Mikey Berzatto

Thirty-Eight stairs to the third floor. Mikey had counted them every morning coming down for eleven years. Tonight he counted them going up because he wanted the number one more time.

The building was doing what it always did at this hour. Somebody's TV on 2. Someone's kid crying and stopping and crying again on 3. He'd been quiet all shift. Manny thought it was a hangover. Richie thought it was a fight with Carmy. It wasn't either. He'd made a decision three days ago and today was the day he'd picked, and the funny thing about picking a day was how ordinary the day became once you had. He'd worked lunch. He'd yelled at Ebra about the walk-in. He'd eaten a piece of bread standing up over the sink. He'd thought about calling Sugar and hadn't, because Sugar knew his voice too well and would've heard it in the first word. He'd thought about Carmy in New York and been proud, which was the last thing he'd felt cleanly all day.

By the fourth floor landing he was already halfway there in his head. (Nightstand. Letter explaining everything to Carmy, and the gun—)

He got to his door with his keys already out. Slid the key in and the deadbolt didn't catch. Already turned.

Three people had that spare. Sugar. Richie. And her, because six weeks ago she'd stayed past close helping him break down the line before a health inspection and he'd walked her to her car at two in the morning and pressed his spare into her palm and said in case you ever need a place to crash, and she'd looked at him and said Mikey are you sure and he'd said yeah of course sweetheart no big deal, and it had been the only thing he'd done in a year that felt like something.

He'd told himself giving her the key didn't mean anything.

A pot lid clinked inside. He pushed the door open.

She was at his stove in her socks, hair up, one of his dish towels over her shoulder. A paper grocery bag sat empty on the counter next to a cutting board of onion skins. The whole apartment smelled like a Sunday in a house he'd never been in. She turned when the door opened and grinned at him, easy, glad to see him.

"Oh shit! Hi. I thought you were closing tonight."

"Yeah, no, switched with Manny." He was already smiling. He didn't remember telling his face to. "What is this, huh? Breaking and entering?"

She waved the wooden spoon at him in mock outrage, defending herself, reminding him he'd given her a key.

"For emergencies, sweetheart. What's the crisis, tell me."

She grinned and told him the crisis, deadpan, was that he could not make a sugo to save his life.

He stopped in the doorway for a beat too long. Then he laughed, because that's what you do.

"You broke into my apartment on a Wednesday to make me sugo."

She rolled her eyes and told him not to be dramatic, she hadn't broken in. She was already pulling down the good bowls, moving around his kitchen like she'd been in it a hundred times when she'd been in it maybe four. She rattled off her offerings as she worked: she'd brought bread, she'd brought wine, and he wasn't allowed to judge the wine because it was seven dollars but the guy at the shop had been very intense about it, and she was trusting the guy, and so was he now.

"Yeah, no, we trust the seven dollar guy." He was still standing by the door. "Smells like my ma never learned to cook. That's a compliment."

She grinned over her shoulder and said she knew it was, she'd met his ma.

"Right."

She turned then, actually looked at him, and her voice changed. Asked if he was okay.

"What? Yeah. Long day."

He looked at her. She had a smear of sauce on her wrist she hadn't noticed. Her t-shirt had a stain on it. She hadn't tried to look like anything for him.

He took his jacket off. Hung it on the hook by the door. Sat down at the kitchen table with both hands flat on it because he needed to put them somewhere.

"You gonna pour me some of that seven dollar wine or what, sweetheart?"