Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “That's a lot of passion for someone you just met.”

  Xavier dented his brow, reminded of the learned rapport he shared with Max. During their years of military service, they’d killed, whored and nearly died together more than once. You get to know someone pretty well under those circumstances, almost without trying. Max could pierce Xavier’s brain like a gamma knife and tell him if he needed to see a priest or just take a good long shit.

  “Don't give me that,” Xavier said.

  “What?” Max retorted.

  “This has nothing to do with that.”

  Max pursed his lips, looking as coy as a fox caught crawling under the fence. “Don't know what you're talking about.”

  Xavier let it go. All his anxiety about old scabs and here he was pushing the issue. Dumb-ass. He panned around the office. “So, it looks like you’ve been doing all right,” he said. He was suddenly feeling a tad confined and was desperate to change the subject.

  “I make a living. It keeps me healthy and the ex off my back. That is when she’s not trying to strong arm more child support.”

  Xavier looked shocked. “You got a kid?”

  Max smiled. “Mhm. A little boy, see?” Max reached to his left and grabbed a 3” x 5” picture frame, which had been facing him, and spun it around. It was already scrolled to a chubby-cheeked toddler with dimples to die for and ears like drink coasters.

  “Handsome boy,” Xavier remarked, almost dumbfounded. Why had it never occurred to him that good things might be happening in Max’s life? “Who’s his mom?”

  “Remember Sheila Markham?”

  Xavier's face flattened out like dough under a rolling pin. “Get the hell outta here,” he bellowed. He remembered Sheila Markham alright. He remembered she was the reason vasectomies were invented. That back-alley skank had had half the married men in Louisiana paying her rent and cosigning her car loans. She also had a thing for soldiers. And that spelled certain doom for Max, who, when it came to women, was about as intuitive as a fart in a windstorm. The poor sap never stood a chance against those thin ankles and $10,000 implants. Once Sheila got a whiff of all that easily obtained devotion, Max's bank account soon found itself getting cleared out like a bunker full of Syrian rebels. Xavier had often tried to warn him that women were capable of the kind of deceptions that would never even occur to a man, and for reasons that defied rationality to its core. As if Max would have listened. Xavier also never had the heart to tell Max that Sheila had propositioned him more than once, even going so far as to place Xavier's hand under her skirt, during a double date. She wasn't wearing any panties and she wanted him to know it. Once Xavier got the hand back, he'd kept it wrapped firmly around his beer bottle the rest of the night. Not that there was any threat of betrayal on his part; he would have sooner wandered into the men's room and steeped his dick in an unflushed toilet.

  “There I am, laid up in the hospital, with a hole where my knee used to be and zonked out of my mind on Morphine,” Max said and pointed at his left knee, “when she walks in and tells me she’s pregnant. Felt like I’d been shot all over again.”

  Xavier shrank at the comment. Was Max reminding him on purpose?

  “Anyway, after he was born and the DNA test came back, I was able to get a VA insured refi and I opened up this place. It’s not where I thought I’d be, but it’s doing pretty good.”

  Xavier’s stomach was in knots. Damn it, he thought. Was Max actually trying to guilt-trip him? Or was hearing the facts, exactly as they were, just that damned hard? He reinvested his attention to the webscreen. And hoped, like hell, that Glenda didn't have to all of a sudden lay a deuce.

  The news site had segued into replayed coverage of some loudmouth wonk of a senator throwing a fit in front of the capitol building in Washington D.C.. An impeccably dressed reporter in heavy makeup stood at the base of the building where she introduced the soundbite, the 270 feet of its celebrated dome situated above her head like a hat. At the midpoint of the capitol steps was a brooding, frumpy-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing an old pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a suit that looked like it had been slept in the night before. He was addressing the crowd below while ardently gesticulating with a fist full of papers.

  “It is an absolute travesty,” he said spiritedly. “It is the highest invasion of civil rights and the privileges of the American people! Is there nothing left in America that is not for sale? Our very genetic stock is being blatantly manipulated, bartered and abused by this unfettered omnivorous industry, and if we do not take steps to regulate them, they could unravel the very tapestry of human existence. We should be asking ourselves, what will happen once they’ve decided to usher in their new way of reshaping humanity? To whom are we allowing access to the most sacred and private areas of our lives? What is their agenda for the genetic future of our country? If we fail to take measures right now, to stop or at the very least control, this ubiquitous auctioning of our life’s blood, we may very well one day find ourselves in a world where anyone who does not fit some arbitrary genetic standard is deemed unworthy to exist.”

  “Senator Beaumont?” a reporter finally out-shouted his colleagues. “What do you say to your critics who believe that this very type of language fuels the fire for anti-biotech terrorism in the United States? Don’t you think by using such incendiary language, that you are indeed expressing a kind of round-the-way support for these terrorists?”

  Beaumont looked ready for the question. “My entire campaign, my entire career has always been about supporting laws that preserve life and put the safety and security of people above all else!” he stated. “With the recent bombing and murder of an innocent security guard at MIT, can anyone here say that what these twisted sociopathic groups want is to preserve life? I think not! If anything, these bombings only prove how too many biotechs make themselves targets by not taking responsibility for the security and environmental risk that they present to so many communities. And that's exactly what SB 39 is all about. It ensures that they are taking all precautions stated by law, and not by their bottom line. And that they’re not engaging in any illegal or unethical genetic trading, tampering or manipulation.”

  Xavier shrugged and took a good long look at the image on the webscreen. “Now there’s a guy who needs to get laid.”

  Chapter 35

  For some strange reason, Glenda was genuinely surprised to find that the city of Cleveland had a trailer park dotting the inside of its borders. I mean it's not like this was the boonies where they're planted every other block, she thought. In fact, she'd always seen them as something you just happened upon as you drove over an unknown stretch of road, and even then you might not notice them, inside their matt-fenced, couple dozen acres, unless someone pointed them out. She felt a tremendous weight lift from her chest and sighed openly. She couldn't imagine a better place to get a decent night’s rest than an invisible housing project.

  Xavier paid the cab driver, sans tip, and joined Glenda at the trailer's doorstep. “Here we are,” he said. “I'd carry you across the threshold, but I'm not as strong as I used to be.”

  “It's okay. I'm not as thin as I used to be.”

  Xavier guffawed. That was a load of crap, he thought. You're perfect. He knew Glenda was just reaching for an excuse to gripe—and maybe fishing for a compliment—because that's what women did when they wanted to feel better. Part of him even wanted to give in to Glenda, wanted to tell her the truth: that she could probably stop traffic without a spot of makeup and wearing a body-cast. But there were a number of ways that could come off sounding and not a one produced the type of results he could handle.

  Once inside the trailer, Xavier unloaded the bag of Take-and-Bake meals he’d picked up on the way over, into its fridge. He'd also bought a coloring kit for Glenda's hair and a pair of matching prepaid comwatches. There was always the chance the trailer's hub would have problems or that he and Glenda might be separated; though Xavier had resigned that hell would freeze over be
fore he would allow the latter to happen. Glenda stood silent in the center of the trailer, taking it all in. She had never been inside a mobile home before and her only thought, now, was that it was everything she'd imagined: small and ugly. Anyone housed here longer than six months would have a one-way ticket to claustrophobia and whatever the medical term was for fear of wood paneling. Glenda peered down at the floor, truly wanting to barf. The early-evening sunlight was pouring in through a window and highlighted a huge stain on the carpet. She stared at the stain, easily imagining its origins as everything from an overturned beer keg to a dead body. From there, the only furniture in sight was a coffee table turned on its side and a pair of metal chairs in the kitchen area. The kitchen's space looked big enough to allow for two people at once, but only if they held their breath while in it. You're safe. That's all that matters, she thought and went about touring the rest of their palatial estate while Xavier moved on to assaying the com-hub stationed on the west wall of the living room. The hub was a Microsoft 800 just like Max had said; built for the first municipal WI-Fi that went up around fifteen years ago. With the older hubs the connections had a tendency to drop every few minutes if you stayed on too long or tried to make too many simultaneous connections, but it would more than suit the purpose at hand.

  “So who gets the bed?” Glenda asked, emerging from the hallway after her reconnoiter of the trailer.

  “The bed?” Xavier responded.

  “I checked. There’s only one bed in here.”

  Xavier did a quick walkthrough and returned, stopping in the bathroom doorway. There were two bedrooms, but only one bed. “You're right. There's only one bed.”

  “So who gets it,” Glenda asked again, hoping he couldn't notice her blushing.

  “Me. I get cramps in my back real easy.” He dipped into the bathroom. “We’ll wait until morning to shower so the tub will be dry for you. You can have the pillows.”

  Glenda’s face was surmounted by a “what just happened here” look.

  Xavier then poked his head out of the bathroom and said, “Gotcha.”

  Glenda giggled. “You jerk.”

  Xavier smiled and drew his head back in. He gazed down at the tub like it was a grave-site in a cemetery.

  “Oh, well, just like old times,” he said. “Or rather, recent ones.”

  Glenda eased into the doorway and leaned a shoulder on the jamb. “You can have the bed if you want,” she said.

  Xavier smirked. He figured she wasn't serious, but the thought was nice. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine. I’m used to sleeping on cold flat surfaces. Hell, I almost married a couple of them.”

  Glenda laughed.

  Xavier stepped past her and into the furnished bedroom. He would have to make mental notes of all the trailer's points of egress and there was no better place to start. He inspected the window, securing its locks and judged it to be big enough for Glenda to escape through should the need arise. Hiding would be another option, but there was only a small, single closet she would likely have little use for and would be the first place someone would look. No, she'd be better off running for it if she could, he thought. Her only other option would be to fight. Maybe he would have to do something about that too.

  As Xavier went about his reconnaissance, Glenda parked her behind on the single wooden dresser that sat away from the bed. She thoughtfully plucked at her fingernails, gathering her courage. “Forgive me for sounding silly, but for some reason I feel terribly selfish, letting the person who saved my hide twice sleep in the bathtub.”

  Xavier almost looked at her and then thought better of it. He pulled a quarter from his Dockers and held it up.

  “Do you want to flip for it?” he asked.

  “No...I mean...” Glenda looked embarrassed. “Okay, this is the twenty-first century. Don’t you think it’s at least possible for two people of the opposite sex to share the same bed without fear of something happening?”

  Xavier plopped down on the bed's edge. He fought off eye contact with Glenda with everything short of the gun he still carried beneath the lapel of his coat. How many centuries had it been since a gorgeous woman had offered to share the sheets with him? Would he even remember how? Glenda had already seen Xavier's soft dirty underbelly. She knew more than enough to judge him as a person. If he crawled into bed with her, and she threw him a mercy fuck, she'd have the ammunition to judge him as a man. No way in hell he was about to invite that verdict.

  “Honey,” he finally said clownishly. “In the twenty-first century, it’s not even possible for two people of the same sex to share a bed without fear of something happening.”

  Glenda sniggered. “You’re something else, you know that?”

  “Well, when you figure out what the something else is...let me know.”

  She hung on his request a second then softly said, “I will.”

  ****

  Glenda tensed as Xavier pinned her against the wall. He had taken her completely off guard. His mannish hands felt like leather against her skin—they were strong, but not nearly as rough as she imagined. He moved in so close Glenda got woozy under the scent of the sandalwood soap, that clung to his body so fresh from the shower. She could feel her pelvis erupting, but hid her arousal like a champ.

  “What do you see?” Xavier asked steely-eyed.

  “I see you,” she answered, shaking.

  “What parts of me?”

  Glenda paused, taking inventory of his head and shoulders. “Your head.”

  Xavier said nothing.

  Glenda suddenly felt like a school kid taking a pop quiz. She wondered if Xavier would feel a little silly if he'd seen Malcolm Block after Glenda had finished with him. However, in that instance, nothing was strategic and compared to the scum she’d run into since, Block was rather sloppy. So, maybe a few extra pointers were well warranted. Plus, it was a hell of an excuse to have Xavier's swarthy paws all over her goose-pimpled skin. Mother of mercy, this is so wrong.

  “Your eyes,” Glenda added, her voice becoming airy. “And your mouth.”

  “Can you move your arms?”

  Glenda wiggled her shoulders, but Xavier had a fast grip on her arms. She had nowhere near full range of motion.

  “Not really,” she answered panting.

  “What can you move?”

  She thought for a second, then a ripple of electricity cascaded down her body. “My legs.”

  “Now, what don’t you see?”

  Almost instinctively, Glenda shot a knee straight up.

  Xavier naturally flinched. He had expected an answer from her mouth, but it was just as well.

  “Good,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many women don’t get that right away. And I don’t care what you’ve seen in the movies or on the web; no man recovers easily from a shot in the marble bag. Half the time, they puke. Now remember how you noticed everything above my neck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, well, always go for the low-hangers first, but if for some reason you can’t, eyes, ears, and throat are good targets.” Xavier let go and made a chopping motion against his Adam’s apple. “Go like this, but not too hard.”

  Glenda made the same motion.

  “A little harder,” Xavier said.

  She did it. “Uh.”

  “Feel that?”

  Glenda nodded.

  “Now imagine giving somebody a good solid whack right in that spot.”

  “Can’t you kill someone if you hit them there?”

  “Only if you hit them too hard. And remember, most guys expect women to be passive, and overcome with fear. So whenever you can, take the fight to him. Make it cost him. Make him earn every punch.” Xavier paused suddenly, his eyes drifting to somewhere Glenda couldn't see. It was a small two-bedroom apartment back in Old Brooklyn. He saw his mother getting cracked in the mouth by a drunken Edward Hawkins. She bled. Fucking bastard made her bleed and I just stood there. Another voice that sounded more like his mother's chimed in. You were
six years-old for God's sake. Six.

  “Are you alright,” Glenda asked.

  Xavier snapped back to reality. He backed off of her and labored a grin. “Fine.” He then pinched her chin like a proud papa, and turned toward the bed.

  As he walked away, Glenda mooned overtly at Xavier's toned back beneath the fibers of his brother's sheer-white tank shirt. He wasn’t nearly as scrawny as she had expected. Not big by any means, but not small either. Glenda also noticed how his calves curved outward ever-so slightly below his jogging shorts—that perfect hint of bow in the legs that drove women wild. She was temporarily entranced, but quickly blinked out of it.

  This made no sense.

  These guys with these...things about them were just too much. Sure, Xavier was different, tougher than most, but his potential for making her miserable was as common as it came. Men and all their gruffness and heroism, and mysteriousness—how she hated them for being such a turn on! It was wrong for women to appeal to those traits, and especially wrong to encourage them. That was the point of the new women’s way of thinking—don’t judge men as they would judge you. A real woman doesn’t bend to the archetypal male. And real men don’t hold to those roles any more than we do. Glenda mashed a hand to her face. Get it together, girl. She tried picturing Xavier the way he looked when she'd first met him: filthy, dressed in tattered clothes and wrapped in the tantalizing aroma of cheap gin sweat. And it worked...a little.

  Chapter 36

  Detective Marcus Northcutt picked his nose with impunity as he sat behind the wheel of the unmarked car and daydreamed of spending his retirement sailing along the sun-soaked coasts of Australia. He would laze on the deck of his custom-built Triton with a fishing rod in one hand and a cold beer in the other. The Aussies were supposed to brew great beer. Every day would be filled with nothing but good food, women who looked and talked like a young Nicole Kidman—not that she looked bad now—and legal, full frontal nudity on broadcast net.