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Chapter19
Renata
“I’m freaking out.” I pace back and forth across his living room while Lanzo pours drinks in the kitchen. “I know I tried to bury a body the other night but this is somehow worse.”
“Why?” he asks, coming over with a glass of something dark. “Drink this.”
I take it, hands trembling. I spill some down my sweatshirt when I take a sip. The whiskey burns as I force it down. I nearly gag but manage to hold it back.
“That was a whole person,” I say, taking another, smaller drink. “I don’t know, he was complete. I held those fingers. I smelled the blood. I shook them around!” I finally gag thinking about the way they clattered around in the box like a Christmas present.
“Come here,” he says, steering me to the couch. “Sit down. Finish the drink.”
“You don’t get it, drinking isn’t going to fix this.” But I obey him, forcing more whiskey into my stomach. “This is serious, Lanzo. Someone was attached to those fingers, but he’s definitely not anymore, and you saw the look on that Craig guy’s face.”
“He was unhappy,” Lanzo agrees. “Finish the whiskey.”
I glare at him, annoyed, but take it in one hard shot. I cough, glaring even harder. “How’s getting me drunk helping at all?”
“It’s not,” he says, taking the glass away. “But it’ll soften everything. Now talk to me. Tell me what you saw. Go over everything, slowly.”
“What do you mean? You were sitting right next to me. You think reliving that trauma’s going to help at all?”
“I think it’ll help contextualize what happened. Put it into words. Distance yourself.”
“You distance yourself, asshole, those were goddamnfingers.”
He puts a hand on my knee, staring into my eyes. “Renata, you’re panicking.”
“NoshitI’m panicking. This is the first reasonable reaction I’ve had to all this insanity so far.” I jump to my feet, pacing again. I feel cooped up, trapped by these walls. “We delivered a box of human fingers to a man’s house. We watched him open it, watched him drop them on the ground. They scattered around on his stoop like freaking carrots. How areyounot losing it?”
“I’ve been on both ends of this transaction before,” he says with absurd calm.
I stop and stare. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He waves me away. I try not to think about him chopping off fingers—or worse, receiving some in the mail. “You can’t think straight if you’re panicking. The worst thing you can do in a situation like this is lose your mind. Come sit back down.” He walks to me, but I back away.
“I’m starting to rethink this whole situation,” I say, shaking my head. “Maybe I was wrong about you.”
“What is it about the fingers, in particular, that has you losing it?”
I open my mouth to answer, to tell him that panic is a perfectly normal reaction to seeing a man dump severed fingers on the ground, but something sticks with what Lanzo said.
Whatisit about the fingers, in particular?
I’m shaking when he leads me to the couch, lowers me down, and sits with my feet in his lap.
There’s a memory nagging at my brain. An old memory, one of my oldest. It’s a pair of hands tickling me. Long, white fingers. I’m laughing, laughing, laughing. I’m lying in bed and I feel so safe with the hands. I feel so happy, like there’s nothing that could go wrong in the world, so long as I’m near those hands.
Then the hands are gone. The fingers are gone. I’m looking for them, crying. They don’t come back.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, tone gentle now. He’s rubbing my feet, kneading the heel. It feels shockingly good. I concentrate on that for a few minutes.
I jam a finger into bridge of my nose, eyes squeezed shut. “Are you a therapist now or something?” I ask, my tone softening.
“In my line of work, you have to pick up a lot of skills. You’re not the first person I’ve walked back from the ledge. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not suicidal,” I say through my teeth. “Just having a tough time.”
