.”
Luis nodded and took his cue to disappear. He tucked the phone and the scrap of paper in his pocket and made tracks. Outside, it had turned cold again and was already starting to get dark. Luis’s T-shirt was damp from washing dishes, and the biting wind cut deep. Home was a bus ride away if he didn’t fancy the cold walk—news flash, he didn’t—but he’d left the bedsit that morning without his magic envelope. His only choice was to trudge his way back on foot, then head straight out again for a SIM card.
Thirty minutes later, he staggered inside with leaden legs, numb hands, and nipples that could cut glass. The by-now cold sandwich called his name, but a hot shower came first. Clean and defrosted, he devoured the bap Paolo had made him in two bites. It was the nicest thing he’d ever eaten. Real food hit his stomach like a warm hug, and he lay back on the bed, tempted by sleep. A cocoon of fatigue enveloped him. He shuffled under the covers and closed his eyes before he remembered the phone, the SIM card, and Paolo’s phone number.
Crawling out of bed felt like sacrilege, but Paolo’s number called to him like a beacon. He loaded the SIM card and turned the phone on. It was fully charged, and the home screen was a picture of the burly old man Luis remembered as Toni, smiling, with his arm around a dainty woman who had Paolo’s flinty smile. The phonebook had six contacts, all Italian, but none of them Paolo. Luis typed in the number from the scrap of paper and saved it.
“Text me the number and I’ll give you a call.”
It sounded so simple, and it was, but something about Paolo terrified Luis more than any road man he’d ever faced. Not because of anything he did, but for how his mere presence made Luis’s heart thump and blood rush.That shit ain’t normal.
But what was normal? In this brave new world, Luis had no idea.
