“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it wore her down. By the end she wasn’t the same person I’d met in the beginning.”
“And now?”
“Now she doesn’t believe she deserves anything. Good things happen to other people. Not her.”
“Good things happen in her dreams,” Rayner says.
He’s smirking.
I stop. Everybody stops walking except Rayner.
“That’s not the same and you know it,” Erik says, and he doesn’t sound happy about it. “Besides, she doesn’t believe those dreams are real. Does she?”
“No.” Rayner keeps strolling, entirely at peace, an entire door on his shoulder. “But I think she’s starting to.”
I look at all of them — Erik wound tight, Rayner glowing, Gunnar suddenly very interested in traffic — and for once I decide to just open my mouth.
“Then we change her mind.”
They all look at me.
“Because we’re all gone for her. Right?” I hear myself ask it. “It’s not just me.”
“Not just you,” Erik says.
Rayner just smiles.
“Speak for yourselves.” Gunnar puts his hands in his pockets. “Beautiful is a complication.”
He calls her Beautiful and denies her in the same sentence. Nobody points it out. That’s probably going to come back to bite him at some point.
We’re half a block out when I see them.
Four men outside the corner market, spread across the sidewalk, too far apart to be friends. Not one of them looks at us.
Everybody looks at us in this realm. It’s like they cannot help themselves and today we’re four large men carrying a door. But these guys? These guys are the only people in Chicago not looking, and that means somebody told them not to.
This should be fun.
The big one in front has decided he’s the leader. He’s still convincing himself.
“Left one’s about to be sick,” Gunnar says, low, almost cheerful.
He’s right. The one at the leader’s shoulder wants to be anywhere else and came anyway. Loyalty, the cheap kind — the kind that’s mostly fear of being left out.
“Company,” I say, pleasant, for the group.
The big one steps up as we reach them. Chin first. “You’re the guy.” He’s talking to Erik. “From the building. Kyle’s told us all about you, man.”
Erik stops. The whole sidewalk feels it.
“Move,” Erik says.
“Or what?”
The small one. Smallest of the four, biggest mouth, the most to prove. He was always going to be the one who talked. “There’s four of us.”
Gunnar laughs. It’s a real laugh, delighted, from the belly, and it does more damage than a threat would. “There’s four of you,” he agrees, wiping his eye. “Rayner, there’s four of them.”
