Frank’s gaze narrows. “What do you mean ‘you guys?’” Somewhere on his person, a phone begins to trill, and he ignores it.
Lawson sucks in a few shallow breaths, the laughter caught in an ugly, fat wad in his throat, which he tries unsuccessfully to clear. “Oh – that’s cute. Gonna play innocent? You’re in the mob. The mafia. Whatever you call it. Right? Otherwise, this is one elaborate damn prank.”
As he wipes his eyes, Frank frowns at him, and ignores the phone as it starts up a second time. “I’m a businessman,” Frank says.
“Right, right.Insurance, huh? You andTom.”
“Mr. Granger–”
“Is it the gay thing?” Lawson asks. “Mob wives have to be actual wives, with boobs and whatnot?” He gestures to his own chest, and that sets him off on a fresh round of chuckles that tighten around his ribs and threaten to choke him. Inside, he’s panicking; nothing about this is funny. It’s terrifying, but it’s so preposterous he has to laugh. It’s that or start screaming and fling himself out of the car.
Frank’s frown deepens, the harsh lines of his face reminiscent of Tommy when he’s at his grouchiest. Brows beetled, mouth turned down comically. Before he can respond, the phone starts ringing again. “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” He fishes it out of his jacket, like he did with the checkbook – it’s Mary Poppins’ fucking magical bespoke jacket apparently – and checks the screen. Curses. Answers. “Not right now,” he says to whoever’s on the line.
“…said you were…” The voice is tinny, and muffled, not all the words distinguishable, but Lawson recognizes the speaker with a lightning jolt down his spine. It’s Tommy.
Frank cuts off whatever he’s saying: “No. No, it’s handled – I’m handling it. I–”
Lawson sways toward him and shouts, “Hey, Tommy! Your uncle fucking kidnapped me! Isn’t that cool?”
Tommy squawks something on the other end, and Frank shoots him a murderous look as he slumps back against the door.
Lawson grins against the rabbity throbbing of his heart. Holds still, arms folded, against the jittery vibrating of every nerve. He swallows his gorge, and holds his ground, and listens to Frank tell his nephew a terse goodbye.
The Town Car slows to a crawl and turns into the Coffee Town parking lot.
Frank drops the still-smoldering end of the cigar into a cut-crystal glass wedged into the cup holder and brandishes the checkbook like a weapon. “How fucking much?” he snaps, impatient.
Lawson drops his grin, unable to hold onto it any longer. Whatever his face does then deepens the groove between Frank’s brows.
“Keep your fucking money,” he snarls, shocked by the viciousness in his tone, but not by the burning in his gut. The awful writhing of shame and hurt and desperation that he hasn’t felt this acutely since Tommy’s teenage rejection. “I didn’t start any of this. I live here, I work here. I stopped trying to contact Tommy years ago, and I didn’t ask him to come back to my hometown and shake everything up.” He grips the door handle, breathing harshly now, his chest heaving, the rush of each exhale filling the backseat like the working of a bellows. “If you don’t want me involved in your family business –whateverthe fuck it is – then tell Tommy, and Noah, and the goddamnfiancéeto leave me the hell alone.”
He tugs on the handle, shocked to find it opens, and all but falls from the car. He rights himself, and slams it shut. As he stalks across the parking lot toward the shop, he braces himself for a parting shout, or maybe the rough grip of the guards tackling him, but he makes it inside unmolested, and goes to stick his head in the freezer for a long, wheezy moment.
When he walks back into the front of the shop, the parking lot is empty beyond the glass.
20
Lawson not only entered, but won the short story contest Tommy badgered him into entering when he was sixteen. After that, he became a regular contributor to the Eastman High Raider Pages, the stupidly-named school literary magazine, most of which was comprised of shitty, yearning high school poems, but which boasted the occasional splash of brilliance. Some of which Tommy assured Lawson his work was.
A story he turned in for his junior year “creative writing” assignment garnered the attention of his teacher, Mrs. Lovett, who held him back after class one day. His knees quaked and he dreaded the inevitable detention – he’d been told twice to stop talking in class that day – and then been utterly floored when she’d handed up a crumpled, coffee-stained copy of a literary periodical to which she subscribed and told him he ought to enter their upcoming short story contest.
“This isn’t like being in the school magazine,” Tommy said, eyes big as he flipped through the periodical Mrs. Lovett had told him to keep. “Law, this is, like, legit. There’s a cash prize. This could lead somewhere!”
So of course Lawson panicked.
He entered the contest, though.
By some miracle, he won.
He wasn’t eighteen, so he’d had to use Mrs. Lovett’s address and contact info, which left him both incredibly impressed by her willingness to circumnavigate the rules, and incredibly anxious to learn the results when he went in on the Monday after they’d been announced. Mrs. Lovett shot him a wink just before she began her lecture, and he didn’t listen to a single word aboutBeowulf, vibrating out of his skin until he went to her desk after class. She handed him an envelope of cash, and a print-out of the confirmation email, and even pulled him into a crushing, bosomy hug. “I’m so proud of you, Lawson!”
Tommy was proud of him, too, and said as much, in a more intimate way, that night out on McGarry Road.
“You’re really good, you know.” Lawson lay flopped across the seat on his back, one arm flung against the door above his head, the other snug around Tommy’s waist. In a few minutes, the drying sweat would glue them together, and to the leather seats, and they’d laugh, and wrinkle their noses and clean up as best they could with the baby wipes and Kleenex in the glovebox. They’d struggle awkwardly back into their clothes, elbowing each other and giggling, still endorphin-high in the afterglow. But for now, they enjoyed the warmth of one another, the languid buzz of afterglow.
Tommy lay on top of him, pressing him pleasantly down into the seat, his lips moving against Lawson’s throat where his pulse was slowing by degrees. Lawson was so drowsy, so content, that it took him a moment to register that Tommy had spoken.
When he did, he chuckled, and patted his back. “Thanks, babe. I try.”
