Antique looking glass and detailed woodwork cover most walls to be seen of this oversized sleepy little town. They have revolving doors as every entryway, that seem to be bowing outward and reshaping themselves as the two pass them by. Strolling the sidewalks of this out of the way Alto, having only one two lane avenue connecting spliced dead ends and one way streets.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asks. She ignores him, preferring the levitating people and their pets. Liking the weave of this peoples clothing and cloths hung on laundry lines crisscrossing the second story of almost every building in town. Admiring the passing peoples clothing, some silky looking scarves hanging in a boutique window.
“They really like scarves here,” she says.
“They're alright. Just keep an open eye, okay.”
“I can look after myself. That one’s nice,” she says pointing to a plaid penguin feather scarf in a window.
“They have nice neck accessories, but were just passing by.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asks.
“Down the block and around the corner. To a gambling house,” he says, liking to see her pause.
“I've never played before.”
“It’ll be fun,” he says
“Do you have money to gamble?”
“Yeah, lots, I've been hot lately.”
“Then, why can't I get a scarf?” she asks.
“We can get one on the way back, now there’s too few people outside to hide,” he says. A humid but cool breeze and the pulsing muted yellow light of spring is disarming the two of any sense of urgency. They come to a well lit hazel house looking like a neglected country courthouse.
“So this is where you've been all this time, a cat house!?”
“A brothel, have some respect for the craft. They have tables and a band.”
“And nude neon women in the window, real neon ones, dancing.”
“It's mostly a gambling den, never mind what's on display,” he says.
She rolls her eyes from him to a brightly lit sign which she reads “The red hen’s house.”
“Can we get some food first? I don’t want to eat there.”
“Sure,” he says looking around. They settle on a push cart manned by a hairy man with stains on his shirt and a tight vendors cap scooping the middle out of balls of bread and filling them with a fleshy blue soup.
“What'll it be lady?” the vendor grunts.
“Whatever they’re eating?” Cider answers.
“You mean a bobber?”
“I guess,” she says. The two watch other people eating and eat it as they do. Dipping the scooped out bread, sipping the soup, then eating the bowl. They walk up a filthy red carpet covering a shallow set of stairs leading into the stochastic saloon's open door. In passing through heavy purple curtains the enter into the air of countless nights of the heights of hot streaks, the lows of last pennies lost and lives put on ice. Mounds and piles of gambling chip shift and spill over tens of green felt tables, cascading in random sounding crashes that chirp like birds in a rain forest. A room of more angles than a house of mirrors, filled with fat drunks and pimps, dogs of men and women, all of them crooks of some sort. Seated together, thieving, lying and tricking the money from the pockets of the person next to them.
The patrons are crammed through the large parlor room past capacity, squeezed between islands of green felt tables and roulette pits haphazardly thrown about a haze of smoke. Nearly every one of them, from child to adult, is smoking with their faces obscured but for their cherries flickering in and out like floating fireflies flashing and fading in a fog. Deafeningly loud, with boisterous shouting and the laughter of the winning mixing in with swearing and fighting of the losing. A waitress clad in dirty apron and skirt with a big kitchen knife tied around her waist, brushes past Anna while balancing a tray full of overflowing mugs. Anna stumbles over a beached whale of a man, face down in someone else’s foam filled vomit.
“What's wrong with that guy?” she asks.
“Him? nothing. Ever play blackjack?”
“Twenty one?”
“Good we'll sit at that table, I like that table.”
“Okay,” she says, following him nervously. Feeling as green as the felt tables stepping over the dead or unconscious. Leaning away from the frisky patron’s creeping about and the few faces she can glimpse in passing. Most of the patrons peek at her, then to Cider and away, sinking their heads as though praying not to know him.
“Do you know them?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. Leading her to a table and pulling out a wooden chair for her to sit. She sits and he waves his hand, a nearly nude knife wielding bar girl brings a stack of colored casino chips.
“They work for a guy I know,” he says and shrugs.
“Which ones?”
“Almost everyone here. They're Ravens Anna. It's why they all have some sort of red about them.”
“What are Ravens?” she asks.
“Debt collectors, hustlers, hookers, messengers, criminals, politicians, crime bosses, anyone. Actually the only requirements for the job are to have been a killer and to have been killed. He has a foothold in almost all the Alto’s I’ve been to yet, he’s virtually inescapable, it’s charmingly a nuisance.”
“Everyone that wears red?” she asks.
“No, some, they'll usually have a some red around the rim of their eye lids too. And it’s usually a bit of red somewhere, depends on how much of yourself you get to hold on to,” he says. She seems stiff to him, not sinking into her seat, not relaxing, looking around and moving mechanically. Like she's scared.
“You want a drink?” he asks, “It'll loosen ya up.”
“Yes please.”
“Two please,” he says.
“What type of exotic drink you think it will be?” she asks.
“Whiskey.”
“How much, sir?” a flat bellowing voice asks Cider. She sees the dealers enormous hands first, following his long white sleeve up to his black vested double wide shoulders. Having a black bow tie that’s tiny in comparison to the stretching somber square face above it.
“Chang’a ten thousand, and give a few hundred to her,” he says throwing some yellow chips to the middle of the table. Anna reaches and puts them in a neat pile for the lurching man. After sliding Cider’s stack to him, she slowly counts her own little batch of black and yellow chips. Each take their drinks and play two hands, and two more shots, and a few more hands. The dealer, a quick shuffle and monkey dealer, deals two cards to the three people at the felt table. The two are next to a thin but triple chinned man not sober enough to look up from his glass. Who jumps up suddenly, leaving his chips and scurries away into the smoke.
“What’s with that guy?” She asks.
“I dunno, probably scared of a skirt taking his money,” he says and she smiles. It's humid in the heat of racing hearts as cards fall and chips shift to the fortunate of this minute. All but the two here have the intensity of diamonds in their desperate sleepless eyes, wired to the rush of the turn. The smoky room comes to be overflowing with the smell of “Is that perfume?” Anna asks sniffing the air and sneezing.
“No” he says, “It's rosewater.”
“Why do you like places like this?” she asks.
“Eh, you kinda sink to where you swim, I guess. Maybe it's that you can see it all here, a bit of the whole show. The less fortunate and the fortunate seeking glory and despair in the same vice. Lives lived by the flop of a hand, the roll of the die, and the springs of a call girl’s bed. It's a den of vice, of life, where every kind meet and mingle, bound by games of chance,” he says.
“Are you a good swimmer?” she asks.
“Hahaha. No, well kinda I guess,” he says “I think of gambling as the chances of chaos, what's possible becomes actual. The rules set for the game, and the luck of the draw. Kind of like the circumstances you are born into, unfolding, and how skillfully you handle the ups and downs of your own...streak”
“Hmm, b
etter than I thought of you,” she says.
“And it feels really good to play the odds. That thrill when the money is up and you think you got it, but you may not. Bliss, the closer the better.”
“Isn't the fun part winning?”
“Eh, either way,” he shrugs. The two play on, she prays to probability under small, smoke smothered ceiling lamp. He taps away carelessly, compulsively chirping his chips away, as she barely pecks at the table with her pointer finger, as long slender fingers crawl slowly, like spider legs, across piano keys playing in the background. Leading a band that’s not on a stage, but the brass and bass are instead spread around the room. Their uneven notes strum as an undercurrent under the incessant chirping of shifting stacks of chips.
A few more hands and shots later the piano drifts off and stops. A slender, porcelain skinned temptress with straight black hair falling around her sharply featured face, is grinning with black painted lips. Her bare shoulders show in a cardinal sundress that adores her shape as she stalks with long legs straight to their table. She sits next to Cider and opposite Anna without a word for several hands. The girl's large black shark seeming pupils remain unblinking until taking out a silver case and lighting a long cigarette. She smells like a freshwater pond and her girlish voice is crisp but cold as her air as she breaks the ice.
“So, where have you been?” the red dressed woman asks. He swills down another shot, “Another round,” he shouts to a dreary blonde waitress.
“You know her?” Anna asks.
“What will it be?” asks the waitress after sprinting and jumping from table to table while dropping off drinks and taking orders.
“Whiskey.”
“Whiskey.”
“Vodka, just bring the bottles,” the pale woman says, and is instantly obeyed. They each take their shots and the cards are dealt.
“You can't ignore me,” says the porcelain skinned girl.
“Rebecca,” he says, peeking at his card and tapping the table.
“Why are you betting so low tonight? and who's your friend?” Rebecca asks.
“Who are you?” Anna asks her.
“Rebecca,” she answers with her big black unblinking eyes blaring right through Anna as she speaks. The fireflies of the room, and it’s noises start forming immature partial patterns in Anna's perceptions as she panics inside.
“You alright dear? have you drank too much?” she asks, every word spoken in condescension.
“No,” Anna sharply replies. Immediately disliking the girl for what she perceives as the pale woman’s disdain of her.
“You seem like the type to over think, panic a bit. Are you nervous right now? poor thing. You have nothing to worry about?” Rebecca says.
“You seem like the type to feign pleasure for the appeals of men,” Anna shoots back, then shooting back a shot. Rebecca smirks, and the corners of her black painted lips become sharper than thorns.
“I like her” Rebecca says rosily.
“You've been coming out to see her all this time?” Anna asks.
“No, she's a...co-worker,” he answers.
“Of the cathouse?” Anna sneers.
“Actually, I made captain,” says Rebecca.
“Oh good for you,” he says.
“Captain of what? Anna asks impatiently.
“Of what?” Rebecca laughs, “what hen house did you snatch this chic from? Captain of the Ravens, the Raveness Rebecca” she says, and Cider squirms in his seat.
“Ravens?” She asks.
“You really don't know. What rock are you from under?” the Raveness asks with a sneer.
“Her name is Anna, and she's been along with me for a while, now” he says defensively.
“Anna, huh. Anyway,” Rebecca says “We have business, don't we,” she turns her sharp smirk back to him.
“What happened to the other guy” he asks.
“Don't try to divert me, like every other time.”
“Okay, fine,” he shrugs.
“He seems to have been seduced and lead to think he was able to walk the path of Alister. He tried, and well didn’t quite make it,” Rebecca says.
“Wonder who tricked the poor guy, and you got the job? that's curious,” he says.
“Not really, I seduced him, turned him against the boss and then carried out the hit.”
“Good work is rewarded,” he laughs with Rebecca. Her shark eyes smiling, to Anna seeming more like they could actually be friends.
“So where are you from Anna?”
“Ahh, I don't,” she stammers, unsure of how to answer.
“Do you like traveling the Altonever's,” the Raveness asks intently.
“Yes, I like the train rides a lot, especially the ins and outs of them,” she replies with a spark of enthusiasm.
“So!” Rebecca says in a disgusted tone, “this is what you've been up to? running around with a backwoods Alto bumpkin? did you promise her adventure away from her little farm?”
“No,” he barks “just walking the girl home.”
“Oh yeah, what’s taking so long. We haven't heard from you for, a while, a while longer than usual.”
“She lives far away,” he scoffs.
“I'm not joking around Cider. He's getting worried about you,” she says with seemingly sincere worry.
“I'm not worried.”
“He does speaks well of you, sometimes anyway. But you haven’t been around for awhile, is all, only playing these game of chance. You know it’s only a drop of water to a thirst like yours. Examples will eventually have to be made.”
“Not enough excitement, so he sends his bitch out to hound me,” he says.
“Just do the right thing, for everyone. Okay,” the Raveness says, brushing the hair away from her face so that Anna can clearly see a gaping hole just above her left ear.
“You got it boss, cheers. Back to the salt mines as soon as tomorrow,” he says feigning to care.
“Ahhhhh, holy shit.”
“What is it Anna?” he asks.
“What're you gawking at, girl?”
“Ah,..ah...Oh what big eyes you have,” she stammers, pointing to the hole in the side the Rebecca’s head. Cider looks over and laughs hysterically along with the cackling Raveness, who nearly falls from her chair in delight of Anna's scare.
“Yeah, and I need a visit from her like I need a hole in the head,” he says in squinting laughter. Their humor of it is oddly easing Anna's strung nerves, though her logic of life and death is still a bit perturbed. Finding herself unable to stop her gawking at the girl’s open wound, and noticing how beautiful she actually is. Even seeming to possess a slight white glow around her, of the eyes of men in the room on her whenever she isn’t looking.
“That's her brain?” Anna asks.
“Why? are you reading her mind?” He laughs.
“How are you so...alive?” She works up the nerve to ask.
“Jeez I know you like ‘em green, but this is emerald even for you. Any who,” Rebecca snickers, settling into a wolf's smirk while touching her tongue to her one of her fangs, “you've been running with this dope, of all people, and you don't even know what Ravens are? I wonder why he wouldn’t have told you something like that, or why you wouldn’t just know it?” the Raveness says glaring at Cider while speaking, as though trying to sear his soul through his eyes.
“Ravenous?” Anna asks.
“No, Raveness.”
“Yeah, like mommy, the Baroness?” Cider says returning the girls shark eyes to her own threatening glare.
“You know, you should be nicer to me. I mean, I only came to warn you that he's been getting a bit worried about your whereabouts,” Rebecca says with a souring face, “he didn’t send me. I came on my own”
“I'll be fine, as always,” he says straightens his stack of chips.
“Yeah, well my hands are tied if I get the whisper, so get back to it for you and me...darling,” Rebecca says sarcastically.
“Isn't that somethi
ng you’re into anyway?” he laughs.
“Ha, always the joker huh, please spare me the pleasure of having to slay you, will you. Take care of yourself, you look like a mess.”
“What's he gonna do, kill me,” He laughs.
“What about her?” Rebecca snaps, he stops laughing. Instantly regretting that he's shown his hand, and knowing that in one action, she knows that he cares, and telling the resourceful Rebecca that, makes Anna’s life as good leverage against his. The stone faced Cider is staring the Raveness right in her big sharky pupils. Rebecca seems absolutely amazed by what she's seeing, a glint of emotion in the eyes of a man whom she knows to be a soulless savage, a slayer of men the Altos over.
“Anna?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“This here is Rebecca. A sweet young girl who lived high on the hills in a big, nice, house. She had everything. It was a mansion.”
“Oh Shut up!” Rebecca says scowling.
“But one thing, and she went mad for it. That eternal feeling, of a soul who's made a terrible choice over a terrible heartache for a boy. Her heart fluttered like the doves and cardinal's from her yard and garden, for him only. So timid, meek even, nice this girl was. But the boy didn’t love the girl, and she felt invisible to him. So what does she do?”
Rebecca sighs, and breathes in a breath of her smoke, Cider pauses for a shot, and Anna's still gawking at her head with a hole in it.
“She went up to the boy countless times, but one time thinking maybe, hoping, just maybe if I show him. Tell him how I really feel, that I love him, he'll see that he feels what I do. As though she would be shining her soul to him, she thought, and he'll see right through her chest. He was a good friend of her relative, so he simply didn't see her in that way, though to her he didn’t see her at all, that he was looking through her as she broke down and cried, and he walked away. So she runs home, to her house on the hills with a great lawn and marble monuments, and a lake and woods as the backyard,” he says.
The Altonevers Page 5