“A few things we need to go over,” Hector said into Ralphie and my non-verbal exchange, apparently oblivious to my cold shoulder.
Unable to do anything else, I turned Ice Princess eyes to Hector.
He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at Ralphie. “From here on in, Sadie goes to and from work with you. She isn’t alone at the store and she doesn’t go anywhere unless she’s with one of you or one of the men. She needs to go somewhere and she doesn’t have someone with her, you call me and I’ll take her or arrange an escort.”
Well maybe it should be said at this juncture that I wasn’t certain sure I could handle whatever came at me.
I stared at Hector.
What was he on about?
“Why?” Buddy asked, also wondering what Hector was on about.
“Sadie got a threatening phone call last night from Marty Balducci,” Hector replied.
“What?” Ralphie screeched.
Buddy stood up, body tense, eyes swinging to me.
My Ice Princess took a hike and now I was staring in horror at Hector.
What was he doing? I wasn’t going to tell them about the call! Telling them about the call would take me one step closer to using them up.
I didn’t want them worried. Or, more worried.
If he told them this, he would use them up. He couldn’t use them up!
“She got a –” Hector started to repeat but I came to and frantically acted to put a stop to his words.
“No!” I shouted, interrupting him and quickly I advanced across the kitchen.
Hector black eyes came to me and he stood as I approached.
“I need to talk to you a second,” I told him.
“Sadie, they need to know –” Hector started but I’d made it to him.
I reached up, put my healthy hand over his mouth and put my casted hand into his chest. Then I pushed him toward the door, Hector walking backward, me moving forward, my hand still over his mouth.
He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, pulled it from his mouth and halted at the door, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.
I changed tactics, immediately twisted my hand so it was holding his and I walked around him, tugging him behind me and praying he’d change his mind and come with me instead of resisting. I didn’t want to engage in a kitchen tussle with Hector in front of Buddy and Ralphie, firstly because it would be embarrassing, secondly because I’d lose.
He came with me (thank goodness!) and I pulled him into the living room, my step stuttered and I had to make a quick decision.
I knew Ralphie and Buddy could hear if we stopped there. So I dragged Hector through the living room, down the hall and into the powder room. I flipped on the light and closed the door.
Hector looked around us with obvious surprise that we were in a powder room and who could blame him, a powder room wasn’t exactly the primo choice for this particular tête-à-tête (or any tête-à-tête) but it was the only option open to me. I wasn’t going to take him to my room, the very thought of Hector in my bedroom made my toes curl.
When his eyes came to me, the surprise was gone and he was smiling his close-to-laughter, white, glamorous smile.
“Don’t you smile at me, Hector Chavez,” I snapped, not sounding like myself, not sounding like Any Sadie That Ever Existed. Sounding weirdly like Attitude Sadie and, if you asked me if I could even be Attitude Sadie, I would have told you, “heck no”.
“We’re in the bathroom,” Hector told me, still smiling.
“We are. I don’t want Ralphie and Buddy listening in,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want them to hear what I have to say.”
He started laughing softly (yes, laughing!) and said, “I got that, mamita, but why not?”
“I didn’t want them to know about the phone call. You’ve got to go out there, say something that’ll make them not so worried and then… I don’t know…” I stopped because I didn’t know, my mind was racing and I couldn’t catch a thought.
Hector was still laughing softly. “Say something to make them not so worried about one of the Balducci brothers threatening you over the phone in the middle of the night? Tell me how I’m gonna manage that?”
“I don’t know!” I cried, losing it in my panic. “Make something up. You’re a private investigator. Veronica Mars is a private investigator type person too and she lies all the time!”
“Veronica Mars is a character on a TV show,” Hector informed me.
“So?”
Hector’s stared at me a beat, read my panic, his smile faded and his face got serious. “Sadie, I’m not gonna lie.”
“But –”
He came in close (or closer, we couldn’t not be close as we were in a powder room).
“What I wanna know is; why do you want me to lie?”
Oh darn.
This was a sharing situation, as in, me sharing my private thoughts. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t tell Hector that I’d never had any friends and I’d grown to love Ralphie and Buddy and I was terrified of losing them.