Page 19 of Rotten Men

I step inside the silent house, and it doesn’t take me too long to discover what my best friend has been doing all day. Sitting on the floor, leaning against a couch disheveled and shitfaced, Vincent stares at the picture he has in one hand while drinking from an almost-empty bottle of Jack with the other.

“Day off, boss?” I say, leaning against the door with my arms crossed over my chest, taking this sad sight in.

Vincent doesn’t reply and instead drinks the remainder of the rich, dark liquor. He then throws the bottle next to its empty twin and proceeds to grab his third. He struggles to open it, too drunk and useless to twist the cap.

Shit.

I walk up to him and take the bottle away.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” I suggest, and once again I’m faced with his silence. My eyes seek out the frame in his hands, and I’m troubled to acknowledge being a picture of him and Pietro with their arms over each other’s shoulder when they were still kids.

“Was I happy here?” he finally asks, and the gravel in his voice hurts my ears as much as my heart.

“Hard to tell. You weren’t the most forthcoming with feelings and shit, even as a child,” I proclaim, sliding next to him and leaning my head back on the couch cushion.

“Hmm. I think I was. I hadher. I hadhim. I had you and Gio. But then I lost it all,” he mumbles incoherently.

“You still have Gio and me.”

“Until when, do you think?” he asks, turning his bloodshot eyes toward me.

“Until we meet our maker, Vince. Does it really matter?” I question, looking into his dead, hazel eyes and praying he won’t go too far off into the abyss beyond our reach.

“No. It doesn’t,” he groans, placing the photograph, face down, on the floor next to him.

“Your housekeeper is going to be pissed when she sees the mess you made,” I divert.

“I saw Selene last night,” he announces, his tone flat and unresponsive.

“I know. She came to see me this afternoon,” I tell him and his resigned expression persists in slicing me in two.

“Hmm,” he mumbles.

“We’ll have to tell Gio.”

“That will be a problem. I need him focused on the assignment I gave him,” he rebukes, shaking his head.

“This is Red we’re talking about, Vincent,” I explain softly, as a parent would to an errant child.

He slams his fists vehemently on the floor, halting my reasoning words from leaving my mouth.

“I know who she is!” he shouts, and the dormant volcano shows its first sign of an impending eruption.

I don’t say another word and wait for him to cool down. It will be pointless to try having a logical conversation with him at this very moment. Not when he’s all raw flesh and fractured soul.

“I need a shower,” he says after a half-hour of total, agonizing silence.

I stand up and help him off the floor. I let him lean on me for balance as I take him upstairs into his bedroom, and then usher him into the master bathroom. He sits on the toilet and starts to undress the same clothes he’s been wearing since yesterday, while I prepare his shower, making sure he gets the cold waterfall to sober up.

“Can you stand up on your own?” I ask, making sure he enters the shower safely.

With his eyes closed under the cold spray, he nods.

“Okay. I’ll make you some coffee,” I tell him and leave him to his business.

I leave the room, heading toward the kitchen, and the minute I step inside, I call Gio without any hesitation or concern to Vincent’s warning.

“Pronto?” he says, and I hear the smile in his voice. It pains me how I’m about to be the bastard who’ll rob it away from him.

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