Ben’s face burned. He thought of what Eddie had said about Mr. Cillo living among all that feminine protection. He didn’t know what felt worse, reading about Francesca getting her period or the way it made him mad at Mira, like she was trying to shame him from beyond. He set the scrap of paper on the bench, walked to the sink and splashed his face with water. His reflection in the cloudy mirror said defeated, the butt of a bad joke. Francesca was a sore spot for Ben. She knew about him and Mira, and though she never outwardly acknowledged it—its futility made it inconsequential—he knew she didn’t approve. That overdeveloped jaw she slid back and forth, a judge-y, clicking noise that sounded like tsk, tsk. The idea that Mira would waste a note on Francesca pissed him off.
What was all in Francesca’s head, anyway? Ben didn’t want to know. He pulled hard at the corners of his eyes as Eddie screamed.
The door swung open and Eddie shouldered in, staring at his hand swathed in a crimson dishrag. Their manager ran behind, yelling, “You may nev-er swear in front of the guests!”
Eddie raised his good hand to slam the door in the manager’s face.
His face was the shade of a ping-pong ball. Ben yanked his shirt over his head and wrapped it around the dishrag, pushing Eddie gently onto the bench. Eddie stared at Ben, his mouth a tight line.
“Can you speak?” Ben said, squeezing the mass of cloth.
Eddie whispered, “It stings bad.”
Ben matched his whisper. “Because of the lemon. You gotta put pressure on it. I know it hurts. But unless you do, the blood won’t stop.”
The manager busted back in. “I called an ambulance, ungrateful as you are.”
Eddie rose to say something and fell backward. Ben caught him with a hand on his back.
“No way am I taking no ambulance to the hospital,” Eddie gasped. “That’s the last thing my mother needs.”
“Is an ambulance really necessary?” Ben said.
“Are you gonna drive him there?” the manager spat, his voice pitched up. “Besides, someone’s gotta stay and clean up. For all I know, Villela left a digit on the cutting board. The place looks like a slaughterhouse.”
“Fine!” Ben yelled. “You man the counter, I’ll sit with him and wait. Stick up the cleaners’ sign.”
Ben knew he was treading a fine line: nothing was off-limits for his manager. Just six years older than Ben, he was an immature toad, and the only person in town sadistic enough to use Ben’s status as “touched” to keep him in line. Taunts of “delicate sensibilities” and “having issues” were whispered for Eddie to miss, and thus not report to Ben’s ad hoc protector, Kyle Kulik, which would ensure a good tire slashing of the manager’s Corolla.
The manager blinked. “What. Did you just say to me?”
Something blazed inside Ben. He smiled ferociously, let his eyes loosen and jitter. The manager backed into the door. He tucked his chin into his chest, swearing he would never again hire a messed-up psycho, and left.
Ben watched the door until he heard the scrape of the sign on its hook, then rose.
“You’re gonna be all right, Eddie boy,” Ben said, flinging open lockers until he found a pile of thin white towels, which he tore into strips that shed dust. He wrapped them around Eddie’s wrist, then circled the palm where the knife had made a clean diagonal slice toward the pinkie. He counted Eddie’s fingers: 9.5, since the pinkie was severed near-through. He used the strips to tack the finger back together tight. When no blood showed through, he pushed Eddie’s head between his knees and rubbed his back, lowering his own head against a wave of nausea. Through the slats, Ben spotted a flash of white. Mira’s note had gotten knocked off the bench, and was right under Eddie’s nose, if he was looking.
“Close your eyes, man,” Ben said.
Eddie groaned.
“The palm’s a bad place to get cut, that’s all,” Ben yammered, eyeing the note. “Like a nose or a lip, it goes and goes. Might not be using that hand in basketball for a while, but you’ll be fine. Maybe keep those eyes closed.”
Ben studied the mummified hand to distract himself from the note. He was impressed by his own handiwork. It hadn’t been easy to cover the palm in a way that kept the slice closed. Or the finger on. He hoped it would stay on. Maybe he should call Kyle. Where was the stupid ambulance? Ben knew it could be tricky to get across Bismuth in the middle of the summer with the endless construction, and then the long ride out to Powder Neck meant they might be waiting a while. Ben placed his hand over Eddie’s and squeezed.
Eddie moaned.
“Gotta stem the bleeding,” Ben murmured.
Eddie swooned forward. Ben caught the collar of his polo shirt and righted him, slapping his cheek lightly. “Eddie? Eddie, listen, stay with me!”
“I’m coming, Concetta Marie. It’s your big brother, Eddie. I’m coming to take care of you…”
“Jesus, Eddie! Listen: Do you remember how funny Connie was? How much she looked up to you, and the girls? Remember that time the three of them had a yard sale and Connie sold your special 1975 Carlton Fisk World Series card to the creepy dude with the handlebar mustache for twenty-five cents?”
He shook his head and laughed anemically. “I wanted to kill her. She didn’t know.”
“And the girls got mad at you, like you were the one who did something wrong? They were ready to lynch you for yelling at her! All for one, they said. You guys talk about blood. Those girls were Connie’s oxygen, man. She wouldn’t have wanted to be around if they were gone. It’s a terrible thing to say, but Connie loved her cousins so hard, I don’t think she could’ve handled it.” Ben could hardly believe what was coming out of his mouth, but it seemed to help, so he kept going.
“Maybe not,” Eddie whispered, rocking over his thumb.
“Sometimes stuff happens for a reason. Maybe they’re better off in heaven, together.”
“Ouch,” Eddie whispered.
“Ouch,” Ben said. “They’re angels looking down on you right now, and you’re gonna be fine.”
“You hurt one, you hurt all of them. That’s what they said.” Eddie shifted uncomfortably. “Truth be told though? She could be kind of annoying sometimes.”
“Nah. She was a cute kid.” Connie had been barely a year younger than either of them, but Ben went with it. “A real cutie.”
“She wanted to please people. Delicate, too. Not just her condition. She was sensitive. Easily led and easily hurt, a bad combination, my mom always said.” Eddie coughed thickly into his swaddled hand, the signature hacky cough that always made Ben wonder. In basketball, he’d stop and hock a loogie, two or three times a game, into trash barrels in the gym or on the asphalt. He wasn’t nearly as bad as Connie, where any real exercise would send her into spasms, but Ben wondered if there was something rogue about the Villela genes, where doing ordinary things made them implode.
Ben shook the image from his brain. “Led?”
Eddie’s lips were turning blue, and he trembled. Ben snatched a dirty towel from the warped particleboard shelf and wrapped it around Eddie’s shoulders and gave him a loose, one-armed hug. Sirens wailed in the distance. Ben figured they had reached the breakaway stretch and would arrive in less than a minute.
Eddie slumped into Ben. “Connie wouldn’t like me saying that.”
“Nah, she knows you loved her.”