When the brothers came back to the table, they seemed a little more guarded, more on edge. Julie didn't dare try to break the tension. It wasn't her job. Instead, she did the next best thing she could think of. She picked up the empty donut box and a few discarded beer cans and threw them away. After that little task, she was lost. She wanted to straighten up a little, but she didn't want to disturb anything. With a sigh, she settled on heading back for the table.
Murphy and Conner were sitting close together, whispering some more. They weren't paying much attention as she sat down, though their voices lowered a little. It was a bit garbled at first until she picked up a few words. They were speaking German. She caught the whispered word meeting and bad men. To her shock, she figured they were speaking about a hit they were planning on making.
"Sprechen Sie eine verschieden Sprache," she said loudly.
"What," Conner looked up startled.
"Miene Großmutter war deutsch. Sie unterrichtete mich gut," Julie replied. "If you want to hide something from me, you can't use German. No Latin either. I don't know proper grammer for it, but I know lots of words."
The brothers looked half astonished and half annoyed. Murphy gave a slow smile. "Parlez-vous le francais?"
Julie shook her head. "Just enough to know that you asked me if I know it."
"Bon," Conner nodded, turning his attention back to his brother, but Murphy was still smirking at Julie.
"Une belle fille comme vous ne sait pas la langue d'amour," he asked with a laughing lilt. "Vous comme nous vous enseigner?"
Julie tried to figure out was he was saying. A few words were recognizable, but she still had no idea what was really being said; except that maybe she was being patronized for not knowing the language.
"Le flirt quitte et laisse arrivent aux affaires," Conner said in a low tone, almost chiding.
Murphy sat back, flicking ashes into the tray. "Vous ne pouvez pas reprocher a un homme l'essai."
Conner smiled and gave a little laugh. "N'oublier pas. Je l'ai vue premier."
They both started talking in-depth in French and it was too much for Julie to process. Instead of letting her headache worsen, she grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the counter and went into the bathroom to splash her face with water. She looked at her face in the unfogged mirror and cringed. Her left cheek was a disgusting shade of purple with greenish-yellow already starting around the edges. At least it was healing quickly and hadn't ripped the skin to hell. There were cuts in her cheek from her teeth slicing the skin.
With a painful groan, she touched the cheek. Pain shot through her skin. She filed that away under something not to be done again. Wetting a washrag, she dabbed the cool water on her face. It eased the pain just a little, just enough for her to deal with it. She hung the washrag up to dry and left the bathroom.
The brothers were no longer in the main room and the music had been turned off. It made the place almost deathly quiet. Then she heard them in the bedroom, speaking low. The door was slightly opened as she stepped up to it. Peeking inside, she could see both men standing at one side of the bed with a large array of weaponry spread out over the mattress. She watched as they checked each piece, sliding full clips into the guns and screwing on silencers.
Carefully, she pushed the door open a little wider, making the hinge creak. They both looked up as she entered the room. Julie walked up to the side of the bed opposite them and surveyed the weapons. She picked Pokey up from the pillows and held him cradled under her arm.
"Julie," Murphy began solemnly. "I think we rather ye didn't see this."
"Aye," Conner nodded. "This isn't something ye should have to worry about."
"But if I'm going to be here for a while," she argued calmly. "Then I should know a little of what's going on."
The brothers looked at each other for a moment, then nodded. Conner looked up at her as he loaded another gun. "We got word about a group of gangsters who're meeting tonight for business."
"We'd been tryin' to get these fuckers for weeks now," Murphy added, running his thumb along a knife blade to check its sharpness.
"We'll be gone for a while," Conner remarked, looking around at all the weapons. His gaze fell on a small semi-automatic handgun. Picking it up, he loaded it and held out it out to Julie butt-first. "D'ye know how ta use one of these?"
Julie nodded slowly. "My uncle taught me a little. He was a cop before he got killed in the line of duty."
Murphy looked up at her and took a drag from his cigarette. "Did they ever catch his killer?"
"No," Julie answered, taking the gun from Conner and pointing the barrel safely downward and away from her body.
Murphy shook his head disappointedly before motioning toward the gun in her hand. "You may need that in case someone tries sneaking in the place."
"We've never had a burglary attempt," Conner added. "But ye'll be here by yerself, and with our line of work there's no such thing as too careful."
The men loaded up black bags with the weapons and headed out the bedroom door. Julie followed, clutching Pokey in one hand and the gun in the other. They were slipping on coats over their holsters when she finally had enough courage to ask "What if you don't come back?"
"Well, then I guess the place is yers," Conner smirked.
"I mean it," Julie said, looking down and trying to stop the tears that were filling her eyes.
Conner hooked a finger under her chin and lifted it up so she was looking at both their faces. "We give ye our word Julie, that ye'll never truly be left alone here."
She smiled a little and Murphy's gloved hand wiped some tears from her cheek. His face didn't have its usual coyness when he asked "Could we each take a kiss fer luck?"
When she nodded, Murphy brushed his lips across her unbruised cheek and Conner gingerly planted a kiss on her forehead. As they pulled away, she realized she had taken a hand of their in each of hers. Letting her saviours walk out the door was the hardest thing she could ever remember doing.
---
Alone in the apartment, Julie was left to snoop. To keep herself from thinking terrible scenarios of the brothers getting hurt, she rifled through closets and cabinets. There were several bottles of whiskey in one of the cupboards, stocked for a rainy day no doubt. There was a bit of food in the fridge, not a lot but enough to give her some ideas. Nothing interesting in the closets. She found a scrap piece of paper in one of the bedside drawers that had an interesting prayer written on it.
Once she had turned the place nearly upside down with her idea of trying not to worry, she decided she did have the right to clean house a little. Beer cans were tossed, dishes were washed, and ashtrays were emptied. Everything short of a good vacuuming had been finished when she looked at the clock.
It was nearly nine o'clock. The brothers had been gone for hours and she was beginning to worry even more. She set up station at the table, chair pointed at the door. Pokey rested in her lap and the gun lay on the table beside her, barrel in the direction of the door. Julie sat there and watched vigilantly, trying her hardest not to fall asleep. But it wasn't working. Her eyes kept drooping and several times she had to catch her head from falling over.
She had just dosed off a little when she heard the doorknob rattling. Fear struck her almost to the point of paralysis. But she fought it back when the doorknob rattled again, then started to unlatch. She was up in a flash, feet shoulder-length apart like she had been taught, aiming down her arms and the barrel of the gun as the door swung all the way open.
Here are the rough translations, in order, if you were wondering…
Sprechen Sie eine verschieden Sprache. Speak a different language.
Meine Großmutter war deutsch. Sie unterrichtete mich gut. My grandmother was German. She taught me very well.
Parlez-vous le francais? Do you speak French? (but you probably knew that already)
Bon Good.
Une belle fille comme vous ne sait pas la langue d'amour? A beautiful girl like you doesn't know the language of love?
Vous comme nous vous enseigner? Would you like us to teach you?
Le flirt quite et laisse arrivent aux affaires. Quit flirting and lets get back to business.
Vous ne pouvez pas reprocher a un homme l'essai. You can't blame a man for trying.
N'oublier pas. Je l'ai vue premier. Don't forget. I saw her first.