“Next time,” he said, collecting the trash bag and tossing it by the door. He’d already told me that it was coming with us, to be burned at the first opportunity. He always burned his trash. “Take those clothes off.”
Never in all my life had I stripped so fast. I was completely naked before I saw that he was trying to hand me a change of clothes. “These will be big on you, but they’ll have to do for now,” he said with a slight smirk.
I closed my eyes and groaned. Although vanity never ceased to outweigh shame in my case, getting an erection from a simple statement was a bit mortifying. “Can I take a shower?”
“Make it quick.” Frank hadn’t even turned bright red this time. He was getting more comfortable with my blunt sexuality. I’d have to turn it up a notch.
I slung my new black clothes over my shoulder and strutted to the bathroom, wishing futilely that he’d follow. Even after the events of the day, I would have jumped at the opportunity to go to bed with him; to have his body against mine, warm inside of me. But while being with Frank would’ve been enough to make me forget about Charlie’s perverted pal, merely thinking about him wasn’t. As soon as I was alone behind the bathroom door, all I wanted was to get dressed.
Wearing Frank’s clothes was a poor substitute for being nude in his embrace, but it would have to do. I pulled on his pants, rolling the legs up several times so they wouldn’t touch the floor. His clothes were by far more comfortable than mine; they were hardly worn, the cotton soft against my skin. After wearing jeans that had been washed with hand soap and shampoo, I relished in having something that had actually been to a Laundromat. Though, I would’ve preferred to wear something right off his back.
I’d always taken pleasure in wearing clothing that didn’t belong to me, especially if it came from somebody I cared about or desired. It made me feel like I was wanted; secure, as if anyone who saw me would know I was spoken for just because my shirt was too big.
I fixed my hair in front of the taped-up mirror, my eyes still bloodshot from crying. I looked like someone else, more so than a change in wardrobe could accomplish. It was like I’d undergone a transformation, one that had been set in motion the moment I first saw him, and had now boiled over to every part of me. Things were different. There was a separation in my mind between the Vincent Sullivan I recognized and a new person, Frank’s V. He hadn’t even changed the way I looked yet, and I was forever altered.
Frank had shoved my old clothes into the trash bag, and was systematically placing molded metal bits into a carrying case that reminded me of Bobby Wilson and his flute, until he’d figured out that playing a flute, and playing with me, made him gay.
“Tell me about your job.”
“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said, moving to the bathroom. I followed him. I didn’t want him out of my sight. I felt like he needed to be protected, and even though there was nothing I could do if someone did come knocking on his door, or if he decided to do himself in, I was determined to stay at his side.
“Point and shoot?” I asked.
Frank smiled instead of answering, then he wiped the bathroom walls just as he had the rest of the room. He even did the door, without me having to tell him that I touched it. I instinctively put my hands in my pockets like I was in a museum.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look pale.”
I shrugged. “I’m wearing black.”
He came toward me, gently pulling a black skullcap over my hair. His hands were warm. “I bet you glow in the dark,” he teased.
“Uh huh,” I sighed, closing my eyes and moving my face against his fingers. I had never wanted anybody as much as I wanted Frank. If he would only kiss me, I could die a happy boy.
“V?”
“Yeah?”
“We have to go.”
I opened my eyes again, the fantasy ruined. “To work?”
He smiled. “You sure you’re okay? Now you’re all flushed.”
God, he was a prick tease and he probably didn’t even know it. “Your hands are warm.”
“Sorry,” he said, starting to release me.
I held his wrists before he could let me go. “It’s a good thing.”
Frank roughly pulled away from me like I’d hurt him. I stepped back, not out of fear, but to give him some room. “You and I need to have a discussion about boundaries, Vincent,” he said, the tension clear in his voice.
“I thought you weren’t going to call me that anymore.”
He sighed, regaining his composure. “V…I am nearly twice your age. Even if I weren’t―”
“I know, Frank,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You have to do as I say tonight. You cannot wander around.”
“Okay.”
“You also have to be quiet.”
“Damn.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “In fact, you’ll probably be bored.”
He was absolutely right.
Frank’s place of work was at the top of a thirty-story tenement building. He said that the job itself would take less time than walking up the stairs to the roof and back down again, and there would be nothing to see. No blood, no carnage, just the inside of a stairwell and a bunch of snow clouds in the sky. At least I had him to look at, though I could barely see him thanks to the arctic wind blowing fiercely in my face.
Snipers, he told me, were the prima donnas of the assassin world; sitting high up on their perch, shooting someone so far away that they couldn’t see it coming. He considered it not only one of the most cowardly ways to kill a person, but also expressly dull. And unfortunately, most of his jobs were just that.
“The real entertainment comes from watching them before the hit,” he said as he set up his rifle. I was under a strict gag-order until he gave instructions otherwise, so all I could do was shiver in response.
Frank seemed completely immune to the glacial weather. I was wearing the thicker of his two coats and his hat and wool scarf, huddled against the ledge in an attempt to escape the elements. He sat completely still, hugging cold metal. “Although, he wasn’t very interesting,” he added, and fired twice.
I blinked in disbelief. Frank was back on his feet with the gun put away before I’d even registered that we were finished.
“Let’s go,” he said, hauling me up and pulling me toward the door.
I wouldn’t have known what to say even if I was allowed to speak. At least with Charlie’s friend I was connected to the action. I’d met him, smelled him, and now he was gone. This man, a man Frank had followed for weeks, who worked downtown and lived alone on the highest floor of a tall building, was less real to me than an extra in a crowd scene of one of my soap operas. I felt nothing for him. I didn’t even know his name.
Frank kept his hand on my arm as we quickly walked down the stairs, just as he had going up. His standard pace was relaxed, his long legs never having to live up to their full potential. But while he was on a job, his speed increased tenfold. Everything he did was quick, in and out before the parking meter six blocks away finished with his quarter.
And that was it. We were on our way out of Chicago sooner than the police could have arrived at the crime scene. I could feel Vincent starting to fade away.
My hometown was basically a truck stop that sucked people in to the point where they couldn’t leave, and they had to start a community. And even though I’d seen the plates, from all fifty states and even some from Canada, it seemed that the possibility of someone leaving Illinois, of me leaving Illinois, was nonexistent. So as Frank’s car sped—at exactly the speed limit—toward the sign that declared we were leaving the only state I’d ever been to, it seemed like he had super powers. It seemed like we were destined to crash into it.
“Wait!” I yelled. He slammed on the breaks, the car sliding off the icy road and onto the even icier shoulder. But even as the car fishtailed to a stop, I wasn’t scared. Frank never lost control of the wheel. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t swear, his expres
sion didn’t even change. He just handled it, and then once we were stopped, actually fully stopped, safe and sound and not flipped over dead, he turned to me and calmly asked “What the fuck was that all about?”
I hopped out of the car and ran back to the sign to get a closer look at it. Frank walked over to my side. “You know what that means?”
“Freedom!” I shouted, and picked up a rock so cold it hurt my hand. Even though I threw like a girl and didn’t come close to hitting it, I was fairly certain that the sign knew precisely what I was going for.
“Felony,” he said. “I’ve just taken a minor across state lines. That’s a felony.”
“You’re not kidnapping me, Frank.”
“That’s the way they’d see it.”
I had a feeling they would see the double homicide and double arson as more of a felony than giving an enthusiastic sixteen-year-old a ride. “How many years is that?”
“None,” he said, and he pressed two of his fingers to his temple like a gun.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, and I thought about that look on his face back in his hotel room. Yes, he would. “I’d miss you.”
“I’m sorry to break this to you, but your happiness, important as it may be, would not be my top priority at that moment.”
“Of course it would. Besides, I’d bust you out. It’s really easy.”
“Is it?” Frank asked. I’d never met anyone who was so open to believing the things I had to say. Especially when my knowledge came with an As Seen on TV sticker.
“Piece of cake. Or maybe a whole cake. With a file.”
Frank shook his head hopelessly, with a look like I’d failed him. “That would take too long.”
“There’s lots of other ways,” I said, trying to gain back my credibility. It wasn’t my fault. It was my stomach talking. “You just have to wait for me to spring you, okay?”
“You had better do it quickly.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Are you finished here?” he asked.
I threw another rock. It missed too. “Yeah.”
Frank and I walked back to the car, windshield wipers moving in time to the blinking hazard lights. He’d managed to park really straight, as if he’d pulled over deliberately, and not because I’d screamed at him. “Do you want to help me change the plates?”
I shrugged, watching as he popped the trunk. I almost expected to see a dead body in there, but it was just his leather duffel bag and our trash, and a plastic roadside emergency kit which instead of containing flares, contained a giant stack of license plates. “Would you like to pick?”
The plates on his car now were from South Dakota. I wondered how many people he killed there before heading to Chicago. “Where are we headed?”
“Florida,” he said. “For Charlie.”
“Florida plates?” I asked nervously.
“Never the same state,” he said, and he placed his hand gently on my back, silently reassuring me that I hadn’t fucked anything up. “And not one we’re driving through. How’s your geography?”
“I’m an American.”
“Georgia will do,” he decided, taking the pressure off of me. He leafed through the alphabetically stacked plates until he found what he was looking for. Then he changed the driver’s license in his wallet, also South Dakota, to match. They both said Frank Smith.
Vincent Smith. “Is that really your last name?”
“Of course not,” he laughed. “And it’s Moreaux, before you ask.”
Vincent Moreaux. It sounded good.
I took the plates, pausing in my assignment not because the pocketknife I got to use as a screwdriver was the same length as the one that had been in me, but because of how many there were. All fifty states. And Canada.
“You must put a lot of miles on this car,” I said, thinking of all the truckers driving through my home town, with all their different license plates.
Frank shrugged. “I just ask Charlie for a new one. The plates are legitimate. Well, in a way.”
“You have fifty of these?”
“More or less.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s just money, V,” he said, and he pressed a wad of cash into my hand as thick as my wrist. He had an expression on his face like he’d just as soon set it on fire with our trash, so I pocketed it before getting started on the plates.
Screwing a license plate onto the back of his car hardly took a thorough understanding of auto mechanics, but I felt more secure when I was making myself useful. That was probably why he let me do it in the first place. Frank may not have been fluent in teenager, but he understood me better than anyone ever had. And anyway, I liked doing things for him. That way I could pretend like I was courting him, and I was one door held open away from getting into his pants.
When we stopped for gas—always with a quarter tank left—I got to do the pumping, and he let me buy him coffee with his money, along with anything my little heart desired; candy and soda and magazines that got thrown out at the next station. But once the excitement of actually leaving the state wore off, along with the sugar rush, it all looked pretty much the same and I started feeling really tired.
Having been company to two murders, an attempted rape, and no sleep the night before, I could imagine falling asleep, then waking up screaming and startling Frank so bad he crashed his car and killed us both. Or worse. Me surviving. Alone. Again.
I couldn’t count the number of guys I’d lived with for less than one night, who’d kicked me out after I woke them up screaming from night terrors when they had an important business meeting the next day.
When the sun finally started coming up it was a relief, even though it was brighter than I’d ever seen it, and without the dullness of Illinois to dim the glow, it felt like being punched in the eyes. “Do you have sunglasses?” I asked. I’d purchased a pair seventy miles back, but they broke when I yanked off the tag, and Frank refused to let me return them because he thought it would make us too memorable to the clerk.
“Glove compartment.”
I opened it, freezing in my tracks when I saw a handgun. “Is that loaded?”
Frank glanced toward me, then back to the road. “It’s a fair assumption.”
“Will it go off if I touch it?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the weapon. Frank’s sunglasses were behind it, thoroughly guarded.
“Depends how you touch it,” Frank said dryly. “The safety’s on, V. Just give it here.”
I carefully lifted it up, remembering another time I’d touched something of his; the torn up copy of Jane Eyre had been worse for the wear after I was through with it.
The gun was heavier than I thought it would be, likely more from my apprehension than the actual weight of steel. I couldn’t help but think of all those stories of kids finding their parents’ pistols and accidentally shooting themselves in the face. I pointed it at the dashboard as I handed it to him, keeping my fingers as far away from the trigger as I could.
He smiled, removing the clip one handed and briefly letting go of the steering wheel to release the round from the chamber, giving the gun and the magazine back to me separately. He tossed the bullet in the cup holder, already sticky from me spilling my Coke.
I set the clip in the cup holder with the bullet and the gun on my lap, then put on his sunglasses and kept going through the glove compartment. It was too tidy in there, everything perfectly in its place. He had a U.S. map that had seen better days, but even that was still pristinely folded. Then I found something that caused more panic than the pistol. “Is this a wedding ring?” I asked, holding the small gold ring like it was the pin from a grenade.
“It was Bella’s idea,” he said nonchalantly.
Of course it was. I could imagine her proposing to him. He would be too shy to do it. But why had he referred to her as a friend if she was his wife? “Getting married was her idea?”
“Wearing a ring,” Frank said. “I still do occasionally. People don’t
look at me the same way if they think I’m someone’s husband.”
I smiled, unable to hide my elation at his unwed status. I’d slept with married men before, but Frank was too loyal to ever cheat on someone. It didn’t change the fact that he was straight, though it did restore my hope of someday screwing him.
I slipped on the ring. It was too big, but I liked the way it looked so much that I shut the glove compartment without putting it back. Sunglasses, check. Frank’s wedding ring, check. My wardrobe was complete.
“They find you more intimidating if you’re single?” I asked, admiring my left hand in the morning light.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “When I came to the U.S., I was a bit naïve. I misjudged someone and got burned because of it. Bella didn’t want to see that happen again, so she suggested I take myself off the market.”
“A girl broke your heart,” I said, somehow understanding what he was saying through his vagueness. “What a cunt.”
“V!” He gasped.
“What? I bet Bella called her the same thing.”
He laughed. “She did, as a matter of fact.”
“You two are really close, huh?”
“Yes,” he said, “we are.”
“If you were seeing someone else, then Bella isn’t your girlfriend?” I asked, trying to disguise my optimism with curiosity.
“Subtle, V.”
“Well?”
“No, Bella’s not my girlfriend. She’s seeing our boss.”
“Charlie?” I croaked, unable to enjoy my moment of bliss through such a revolting thought.
“Charlie is not my boss,” he said firmly. “He’s my handler.”
“Handler? That makes you sound like his pet.”
“Don’t remind me,” Frank said. “Charlie and I work for the same person. Technically, I’m closer to being his supervisor, but only because our boss doesn’t care for him. Our professional relationship is symbiotic. He needs me to do his job, and I need him to do mine. It’s safer for both of us if Charlie never commits the crime, and I never meet the client requesting it.”
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 9