Page 21 of Sink or Swim

Now isn’t the time. I can nurse my broken heart later. For now, I just need to get the fuck out of Sugardove City. I need some cash, and then I need to get on a bus to anywhere but here.

I slip behind a large wooden crate labeled “FRAGILE” and wait for the group of men to amble past. Then I scurry across the dock, as far away from the lights as possible, to cower behind another crate.

Stealthy I am not, because the second I make it to my next hiding spot, I hear someone yell, “Oy! You! Come out!”

My heart thunders in my ears as I step out from behind the crate with my hands up. Hopefully, they’ll see I’m sopping wet and unarmed. Hopefully, they won’t riddle my body with bullets and toss me into the channel for my girlfriend to find later.

I clench my eyes tightly, hoping that whatever happens, it’ll be over soon. Then I hear a familiar laugh. A chortle, really, and a few heavy, plodding footsteps approaching. When I open my eyes, I see Maurice’s familiar white mustache and the scar across his right eye. A friendly face, if there ever was one in the mafia, but I know better than to greet him like an old friend. He was complicit in my murder attempt, after all.

“Well, well, well … looks like we’ve got a ghost haunting us, boys,” he says. I don’t miss the amusement in his gruff voice, though there’s an edge to it as well. The other two men step into the light. I don’t recognize them. They must be new. Poor bastards. “Nick. You’re alive.”

I’m shivering and can’t stop my teeth from chattering as I grind out, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

Maurice closes the gap between us, claps a meaty paw on my shoulder, and pulls me into a tight bear hug that squeezes the air out of my lungs. I’m stunned. Speechless, in fact. Here I thought he was about to finish the job from three months ago, and now he’s hugging me. When he finally releases me, he throws an arm around my neck and pulls me into his side. “This is Nick. The boss tried to off him three months ago, but somehow, he’s survived. Like a cockroach!”

I am so confused right now. The other two men are slender and almost identical in their appearance. One wears thin, dark-rimmed glasses and a white crew-neck t-shirt despite the cold. A couple others are at least in black hoodies and jeans, a more practical choice when trying to go incognito at night. The sides of their heads are shaved, and their dark hair falls into their equally dark eyes. They look like they haven’t eaten or slept in weeks. I looked like that when I first joined up, too. Definitely new. They laugh at Maurice’s poor attempt at a joke.

“We offed Luther a few weeks after you were left in the lagoon,” Maurice says by way of explanation. “Gone. I took over. Glad to see you made it. Wasn’t right what he did to you. An apology would have sufficed in my book, man. You’ve more than proven you’re loyal.”

Again, I’m speechless and unsure what else to say in that moment, so I mutter, “Yeah. Loyal.”

“He’s a good egg,” Maurice says to his henchmen, then releases his stone-cold grip on my neck. I gulp down a deep breath as my body shudders again. “We need to get you some clean clothes, though, before you shiver yourself to death. Hah!”

I smile weakly, and he leads me away from the docks toward one of the black Cadillacs parked in front of the warehouse. When I look over my shoulder, I silently murmur a prayer to whatever god might be listening that Oona is long gone by now. I wouldn’t want her to see me like this.

Back at headquarters, Maurice and some of the others are caught up in a noisy pinball game while I lay on the couch staring up at the ceiling fan. I’m not sure how long I’ve been like this, but it’s been long enough for the new guys to get piss-ass drunk and pass out. Maurice, who’s always been better at holding his liquor, grabs a chair, pulls it up, and sits on it backwards.

“Hey,” he says. He’s using his pep talk voice. Great. Exactly what I was hoping for. “You look like you’ve been through hell, friend. Want to talk about it?”

Maurice takes a long pull from his beer bottle. When I sit up, he holds up a fresh bottle he just opened. I’m really not in the mood for drinking, but I take it anyway.

“Nah. Nothing to talk about,” I say with a sigh, then take a swig from the bottle. It tastes like dog piss. No alcohol in three months evidently made me lose the taste for it.

But Maurice has never been one to live and let live when it comes to the mental health of his crew, and he lets go of a long, exhausted sigh. “I hear you. What you went through … no one should have to go through something like that. Were you out there by yourself for three months, or were you somewhere else lyin’ low? No judgment. Just curious.”

I could make something up. Lie. But would he even believe me if I said I survived in the wilderness on my own for three months eating nothing but bugs and rabbits? Probably not. Maurice isn’t an idiot, even if he likes to act like one.

“Nah. I was lying low, yeah,” I say, and Maurice nods slowly.

“I would, too, if I were you. Wish we had known where you were. Would have pulled you back into the family ages ago,” he muttered. No doubt he would have, too, because Maurice and I had always gotten along well enough.

He’s not a bad guy … except no, he kind of is. I used to tell myself that none of these guys were actually bad. That life itself made them turn to crime. It was the system that broke us and spit us back out. Made us all what we were. Poor circumstances. Maurice’s sister, Genevieve, is at least a stable influence on his life. But Maurice’s own father tried to off him when he was just a kid. Burned their house down with him in it. His mother and sister couldn’t hold things together anymore, and he was placed in the foster care system like I was. Then he “graduated” when he turned eighteen … just like me. Turned to a life of crime, also like me.

But I want out. I don’t—can’t—keep living like this.

More than anything though, I just want to be with Oona somewhere far, far away, on a strip of land to call our own. A pipe dream, I’m now realizing, because what kind of future could a human have with a lagoon woman? I was delusional to even entertain thoughts of a future with her. Maybe that’s why she left me. She knew we could never work out and never intended for us to be anything more than… allies? Friends? I was company to her, nothing else. God, how could I have been such a fool?

“You have pain in your eyes, brother,” Maurice says before finishing off his beer and chucking the bottle across the room to hit the recycling bin. We might be mafia, but we care about the planet, apparently. “Tell me about her.”

I arch an eyebrow, and he smirks. “You think I can’t tell this is about a woman? C’mon, man. No one would have you so down unless it was a girl. So tell me about it.”

I mean, there’s also the fact that my “family” almost succeeded in killing me. That would get a person down, too. But I don’t say that out loud because I don’t feel like getting into it with him. Not right now.

Shrugging, I say, “What’s there to tell? She was the light of my life and now she’s gone.”

He goes quiet for a few long moments. Then he narrows his eyes as his knee bounces, one of his few tells that he’s deep in thought.

“She was beautiful. And smart.” I think about Oona teaching me how to use tools those first few days in the woods. How she showed me the best way to open up clam shells. The best way to skin a rabbit without damaging its fur. All sorts of things they don’t teach you in school or, hell, even Cub Scouts. My brilliant, beautiful Oona with so much fire in her heart.

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