Page 49 of The Pleasure of Panic

“Was it a watch or something?”

My hands stop what they’re doing as I gaze off into space, thinking back on that moment. “No, it wasn’t a watch. It was a phone.”

“Huh,” she says. “Like a cool new iPhone? Kind of a weird gift, but OK.”

“No, it wasn’t a cool new iPhone. It was a cheap-ass thing you buy in the checkout lane at Walmart.”

Now she’s squinting her eyes. Trying to fit the pieces together. I’m just about to give the big reveal when she says, “Oh. Shit.”

“What?” I ask.

“It was a burner phone, wasn’t it?”

“How the fuck did you guess that?”

“Was it? Was it a burner?”

I nod.

“Fuckin’ A. He was dirty, wasn’t he.”

“How the fuck did you jump to that conclusion?” I ask.

“Sorry. OK, well, good.” She draws in a deep breath and lets it out.

“No,” I say. “He was the bad witch, remember. He was dirty as fuck, Issy. And that phone was… it was his way of saying, ‘Welcome to the family, Finn. Now you’re a bad witch too.’”

“Shit. You had no idea?”

I shake my head. “Not a fuckin’ clue.”

“What did you do?”

“I took it.” I look up at her as I say this, my eyes looking right into hers. “I answered it when it rang. I got a new one sent to me every few weeks or so. And I answered those too.”

“So you fell in line.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I did.”

“So what happened? That you got sent to Denver?”

I start lacing up her boot, winding the laces back and forth across the back of her calf, all the way up to that little dent behind her knee. And each time I poke the lace head into the eye, she makes the cutest little whimper sound. Like I’m driving her crazy. “So mostly I’m just doing my job. Sometimes it would be a month in between calls. But when it rang, that fucker rang, ya know?”

“What did they make you do?”

“Whatever.”

“Kill people?”

“Yeah, some. But they were all thugs, right? Enemies. Different gangs, different cities.”

“Gangs?”

“Remember when I told you I was Irish?”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Oh, fuck is right.” I inhale. Exhale loudly. I finish lacing the boot, tie it off at the back side of her knee, and reach for the other one.