by Hart, Callie
Held like this, it would be so fucking easy to slit his throat. To open up his carotid and have him bleed out. All it would take is a casual, effortless swipe of the hand.
My shoes, wet from the rain and caked with mud, leave dirty prints on the cream carpet as I slowly walk around the prone man in front of me. I come to a stop in front of him, a sick, tight feeling in my stomach when he looks up at me and I see the first flickerings of real fear in his eyes. It was easy to mock me when I was standing behind him. It was easy to forget what he was dealing with, no doubt. His mind presented him with the bare facts: I am nothing more than a seventeen-year-old high school student, employed to do Montgomery Cohen’s grunt work.
Towering over him now, though, Peter sees me for what I truly am: a man, broad, strong, and unrelenting, made hard by the violence I have already borne witness to in this life. I’m no wilting boy-child, quaking in my boots, unsure of how to proceed. Peter knows this the moment I stoop down a foot in front of him, giving him the chance to take a good, long look into my eyes.
I raise my hand, flicking the knife open and closed.
Peter flinches.
“I—I told you,” he stammers. “Monty placed the order. I gave him the order. This black bag bullshit is…it’s fucking bullshit! The bag has nothing to do with him!” He’s going red in the face now, a vein pulsing in his left temple. I doubt anyone’s ever burst into his office and threatened him before. He’s sure as shit never had to answer to the likes of me. “Don’t you understand?” Westbrook spits, straining at the cuffs that are restraining his hands behind his back. “He’s getting fucking greedy. He’s fucking manipulating you!”
I tilt my head to one side, pouting. “So, he’s telling tales, sending me out in the middle of the night to steal random bags from you. That it?”
“Yes!”
“And he’d do that because…?”
Westbrook growls, frustrated, rolling his eyes. “Come on, smartass. This is Bad Guy one-oh-one. Power means respect, and respect means fear. Fear means obedience. Obedience means more fucking power. It’s an endless cycle, and Monty wants more. That bag…it means power. Whoever owns that bag becomes a very powerful man overnight. He’s sent you here, knowing I’ll never hand it over. He knows I’ll kill you before I give it up. What’s that tell you, huh? He doesn’t give a shit about you. You’re disposable. A means to an end. Nothing more than an amusing toy he’ll get bored of, the same way he gets bored of all his other toys. You think you’re the only project kid Monty’s taken under his wing? I hate to break this to you, Princess, but you’re not that fucking special. There were plenty before you, and there’ll be plenty after you, too. You’re gonna end up dead or in prison. Either way, you’re fucking insane if you think Monty will give a shit. About any of it.”
Time to go, Passarotto. You have to leave. Don’t be foolish, mi amore.
When she was alive, my mother was never all there. Not really. Her thoughts were so scattered, her mind drifting from one idea to the next so rapidly that it was impossible to keep up with her sometimes. Now, when she comes to me, softly whispering her words of advice and her warnings into my ear, she’s much clearer, her mind free of the fog that always clouded it over. I know I did this, that I gave this to her this clarity in death. She didn’t live long enough to help me through the difficult transition from boy to man. She wasn’t there to tell me what the fuck I should have done when I first met Silver. Over the years, whenever I provoked Gary into beating the living shit out of me with his belt, or before that even, when one of the other cold, bitter fuckers who ‘took me in’ decided to tan my hide, she wasn’t there to protect me. Sometimes, she shows up like this, though, whispering quietly over my shoulder, gently nudging me toward safety.
It's my own sense of self-preservation doing the whispering. It’s not really her. She was buried eleven years ago, for Christ’s sake, the worms finished up their work with her a long time ago, but I choose to believe her influence over me is far from dead and gone.
I set my jaw, quickly lifting the blade of the knife up to Westbrook’s throat. The edge of the steel is so sharp, I barely even show it to his skin before a thin, crimson line forms below his Adam’s apple and the shining surface of the blade is stained with blood. “I don’t care what his motives are. I don’t care if he’s lying. Monty sent me here with a purpose, and I have nothing better to do tonight than fulfill it. You know your options. I’m done fucking talking to you. If I have to stand here any longer, I’m gonna start putting this knife to good use. Y’know…they say the cuts don’t even hurt at first, when the knife’s so sharp. You could be missing more of your body parts than you’d like before you really start to feel it, and by then…” I shrug. “I might not be inclined to stop.”
“All right, all right. Jesus Christ, kid. Ease up.”
I lean into the blade a little, pressing more of weight behind it. A warning. A promise. A threat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Fucking stop!” Westbrook snaps, trying to jerk away from the knife. He only succeeds in catching himself on the tip of the knife, though. The slice at his throat I just gave him was only a papercut; if he’s not fucking careful, it’s going to end up cutting his own carotid. “Fine! Fine! The bag’s here! It’s fucking here, I swear. Goddamnit, will you back the fuck up! I can’t give it to you if I’m fucking dead.”
I withdraw the knife, plastering a grin across my face. I can see myself reflected in Westbrook’s eyes and boy oh boy do I look fucking insane. So fucking what, though? In situations like these, it helps if people think you might be a little unhinged. “On your feet, then,” I say brightly, grabbing him by the elbow and tugging him up. “Show me where the bag is, hand it over, and that’ll be the last you see of me.”
Again, the guy laughs bitterly under his breath. He obviously doesn’t believe that’s true, but he’s smart enough to keep his doubts to himself. His legs are shaky as he heads toward the office door, where he huffs impatiently, arching an eyebrow over his shoulder at me. “You’re gonna have to open it if you want to move this thing along,” he snaps.
I collect the gun I set down on his desk, returning it into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back, and then I open the door to Westbrook’s office, holding it for him obligingly. “After you. I insist.”
Westbrook grumbles malevolently as he storms out into the hallway, taking a right and walking off at a fast clip. I follow after him, keeping pace, carefully eyeing every door and hallway that branches off from the main corridor, making sure I’m not about to be taken unawares. It’s Monday, so Gimlet’s, Westbrook’s club, is closed. It’s after six in the evening, so it’s unlikely we’re going to run into anyone, but you never know. It never pays to let your guard down.
At the end of the hallway, Westbrook hangs a left, heading toward a large, rivetted door that’s been painted red. Looks like it’s made out of reinforced steel. Pete juts a hip out, jerking his chin down at the left-hand pocket of his pants. “The key’s in there. I’d tell you to uncuff me so I can get it out, but I’m not stupid enough to think you’d do it.”
“Bully for you. Congrats on not being stupid.” I stick my hand into his pocket and pull out the set of keys quickly. I’d planned on hanging at the bar this afternoon. Paul invited me for a beer, but the moment I stepped foot inside the Rock, Monty had me cornered and was handing off this shitty job to me before I could say no. This was not how I’d planned on enjoying one of my only days off this week…and ending up with a handful of another man’s dick and balls is only going to sour my mood further.
There are five keys on the Westbrook’s fob. “Which one?” I demand.
“The gold one, there. The old looking one,” Westbrook mumbles. “It opens both locks.”
There are, indeed, two locks on the red, reinforced steel door. I use the key he pointed out, quickly unbolting the door and then pulling it open.
Inside, a bright, cold strip-light casts a stark blue glow over the small room beyond
—a liquor store, lined with shelves that span from floor to ceiling, laden with a supply of booze that would last me a goddamn lifetime.
“In there, at the back,” Westbrook clips out. “On the floor, by the bottles of Jim Beam.”
I give him a tired, weary look. “Pete, I’m going to be so disappointed if I find out this door automatically locks when it’s slammed closed.”
His weak, irritated smile confirms that he was going to try and lock me inside the liquor store. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?”
“Just fucking move, before I decide to lock you in there and set this place on fucking fire. I hear death by smoke inhalation’s a pretty miserable way to go.”
Westbrook stumbles a little as I shove him inside the liquor store. He reluctantly makes for a bank of whiskey bottles at the far end of the room and halts, sighing.
“All right. Here you go,” he says, kicking out with one of his leather shoes. “The magical, mysterious bag Monty sent you over here for. It’s been nothing but fucking trouble since the moment I laid eyes on it. Untie me and get the fuck out of my sight, before I call in some friends and have them play soccer with your dismembered fucking head.”
“Sounds like a good time. Real talk, though. Friends? You’re fucking detestable. I can’t picture you having many friends, Pete.” I join him, snatching up the bag at his feet by one of its handles, determined not to bother trying to guess what’s inside it by its weight. A hard thing to do, though. I never know what’s inside any of the packages Monty sends me to drop off or collect, but this run has felt different from the get-go. There was something off about the desperate edge to Monty’s voice when he told me I had to get this bag for him. The look on his face was nothing short of weird.
“The key?” Westbrook snaps, spinning around to give me access to the cuffs behind his back.
I’m already walking away, though.
“Hey! Hey, don’t you dare, you fucking punk!” Westbrook yells after me. “There’s no cell phone reception down here. No one’s coming in until nine tomorrow morning.”
I pause in the doorway, hand resting on the cool steel, pitted steel. It takes me all of three seconds to weigh the pros and cons of leaving Peter locked in his own liquor cellar overnight. Pro number one: it’s a fucking liquor cellar. The guy can have a great time if he sets his mind to it. Two: if he can’t use his cell phone down here, then he can’t call any of his goons to chase me down and ruin my night. Three: imagining the look on Westbrook’s face when he realizes the hand cuffs he’s wearing are fucking novelty cuffs and a stick insect could pop them open makes me fucking laugh.
Cons: Hmm. Well, damn. Doesn’t look like there are any of those...
That settles it, then. Westbrook’s spending the night locked up in his little box. I give him a halfhearted shrug as I swing the door closed. The guy charges, trying to reach the exit before it has a chance to slam shut, but he’s too fucking slow.
“Hope you’re not claustrophobic,” I call to him through the door. From how muffled the angry shouts are on the other side, I doubt that he’ll have heard me. “Have a nice night, Mr. Westbrook.”
The freezing night air tries to rip right through me as I step out of the emergency exit at the back of Gimlet’s. The wind’s been howling for days now, tearing through the Whitson Valley, knocking down Raleigh’s street signs, felling dead trees, causing chaos and blocking the roads in and out of town. It felt like the Camaro was going to fucking roll on the drive over to Bellingham. The weather’s even worse here. Not only is the wind so much stronger as it comes raging in off the bay, but the threat of snow is hanging heavy and pregnant in the air, promising to make the drive back to Raleigh seriously sketchy.
If I were smart, I’d wait the weather out. Hang tight in a motel for the night. Watch some bad T.V. and gorge myself on vending machine food. I don’t want to waste the money on the room, though, and this storm isn’t a twenty-four-hour squall. Once this cold front takes hold, it’s going to snow, and it’s going to snow hard. Not just for hours, but for days, and there is no way in hell I’m getting stuck in goddamn Bellingham for that long. Not with Silver Parisi expecting me to meet her in Raleigh. The very hounds of hell couldn’t keep me from making that appointment.
It takes a couple of minutes to jog down Culver and cross over a couple of blocks to the parking lot of the Night Stop Convenience Store where I left the car; by the time I hurl myself into the driver’s seat and I slam the door closed behind me, my hair is stiff with ice and my eyes are streaming like crazy.
Somewhere in the world, the sun’s shining right now. There are beaches, and coconuts, and cocktails, and people are walking around in their goddamn swimsuits, but I can’t for the life of me think where such a place might be because my fucking brain is too fucking frozen and I can’t form a coherent thought.
The fingers on my right hand ache and throb as I fumble with the car keys—an unpleasant reminder a day five years ago when I’d been playing my guitar a little too loud for Gary Quincy’s liking. I curse angrily under my breath, annoyed that I’ve even allowed myself to remember the man, which is dumb really. I’m covered in scars, and plenty of my bones crunch and crack courtesy of all the injuries I’ve suffered at other people’s hands. I should be used to this kind of thing by now. But there’s something about this injury that makes my insides burn. Gary knew how much music meant to me. I’d wanted to play professionally. I’d wanted to pay my bills by playing the guitar, and he’d taken hold of my hand and slammed it in his door to his truck over and over again…
I can still play, thank fuck. If I stretch out my hand and use the bands I was given to strengthen the muscle and the tendons, there’s no real reason why I couldn’t make a living through my music, one way or another, but…
Every time I feel that fucking ache, I also see the hatred and the spite in Gary’s rheumy, spiteful eyes, and deep down inside, I know that it’s fucking true. That motherfucker didn’t end up totally destroying my hand like he’d wanted to, but he did succeed in destroying my dreams for good.
TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:
+1(564) 987 3491: Your fucking disgusting. I don’t no how u can even bear to look in the fucking mirror without puking. Im gonna cut your face up.
3
SILVER
There many different ways to love.
There’s the kind of love that exists between friends. The lifetime bond of camaraderie that sometimes forms in the space of a summer afternoon, playing outside on the streets, riding bikes up and down the sidewalk and collecting bugs in jars. There’s the love a person bears for their siblings or their parents. An intrinsic, deep-seated love that is always there, and always remains, through slight and disagreement, spanning decades and distance and so much silence.
And then there’s romantic love. The kind of love poets have written sonnets about for hundreds of years. Romantic love, the lynchpin of all good stories. The all-consuming, burning fire in a heart that can create or destroy in the blink of an eye. The kind of love that inspires heroic acts of sacrifice, while also being the root cause of murder, jealousy and hideous acts of revenge.
Like nearly everyone else on the face of the planet, I’m well acquainted with the story of Romeo and Juliet. I’ve read the book. The adaptations. I’ve seen the movies. I’ve swooned over the devotion and all of the suffering held within the pages of Shakespeare’s tragedy, but I’ve never understood it. Never really felt it before. Now, though, that fire burns in my chest. I feel it from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep at night. Seems to me, no one else in the world has ever been this turned-around by someone before, this consumed or swallowed whole by another living, breathing, flawed human being.
This love is so overwhelming, so hot and so bright, that it has to be unique in all of creation. Because how would the world keep on spinning if everyone felt this way? How would governments not collapse, and wars not cease, and the whole of society not come to a crumbling standstill if there wer
e other people in this world who felt for one another what I feel for Alex Moretti?
It’s late. On the corner of High Street and Paulson, a figure stands in the shadows, leaning against the brick wall of Harrison’s Home Hardware and Electrical Supplies, looking up at the sky. He doesn’t seem to have a purpose as he gazes at the heavens. Doesn’t seem to be waiting for anything in particular. A passerby would probably frown at his presence, casting suspicious eyes over him and making their small-town judgements of him as he does nothing more sinister than dare to stand still and scan the midnight sky for stars.
At first glance, his hair, thick with waves, is impossibly dark. Up close, it’s easier to see that it isn’t black but a very dark, textured brown—the darkest of browns—shot through with the odd stand of red that unexpectedly catches the light from time to time. His eyes are dark, too. I’ve seen such warmth and humor in them before, but that isn’t what the rest of the world sees when they look into his eyes. Strangers are generally met with a cold, predatory disregard. I suppose the sterile assessment of his gaze could sometimes be described as frightening.
Vines with full-bloomed roses and studded with thorns circle his throat like a collar, the black ink peeking above the neck of his shirt, hinting at what else might lie beneath the fabric of his clothes. His jeans are ripped, his leather jacket worn, the collar popped against the biting wind and the halfhearted sleet, but there he stands, at ease, oblivious to the fact that winter has officially arrived, giving off the impression that he simply doesn’t feel the cold.
He’s an artist’s rendering of something fictional and make-believe. A charcoal smudge against a bleached-out backdrop, drawn in swift, sure, mad lines that defy the laws of physics and confuse the eye but somehow seem all the more real because of it.