by Sam Munson
No reason a simple transaction had to be anything more than that. We hand over the map. They hand over Hob. A priceless relic for one lightly used adolescent warlock. A better deal for Potash and his crew. Considered objectively. Charthouse had not come. Vincent insisted. He said it was too dangerous. I thought he was being dramatic. Alabama had agreed with him. So Charthouse stayed behind. Vincent had the canvas sack slung over his shoulder. “Is it in there,” said Quinn. I kept my mouth shut. I wanted more than anything else to hurt him. Worse than Hob had. Just on principle. All this, I reasoned incorrectly, was his fault. “Are you going to go get my brother,” said Vincent. “You have to come upstairs,” said Sasha, “Verner wants you to come upstairs to see him.” This I disliked. Referring to your teachers and superiors by their first name. A gesture of fake equality. “Come upstairs,” said Alabama. I didn’t like the changing-locations aspect either.
The great entry hall of Mountjoy House: cathedral sized. We’d missed a lot by going in through the tradesman’s entrance, during our first visit. They clearly kept the hotel-hallway stuff out of sight of first-time guests. Made sense. Places need to live up to their reputations. Here was nothing but white marble. Or travertine. The ceilings fifty feet high. The white walls inset with white niches, each holding a white bust. One I recognized: Francis Bacon. I’d been forced to write a paper on him when I was in ninth grade. I will never forget his flowing hair or his offensive, well-groomed beard and gaze. Eight white stairways led up in the eight cardinal directions. Owl-headed banisters. More white stone. You could feel the cold coming off the floors and wall. In the center of the hall a fountain plashed. Carved from the same white stone. Four statues guarded the rim: a youth with a feather quill and a cornucopia; a woman with a book and a sword; a scroll-bearded, helmeted man seated on a lion; and a matron with a torch, wearing a shift. The hall was illuminated. No lamps or light fixtures visible. Quinn was wearing slippers, I saw: beaten red leather. Sasha had on only socks. Blue-and-purple striped.
“So what year are yoooou guys,” said Vincent. He drawled. I started to worry. “Seniors,” said Quinn. He was sweating. “And do you like liiike it here,” said Vincent. His voice cramped and falsely sweet. I’d never heard him sound so sincere. “It has its advantages,” said Sasha. “I bet,” said Vincent. “So I guess we should take you upstairs,” said Sasha. I’d like to take you upstairs, I thought. “We’re not going upstairs,” said Alabama. “That’s what my uncle said,” said Quinn, “Verner, I mean.” “I don’t give a fuck what your fucking fat faggot uncle told you,” said Vincent, “we’re not going upstairs.” “You shouldn’t use that word,” said Sasha. It was like being at that terrible party: you don’t know the kids at all, really, but you are already almost in a fight with them. This did not surprise me. I’ve never gotten along with the studious. Did not make it any less difficult for me to avoid looking at Sasha’s tits. They shelfed an odd necklace: a bicycle chain, from which hung what appeared to be a jade-colored slice of petrified wood set in a brass rim. I wondered if it served a purpose other than decoration.
Quinn wore his blue blazer with the owl-and-wheat crest. “You guys are big on owls,” I said. Trying to ease the tension. “With us it’s snakes.” “You’re the faggot,” said Quinn, “if anyone’s a faggot here.” “Oh, that’s clever,” said Alabama. I was grateful only Alabama had a gun. I was examining Sasha’s ass, which was as impressively massive as her tits. “What did you just say, you cunt,” said Quinn. “Come on,” said Alabama, “really?” “You heard what I said,” cried Quinn. Still a dialogue expert. Maybe he’d come out with a you want some next. Hard to tell. Strange strain in his face. Smooth and young. Old looking at the same time. Defeated. By a secret vice. An ineffable shame. His hand dipped toward his waist. This puzzled me. We’d deep-sixed his wand. Maybe they’d given him another. Seemed about right. Reward stupidity. How kids like Quinn end up that way: through rewarded stupidity. His hand slipped farther. Sasha started to mutter. “Vincent,” said Alabama, low and hard. She strode up and planted herself behind Sasha, who was standing with her back to us and (it seemed) talking to a blank white wall at the back of the lobby. “All right,” I said. I took a breath. I clenched my muscles. Where we began, the world can judge: in trust, wholehearted; in unshakable assurance.
The world slowed down. My pain flared up. Brain, eyes, lungs, spine. No longer merely companionable. The lobby’s gentle white light had deepened in color. Redshifting: the name of that phenomenon. I had time to remember the word. From my physics class. I had all the time I needed. Vincent, Alabama, Sasha, Quinn: sloooooooooooow. Vincent sliding his hand toward his pocket. Going for his knife, I assumed. Alabama reaching toward Sasha with one arm and drawing her gun with the other. Stretched-out, dancerly movements. Sasha’s eyebrows winging up, a chevron of light creeping across the surface of her green pendant. Me in the midst of these stone-slow fellow humans, calm, in pain, and alert. More absorbing than anything. Better than any movie. It sounds insane to describe it that way. I watched Vincent’s sneer begin. I watched Alabama’s thin forearm make contact with Sasha’s neck. I watched the divided skirt of Quinn’s blue blazer billow with aching lassitude. It revealed his wand—a new one, as I’d suspected; black metal and inset with silver wire—in a fake leather rent-a-cop holster belted to his back. A pearly bead of sweat slipped millimeter by millimeter down his pale, pious forehead. Not from pain. Not from exertion. Just nerves. I could hardly breathe from the pain firing up and down my lats. I did not mind this, I discovered. As though I were at ease inside myself, inside this lumbering body and this pain: Mike Wood watching Mike Wood.
Call it whatever you like. It isn’t any different from anything else. Not even less probable. Your body cries out. Your soul cries out. The cries find expression or they die off. Just that simple. Just an extension, as Alabama said, of what you’re already good at. I walked up to Quinn and broke his wrist. Incredibly satisfying. Easy, too. At least when your target is one degree more animate than a statue. I took hold of his forearm with my left hand and his hand with my right, and I twisted them as hard as I could in opposite directions. One quick, hard flexion, putting my shoulders into it, my back. My body thrummed. His bones moved. The ulna bent and fractured. A green twig. It pressed the skin. A loud, long thud: the noise of its breakage. Would have been a quick crack, had I been moving at normal speed. Quinn started to yowl. This came out as a deep, smeary rumble. Alabama was still looping her arm around Sasha’s neck, moving a centimeter or two at a time. Vincent had just started to open his mouth in surprise. Or so it seemed. He might have been sneezing. I saw all this with great contentment from within the confined and friendly theater of my corporeal form. It occurred to me that if I wanted, I could kill all of these people. Friend and enemy. This thought pure and childish. Mine. Another’s. My clothes stuck to me. I’d broken into a fever sweat, armpits, knee backs, feet, and hands. I slid Quinn’s wand out of his holster. I was dizzy with pain, nauseated with it. The wand’s metal cool-warm. The world was speeding up again.
“What was that, Wood,” said Vincent. I tried to break the wand. It bent—a U. I twisted. It snapped. Quinn groaned. In clear pain. Or was already groaning. I loved that. Sasha was breathing, “Okay, okay,” and Alabama was saying, “it’s okay, just be quiet.” She had the Colt to Sasha’s temple. Barrel dimpling skin, one arm locked around the girl’s soft-looking throat. Now flushed in panic. Quinn on the ground now, cradling his hurt arm. Repeating, “What.” A question: why does academic achievement so often breed physical cowardice and even debility? I’ve never managed to answer this question. And so I remain strong and lumbering. “Do you have reinforcements on the way,” said Vincent. Quinn snorted and gasped. “I don’t know what you mean,” said Sasha. “No wonder they let you in here,” said Vincent, “being so quick and all.” “Maybe we should get moving,” I said. “Open the door you were trying to open or whatever it was,” said Vincent, “but if you do anything stupid she will k
ill you.” Sasha swallowed spit. She pointed to a bower of vines carved into the otherwise blank wall. “It’s that middle blossom,” she said. “You do it,” said Alabama. Sasha did it. Stroked the blossom edge. A morning glory.
Death: what I was expecting when Sasha touched the white stone flower. A mild grating hum: what I got. Upper-middle-class ease and opulence, in other words. A panel of the white wall slid into itself. Behind was what appeared to be a brass-and-wood elevator cabin. Quinn started blubbering. With no acid in his brain and no new wand, a total pussy. No shocker there. “Are you going to kill us,” he said. “No, but if you don’t shut up I’ll break your other wrist,” I said. He shut up. Vincent pulled him to his feet. “You’re coming up with us,” he said, “and seriously she will shoot your friend if she has to.” “So now we are going upstairs,” said Sasha.
The elevator was also larger than it could possibly have been. It had that unmistakable elevator smell. Smell of the mundane. High-test brass polish and lemon oil. Alabama and Sasha went in first, scuttling backward. Sasha seemed to be taking her captivity with detachment. Then again, I hadn’t broken her wrist. Quinn was sucking air in through his mouth. Expelling it. Vincent had Quinn’s wounded arm twisted up behind his back. Smart play. You get hold of a broken limb and you can make sure its owner stays docile. The elevator moved slowly. Alabama kept her gun at Sasha’s temple. Sasha pressing her lips together and staring dead ahead. A look of total shutdown. True, taking hostages is a surefire cockblock. You have to make sacrifices in the name of the greater good. “Frankly,” said Alabama, “I didn’t think you had it in you.” I managed not to puke on my shoes. “What floor,” I said. “It’s not like that,” said Sasha, “it just goes to Verner’s office.” “Hey, let me ask you,” I said, since I figured I really had no shot with her now, “why do you get to call him Verner. He’s in charge. In my school it’s nuns and I don’t even know their actual names.” Sasha ignored me. Quinn sobbed. I got a weird vibe: this is your life, Mike Wood, fistfights and walking around at night and never getting a straight answer.
I started to chuckle. So did Alabama. “Not funny, you guys,” said Vincent. He was already laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, or tried to say, to Quinn, who was looking at me with fear and glittering hate, “it’s just funny, you have to admit.” I was whooping now, propped against one wall, my whole body aflame. Vincent guffawed and wiped his eyes with his free hand. “Sociopaths,” Sasha whispered. “Hold on, Dr. Freud,” said Vincent, through his dying chuckles, “we’re not sociopaths.” I was—as I would have put it then—fucking dying, gasping for air. Alabama bit her lower lip again and again to stop herself. Her gun never left Sasha’s temple. Quinn kept sobbing. We stopped moving. “Okay, okay,” said Vincent, “everybody get serious.” This set me off again. Alabama too. My jaw ached now. The doors slid back. We all shut up.
Stars. Night sky. A painted dome. A glass dome. No dome, rather. The night sky itself. The blue night and its unrecognizable stars, and the strange, aching scent of its trees. Before us, a long, wide room appointed in leather and blond wood: two huge sofas, an end table supporting a massive, brown-and-beige globe. Bookcases, loaded. The skeleton of a gazelle, I thought, set up on wires. White-painted walls with dark wooden beams and doors set in them. I counted four. The vast night for a ceiling. The air cool and fresh. The air of the out of doors. A comet streaked, hair-thin and bright. Vincent jerked his head to watch and Quinn slipped away. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if they killed me. To have seen this would have made death worthwhile. This vast alien sky and this lonely, warm platform beneath, across which we were marching. Quinn was yelling, “Uncle Verner, Uncle Verner.” Tears throbbing in his voice. I didn’t see Potash, at first. Then I noticed him, sitting on the edge of a vast desk, shooting a deck of cards from one hand to the other. “How does it go about the mountain and Muhammad,” he called. “Verner, they tried to kill us,” said Quinn. Emphasis on kill. That whiner. “Quiet,” said Potash. His thin nephew, the boy with the animal teeth, stopped speaking. “Come in, come in, mi casa and all that,” said Potash. He was speaking to Vincent and staring at the canvas sack he carried. No wall behind Potash’s desk. Just more night and the branches of an enormous tree, thick as human waists and thighs, knotted and covered in waving, sword-shaped leaves.
The white woman: nowhere. I kept checking behind the sofas. For quick-moving shadows. I sniffed the air for her wet-stone scent. Nothing. Did not mean we were safe. I was glad I detected nothing all the same. If she was going to appear and slaughter us, I’d rather it come as a surprise. Potash was bobbing his head. If he went for his wand, I decided, I’d have another run at him. He had a punchable face. “Mr. Potash,” said Alabama, “we don’t mean you any harm. We just came to make the exchange. All this is accidental.” Sasha gulped. Didn’t speak. Alabama’s version: not strictly true. True enough, however. “I trusted,” said Potash, “my own blood. No one believes as firmly in their right to screw you. And this one has always been more than a bit of a moron. So the blame, I think, lies with me.” He stroked his right palm with his left. Like a usurer. No offense to the Jews. Quinn stared at his uncle. Lips quivering. I didn’t know how I’d feel if my uncle sold me down the river, morally speaking. Then again, I don’t have any uncles. Just aunts. “Where’s my brother,” said Vincent. “He’s in the next room,” said Potash. “Get him,” said Vincent. “You’re being hasty,” said Potash. The tree rustled. I stared. “Miraculous, no,” said Potash. He was right. No other word for it. “Iron Tom, he’s called,” said Potash. The name filled me with a yearning ache. Or simply the fact that this great and unknown tree bore a human name at all. “Is it an oak,” I said. “No,” said Potash, “this is not really the neighborhood for oaks.”
“How is it spring,” I said. “Go get my brother,” Vincent said. Sasha tried to break free. She whined and gasped as Alabama choked her. “Your brother’s asleep,” said Potash, “he wakes up when what he stole is in my hand.” I started praying. Ave Marias. For Vincent not to fuck this up. All he had to do was toss Potash the canvas sack. Vincent was staring at the fat man. Who smiled. A sunny uncle. Alabama’s shoes squeaked against the floor. “Gratia plena,” I muttered. Without meaning to. “A religious man as well as an educated one,” said Potash. Vincent tossed him the sack. “Through that door,” said Potash, gesturing with his ringed hand: a two-fingered pass. A benediction. The one nearest us. Vincent ran and leaned against the jamb. Said his brother’s name. No answer. “Still groggy,” said Potash, examining the mappa, “Verner Potash.” I could see the inverses of the lines forming: the warm lamplight poured through the paper. “Hob,” said Vincent. Louder. Again, no answer. He tried the handle. Locked in place.
“You motherfucker,” said Vincent. Alabama let go of Sasha and aimed at Potash. “Don’t move and don’t speak,” said Alabama, “and get your hands up, palms facing me.” Potash had gone gray. Now I was worried. Vincent started throwing himself into the door. Grunting each time. He got nowhere. Sasha’s hand crept toward her green pendant. “I’ll fuck you up,” I said to her, “if you try anything. Even worse than him. And you’re really cute, so it would doubly suck.” I don’t know if I actually would have gone through with it. The threat worked. I felt like a shitbag but what can you do. Sasha dropped her hand. I kept watch. Vincent placed his palms against the door. Veins stood out in his neck. The living wood cracked, groaned, cried out—a crease, a furrow appeared in the middle and deepened. Sap leaked. Sprayed. The door split. The hinge side swung limply. The handle side fell. Vincent sprinted in, his gasps for breath ragged and high. Calling his brother’s name in between them. Dead silence. “Hob,” I heard. Not a shout. A whisper. Then: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, motherfucker, fuck.” Screams. Each rawer than the last.
“Let’s get to it,” said Alabama. Before I could do anything, before I could speak, she started firing. Just like she was pointing out a vista with her index finger. Not aiming at her target. Who was
already chanting (I caught the French word feu) and moving his lifted hands. His ring starting to glow: umber, black, crimson, aquamarine. He’d decided to take his chances. Not quick enough. Alabama shot him in his right palm, then his left. He stopped chanting. The ring stopped glowing. Alabama shot his left knee, then his right. No recoil, no repositioning. Point with the barrel and fire. That’s all. Before Potash fell, squealing, Alabama shot Sasha and Quinn. She kept her eyes on Potash the whole time, firing to her left, her arm out and stiff. This huge gun. Quieter than I’d guessed. Then I remembered. No ceiling. The shots half-echoed. Noise lost in the huge night. I could not move. Sasha and Quinn each took a bullet. In the same spot on both their bodies: about three inches from the right clavicle edge. I saw the blood bloom. I saw them stumble and hit the wall. Slide down. Leaving red traces. They were both whining and yowling with pain. Animal pain. Potash hissed: “This isn’t.” The mappa fluttered on his desk edge. “If he starts talking again, finish him off,” said Alabama. To me. “Okay,” I said. My lips cold with panic. I’d never been given an order to kill before. The fat man curled in front of his desk, gritting his teeth and grinning. I had to give him credit. He took the pain better than his students. “Necessary,” he said. His neck and jowls oyster colored. “It’s not in my hands,” I said, “any longer.”
Vincent charged through the side doorway. The still-attached door half banged against his shoulder: a swift blow. He ignored it. He was sobbing. He leaned against the wall, his face wet and his fists clenched. Alabama crossed the carpet. I remember the precise, padding sounds her feet made, left-right-left-right, amid the cries and labored breathing of the three people she’d shot. She looked through the door, one hand on Vincent’s chest. She looked a long time. The side room lamp-lit. I could see a bed. Two shoes. A wooden table. The brown edge of a blanket. It looked military. That’s all. I was looming over the hard-breathing fat man. His bone-chip necklace clicked as he shook. Shock, I guessed. “Who did this,” said Alabama. Still staring into the room. Potash’s chin thudded on carpet. Blood from his knee and hand wounds spread. The carpet drank it. He started to move his mouth. Alabama interrupted: “No, no. I’m asking you once. If anything other than a person’s name comes out when you answer, that’s it.” Potash gulped air. He set his teeth. “Go ahead,” said Alabama. “You don’t,” said Potash. As far as he got. Alabama half-turned toward us. Stiffened her arm. Bit her lower lip and fired. She might as well have had her eyes shut. Potash’s bulky body leaped. His forehead caved in above his left eye. Blood sprayed my shoes and pant cuffs. The noise still not the thunderous sound I’d been expecting. Flakes of smoldering yellow wood dust fountained into the air. The bullet had struck his desk after passing through his head. Potash kicked. His glossy shoes drummed. Their laces scuttered against the floor. He groaned. Then he was still. “Jesus,” I said. “Come here,” Alabama said. Vincent was weeping.