Page 17 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

“You talk about flesh like it's a soldier,” I say.

“Flesh fights constantly,” she replies. “You only notice when it loses.”

She turns to the small sink in the corner and rinses her hands.

Water slaps steel and runs away.

The wrist scar catches the light, a white comma paused mid-sentence.

I think about asking, then put the question where it belongs.

I have taught men that curiosity is a luxury.

In my line, it will get you dead or worse, indebted.

She catches me looking and smiles, not coy, just open.

“Burned myself on a caramel when I was twelve. I still love caramel,” she says, flicking water from her fingers and wipingthem on a towel that used to carry flour to a bench. “Pain and pleasure are not mutually exclusive. It's a trick of the brain.”

There it is again, the low, warm current under the plain talk.

The sexy lives here, not in cheap lines or the easy peel of clothes.

It's in the way she says caramel and looks at the ovens like they owe her a favor.

It's in the way I'm suddenly, acutely aware of the square footage between us and how easily it could be closed.

“I will make you coffee,” she says, heading for the door like she needs the corridor to remind her what sort of night we are living. “Not the hospital kind. Real. Don't get up.”

I don't promise, because my promises are expensive and I like to keep their value high, but I stay where she left me and listen to her footsteps fade into the larger room.

The quiet that follows is a friend from long ago.

I count exits, then count them again.

I map the approach to the street in my head.

Two doors to choke points, a back stair that goes to the alley, one narrow window that faces a brick wall, another that looks at the side of a church.

I picture the block as it is at three in the morning.

The deli stacked with oranges.

The sleeping pigeons.

A sedan with a man who pretends to smoke while his hands stay too still.

I remove the holster long enough to check the slide and the magazine.

My fingers know the weight down to the last round.

I have two blades, one in the back, one at the ankle.

This is not bravado.

It's simply what the night calls for when you have been marked and you are not fatally stupid.

I set the pistol down again, grip toward me, and take a breath through my teeth when the wound speaks up to remind me of what I owe my body.