Weavers

by Aric Davis

  None of this should have been Darryl’s problem, but it was. If Terry got busted, they were both going down, and there would be some rough questions for Darryl to answer if the police dug into their finances.

  “I’ll get there, Terry,” said Darryl, hating himself as he spoke for not being honest and just calling his friend out on his indiscretions. Terry thought he didn’t know, and that even if he did, he wouldn’t care. After all, Darryl killed people, too, and for whatever reason, Terry couldn’t see the difference. I’m killing as part of a solution so that a couple of lost lives can see a happy ending. He’s just doing it to hurt women because his childhood sucked. Darryl knew this was true yet couldn’t imagine discussing the matter with Terry, whether the man was sober or drunk—or, for that matter, whether Darryl was sober or drunk.

  Instead of facing it, Darryl ignored the problem, giving drunken Terry a wave before turning back to the computer. As he did, though, he gave Terry a little poke, one that he didn’t think his drunk friend would recognize as anything at all, and what he found was even worse than what he’d imagined. Christ. Terry had taken another girl last night—the third one in a week—and this one hadn’t been a native. Darryl could see the whole thing through Terry’s eyes: his friend coercing the drunken teen away from her friends and then slowly raping and killing her on the beach, where he left her body to be discovered by whoever was unlucky enough to stumble across it. The bar he’d taken her from had been packed. Darryl and Terry were both regulars there, and there was no way he hadn’t been noticed.

  “Motherfucker,” said Darryl as he stood and started across the room at Terry.

  In response, Terry dropped his can of beer, sending suds flying into the air as the can bounced on the hardwood floor, and cowered behind his hands.

  It was all Darryl could do to stop short of blowing the fucker up. “We need to go right now, asshole,” he said, looming over him. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You didn’t even have the nerve to tell me. You were going to just let me sit here with you until the police showed up!”

  “You’re not supposed to look in me,” whined Terry. “We have a deal, Darryl, a deal we made a long time ago. You’re not supposed to ever look in me. We both know that I’m poison, you more than anyone. After all—”

  “Think very hard about what you’re going to say,” said Darryl. “I’m serious, Terry. This could be it, and we’ve got a pretty good thing going.”

  “I know, I know,” moaned Terry. “And I ruined it. I fucked up, all right? I was going to tell you, but you know how hard that is, to admit what I did. I can’t just say it, not when you’re risking everything every single time you do your trick.”

  Darryl shook his head. It was already starting to ache, and he was beginning to wonder why he was even still in the apartment. For all he knew, the authorities could already be on their way with some serious questions about the men who had been living there. And if all Terry wanted to do was make excuses for himself, then maybe Darryl should just get on a plane without him and stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  But no. He wasn’t ready to do that.

  “Terry,” said Darryl finally, “this isn’t about us, about me breaking our ‘deal’ and looking into you. I have to look into you, you fuck. This just proves that. And you can’t just boohoo this away, say you’re sorry. This is about you being sloppy and putting everything that we have at risk.”

  “How it went down with that girl wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Terry. “It was consensual, all of it. I just got rough, and then—”

  “Not ‘that’ girl, Terry. Those three girls,” said Darryl. “Get the story straight if you’re going to lie. And while you’re at it, try and remember that I know the rest. You didn’t give me some half-cocked drunk confession where you tried to save me from the worst parts. I’m a thief, remember? I fucking know what you did, all of it, so just cut the shit.”

  “All right,” said Terry. “All right, Darryl. I know it was wrong. I knew I could mess things up, and that this was a good place, but there will be other good places, right? You’re not going to leave me here, right? I can’t do that, Darryl. I can’t go back to a regular life. I can’t be what I am if—”

  “You can’t be what you are anywhere,” hissed Darryl, and Terry waved his hands.

  “I don’t mean like that, seriously, I just meant—”

  “No, Terry, shut up,” said Darryl. “This situation is bad enough without you trying to explain. I know exactly what you mean, but there isn’t a place in the world where you can take a girl like that from a crowded bar and just kill her. Fuck.” Darryl walked away into his bedroom. He could hear Terry scurrying behind him, and Darryl called back to him, “Time to pack, Terry. I’m leaving on the next flight out of here that isn’t heading stateside, and if you’re not with me, you’re never going to see me again.”

  “I’m coming to pack right now,” called Terry.

  Darryl could hear the desperation in his voice but didn’t care. You could blank him right now, make him forget everything he’s ever known and just leave. He’s never going to get better, and you know it. Darryl swallowed thickly. It was true, but he knew why Terry was having those urges in the first place. He knew why, and he knew it wasn’t just a bad childhood. The fact was he needed Terry.

  “Just pack quickly,” said Darryl. “You didn’t leave us much time to work with.” Darryl was throwing his own things into a pair of suitcases, pleased as he worked that he had so little to pack.

  You’ll need to be rid of him before it’s too late, a voice screamed in his head, but it didn’t matter.

  “I still need him,” Darryl said to himself. “At least for now.”

  Darryl and Terry sat in the backseat of the cab. The cabbie was a local and thankfully wanted no conversation after the word “airport” had been uttered. Cops were everywhere, especially for a sleepy Mexican coastal town, and Darryl knew why and that the cabbie had to at least be wondering about the two rough-looking foreigners. Darryl read the cabbie as they moved, letting his topknot meld with the cabbie’s, but aside from irritation with his job, breakfast, and wife, the cabbie was doing pretty OK.

  That is, he was doing pretty OK until they passed a cop car. / Couple of fucking gringos / Probably fucking did it / So sick of them treating this country like a toilet / Darryl took in the thoughts like poison, then leaned back in his seat and tried to have golden thoughts. He dug in the cabbie’s head for memories of his wedding day, of his daughter’s birth, of playing baseball with neighborhood kids. Darryl let these memories bubble to the surface one after another, and when he looked at the space between them he could see that the yellow from his topknot was bending the cabbie’s to a calming blue.

  The cabbie parked at the airport, helped them get the bags from the car, and was actually whistling as he got back in the driver’s seat and pulled away from the curb.

  Darryl led the way wordlessly as the two slipped into the airport amid a sea of other travelers. He tried to think positively—Mexico was still a borderline Third World country, and the chances of the police having much of a lead on Terry seemed low—but a very loud, angry, panicked part of him screamed that he would be better off just shutting Terry down on some airport bench and leaving while his friend slept.

  But it was a quiet voice that he ended up heeding: You need him just as much as he needs you.

  Darryl led the way to the ticket booth and parked his luggage two customers back from his turn to talk to a rep from Delta. Terry whispered something to him, and when Darryl turned to ask him to repeat himself, he saw a group of four cops working their way through the airport. Fuck, thought Darryl. The cops were stopping Americans, checking passports. He wanted to dive into Terry’s brain right there so he could know if there was any reason to think the cops had Darryl’s name, but he didn’t really need to. They had a sketch of the two of them from the bar and
they had Terry’s name, he was sure of it—when you’re chatting up a potential date for the abattoir, you pretty much have to give your name, and Terry wouldn’t have had the sense to make one up. No, the cops had what they needed. It was just a matter of time until they found them.

  The old couple in front of them parted, and as Darryl walked to the young woman working the counter, he hit her with a bend without even thinking of the consequences. He knew he’d have to work fast, could feel the cops on their necks. He settled in, doing his best to control both himself and the ticket agent, and reminding himself as he worked that this was practically running an old-school operation compared to the computer work.

  Darryl laid his own hands atop the ticket counter, then set the woman’s fingers to flying on the computer in front of her. He could feel her breaking, but it didn’t matter. He punched in his name and then Terry’s, not even checking where the flight was going, because that didn’t matter right now. There were connections all over the world that they could take later, but right now all they needed was to be out of Mexico. Darryl made the woman take the tickets from the printer, her hands feeling like he was working with a pair of oven mitts, and then laid the boarding passes on the counter. This was the sloppiest he’d worked in years, but he could see the police through the woman’s eyes working their way up the line behind them, and the mess he was making of the woman was the least of his worries.

  Darryl grabbed the tickets with his own fingers as he slowly took back control of his own body, and as his hearing came back, he could hear the clerk next to the woman asking her rapid-fire questions in Spanish. “Sí, sí,” said Darryl through the woman’s mouth, and that just made the other clerk look even more confused. Darryl grabbed his bags, leaving a connection to the woman still flowing behind him like a bridal train, and then took off from the counter with Terry at his heels.

  “Go to bed,” said Darryl to himself as he cut the woman off, and behind them he could hear panicked screaming.

  “Hit the bathroom,” said Darryl as he steamed ahead of Terry. “Leave the suitcases, get on the plane.”

  In the bathroom, Darryl led Terry to an empty stall and took his bag from him. He balanced both their bags atop the stall’s toilet, then unzipped the top bag and pulled out a pair of pants and a pair of worn loafers. He set the shoes on the floor and the waist of the pants on the toilet seat with the suitcase atop them, then tucked the ankles of the pants into the shoes and shut the door. From the outside, it looked like someone was taking a shit.

  “How are we going to get our stuff back?” Terry asked as Darryl led them from the bathroom toward the security checkpoint.

  “We’re not.”

  Darryl ignored his friend’s protests as they closed in on the security station, pulling his ticket from his pants pocket to see where they were headed. Shit. They were on their way to Des Moines, Iowa, for some reason—back in the middle of the central United States. We’re going to need to stay there awhile, too. You know that. The best thing to do—assuming they even made it through security—would be to hit Des Moines and lie low for a few weeks before getting the fuck out of Dodge.

  Darryl winced as they hit the line for the checkpoint. He must have left something with the woman at the ticket counter. She’d just died, and his brain felt like it had been snapped with a rubber band the size of a fan belt.

  “Are you OK?” Terry asked as they shuffled through the line, and Darryl turned at him and smiled for the benefit of the people around them.

  “I’m just ready to get on this plane and get back to the US,” said Darryl, turning back around and ignoring the confused look Terry gave him. Jesus, it’s bad enough I had to bend that woman in the fucking airport, but I’m going to have to euthanize Terry, too, if he can’t start thinking straight. Remembering that Terry had started this adventure drunk, Darryl took a deep breath and tried to calm down. The serious part of the checkpoint was coming up, and it was safe to assume that the guards were looking for a gringo who resembled Terry a great deal.

  Darryl gave his passport and ticket to the man standing at a little podium in front of the X-ray machines. He was ready to fry him—to not even attempt to use the man, just send a blast into his brain and shut him off like a light switch—but there was no need. The man took his passport and ticket, grunted, and then handed them back, before doing the same for Terry. The two of them took their papers back, passed through the metal detector, and walked to their gate.

  It was an hour later before they could board the packed plane and sit down. It would be hours until they could talk about what had happened, but Darryl was just fine with that. He had no idea if he was going to let Terry ever leave Des Moines, or if he even wanted to keep the charade going. Everything since Vincent had been a nightmare, and the setup in Mexico was going to cost them a significant sum of money. Darryl grabbed a magazine from the seat back and then opened it to read. He fell asleep moments later as the plane took off, and his dreams were awful.

  CHAPTER 18

  Cynthia took a sip of milk as Mrs. Martin returned to the table with a plate of delicious-looking chocolate-chip cookies. Mrs. Martin set the cookies down between them, then sat in the chair opposite Cynthia and took a drink of her own milk. Cynthia smiled at her, and Mrs. Martin smiled back, while the dogs ran around Cynthia’s ankles, begging to be picked up again.

  Mrs. Martin looked down at them and shook her head. “I can lock them up in the bedroom if you want, dear.”

  “No, I like them just fine where they are. They’re so friendly.”

  “They are indeed, at least to the right person,” said Mrs. Martin with a curt nod. “Do you know why they like you so much, Cynthia?”

  “I guess because I’m not much bigger than they are, and because they like to be petted, and I like to pet them.”

  “Those are certainly very good reasons,” said Mrs. Martin. “But I was looking for another answer, and it’s kind of a scary one. I don’t want you to be afraid, though. I want you to trust me, even though you have a hard time trusting any adult right now. I know that adults—”

  “Lie,” Cynthia finished for her. “They lie and they get divorce, and then you have to move. They get in really mean fights where no one says what they’re thinking but everyone hates each other. They lie.” Cynthia could feel the tears welling up in her eyes, and she leaned down to rub Libby between the ears and to dry her eyes in secrecy.

  “They do lie,” said Mrs. Martin. “That’s one of the worst things about childhood, the discovery that adults make mistakes and are far more apt to lie, cheat, or steal than even the worst little child. Adults are cruel, and often with a purpose. At least when a child is cruel it is typically for reasons they don’t understand.” Mrs. Martin took a cookie from the plate, dunked it in her milk, and nibbled at the edge of it. She smiled and said, “But we both know that’s not what I was asking you, not really. You’ve been seeing the threads of the Moirai.”

  “The what?”

  “The strings, my dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “You have been seeing them, haven’t you?”

  “It just started,” said Cynthia. “I was at my Nan and Pop’s house taking a nap, and when I woke up I knew my parents were going to get divorce because of affair. When my parents came home, I could see red lines coming from their heads and from Nan and Pop’s heads. My dad’s were a little purple, but the rest were bright red—so bright that I can’t understand how no one else could see it.”

  “Are you sure they were purple?” Mrs. Martin asked in a small voice, and Cynthia nodded.

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Martin pursed her lips, set the cookie she was eating down, and took a pack of the funny-smelling cigarettes from her pocket and stood. She walked back into the kitchen and grabbed a glass ashtray from a drawer, then walked back to the table and set it down. Cynthia realized as the older woman went through the motions of removing and lighting a cigarette that
she had been watching her head, as if she were expecting to see something there, but there were no threads betraying Mrs. Martin’s emotions.

  “Purple is never good,” said Mrs. Martin between drags of her cigarette, and Cynthia looked at her with a terrified mask on her face. “Calm down, dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “You haven’t even touched a cookie. Let the dogs alone, and let’s discuss this. I regret that I won’t be able to answer every question that you have, but I should be able to help with a great many of them.”

  “You looked scared when I said that Daddy’s strings were purple,” whispered Cynthia. “They were purple yesterday, and they were purple again today when I went to the store and they were all fighting.”

  “You have crayons, don’t you, Cynthia?”

  “Yes, but they’re still at the old yellow house, not here in the apartment.”

  “Well, you’re going to need to get your mother to buy you a set,” said Mrs. Martin as she tapped her cigarette on the glass ashtray. “I suppose I can if she won’t, but it will make a lot more sense to her if they don’t just happen to show up. Your mom trusts me, but only just so much, and I don’t think a gift from me now, even a small one, would help build her trust in me.”

  “What will I do with the crayons?” Cynthia had no doubt that she could get her mother to buy her a set. Her mother knew she loved coloring and couldn’t imagine not being able to draw.

  “You’re going to make a color chart,” said Mrs. Martin as she stood again, leaving her cigarette in the ashtray and walking into the living room to get her purse. She took her wallet from it, walked back to the table, and sat before opening it, and then removed a sheet of worn and yellowed paper. “When my great-grandmother told me about the Moirai, she was close to dying, and she made me promise that I would remember every word she said. More specifically, she made me promise that if I could ever see, I would get a set of paints and make a chart so that I could remember them all.”