FEROCITY Chapter Four through Eight

by Michael Callinglast

  “Jack,” she says, “do you realize that you’ve just described yourself?”

  “Whatever.”

  She’s laughing.

  “So how’s the book coming?” she nods to the mauve monstrosity that is How To Be A Sensitive Man.

  “It’s okay. Most of the stuff this douche talks about is common knowledge. But this I found interesting.”

  “Do tell.”

  “It’s a list of signs that the girl in a relationship is about to bail. Tell me if these are true or not. One: she no longer complains about the stuff she used to complain about because she figures the relationship’s about to end anyway.”

  “Sounds plausible.”

  “Sounds plausible? So I’m supposed to be worried when she’s no longer complaining? What the French? Two: Her friends and family act differently around you because she’s told them that she’s planning on dumping you. Really? I mean do girls really do that shit?”

  Victoria smiles and shrugs. This means not only do girls do this heartless shit, but they do it A Lot.

  “So basically the guy is the last to know when the ship’s going down. Fucking great. Three: She’s lost interest in sex.” I put the book down and think about this. Did Keira lose interest in sex? I mean clearly she’s lost interest in sex now because she’s not even returning my calls.

  “Four: She’s no longer interested in talking about future plans. Five: She no longer confides in you and generally tries to avoid you all together. Fuck. That’s a scary number five.”

  Victoria laughs. She’s enjoying this.

  “It doesn’t look good,” I tell her, tapping the book. “And all the things a guy is supposed to do to be a Sensitive Guy, I already do.”

  “You do not,” she says. “Jack, you’re heartless. I’ve seen you with girls before and you get bored with them quickly, and then you toss them aside.”

  “Wrong. They dump me.”

  “You let them dump you. You make them dump you because you don’t want to feel guilty.”

  “Hell yes I don’t want to feel guilty. Who wants to feel guilty?”

  She shakes her head and sips her drink.

  There’s a guy outside, across the street, walking from the UPS Store towards the bridge. He’s wearing a baby blue sports jacket, ill-fitting, and he walks like an imperial guard or something. And although he looks outrageously absurd, he’s happy. I mean it’s freezing outside, not a hint of healthy light anywhere, and yet this guy’s walking like he owns the sun.

  How is that possible?

  This guy can’t be married. I can’t imagine any woman who would desire to marry him. He can’t even have a girlfriend. What kind of girl would merrily be with him? He’s like, fifty, short, and his attire is sixty dollars short of being homeless.

  Oh, wait a second. He’s crossing the street. He’s... well he’s coming in here.

  “What are you watching?” Victoria asks. She turns to look out the window as the man walks in.

  “That guy,” I whisper, nodding to the man in the baby blue.

  Vic turns and observes the man.

  He struts up to the counter and the barista named Jo apparently recognizes him. He orders a Grande Soy Latte (wtf?). His voice is friendly, jovial even, completely worry free. In fact, it sounds like the voice of someone madly in love. Impossible.

  “You know him?” Vic asks.

  I shake my head. The guy’s wearing plaid pants. And Birkenstocks. Who still wears Birkenstocks? He does.

  Vic leans in while keeping her mischievous eyes on him. She smiles. “Are you going to kill him?”

  I smirk. “His name is Bob.”

  Vic studies him. She’s finished licking the cream off her drink.

  “Hmm,” she says, “he looks more like a Hinkley to me.”

  This surprises me.

  “You think he’s the type that has a surname for a first name?”

  She nods.

  “Okay. I’m going to say he’s an artist. A painter. Acrylic, maybe he dabbles a bit in watercolor. He’s not married. He was once but the woman left him because of his infatuation with the color green. This was during his Green Phase. Plus, he listens to the Carpenters.”

  Vic laughs.

  “Well,” she says, “Hinkley’s a musician. Guitar. He plays acoustic on weekends at the Public Market, although he makes his living working around here somewhere. He’s not married but...” she squints and runs her eyes over the guy again, the way irons spread out the wrinkles of stale clothes, “but he is gay. His partner works... here. That’s how the baristas know him.”

  Of course! Gay! That makes perfect sense! It explains the way he dresses and how he can still be happy, plus the Grande Soy Latte he just ordered. Vic is good.

  “What’s the wager?”

  “One hundred?”

  “Deal,” I agree. I signal for the guy to come over.

  At first he doesn’t realize I’m signaling him, but when he does he looks appropriately perplexed. He walks over though and smiles, trying to figure out if he knows us.

  “Howdy,” I say, “and I mean that. I’m Jack. Jack Tide. And this is Victoria Pride.”

  “Hi,” he says. He shakes Vic’s hand. “Tide and Pride, huh. Cute.”

  I pull up a seat for him while Vic clears a spot. I take his latte and place it on a coaster. All the while this guy is baffled, not sure what’s going on, but he sits down and waits for whatever’s going to happen next.

  “Dan,” he says.

  “Dan,” I repeat, looking at Vic. “As in first name Dan and not a surname first name?”

  “Uhm,” Dan notices Vic’s disappointment, “yeah, I guess.”

  “Yes!” I proclaim. One for me.

  “Okay, Dan,” Vic says, dark emphasis on his name, “what do you do for a living?”

  He looks at me and then at her, and then he looks at the baristas.

  “Well,” he says, “I’m a carpenter. I work over there at The Treehouse.”

  He works here in Fremont. Touché Vic! Touché!

  “Okay, Dan. Art? You like it? You partake in the artistic fields of any sort?”

  “What is this?” Dan asks, grinning. He looks a lot younger up close. I’d now put him around forty-something. His hair is light brown and he’s got scrub on his chin. “Some kind of joke or something? Is there a camera around here? Like, you know, one of those Cash Cab game shows?” He’s looking around.

  “This is serious, Dan,” I tell him. “Arts?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Kind of. I’m a poet. I have a small book coming out next week. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You guys are with The Stranger.”

  Fuck.

  I look at Vic to see who gets this one. She shrugs. We’ll split it then.

  Last one. Important one.

  “Okay, Dan, who do you bang?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Vic shoots me this look and shakes her head a bit, indicating I’m being crass again.

  “Who do you bang?”

  “I think that’s not really any of your business,” he says, starting to get up.

  “Sit down,” Vic says.

  Dan sits. He doesn’t know what to make of all this. Are we dangerous, is this all in fun, what’s going on?

  “Dan, it’s okay,” Vic says. “Yeah, we’re with The Stranger. We’re interviewing you. You’ll be in the next week’s paper. You’ll have to excuse Jack here. He’s a bit shy on tact. Readers want to know if you’re involved with anyone, and who that may be.” She smiles sweetly.

  This guy isn’t too bright.

  “Uh, yeah,” Dan says. “I am seeing someone.”

  Victoria and I lean in and wait, patiently.

  He slowly sits back down. He’s still trying to casually find any hidden cameras.

  “Dennis,” he says. “He works here, as a matter of fact.”

  “Goddamnit!”

  Dan jum
ps, startled.

  Vic laughs and extends an open hand.

  I put a hundred dollars in it.

  “Okay, Dan,” Vic says, “thanks. You can go now.”

  We get up and leave.

  #

  I don’t know what Vic does for real. I mean, she’s my agent and I know she represents other Big Game Hunters in the area, but she does something legitimately too. She has to, for tax purposes. Just like me. I supposedly work at this little crappy restaurant on Pike. The place is called Jadda’s. Don’t ask me what that means. They serve your basic clam chowder, fish and chips shit, and it’s owned by a family instead of a corporation. Anyway they were friends with ValVerde and he hooked me up with them. What they do is clock me in every day that I’m supposed to be there, then clock me out when my shift is over, and then I come in every once in a while, sign my checks, and hand them over to the owner, Mister Dyson. He then does whatever with the money and I claim it on my taxes. This is another reason why I live in a shitty apartment when I could afford something better. Appearances.

  Vic and I walked down by the water after our Starbuck’s bet. She took a picture of the statues that stand in the square. People are encouraged to dress the statues up, kind of a socio-art thing that Fremont has going on.

  “You know you’re in over your head,” she says. She’s talking about the Indians.

  “Maybe not.”

  “Jack, no one’s going to give up on this one.” She means the police, the detectives, everyone. She means that once I kill Senator Ruttleby that will be it. I’ll forever have to look over my shoulder. “How much are they paying you?”

  “They gave me five grand up front money. A million after that.”

  She whistles.

  It’s cold. It shouldn’t be this cold, not in the middle of March.

  “What do you know about them?” She should know something. Vic’s good about knowing everyone in the business.

  She leans against the railing and has this stressful look about her. A few kids skateboard by, laughing. Silly kids, lost in their world that isn’t even real. They’re innocent. They have yet to realize that they’ve just skated by someone who may kill them in the future.

  “This guy,” she says, “Sunset. I’ve heard of him. The tribes in Washington have banded together and are going into banking. You know the Skylark Bank of Nations? That’s their bank.”

  “That one in Seattle? That monster glass building?”

  “That’s the one.” I didn’t know the Indians are this powerful. I always considered them... well come to think of it, I never really considered them. True, we have tons of Tulalip Casino commercials on the television, but not once in all their commercials do they show anyone even closely resembling an Indian.

  Let me think about that.

  No. Nope. They’re all white, happy, celebratory people.

  “Supposedly they’re getting into the political arena too,” Vic says. “Anyway, there isn’t a.... what you are, that I know of that’s done business with them and survived. You remember Colin Rose?”

  “Yeah.” Colin Rose was a famous B.G.H. Supposedly he did some work for the military a while back, in Afghanistan. Then he went missing about three years ago. Everyone assumed that it was the government that made him scarce.

  “He got involved with the Indians,” she says. “They hired him in August to take out a family of Navajo in Arizona. He did. He blew them to fuck. They found him three weeks later in the Gulf of Mexico. He’d been eviscerated, completely, and by all reports that I’ve read, he was mostly alive while it was happening.”

  “What? But he did the job for them. Right?”

  She only nods. She’s not looking at me.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. And why would they have him kill Navajo? Aren’t they all... Indians? I mean, that just... I don’t get it.”

  She shrugs. “I saw the photos. I sent Delholm down there as soon as I found out.”

  Delholm. I’ve never heard of him.

  “Point is, Jack, this is an ongoing theme with them. You’d better be the hell careful. Don’t trust them. Especially Sunset.”

  “He seems pretty harmless.”

  She laughs. “None of them are. They’re a lot more powerful and threatening than they come across. What do you know about them?”

  “Just what you’re telling me.”

  “And what do they know about you?” She turns and looks at me.

  I don’t have to answer that one. They know practically everything about me.

  “Goddamn it Jack,” she says. She turns and gives me this look that I’m familiar with. It’s the same look my mother used to give me this time when I burned this house down on accident. “Okay. We’ll just hope for the best. That woman that was in the room with you.”

  “Sexy red head.”

  “Yes. That sounds like Knight. She’s a Big Game Hunter only she’s about a hundred times better than you. If they brought her in to the room then things are already looking bad. Be careful.”

  We say our goodbyes and I watch her drive away. I don’t know where she lives. I really don’t know a whole lot about Victoria, come to think of it. I know she has a nice laugh and that she can be pretty funny sometimes, and that all the jobs she’s given me are safe. I know she looks amazing. Is she seeing anyone? Probably. How old is she? I’d guess mid-twenties, maybe a few years older. She looks Greek, or partial Greek. Slightly Italian? Hard to tell. But I trust her.

  And she’s scaring the fuck out of me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tuesday.

  The sky has decided that enough is enough and it wants to just come the fuck down, and that’s exactly what it’s doing. Outside is a downpour. I mean there is no other color outside but gray.

  I don’t want to go to class.

  I hit the snooze button on the alarm again and try to sink back into my dream.

  In the dream I’m in this amazingly pristine mall, standing by an Orange Julius. The mall is reminiscent of the Crossroads Mall. Anyway there’s this fountain next to the Orange Julius and this crowd of people start to gather there. I think, in the Crossroads Mall, it would be right by where that deli-burger shop is, right across from where they sometimes put on performances on the stage.

  I go over to the crowd, being the curious sort of guy that I am. And then I see her. Keira. She’s walking towards me and in the dream my heart hurts. I run up to her and touch her shoulder. She turns around and smiles. Relieved.

  “Keira.”

  Jack, she says, there you are. Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.

  And in the dream she hugs me and I swear I can feel her familiar warmth. Her perfume is the same, and she feels like Christmas. I kiss her chin, her neck, her lips.

  I pull back and I’m crying. Fucking crying. I’m so happy.

  Jack, she says, I’ve been away for a while and I’m sorry. But I’m back now. I won’t go away. I promise.

  And the mall is white and pristine and clean, and the crowd of people are gone and it’s just us. She’s standing there, black hair, blue eyes, smiling.

  I wake up to the alarm clock again.

  The rain is diving down vagrant and cold.

  #

  Kline’s American History class is boring as shit. I take notes. There’s quite a few people absent, because of the weather, so Kline cuts the class short and I’m left with twenty minutes of free time. I hate free time. It means that I have time to think, and all I think about is Keira.

  Pauletto’s class is boring as shit. Danielle smiles at me and I smile back, but only because I feel like I should, not because I want to. Something in my smile turns her head though.

  “-which is why Handel’s The Messiah grew rapidly in popularity.”

  What did she just say? I stand up and clear my throat.

  “Jack?” Pauletto says, “is there something you’d like to comment on?”

  All ey
es turn to me.

  “Uhm. Well George Frideric Handel’s oratorio is called Messiah, not The Messiah, and Handel turned to oratorios only when Italian operas went out of style. He had to make some dough, right?” Students laugh. Pauletto does not. “It was because of England’s rich choral tradition that the oratorio holds so many numbers for chorus. Many people mistakenly cite this as a Christian oratorio, including yourself Mrs. Pauletto, when it draws more from the Old Testament than the New Testament.”

  “Okay, Jack,” Pauletto says, “thank you for that wonderful story.”

  “Well I was just going to say what the book lacks in information. I don’t think a lot of the students here even know what an oratorio is.”

  Pauletto blinks. This is when I realize that she doesn’t know what an oratorio is either. Fuck me. How much am I paying for this class?

  I walk to the front of the class.

  “Jack, could you please take a seat?”

  “Yes, just a moment. If the class could please turn to page 121 in the text.”

  “Jack!” Something in her voice that is new and a bit displeasing. And now she’s pointing to my seat.

  Fine. I sit down and put my cheek on the book. What’s she going to do? I obviously know way more than she does, which means she can’t flunk me. She closes class by reiterating the rules for our upcoming mid-term. Show up to class on time, no notes, not open book, bring a number two pencil. Then class is over.

  Kjellman’s class is boring as shit. We learn something about the life span of sharks. Next week we get to cut one open. That should be good. And then we get lots of homework and I start wondering how any of this is actually going to help me. And I want her back. I want to hear her voice again.

  And then classes are over and I’m driving and the rain is streaming down from the sky in thousands of unstoppable lines. I’m listening to Andrea Bocelli’s Miserere. I think I’ll go the long way home, by Lake City, and drive the length of Lake Washington. I need some melancholic me time.

  I’m twenty minutes into driving when a car forces me off the road and into an abandoned parking lot.

  Three bright yellow Ducati 996 street bikes hum and whine up next to me, surround me and slowly push me off the road, into a small park overlooking the water. The riders are all dressed in black and yellow leather, with yellow helmets. They look like wasps, or yellow-jackets, and this is no good.