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"If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. I must remove all ethical obstacles in my path, anything that might call into question my dedication to making Boston a better place for everyone. As anyone who knows me will say, when I do something, I give it everything I have. So from this moment forward, I serve the people of Boston, and no one else."
There was a smattering of loud applause, and Brandon flashed the crowd his trademark smile just before the clip cut back to the anchor. She pivoted to another news story, and I turned back to my coffee, my chest hollow and numb.
"You okay, hon? You look like you're having a rough night."
Faye tapped her scraggly fingernails on the stained countertop. There were only a few other people in the diner: an obviously inebriated couple crowding one side of a booth and an off-duty construction worker who looked even more tired than I did.
I sighed and nodded. "I'm fine."
Faye looked like she didn't believe me, but just refilled my coffee cup. "Can I get you somethin' to eat? You look like you could use a bite or two."
In fact, my stomach was growling again, but I couldn't have eaten a thing. I just shook my head and drank my coffee, relishing the bitter, stale taste. I toyed with the silver cuff still hanging around my wrist, more solid than the rest of me felt. I pulled it off and ran my thumb over the gold-embossed inscription:
One man loved the pilgrim soul in you
It was fitting really. I'd looked up the poem it came from so many times that I had it memorized. It was one of the many beautiful pieces of poetry that Yeats had written for Maud Gonne, his decades-long unrequited love. He chased her for almost twenty years, during her marriage to another man, even to the point where eventually he proposed to her daughter just to get to her. It was a mad love, the kind of love that lasted a lifetime.
I'll never stop chasing you, Brandon had once told me. He had given me this bracelet after I'd put him off again and again. The quote, a bit from a poem where Yeats warns Gonne of the regrets she'll have, referred to the uniqueness of his adoration for her. That he saw her as no one else. And that one day, she'd realize it and wish she had acted differently.
I didn't need to wait until I was old to have those regrets. I was completely and utterly filled with them. Now it seemed that the tables had turned. I'd be the one loving Brandon's pilgrim soul. I'd be the one pining for someone else my whole life while he moved on to bigger and better things.
~
The night sky was completely black when I finally shuffled up the stairs of my apartment, well past midnight. I took comfort in the fact that I could continue my wallowing alone. Eric and Jane would be gone, off to bid their farewells at the airport before Jane left for Chicago.
But as my head peeked over the landing of the third floor, I caught sight of a pair of men's black leather shoes and black pants through the weathered wood railing. Momentarily, my heart surged. Brandon.
"There she is. How you doin', Red? Thought you'd never get here."
And just like that, my heart fell to the bottom of my stomach. There was another person who called me that sometimes. The voice, thick with Brooklyn twang, raunchy in its slow, thick-lipped drawl, made my skin crawl.
Three more pairs of feet appeared next to the originals. I looked up. The round, sweaty face of Victor Messina leered over the railing, his half-smile pushing into the layers of fat that surrounded a set of tobacco-stained teeth.
"We been waitin' around here for a while, sweetheart," he greeted me. "Now, now, don't run off, baby girl," he said as I took a few steps back.
He pulled aside his jacket to reveal a paunch that piled over the edge of a handgun tucked into his waistband: a nine-millimeter Glock, the kind I'd seen before, toted by neighborhood gangsters and on homicide specials.
"How-how did you find me?" I asked, my voice unsteady as I gripped the edge of the railing, tensed like a rabbit. Run, a voice inside my head screamed. But the gun was big and black, and I was stuck.
"Oh, it wasn't so hard," Messina said, smacking his thick lips. "You made a mistake, see, challenging Katie like that. She don't like bein' challenged so much. She'll get even with you later."
He chuckled with his henchman, as if they were both sharing some recalled memory of Katie Corleone, one that was almost certainly not appropriate for most people to know about. Every muscle in my body pulled taut.
"She mentioned your man, and imagine my surprise when she told me he'd been on the cover of a magazine last month. And now he's runnin' for mayor?" The gangster clicked his tongue, causing the collection of skin under his jaw to wobble. "Now that's power."
"I'll––I'll call him," I volunteered, my voice tripping over itself. "He'll give you whatever you want, I know he will."
Victor nodded in agreement, and his friends nodded as well, their fat heads bobbing in terrifying unison.
"Oh, I'm sure he will, honey." But his eyes glinted like steel. "Which is why you're gonna come with us, Red."
Maybe it was the look in his beady eyes. Maybe it was the thought of having his ham-shaped fingers on me. Maybe it was the basic realization that if I did go with Victor Messina, I might not ever come back. But my fight-or-flight instinct switched on.
"No," I said.
My feet started to work before my brain did. Moving on pure instinct and adrenaline, I fled down the stairs, ignoring the gunshots that slammed the plaster behind my back. Messina's and his thug's heavy footsteps slammed on the cracked marble stairs, but not as quickly as mine. GET OUT, my brain shouted at me, over and over again.
There it was: the heavy brass door that would lead to my cobbled street, and then to Hanover, to crowds, to police officers, to safety. I sprinted towards it while Messina and his thugs hammered down the last flight of stairs behind me.
