by AJ Elmore
I launch the cards at the coffee table with a sharp curse, sending red and black numbers flying. No ace can save me. This is it, the breakdown. The hand fate has imposed upon me hurts.
With a disconcerted sniff, I stand on shaky legs to escape the room for the more open feeling of the tiny balcony, tequila bottle in tow. The sun'll rise soon. I notch a cigarette.
Maria is across town with Josh, that idiot, there to offer his shoulder.
With a deep drag of smoke, I run a rough hand over my face: scratchy with a day's stubble, lips dry from chain smoking, cheeks wet like a damn kid. I'm only thirty, why do I feel I've done a grueling sentence in this illegal trade? I lean on the railing, watching the scattered early-morning drivers, letting the tears run messily.
These kids are bad for my heart. Charlie was someone who understood the world from the same viewpoint as me, that little subtle wisdom that comes after you pass twenty-five. Twenty-four is like another universe. It seems so far away, and Freddy and Josh, Maria, they don't understand.
No, those two guys have barely had time to have their balls broken enough times, especially Josh. And Maria doesn't understand the manly tendencies she brings to the surface with her bright smile and surging vitality. Maybe she does understand, but that only makes it worse.
Of course, that's the fate of beautiful women. I've always known this mixture of business and emotions could end in disaster. Friends are the best and worst partners. It all feels so close to out of control.
Dawn breaks with liquid pain spilling slowly over everything. Good morning, you have to face it sometime. Sunlight creeps up to burn away the comforting cool temperature, and the mournful wet on my face.
My stomach threatens to give, to forfeit the contents of my night all over the balcony. My world does the cactus spin, tequila vision blurring and coming to me in waves. I'm a mess, a wasted messy fool. The cigarettes aren't helping.
I heft the unwieldy bottle to my lips for a twisting, unforgiving chug, the end of the rations. Outside of the city, Charlie's body lies cold in a morgue that will never show his name on its files. He'll never have an epitaph, no flowers, no jazz. He will fade to ash and smoke and memory. He leaves his underground family drowning in his wake, sinking into this life we've made, this life we love. Hate to love.
Chapter 5 The Ghosts of Rhythm
Joshua
Waking up is hell after you've been asleep for too long, especially the sleep that comes after you've been awake too long. That resounding truth comes blurred with the realization that I'm too hot to sleep anymore.
I fight it, try with lulled desperation to sink back into oblivion only to find the way blocked. Reluctantly, I try to drag my brain into some coherent thought, finding that path equally as difficult. My body does the familiar lag of the morning after, though something tells me it's not morning.
Maybe it's the feeling of ruffled, empty sheets under my fingers as they stretch across the bed. Maybe it's the vague memory that it was well after the sun rose when my body dropped into unconsciousness. Maybe it's the heat.
This is not my bed, I notice with the languor of a post-drug-cocktail binge, though there are no drugs in my system. My sheets are not nearly so scratchy against bare skin. Bare skin, I realize, and finally I find the resolve to pry open my eyes.
For a moment, everything is brightness and foreign colors. The pillow beneath my face is damp with sweat. I can feel my hair sticking to my forehead and neck. The scratchy sheet slips away as I force myself to sit, muscles gathering a familiar tension that I am not quite prepared to catch. With a groan, it all comes crashing down. This is a hotel. My best friend is dead. The night didn't make it go away.
The room's dandelion paint and antique cherry furniture come into focus, as a devastating stab of grief wells up in my chest. It was so easy to force the loss away when a different void was being filled, when we were both escaping through the night. She felt just like I knew she would, tasted better. I can still feel her hair against my skin, but she's gone. I'm alone.
Across the room, the balcony doors still stand open. Might as well, the heat will get in anyway. No air conditioning unit in the world can combat this oppression. The day seems clear beyond the doors, burning late into the hottest part of the afternoon. The bougainvillea is sickeningly sweet outside.
A bead of sweat slides down the side of my throat. I feel like I've been beaten. I wish it were that simple. I wonder miserably if our house has been burned yet in retaliation. I wonder what has become of Charlie, nameless in a refrigerated filing cabinet. Despite all the things I have seen since following Maria down the hallway in an attempt to run away from reality, I can't see anything but her brother's blue lips and pinched eyelids now.
God, he would have thrived in this situation. He would have reacted the same way she did. But he would have made it hurt more, and he probably would have robbed them first.
I don't know how she'll handle this, or how I'll handle it. I don't know which direction she'll fling me if she lets me go, but I can't believe she really wants to. Their reckless and fierce loyalty is what drew me to them in the first place. That's a hard sentiment to find in this profession and in the childhood that led me here.
I think I would have done anything for Charlie upon meeting him, that fucker, when he saved my ass from getting shot. I was just a bright-eyed punk, hustling a game bigger than me and acting much tougher than I was. Charlie had years’ more experience than I did, lifetimes' worth.
I let my fists ball into the sheets as I yield to the tears that rise. They haven't broken until now, so I fight them, which makes it hurt more. I can't move, I can't think, so I stare down at the wet dripping onto the cream-colored sheet that barely covers my lap. The force is so much that, for a moment, I believe the knot forming in my chest will soon explode and kill me.
The door behind me opens, unsettling me enough to stop my tears in an agonizing ball just beneath the surface. It is enough to bring me to face her. In those first few moments of eye contact, I must look like a bewildered mess. I must, because she looks so startled.
Her eyes flash with concern for a fleeting moment, so quick that it could have been my imagination. Then her gaze crawls down the naked length of my body as if her vision has been snagged and weighted hopelessly. Her face darkens into the lust I discovered by chance this morning, which surprises my brain into more perplexity.
Then, just as quickly as the previous look, it's gone. She looks me in the eye and it is strangely cold. More distant than I have ever seen from her. Still no word from the Queen? The street cries from beyond the sultry afternoon.
“Business meeting in half an hour,” she says, voice a mere shell of the luxurious sound I know she can utter.
Ripples like a bad dream shake me. Some of the quakes are memories of her voice, only hours earlier, not quite words. No, this is the first thing she has said to me since the hellish ride away from Biloxi. Echoes of hot hands on a sweaty morning roll over me with trembling ruthlessness, and I'm forced to endure the ghosts of flawless rhythm, of soul cleansing. The other tremors are the words she just spoke. Business. Meeting. Business. It always comes down to that. How could I forget?
She waits as long as she thinks it should take for her words to sink into my muddled and scattered thoughts. She knows I'm stuck in her gaze. Surely she is reading my impaired mind. Then she turns away. She leaves. Her indifference won't falter again. I know it's a mask, but I have no defense against it.
The door closes, oblivious to my offense. She might as well have slammed it against my face and my pride. She might as well have shattered her obscene, glass-bottle cocktail against me at close range. Business meeting. It's never been just business between Charlie, Maria, and me.
Chapter 6 Unspoken Answers
Isaiah
The courtyard of the hotel on Rue St. Anne is small. It hosts one wrought iron table for two and a couple of wooden benches built around a huge, twisted sycamore tree
whose branches hang overhead. The girls have closed the space off to their other customers, but still it seems too small for everything that must fill it.
I'm feeling claustrophobic, even though, right now, it's just me and Freddy. The Camels aren't doing much for the rising and falling of nausea in my gut. That's the after-wrath of the tequila gods. I brought it on myself, but the heat doesn't help either. I think I smell like liquor.
She's surprisingly collected when she comes out to us like royalty dressed down to face her subjects. She's so calm that I almost miss the gun in her hand. It's Charlie's gun and it looks obscene against her long and elegant lines. She always went for something smaller, more chic. Even so, it's not loaded.
Frederick's sharpening a straight razor against a whet stone, sitting at the table with his feet propped on the adjacent chair, feet he didn't offer to move so that I might sit, as if I'd want to sit so close to him. He glances at her over his dark, wire-framed sunglasses as she approaches, his smoky eyes electrified by the sound of metal scraping stone. There's something not right about him, but I suppose that's why we keep him around.
Her eyes drop to his dark hair, short and spiked in the very front. I watch her find his eyes as she would find the door to forgiveness, slowly, tentatively. Usually she'd smile at Freddy, but she doesn't have a smile today. The precious few moments of eye contact are heavy ones.
Then she sets the gun onto the glass tabletop with a clang. She knows how to clean a gun. She's known how to clean a gun since well before I met her five years ago. But there are some things in Maria's world that she prefers others to do for her. She likes for Freddy to clean her guns.
His eyes are sea gray next to the black shades, and the sad color washes down to the gun with a hard flash to his features. I've seen those eyes so blue they were frightening, but they're dull now. Yeah, it hurts for all of us, even the one who acts like he feels nothing.
She won't look at me. She fucked Josh. I know it from the way she avoids eye contact. It's not my business really, but Charlie would've been pissed. Her brother was always sternly against such a relationship between those two, for reasons that I never cared to ponder.
I've never acted like her brother, though, or her father, or anyone other than a partner. Ours has always been the type of relationship that develops between a young criminal powerhouse and a jaded veteran of the scene. It's still not my place to say anything, so I let it churn in my gut with the tequila.
I look to the blazing blue sky and drag the cigarette. It scratches along my throat, but that's a negligible feeling compared to having my insides torched.
“Thanks for getting everything together,” she says softly, voice so far from the hard commands on the phone last night.
She shoves her hands into her jeans pockets as she leans against the fence. The only remnants of desolation linger in the dark spaces under her eyes. She's pulled her long hair into a messy ponytail. Her brown skin is moist with the summer burn. She stands shaded by the old tree, staring vaguely toward the ground.
For a moment, I can't believe this girl could set a house full of people on fire. I think of the discreet, unmarked van that showed up to get Charlie's body. They didn't ask any questions. It's better not to know. I didn't even hear the arrangement Freddy made with them. I didn't care. I couldn't watch them take him. She'll never see his face again. I wonder if she's had that thought yet.
Tension shifts as Joshua joins us. He looks like hell, like she devastated him. His brown hair comes alive in the sunlight with a deep red infusion I never cared to notice before. He's grown it shaggy this summer, and has left it to dry in a wavy mess, tucked behind his ears. He's wearing wrinkled jeans and t-shirt, yesterday's grief. He might be a zombie. She's stolen his soul.
Better you than me, buddy. That's what happens when business and pleasure meet. That's all I can think as he takes a seat on the bench by the tree like a lovesick puppy. He won't look at us. Fucking kids. I stab my cigarette butt into a nearby flowerpot with a sigh.
“Things will get uglier from here, I imagine,” she says, voice strong and steady, cutting into everyone's thoughts.
Her softness is nowhere close. Any weakness has been carefully shoved out of sight. She's still staring at the ground.
She's like a darker version of Charlie, chocolate hair to his light, brown skin to his pale. No one ever believed they were related, but they were the closest siblings I've ever met. If you looked well enough, you could tell. They both had that long face and those deep eyes, meaningful expressions, and easy grace. They were both thin and cocky, and so easy to follow into the unknown.
She adds, “If any of you want out, I understand.”
My heart breaks again, as if the past twenty-four hours haven't been enough. We're all looking at her now, all caught up in the same disbelief. Nobody moves. I know she feels it. She stares intently at the stepping stones lodged into the tiny landscaping job like they'll help blunt the pain if any of us said we did want out. But of course, no one says it.
Finally the silence demands her eyes. She looks up and around at us, expression startled by our flat and stubborn, unspoken answers. She's treating us like we're strangers. Maybe she's pretending that we are. None of us will play that game, though. Surely she can't believe we are the type of men who would leave her side now. Does she feel obligated to turn us loose and can she really think that we'll go? Fuck.
Does she not realize we're all in love with her in some way or another?
Chapter 7 Slow Drag Night
Isaiah
She didn't speak much when we left the hotel late in the afternoon, or when we got to the restaurant for dinner. She completely ignored the other diners and staff, the blatant appreciative stares of random men. She actually smiled at the brothers when they swept her up in a giant hug.
They've been in business with us for a long time. They were more than ecstatic to feed us and provide a temporary base of operations. She tipped the server twenty dollars and she slipped out the back as the rest of us filled in Jack and Noah with a few details.
I find her behind the restaurant, sitting on the Caddy in the light of a weak bulb above the back door, smoking a joint of some high-grade pot. I can smell the dank smoke blending with the aroma of food.
The car is slung up on a patch of grass beside the private parking spaces for the boys. She's stretched out on the dirt-covered hood, oblivious of the southern dust, leaning back against the windshield with a Negra Modelo in her other hand. She lets out a stream of smoke as her eyes roll to me. Her cheeks are wet.
Silently, I take a seat on the Caddy's nose beside her feet. She nudges me softly with her toe to get my attention. I turn to find the joint stretched in offering to me. It feels like the hood of the car is the size of a football field, a hundred yards between our goal lines. I accept. It's a nice night for a slow drag. I let my muscles go slack, resting my elbows on my knees.
Back here it smells like jambalaya and weeds. The sounds of Creedence Clearwater Revival's hard truths drift from the kitchen. Some folks are born silver spoon in hand. I pass the smoke, feeling the burn deep down. I won't press any issues yet. Some of them I will never even touch, like the dark curiosity I sometimes see when I catch her looking at me, or her final conquest of Josh's little boy heart.
I hold my breath until my lungs force out the smoke, then let it waft toward the clear sky, watching it obscure a patch of stars for a moment. Around the fringes of my perception, I hear night bugs, cars on the street, cooks laughing through the wall. They're expendable. My whole world is expendable if it’s not on this car hood at this very moment.
I hear her beer slosh around a little as she takes a drink. I don't even look at her face when the joint returns to me. The thing burns hot like her emotions, jagged and black, unevenly consuming the paper. She does love the long draw. The end is slightly damp. I try not to think of her mouth.
Finally she says, “You were there when he died, weren't you
?”
I take another heavy hit. It ain't me. It ain't me! I grimace through the sudden emotional wave. The green seems to be kicking in already. Of course it would, she won't smoke less than the best product. It dulls the edge.
I nod, the cherry making tracers in front of my face in the darkness. The humidity has abated a little, pushing against me in a subtle comfort rather than an oppressive hand. She moves through it effortlessly, lover of the southern, summer spirits. The music of liquid against the glass bottle is my only indication that she's moving closer. She scoots herself to the end of the hood beside me to take her turn.
“I'm sorry I left you,” she says, eyes scanning the beat-up '67 Mustang and the small pickup beside us. She takes a deep drink to the end, then uses her bottle as an ashtray. She has dried her cheeks. The joint is almost gone.
“You're the boss,” I say vaguely, throwing what bravado I can muster into pretending I don't care.
I know she has turned her bewildered expression on me. Surely she realizes I'm full of shit. I avoid the probing look that covers me like the finest olive oil on hot tortillas, like the concern she's shown for me over her amazing huevos rancheros. She likes to cook for her boys when they're down. Tonight she wouldn't have eaten if we hadn't pushed her to do it.
And when you ask them, how much should we give, they only answer more, more, more.
“You're right,” she snaps.
Then she looks away again, ritualistically inhaling smoke. I watch her in my periphery as the tension leaves her face. She doesn't have the heart to fight. I don't have the heart to spill any truths, so I hand control of the situation to her as she passes the smoke that's left to me.
“I'm still sorry,” she softly adds.
I make the joint's finale as hard and consuming as possible with the hope that if it blasts me well enough, I can fade from this conversation. Maybe if I never exhale, I'll float away and be higher than emotion, and I'll forget everyone and everything.