Pillow

by Andrew Battershill

  ‘Why you ruined your own deal, where you’ve been, why you’re coming to me now, where those coins are and how much you want for ’em. In that order.’

  ‘As soon as I tell you where the coins are my life is worthless. They’re all I have. I just want to make a deal.’

  ‘You’re not wrong, Georgie-pie. I guess that’s why I asked those questions in the order I did.’

  ‘I ruined the deal out of a false belief that I had arranged a better deal. Breton would never have allowed me to cancel our deal, and if I simply did not appear, you and Louise Aragon would have tracked me down in a matter of hours, so I brought Artaud to distract you all until my, at the time, new buyer was ready to make payment.’

  ‘So the deal gets knocked over, your buyer gets scared off, probably didn’t realize you had a deal in place for the coins anyhow, and you lam it. Okay. So you’re a nutjob, but that all makes some kind of nutjob sense. Why are you coming to me now?’

  ‘I hid for several days in the house of a student with whom I have developed an intellectual relationship of practicality and trangression, and eventually I thought of Gwynn Apollinaire. She would be the only one capable of moving the coins, but in case you are not aware, I owe her several thousands of dollars and several millions of unpaid favours. But I was desperate and so I went to her, only to see you leaving. And it all fell into place. Breton, as is his way, pushed your loyalty too far, and you’d had the same realization I did. You were still under my enforced apprehension that Artaud was the ground upon which to make that play, so –’

  ‘You’re coming to me with the coins so your debt to Gwynn doesn’t come out of your end.’

  Bataille did a gesture that fell somewhere between nodding and bowing.

  Pillow didn’t need time to think. ‘Gwynn’ll go full price. The seventy you were going to get from Breton.’

  The thinning ends of Bataille’s eyebrows perked up. ‘And my percentage?’

  ‘You get seven grand. You’re down to a finder’s fee.’

  The old man nodded and set his shoulders. ‘Fair. Give me two days.

  ‘Days? Do you even have the coins?’

  ‘I will need to make a swift exit. And seven thousand does not go far. I wish to make my arrangements before receiving my payment. Then we can arrange a drop.’

  ‘A drop? Why aren’t we going hand-to-hand on this?’

  ‘Let’s say that trust is always at issue when breath and bodies are involved.’ Bataille with that not-knowing-what-to-do-with-his-hands look again.

  ‘We do the drop at the zoo.’

  Bataille smiled. ‘A good choice. And in front of which beasts?’ ‘Giraffe pen, obviously.’

  Bataille stepped forward with his hand out. ‘That is fair on all counts. I’ll meet you in two days with the coins.’

  They shook on it. Pillow felt the bones in his hand move in the soft, accommodating way that it is totally fine for bones to move in.

  Bataille cast a quick look up at the slaughterhouse.

  ‘I love this place, I actually have a whole theory about –’

  Pillow reached over and gently cupped the side of Bataille’s neck. ‘No more, man. I’m sorry, I can’t do it. They’re all … Do you know how many times I’ve heard Breton ramble on about dreams? I just can’t listen to these long speeches anymore.’ Bataille stepped away from Pillow’s hand laughing.

  ‘Oh yes. He was telling me about it once, and I couldn’t help thinking, “If you like dreams so much just go to bed.” I’d rather talk about someone’s big toe than a dream.’

  Pillow scratched his chin. ‘Well, we agree on that one, Georges. Big toes are super-important: where you put ’em, where everybody else’s are. A lot depends on it.’

  Bataille smiled. ‘You don’t want to get me started.’

  ‘True.’

  Pillow winked and rubbed Bataille’s belly. The old man started to walk away and Pillow caught him by the elbow.

  ‘Sorry about that wink a second ago, I think it kind of came off like an “I’m fucking with you” sort of thing, but that’s not what it was. Once you get in that winking zone it’s sort of hard to stop. You feel me?’

  Bataille had his hands crossed over his crotch, always waiting for that cosmic ball kick. He winked back without moving any other part of his face and disappeared into the trees.

  Pillow closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. Even though he hadn’t been famous in a long time, he couldn’t shake the feeling you get when someone is watching and liking you.

  Pillow spent most of the next morning sitting against the wall of his bedroom massaging his jaw and temples and periodically covering his eyes with flat hands.

  He’d been a chump, but somehow he’d backed into the coins. Everyone but him knew Bataille still had the coins. That was why Breton had gone after Prevert, and why Don had let him stash Artaud, because Artaud just didn’t matter. But whatever the route, he was there now. Bataille was ready to give up the coins and nobody else knew about it. Pillow didn’t like the idea of sitting around for two days, but there wasn’t anything he could do. He just had to wait.

  After a while Pillow started thinking about cocaine. He didn’t want any. Once he’d run out of money, once the parties stopped being parties, Pillow had actually found it very easy to abstain. He was a good abstainer, in general. The only thing Pillow actually missed about it was the part that most people hated: the part where he was just getting rolling, talking, laying it all out there, and he’d get that hard, slow bloom right in the middle of his chest. And in some isolated top shelf of his brain he could tell, objectively, that he was sad, but he was chemically unable to feel it. He just knew it was there.

  Eventually, he got up and ate a fruit salad, blended up some food for Artaud and delivered it, and a little taste of morphine, without waking the guy up. After, he went home and did a punishing set of intervals in the courtyard to relax, during which Avida and Simon showed up.

  They were still eating a road lunch. Avida was nibbling at a sandwich and Simon was eating a full roasted chicken, holding one leg in each hand and chewing his way across the breast plate, grease shining off and calling attention to each fold in his face. Pillow bit down hard on his own teeth.

  Avida took a final rabbit nibble off the side of her sandwich and then threw it in the gutter. ‘Hey there, friend, remember us?’

  ‘How could I forget Captain Wordplay and her pet sea monster? It’s about time someone threw that thing back in the water.’

  Simon tore a long strip of meat off the chicken’s breast. His chewing made a sound that was not exactly one a warthog would make getting fed through a grain thresher. He tapped his lips twice with the top of the chicken. ‘We want the coins. We know Costes is looking for them, and we want you to tip us off if he finds them.’

  Pillow fought through his intense revulsion and reached a strong, instinctive conclusion. ‘All right then, let’s get our dicks out, I guess.’

  Avida reached into her pants, rummaged around forcefully for a bit, and then theatrically presented an empty, vaguely musky palm. Simon sucked an entire leg clean off the bone.

  ‘You two want the coins, Breton wants the coins. Breton pays me, and you guys think you can jam me up. And I’m supposed to give up alllll this –’ Pillow threw a long arm across the length of the peeling plastic siding of his apartment complex ‘– to avoid some trouble you can’t even make without giving up your shot at the money.’

  Avida ran her finger along length of her nose. She was getting more comfortable. ‘We’re going to get those coins, and you can help us and get protection, or you can fuck with us and be on our bad side. It’s all up to you.’

  Pillow shrugged.

  Simon tossed the chicken blindly over his shoulder, sucked each of his fingers thoroughly in turn and then walked over and looked up at Pillow. ‘I’ve thought about it some, Pillow. I’ve realized that you’re right. What you said to me before, you were right. You are far too stupid to threaten.
So I’ll try to explain myself. I’ll tell you why I want this money. Let me tell you what my dream is, Pillow. My dream is to buy a little house right on the edge of town. Nothing fancy, just a little house away from all the people and all the noise. And I will fill this house to the brim with cats and high-class, vintage pornography. More porn and more cats than anyone could possibly need or hope to use in a lifetime. Then I’ll stay inside that house until I die. That’s the dream. That’s what I’m working toward. And I will not let you get in the way.’

  Avida already had her car door open. She called over to Simon. ‘Come on, he’s useless. We need to talk to Costes.’

  Simon waved her off with two fingers no fatter than elephant legs and turned back to Pillow.

  Pillow pulled his head back a little bit away from the grease. ‘That’s good, man. It’s good to dream.’

  The fat of Simon’s cheek split into two discrete segments as he grinned. ‘No, it’s not, just necessary.’

  After the cops left, two very obvious realizations struck Pillow nearly simultaneously: the first was that he didn’t have seven thousand for Bataille yet, and the second was that Bataille was planning to fuck him over, take the seven grand and the coins and run. Why else make it a drop? Why else delay two days when he was being actively pursued by two corrupt cops and a well-connected sociopath with a crew?

  It only took one phone call to an underground casino and one phone call to the registrar of the university for Pillow to get the address of Bataille’s safe house. Pillow wondered how Breton had missed it, and then he remembered that Bobby Desnos had been one of the main searchers, and that Desnos had spent a lot of the time he was supposed to be searching listening to old radio plays.

  There were a lot of little steps involved in the seemingly simple act of going straight to Bataille’s safe house. He had to decide to go, then he had to stand, then he had to get his gun from the closet, then he had to open the door and leave his apartment and avoid looking up at Emily’s door as he left. Then he had to do all the things you have to do to make cars start and move and stay moving in the right direction. And he did each of these steps knowing that it, and the one before it and the one to follow, were huge mistakes, or at least tiny parts of one huge mistake. But he did them all.

  Pillow stood on the porch of Bataille’s safe house for a few seconds to get his bearings. The porch itself was a tragedy, as porches go. It looked like someone had tried to shake it to pieces from the middle out. The front door had a thin, plastic frame, but otherwise it was all glass. Pillow looked in, and the corridors seemed empty, as if cigar smoke was around but hiding. The windows to the outside were all painted over a half-opaque white and Pillow could sense the presence of a dog lying down, but couldn’t see where it would be. His hand knocked aggressively on the door and Bataille seemed to float into view, swinging smoothly around the corner, like he was skating.

  Bataille looked somehow calmer than he had at the slaughterhouse, like he’d given up a few minutes prior. He motioned Pillow in and stood by the door, waiting to close it. Pillow reached up, did two quick pull-ups on the top of the door and loped elaborately into the house, peeking his head around the corner into the living room.

  ‘Could you have picked a creepier place to crash?’

  ‘I was not spoiled for choice.’

  Bataille wasn’t wearing shoes. Pillow got distracted for a second wondering if he’d ever seen a man that old in sock feet before.

  ‘Are we alone?’

  ‘Yes. In fact, I had planned to be completely alone.’

  Pillow dipped to the side of the doorway, next to kind of a nice vase, and came up behind Bataille, rubbing at the combination-lock-sized knots in the old man’s shoulders. Pillow guided him to and pushed him down on the sofa. He kept standing behind him, stopped massaging and just kept a grip on the old man’s shoulder. ‘Tell the cushion where the coins are.’

  Pillow felt Bataille take a deep, dipping breath.

  ‘I wanted to talk about that big toe first. You seemed interested.’

  Pillow tightened his grip. He had a feeling where it was going. From the old man’s voice, Pillow could tell Bataille was smiling.

  ‘The big toe is a genuinly human part of the body. It’s the part of our bodies least similar to any portion of an ape. This is due to the fact that apes live in trees, and human beings are trees.’

  Pillow switched his grip and took hold of the back of Bataille’s neck. ‘Where are the coins, Georges? I never repeat myself.’

  ‘I don’t have them.’

  Pillow’s stomach finally fell from the sky. The part of the sky so high up there isn’t much air left. The part where balloons die. He swung around the side of the couch, pulled Bataille on the floor and dropped a knee onto the middle of his back. ‘You weren’t looking to sell the coins to Gwynn, you were looking to knock off her stash and leave town. Because Artaud has the coins. It was true. Then you saw me and thought you could get the best of me. Tell me some story, get a few grand and hit the road.’

  Pillow eased off and Bataille groped for breath; the carpet was old and thick enough that it belched a puff of dust at him in response. He caught his breath and moved up to his knees.

  ‘You know, you’re a little bit smarter than they said you are.’

  Pillow felt one bead of cold sweat roll out from every pore in his body. He dropped into a beat-up old recliner, the footrest popping out like a cuckoo from a clock. ‘I haven’t been this mad in a little while, Georges. And I have a feeling I’m going to get a little bit angrier before you’re done talking.’

  Bataille was in full-on snitch mode now, tripping over himself to get the story out. ‘Yes, but there’s more. This was all a couple days before the meeting, and I knew I couldn’t tell Breton I’d lost the coins, so I went to Lieutenant Avida. I know her from some of the orgies, and I thought that she was smart and crooked and that she’d help me find Artaud before the meeting. I said I’d give her half the money.’

  Pillow gripped the arm of the recliner hard enough that stuffing popped out. Bataille was the leak, he’d fed them the whole deal. ‘Why would she take half, Georges? You gave her the whole thing, why would she let you have half when she could just take it all?’

  Bataille looked back at the ground, hyperventilating but seeming somehow relieved at the same time.

  What Pillow knew, and Georges didn’t, was that Avida hadn’t just gone for the whole payment. She was trying to double her money. That was why she and Simon had shot first that night at the deal, so they’d catch their own case in homicide. Rip off the deal, find the coins and get paid twice.

  Pillow stood up and started pacing. He started thinking about everything he still had to do, everything that needed to be done, and he felt tired. His head was spinning, the way an empty bottle spins in outer space.

  Bataille was getting himself together; he settled an arm over his knee and took a couple breaths. He started a laugh that became a cough instantly. Bataille got himself into a runner’s stance. ‘We enter traps of our own free will. Everyone does.’ He made a thin whisking sound with his teeth. ‘Breton. He’s a real piece of beef, isn’t he?’

  Pillow saw it coming. He saw what he had to do, but all he wanted was sleep.

  Bataille made a try for the front door, getting less than halfway out of the living room before Pillow caught him with a clean left hook.

  Pillow had thrown enough punches in his life that there was no longer a conscious thought to doing it. So he didn’t totally feel himself swing, and he didn’t totally feel the thick, wrong crunch when he caught Bataille on the chin. He was fairly sure he saw the old man drop face-first and land on his neck at a bad angle that Pillow knew wasn’t so much a bad angle as it was the worst angle possible, his legs twitching once and then settling at another angle that was even worse. Pillow was fairly sure that he watched Georges Bataille die right then in that shag-carpet hell of a living room. He was still pretty sure about it even after it happened, eve
n after it was just another one of the things he had to try to remember.

  Pillow left the body in the living room and went to the kitchen. He used the heavy rotary phone on the wall to call Don Costes, who showed up in what seemed like two minutes but could have been any amount of time. Pillow felt like he’d just taken a long drink of alone water.

  Alone water is similar to lemon water, but with a sharp, clawing bleakness squeezed into the water instead of half a lemon.

  Don asked what had happened, and Pillow told him that he’d seen Bataille at the grocery store and followed him home. Pillow stared at a fridge magnet stylized to look like a really surprised panda as he talked, so he wasn’t sure if Don believed him at all. He didn’t really care, but some part of his brain knew he should.

  Don started rubbing Pillow’s back like he was burping a baby. ‘Easy, easy, easy, buddy. It’s easy, okay? Breton and I will take care of this, and you go home now and see Emily. All right? See her and don’t talk about this. I’ll smooth it over with Breton, and we’ll get rid of the body. You tried your best. It’s easy now.’

  Pillow thought, but wasn’t entirely sure, that the panda on the fridge smiled at that. ‘Yippee.’

  The kitchen glowed in the sick, buzzing yellow light of a fixture that needed to be replaced.

  Don waved a hand in front of Pillow’s face. ‘Do you have the coins? Did he tell you where they were?’

  Pillow figured he was committed by now. ‘No.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything about where he kept them?’

  ‘No, he just ran for it, and I … I don’t know, man, it was just an instinct. I didn’t …’

  Don shushed Pillow, pulled him standing, walked him to the front door and, pretending Pillow was wearing a collared shirt, fixed the shirt and straightened Pillow’s imaginary tie.

  Pillow felt that, since he’d strongly considered crashing his car into a bridge pylon on the way home, he was doing a pretty great job of seeming emotionally present as he and Emily spooned and chatted on the couch. Her couch was a cheap and very hard one, so she took the keys out of her jean pocket and threw them in the loud, shiny prayer bowl where she’d started keeping her change. She wiggled around a little bit until the two of them were settled.