Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

“What does she want?” Dane whispered. “Why doesn't she visit?”

“She can't. Because you need her too much.”

He watched Angie, wondering if he really could keep her sane in hell, or if she'd gone over the edge. Or if it was just him. “Of course I need her.”

“Too much. If she came back, it would ruin you. Who you are and what you've got left to do. You're always this close to death.”

“Hey, Angie, you think you're telling me something new?”

He could see his ma, languishing day by day, for years. Withering in darkness, tormented by her own body. It made him want to drive a fist inside her and squeeze out whatever was doing this to her. His mother, torn in half, peeling away from the inside out. Dad unable to bear witness, working longer and longer hours.

You can give yourself blood poison by tearing open your scabs. You dig into a scar long enough, it'll crawl forward on its own, cover you up until your mouth, nose, and even your eyes are sealed.

“You should go,” he told the dead girl he'd sort of killed.

“She wants you to know-”

“I don't want to hear.”

“But you do, Johnny, you really do.”

He glared at her, a girl who'd spoken her last words to him, and kept right on speaking them.

“I don't give a shit, Angie. That's enough.”

Glory blowing the guy off the bridge with the rocket. “I'm gonna rock your world, baby!”

“You ever gonna go back to Bed-Stuy and settle the score for me?” Angelina asked.

“Yeah.”

“When? When are you gonna do it, Johnny? Please tell me. Tell me!”

The current of the past took him again and rolled him along. Drawing him one way and then hurling him another. It brought him back to the last time he'd seen her alive. A red awning over the door. Flower boxes filled with petunias. The cop with his hand up.

He hadn't been a very good cab driver either, because he didn't gun it up and down the streets driving like a maniac, rushing all day long trying to make a buck. You'd think it would've played into his strengths, his instincts, being a driver and always digging the speed, but it just didn't work like that.

Fatigued most of the time for no reason but his own inertia. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. It was either a Newtonian law or somebody in a mortuary talking about the plastic-faced cadavers laid out on gurneys.

The Olympic Cab & Limousine Company would've fired him after the first week, except the guy in charge at the time knew Dane had a tenuous connection to the Monticelli clan and didn't want to kick him free. Not until he had a clearer idea of how much trouble he could expect from it later on.

If a fare brought Dane back over the bridge to Brooklyn, he'd take his time returning to Manhattan. He'd cruise around Headstone City for a while, take a long lunch break, and wander the neighborhood. Head over to the Grand Outlook Hall, walk the galleries, and consider his options.

There weren't many left. He thought he might join the force. Or maybe take up Vinny's offer to become a Monti lieutenant. It was mostly for show anyway, he wouldn't even need to wear a piece if he didn't want to. Just carry Vinny's coat for him, hold the doors open.

Neither choice appealed to him much, but then nothing really did.

His own apathy weighed on him like a sack tied to his back. He could sometimes see the shadow of the bitter old man he was going to be someday. The old prick wishing he could go back and kick his younger self in the ass. Get him moving in the right direction and avert more tragedy.

Dane had just gotten back into his cab and started to pull away from the Hall when Angelina Monticelli threw open the door and got in back.

“You need one of those pine-fresh deodorizers in here,” she told him. “Doesn't this atrocious smell give you a headache?”

“I kind of like it.”

“That's because it gets you high. So little oxygen getting to your brain. Death by sinus attack.”

Fifteen years old and seething with hip attitude. She hardly ever smiled but there was always a glint of superiority in her gray eyes. He knew she could verbally outmaneuver him with ease. It scared him a touch but also made him admire her.

She'd dressed down today, wearing an oversized black sweater and midnight-blue jeans, no makeup, her dark hair falling straight back over her ears, showing the slightest curl of bangs up front.

He heaved a sigh out like throwing a rock. “Angie, what're you doing?”

“What do you think I'm doing? I need a cab. You're a cab driver. You know simple economics, yes? The law of supply and demand?”

“Shouldn't you be in school?”

“Just drive.”

“I'm on break.”

“You're always on break, Johnny, you sit around here for hours. How do you make a buck?”

“I don't need much,” he admitted.

“That means you're gonna live with your grandmother forever? Don't you know what they say about you, a grown man living with his grandma? Even if she does make the best ziti. She brought some to the St. Mary's book sale last month. Bishop Dilorenzo couldn't tear himself away, the cheese hanging off his face. He was a pig, it was disgusting to see, but kinda fun too. Why don't you get married?”

It was the kind of conversation he was easily led into and had to consciously avoid. “Don't you have school?” he repeated. “How do you learn things like the law of supply and demand if you don't go to class?”

“It's almost four. Don't you own a watch?”

“Yeah. It's at home in a box with my tie clips and cuff links. Where are you headed?”

“I'll tell you when we get there, soldier boy.”

“I need to call it in to the dispatcher.”

“This one is off the books. Come on, what do you care? I can see how much you fret about following the rules and bringing in as much money to Olympic as you can. Besides, you don't need to worry, it's not like they'll fire you.” Saying it with an edge, like she had something to do with the boss not firing him, by way of her being part of the family. He checked the rearview and she fluttered her eyes at him.

One of those girls that, when she's little, she's cute, bright, and funny, and makes you wish she's your own younger sister. But then, when she hit thirteen or so, you grew acutely aware of her sex appeal. The angle of the jaw, the shape of those legs, and suddenly your whole cerebral cortex got rewired.

You found yourself vying for her time, grinning a lot, then smacking yourself in the forehead going, What the fuck are you thinking?

“Come on,” she said. “It's important and I'm running late. Cut through the plaza, make a left.”

“You don't want to give me the address?”

“I don't know it, but I've been there before.” Taking out a compact and checking herself in it, making kissy faces until she was sure her lipstick was okay.

He'd known her all her life but just started seeing her in that new light two years ago. As her transformation into adulthood continued he knew he had to watch himself, stop sweating so much around her. It wasn't totally his fault. It was chemical. She was becoming what he desired, just as her sister Maria had before her.

The shape of her nose, the pouty lips, and the brash knowledge in her gaze that made him want to ask her, Hey, what are you thinking? Angie had the right curves, and they were getting better every month.

Ignoring him just enough to get him irritated. He supposed that made it worse because he liked to be cut down. His own streak of masochism going pretty deep. The army psychiatrist used to ask him if Mom or Dad used to smack him around as a kid. If his mother would hit him upside the head and then yank him to her bosom. If she used to take bubble baths while he was sitting on the toilet. All kinds of shit, that shrink had a goddamn dirty mind. No matter how many times Dane told him no, the doc would just nod and ask the question again in a different way.