The Losing Game (12 page)

Dante stared at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of his wardrobe door. The waistcoat pulled around his middle.

“What are you worrying about? Lucas? Because you could turn up in your pajamas for all Avery would care.”

Avery had left the Okoro men for good when Dante turned ten. Yet those six years had made their mark, and that mark had deepened into something permanent and indelible in the years since. Avery had a way of making her presence known, from near and far. Dante would miss her.

With an hour and a half to spare before he needed to pick up Lucas, Dante found Kit in the stockroom, halfheartedly unpacking boxes, knee-deep in cardboard and pulled tape. Dust motes floated in the air, illuminated by the overhead light. From where she knelt on the floor, she pushed her hair from her forehead with the heel of her palm and looked Dante over.

“Very handsome. Are you sure you’re going to be okay, going on your own?”

“I won’t be alone. I’m going with Lucas Green.”

“Yes, but he’s not family, is he? You hardly know him.”

Dante bristled at her tone, mainly because it sounded exactly like something he might say.

Might have said.

“It’s fine, Kit. There’s no need for you to be there.”

Kit and Lois weren’t—
hadn’t been
—close to Avery. She’d been a remote figure in their lives—an old friend of their father’s.

Kit continued scoring the tape along the boxes of new stock, folding back the lids, checking over the contents. “I’ll be done in here by lunchtime. Is there anything else? Only I thought while we’re closed I’d do a bit of my own Christmas shopping.” She paused with the blade resting at the seam of a box of books. “Sharps has got the day off. We might go together.”

“Go ahead. I wanted to talk to you about him.” Dante reached for the knot on his tie and tried to loosen it.

Kit’s shoulders lifted defensively. “What about him?”

“How is he spending Christmas this year?”

Dante remembered enough about Sharps (though not his real name) to know he didn’t have a family to speak of. He knew he worked as a porter at the local hospital and that Kit had met him when she started parkour, some five or six years ago. Where Kit had a background in gymnastics to kick-start the pastime, Sharps had only hours of hanging about on the streets and lampposts and window ledges.

The shutters closed over Kit’s expression, yet the aggression in her voice was palpable. “He’s not sure yet. He’s down for a shift at the hospital, and then I expect one of our crew will have him over.”

“It’s a shame he doesn’t have any family. Worse at this time of year.”

“Nor would Lois and I if it wasn’t for you. We might not even be together.”

“I didn’t mean…. What I was trying to say…. He’s like family to you, isn’t he?”

Kit closed the penknife, slipped it into her back pocket, and stood, with her arms folded across her chest. She inhaled deeply. “I love him.”

She opened her mouth to say something else but stalled. Dante didn’t interrupt. He was scared if he said anything, she’d clam up. That was Dante’s fault, and the shame scorched his face.

“I know… I know I’ve been confused about this before. But he really gets me. He likes what clothes I wear and how I cut my hair, and he doesn’t care if I never wear a dress or makeup or if people think I’m a boy. Or if I feel like I’m a boy sometimes.” She hugged herself. “He likes me like this. And I like him. If you’d only get to know him, you’d see how nice he is.”

“I’d like that. Perhaps he could come here for Christmas this year.”

“For dinner?”

“For the whole of Christmas. After we shut on Christmas Eve, to Boxing Day. Whatever suits you both.”

Kit’s jaw dropped, and Dante’s chest tightened. How long overdue was he with the invitation?

“You’re sure? Three days? He could stay for three days?”

“Yes. If he’d… if you’d like.”

“Where would he sleep?”

“That’s between the two of you. You’re adults.”

“Do you mean it? You’re not just saying it because of the flats? Because Lois and I are still going to move out. And I don’t want to ask him, and for him to say yes, and then have to tell him you’ve changed your mind.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

What a bitter pill it was to swallow—that Dante needed Kit and Lois more than they needed him. How many concessions had they made for him over the years? How much of his overprotectiveness had they forgiven because of how they’d come to be with him? If he’d been their birth father, would they have asserted themselves more?

“I mean it, Kit. Ask him to join us.”

“I will,” she said, returning to the boxes of stock, more energetically than when Dante had come in.

On his way out, he said, “When Lois comes home, tell her I’ve gone to see Jim. I’ll be leaving to pick up Lucas directly from the Rose and Crown.”

“Okay. Take care, won’t you? Try not to be too sad. Avery had a good life, and she wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

Dante’s first thought as he left through the back door for his car, was,
Out of the mouths of babes.
Only Kit was no more a babe than he was.

Jim sat at his desk in his store-cupboard office at the back of the restaurant, amidst a pile of paper receipts and a press-button desktop calculator. He stood for Dante and smothered him with his embrace.

“Sorry for your loss. I hadn’t seen Avery in years, but I always remember what a lively one she was. Kept your old man on his toes for a while, anyway.”

“Thank you. She’d be glad to know she was remembered that way.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“No. I just wanted a quick word, before I go.”

Jim motioned to a wooden folding chair propped against the wall.

“It’s all right. I won’t sit.”

When Jim perched on the edge of his desk, he crumpled a pile of papers under his thighs. He shifted to one side and shoved everything into an untidy pile, on top of another untidy pile of bulging manila folders.

“What’s on your mind?”

“I need to forfeit our wager. You can name the price. Kit and Lois are looking at flats this week. I haven’t told them yet—I thought I’d surprise them for Christmas—but I have some money put by to give them when they find somewhere. Also, I’ve invited Sharps for Christmas.” Dante stepped forward and pushed a large envelope balanced precariously half-on, half-off the desk into a more secure position. “It shouldn’t have taken a wager for me to do the right thing.”

“That’s fine by me. I’m happy to call it quits.” The smile on Jim’s face was kind. Sympathetic. “And glad you got there eventually.”

“There’s more.”

The air felt too thin, like it was impossible to fill his lungs. Dante put his hand out for the chair and at once changed his mind. He needed to be standing.

“Sit down, man. You’ve got time for a stiff one.”

“No. I can’t. I have to go soon, but I wanted to say that I overstepped the mark. If you are ever interested in anything in the shop, you’ll always be welcome, and if you want to come in privately, just say, but otherwise I’ll never mention it again.”

Two down, one to go. Dante had already loosened his tie once this morning but reached for it again. At the same time, Jim returned to him for another quick, rough hug and a hefty pat on the back.

Dante took the opportunity to confess, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Jim let out a long sigh. “Underneath that fancy cloth, you’re just like the rest of us. You reach your forties, and it’s like one day you’ve got big plans for the rest of your life, the next, you realize your mortality.” He shook his head. “Your babies are going their own way, and once upon a time, you thought you’d relish the freedom, but now all you can think about is how much you’re going to miss them. And let’s not forget the aches and pains. We’ve all been through it. I’ll tell you sometime, over a real drink.”

It sounded bleak. Yet Jim sounded stoic. Almost cheerful.

“Maybe this evening.” Dante might have more to talk about then. “I’m taking Lucas Green to the funeral. I wanted to make sure he’s okay.”

“That’s decent of you.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. When I came to you a few weeks ago,” Dante said, “when we ended up betting on Lucas killing Shaw… that wasn’t what I’d intended.”

“I know.”

“You did?”

“You wanted to help him. Right from the start.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You were on a warpath for something. I thought agreeing to the wager would be the lesser of two evils.”

Dante had known Jim almost his whole life. Through adolescence, a decade-long love affair with a man who almost turned out to be his ruin, and another fifteen years as a shop owner and a father. He shouldn’t have been surprised or held back on being honest from the start.

“I still want to help him. If he wants my help. He might have given up on the whole idea by now.”

The color rose on Jim’s cheeks, and not with mirth. “I can only hope.”

“It’s not going to be like before. When I was with Flynn, I was trying to prove myself to him. I was naïve. I’m not anymore.”

“No. You’re older.” Jim’s look was harsh. “Maybe not so much wiser. And you’ve got more to lose than you did back then. I wish you could be happy with the perfectly good business you have up the street.”

“My father’s business. I haven’t done a thing with it but keep it ticking along since he died.”

“It’s a
good
business.”

“I don’t know if I want to be good.”

Jim didn’t seem to have an answer to that except to clench his fist and lightly thump Dante’s arm with his prosthetic right hand. He returned to his accounts without another word.

As far as Jim was concerned, a prosthesis made of polymer and electronics was all the reminder he needed to stay on the right side of the law. He’d never mentioned it, but his wife Carol had spoken to Selena, Dante’s other full-time employee, who’d talked to Lois and Kit. Jim still suffered from phantom pains and nightmares, years after the loss of his arm. The price of his mistakes wasn’t so much high as it was long. Interminably long.

Dante understood his reservations about him getting involved in a crime, but this was different. Dante was different. “I won’t do anything rash.”

Jim sunk back into his chair and punched a number into his adding machine. The whole desk rattled. “You’ll do what the hell you want to do.”

Dante took that as a dismissal. He was sad more than angry to leave Jim that way, not because he thought his old friend was right, but because he’d hoped Jim would understand. Even if he didn’t approve.

LUCAS DRESSED
in the one and only suit he owned. It was dark navy. Over it, he donned his peacoat and the satin scarf Avery had bought him for their last night out together. He was ready for Dante early and stood by the window, searching the end of the street for any sign of a car.

Her words haunted him then as they had the last week.
Don’t give up on love.

He hadn’t given up. He’d merely left it out in the cold. As surely as this frosty December would turn into a snowy January, and by March the snow and ice would thaw, love would return to Lucas, and Lucas would return to love. Maybe, while he waited, there would be some unexpected warm spells to remind him of the spring.

At eleven on the dot, a black saloon, paintwork glinting in the slanting sunlight, pulled in front of Lucas’s house. The car was a Mercedes and Dante the driver. Lucas opened the front door before he rang the bell.

The low winter sun was unforgiving. Dante had fine wrinkles in the corner of his eyes, and a slight peppering of gray at his temples. Lucas hadn’t noticed before, not in Dante’s shop or in the soft firelight of his office. It might have been the strain of grief, maturing Dante from a man who looked to be in his thirties, to someone most definitely over forty. Lucas didn’t think so. Dante simply wasn’t as young as Lucas had initially thought.

“Thank you for coming to get me.”

“No. Thank
you
. It would have been awkward if we’d gone separately and met there.”

It was awkward enough. The moment where they might have shaken hands had passed. Dante stood still and stiff as a soldier on the doorstep, and Lucas wondered if the neighbors saw him, what would they think? That Lucas had for some inexplicable reason hired a chauffeur or a bodyguard?

Lucas stepped out into the brusque December air and closed the front door. His exhaled breath was a puff of smoke. The car was warm inside, and Dante had had the good sense to put on the radio.

Lucas could lay on the small talk when the situation required, but he was content with the silence as they drove. He didn’t feel up to talking. He remembered how patient Dante had been the first time they met. How he seemed to consider his words before he spoke. Today, Lucas got the feeling from the way Dante kept his eyes firmly on the road he was content to say nothing too.

The crematorium had six private rooms. At the end of the corridor, a sign on an easel welcomed guests to Avery Lister’s memorial. A bland plume of white lilies, sprayed with tiny buds of baby’s breath, graced a stand inside the doorway. Music played. If Lucas wasn’t mistaken, it was something from last century, with an up-tempo beat and too much synthesizer.

A gravely suited attendant pointed Dante and Lucas in the direction of the guest book.

“A guest book? Who the hell for?” Dante said to no one in particular.

The attendant ignored his remark and said, “Are you family? Friends?”

Lucas thought it irrelevant, but he replied, “Friend. I knew her from a pottery class.”

He wrote his name, and in the space for a comment:
I’ll miss you.
Nothing poetic sprang to mind.

Dante said, “She worked for my father, many years ago, in our family business. We remained friends.”

Above Lucas’s name, three other people had signed without leaving a comment, and judging by the empty room, already left. They were all Listers. Lucas assumed Avery’s two brothers and the third, a woman, possibly a wife. The room had been open fifteen minutes. They had been and gone in less than fifteen minutes.