by Rick Wayne
Naturally, in my shotgun attempt to find her, I reached out to all those people, as well as quite a few more, which felt like sailing in the wake of an oil tanker. Kell had cut a path through all those people’s lives and churned them to froth. Most had yet to fully recover and in the space of three minutes went from being happy that she was in trouble to hopeful that it might somehow bring her back. It was a little distressing, though, how few of them had heard of me. Kell was apparently very skilled at compartmentalizing. I learned real quick that referring to myself as her best friend did not, as I had hoped, encourage anyone to open up to me. It only invited suspicion. Two of the girls were certain they had rights to that title. By the time I found Yantos selling stolen bric-a-brac on a blanket near St. Mark’s Place, my story was that her grandmother had died and left her some stuff and her parents had called me in a desperate attempt to track her down. Most people knew Kell had problems with her parents, especially her dad, but who doesn’t like dear ol’ grandma?
By the second day of that, I’d had enough. I did the friend bit, I decided. It wasn’t my fault she was playing Jimmy Hoffa. Enough people knew that I was looking for her that I figured whenever she finally came up for air, one of them was bound to steer her my way. Truth is, I was feeling guilty about the whole thing. More than once, I caught myself dreaming on the train about what I would do with my share of the money—if for some stupid reason it turned out not to be a scam, which I suspected—and that made me sick. Because that’s how they do it. Rich people. That’s how they get everyone to happily go along with all their bullshit. I wanted a do-over. I wanted to go back to Lykke’s house and throw that heavy stack of money in his face. Or better yet, to make him eat it. I had no idea how I would possibly do that, but dreaming about all the various ways he might meet a vile end was better than dreaming about all the ways I was up for sale.
Without ceremony, I threw my “notes” (such as they were) in a trashcan and went to a hardware store, a big box kinda place, and finally got everything I needed to fix my door. On my way home, I sprung for a smoothie. I was running out of cash and had no idea how I was going to pay for both groceries and my cell phone bill, which was already past due, but I needed the pick-me-up. Totally worked, too. Not only had I cast off the shackles of the money trap, I had passed the Bastien test. Seeing him was much easier than I expected, which made me feel both really good and really stupid for putting it off so long and let it build into this big anxiety thing. But now it was done and I was totally in a good mood. I was contemplating how best to celebrate on a budget of seven dollars and fourteen cents when I saw the black limo waiting across the street just down from the halal market. It was all sleek and curvy, like a reef shark. I slurped the last dribbles of my treat to myself and tossed the cup into a trash can before passing the rear of the vehicle to cross the road. I pretended not to notice.
Bouncer-man stepped out from the driver’s side.
“Mr. Raimi hasn’t heard from you.”
“I mailed him a full report,” I said without stopping. “Typed and double-spaced with proper margins and everything. Mrs. Cho would be very proud. He should have it in a couple days.”
“He’s losing confidence in your ability to hold up your end of the bargain.”
“Well, I tell you what.” I turned and started walking backward across the street toward the market. “If I don’t deliver, I promise I won’t make him pay. How’s that?”
“He’s wondering if you require additional motivation.”
I stopped. It was the way he said it. Made me wanna kick him in the balls.
“Is that a threat?”
Bouncer-man opened the door to the back. “He would like a word.”
“We all want things.” I turned again for the door.
“Ms. Song,” he called insistently.
I didn’t stop.
“Ms. Song!” Lykke’s voice. Like my dad yelling at me to stop putting noodles in my cousin’s hair. He was in the back of the limo. His head was poking out. I shit you not, he was in the douche uniform: khakis and a striped polo under a white cardigan with a colorful border.
“I’m working on it,” I called. I waggled my hand to shoo him away. “Go foreclose on people’s homes or inflate the price of lifesaving medicines or whatever.”
“Do we have to shout?” He looked around. “Can you get in the car? Please?”
I sighed and walked back to the limo. Bouncer-man shut the door behind me. It was very quiet. I was facing Lykke. He looked like he’d taken a turn. His eyes were dark and I got the sense he’d been coughing when the door was closed, which was maybe why bouncer-man had stepped out first. Across the seat from me was the black guy with the long face who’d searched the motel room. He glowered menacingly.
I rolled my eyes and dropped my plastic bag in his lap.
“Hold that.”
“You may not appreciate it,” Lykke began, “but cash is expensive. Every hour that a dollar isn’t invested, it loses—”
“Come on. You’re not gonna give me a million dollars.” I made a face. “How stupid do you think I am?”
He looked at me. He pulled down the center cushion in the seat back, which revealed a compartment. Inside was a metal suitcase.
“No way . . .”
He took it out and opened it on the seat next to him. He raised the lid and my lips pursed.
“Holy fuck.”
It was full of ten-thousand-dollar stacks, but different than the one he’d given me. These bills had clearly been used. They weren’t in terrible shape, but they weren’t all neat and crisp like the others.
The car was deathly quiet for several seconds.
“This is five hundred thousand dollars,” he explained in neat and tidy words. “I’ll have another case just like this in the morning. Unmarked, non-consecutive bills. Just like you asked.”
“Fuck me . . .” I couldn’t help it. That was a lot of goddamned money.
He motioned to the front. “William has been busy in your absence. He’s almost convinced me that we don’t need you. He knows some men. Ex-military, ex-NSA, who have other means of working quickly. Understand?”
I was too busy looking at all the money to listen to his threats.
“Convince me,” he said.
“She texted me,” I defended my lack of progress. With half a million dollars in front of me, I felt like I had to. “I got a number.”
He smiled in a very self-satisfied way, like the everyone in the world had just stopped what they were doing and they’d all shouted what a smart guy he was.
“I told you she trusted you. I knew it. You just might be the only one.”
He nodded to the bodyguard in the seat next to me. My eyes got big. I reached for the door but it bouncer-man locked it from the front. I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I turned and the black dude with the narrow head punched me. Like, hard. My head flew back and bounced hard off the window.
“Owww . . .”
I didn’t know whether to grab the back of my head or the front. My nose was running. My eye was hot and was starting to swell. I was gonna get a shiner, just like Kell.
“Assholes,” I breathed.
They took my phone. It was locked, of course, but Lykke just nodded again and his bodyguard grabbed my arm. I made a fist and tried to fight him, but the fucker was strong and he worked my thumb free and held it on the reader. My phone unlocked and I scratched his face with my free hand. I think I got his eye. He screamed and elbowed me hard. It was a reflex and he didn’t hold back. It hurt even more than the punch. I flew back and hit the side of the car and fell to the floor.
That’s where I was when the door opened. William bouncer-man dragged me from the limo and dropped me right on the road. I could see the brass vajra in its holster. Lykke got what he needed from my phone and deleted the text so I wouldn’t have the number. Then he tossed my phone to the street. It bounced and slid.
I picked it up. The screen was cracked. “You fucking dic
k!”
“Thank you for your help.” Lykke pulled a single hundred-dollar bill from a stack in the case. “This ought to cover your time.”
He crumpled it and threw it at me. It bounced off my hair. The door shut and the limo pulled away, almost running over my foot, which I yanked out of the way at the last second. I tried to kick the car but missed by a mile.
“Asshole!”
I tongued the inside of my lip. The back of my head stung. My eye throbbed. And I was pretty sure I was going to have a fat, tender bruise on my chest from where dickless elbowed me. I sat up on the pavement in the middle of the road and sniffed. My eyes were watering and I needed to clear my nostrils. I ran the back of my hand across my nose. I had almost forgotten what getting your ass kicked felt like. It hurt, but then, it wasn’t the worst beating I’d taken. That was a couple of years before, when Kell and I got arrested for brawling on the street. Some drunk lesbians were yelling gay slurs to our friend Rey, who was super skinny and very, very shy. He just wanted to leave, but Kell and I were drunk too, and high, and words got said and things got out of hand very quickly. I don’t think any of us intended to fight. All I remember is being so angry at them. They were lesbians—they were supposed to know better!
The fight was epic. Punching. Screaming. Kicking. Hair pulling. The works. The police came and broke it up. They had us all line up and sit with our backs to the wall. Kell and I looked like shit. Hair a mess. Cuts and bruises everywhere. Spots of blood on our clothes. We were outnumbered and totally got our asses kicked. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive. Kell, too. I’m sure that’s why neither of us said anything. We just sat there like a pair of darkening bruises as the police processed the lesbian gang. We had stood up for our friend and we were feeling good. We were soaking in it like a hot bath and neither of us wanted to do anything to break the spell.
As I was sitting in the road in front of my apartment, all I could think was that I would’ve killed for a joint just then.
A car screeched to a halt behind me and honked. The dude got out barely a second later and started yelling at me to get out of the road. He was in a blue and green track suit with a soccer logo.
“Girlie!” he yelled. “Get out of the road!”
Didn’t move.
“Do you understand English?”
I laughed. “Is that what you call it?” His accent was so thick he was damned near unintelligible. I sniffed and wiped again.
He moved toward me, like he might drag me out of the way or something.
“Touch me and I’ll eat your balls.”
He was about to retort when a white turd landed on his cheek. He wiped it and looked at his hand. “What the . . .”
We both looked up.
Birds.
They moved in a deranged flock overhead. Crows, mostly, but some smaller birds hung about like groupies. They descended angry and quarreling and landed on rooftops and traffic lights and street signs and cars and railings and everything. There was chirping and cawing and flapping—so many wings that they actually stirred the air. Amid the constant agitated shuffle, a crow dove over the guy in the track suit, then another, like they wanted his bald head for a perch.
“HEY!”
He barely had time to duck before another came. He crouched to the street, where I was already thankfully planted. One of the birds brushed my hair, which gave me the willies, and I shook my hands around my head. But another came. And another. And another. They began settling on curb and the pavement until at once they scattered in all directions as if somewhere a predator had pounced.
Track suit guy had his head craned to the sky. “What da fuck?” There was a tiny wet spot on his crotch. “What da hell was that?”
“A murder,” a man said behind me.
I was still sitting on the ground. I dropped my head back and looked at him upside down. He stood with his hands in his fantastic coat.
“Oh. Hey. It’s you.”
By tilting my head back and then forward, I caused my nose to run. I sniffed and tasted blood. I touched it and saw red.
“You are bleeding.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket like a stage magician.
“Thanks. I’m okay. My apartment’s right here.”
“Please, you may keep it.”
“Um.” Blood was definitely running. I felt a drop escape my upper lip. “Thanks.”
The hankie had the initials H.H. embroidered in the corner. I got up and pressed it to my nostril.
“Finally!” Track suit guy raised his arms as if to praise Allah that I’d gotten out of his way. A car honked behind his and he told them what he felt about it in colorful language.
“May I have a moment?” bald guy asked.
“Uhhh . . .” I backed to the door. “To be honest, it’s not the best—Fuck.” I looked up in frustration.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. It’s just.” I raised my hand toward the end of the street. “They drove off with my . . .” The assholes in the limo still had my tools. “Never mind. Look, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Whoever. I hope you found whatever you were looking for. Thanks for the hankie.”
I trotted up the stairs and into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. When I turned off the spigot, I heard someone at my front door. I came out with a tissue hanging from my left nostril. Bald guy was staring in silence at the giant sparkly clitoris in my living room. I may or may not have had Mr. Fluffers eating it out.
“I could’ve swore we just said goodbye.”
“Yes. ‘Brush off’ I believe is the phrase.”
His eyes moved over the couch and the floor and the little kitchen nook. My place was a mess. There were worn panties lying around and an open box of tampons and the art and shoes and everything.
“Okay, so now that you’ve successfully invaded my privacy—and don’t think I won’t call the police.” I held up a finger. “What is it that you want, Mister . . . ?”
“Étranger.”
The name got me. “Wait. Have we met?”
“I don’t think so. I would have remembered.”
I’m not sure if he was complimenting me or his memory.
He handed me a card. “Perhaps you have been to my restaurant.”
Bistro Indigenes. With the name in print, it all came back. I held up the card. “Mory.” I nodded.
“Excuse me?”
“Dr. Sandoval. He was my aesthetics professor. He used to rave about you. Holy shit—excuse me.” I covered my dirty mouth with the card. “He’d freak.”
I loved that class. It was the only one I attended regularly. Professor Sandoval was this funny little Puerto Rican Jew with a thick Brooklyn accent. He’d go off on Kant and baseball in the same sentence. He loved Étranger’s food—his art—but could rarely afford it on a teacher’s salary. He told us about the Cirque Gastronomique, this food art series Étranger did—and about the Eros Gastronomique in particular. It wasn’t just a dinner. It was a complete sensual experience that “penetrated a wet cave,” an ocean grotto exposed by the tides, with a stunning view of a red-hued sunset over the Indian Ocean. There were candles and lights strung overhead, and the courses were served with an increasing urgency as the tide returned over the duration of the meal, thrusting in and out. Dr. Sandoval said the diners swayed, not just with the waves but in tension between the desire to savor and the desire to hurry and finish before the waters returned and drowned them. As he told us the story, he stood on stage with his eyes closed making this face. I swear he was going to pop in his shorts right in front of the class.
But my guest seemed uncomfortable with his notoriety. Or just annoyed perhaps. As soon as I started talking about the Cirque, he changed the subject.
“You met with Lykke Raimi.”
“So I did.”
I started feeling queasy. I touched my stomach and went to the kitchenette for a glass of water.
“Can I offer you anything? I’m afraid the only soft drink I have is water. And Red Bu
ll. But you don’t look like a Red Bull man.”
“May I ask the reason for the visit?”
“Reason?” I put three ice cubes in a glass, filled it with the half-empty remains of a vending machine water bottle, and added a dash of Southern Comfort. “What makes you think there was a reason?”
“Lykke Raimi sits at the stone table,” he said, like that explained everything.
“Stone, huh? Well, mine’s just made of vinyl. I think.” I pressed the top to make sure. Then I walked to the couch.
I was about to offer him a seat when I saw it was covered with crap. He was already gawking at the mess.
“Sorry.”
I pushed clothes and a crumpled blanket and Kell’s plastic bags to the floor with my art supplies and everything. A book fell free. It was an old-style hardcover. It clunked on the faux hardwood and landed near my guest, who picked it up and read the spine.
“An adequate survey,” he said, “but narrow. You might prefer The Long-Vacant Cupboard for the introductory commentary.”
He handed it to me, which is when I noticed his palms and fingers were tattooed.
“Um. Thanks.”
I glanced again at his fingers before scanning the book myself. The Compendium of Greater Travesties. I walked it to the kitchen table as he lowered himself to the couch. He stood immediately. There was one item left, apparently—my Magic 8 Ball watch. He studied it quizzically before I snatched it from his hand.
“It belongs to a friend of mine. So what’s your deal with Lykke?” I asked. “You looking to take his seat at the rock table or whatever?”