Lawson stares at him, at the flush on his cheeks, and the fast heave of his chest inside his pressed white shirt, and tries to process what he just heard.
“What do you mean ‘step down?’”
“Just what I said: after this shit with the Giacolottis is put to bed, I’m going to hand the business back to Frank. I never wanted it in the first place, and I’m not going to run it anymore. As far as I’m concerned, once I handle Gino, I’ve avenged my father, and I’mdone.”
Lawson stares some more. He entertains a brief and beautiful fantasy of Tommy being done with this. Of the two of them cuddled up in his childhood bed every night, mundane jobs, and writing dreams, and Tommy going grayer and grayer at the temples as the years stack up and they live them together, like two vines finally grown into a braid.
He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. “People don’t just quit the mob, Tommy. Haven’t you ever watched a movie? When you’re family, you’refamily.”
Tommy’s nostrils flare. “You’re going to use movie logic on me? Don’t you think, of the two of us, that I’d know better about what’s possible when you’re part of afamily? This is my last job, and then I’m quitting. I’ll change my name if I have to. I’ll do whatever it takes, but I’m not doingthis” – he gestures expansively to the room around them, watch winking in the sunlight – “anymore.”
There’s no longer a lump in Lawson’s throat, but it’s very dry, and swallowing doesn’t help. “You’re quitting.” He sounds dazed; he is dazed. Thiscan’tbe real. Tommyhasto be lying…
But hisface.
“You’re really quitting?”
“I really am,” Tommy says, and exhales in a rush, and fluffs at the back of his hair, and sends Lawson a crooked little smile. “After this, they’ll have to go on without me.”
“What – what are you gonna do? When you quit?” His heart pound, pound, pounds. There’s a faint whining noise in his ears he attributes to his blood pressure. He doesn’t believe, not yet, but oh, how he wants to.
Tommy’s crooked grin grows a little wider. “I was hoping I could get this guy I know to put me up for a little while. At least until we can find a place of our own.”
When Lawson was six, his parents took him on vacation to New York, and they took him to Coney Island one day. He got so excited about the roller coaster that he made himself sick, and lost his breakfast all over his mom’s lap on the train. It wasn’t pretty.
Lawson feels like that now: so suddenly and acutely excited that he thinks he might puke. He starts pacing the width of the rug like Tommy was doing before, and wipes a hand down his mouth. “Shit,” he breathes into his palm. “Holy shit.”
After a moment, Tommy says, “Well, this is reassuring.”
Lawson rounds on him, shoulders bowed up, breaths getting jammed up in his lungs so that his whole chest burns. “Don’t fuck with me,” he orders, pointing at him. “Don’t you dare – if you don’t mean it – if you can’t–” His voice cracks and he shuts his eyes, and shakes his head, lips pressed tight together so he doesn’t release the embarrassing noise that builds in the back of his throat.
He hears noise downstairs, wheels clacking over hardwood floors, bodies moving hurriedly up and down the steps, the tide-like murmurs of conversation as it ebbs and flows. But all of that is distant and inconsequential. Up close, he hears Tommy cross the rug to him, and then he feels the heat and weight of his hands, as he smooths them up Lawson’s chest so that he cradles Lawson’s neck between his palms.
“Lawson. Open your eyes.”
He does, albeit reluctantly, and Tommy’s looking up at him like he did that night in his bedroom; like Lawson’s a miracle.
“I love you,” Tommy says, slow and serious, “I always have. I never stopped, and after I end Gino’s reign in New York, I’m going to come back here – I’m going to comehome– and I’m going to be with you.” His smile twitches with uncertainty. “If you’ll have me.”
Lawson can’t speak to say,Yes, of course, you’ve always had me. Please come home. Instead he makes a low, wounded noise, and tips their foreheads together.
“Okay?” Tommy asks.
He nods.
“Now.” Tommy pets his neck, his collarbones. “What did you want to tell me when you first came in?”
32
Tommy tells him goodbye in his office, with a kiss, and an almost brutal hug, and a firm promise to be back as soon as he can, and to call sooner than that. He takes most of his people, but leaves behind a skeleton crew, with Ray in charge of them. He looks back up at the house, at the window where Lawson’s standing, as he climbs into the back of a Navigator, and then he’s gone.
The house is startlingly quiet with the absence of so many bodies. Lawson never realized how many people Tommy has in his employ until most of them are gone.
“Whatcha wanna do?” Ray asks where he’s sprawled across a sofa in the den, eating pistachios out of a crystal dish. “You a sports guy? The game’s on.”
Lawson stands at the window, gazing out the garden, where vivid red leaves from a Japanese maple drift lazily down to dot the surface of the koi pond. “I need to get going,” he says, turning back to face the room. “I told my mom I’d stop at the store.”
Ray frowns as he splits a shell with his thumbs and pops the green nut into his mouth. He speaks through his crunching: “We’re supposed to keep an eye on you.”
