FALSE FRONT

by Ry Eph

  “Promise me you will drag him out with you,” she says, smoothing down her dress after he pulls her to her feet. She eyes the wet, bloody gun, and says, “And put that away before you kill someone.”

  “Sure.”

  “I would love to stand here gawking at you half naked, but I think it’s time for action,” she says, rotating her head. Her eyes follow the swirling red and blue lights coming in from the window.

  “Let’s do it,” he says, peeking at the swarm of police cars parked outside the house.

  “Action,” she says, getting on her toes and leaning in, kissing Air’s cheek.

  She runs outside screaming, frantic, and yelling in madness about how a man is in her house, that he hurt their brave neighbor, and how he’s holding a gun to her boyfriend’s head. She cries and says, yes my boyfriend is a local author and inside are thousands of stolen books scattered throughout the house. She puts on her best confused face when the police say someone had been running around Vivacity stealing every possible copy of her boyfriend’s novel. She tells them something smelled wrong, something smelled like bourbon. She tells them how they just arrived back home from vacation, and how her boyfriend was working on his next book, and how the man inside said he was obsessed with his masterful storytelling, and how she is afraid she will never hear him speak again, or how she may never get to kiss or hold him again, and how the world may never read another word of his. She tells them her life is ruined, and while she babbles on and on to the officers, a gun goes off inside.

  She screams, begins shaking, and says, “He killed him.”

  Inside, Air wipes the gun with the shirt he was wearing. He stares at the golf-ball-sized split in the center of Tony’s forehead.

  “So that’s what brains really look like.”

  Blood fills the lagoon hole and oozes out of his skull, dampening the floor below Tony. His life source mingles with whiskey.

  Air stands looking down at Tony for a long time. Outside, an officer speaks through a megaphone.

  “Sir, I don’t know what that shot was about. I hope everyone is still alive in there. You can come outside and end all this. No one has to get hurt. Think about how much worse this can get for you and the people you’ve put in harm. Let’s work something out that gets us all out of here alive.”

  Air glances out the window, shakes his head, and looks back down at the dead.

  “I didn’t want to kill you, Tony. I figured you knew it was me behind the mask.” Air saunters over to the chair he was sitting in and picks up the Johnny Walker Blue while he talks. “I guess I was wrong. You really are so dumb you had no clue it was me.” He takes a harsh pull from the bottle. “No anger toward you. I didn’t like you. But I didn’t want to shoot you. It’s just. I’ve learned something about uncertainty. It never ends how you want. A plot hole the size of you would have ruined all of this for us. You saw me. You saw her. You understand.” He stares down at Tony for a long time, as if he’s waiting for him to say something back. He holds the bottle over Tony’s face, slowly tipping it, watching it pour out and douse him. When it empties, he allows the bottle to roll out of his hand and plunge into Tony’s chest. “The fever called Living is conquered at last.”

  The officer continues on pleading and demanding over the megaphone. Air walks over to the cold slumped man in the chair, putting the gun in the guy’s hand. Air no longer matches. Instead, he’s in crisp white and dark blue from neck to feet.

  “Thanks for your help,” he says, patting the dead man in the chair.

  And then he stands, grabs the cigar, and listens to the officer outside pleading for cooperation. When the cigar gets close to being finished, he flicks it into one of the puddles of whiskey, and fire chases up a wet line toward a stack of books. Everything ignites into a flaming rage. The room clouds with suffocating smoke. Air stumbles across the living room, down the stairs, and exits the front door, coughing and yelling for help. Police swarm him, and he points back inside.

  “He’s started a fire.”

  Smoke billows out the front door and beats against the large living room window. Everyone watches. Flames waltz in the reflection of their eyes, and the place burns down.

  Air walks over to his girl, who has raccoon eyes from the fake tears she masterfully displayed, and wraps his hand in hers.

  “Nothing will be the same,” he says.

  Sitting on the corner edge of a king-sized bed inside the voguish W located in downtown Seattle, his lax silver eyes scan the morning news playing on the TV screen. He rubs swollen tissue, butterfly stitched now, on the side of his face. The “Book Heist” has been talked about on the news for the last forty-eight hours. Even this morning, a cheery blonde newscaster goes on about one of the most unusual Vivacity crime stories to go down in sometime. The screen flashes to a Costco employee:

  “Guy was way mad obsessed with this book. He stole all of them. Every last copy. Crazy son of a bitch. I thought he might kill everyone in the whole store. He had that vibe. You see what he did to Nick’s face? Real bad. Something about that book got him all screwed up. I know I’m curious about it. If I can still find a copy.”

  The screen flips back to the blonde newswoman, and Air chuckles while watching the woman continue on about how this mentally confused individual decided to steal the same book from multiple locations. A book at this time only experiencing minimal success in the author’s hometown. She tells how the book was the debut novel of a young author named Air Hunt. How the individual had broken into Air’s house, filling it with all the copies he had stolen over a few day period, and then held him and his stunningly beautiful girlfriend, Naomi, hostage after their return from Portland, before burning the house down. She says, “No one knew Air before, but I guess he’s known now. He’ll forever be tied to the “Book Heist”.”

  A pair of starving lips makes their way up the back of his neck, breaking his concentration from the screen. Naomi crawls closer to him with only an Egyptian cotton towel wrapped around her body.

  “You’ve seen it a million times already,” she says.

  “But I want to watch your part again.”

  “Not bad for my first time in front of the news cameras. It was live too,” she says, and licks the back of his ear, curling her face around his throat and grazing her lower lip against the tattooed wings on his neck.

  “You were perfect. Everyone will want a piece of you now. Naomi the star. More performances to come, love.”

  She reaches around him, hugging his waist, and laying her face against his bony back.

  The newscaster goes on about how the author’s home was doused in alcohol. About how the house went up in flames and came down in ashes. About how the police have the remains of two bodies, and one of those bodies is more than likely the intruder, who probably burned alive when he lit the place on fire. Of course, the other body is the real tragedy.

  Air leans across the bed to pick up his ringing cell phone. A sigh leaves Naomi’s mouth as she stretches on the bed and rests her head against a leather headboard. She pokes at him with her toes, biting her lower lip and teasing him with her sensual eyes. He talks to who rang:

  “Hey, Air.”

  “Hello.”

  “We’re on top of the world this morning.”

  “I’m on top of the world.”

  “Well yeah. But you know what I mean.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We had 150,000 e-books purchased in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “We?”

  “Air, come on.”

  “I.”

  “Okay, Air.”

  “So does that mean I can distribute my hardback copy in more places than just Washington now?”

  “Of course. Let’s talk book tour.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I want a knew publicist and a new agent.”

  “Air, don’t be like that.”

  He winks at Naomi.

  “Air?”

  “Yea
h.”

  “All this free publicity and advertising. You’ve seen the news?”

  “Nothing’s free.”

  “Right.”

  “Tell whoever directs the show there I want someone new.”

  “Air, I’m your man. I promise.”

  “But you promised before.”

  “Every time the story comes up they show the book. It’s different now.”

  “You’re right. Everything is different now.”

  “Air, I’ll make up for what you were not provided with before,” he says.

  Air puts his hand over the cell phone, leaning his head back into Naomi’s lap, his sleek hair now a mess. He winks up at her. “You should hear this desperate clown.” The voice of the man on the other end continues to ramble with promises.

  She leans over his face, locking her lips onto his mouth. Air speaks in spite of them, saying, “Now I am important? Now I’m not just a local author? Now I should quit my day job?”

  “You’re very important, Air.”

  “Why should I choose to stay with you? I’m good for a one-book contract is what I remember you saying a few months ago. That’s what you said, right?”

  “Air, I’m sorry.”

  “Bye.”

  He ends the call, tossing the phone away, reaching up and grabbing the back of Naomi’s head and guiding her to his mouth.

  She kisses him between each word. “What. Did. He. Say?”

  “Whatever he thinks I want to hear.”

  “What did you want to hear?”

  “I sold over a hundred thousand books last night. We won’t know the true numbers until later in the week, I imagine.”

  “Air? You’re joking?”

  “No.”

  “Air?”

  “What?”

  “It worked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  The newscaster continues on with all the emotion she can muster about the death of the brave neighbor, Tony Lowry, the man with a family of four. How the police think he was shot and killed before the house burnt away.

  “That makes me so sad,” she says, pulling her face from his and watching the screen bring up a picture of Tony.

  “Sometimes something horrible brings about something amazing,” Air says.

  “You said no one would get hurt?”

  “Naomi.”

  “Our plan was safe.”

  “I didn’t hurt anyone. They didn’t save him in time.”

  “You dragged him to the door?”

  “The smoke came quicker than I thought it would.”

  “It’s so sad.”

  “The flames spread so fast. I tried to drag him. I thought for sure they would go in and get him.”

  “Why do they think he was shot?”

  “Naomi.”

  “He saw us.”

  Air’s silent.

  “Air?”

  “I once read that sometimes the prize is not worth the cost. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as victory itself. I don’t remember who said it, but I think in our case the cost was appropriate for the prize we’ve gained. Don’t you?”

  She rubs the tips of her fingers against her lips, gazing off at nothing in particular. They sit in silence, watching the screen. He flips over on his stomach, pushing up onto his hands and knees and searching her wounded eyes.

  “He chose it for himself. We didn’t invite him into our story. He forced his way in. Right?”

  She frowns.

  “Naomi?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You remember what I told you when we first started together?”

  “Yes.”

  “That I would do whatever I had to so you can have all of what you want.”

  “I remember.”

  “You want it all?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said we have interviews with all the major cable news stations over the next few weeks. Everyone will want to talk to Mrs. Hunt. Think of the prize.”

  A faint smile spreads across her face and she says, “Mrs. Hunt?”

  “I’ll send his family flowers,” he says.

  She slaps his arm.

  He chuckles, leaning his face close to hers and says, “College scholarships for the children. We pay the house off for the wife?”

  “Better.”

  “And of course, signed copies of the book.”

  “Of course.”

  “The Hunt foundation,” he says.

  “Air, you said Mrs. Hunt?”

  Air tosses her towel open by pinching one of its soft corners between his index finger and thumb, revealing her bare body.

  “Air?”

  He rolls off the bed, his skeleton visible through his creamy tattooed flesh, and walks over to a pair of jeans hanging over the back of a chair. He digs into the pocket and pulls out a little grey box and his cell phone. He scrolls through his apps and hits play on the screen, and the song, “My Girl,” by The Temptations plays low through the Bluetooth speakers in the room.

  Naomi giggles, watching Air snap and strut across the room, stopping every few feet and showing off his best Grease dance moves. When he gets near the edge of the bed, humming the words, he stops. Instead of climbing back on, he kneels to the side of it, holding the box out to her.

  “Air?”

  He folds it open, exposing a 3.00 ct Princess cut diamond and says, “I did say Mrs. Hunt.”

  Her hands cup over her mouth.

  “Will you ma—”

  “Yes.”

  He crawls back onto the bed, and she takes the box from him.

  “So that is where you went off to last night.”

  “I knew it worked. I just knew it. So I spent every last bit of credit we had.”

  “Come here you best selling author.”

  He crawls on top of her and says, “Not just another book anymore. We’re not just any other people anymore.”

  A Novel by Ry Eph Coming the Summer of 2016:

  The 82s

  Moment 1:

  Close Your Eyes

  “Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?”

  “Help me.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I don’t see him anywhere,” a shaken woman says through searing gasps. Her panic whistles through her cell phone into the operator’s ear.

  “Ma’am, are you hurt?”

  The disturbed caller scuttles her jiffy grip slipper soles down the center of a quiet neighborhood street, leaving streaks of blood behind her.

  “Ma’am?”

  “My son is missing,” she says. Trauma beats her trembling voice.

  “Okay, Ma’am. State your name please.”

  A faint evening wind hisses around her as she scrambles through the neighborhood, blowing her cardigan back so it trails behind her, exposing a white v-neck soaked in red. Her face is a mask of blood. She scans every direction with one wild weeping eye, the other collapsed by flowery disfigured skin scarring the outside socket. She tussles onward. Her clear tears wash one side of her ruby veiled face.

  Even though the woman is distraught, it seems her feather-blue eyes possess a jot of hope, a hope carrying her against the something horrible collapsing her.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Let us help you find him. Can I know your name, Ma’am?”

  “You’re not listening to me are you? Someone took my son.”

  “I did hear you, Ma’am. And we want to help your son.”

  “I’ve never seen so much blood,” she says, clenching her shaking hand around the phone, causing her aged pale skin to stretch around her worn jagged knuckles. She presses the phone hard into her cheek so her worn flesh bulges around the device.

  “Blood? Is your son hurt, Ma’am?”

  “Hurt?”

  “Missing or hurt, Ma’am?”

  “I tried to put him back together.”

  “What, Ma’am?”

&
nbsp; She raises her other hand. Under her two center knuckles, the tattooed numbers 82 glisten in gold. She grips a blood-splattered alloy .38 Special Snubby.

  “Ma’am?”

  No visible wounds mark the aged lady, and the mayhem of blood drenching her long grey cardigan looks like someone eviscerated a body over the top of her, turning a person inside out with her under them.

  She ascends a set of wooden porch steps and thumps the handle of the gun against a white front door, stamping it red.

  “Open up.” She keeps thumping against the door. “Brees? Are you in there?" She pounds on the door a few more times, denting the clean wood with the handle of the gun. She places her ear next to the door and listens. Her breathing beats loud against the wood, met with silence from the other side. She attempts to wipe smudges of blood from her wrinkled rosy cheeks with the back of her hand but only further smears her appearance, giving her the look of an extinct painted warrior.

  “Have you seen Brees? I know someone is in there. Answer this damn door.”

  An iron lamp above the door lights up the porch. She stares up at it, tapping her foot against the wooden slats. But before anyone can answer her crazed demands, she takes off, cutting over the front yard and across the sidewalk back into the road. Red footprints trail her.

  “Ma’am, you need to calm down and answer some questions so we can help you,” the dispatcher says.

  “Where is he?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “My son.”

  “Is your son Brees?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Find him.”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to help you through this. We will help you find Brees,” the dispatcher says.

  “It’s Fredrick’s blood.”

  “Who’s Fredrick, Ma’am?"

  She stalls for a moment, slowing down, blinking several times, and adjusting her eyes to a goopy darkness advancing over the neighborhood. Odd opaque clouds creep in around the edges of Vivacity, Washington and ebonize the sky, swallowing the city.

  “Fredrick?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Who’s Fredrick?”

  “Fredrick wasn’t breathing. I put my hands over the wounds, but it kept pouring out,” she says.