“Is that how it works at Velvet House?”
“Basically.”
She frowns. “Is that why Adriano took me to the hospital to see Zia Teresa? Because you’re allowed to get away with things if you get away with them?”
It’s a good way of putting it, but I don’t want to talk about Adriano. “Do you think I’ll get away with doing you from the back again when we get home?”
January presses her hand to her lips and I’m sure it’s to cover a smile.
A decent song comes on the radio, and I turn it up. We drive along, not talking for a bit. Is this how other people feel when they’re with their girlfriends? If so, I get the whole relationship thing a lot more. It’s… nice.
“Doc,” January says in a fluttery voice. “Is Adriano okay?”
I say nothing.
“I wouldn’t bring it up, but I know he’s been your friend ever since high school—”
“Elementary.”
“Wow.” She blinks. “It’s so hard to imagine Adriano as a kid.”
“Lose the beard and it’s about the same.”
She doesn’t smile. “Where is he, Nico? This morning I heard Harvey telling Sal that he’s not in the house. Has he… run away?”
I grin at the thought of Adriano loping down the street with a red handkerchief bundle on a stick. “No.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know.”
She looks up at me through her thick black lashes. “Nico, please?”
“You can’t just look at me like that and whisper my name every time you want something, Tits.”
She gives me a couple of slow, cutesy blinks and I sigh. “He hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s out living in the woods like a yeti.”
“What?”
“He built a cabin out in the forest near Velvet House,” I explain. “Whenever he gets sad, he stays out there. But he’s less than three miles away. Fishing in the stream.”
“Oh.” January toys with her gold medallion. “He made a cabin? Like he built it himself?”
She sounds way too impressed.
“It’s a shithole. And by that I mean he’s literally dug a hole to shit in.”
She wrinkles her nose. “But how does he eat and drink and stuff?”
I shrug, because the truth—he shoots deer and drinks out of the stream—will only play into whatever shirtless ‘man of the woods’ thing she’s imagining.
January sighs. “I wish you’d all forgive him for taking me to the hospital. I thought your friendship was bigger than that.”
“Hey, you don’t get to go putting that on me. He went out there on his own.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a nutjob.”
