“If you like. I’ve got the catering and accommodation covered, but feel free to take charge of the entertainment.”
“You might be sorry you said that.”
“Doubt it.” Mickey finished Benito’s cigarette, stubbed it out, and flicked it into a nearby bin with perfect aim. “You’ve never let me down yet.”
“What about the chilli noodles I bought you that burnt your lips?”
“That entertainedyou, which is good enough for me.”
“It shouldn’t be. I want you to have fun too.” Benito’s gaze flashed with heat.
Mickey absorbed it as it travelled through him like wildfire, setting light to the temporary gates they’d silently constructed over the last few weeks. “You know what I like,” he said. “I trust you to bring your A game.”
Benito nodded slowly, as if his mind was stoking the flames. “I can do that. When?”
“Tomorrow?”
“I can’t. I have to work, and the next day too. I can do Friday?”
It pained Mickey to wait that long, but he tried not to let it show on his face. After all, a Friday encounter had the potential to last the whole weekend, but it still felt like a lifetime away. As if the world could change before then and snatch it away from them. “Friday is good,” he said after a beat of tense silence. “You like pizza, right?”
Benito smiled a little. “You’re not going to cook for me, Larwood?”
“Probably not. I have other plans.”
“Thought I was in charge of the entertainment?”
“You are, but... not that much.”
A full-on belly laugh escaped Benito. Mickey laughed too—a reflexive reaction that seemed to kick his heart free of whatever hill it had been stuck on until now. “I should go,” he said. “I need to fetch something from my car, then visit the other block before I can go home.”
“I have to leave too,” Benito said. “Work.”
Neither of them moved. Then Benito sighed. “Can I walk you to your car?”
“If you like.”
They rose together and made the short walk to where Mickey had abandoned his car by the garages. He opened the boot and rummaged around while Benito hovered. “What are you looking for?”
“Fire safety leaflets. Mr Morris put the wind up me, so I’m going to stick them through every letterbox before I go.”
“He’s the one with the gun under his pillow, right?”
“What?”
“I’m messing with you.” Benito held up his hands. “It’s just when he first moved in, everyone said he’d shoot you if you tried to fuck with him, because he was a soldier.”
“I don’t know about that, but I get the feeling he could handle himself back in the day.”
“This was twenty years ago. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen back then.”
“He’s still big,” Mickey said. “But he’s pushing seventy, so I reckon you could outrun him.”
Benito snorted and dropped his gaze to the leaflets Mickey had rooted out. “Has this got anything to do with the maintenance you were talking about?”
Mickey shifted the stack of leaflets to the front of the boot and grabbed a handful. “Indirectly. DOSHA did a cladding inspection a while ago and turned up some missing fire breaks in the cavities. Not enough to make the building lethal—I hope, at least—but it’s still fucking criminal.”
“Cladding? You mean, like Grenfell?”