Read The City Below for Free Online Page B

with his napkin. His wet eyes glistened, turning on Terry. "Don't you worry. You can do that if you want. It's what the cardinal did, a couple of years with the Jesuits at BC. You tell your mother Dick Cushing did that very thing." Cronin spoke intimately of the cardinal because they'd become friends years before, when a younger Cushing had helped out at St. Mary's.
    "Would
you
tell her?"
    "I will indeed. She can wait. So can Monsignor's present."
    Terry felt that he could breathe again.
    But then his grandfather had added, "Experience, that's right. And some Jesuit training. You'll be a better priest for it." He'd fixed Terry with a cold stare. "Your mother is counting on you. And so am I. But the main thing, boyo, it's a sin to reject a divine calling, and we all know you've got one. Right? Right?"
    Now, in the bedroom, Terry said into the darkness above him, "I know you're awake."
    "No I'm not."
    "Come on, Nick."
    "Squire."
    "You like that name? You don't think it's phony?"
    Squire sat halfway up. Terry could just imagine the expression on his face: Who's phony?
    "All right,
Squire.
All right"
    Squire flipped onto his back and punched his pillow up.
    Terry said, "I heard what happened. Jackie's sister told me."
    "Told you what?"
    "At the store. Those guys."
    "Wop cocksuckers."
    "How'd you do it?"
    "Just said we were already paying some asshole. Said everybody on Main Street was. Lou Triozzi." Squire laughed quietly. With Terry, now that he'd asked, Squire could enjoy it.
    "Won't they find out?"
    "We
are
paying. That's what I've decided. Us and everybody."
    "Paying who?"
    "Me."
    "For protection? That's nuts. They never—"
    "Gramps agreed. He's calling the meeting. The Lou Triozzi Benevolent Association. It's about to become famous. Punks like the two that we saw won't know it from the Black Hand."
    "Does Mom know?"
    "Come on, Terry. What does Mom have to do with anything? You shouldn't worry so much about her."
    "I really let her down tonight."
    "That's catshit, Terry. Hey, do you want to be a priest or don't you?"
    "I don't know."
    "It's your life, kid."
    "But she's sick. I really get worried."
    "That isn't your fault Anyway, who the hell knows how sick she is?"
    "I just wish we could keep her from getting so—"
    "Maybe she gets that way to keep the leash on. Don't get railroaded."
    "But
you're
getting railroaded. You're the 'Knight's Squire.' That's a leash. A year from now it'll be you who's graduating, and you'll be headed for the flower shop full time."
    "Hey, as long as I don't have to take your place in the sem." They laughed. Then Squire said, "The shop is okeydokey with me."
    "Really?"
    "Yes. I fucking love the place. Especially now."
    "Because you're Lou Triozzi, you mean?"
    "I'm going to organize the pansies around here. Moran's, the Shamrock, Flanagan's, the drugstore, all of them."
    "You're in high school!"
    "The two wops that came into the store were no older. What do you know?" There was a defensive meanness in Squire's question, and Terry felt the shove in it.
    They stopped speaking.
    The silence from Squire's side was blunt, and Terry was disoriented by it Once, Nick had deferred to Terry in everything. Nick, hatching a plan, would have wanted to know what Terry thought But this was "Squire."
    "Charlestown is changing, Squire."
    "No it's not."
    "These Italian guys coming into the shop like that proves it The whole city's different. We just may as well face it. Wops come into our turf. Some of us go out. It shouldn't bother you so much."
    "What fucking bothers me"—Squire sat up angrily—"is watching Gramps get slugged to the ground."
    "That happened?"
    "You didn't notice the mark on his head?"
    "I thought that was—"
    "What, he got drunk and passed out? Jesus Christ, Terry, you can really be an asshole, you know that? I mean a fucking asshole! This is the real world I'm talking about, not BC."
    "What does BC have to do with it?"
    Squire fell back in his bed, silent again.
    "No, seriously. Why does BC