He hangs up. I put the phone down and go to the window. Grace's lights are still off. She hasn't left for the bodega. Sheusually leaves at ten fifteen on a morning shift. It's ten forty. She's late, or she's not going.
At ten fifty-two, her door opens. She comes out in her work clothes, hair pulled back, bag on her shoulder. No bodega stop. She walks straight to the restaurant, fast, her stride tight, her shoulders up. No easy pace. No loose posture. She's walking with purpose and the purpose isn't work.
I pull on my jacket and cross the street.
The restaurant isn't open yet and it’s not her shift. The CLOSED sign is on the door. I can see Grace inside through the cracked window, standing at the bar, her bag on the counter. She's not prepping. She's not tying her apron. She's standing at the bar with her phone in one hand and something in the other hand and she's waiting.
She's waiting for me.
I push through the door. The bell rings. She turns and her face confirms everything I was afraid of.
Her eyes are red-rimmed and hard. Her jaw is set. She's holding the pill bottle in her left hand and her phone in her right and her finger is tapping the pill bottle, fast, the plastic clicking against her ring.
"Sit down," she says.
I sit on the bar stool closest to where she's standing because she told me to sit and I sat.
She puts the pill bottle on the bar between us. The label faces me. Pemberton Family Pharmacy. 1847 Spruce Street.
"That address," she says. "Is a parking garage."
I don't say anything.
"The pharmacy name doesn't exist. Anywhere. I searched it. No website, no phone number, no listing, no record. The pharmacy that's been filling my prescription for eleven years is not real."
She waits. Her tapping accelerates.
"Tell me you didn't know," she says. "Tell me this is news to you. Tell me you're surprised."
I look at her. Gray-blue eyes. Renzo's eyes. Red-rimmed and exhausted and furious and terrified… aimed at me.
"I can't tell you that," I say.
Her hand tightens on the pill bottle. The plastic cracks under her grip. "How long have you known?"
"Before I came to Philadelphia."
Her face twists. I watch the processing happen in real time: the confusion first, then the recalculation, then the slow, horrible understanding spreading across her face.
"Before you came here," she repeats. "Before you walked into this restaurant. Before you sat at table four and ordered the branzino and tipped thirty percent and learned my name. Before any of it."
"Yes."
"You came here because of me."
"Yes."
"You came here because of the pills."
"Because of what the pills were doing to you. Yes."
She puts both hands on the bar and leans forward, and her voice drops low and steady. "What are the pills, Carmelo? Are you a spy? Sent here to make sure I take them, or what the fuck are you? WHO are you?"
"Memory suppressants. Pharmaceutical compounds designed to prevent traumatic memories from consolidating into conscious recall. They don't erase what happened to you. They keep your brain from accessing it. And no. I’m not a spy. I’m in the mafia."
Her mouth drops open. She can’t handle the information overload, so she asks the one question burning on her tongue. "What happened to me."
"Yes."
