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Step Down

“You’re just not cut out for this sort of shit”, Paul said, as they lifted the corpse out of the trunk of the car. 

Joey knew he was right. He held the lifeless man by the legs, Paul at the other end, his hands clutching the body by the sides of it’s chest. They carried it until they reached the edge of the cliff, and at the silent count of three swung the recently murdered man down into the river below.

As the two walked back to the car, Paul put his arm around Joey.

“It’s over. Finito. You’re going to go back to your wife and kids, and tomorrow, everything will be back to normal. Don’t think about it. A bad dream, that’s all it was Joey, just a bad dream”. 

Joey wished his old friend’s prediction would prove correct, but knew deep down that this was not to be the case. He had made a decision out of desperation, and would now have to live with the consequences, of which he had priorly not given much thought. His situation had demanded that he act swiftly, which is exactly what he had done. He hadn’t the luxury, he assured himself, to have thought his actions through. At least this is what he attempted to convince himself of,  as he opened the passenger side door  of the ‘99 Lincoln.  

They drove for a bit on the pitch black road before either of them uttered a word.

“Do you ever get used to it?”, Joey found himself asking Paul.

He did not answer straight away. For all his outward machismo, Joey knew that the shy, sensitive kid he grew up with on the Lower East Side was still lurking somewhere within his old buddy.

“Let me put it this way”, Paul began his response, as he made a right hand turn onto a main road, and some streetlights from civilization came into distant view. He thought some more before he continued. 

“I’ve long ago made my peace with it. I still have a code that I live by, and there are boundaries that I will not cross under any circumstance”.

Those words struck Joey like a ton of bricks. Here he was, the only one from his old crowd who wasn’t dead, in jail, or still leading The Life, and it was he who, at this advanced stage, was lost.

Paul intuitively sensed Joey’s emotional state.

“I’ve always looked up to you, Joey. And I’m not the only one. The whole gang is proud of you, has been for a long time. I’m sure you don’t know the things we have done to cover your back throughout the years. But we have always kept an eye out for you, even clearing the way here and there when the opportunity presented itself. So now don’t start feeling all guilty and stuff. You’re a good man, and that doesn’t change overnight. You hear me?”

Joey nodded his head, indicating to his old friend that he did, indeed,  fully understand what Paul was trying to say.

It’s just that, in his heart of hearts, he knew the unadulterated truth would, in the end, prove  otherwise. 

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