Page 39 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
Brian puts a hand on my arm. “No. I have to call a cleaner.”
I don’t have to ask what he means. I’m not an idiot.
While Brian usually does his own clean up, it’s a lot of bodies, a lot of blood, and there’s no way we can clean it up with a parade still going on outside. Plus we didn’t prepare for this. It was supposed to be a clean job from a distance. And there are emergency vehicles all over the place down there. Police, fire trucks, ambulances. It’s a big outdoor event with explosives after all.
Except our fireworks won’t be going off tonight. We were supposed to be well away from things when the building blew, and now there’s this mess.
A burst of bright green and purple light goes off just outside the window, and the boy cries harder.
“Hey, I need to order pizza for a large party,” Brian says into his burner phone. A pause. Then he speaks again. “There are 18 of us.”
I mentally count them up in my mind. But he’s right. Eighteen. Really there are 21, but only 18 of us are dead. Everyone but me, Brian, and the boy.
“A lot of pepperoni, yeah.” Brian disconnects the call.
I don’t want to know what pepperoni means. I pull out chairs from the table and sit on the floor, motioning the boy to come out. He shakes his head furiously at me. He thinks we’re going to kill him, too.
“If we wanted you dead, the table wouldn’t stop us, kid,” Brian says, which only makes the boy wail more.
“Nice,” I say, glaring up at him. Brian has no bedside manner and has clearly never spoken to a child in his life.
“It’s okay,” I say in a soft voice like I’m trying to coax a kitten out of a tree. “No one wants to hurt you.”
I motion for him to come out, and when he finally does, I guide him over to the far side of the room and sit him so he’s facing me and one of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the fireworks display.
“I-I wanted to see the f-fireworks from high up. M-my dad said I could c-come.” With all his crying and sniffling it’s hard to make out his words.
I’m so angry. I know this kid’s dad is one of the bodies outside this room. Why would you bring your kid to some secret crime meeting? But he’s young, and they probably would have talked in code.
“Are we going to have pizza?” he asks me, guileless brown eyes looking up into mine through his tears. He looks so much like a tiny version of Brian that it makes my heart hurt.
“No, sweetheart. We’re going to wait just a while, quiet like little mice, and then I’m going to take you to someone who can take you home.”
“Is my daddy coming, too?”
I can’t stop the tears. He’s just so young. I don’t think he fully understands what’s happened, and that his dad isn’t going anywhere with him ever again.
“No, he can’t.”
“But why not?”
“Take him to the executive suite,” Brian snaps. “I need to think so we don’t miss anything.”
I’m about to snap back, but when I see his face I realize he’s lost inside his own head, probably in memories of his own childhood trauma. I quickly nod and take the boy out into the hallway. I try to block his view, but there’s so much blood and it’s impossible to maneuver over and around bodies without him seeing things.
Anyway, he’s already seen them.
He cries out when he trips over an arm, and then he’s sobbing again.
I get him into the executive suite and we sit on a black leather couch facing the window. I try to distract him again with fireworks, but the boy has lost interest in the one thing he was so excited to see.
He was going to work with his daddy, going to see big loud lights in the sky. And now this. He gets up, pacing restlessly back and forth. Finally he stops and stares out the window.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” he says, not bothering to look at me. The boy suddenly looks far older than the five or six he surely is. Of course he knows what dead is. Maybe he didn’t fully understand yet that everyone was dead, maybe he didn’twantto understand, but how would he have been shielded from such knowledge, surrounded by violence at such a young age?
“Yes,” I say. “But you can’t say that. When I take you outside, you can’t say that. Promise me.”
He looks at me, his lip quivering. He’s trying to be brave and stop crying. He’s only five, and already he thinks it’s not okay for him to cry. His dad just died, for fuck’s sake. I think I’m crying more than he is now.
