Up in Smoke

3.5

3 months later

3 long months since Tommy's been in the hospital. The men really messed him up good. A lot of it was his brain so he had a little bit of relearning to do. It took him a while to be able to stand on his own, let alone walk. Tommy, of course, pushed through.

Now, you wouldn't even know anything happened to him. He's back to being normal Tommy. Well, as normal as he could be I should say.

I joined Tommy for breakfast. He had all this food in front of him. Instead of eating it, he was smoking a cigarette.

"Tommy, you need to eat something. You can't just smoke for breakfast."

"Sure, I can."

"Thomas, eat the food before I shove it down your throat." He smirked as he began cutting up his food.

"That's more like it," I smiled as filled up my plate.

In the afternoon, I was organizing Tommy's papers. He really needs to start doing this. His entire desk was a mess. It was giving me a headache just looking at it. Grace and I always used to get on him about it. There were multiple random stacks of papers. How did this man find anything?

The door creaked open but I didn't bother looking up. I figured it was only Tommy.

"Well look at you taking over."

"Alfie, what are you doing here?"

"Business. Where's Tommy?"

"In the backyard but I could talk. I'm his lucky charm, remember?"

"The Russians."

"How did you find out?"

"I know things." Tommy walked in, looking sort of confused.

I left the room for them to talk. Arthur, John and Michael were sitting in the kitchen, smoking and drinking. They were talking about marriage and kids. I walked into the conversation a little too late. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't bother asking because I didn't really want to know.

The bell in the kitchen rang. "Tommy said when that bell rings we're to all go to the big room," Johnny Dog declared. "Come on, Tommy has a plan," Johnny shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked out of the kitchen.

Alfie was waiting for us in Tommy's office. I guess Alfie was in on this whole rib the Russians ordeal. Arthur's entire body tensed at the sight of him. He turned to walk right back out. "Arthur," Tommy snapped. Arthur glared at Tommy as he stood right beside the door. Alfie held his arms up.

"Arthur! Shalom!"

"Alfie," I warned as he walked up to Arthur.

"Come here. Come. Let's sit down. I owe you a little something, don't I? I do. Come on. Sit down. Come on, sit down here." He pulled Arthur down next to him on the couch. "There you go. Right. Listen, Arthur. I want you to know that whatever happened between us back then, that was business. It was just business, alright? And I also want you to know that I have made my apologies via my own God for abusing a very holy day to get you clinked up and battered, which I did. And now, I would also like to extend my person apologized unto you." Arthur looked at us before back to Alfie. "Alright. I hear that you have allowed Jesus to come into your life. Eh?"

"Oh, you heard then."

"Yeah, that's beautiful, that's wonderful. That is lovely, isn't it? That is lovely. And I was wondering, how does that work for you on a day to day considering your line of work, mate?" Arthur stared at Tommy.

Steam was basically coming from his ears. There was so much that he wanted to say in this moment. He was doing an amazing job keeping it together. "You're apology is accepted," was all that came from his mouth.