by Kurtz, Ed
“What’s that?” he asked. “Negatives?”
“Pos, actually,” Trevor put in. “Part of a print.”
“A small part,” she said.
“Print? What print?”
“An original road show print,” said Trevor. “It’s just an old movie.”
Nick squashed his eyebrows together. “I don’t understand.”
“That old place—the Rialto—it’s been there for decades. Used to show regular movies, then went to porno and back to mainstream before turning over to what it is now eight, nine years back. There’s this huge storage space in the loft…”
“…right above the projection booth,” Charise cut in.
“Full of all kinds of old shit. Like everybody who ever owned or managed the place threw stuff up there and then forgot all about it.”
“Like that,” Nick said, pointing at the film strip.
“It’s—it’s an old road show roughie,” Charise said. “Naked Nightmare, it’s called.”
“Porn,” Nick said.
“Soft-core,” said Trevor. “But it’s worth preserving. Rare old stuff like this, it’s our thing.”
Nick nodded, though he didn’t get it. He glanced again at the posters hanging on the walls, all weird, old movies he’d never heard of and wouldn’t watch if he had. He shrugged. It all seemed so anticlimactic to him.
“Dude who owns the Rialto, Angelo, he’s into a lot of shady shit. We just wanted to rescue this stuff, clean it up and get it digitized, you know?”
“But you’re still stealing from a connected guy.”
Charise looked at the boxes on her lap. “Yeah,” she said.
“I don’t think he knows,” Nick said.
“I don’t think he’d have somebody murdered over something like this either,” Trevor said, eyeing Nick with more gumption than he’d managed until then.
Nick shook his head.
“So…why?”
“Why…” Nick repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth like he was trying to figure out how to swallow it. “Because I thought maybe if I could—kill you, both of you, over nothing, for no reason at all, good or bad—maybe I wouldn’t have to…”
He tilted his head back, his eyes getting hot and his throat half closing.
Trevor and Charise waited, quiet and afraid. Nick made a leaky tire sound in the back of his mouth and said, “Feel.”
The girl let the strip fall back into the Jujubes box.
“Feel?” she whispered.
“There’s too many, kid. Too many years, too many bodies. I can’t let that pile up on me now. Not after so long. I can’t do that.”
“But we didn’t do anything to you,” she said, her voice wet and on the verge of breaking. “To anybody.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Nick said, a sad smile playing at his lips. “I saw you two. At the goddamned HoJo’s. I’ve been watching you for a while. Trying to sort it all out. What it means. Why I get sick when I…work. Why I keep remembering everything. I never used to think about it. Not about yesterday or the day before that or last year or any of it. I work and I sleep and I eat. I’m not a person, do you fucking understand that? You are. Both of you are, I can see that. But not me. I am not a human being. And I don’t want to be.”
“It’s…this is just random, then?” Trevor said.
“Could have been anyone.”
“You don’t have to. It’s up to you, and you don’t have to do this.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Trevor. I didn’t before. But I do now. You’re a contract, as of today. And I’ve never squelched on a contract.”
Charise fell apart, collapsing into Trevor and soaking his shirtsleeve with her tears and snot. He held on to her, but his eyes shot across to the mobile phone on the TV stand, only barely out of reach.
* * *
“This,” Mother said, taking the glasses from her face and placing them gently atop a small stack of papers, “is unexpected.”
Nick remained frozen, his eyes flitting from Mother to the papers and back to her again. He opened his mouth to speak, but realizing he couldn’t think of a single thing to say, snapped it shut again.
“There was this burger joint back in Texas,” she continued, leaning back and lacing her fingers together over her midsection. “Stan’s. Decent if you care for fast food, I suppose. It’s still there, last I was around, but it was owned and operated by this couple: Stan, of course, and his wife, Jan.”
Nick nodded. He immediately felt foolish. To some degree he was submitting to her authority, keeping quiet and letting her say what she wanted to say, while still holding firm to the wire between his mildly shaking hands.
“Point being, Stan and Jan split up. And the burger joint, the whole chain of them, got split up between the two of them, so now some of them are Stan’s and some are Jan’s. It’s the silliest thing, really—folks around there have a mild war of loyalty going on, have ever since. Some swear by his hamburgers and others claim hers are better by far. And do you know what, Nick? They’re exactly the same. The only thing that ever changed was the fucking sign on the buildings. People get pretty funny when it comes to divorces and allegiance sometimes, let me tell you.”
“I guess so,” Nick said.
“I preferred another place altogether, personally. Though at my age I can’t really afford to stuff that kind of garbage into my body anymore, anyway.”
“Mother,” he said, “the, uh, code. In the locker. It brought me here.”
“I realize that, you twit.”
“Are you—?”
“I’m trying to explain it to you, if you’d shut your mouth for one minute and actually listen to someone smarter than you speak for once in your life.”
“Right,” he said, furrowing his brow.
“Love doesn’t really exist,” Mother went on. “You understand that, right?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I—”
“Why did you kill those people in my massage parlor, Nick?”
For a fraction of a second, he felt himself nearly wince at the memory foisted upon him. But he didn’t. When she said those people, Nick could vividly see their faces, clearly recall their names and their final moments and how he brought them there. Joe and Hana. People who hadn’t needed to die that night; people who died for a girl who went away.
He almost laughed.
Mostly, he didn’t feel anything at all.
“Not love,” Mother said, shaking her head subtly and sagely. “Not that.”
“No,” he agreed.
“You dumb bastard,” she said. “It’s all right. You’re young. But you can’t be dumb forever.”
Nick nodded.
“I’m getting divorced, now. This”—she unlaced her fingers and spread them out over the papers on the table—“all of this, was a joint operation, boy. His and mine. His at the outset, sure, but I’m damn good at this. Better than he ever was. I’m not humble, but it’s true.”
“Stan’s and Jan’s,” he said.
“Yes. Only this time Jan’s burgers really are better. You can take that to the fucking bank.”
“And…what about Stan?”
“Hah,” Mother snorted. “Why do you think you’re here?”
“Christ,” Nick said. He drew in a deep breath, smelled the astringent odor of Lysol and bleach. “Hostile takeover.”
“That’s the long and short of it,” she said. “Looks like you work for him now. My betrothed.”
“Not love.”
“No,” she said. “Never that.”
“Tell me what to do,” Nick said. “I never even met him. Don’t even know his name. You want me to do him instead? Tell me. That’s what I’ll do.”
Mother smiled, just enough that her mouth resembled a small pink moth.
“I’m not going to tell you his name,” she said. “Or anything else about him. If he wants you to know, you’ll know. Apart from that,
you work for him now. And goddamnit, Nick—you never squelch on a contract. Be a fucking professional, for Christ’s sake.”
“I can’t. You can’t expect me to.”
“What the hell do you owe me, Nick? I made you murder a man you never met to even a score with me. You never had to go back to that depot. You could have just walked away, gone to some other town and never looked back. Don’t you realize that? Don’t you see it’s too late now?”
“Maybe I’m just loyal to Jan’s.”
“Jan’s is closed, kid. And a word to the wise: squelchers get squashed. You did all right with Hart. Messy, but all right. Make this one count. Do it quick, do it clean. And get the hell out of here. You are what you are, and my guess is you always were. I think maybe that fuckup at the Cowboy was just you trying to figure out what it might be like to be a human being, but now—finally, Nick—you’re starting to get it, aren’t you?”
“I’m not a human being.”
“You’re the goddamned cleaning lady. And by Christ, a burger is just a burger. Who cares where you eat it?”
She tilted her head to one side, her eyes unblinking and hard. Nick saw in that moment that Mother was no human being, either. They were two nonpersons, hiding out in plain sight, doing what needed to be done, balancing the books. He could see that now.
“Did you make that?” Mother said at some length, motioning with her head at the wire in Nick’s hands.
“Yeah.”
“Why a garrote?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“That’s what it is. Originates in Spain, and those people knew how to make folks hurt. A proper one, you tighten it with a stick that you twist, like so.” She pantomimed the action, turning her hands over each other, turning the invisible stick and cutting off her imaginary victim’s air supply. “The word actually refers to the stick. But that, my friend, is still a garrote. Interesting choice.”
“It was circumstantial.”
“Improvisation? Color me impressed.”
“There are two dead guys in an abandoned sports shop across town. I don’t know what they were planning to do to me, but I didn’t hesitate. Everything’s different since Hart. I don’t know why.”
“Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, Nick. This is what you’ve always been meant for. This is who you are.”
“Then you’re giving up.”
“I’m letting fate have its say. No sense fighting it. Everybody gets knocked off in the end, one way or another. I like you, Nick. Might as well be you.”
“That’s a little fucked up,” Nick said.
Mother shrugged. She picked up her teacup by the handle—the light clinking Nick heard from the other side of the basement door—and after a sip, she scowled.
“Cold,” she said. “Be a dear and warm that up in the microwave, will you? I’d like to finish it before we get down to the business at hand.”
He hesitated, but ultimately freed one hand from the garrote and reached for the cup.
“Sure,” he said, taking her tea across the kitchen. By the time he reached the microwave he heard wooden legs screech across linoleum and Mother—Selma Bea—was up and running.
Nick was learning they nearly always did.
* * *
“Don’t,” Nick said.
Trevor’s line of sight snapped back to him, his mouth hanging open.
“I wasn’t…”
“Shut up. Just don’t. This is all going to be over in a little while.”
But how’s it going to end, Nick? the voice inside his skull asked pointedly.
You don’t have to, the kid had said.
Didn’t he?
Never squelch on a contract (Trevor). Never leave a witness (Charise).
He hadn’t.
But he had.
And son of a bitch, how couldn’t he have seen it?
“Christly fucking shit,” he spat, spinning round and all but collapsing against the short kitchenette counter. “I don’t. Holy mother of fuck, I don’t.”
“What’s he talking about?” the girl asked Trevor.
“Don’t what?” Trevor said, his voice far too loud and filled with terror.
“Maybe it is fate,” Nick said. “Maybe. I don’t know. The nausea—the goddamned nausea. It’s all a weird circle, isn’t it? Everything is. God, but it took a long way round.”
“Trev,” she whined.
He shushed her, pulled her into an even tighter hug. Nick laughed a small, sad laugh, and when he turned back around again, there were tears dancing at the edges of his eyelashes.
“I—I thought it was nothing. All of it, I mean. No meaning. No love. No emotion, no emotion.” He sang these last words, scratching his neck and allowing the tears to fall past his eyelashes, dripping like misting rain to the floor. “I’ve been fucking losing it, since that one job, you know? Lou goddamned Szczepański. No idea. Not a clue who he was. Some executive, I reckoned. Didn’t matter. Who cares?”
The last words were barely out before Nick erupted into a wet belch, after which he screwed up his mouth, squeezed his eyes shut, and half doubled over.
“Bathroom,” he managed to say, and with a quaking hand Trevor pointed the way. Nick bolted, and the second he was out of sight, Trevor lunged for the mobile.
His hand snapped back like a rubber band when the window shattered a few feet away, right beside the front door.
* * *
Selma Bea darted for the stairs. Nick hadn’t expected that, but decided it made sense: her child was up there, and she didn’t want to leave her behind. But she was also trapping herself on the uppermost floor, making his job easier, though nowhere near as easy as her apparent surrender moments before. He followed at a leisurely trot, his shoes sinking into the plush carpet that covered the steps leading up, thinking all the while how the mind had to kick into some sort of self-preservation instinct at a moment like that, facing one’s own imminent demise. She certainly seemed to accept what was happening, yet at the last possible second dashed off without a word, desperate to save herself. As if she could.
Fate, she’d called it. Nick wasn’t too sure about that, but either way he wasn’t interested in letting her get away from him while the new boss roamed free and clear to do whatever it was people like him did to squelchers. It wasn’t all that different than Hart—it was her or him. She’d made that much clear herself.
At the top of the stairs he found himself in a dim hallway with closed doors on either end and three rooms in between. It struck him how large the house seemed from the outside, but inside everything seemed so cramped, partitioned into small, dark spaces. Even the hall itself was narrow, the ceiling low. Nick thought vaguely how the house was like an unfocused mind—big enough to wrap itself around complex tasks but too broken up, spread out too thin. Wasting itself on regrets and hopes and self-recriminations. The sort of harried divide that led to relying too much on other people (Misty) and getting too invested in their choices (revenge). He thought about a weird tic he’d developed in adolescence, a nonsense phrase he brought to mind whenever his thoughts and feelings started to pile up, overwhelm. I have never killed a man for his shoes. He hadn’t, of course. It didn’t matter. The point was to focus on the words, not the meaning, and let them overtake the chaos in his skull until it all burned out under the weight of the pointless sentence. It was almost like a Buddhist koan, a strange form of meditation that worked well for him well into adulthood, until it was automatic and he no longer had to conjure it. Somehow, by the time he met Misty, the pseudo-koan had faded away. He fell into the chaos again, the over-compartmentalization of his own mind, just like this queer big/little house.
There was no chaos now. Nick was fixated. He couldn’t care less who the mark was, today or any other day. There was a job needed doing. He intended to do it.
He advanced to the center of the hallway, fell still, and listened.
From behind a closed door to his back, a whimper.
A hush.
The shrieky whoosh of a window heaved open.
We’re on the third floor, Nick thought, and he pushed his way into the room. The room was small and pink and lacey—a girl child’s room, with the girl child getting pulled out through the window by Selma Bea, perched on the shingled awning above the front walk.
The girl squalled, her limbs folding up like a doll’s, and she vanished past fluttering salmon-pink curtains. Nebulously, Nick wondered once again what Stan was going to pay him for this, now that the job was getting more challenging still. He put it out of mind. Made a beeline for the open window.
* * *
Nick heard nothing above his own retching, gasping, and the violent splash in the john beneath his sweat-drenched face. His eyes squeezed shut, he reached blindly for the handle to dispose of it, but at the last moment looked as he pulled. The water began its noisy swirl, but he could see the blood in his puke as it was swallowed up by the hole in the bottom of the bowl.
Beautiful, he thought. He hadn’t even done the job yet, and it was worse than ever. His hands, clamped on the sides of the toilet, shook madly. His vision swam, as though he were staring into the dancing fog of heat on a desert road in high summer. He was fucked. He was done. Finally, he knew it. Nick was just done.
He had to pull himself up by the sink, over which he hunched and spat, running cold water and waiting for his stomach to stop pitching enough to take a handful down. It was only when the toilet stopped running and he turned off the tap that Charise’s frantic whining made its way to his ears. Then, a sharp thunk. Followed immediately by another, which was met by a crackling shatter of glass.
Subconsciously, he realized shots were being fired. Counterinstinctively, he rushed back to the front of the apartment. Charise was on her stomach, on the floor, with her hands over her head and her mouth open, hollering. Trevor crouched beside the window, its glass shot out and blinds partially shredded, his eyes bulging halfway out of their sockets and his face red and dripping.
Nick said, “The fuck is this?”