It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Famous last words, I know. But originally we would’ve had four hands to carry the six-pack of microbrew and the sub platter. Then we got a call (okay, Vic got a call). There was a body, and he had to go…which left me by myself trying to figure out how to ring the doorbell. I could’ve knocked on it with my foot, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear SWAT team jokes for the rest of the night. I really wasn’t in the mood to be there at all anymore, but it seemed better than sitting alone in that minuscule apartment with a platter full of subs.
I managed to connect my elbow with the doorbell, and pretty soon a silhouette filled the frosted glass window. I hoped it was Manny. That surprised me. Keith might have been the one I’d known forever, but Manny had an easygoing way about him that Keith had never managed. Sure, Keith tried, or maybe he just tried to fake it, but all those bitchy remarks he made and then later claimed to be “just kidding” about, all the backhanded compliments and derisive eye-rolls—they added up. The front door opened. Keith. “Oh, here, let me get that.” He wrangled the platter through the door, then did a sudden stop as I mounted the single stair so he could peer over my shoulder. “Where’s this Victor person we’ve been hearing so little about? Parking the car?”
“He got called in. You’ll have to make do with me.”
He shooed me in out of the cold and bumped the door shut with his hip. “And what have we here? Alcohol and nitrates? Very decadent. And just in time—there’s been some grumbling about the gazpacho.” Civil enough. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. A pleasant new leaf. He leaned over the platter and kissed me on the cheek, then headed for the dining room.
Whatever snow had landed on my leather jacket beaded up into water droplets in the heat of the foyer, and I shook them out before I tucked my coat into the closet. If Vic were there, I would have mentioned how nice it would be to actually have a coat closet. If he were there.
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