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This is the really stupid part. Granted, the whole idea isn't that brilliant, but the part that Dallas is really kicking himself for is the part where he voluntarily goes to see Keith and Berga when Luck isn't around to bail him out. Still, he'd bet Luck misses the sons of bitches, and Dallas for some reason really wants to be able to do something nice for Luck.
"Hi," he says to the guys in the front room at Coraggioso. "The boss in?"
"Mister Luck ain't around," one of the guys says. He's wearing -- they're all wearing black, even though it's early in the day.
"You got two other guys called Mister Gandor around here, though, don't you?" Dallas says.
The guy puts his cards down and gets up from the table. "Let me see if they're in," he says.
If they want anything to do with him, more like, but Dallas doesn't say so. It's been a few years now since he got his kicks picking fights with mafia.
"What?" he hears from the other room, too loud, and when he flinches one of the guys at the table even gives him a sympathetic little grin. Berga slams open the door to the back room, glaring. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demands. "You haven't shown your face around here for months, and now you come waltzing in like everything is fine! Luck isn't even here!"
"I know that!" Dallas answers, and oh shit he's going to die, because he's yelling back, but. "Why do you think -- that's why I haven't been coming around! I know where he is." His hands are shaking a little, so he curls them into fists. "I know what happened, okay? We -- Eve and I figured we shouldn't go to the trial, to keep from getting anyone's attention. But I was following it in the papers. I know how it went."
"If you know so much," Berga says, "then why are you --"
"Let me finish!" Dallas says. "Please." Keith comes out of the back room, too, Berga's silent menacing shadow, and Dallas takes a deep breath. Berga throws a nasty punch, but Keith is mean when he goes after a guy. "I'm, ah. Going upstate tonight so I can go see him." It's even weirder to be telling them than it was to tell Eve, who looked a little worried and like she understood why a little too well, but at least not like she wanted to kill him. "So I thought, ah. You have any messages you want me to pass on while I'm there?"
There's quiet for a second, and then the scrape of chairs as the other guys get up and leave. Dallas hopes it's just to give them some privacy for the conversation, and not because Keith has just given them some kind of signal to go start mixing cement or anything.
"Hah," Berga says, when it's just the three of them left. "You want to go see him, huh? Like you're his best girl?"
"Fuck you," Dallas says, before he remembers to be afraid, but Berga just laughs. "If that's a no, you don't have any messages, then I can just --"
"Wait," Keith says, and Dallas stops in his tracks. Seven years since he started coming over here, and he thinks this is the first time he's ever heard a word out of Keith.
"I'm waiting," he says.
Keith nods. "Tell Luck that we love him," he says. His voice sounds a little like Luck's, even. Not quite as smooth as Dallas remembers Luck's being, but the similarity's there. He's got more of the Italian accent left than either of the others. "We're wishing him strength."
"Okay," Dallas says. This feels serious, all of a sudden. Not dangerous, but...serious. "I'll pass that on."
The warden looks bored as he turns the key in the lock and rolls the heavy door back. Even knowing it's just for a little while, just a visit and he'll go home tonight -- home to Manhattan, home to Eve, to a good life he's never deserved -- Dallas still shudders a little. He's not the only one. He catches one or two of the others flinching, too -- this one probably somebody's brother, that one probably somebody's girlfriend, in her prettiest dress and too much makeup.
Dallas is glad they didn't make him put a name on what he is. He can't think of a good one.
The guys who have visitors are waiting in the courtyard, half a dozen of them. Mostly they look like shit, like guys who've spent too long in here and would do their crime all over again to get out again. One of them has a black eye and a splint on his arm.
And then there's Luck.
When he sees Dallas he -- okay, it wouldn't look like surprise to most people, but Dallas knows him that well by now, can read the faint widening of his eyes and the way his mouth doesn't move at all.
"Not who you were expecting, huh?" Dallas says. He tries to smile, knows it probably comes out pretty weak.
"No," Luck says -- God, it feels like it's been forever since Dallas heard his voice. "I admit I -- didn't think I'd see you here." He looks down. "But thank you."
"Yeah," Dallas says. The other prisoners are walking around the exercise yard with their visitors, the guards watching them all. Luck takes a step along the worn dirt path beside the wall, and Dallas moves with him. "You look --" Well, the same, pretty much, apart from the ugly change of clothes. Luck's God damn pajamas are better tailored than the prison jumpsuit. "You look better than you probably feel, huh."
Luck's smile is tired, tight at the corners. "That...does sound about right," he says. "Firo warned me it would be like this, but being prepared only helps so much."
"Firo?" Dallas says. All that shit was ages ago, for both of them, but he doesn't think he'll ever be happy to hear the name. "What were you talking to that brat for?" They're friends, Luck says, but Dallas doesn't buy it. Firo's a sneaky little fuck.
"Keith insisted," Luck says. "Once we'd decided I would be the one." He shrugs. "Firo spent some time in Alcatraz, so he knows what it's like to look like this in prison."
It takes a second for Dallas to figure that one out, and then he finds himself making fists without meaning to. "Jesus," he says. "Has anybody -- I mean, are you --" He can't finish the damn question.
"Sometimes they try," Luck says. He nods at the guy with the splint, on the other side of the yard. The pretty girl is with him. "So far I've managed to leave most of them injured without making it too obvious why I'm not."
Dallas watches the guy talking to his girl, doesn't look away when the guy glances over at them. "I want to kill him."
"Don't do it here," Luck says. "I -- I've missed you, but I don't want you for a cellmate."
"Yeah, uh. Me too," Dallas says. "Missing you. I mean, both parts, I guess." He almost asks how much longer it'll be, but the answer's pretty guaranteed to make them both feel rotten. "Your brothers send their love," he says instead.
Luck almost misses a step, he's so surprised. "You've seen them?" he asks.
Dallas nods. "It was Eve's idea," he says. "She said, ah, if I was going to come all the way up here I should at least see if they wanted to say anything to you too."
"Thank you," Luck says. He probably knows better than anyone how much his brothers wish Dallas would just fuck off. "Are -- are they well?"
"Guess so," Dallas says. "Everybody's wearing black for you. Berga's still terrifying as ever." Fuck, probably nobody would try to start a damn thing with Berga if he was the one in prison. "Luck?" No way he could have asked the others about this. "Why was it you? Did you guys draw lots or something?"
Luck takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a sigh. "No," he says. "It wasn't random. My brothers both," and he's slowing down, hesitating over the words like he does when he's trying to talk about the stuff they do. "They're family men, Dallas. They have wives who love them and need their support."
"You mean," Dallas says, "this -- I don't -- fuck." He doesn't know who he wants to kill right now, just that he's spoiling for it and his stomach won't settle. Okay, true, this...thing he and Luck have is nothing like being married, and it's not like they're -- shit, it's not even like Dallas is queer, not really. But still.
"I know it seems unfair," Luck goes on, not looking at Dallas as he keeps walking. They pass the locked door where Dallas came in here, move on in another circle. "But it was the only thing that would look right to the rest of the family. I have less to lose, right?" He sounds like he's pissed about it, too, and maybe scared.
"Hey, look on the bright side," Dallas says. His voice doesn't sound so hot either, and they should be touching. God, he never thought he'd miss touching Luck so bad. "At least when you get out I won't be old and gray from waiting for you."
Luck smiles and it's fragile and fucked up and this place is no good for him. "You -- you're waiting?"
"Told you, didn't I?" Dallas says. "When you called me before you went to the cops."
This is something I have to do, Luck said then. For the family. I'll probably spend some time in prison.
Yeah, Dallas said. Then I guess I'll see you when you get out. He should have said more.
"You did," Luck says now. "I guess I wasn't paying enough attention."
"You?" Dallas says. "Not paying attention? Man, what would your brothers say?"
Maybe it's just his imagination, but he thinks Luck smiles a little easier that time. "If you tell them, I'm sure they'll be disappointed in me."
"Oh, I don't know," Dallas says. "Maybe they'll make an exception if you say you were just ignoring that no-good punk who keeps coming around to bother you."
"He doesn't bother me," Luck says. "I keep asking him back." He sounds almost like himself again, on top of the situation, dry and a little teasing.
What the hell. They're far enough from anyone else that it's as much like privacy as they're going to get. "I wish I could kiss you," Dallas says quietly, and hopes his face isn't turning too red.
"So do I," Luck says. He laughs hoarsely. "Among other things."
That makes it Dallas's turn to miss a beat, distracted by that thought. "Right," he says. He's thinking of the slide of Luck's skin under his hands, the needy way Luck pushes against him when -- "You're not the only one." He's definitely starting to blush, though. "We, um, should probably talk about something else."
Luck nods once. "We probably should," he says. "How's the family business?"
"Can't, ah, speak for yours," Dallas says -- that'll be the day, when Keith and Berga are willing to tell him anything that important. "But we're not doing so bad. Roosevelt's a crazy socialist, but we're holding on to most of the factories okay. So it's not as -- shit."
They stop, because a few yards up ahead one of the other prisoners is throwing a punch at the guy who came to see him. Luck takes a step back, closer to the wall, so he's out of the way when the guards jog over there to break it up. Dallas thinks he sees a flash of metal in the prisoner's hand, and then the nightsticks come down.
"That's probably it for visiting hours," Luck says. He gives Dallas an apologetic smile. "Thank you for coming to see me." He holds out his hand. "It really means a lot."
"Sure thing," Dallas says. He takes Luck's hand, doesn't shake, just holds on. "Glad I could make it. Anything I should tell your brothers?"
"I miss them," Luck says. "And I'll be home as soon as I can." The guards are dragging off the guy who started the fight. He's bloody now, but still struggling. Others start to move into the yard to take the rest of the prisoners back inside.
"When you get back to Manhattan," Dallas says, before they make it over to him and Luck, "look me up."
Luck nods, letting go of Dallas's hand as a guard reaches his side. "I'll do that," he says, and doesn't fight when the guard pulls his hands behind his back. He keeps his head high, and his eyes are clear and focused. "See you soon."