“You fucking piece of shit.” He roared. “You took my eye. My fucking eye.” Placido was belligerent. Scratching at the air—fighting the rain. He screamed and bellowed like the bearded toddler he was. There were small holes all over his shirt. The pen knife had gone on a hell of a trip, but those wounds were nuisances. The eye was a major victory, though.
Fantine pulled herself up to her feet. Turned. She was tired. Tired of dealing with idiots like Placido and Aleksei. Tired of losing the idiots in her life like Pete and her mother. She loved them, sure, but had to admit they were more flawed than not. Just like her. All that time, she thought she was better—smarter. That wasn’t true. Fantine made the biggest mistakes. She doubted, never thought anything through. Life wasn’t a lock—there was no secret way to get things exactly how she wanted them to be.
“Fuck it,” she muttered. “Fine, asshole. You want someone to take this shit out on?” Fantine could barely see. The wind blew the rain into her eyes. It gusted and she felt like she’d be sent off like the rest of the New York City trash. Something bumped against her foot. She looked down—a jagged piece of metal. It was in her hand before she could even register. “Come on!” She gestured to Placido—an open challenge to the half-blind bull.
Placido charged forward, fist held high in the air. The distance between them closed in seconds. He met the rougher end of the metal in Fantine’s hand chest first and seemed to deflate. Fantine fell back and he came with her. She felt a pinch against her stomach, then a pain that lit the sky above them with fire. Placido pawed at her weakly. His breath rattled in her ears. She knew the instant he died because she could feel his entire weight settle against her, as if he would melt into her.
Fantine closed her eyes and concentrated on everything but the pain. The car alarms, the sirens, the way the rain played staccato on the filthy water she lay in compared to how it sounded against the back of Placido’s head. She concentrated on the stinging cold and on the musty smell surrounding her. The slosh of footsteps towards her, the relief when all that weight seemed to float away from her. That was when she felt her back pull away from the ground and she was lifted into the darkness above. Something warm engulfed her and she could hear heavy breathing. Fantine saw red and blue.
She was compelled to laugh, so she did—like a child. It didn’t hurt so bad.
17
November 19th, 2012 NYU Langone Medical Center, New York City
The smell—that familiar hospital stench—made her stomach flip. Lemons again. Fantine sat up—bad idea—her midsection seized and the world went white. It felt like knives were twisting inside her from bellybutton to throat. The pain was so bad she went cross-eyed and struggled to find her breath again.
After slapping down on her wilted pillow and blinking her way back to the real world, she could breathe without needles riding up and down her midsection. “Fuck.” Even she was surprised at how hoarse and low her voice was.
“About time you woke up,” Jae said.
Fantine followed the sound of his voice to her left. When the pain started to fade, she could make him out. She reached a hand out to him and ignored the three different needles nested in her hand, wrist, and forearm. “Hey, old man.” She smiled. Her lips split from being dry, but that pain was welcome compared to the business in her gut.
Fantine looked around the room. There were flowers on a dresser right in front of her. Above that, a TV was playing the soap opera her father liked so much. She slowly pulled herself into a seated position and took a long breath. At her right, a plunger-style button. She’d seen that before—morphine. She snatched at it and pressed the button. There was an immediate tension in her neck, and then it went slack. Bliss rolled in. Like a million kittens giving her a hug.
“You don’t get much of that, so don’t go abusing it.” Jae took a sip from a coffee shop cup. “Looks like its Jell-O and soup for you. Doctors said your stomach was in pretty bad shape.”
Fantine nodded. “That bad?”
“That bad.”
“I notice I don’t have any handcuffs on me.”
Jae laughed. “Why would you? Between me and the stories from those boys you helped, you’re a hero. It all fell the right way.” He smirked. “I asked the media to please respect your privacy as you recuperated.”
“Aleksei?”
Jae shrugged. “Damned if I know.” He coughed—hard. Wiped his mouth when he was through. “You’re okay and I’m okay. That’s all that matters.” He placed a hand on hers. He looked grey—as if he’d been left out of the freezer for too long.
Fantine smiled. She noticed Jae felt hot. “Are you okay? That cough doesn’t sound too...”
He waved her off. “A cold. I’ve had worse.”
“We’re in a hospital, you know.”
“Exactly, if it was bad, they’d have me in a bed next to yours.”
They stayed silent for a while. The soap opera was engaging. Someone named Samantha was revealing to her twin in great detail how she’d murdered the twin’s boyfriend and kidnapped her adopted black baby. The villain’s monologue sealed her doom when the black baby—through some kind of superhuman feat—managed to push her off the balcony she conveniently stood near while talking.
“This is terrible, Dad.”
“But the girls are easy on the eyes.”
“I read the letter from Mom.” Fantine rubbed her eyes. Reached for a Styrofoam cup of ice chips on a tray set up in front of her. She dumped a few in her mouth and chewed.
“I hoped you did.”
“What did you owe?”
Jae smirked. “What else does a man owe but money, Fan? It’s always fucking money.” He leaned over to the side and brought a briefcase into view. Laid it on the night table next to Fantine.
“What’s that?” Fantine asked.
“I can’t open it.”
She laughed out loud. Her midsection revolted and she cut herself short.
Jae reached over and pressed a red button at Fan’s right side. “Free drugs.”
“Thanks.” The relief came in that same pleasant wave. Fan reached over and snatched the briefcase from the table. There was an echo of pain, but the morphine made it so very easy to ignore. “One last job?”
“One last job,” Jae said quietly.
Fantine eyed the case. It was one of the double latched number combination types that were so popular in the late-eighties. The way the numbers were set, it was obvious the combination hadn’t been changed yet. “Wow, it’s still on default.” She went through the standard default combinations she remembered most companies used—all zeroes or sequential numbers from one to nine. It was never very complicated, At worst; a company would use something like a product number or zip code if they were clever. This suitcase unlatched when she entered 1-2-3-4 on one latch and 6-7-8-9 on the other. Poor 5 sat that one out.
Fantine opened the case and gasped. Money. A lot of fucking money. “Holy balls.”
“That good?”
“Where the hell did you find this?”
“I went back downstairs when you and that idiot ran off. Thought maybe I would find another gun or a working phone.” He threw his hands in the air. “All I found were containers filled with you-know-what and that briefcase.”
“It must have been whatever Placido had on hand. That fucker lied about there being money.” Fantine wondered about Aleksei’s notebook—about the routing numbers. They were probably dragged into the floodwaters now, a potential goldmine to a lucky emergency responder or some random passerby with enough sense to know what those numbers were.
Jae smiled. “How much do you think we have?”
“Enough money to go away once I can breathe without wanting to die.”
Jae coughed again. “Good.” The coughing got worse. She could hear his chest rattle.
“Seriously, Dad. Can you ask a nurse to check you out?” Fantine closed the briefcase and set it down at the side of the bed. “We were out in a pretty nasty spot.”
/> Jae stood up. “Fine. I’ll ask if they can get an accurate temperature with those special thermometers.”
“The ones they put up your ass?”
“I need a little action in my life.”
Fantine laughed, this time it hurt. “Go, go,” she said waving him away, “before I actually bust my gut.”
Jae walked to the door and turned. “You did good, Fan. Lily would have been proud.”
“Mom would have kicked my ass. Don’t play that sentimental crap with me.”
Jae nodded. “You’re right, but I like to think a little bit of her would have been proud. At least while she was kicking your ass.” He smiled. “Get some rest.”
Fantine leaned back. “Can I at least have the remote to change this crap?”
“No.” Jae walked out of the room and into the hall.
“Love you too, asshole.” She smiled and closed her eyes.
The head nurse came to tell Fantine about her father only hours later. A seizure from a fever. The old bastard’s temperature clocked in at over 105. Old man like that couldn’t handle that kind of stress and his heart gave out before they could do anything to stabilize his condition.
Fantine wanted to say something clever, something that would let them know she could handle hearing those words—like she did when her mother died. She failed at that. After asking the nurse to give her some time alone, she spent it crying and cursing her father for letting this happen. That was wrong, though. The poor man had gone through twenty years of stress in three weeks alone. It was a wonder she hadn’t lost him the night of the storm.
Fantine pushed forward with recovery. The damage from Sandy took her story out of the limelight almost immediately. This was a good thing; Fantine didn’t need focus to be on someone like her when people needed real help. It also didn’t hurt that it maintained her freedom as well. The fear of the police rolling in to cuff her was ever-present, but she had distractions—thankfully. She became a real big fan of mid-day soap operas after the news. For the next few weeks, she watched and recuperated. Did as she was told by the doctors and by the time her staples came out, they told her she’d be good to go in as soon as a day.
“I’m glad nothing got infected. You’d been in some nasty water,” her doctor told her. “A lot of people came down with severe bronchial infections just from breathing some of that in.”
Fantine shrugged. “I’m a lucky girl, I guess.”
She had to make all arrangements for Jae while at the hospital. By the time she was ready to leave, Jae was with her again—albeit in an urn. Fantine wondered why he’d asked to be cremated instead of buried with her mother, but if that was what he wanted, that was what he got. There was a proviso to leave the urn at her mother’s grave—another odd request—but her father was an odd man.
Jae was smart enough to not only go back for the briefcase, but for Fantine’s bag too. All of Aleksei’s goods were gone, but there were still some fake IDs and extra spending money. He’d left her a note on a particular ID with a picture of her mother where she and Fantine would have been hard to tell apart. The note read, This is your name downstairs. Fantine smiled at the picture of her mother and at the name listed next to it, Cosette Lee.
“Cute,” she said.
Everything collected; Fantine gleefully accepted her wheelchair ride to the entrance of the hospital and outside. She wished a few nurses a fond farewell and thanked the orderly as she stood up and took her first real breath of fresh air in almost a month. The sun was out, but it was cold. She’d heard on the news that some people were still feeling the effects of the storm—just like her. That was okay, she thought, we all have our damage—it never needs to go away completely. Fantine—now Cosette—took her briefcase and bag, hailed a cab, and slipped in.
“Where you going?” The cabby looked how he smelled.
Fantine rolled down a window. “I have to make a stop at Saint Raymond’s cemetery in the Bronx—the Holy Cross section. After that, the airport.”
“Which airport?” the cabby asked.
“Whichever’s closest,” she said.
The cab pulled out of the hospital carport and onto the streets. Fantine leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. She wondered what the weather was like in France.
She practiced her French on the drive to the cemetery.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Big thanks to Eric Campbell and the crew at Down & Out Books for taking a chance with a story initially hatched from the simple idea: death by bukkake. You folks may be a little stranger than I am.
As always, a big thank you to my Shotgun Honey family: Jen Conley, Nick Kolakowski, Chris Irvin, Erik Arneson, and Ron Earl Phillips. You guys are always a big inspiration.
To the poor bastard that’s heard me talk about this goddamn story for longer than most; thanks Todd Robinson. Hope my dashing good looks make up for the shit conversation.
Super, super big thanks to my only beta reader (other than my wife, but that lady’s biased), Holly West. Holly, you rock and were absolutely instrumental to me getting my head around the story of Fantine Park. I owe you many beers!
And finally, thank you to my wife and kids for their infinite patience and their love. Not a damn thing gets done without you guys. Every last word is yours.
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Angel Luis Colón is the author of The Fury of Blacky Jaguar, No Happy Endings, and the in-progress short story anthology Meat City on Fire (and Other Assorted Debacles). He’s an editor for the flash fiction site Shotgun Honey, has been nominated for the Derringer Award, and is published in multiple web and print pubs such as Thuglit, Literary Orphans, All Due Respect, The Life Sentence, RT Book Reviews, and The LA Review of Books. He’s currently repped by Foundry Literary + Media. Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife.
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ALSO BY ANGEL LUIS COLÓN
The Fury of Blacky Jaguar
Blacky Jaguar and the Cool Clux Cult (*)
Meat City on Fire and Other Stories (*)
(*) Coming soon
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No Happy Endings Page 11