The nail gives under the blade. A thin curl falls to the counter.
"I'm not leaving her to someone else," I say.
Danila watches me for a long time. Then he nods once and picks his fork back up and eats, and we don't talk about it again.
After he leaves, I stand at the window. Grace's apartment is visible from here. Third floor, two windows facing the street. I can’t make out details, but I can see the windows and that’s how I track her schedule. The lights are off. She went to bed at eleven thirty-two. I know because I watched the lights go out the way I watched them go out yesterday.
I can see the window, but can't see her behind it and that's fine. That's enough for now. I know she's in there. I know the pills are on her nightstand. I know the tapping happened nine timestoday and the man behind the bar walked her home and her confidence in the dark is a lie built by people I'm going to kill.
I know her name. Not the one she uses. The real one.Graziella Ferrara. A man's daughter. A girl who was taken.
Folding the knife closed, I set it on the windowsill. I don't go to bed because I don't sleep much anymore. She has consumed all waking thought. Tomorrow, I'm going to figure out how to walk into that restaurant and sit down at one of her tables and hear her voice for the first time, and I need to decide what kind of man I am when that happens.
Chapter Two: Grace
Thepillissmalland white, and I grab my glass with the last of yesterday's water. Taking a small sip, my nose crinkles.
The glass has been on my nightstand since Tuesday. I should wash it. I should wash a lot of things… the glass, the mug in the sink, the jacket I wore home last night that smells of fryer oil and the lavender hand soap from the restaurant bathroom. Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered. I have a couch, a bed, a table with two chairs I bought from a woman on Craigslist who was moving to Denver, and a kitchen that fits one person if that person doesn't need to open the oven and the fridge at the same time.
I swallow the pill dry because the water is warm and I don't want it. My throat catches for a second and then it goes down. Same as every morning. I've been taking these since I was thirteen, prescribed by a doctor whose name I don't remember. It was one through my foster family, and I have never once thought about itlonger than the three seconds it takes to open the bottle and put one in my mouth.
They're for anxiety. I have anxiety. The pills help. End of story.
The bottle goes back on the nightstand next to the warm water. I should count how many I have left, but I don’t. I think I have enough to put off calling them for a refill. They have always made me feel uneasy and now that I’m on my own, I prefer to give them the least amount of energy possible. A few calls here and there just to let them know I’m alive. Maybe a visit on the holidays.
No real love lost there.
My shift starts at eleven and the walk takes six minutes if I don't stop at the bodega, eight if I do. Today I stop. Coffee from the pot Rosa keeps behind the register, a dollar twenty-five, same she's been charging me for since I started coming in three years ago. Rosa is seventy and has opinions about my hair and my weight and my lack of a boyfriend and she delivers all three every morning in the same order.
"Too thin," she says, handing me the cup. "You eat today?"
"I'm going to work at a restaurant, Rosa."
"You work at a restaurant. You don't eat at a restaurant. I see you walk home with nothing in your hands. No bag. No leftovers. Nothing."
"I eat at work."
"You eat bread and whatever Marco burns on the flat top." She waves her hand. "Eat real food. And do something with your hair, you will never get boyfriend looking like you’re trying to attract a family of swallows."
I drink the coffee and leave a two-dollar bill on the counter because Rosa won't take a tip, but she'll take an overpayment if I don't wait for change. The bell above the door rings when I leave. The sidewalk is cold through my sneakers. April can't decide what it wants to be, and today it wants to be forty-three degrees with a wind that comes off the Delaware and pushes through the grid streets without anything to slow it down.
Three blocks. I know every crack. The uneven slab in front of the dry cleaner where I tripped last winter and caught myself on the parking meter. The storm drain at the corner of Ninth that floods when it rains and sends a sheet of water across the crosswalk that every regular pedestrian knows to walk around. The front of the restaurant, where the awning is green and the window has a crack in the lower right corner that Danny the owner has been meaning to fix since October and will probably mean to fix until the window breaks and he has to replace the whole thing.
I push through the door, the heat hits me and then the smell hits me. Garlic, bread, pasta and my shoulders drop an inch. This is mine. Not in the ownership sense. In the sense that I know every table and every chair and every chip in the bar top, the wobble in the leg of table six and the light above the register that flickers when the AC kicks on. I've worked here for four years and there'snothing in this building that surprises me. I didn't understand how much I needed that until I thought about it just now.
Routine helps settle my anxiety.
"You're early," Javi says from behind the bar.
"I'm on time. You're early."
"I'm always early because I'm proactive and you're punctual."
"You're annoying is what you are."
He grins. Javi has a grin that takes up his whole face and makes it impossible to stay irritated at him for longer than ten seconds. He's twenty-six, two years older than me, and he's worked here for three of the four years I have, and somewhere in the overlap we became the kind of friends who don't have to explain themselves to each other. He knows I don't talk about my childhood. He knows I live alone and don't date and take a pill every morning and have a thing about Italian that I've never explained, and he's never asked about. He knows these things because he pays attention, and he's never once used what he knows to push past the place where I stop letting people in.
I tie my apron and check the reservation book. Twelve tables booked for lunch, which is average for a Wednesday. Two large parties tonight; an eight-top at six thirty and a birthday six-top at eight. I check the specials board. Marco is doing a pan-seared branzino and a pork shoulder that's been braising since yesterday. Both of those are going to sell out because Marco is anasshole and a loudmouth and also the best cook I've ever worked for.
