He was watching me closely and for some reason there was no grin fighting anymore.
Then he answered, “Yeah.”
I waited.
He pulled me closer so my body was not so lightly pressed to his. In fact, I was so close I had to lift my hands and put them on his chest, right below his shoulders.
“Do you want me to start?” I asked, again trying to be helpful as I thought nice people would want to be.
“You have something to say?” he asked.
I thought about it.
I suppose I had a million things to say. I hadn’t practiced any of them yet because I was too busy practicing what I was going to say to Lee. Talking to Lee took precedence but I sure as certain wished I’d practiced something to say to Hector.
“Give a fuckin’ mint to know what’s goin’ on in that head of yours,” Hector muttered, breaking into my thoughts.
I ignored him and said, “Right now, I don’t have anything to say. I reserve the right to say something later though.”
At this, Hector started laughing. It was silent but I could feel his body moving with it. This confused me even more.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“You,” he answered.
Me? I was funny? I’d never been funny.
Ever.
I tried to think of the last time I was funny.
No, there was no last time.
I was just not funny.
“What’s funny about me?” I asked with curiosity.
He shook his head and brought me even closer so my body was deep in his, his arms were around me tight and my hands had to slide up to his shoulders.
“It’d take too long to explain and we got more important shit to talk about.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed because I still kind of wanted to know what was funny about me. “Okay.”
All of a sudden, he switched the subject. “What made you go out the back last night?”
I shrugged again. “Some bartender came up to me, handed me a note. It said it was from my Mom, she’d been looking for me, finally found me and she was out back and I should meet her. I figure Harvey paid someone to give it to me.”
Instantly and inexplicably, the air in the room changed. A current ran through it, strong and dangerous and Hector’s arms tightened further.
My body tensed.
“Are you fucking shitting me?” he asked, enunciating every word clearly from between his teeth.
“No,” I whispered because the change in him was kind of scaring me.
All of a sudden, he let go. I felt the loss of his heat like a blow and watched him walk away, tearing his hand through his hair. He stopped at the window, yanked the curtain back and looked at the street.
I stared at him, unsure what to do. One second he seemed to be kind of mellow but amused. The next he seemed anything but mellow and amused and his body language was saying to stay well away. Because of that, my head was telling me to run away.
Instead I called hesitantly, “Hector?”
“Give me a minute, Sadie,” he said to the window.
I felt it prudent to give him a minute seeing as, for some bizarre reason, he seemed a tad bit upset (which was an understatement). Then after what felt like about a hundred minutes, he spoke.
“I’m losin’ patience with this.”
“With what?” I asked.
He kept looking out the window. “Usin’ your fuckin’ mother to get at you. How fuckin’ low. Fuck!” he exploded.
Again, I was confused. In my experience people could do things a lot lower than that.
“This is Harvey Balducci we’re talking about,” I told Hector as if that explained everything which, to me, it did.
Hector’s eyes turned to me.
“I mean, he’s a jerk,” I went on. “And he’s crazy. And, well… he’s a jerk.”
“People don’t do that shit,” Hector told me.
That’s when I laughed. I mean, seriously, people did that “shit” all the time.
“Oh yes they do,” I replied sagely.
Hector dropped the curtain, turned fully to me, his face hard and he said, “Sadie, no. They don’t.”
Instantly, my laughter died. “You know they do, Hector, you lived amongst us. My kind of people sell drugs and guns and kill people and kidnap them and rape them –” I stopped because Hector started toward me.
I lifted my hand to stop him, finally realizing what I had to say, it all came to me in a flash. I was going to tell him we were different, this would never work. I didn’t belong in his world.
Simple as that.
But it was like Hector didn’t see my hand. He kept coming at me until he was right there.
My hand hit his chest, he pulled me into his arms again and said, “Those aren’t your kind of people.”
“Yes, they are. Don’t you remember –?”
“I remember you feeding me information on your father.”
My body went rigid and I gasped (not, I belatedly realized, the kind of response to have when I was trying to keep my clandestine informant status a secret).
I tried to cover. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sadie, I saw you do it.”
I blinked at him.
Oh my God.
Did he see me do it? How could he see me do it? That was just crazy. It was also impossible.