Sunny Side Up

by Daniel Stallings

He stopped before the chorus. He only hummed when he was totally at peace with his surroundings.

  Somehow, this made every nerve stand out in bright, white relief.

  He shook out the thought and resumed scrubbing.

  His head snapped up. There was an alien sense of intrusion—of someone breathing his oxygen. Li jerked his head toward the doors. A silken rustle of air…a quick patter of tiptoes like the velvet paws of a cat…the tingling sensation of pressure against his personal space.

  He was not alone.

  Li wound his fingers around the handle of a soap-soaked saucepan and raised it in defense. His breathing started to sprint. He inched toward the locus of pressure, creeping, the suds drooling onto the floor. His ears strained for the flimsiest sound.

  A slight whistle of metal…pots and pans sliding against each other…the intruder doubled back to the drying racks. Li felt his heart in his throat. What was he thinking? What if this was the killer? All he had was a half-clean saucepan for a weapon. He should have escaped through the kitchen doors. He would have been safe then.

  Unless the intruder meant to hunt him down.

  Another bump, this time nearer the sink.

  Li held his breath and charged toward the noise, swinging his opportune weapon like the bats he swung in Little League. The intruder threw herself against the wall and collapsed into a knot of noiseless terror.

  “Mrs. Brent?”

  Sally crossed her arms over her head and batted away the blows that would not come. Her hands were rigid like arthritic claws. Li dropped the saucepan back in the sink and tried to soothe her wild, lurching panic. He didn’t have the heart to admonish her presence in the kitchen. She was punished enough.

  “Mrs. Brent, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. You just caught me off guard. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  A wide, blue eye poked out from under the scaffold of her arms.

  “I promise I won’t hurt you, Mrs. Brent.” A new realization flooded his brain. “And I promise not to tell your husband that you were here.”

  She’s alone, he thought. She managed to escape her husband. Does he know where she went? And how long before he finds out?

  Li stretched out a hand and helped Sally stand. She creaked to her feet as if her joints needed oiling. Her face cowered behind a greasy sheet of pale hair.

  “Are you all right?” Li asked.

  She jerked her head downward, then drew it up slowly. A nod.

  “May I help you?”

  Her hand, stiff with bone, grazed his cheek. Her voice, heavy as a falsetto, hobbled over her tongue.

  “D-Did he h-hurt you?”

  Li brushed his fingertips over the swatch of purple fattening in the crook between his cheek and nose. “Oh no! No, this was someone else. Your husband never laid a finger on me.”

  Sally wrung her split ends like a wet towel. “But he does want to hurt you. It’s the same game.”

  Li felt his skeleton shudder. “Game?”

  Another rusty nod. “Just like the bellman at the Champagne Shores Resort.”

  Now he felt like a ghost sailed through his body.

  Sally wrung her fingers, the nails torn by teeth. “They’re always so young, and they need their jobs badly. Aaron…Aaron makes it hard for them. H-He has a nose for the one in the most danger of losing everything.” Her lower lip shook. “He never physically hurts them, but…but sometimes there’s an accident…”

  Accident. Li thought about the incident that earned him his second strike with Paul. Something that read on the surface as Li’s mistake.

  His ankle tingled with the memory of contact with a foreign foot.

  Tears dribbled through her lashes. “A bellman might lose control of his cart…A junior stylist might slip and nick a person’s ear…A waiter might trip and fling food at someone…” She pushed back a ream of fair hair. “And these poor kids can’t prove Aaron did anything! They get hanged for it! Their bosses sacrifice them! I have to sit and watch them, on their knees, begging for their jobs. But it never works. We often find them in an alleyway or a homeless shelter several months later.”

  Her voice wavered and broke. She swallowed the tears that trickled from her eyes to her lips. Li shivered at the horrible vision of the life Aaron Brent predicted for him. Sleeping on a cardboard mattress, eating a dumpster dinner, showering in gutter runoff….

  “What happens to them, Mrs. Brent?”

  Sally strangled her hair again. “They’re so desperate. It’s like looking at wounded animals at the pound. So Aaron…Aaron offers them a job.”

  Somewhere in the folds of Li’s brain, a siren screamed. He could imagine the whole scene, his gaunt face, smudged with dirt and peppered with black stubble, craning to look at the evil, gloating eyes as dark as his hair.

  “They take the job without thinking,” Sally moaned. “It’s a miracle to them. They’re half-mad with hunger and filth. The chance to crawl out of the hole they live in is too tempting. Oh God, it’s the same pattern.” She stared at him, and Li flinched from the naked terror oozing from her eyes. “Aaron owns you.”

  “He can’t do that.” The protest withered in his throat.

  “Oh, it’s all legal. Aaron just gives them an excellent job, with benefits, and helps them get back on their feet. The Good Samaritan act.” Was that a tinge of sarcasm in her tone? It crumbled away just as feebly as it came. “It’s like he’s adopting rescue dogs, only he makes sure that these kids know that they are in his debt. They feel it. It clings to them. They know they owe everything to my husband. It eats away at them.

  “They go insane under his thumb. He controls their happiness. It’s impossible to be happy if someone else manages it.”

  Li wondered how Aaron hadn’t been murdered yet.

  Sally’s voice started to collapse. “They end up destroying themselves. These poor kids. They’re always young…still babies. They…They drink…do drugs…try and obliterate every last feeling in their bodies.”

  “Why doesn’t someone stop him?”

  Sally’s expression equated the suggestion with ripping open the sky at the seams. “No one can do that! There’s no proof! He doesn’t do anything to hurt them. He always looks like an angel, rescuing children from the gutter and giving them everything they need for success. The abuse is all in their minds. He gets in our brains.”

  She crumpled upon herself, wracked with tears, without an audible sob. She had been trained to keep her pain silent.

  Li strained to talk. The moisture had been sucked from his mouth and throat. “And I’m the next one on his list?”

  Sally nodded.

  “What can I do?”

  She seized him by the forearms, dragging him closer. A mass of tense, wiry strength raced along her frail bones. Li saw in those wet eyes, raw with terror, Melanie’s frantic story of rape. “Stay away from Aaron. Don’t get anywhere near him. Avoid him if you want even a splinter of joy in your life. He’s hunting for someone he can make a long-term slave. He’s not looking to give a job in his law firm anymore. He’s looking to give a job in his home!”

  “I-I don’t know if I can do that…”

  “Ask your boss. Do something that—”

  “My boss loves sending me to your table.” Li rocked on his feet as if they had fallen asleep. He gnawed on his lip. “I think if he learned about your husband’s plan…he’d help him.”

  Sally made the closest thing she could to an outright cry. It was more of a strangled death rattle crackling in her throat. “It’s no use. There’s nothing we can do. Aaron always wins.”

  “Maybe if we told someone…”

  “It would be useless.” She clawed at her forehead, shoving back her lifeless locks of hair. “I thought Jacob would be the last one. I thought the gun would scare Aaron. Everyone in the firm watched Jacob shoot himself in front of Aaron’s open office door. I watched it happen. There were brains everywhere. He was only twenty-three.” Her fingernails scratched her skin. “I can’t wat
ch another kid die like that. I’ll go insane. When will it stop? What can we do? Why can’t Aaron die instead?”

  CHAPTER 18

  Catastrophe

  Rosemary rolled onto her back and tried to feel comfortable in the embrace of her pillow and mattress. She prayed this was her bed at home. Then she could slide into her husband’s slippers and pad into the kitchen for her beloved Keurig.

  Her eyes flickered open, but her prayers had been squashed. The ceiling didn’t belong to her bedroom at home.

  It was the final full day of the cruise.

  Rosemary clamped her eyes shut. She willed her thoughts to focus on the rhythm of her husband’s breathing. She wanted to sink into the warmth oozing from his body.

  It failed. Her eyelids rippled open. The sunlight in the window, tempered by creamy sheers, was a warm ivory. Like Charlegne’s unburned skin.

  She was an idiot to believe that Charlegne’s death would kill her memories. Nothing could kill them.

  She rolled onto her side and watched the sheers flutter in the sea-scented breeze. She liked to sleep with the window open. It cleaned out her thoughts. Maybe the gentle sway of the curtains could hypnotize her into an empty slumber for a change.

  Blood haunted her dreams. Oceans of it. Her blood line. The blood of her brother. Her family drowning in a thick, red tide.

  Martin shifted his weight on the bed, drawing his wife from the blood filling her thoughts. Rosemary turned to watch the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, perfectly in tandem with his breathing. His back was to her. She felt an ache in her heart to see his face. It might be enough to steady her through the last leg of their trip.

  One more day. The day of Charlegne’s memorial.

  A day trapped in an ocean of unfriendly faces.

  She could almost relate to the boy whose wounds she wrenched open. Hostile faces smothered him, and he still drove forward with his chin up and a smile glued, albeit haphazardly, to his face. She could learn from that. Everyone would be remembering Charlegne today. She would too, but she had to fight to keep those memories bland and blameless. She would split her face with a smile, even if the whole universe could see it fraying at the seams.

  Rosemary breathed in the salty breeze. The unbroken cadence in her husband’s shoulders lulled her senses into silence. The sunlight in the window faded.

  Her eyelids settled for sleep. She dreamed about the day Dustin died.

  “Dammit, Dropout! Did you get your head stuck in your ass again? Your flowers are still off-center!”

  Li knew the quiet wouldn’t last. Since his talk with Sally, he was as tightly strung as an over-tuned violin. His senses were on high alert, straining to stay on guard against Aaron Brent. Perhaps he was having a nervous breakdown. His fingers fumbled, and he was pale to the point of anemia. Paul’s voice, freshly sobered, scraped against his fraying nerves like a cheese grater.

  “Who the hell brought out these champagne flutes? This is a LUNCH service, for Christ’s sake!”

  One more day. Two more meals. Then he would lock himself in his un-air conditioned apartment for a week and nurse his injuries, physical and emotional.

  “Oh great! We’re missing a piece of cutlery! Dropout, can’t you keep a damn count on our silverware?”

  Easy does it, Li told himself. Your nerves are shot as it is. You can ignore Paul—and Mr. Brent wasn’t at breakfast. Maybe he’ll skip lunch and dinner, too.

  A voice in his head laughed at that dream. Even if he skipped lunch, how could Aaron Brent resist the temptation of publicly insulting Chef Will’s signature Jewels of the Sea dinner, where every dish was inspired by a different gemstone? Perhaps he’d label it a paste replica of a cheap Vegas buffet.

  He would be here, hunting for Li.

  The first flutter of guests trickled into the dining room. Paul snarled at his staff.

  “Everyone get to your positions. Norris, take Table 13. Hernandez, charm the Veragas at 65. Dropout, don’t screw up.”

  Lunch started well. Not as many people as there would be for dinner. Paul still groused about sending Li to the Captain’s Table on Rosemary’s request.

  “I don’t know what these women see in you, Dropout. You’re a loser and a waste of oxygen. Get your ass out there now and try not to look like an idiot.”

  Li kept his smile wide, fixed, and pleasant on his walk to the Captain’s Table.

  Until he saw Countess Ramseyer chatting in excitable French to Rosemary, who replied with smooth, unhurried fluency.

  Someone up there hated him.

  “Oh hello, Liam,” Rosemary said, her smile sparkling with welcome.

  The Countess’s coral lips shriveled into a snarl.

  “H-Hello, ladies.” His burned ear prickled. “A-Are you ready to order? I can recommend the roasted salmon.”

  The Countess hissed a full French soliloquy to her table companion. Rosemary’s brows pulled together in a sharp stripe, and she glanced at Li through the corner of her eyes.

  Li wished he had applied at Happy Burger instead.

  “Amelia told me to ask for a different waiter,” she said, “since you threw some food at her at lunch two days ago. And on the advice of her attorney…” Aaron Brent, Li thought. It has to be him. “…she is waiting for the check from you reimbursing her for the suit you ruined.”

  The boy’s cheeks flushed as green as the money he didn’t have, as the eyes that studied him from her seat at the table.

  “Liam?”

  Bobbing from one foot to the other and wringing sweat-filmed hands behind his back, Li fumbled with his side of the story. He avoided the haughty hate seared in the Countess’s eyes.

  Rosemary’s face sweetened with a smile. “I think I see what happened. The salmon sounds delicious. I’ll have that, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He felt like a child dismissed from detention by his teacher.

  When he returned with the dish, Countess Ramseyer was all grins and giggles. She brightened on his approach and, to his incredulous horror, swaddled his face with kisses. She babbled in rapid French, ruffled his hair, and flounced away to another acquaintance. Rosemary’s emerald eyes twinkled with laughter.

  “What did you do?” His voice was hoarse with shock.

  She handed him a cloth napkin to wipe the wet, coral smudges smeared on his cheeks and chin. “Amelia Ramseyer is a fan of my work. Turns out the ruined suit was from one of my earlier collections. I told her you were my nephew, that someone tripped you, and that I would design a custom dress just for her.” She grinned. “All was forgiven.”

  “But I—”

  “I knew you wouldn’t lie about what happened. The truth was plain on your face. You were being lynched by a lawyer taking advantage of a silly accident. I decided to set things straight.”

  Gratitude warmed his voice. “I don’t know how to thank you, Mrs. Hale.”

  She shrugged gently. “You get the Countess off your back. I get my clothes on hers. Everybody wins.”

  “Where the hell is that lazy, stupid Food Boy?”

  Not everybody, Li groaned. The time had come. Aaron Brent was sober, sour, and ready to kill. Li steeled his nerves, buoyed by his recent good fortune, and strode to the table.

  Aaron greeted him with his infamous zipper sneer. “Thought I left you alone, didn’t you, kid? Thought you got off easy? I’m not done with you yet, Food Boy. Far from it. Get me the pork plate. Sally will have the arugula salad.” His black cobra eyes sliced through the swelling of his bullfrog face. “It’s probably the safest piece of crap on this menu.”

  It took a record five tries to get Aaron to accept his plate. Chef Will was halfway out the kitchen doors to filet this customer for daring to accuse him of poor food.

  Aaron wasn’t appeased until they drowned the dish in bacon confetti.

  “Bon appetit,” Li said, keeping his manner as reserved as an old English butler.

  “Hold on, kid.” A spasm of fear toyed with Li’s mouth. “We have to discuss so
mething.”

  “If there is something I can get for you, sir—”

  “Drop the good servant act, Food Boy. I want to see you squirm.”

  Li did his best to look even more aloof and immovable. His skin was like marble, and the collection of bruises he earned on this trip swelled like algae in a stillwater pond.

  “If there is nothing else, sir, I do have other customers waiting for me.”

  Aaron attacked his meal, food spluttering out of his mouth as he spoke. “Lots of big talk coming from a little cockroach, wouldn’t you say so, Sally?”

  Sally said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but—”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not sorry at all. You can’t wait to get the hell out of here. You’re already bobbing on your feet.”

  Li forced himself to stop rocking.

  “You’ve got quite a story, boy,” Aaron continued, flashing a sauce-smudged sneer. “You’re not the innocent urchin you want to portray.”

  Li’s insides began to squirm like Aaron wanted.

  “Someone is a little too friendly with his customers…”

  I’m doomed, Li thought, and the words echoed in his skull. He started to sway on his feet.

  Aaron looked as happy as a snake digesting a fresh kill. “I saw you. I was in that stupid bar right across from the dining room.” His voice throbbed on the edge of orgasm. “I saw you have a private chat with that primped slut.”

  Here he was. The worst witness. The man who could hang Li with his story, a story Paul would pounce on as proof. Li couldn’t refute it. He would be slaughtered with the truth, maligned and violated by evil intelligences. He could see the ugly future painted in the dark glitter of those cobra eyes.

  Homeless. Starving. Chained forever to Aaron Brent.

  The horror was transparent on Li’s face.

  Aaron shoved a fat wad of pork into his jaws. “Did I scare you, kid? Do you want to run to your Mommy and Daddy? Although I can’t think of any parent who would be proud of a college dropout-cum-Food Boy.”

  He unleashed a deafening avalanche of laughter, mashed food pulsing in the cavern of his throat. Li would have exploded if his shabby temper hadn’t been cut by a raspy hiss of effort.