And they were doing an excellent job. I was petrified.
I grabbed a marker and started to write out some of the letters we were focusing on today on the white board.
I didn’t even notice that Mason and Toby had walked in.
“Hey, sorry Toby is late today. It was all my fault,” Mason said.
I turned around too quickly and almost fell down. The marker fell from my hand. I bent over to grab it and dropped it quickly again. My motor skills were all over the place. I felt like I was on the verge of having a panic attack. I couldn’t do that in front of a room full of children. It would freak them out, plus if I needed an adult, the only one present was about to leave.
“Are you ok?” Mason asked.
He grabbed the marker off the ground. It had rolled over to him and stopped beside his feet.
I took it from him quickly and laughed. “Wow, today is just one of those days.”
Mason was staring at me. I did my best not to make eye contact with him, but his stare was wearing me down. If other adults had been present they definitely would have noticed it, too. Did he know? Of course not, but he knew that I was behaving strangely. So did I. It was easy to feel it. I was all over the place. I felt a bit sick to my stomach, the memory of what happened on the way to school rolling over and over in my mind.
What was I going to do?
“Oh, yes,” I replied. “I’m just fine.”
But I wasn’t. No, I wasn’t fine at all.
CHAPTER 5
Mason
I stepped out of the car and paused to survey the area. I felt a bit strange, like I was on display. The media circus was a bit understated today. I’d expected there to be cameras all over the place. Perhaps many of them were too scared to be there. It might have been troubling for the networks trying to find a camera man who didn’t mind becoming a possible target of the Zeffari crime family.
But I was sure that the vultures were waiting in the wings, most of them independent bloggers, photographers, and self-employed “journalists”. None of them ever seemed to own the term “paparazzo”. It had certain negative connotations to it and it just left a bad impression with people. But if you called yourself a freelance journalist, or photographer, well then you were really putting your best foot forward.
I smiled as I looked around hoping to catch a glimpse of a jerk with a camera slunk down in some little car with tinted windows, or a long range lens peeking out just enough from the window of a high rise building a few hundred feet away. Still, I saw nothing. I was almost disappointed.
The day of Arnold’s funeral came upon me even faster than I thought it might. I realized I’d been dreading it. I desperately wanted to pay respects to a man I loved very much, but I did not need the media hoopla that might go along with it and I found that I did not want to see my former business associates who’d stayed within the parameters of shady business practices all of these years.
Many of them were jealous of my mainstream success, but of course men cut from that cloth would never admit to such a thing. There was too much pride in organized crime. Pride…in crime? The irony was never lost on me.
I walked slowly towards the church glad that no one was looking at me or paying me any special attention. I just wanted to blend in today and pay my respects to Arnold. Of course, I was wearing typical funeral attire, as was everyone else. Most of us were dressed alike in black suits, black sunglasses, and black shoes. There was nothing distinguishable about me--unless you were really paying attention.
When I entered the church I was immediately struck by the somber atmosphere. I’ve never been particularly religious (despite repeated attempts by Arnold to turn me Catholic) but stepping into a church has always felt like a Zen experience for me. There is just something about the ambience, the atmosphere, the ceremonial nature of it all—it is so humbling and it never failed to open me up until I was almost on the verge of tears.
It was like it had been designed to elicit my confessions about everything in my life I’d ever felt bad about or needed to get off my chest, no matter how mundane. It was a battle of wills to not drop to my knees and admit I stole candy when I was nine years old from a corner convenience store.
As I stepped into the church I quickly discovered where I needed to be. Several members of the family that I knew were sitting in a long pew towards the front. Ranier was sitting by the aisle, along with Ramon, Charlie, Max, and Vinnie.