by Paula Cox
He splutters and dribbles, spit dripping down his chin in big phlegmy globules. I see Emily’s face, running continuously like a stuck DVD in my mind. I imagine this piece of shit tailing kids in his car, grabbing them . . . using them. My blood has turned to ice, lava, fire; my blood has run with hatred and killer’s intent more times than I can count. Now, it runs with a strong protective urge. I’m no longer in some hooker’s rundown crack house. I’m standing on the shore of a lake watching the bubbles of my dying parents rise to the surface. I have to do something.
“P-p-p—”
“Prick!” I let go of him and take a step back. I feel the others at my shoulders, ranged either side of me, but all of them know better than to get in my way right now, just as any smart man knows to get the hell out of the way when a bull comes charging at him.
A hush falls over the apartment, as though everybody knows what’s about to happen. The Judas Kiss has become a sort of joke around the bar at this point, but just because Tool has a laugh over it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t feared. I take another step back, aiming. Barry totters from side to side, a drunken man struggling to stay on his feet.
“You’ll never hurt anybody again.”
My voice is iron.
I jump, spin—and give him a Judas Kiss which sends him hurtling over the back of the couch, flipping head over toe, and landing in a crumpled pile on the floor. I jump through the air, throwing my entire weight behind my right fist, an MMA-style move that earns me a gasp from everybody, even Tool. I never know exactly what I look like when I give anyone a Judas Kiss, but Tool once told me it was like a giant mousetrap flinging shut.
I walk to the edge of the room. Barry moans softly from behind the couch. He coughs; he gurgles.
“Finish him off.” I wave a hand at the men. None of them argue.
They walk around the back of the couch and lay into him. His gurgling and coughing is replaced with whelping.
I turn my back on the scene and inspect my knuckles. They’re cut and grazed, but that doesn’t bother me much. It’s tough to think of a time in my life when my knuckles haven’t been cut and grazed.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, calming myself.
The prick who pulled Emily into his lap will never hurt anybody else.
A scream—a shout—and finally a gargling, choking noise.
“It’s done,” Tool says.
“Good,” I reply.
It’s only when we leave the apartment and a few pedestrians look at me sideways, I realize I’m coated top to bottom in a misty layer of blood.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jude
When we get back to the bar, the only thing on my mind—except for Emily, who is always on my mind, even if every so often she’s a background track—is cleaning myself off. I make toward the bathroom as the other guys go to the bar for a drink. I’m about to enter it when Mickey’s voice cuts through the bar. He speaks quietly, but it’s the quietness of a feared king, the quietness of a man who knows he never has to raise his voice to be heard.
“Jude, my office.”
I go into the backroom, past containers of whisky and potato chips, and into the small office hidden in the back. I walk in and Mickey gestures at the seat opposite his. A man like Mickey, you’d expect him to have a grand, kingly office, but this room is bare and plain, the chairs simple wooden stools, the desk devoid of any personal indulgences. It’s a Spartan office.
I sit down. If Mickey has any problem with me smearing blood all over the chair, he shows no sign. He doesn’t seem to notice the blood at all. But then, he’s Mickey, the leader of this crime family. His entire life has been spent in the presence of blood.
“Heard you gave the man a Judas Kiss,” Mickey comments, with the shadow of a smile.
How does this man know everything?
He reads my expression, and then says: “Tool texted me. In code, of course.”
“I just did my job,” I mutter. Too much is made of this Judas Kiss business. It’s almost as though a man can’t just go about his work without people twisting his bloody tasks into some kind of heroic gesture. Judas Kiss, is, really, only, a punch, and yet people treat it like some emblem of the life.
Mickey grins openly now. “Yes, yes, I know. We don’t have to indulge in all that nonsense, do we? That’s why I called you in here, actually. I’ve got your pay.”
Already? You go freelance, you get paid when you work; you sign up with a family, you wait for the cuts to be spread out.
“And a bonus,” Mickey goes on. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a huge roll of twenty-dollar bills. At a glance, I’d guess there was around twenty thousand dollars there. He casually counts out ten thousand dollars and slides it across the table. Then he counts out another three and drops it on the pile. I take the money, roll it up, and stuff it in my pocket.
“Thanks, boss,” I say.
Mickey waves a hand. “You’ve earned it. That asshole didn’t deserve to live. That’s the truth about some men, Jude. They don’t deserve to breathe. How much do you know about natural selection?”
I blink at him, dumbfounded. Mickey is like a pinball sometimes. One second he’s beating the blood out of some unlucky gentleman, the next he’s philosophizing.
“Nothing,” I admit. “I think it was that Darvin guy, wasn’t it?”
Mickey’s grin is positively beaming now, like a little kid on Christmas morning. “Darwin, but close enough.”
“Okay…”
I want to go back to the apartment, take a shower, see Emily. I know Moira’s there, but it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon and I want to see how the ladies are getting along. I decide I won’t bother washing up in the bathroom. I’ll just get home as quickly as I can. But of course I have to let Mickey finish. If there’s one thing you never do in this life, it’s interrupt the man in charge.
“Survival of the fittest,” Mickey says.
“I’ve heard of that phrase,” I offer.
“It’s commonly misunderstood,” he lectures. That’s what he sounds like: a professor giving a lecture. “People misinterpret it to mean survival of the strongest, but that’s not what it means at all. Fit, in the biological sense, means a collection of genes and traits which are suitably adapted to their surroundings. For example, a chameleon, whose entire life is based around hiding, is fit. That’s interesting, I think.”
“Yes, sir.” When he starts talking, he can really get going, can’t he?
“You are suitably adapted to your surroundings, Jude. You’ve lived it. You’ve breathed it. You are the fittest, and that’s why you’ve got a bonus. Barry and his friends, they are not adapted, which is why they have to go.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m rambling, Jude. Forgive me. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately about the life, the nature of what we do.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, what I mean to say is, we’re suited to this. We’ve been doing it a long time. We know how the game is played. Barry didn’t. His friend, Patrick, doesn’t. My hope is that Patrick and his buddies take Barry’s death as exactly what it is: a proclamation that they are not, nor ever will be, the fittest. We are. Failing that, it will at the very least send a different message: we’re coming for you, so don’t get too comfortable.”
The blood has dried and stuck to my body now. I feel it peeling away from my skin.
Mickey rolls his eyes. “You can go, Jude,” he says.
“Thank you, sir.”
I go into the bar and make for the door. Tool touches my arm.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Did he give you the survival of the fittest speech?”
I laugh. “He’s given you the same one?”
Tool nods. “He bought a book about evolution a few weeks ago. How survival of the fittest applies to business management. He told me he regrets not reading more when he was younger.”
I leave the bar, chuckling to myself. You can be in this life for a year or a decade and it’ll never fail to surprise you. Pe
ople think of us as monsters, but the truth is we’re just men like anybody else.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a comforting thought.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Emily
Moira emerges from the bedroom at around half past three. Her hair is messy and her eyes are wide and bloodshot. “Never sleep in the day.” She groans as she walks across the room, dragging her feet, and into the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of water and returns to me on the couch.
My nose is buried deep in the nursing book. I’ve gone from general housekeeping to assisting in advanced operations. I’ve learnt about hospice care, which sounds tragic but also somehow beautiful, to childcare and general nursing duties. When Moira sits next to me, I place the book on the table.
“Enjoying it?” she asks, but I can see by her bright eyes and her smile that she knows I am.
“It’s okay, nothing special,” I reply, years of being forced to hide my interests coming to play. I can’t even fool myself.
“Yeah, right.” Moira drains her glass of water and leans back on the couch. “When I came in here, you looked like a little kid, all excited because the next book in her favorite series was out.”
“I feel like my mind is electrified,” I tell her, wondering if I’m putting into words what I’m feeling. But that’s the only way I can think to describe it. It’s like my mind, stunted and ignored and battered for so long, has finally been set free.
“I know what you mean,” Moira assures me. “That’s how I felt when I first started. It’ll all the new knowledge. It makes sparks when it goes into your head.”
I giggle. “Is that the scientific explanation?”
“Don’t laugh at me, stupid girl!” Moira cackles, waggling her finger, doing an impersonation of some despotic matron on a hospital ward. She settles down. “I’m glad you like it. Do you think nursing is something you’d go into?”
Before I’ve even formulated an answer, I realize I’m nodding. Nodding eagerly, too, like it’s something that’s been building up my entire life.
“Wow, enthusiastic,” Moira says.
“Overenthusiastic?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“Whoever told you there was such a thing as too much enthusiasm?”
Patrick.
“Just . . . people.”
“Well, people can go to hell. Let me tell you something, Emily. There’s no such thing as too much enthusiasm for learning. I remember school, how the kids ridiculed the smart kids. A kid did well in a test, he was beaten and insulted because of it. Why do you think that is?” She barrels forward, pausing for a quarter-second before going on with her machine-gun speech. “It’s because the kids were jealous. They wanted to be smart, too. Maybe they knew they could’ve been smart if it were not for their desire to be popular—”
The apartment door opens and Jude walks in.
Moira and I turn.
Patrick, I think again, but this time I feel an old reflexive twinge in my chest. I remember watching once as Patrick got the crap beaten out of him by some of the older kids at the orphanage. It didn’t happen often, but even a mean huge man like Patrick struggled with five on one. I watched, backed against the wall, as they kicked and bit and punched him. This was years after he had started beating me. I remember thinking: I should be happy. He’s getting what he deserves. But I wasn’t happy. I was terrified. Hateful or not, evil or not, he was my brother . . . He is my brother, I think, staring at Jude, bathed in blood.
Moira shoots to her feet. “I have to go,” she says, facing away from Jude.
“Sorry, sis,” Jude mutters. “Slipped my mind about, you know—”
“About me not enjoying the sight of my brother covered in somebody else’s blood?”
Jude winces. “Yeah, that.”
“Right. You know, Jude, for a man who saved my life, you sure are a piece of shit.”
“Ha, ha.” Jude steps aside. “I’ll see you later, sis.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Moira collects her things. She leaves one book on the table, the one I was reading. “You can keep this, hon.” Before she exits, she scrawls her cell number on a piece of paper, folds it up, and slips it into my pocket, all while I sit statue-still. “If you ever need to talk,” she says, and then leaves.
I don’t hear her. I don’t hear anything. My mind is spinning. The man I’ve given myself to, the man I very well might love, has just entered the apartment covered in my brother’s blood. Ha! Some twisted part of my mind cackles. What sort of joke is your life, Emily? You fall for a man, he shows you things about yourself you never knew, and now here you are, sitting on his couch when probably less than an hour ago he was killing your brother. What sort of sister are you? What sort of woman are you? He’s your brother, your family! Are you going to stand for this?
Moira leaves the apartment. I gaze blankly down at the nursing book as Jude walks across the apartment and leans down into my field of vision.
“Emily?” he asks.
I try to speak, but I feel as though something vital has been wrenched from deep within me. I hate Patrick; he’s my brother. Patrick hits me; he’s my brother. Patrick ridicules me, insults me, resents me; he’s my brother. Patrick is an evil drug-dealing man; he’s my brother. It seems the latter always, no matter the circumstances, overrules the former. Brother is a trump card my emotions, my mind, my everything can’t help playing. And no matter how much I try and fight it, I can’t. When you’ve lived with something your entire life, it’s difficult to just let it go. I feel like a woman’s who’s lived her entire life with a glass eye, only to find that the eye has rolled out of my socket and disappeared. Maybe the glass eye was a nuisance, maybe it was a chore, perhaps it was annoying, but it’s been there forever and that’s all I register.
“Emily?” he prompts.
“I asked you to leave him alone,” I say. My voice sounds distant, disconnected from my body. It’s an out-of-body sensation I know well. It’s the same one that comes over me every time Patrick beats me.
“What?” Jude flinches. “Are you serious right now?”
“What do you mean, am I serious?” I look deep into his eyes. I feel rage bubbling over again. The presence of the rage provokes more rage. I don’t want to be angry with Jude. I want to be close to him, love him, and yet when I think about him laying into Patrick, the rage turns volcanic.
“That’s not your blood,” I mutter.
He takes a step back, regarding me with a perplexed expression. “No,” he says. Something in his face hardens. He’s not even sorry about it! “No, it’s not. But you shouldn’t even care, Emily.”
“Well, I do!” I explode onto my feet, waving my hands at him. “I do care! Do you understand! I. Do. Care. I can’t help it, Jude. We talked about this. I said I wouldn’t go to work as long as you left Patrick alone! You completely ignored me! Do you even care about me, Jude? Or are you just using me for sex?” The words spill from my lips as though somebody else is talking. I don’t even think about what I’m saying. I just ride the wave of rage. “Well?” I bark, when he just stand there, blood-flecked features getting harder each moment. “Do you even give a shit about me? He’s my brother!”
Jude paces up and down near the table, shaking his head, muttering under his breath. “After everything he’s done…so what if I did…after everything he’s done…so what if I did…”
“Jude.” Voice shaky, threatening to blow up. “Jude, you’ve ruined my life.”
Even I’m not sure what I mean by that. But then, it isn’t me speaking. It’s the scared little girl in the orphanage who, despite everything he’s done to her, sees Patrick as her only lifeline.
“How the fuck would that even be the case?” he snaps. “Look at your eyes, Emily. How long until they heal? How long until you don’t look like a woman who’s been in a car accident? I can’t believe you’re defending him again.”
“What if it was Moira, huh?” I chuck the question at him like a knife. “What if
I came home one day covered in Moira’s blood? Wouldn’t you care? Wouldn’t you defend her?”
“It’s not the same.” Jude stops pacing and turns his blood-ringed eyes to me. “Moira is a nurse. She spends her life helping people. Patrick is a fucking monster who spends his life hurting women.”
Suddenly, unbidden tears sprout from my eyes. They slide down my cheeks, over the pitted bruises. My tear ducts don’t seem to see the irony in crying over the man who caused the black eyes; they just go right on ahead.
“You’re . . . crying.” He speaks in a tone of complete disbelief. “Why are you crying? Even if I . . . He’s not a good man, Emily. I can’t have you defending him like this.”