#mob stuff

“Good, good.” Sean slides an arm around his shoulders, jovial as always. Paul tries not to be visibly uncomfortable at the touch. Everyone is always touchy, in the world, and he’s never liked it much. Except with Ronnie, but… that’s different. “So, talk to us, Paulie. What's got Billy’s boy mucking around here at the Garden with the old-timers?" 

It's not actually much of a garden, unless you count the dandelions in the sidewalks and the bits of scraggly grass along the edges of the pavement as your rows of plants. Instead, the big warehouse stretches wider than two Walmarts, chopped off into pieces by the standalone temporary walls inside that don't reach the ceiling. 

The ‘Garden’ is a place where things happen that no one with a badge is ever supposed to see. There's shouting, good-natured calling out of sums and figures and code words Paul doesn't know, bouncing and echoing in a constant chaos of sound. Metal scrapes, an odd clicking Paul vaguely recognizes but can’t quite place until he thinks of his dad cleaning his guns now and then at night, carefully putting them back together once he’s done. 

All that noise lays heavy like a blanket over his skin. He pushes past it - he's got a reason to be here, and he won't let Ronnie down. He can’t let her down.

"I'm here to work," He says, going for strong and loud. He doesn't change expression when the men around him laugh. 

He doesn't think their laughter is meant to be unkind, and besides, he doesn't really care if it is. These men have all known him since he was born - if anyone’s going to give him what he needs, it’ll be them. "My dad told me I could pick up some shifts this weekend as a lookout, that you pay cash at the end of the shift, right away. That I could get a couple hundred if I’m good at it, maybe five if I do some running, too.”

"Oh he said that, did he?" Sean meets eyes with Cilly, whose real name Paul has never learned. He isn’t entirely sure anyone here has ever given him their real legal name. Not even Sean. "Will might've let the family know first before he sent his boy here, hm? 

"Well, it's. It's important I get cash. Um. Fast. I just spoke to him, probably he'll call you in a bit thinking he's giving you a warning." Paul tries for another smile, and hopes it's warm enough. A bit of coppery strawberry blond hair falls over his green eyes as he looks hopefully from man to man. 

He's not even eighteen yet, but really, isn't that even better for a lookout? He knows where they do their business, he knows who to watch for, and he doesn’t look like he’s one of them at all. He's paid attention, sat up at night making maps of where they work and what they do. He knows they’ve gotten into business with WRU, even, the big Facility up in Berras has been sending people down here now and then. He’s good at this sort of thing. He knows he can do this. He’s going to make a living at this one day, and everyone starts somewhere.

He just… has to convince them. These men aren't unreasonable, and they're family. Well, sort of. In a way. In that they all commit crimes with his dad. And some of them actually are real family, although he’s not always sure exactly who.

"What d'you need cash for that can't wait for your parents to come back from Florida, then?" That's Cilly, scratching idly at a red spot on his face, sipping a mug of hot tea like they're at a kitchen counter and not a fold-out table by a warehouse door. The others all have takeout coffee cups, but not Cilly. 

Paul's mom buys him new mugs on all her vacations. A gentleman among thieves, she said once. 

Nah, Paul's dad had said. Just a thief. But he puts on airs for you. 

All the more reason to show him my appreciation, Bill. 

The mug he’s drinking from now was one of Paul’s mom’s presents to him. It has a little palmetto tree on the side and Nothin’ Could Be Finer written in swirling script. It came from a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when Paul was seven. 

He hated that trip. He never liked sand. Or the ocean. Or the noise of all the people everywhere in the street. He would have been happy with a book on the couch in the condo if they’d have let him stay there. 

"They're not in-"

"Think they're in Georgia," Conor pipes up, the oldest with hair gone nearly gray, cousins to the real boss, a man Paul has met maybe three times and knows only as Mr. Sondheim - which isn’t even a little bit his actual name. 

Conor makes Paul’s skin prickle, the way he thinks maybe a cat feels when it sees a mean-looking dog across the street. Paul's dad came home once with blood he had to wash off his hands and a shirt he had to throw out. When Paul asked, he said only, Conor's temper is going to get someone who matters killed one day. Too bad his grandson's as bad as he is. "Aren't they?"

"Nah," Sean says, shaking his head. "Florida. Definitely Florida."

"Actually," Paul starts. "They're in-"

"I thought Texas," Cilly says, almost thoughtful. He interrupts Paul thoughtlessly, and Paul’s face colors a little with embarrassment. He feels like the odd man out in a conversation meant to be about him. 

"They went to Alabama," Paul finally says, soft. Thinking no one’s listening, but they all look at him then. That's worse than when they weren't paying attention at all. He never meets any one person's eyes, instead focusing on Sean Malley's forehead, a spot that'll look like eye contact without having to be it. He's never liked having to look too many people in the eye. 

Or anyone, actually. 

"Ah, all right then. Alabama. Well. What couldn't wait for them to get back from Alabama, Paulie-Wol?"

No one's called him Paulie-Wol since he was eleven - and he hated it then. He blushes even darker. He's always been easy to make blush, and they laugh again. It's a little meaner this time. He has to not care. It’s important not to care, so they’ll let him work. 

Paul Higgs straightens his narrow shoulders and pulls a crumpled but of paper, shiny on one side, out from his back pocket. "This is why. I need money. Fast. For this."

He can't help how his voice dips, hushed, almost in awe. Sean is the first to take the little piece of paper, eyes widening in surprise at what he sees, before he hands it to Conor, who whistles through his teeth. Cilly takes it next, with a soft exhalation that's either curse or prayer. 

With this group, it could be either. Or both. Paul’s dad always says God doesn’t care overmuch about the difference.

"You're a bit young, aren't you? To need money for this?" Sean asks, and he's… concerned, Paul thinks, and he tries to square himself up even taller. “What’re you, Paulie, fifteen?”

"S-seventeen. It’s-... we didn’t plan on it, Sean, it just happened." This time when his face stays red, heat burning under the smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose, they don't laugh. All their smiles are gone, too.

They've gone serious, these men who aren't quite blood but might as well be. They aren't laughing at or with or because of him. They look worried about him.

"Paulie," Conor says, shaking his head. "Paulie, you know better than this. Don't they teach you how to make sure this shit don't just happen? Thought we’d stop having teenagers knocking each other up once we got past the eighties.”

"They did. I had a whole health class where we-... but it doesn’t matter, it still. Happened, okay?" The absolute last thing he wants to do is talk to these old guys about Ronnie, and why, and when. If they ask him he’ll melt into the floor, and die, and just be dead right here and now.  

“So, when you say you need money… Are you looking to drive her up to Berras?”

“No, that’s not... We talked about it, but she said she already thought about it and made her decision. This isn’t… Don’t look at me like that. I like her decision. I’m happy.”

“You are?” Sean blinks, surprised.

“Yes! I'm happy, so don't tell me I fucked up, because I did. I know I did, but… but I talked to Ronnie, and we have a whole plan and I need money for my plan. And just. Look at it.”

Sean glances back down, taking the paper back, smoothing it out. Shiny on one side, it's a printed black and white image, a smeary blur of monochrome shades. Unmistakable in its center, more or less, is a gently rounded blob of white, topped with another and with other little blobs coming off its sides. Labeled along the top is Baby Botham, 14 weeks 3 days. 

“Botham?” Sean asks, head cocked to one side.

“That’s… that’s Ronnie’s last name. She, uh. She didn’t tell them… Because we’re not married.” Paul squares himself up again. “Yet. We’re not married yet.”

He tries not to think about Ronnie crying on his shoulder about how her parents and her sister had screamed at her when she told them, that no one was talking to her and they might throw her out, like this. His throat will close up if he does, in hurt for her, and in anger. 

His own parents he’d just told on the phone today, heard the long silence on the other end. Whispers that didn’t quite carry through the line. Then his mother had said, brisk and no-nonsense as always, So what does Ronnie want to do? We’ll help however we can. Will she need somewhere to stay?

“You’re not married yet,” Cilly repeats, not with derision, just with a kind of flat uncertainty. “You’re seventeen, Paulie. Little young to be talking marriage, don’t you think?”

“Well, we’re talking it, anyway,” Paul says firmly. “And don’t tell me it’s stupid. We already made our minds up.”

“Well, far be it for me to question your judgement,” Sean deadpans. “Since you’re clearly making excellent decisions already-”

“I got married at sixteen,” Conor points out. “Wife and I been married forty-two years this December, too. Sometimes it works out.”

“Different world, different times,” Cilly counters, and Conor has to nod in agreement to that. “Lots of those didn’t work out either, now did they? Besides, kids got options now we didn’t have back then.”

“Ronnie doesn’t want those other options,” Paul says, forcing his voice to be loud enough to carry, surprising all three men, who give him a new kind of look. Maybe even seeing him as nearly a man and not a kid, just for the moment. “She doesn’t. I never told her to do or not do anything, we talked about it, and she knows what she wants to do, and I agree with her. Ronnie and I want to get married, and we’ll need somewhere we can live when-... when the baby comes. So I need to start making money. And I want-... I need some fast, this weekend.”

Cilly’s expression goes cold. “Don’t tell me your folks are making you find a place that fast. I’ll take Billy to the woodshed myself if he’d be such a bastard to his own kid when things get tough-”

“He’s not,” Paul says quickly. “They’re not. Mom and Dad aren’t-... but they get it, they’re helping us. It’s not for an apartment, not yet. It’s so I can buy her some stuff.”

"This is a serious thing," Sean says, and he rubs his thumb over what Paul is pretty sure is his baby's head. The blobs are all sort of odd to look at, but… he's pretty sure that one's the head. It’s where he would put the head, if he were designing a person, anyway. "But I can see you’re quite the serious young man, now. What sort of stuff are you lookin’ to buy, Paulie?" 

Paul swallows, nervously rubbing his palms along the seems on the outside of his pants. “I… I don’t know. What do you buy someone who’s pregnant? I thought, like, baby clothes? Or a crib?”

“No, no, no.” Sean shakes his head. “You can’t just get her baby stuff, not this early. You are not starting with a crib, Paulie. You got nowhere to even put one yet.”

“Then… what do I buy?” Paul looks from man to man. “I’ve never known a pregnant person before, not anyone I cared about.”

“You were around for my wife’s last pregnancy,” Sean says, mildly offended.

Paul shrugs. 

The three older men look at each other, and then sigh nearly as one. Someone pushes out the fourth chair from the fold-up table and Paul sits, each of the other men sitting in turn. Sean picks up his phone and dials. “Hey, Don. Let everybody know we’re off-limits for the next couple hours, ‘til lunch. Yeah, Billy Higgs’s boy stopped by. He’s sniffing around for some lookout work this weekend. Find him some decent jobs for me, will you?”

Paul starts to smile, and it’s genuine this time. Sean hands him back the little picture of the blob that will become a baby, his and Ronnie’s baby, and he tries not to crumble it fully in his hands, worried his sweat will smear the ink. She’ll get another one in a few weeks, said her doctor told her it’ll look more like a person, then. Less like a weird frog. Or like a really, really bad painting.

“Thanks, I’ll owe you.” Sean hangs up the phone and grins, leaning on his elbows on the wobbly little table. The sun shines warmly through the open warehouse doors on Paul’s back. “All right. Between the three of us, we’ve got, what, ten kids?”

“Yeah, but five of those are all Cilly’s,” Conor points out. “And mine stopped bein’ kids decades ago.”

“Yeah, but babies don’t change, and they don’t need much. You need a pen and paper to write things down, Paulie?”

“Write… write what down?” 

“What you’re gonna spend your money on, for your girlfriend. You don’t just show up with baby clothes, kid, you gotta go all out. Let’s talk date, let’s talk gifts for this Ronnie, let’s talk it all out.”

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” Cilly says. “They all get that book, right? Isn’t that the one?”

Sean snorts, derisive. “Don’t get her that, not this early. That damn book had my wife in fucking tears telling her everything that could go wrong. We need to think of a happier book than that.”

“Well, call your wife and ask her what she’d want, then.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You should!”

“She’s liable to start planning a damn baby shower if I do. You know how Christa is about little ones.”

Cilly grins. “Think she’ll make those deviled eggs I like for the shower?”

“Cilly, for God’s sake, we found out about this five minutes ago.”

“Right, but... deviled eggs.”

Paul takes a deep breath, and sits back in his chair. “I’ll remember, whatever you say. I promise. I don’t need to write it down. Just tell me what I should get her, what I should do.”

“Right. Well, then.” Sean spreads his hands. “Let’s talk gifts.”

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