“What happened to me leaving?” I asked.
Honestly. I couldn’t be too shocked. I was so used to my mom changing her mind on a whim that having Rocco do it wasn’t much of a surprise at all. I just had to play him, to play the situation, and to hope he’d change his mind again. I watched as he stood to walk away, each step he took like a thump in my chest.
“There’s a mattress I’ll bring in for you. Warning, though, my brother has not been kind to it.” He turned to me once he reached the doorway and smiled. “And I’ll go see about that toy. I wanna make sure you get enough rest here.”
He had my phone and my mom had seen me talk to him, so she’d welcome him inside, and before I knew it, she’d be in a similar situation, probably with worsened health and needing oxygen twenty-four seven, which would mean around the clock care too.
“I’ll leave Boston,” I called out to him as he was already down the hallway, footsteps echoing like ghosts, traveling up and down.
Rocco appeared in the doorway, and a smile twitched at his cheek. “I know you don’t mean it,” he said. “So I’m not accepting it. I’ve got everything I need now. And maybe I’ll mention it to my contact. I’m sure they’ll love to hear about an agent going off, doing their own thing, sticking their nose into businesses, costing taxpayers, and all the stuff people love to complain about.”
I sank further into myself on the ground. It felt like I was being punished. I hadn’t found anything, I’d actually just worked for him, perhaps flirted too hard. I’d even given him dinner, so if anything, I was an awful agent who’d only managed to get themselves into shit, rather than opening a case and busting itwide open.The only thing busting now was the vein running down the side of my temple.
Times like this, under stress, was when I regressed, played house with my stuffed animals, absorbed the comfort of a onesie, and worked through a colorful sticker chart that set some sort of order up for my life. As Rocco left the doorway again, and a tear rolled down my cheek, I tried imagining that same sticker chart I had in a secret corner of my New York apartment, the one that made it look like I had a child living with me.
***
It could’ve been seen as disassociating, but little space was happy space. It was where I went when everything in my life turned to ash—and shit, basically. It’s where I became all giggles and less frowny. I’d lain on the hard floor for a while now, looking at the marks on the ceiling, making pictures from them. It usually helped me process life, but I didn’t have anything now but a sort of hazy feeling, like my body was coated in fur and fuzz.
The marks on the ceiling looked like dino claws, and they were ready to play with the lion, or maybe it was a clown. It had a big circle nose with two dots. It was a nice canvas to work with, and my eyes continued creating pictures all the way across it, most of them changed. The dino claw became a field of grass where I was playing, rolling a beach ball through it.
It must’ve been an hour or so when Rocco came back, distorting the hazy glow of removing my adult self from this space. I snapped out of it with two tears as reality slapped me in the face. One of the first real feelings I’d had in a while, and it was the feeling of fucking up—of not thinking anything through.
“You’re on an extended vacation,” he said, holding out a large manila file. “Compassionate leave to take care of yourmom. Or so your file says. You’re an intel analyst. You have a photographic memory. High intelligence. You crave order. You’re a chameleon to your surroundings. And it says here, an uncanny ability to get under people’s skin when you need something.” He smirked. “Think that means you’re annoying.”
I nodded. “I’m not going to say anything about you to them. Listen. I’ll leave.”
“I’m impressed,” he said, folding the file shut. “You might actually be useful. I already told you, we’ve got enemies—the Morrell family, the Cordello family, both of them want our business, our territory, you know. And obviously, they’ve been using dirty tricks.”
I gulped hard. I’d read up on the families, just a little, but enough to recall it all at will. “You had their son arrested at your port,” I said.
“And you thought they’d come for us, so you’d catch us going for them?” He posed the question, shaking his head. “Why not go to them?”
“Because my mom lives within your territory,” I said. “If I tried with them, they’d—”
“Kill you,” he said with a smirk. “But they don’t know anything, so you’d probably get away with it. And that’s why I want you to work for me. Your resume speaks for itself. You’ve worked in the area, analyzing organized crime, which I am not in any organized crime, and I will not admit to any of that.”
It was obvious he was. He knew I had no wire or phone, so he didn’t even need to keep up the act. The pretense that he was a good guy. After all the threats, he wasn’t good, but there was something about him, and it made my chest swell.
“Work for me, and I promise you’ll never want for anything, and you’ll never be in this room again.”
Two choices it seemed. Work for him or die. And I liked living. “Is there a third option?”
He shook his head. “Not for what I want to do with you.” He was on his knees,in front of me, scuffing his trousers in the floor dust again.
“Tell me, then,” I said.
Rocco gritted his teeth. “Well, my brother did it, so why can’t I?”
“Did what?”
“Work for me,” he said. “And I’ll make sure you want for nothing.”
“You already said that.”
He got closer, his finger beneath my chin. “I want you, but I can’t have you.”
“Unless I quit,” I whispered, finally understanding. “You don’t want to sleep with a federal agent, or kill one, so you’ll have me quit and then—I just become a civilian, someone you can do whatever you want with.” As the words came out of my mouth, Rocco’s smile widened.
