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I can hear him down there messing around with my tools. I’ve got a mind to grab the power washer and blast him out of there like a junkyard dog.
The only reason I don’t is because my dad starts coughing again. He’s supposed to be taking a nap, but he keeps waking up every ten minutes with another round of hacking and groaning. I feel frozen in place in the kitchen, vacillating between going in to check on him, and leaving him alone if he might be falling back asleep again.
I’ve got a sick feeling of dread, like I’m standing in an abandoned building and the walls are starting to crumble down around me. Vic is getting in trouble. That cop is up my ass. And now something’s wrong with my dad. It’s not just the coughing—he’s been sick for a while. But we don’t have insurance. We’re self-employed. I’ve looked several times, and the cheapest plan we could get is $1200 a month. I’m lucky to have a spare hundred bucks after we pay for utilities, groceries, and the rent on this place, which keeps going up every year.
I keep working harder and harder, just to watch my dreams slip through my fingers like sand. I want my brother to go to a good school and become something great, like a doctor or an engineer. I want him to live in one of those big, fancy houses in Old Town, not an apartment. I want my dad to have a fat savings account so he can retire when the heavy lifting of the job gets to be too much for him. I want him to be able to take a vacation somewhere sunny now and then.
And for me . . .
I don’t know. I don’t even know what I want for myself.
I want to not feel like a fucking loser. I want to have time for friends and dating. And I’d love to be able to do the kind of work that really interests me. I love cars, more than anything. But changing brake pads is tedious at best. I’d love to be able to do more creative projects.
There’s a huge market for custom mods, and it’s growing all the time. If I had the capital, we could be doing matte finishes, wraps, custom lights, body kits, all kinds of stuff.
That’s just dreaming, though. We’ve barely paid off the equipment we’ve got. And if my dad doesn’t get better soon, we’re not going to be taking on extra work, either.
At least he’s quieting down, finally. I think he’s actually asleep.
I make myself peanut butter toast and eat it with a glass of milk. When I’m sure he’s getting some rest, and the noise coming from his room is just snoring, I put my dishes in the sink and head back down to the garage to tell Nero to get lost.
Looks like he’s already gone.
The right side of the bay is empty, his Mustang apparently fixed enough to carry him back home.
The radio is playing Drake. He changed my station. Are there no depths to which this man will not sink? I snap it back to Top Hits, swapping over to “Watermelon Sugar” instead. Thank you, Harry Styles. You’re a true gentleman. You would never fuck with a woman’s torque wrenches and then force her to listen to Canada’s worst export.
At least Nero cleaned up after himself. Actually . . . the only thing he left out of place is a wad of bills on the workbench.
I walk over to it, slowly, like there might be a scorpion hidden inside.
I pick it up. There’s six hundred bucks here. All Benjamins, of course. Douche.
I hold the bills, wondering why Nero bothered to leave money. Not because he felt guilty for being an asshole—I’ve never heard him apologize for anything, not once. Not when he broke Chris Jenkin’s arm during gym class basketball. And certainly not when he got a blow job from the Henderson twins, on the same day, an hour apart, without telling either of the sisters that he was going for a matching set.
And that was just high school shit. He’s done a lot worse since then. Serious criminal activity, if the rumors are true. They say he’s in the Italian Mafia, along with his brother. I wouldn’t doubt it. His father is a don, not just your regular goombah.
I remember the first time I saw Enzo Gallo pull up to the auto bay in a sleek, gray Lincoln Town Car that looked a mile long. He got out of the back wearing a three-piece suit, Oxford shoes, and a houndstooth overcoat. I’d never seen a man dressed like that. I thought he must be the president.
He shook hands with my dad, and they talked for a long time. They were laughing at one point. I thought they must be friends. Later I found out that Enzo’s like that with everybody. He knows everyone in our neighborhood—the Italians, and everybody else.
He’s a benevolent dictator. My father told me that at one point, every single business in northwest Chicago paid a 5 percent protection fee to the Gallos. The Irish had the northeast. But when the Gallos moved into the construction racket, they dialed back on the old-school extortion.
Now I see their name on high-rise sites in the downtown core. I really can’t picture Nero working a backhoe. Now, burying a body under a foundation . . . that I can definitely see. I bet he’d smile while he did it.
No, if Nero left money, it wasn’t to be nice. It’s because six hundred bucks is pocket change to him.
Not to me, though. I stuff it in my coveralls. That’s two month’s groceries, or a quarter of the rent. I’ll take it, even if it fell out of the devil’s pocket.
I finish topping up the fluids on the Accord, then I head into the tiny front office to pay a couple bills.
As I’m messing around with our online bill pay, my cellphone starts buzzing. I pick it up without looking, thinking it’s Vic wanting a ride home from work.
“Did you miss me yet, Camille?” a male voice says.
I cringe away from the phone, looking at the name on the display: “Officer Dickhole.”
“I really hadn’t had a chance to miss you,” I say. “Try staying away longer.”
