|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It happens just like that, and you don’t even know. Until it’s too late. A door closes, a bell rings, and everything changes. Just like that…
The door is closed behind me, and I can still hear the fading jingle of a cluster of bells that hang from a tattered piece of string above my head. As I walk to the counter, I’m watching the only other customer as he casually returns his wallet to the back left pocket of his pants. The gesture seems familiar.
There’s no mistaking the smell of a tobacco store, and I pause to take in the scene. Ample display cases of glass and hardwood, a rack of pipes sorted by price, and an expansive humidor to my right. Rows of labeled jars, each of which will hold a fragrant blend of specialty tobacco. I imagine opening each and inhaling the subtle differences as I watch this familiar stranger accept a pack of Gauloises from the sales girl behind the counter. Only one employee.
The larcenous side of my character notes this with mild amusement. This late in the day there could be fifteen hundred dollars in the drawer. No camera, no alarm. The girl is young and inexperienced. She would frighten easily, which would guarantee her cooperation. Three minutes, fifteen hundred dollars. But that’s not what I came for. I approach the counter.
"Gauloises," I say and point, as I have a hundred times before in other shops, in other cities. She smiles at me. I think the word is "coy." She doesn’t find the effect she’s looking for. I nod, and point again.
"French cigarettes are popular today." She’s trying to make conversation, almost like a man. I think to myself it must be a side effect of working in this environment everyday. If she couldn’t chat like a man, nobody would respect her when she tried to sell cigars. I take a moment to explore the depth of my indifference to this situation. If my business doesn’t come together soon, I could end up dead. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. I don’t want to chat, I want to smoke my fucking cigarettes. This bitch is wasting my time.
Wordlessly, I drop a twenty on the counter. She seems to be giving up hope of conversation, and then I realize that the stranger has stopped to listen. It would be foolish to kill these people just for trying to talk to me. San Francisco, I remind myself, is a friendly city. People talk here. It happens; just move on.
The cash register beeps twice and jangles open. I accept my change without looking and shove it into a pocket. I’m turning toward the door when time hits me sideways and I have to work to keep my footing. It feels like the floor has tilted and I’m sliding from nowhere to nowhere else. The moment lasts forever, and then the bells on the door jingle again. The stranger is holding it open, looking at me, and our eyes meet over the faintest hint of his smile. He still hasn’t said a word in my presence and it strikes me: I know this man. Brown eyes blink once under a mop of short, dark hair and he turns, his careworn gray overcoat and charcoal slacks vanishing out to the street.
Impossible.
The word echoes over and over again in my head until I wonder if I even know what it means. I rush to the door and burst onto the street in a crash of clanging bells, searching every face and haircut, looking for the shape that cannot be here. I find him at the end of the block, waiting to cross a street swollen with rush hour traffic. He looks back once over his shoulder and our eyes meet again.
He gives the slightest nod, and across the distance it says, Follow me. "Then he steps into the crosswalk and I’m running through the crowd to catch him.
Memory haunts me…
I remember a scene, years ago, in a squalid one-room Boston apartment, as if it were happening right now. We’re on the floor, sitting. The music has stopped on the CD player and he’s poking at the bowl of his pipe with a bent paper clip. I’m looking at the metaphysical books that litter my floor. Most of them, he loaned me. Most of those, I have not read. What I have read is absurd, like something from the movies. Only worse, less credible. Cook books with recipes for delusion.
"Alex," I ask, "why do you read this shit?"
Now he’s holding a deep hit from the pipe and exhales it slowly. Time drags on as I watch the smoke billow and curl in on itself, and nine hits of quality LSD make faces at me from the wispy tendrils before they dissipate and are lost against the ripples of my ceiling. Nothing in the world, I think, looks quite like smoke. Not even this. Not even this.
"What if…" he mumbles, and then stops, watching something only he can see. "How do you know?" he finally asks. "How do you know what can happen until you try? Why do we sample the product, instead of just turning it loose? And what if the world is bigger than you think, and there’s more to it than flesh and bone, metal and plastic, meat and gristle? What then, man? Will your epitaph be, ‘Damn, if I’d only known?’ Not mine, David. No way. No fucking way… You gotta push the envelope. It’s… it’s a moral imperative," and then he trails off, chuckling and mumbling to himself at our inside joke.
Karen will be pissed, is what I’m thinking. We’re sampling the products again, using instead of selling, and Karen will be royally pissed. That’s why we do this at my apartment, instead of his. He thinks she’ll never know, or that it won’t matter what she thinks. I know different, and it comes home to me that this was a bad idea. Celebrating before a big deal, is what we told ourselves. It’s three in the morning, and we’re supposed to buy six pounds of heroine from the Spaniard at eight so we can sell it all again in the afternoon. We’ll still be tripping, and if we get crosswise with the Spaniard we’re fucked. Stupid. If I keep using like this, I’ll never have the money for a car. If I don’t start getting ahead, I’ll always be an accomplice and Karen will always be…
"It’s like Charon said…" he continues, and I panic.
"You don’t know what Karen says," I bark and instantly regret it. Did I hear him right? and Does he know my thoughts? and Could he know what we’ve been up to, and what she said? all cross my mind. It occurs to me what a shitty friend I am, and I start to hope he does know. I find myself praying that his bullshit metaphysics taught him some Enochian secret and he does know what I’ve done.
He nods sagely and smiles, his eyes bloodshot and his pupils big enough to swallow my soul. "Yeah," is all he says before he sparks my lighter and takes another long drag off his pipe.
I didn’t know what was coming next that night, and it changed me. Hard. That night I turned a corner and stepped onto the path that led inexorably to a tobacco store. There was no other way.
I see him walking slowly ahead of me through the crowded streets of San Francisco, and I’m running but I can’t catch up. I feel I’m in a dream, the one where you’re running as hard as you can to get away and the killer keeps walking after you and getting closer and closer, except everything’s backward. Sideways. I’m out of breath, panting and gasping, the unopened pack of cigarettes forgotten in my clutching hand. And he just gets farther away.
This chase leads back to my hotel and then I’ve lost him. Found him and lost him again. Just like that. I’m searching faces, trying desperately to match a color or a shape to the vision I’ve pursued. Gone, he is. And I step into the lobby.
My Italian leather loafers touch down on cold smooth marble and calm settles over me like waking up. I’ve been in and out through here for almost two weeks and it’s starting to feel like home. Familiar at least, and I cross below the mezzanine while a chandelier watches from above on a scale that would be gothic if not so modern.
On my way to the desk to check for messages, I pass a prostitute. Some people wear their occupation like a costume, or a robe. It’s not that she doesn’t fit here; rather, she fits too well. She could be any professional woman, well dressed in a nice hotel, and she tips the bell captain twenty with a practiced gesture before our eyes meet. She knows that I have money and I can see that she has time. We pause almost imperceptibly, giving me time to ask if I could buy her a drink.
I’m still reeling from my encounter at the smoke shop and I know that I’d be more alone in her company than I would be on my own. A tiny double-shake of my head says no thank you and then we pass. The carriage of her Betty Paige shoulders changes slightly in a way that means oh, well and then she’s out the glass doors and a doorman is flagging down the cab. Karen used to shrug like that.
I close the last of the distance to the front counter and complete my inquiry.
No messages.
I’m still weighing what that means when the first goon gets up from his newspaper and steps to my elbow. I know this one, and it’s bad news for me that I didn’t spot him first, on my way in. It means I’m getting sloppy, and sloppy is just one step from dead. Had I seen, I’d have approached him first and we’d have talked on my terms. Taking the initiative is an important part of staying alive. Now, I only know the futility of fighting him for the tempo. I wait for his move, while two more heavies watch the room to see if I’m alone.
"Davey," he says slowly in a low, sugary voice, and gestures toward a lounge off the lobby. The way his arm moves in his unbuttoned coat reminds me that Paulo’s been wearing a shoulder holster almost as long as I’ve been alive. Not that he’d do anything stupid here, but I remember nonetheless. We find a table near the bar and sit together, each watching the other for a cue. He waives off a waitress who offers us drinks: a bad sign.
There’s no point in asking how he found me; I called twice from the hotel to try to buy time. We wait without speaking while sax competes with horns for my attention in the canned jazz instrumental that repeats on the sound system. The quiet between us grows awkward… We each wait to see what the other will say and then I remember my unopened cigarettes. As I turn a lucky and light my first Gauloises, I hope the shrug of my eyebrows says it’s your move.
"You look well, Davey." Old-timers, which means "over thirty," have a habit for small talk that never ceases to confuse me. They always start with your health, or the weather, or some shit like that. I think it’s supposed to mean we’re friends. Paulo is not my friend, and I start to lose patience.
"You’re a long way from home." I don’t say I’m surprised to see him. We’d both know that was a lie. "What brings you here?" I ask, though I already know.
"Stan’s worried about his money."
"The money’s safe," I say slowly. That much is true. I haven’t touched any of it, or any of the others that I collected as fronts to make this deal. But Stan was my biggest contributor, and it wasn’t easy to win his support. I sold him on easy profit with me doing all the work; I knew this was a risk.
"Good. Listen, Davey, why don’t you go get it? I’ll take it back to Stan and we can just forget about this business." Which can only mean that he’s already searched my room. This is not good. Not good at all.
"I can’t do that. I promised that money to make a deal. When the product shows up and I don’t have the cash, what’s gonna happen? Besides, Stan’s gonna make a killing on this. He’d be a fool to back out now."
"Stan ain’t no fool, and what happens to you is your problem, not his." I can see Paulo sliding into his tough-guy formula, and with him it’s not entirely an act. I start to back down.
"Okay, okay, Stan’s not a fool. I know that. That’s why I brought this to him in the first place. If it’s not gonna work for him to wait a little longer, that’s okay. I’ll get you the money."
Things are getting really torqued. The pair of thugs are watching us now. I’m sure they came with Paulo to check out the scene, but he must have given a signal and their eyes are on me. I’ve been expecting Stan to send somebody to watch me, but that he sent Paulo is bad news and that he wants his money back is worse. I was hoping this was just going to be pressure to step down and let Stan finish the deal for himself, cutting me out.
If I give Paulo the money, then I don’t have enough cash to complete the deal. I’ve been hanging here, waiting for my connect to deliver the product for too long now. I knew I was pushing the hook-up beyond his usual range, but that was the only way I could get in on something this size. If I cut out now, when the product arrives he’s holding the bag, and with more than he knows how to move in a year. We’re both grifters, way out of our league, and playing the angles hard to score a deal we should have no right to.
Neither of us has the muscle to cover us if we blow this. If my end falls through, he’ll sell me out to his suppliers to save his ass. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury. If I let Stan take over my end, not only am I out of the loop forever when Stan takes a step up to my connect, but he’ll also find out who else I went to to make this happen. When he finds out I’ve been selling for less to his toughest competitors, I’m out for good. I tell myself I’m too old to look for another line of work, but the truth is more like a leopard not changing his spots.
"You want it right now?" I ask, innocently I hope.
"Where is it?" Suspicious, which is good under the circumstances.
"In the hotel safe," I lie, with what I hope is just enough grace. "All I gotta do is ask the manager. I didn’t want to take a chance with that much cash. The maid. You know." I hope by all the gods I’m not fucking this up.
"You’re a smart kid, Davey." He doesn’t say, I always liked that about you. The tension is starting to drain away.
I put out my cigarette and get up slowly, sliding my chair back with both hands on the table. Timing is everything, now. He rises with me, and I take two steps before I pause and fidget just a bit.
He’s looking at me expectantly.
"I gotta piss." It sounds almost like an apology as I say it, perfectly.
He’s still looking at me, sizing me up. He knows I’m nervous; this should seem natural to him. I interrupt his thoughts.
"Should I ask your nephew to hold it for me while I go?"
At last the initiative is mine, and he didn’t even see me steal it. I speak it like it’s nothing, but a comment like that is a challenge. If they watch me now, he’s admitting that he thinks I’m a threat. I’d never fall for a ploy like this, but he will. If he doesn’t, I’m fucked.
He waves his hand at his side, a quick cutting motion, and the two stiffs halt their approach.
"Go ahead," he says abruptly. He’s trying to look mean, which says I did sting his pride. Gotcha, old-timer.
I’m not out of the woods yet. Hesitating what I hope is just long enough, I pretend to scan the area, looking for a restroom. Truth is, I’ve known where it’s at for a week.
With what I think is the right mix of casualness and uncertainty, I make my way to a narrow hall past the end of the bar and turn left into the men’s room, remembering to stop and read the sign before I enter. I feel their eyes on my back the whole way.
Once inside, I quickly relieve myself and wash my hands. About two years ago, I noticed how long it takes a person to get bored when he’s trying to be watchful in a tense situation. It takes just long enough for a guy to piss and then wash his hands. See, you start out all focused, too focused really, and then after a few moments the stress gets to you and your attention starts to wander. Right after that, you notice that your attention has wandered and you start paying attention again.
As I drop my paper towel into the waste basket, I’m aiming for that little moment when they notice the waitress going by, or try to remember the punch line of a joke, or wherever it is that attention goes when it’s not on what’s right in front of you. I open the door.
I turn left without looking and grab the handle of the door marked employees. If they saw me, then they’re already after me; if not then this is my chance to get a lead. Either way, I’m running. As soon as the door closes behind me, I’m looking for the exit that has to be here.
Past a stock room I spot the lighted sign of my salvation: Exit. As I rush forward to the corner, a door slams open behind me with a crash. It seems I missed my aim.
The alarm is screaming my progress as I burst from the emergency exit door and I offer silent thanks to the gods of fire code. My feet pound pavement. I remember that the night air is cold this late in the year, and my sweat grows suddenly chill as the evening breeze draws the heat from my face and hands. I push onward.
Dodging cars, buses, taxis, I stumble across a busy street while Paulo’s henchmen pursue me wordlessly, relentlessly. Desperate, I’m looking for a way out, a place to hide, anything to get away. I think of reaching for my gun, and realize how absurd it is that I should still be carrying this particular weapon. Memory creeps up on me again…
I am arranging books on the floor and studying the mosaic I make from their covers. None sit quite still, and the whole squirms and writhes as if alive under my hallucinogenic gaze. I toy with a broken lace on my worn black sneakers before fumbling for my pack of generic cigarettes. I find it empty. Crumpling it in my right hand, I throw it across my diminutive domicile, aiming for an overflowing heap of pop cans and pizza boxes that marks the trash bin, and try to name the color of the arc that describes its trail.
Such a small apartment. Years from now, in San Francisco, this would be called a "studio," but I am in Boston, in the past again, so it’s a "buffet."
"Alex, let me have one of your cigarettes."
He looks at me as though I offered to fuck his sister.
"Why?"
"Because I’m out, man. You act like they’re gold. All you’re gonna do is light ‘em on fire anyhow. Come on, let me have one."
He seems lost for a moment, sitting slumped against the wall. His bowl is cashed, and the pipe has slipped from his hand, spilling ash onto faded carpet.
With difficulty, he crawls to a worn and weathered overcoat, gray in color, and extracts the exotic, imported pack.
"These," he states with great emphasis, "are not cigarettes. They are Gauloises, the deadliest French coffin nails that I have ever found. And if you want one, it’s gonna cost ya." With that, he flops onto the floor, staring raptly at my collage of new age books and holding the pack just beyond my reach.
"Fine. Whadaya want?" I ask, already clutching my lighter.
He seems thoughtful as the CD player repeats a Soundgarden tune we heard earlier, and I wonder which one of us chose to play it again. Lyrics drone on as he ponders what is to be the price of my addiction.
"Your gun," he finally announces, and it takes me a moment to recall what we’re discussing.
"Bullshit. Now way. My gun for one stupid cigarette? You’re crazy if y—"
"Gauloises," he corrects me. "And I don’t want to keep it. You’ll need it tomorrow, anyhow. No, you’ll hold one of my death sticks for a little while, and I’ll hold yours. There’s a certain… symmetry in that, don’t you think? Very… new age," and then he swipes at my mosaic, scattering the books.
"Alex, you are one sick monkey," I tell him as I pass him the weapon.
"’Man is a Bad Animal,’" he quotes with great emphasis, and I light up.
He mocks me by holding the barrel in his mouth and waving a lighter past the butt. My anger at this jest is tempered only by the flood of nicotine into my body.
My first hit of a Gauloises. The first of many.
I rush past cafes and news stands, evading traffic both automotive and pedestrian, hoping in vain to lose my pursuers. I’m no stranger to benighted city streets. There will be some way, if I only know how to see it.
Suddenly, everything tilts around me.
Perhaps I have lost my mind.
Alex stands across the street from me at the opening to an alley. He leans against the wall smoking. Gauloises, no doubt.
Surprise registers in his expression, as though I were early and in too great a hurry. He steps quickly into the alley, looking once back at me. Again that nod.
Follow me.
Tires squeal, grinding to a halt, and I narrowly escape the fender of a honking car while a cabby decries his indignation in a language I can only guess is Farsi. As I charge into the alley, gutter smells assault me: vomit, urine, garbage. I race into the darkness, hoping that this specter from my past has come to show me a way to freedom.
I am profoundly disappointed, and I find out too late that I’ve been chasing the ghosts of my own mind. This alley is a blind run; no exits of any kind. Alone, I take a moment to appreciate the phrase "dead end" before looking back.
Paulo’s men surge into the alley and one slips on discarded newspaper, perhaps someone’s bed the night before. The other pushes past him, entering more cautiously. He holds his weapon like a professional and uses cover well, making any last fantasies I have about using my gun just that: fantasies. Only failing light has let me live this long.
I’ve no doubt that they will kill me; they have not spoken a word.
I turn again to the blank brick wall before me and see…
Alex.
Sitting with my gun clenched in his teeth and still mocking my habit by pantomiming long drags off the barrel and pretending to ash the butt into my pop-can ashtray.
"You still just don’t get it, do you David?" He fixes me with a quizzical look.
"Get what?" I answer, savoring the heady buzz of strong tobacco through my haze of other drugs.
"This, all of it," he explains, poking one of the books with his toe. "I thought you were like me, breaking free and clear by seeing beyond the rules. But you bought the lie, didn’t you? And I don’t mean society, I mean the Big Lie. Life. Reality. Personal existence. Shit like that."
"Alex, you’re an ass. Stop fucking with me, okay? I’ve had enough. You win. Jesus Christ. All I wanted was a cigarette."
"You see? You don’t get it. You don’t know what you’re asking for, let alone who you’re asking. Do you know why I smoke these? Do you? Can you tell me why I smoke these?"
"Because their Gauloises, the deadliest fucking French coffin nails you c—"
"Idiot! Parrot! Parakeet talking monkey pig spit imbecile! Where do you get this shit?"
"But Alex, you said—"
"Hogwash! Horse shit! Smoke and mirrors. Nobody says what they mean. God damn it, haven’t you ever met a person before? Haven’t you learned anything I’ve been teaching you?"
"Listen, man, this is crazy talk. You’re flipping out, that’s all. Take a deep breath and think about something nice. Think about Karen." The words are out before I know what I’m saying.
"Karen? Karen is crazy. I could never really marry her. I’d have to be crazy like you. You, you could marry her. You believe this bullshit," and he flails his arms wildly, still holding my gun.
Oh, God, I think, he knows.
"David, I am going to do you a favor. A favor as big as the one you’ve done for me." Oh, God, no. "I am going to explain it all for you. Everything. Right here. Right now. So listen up, ‘cause I won’t repeat myself. Understand?"
My legs are numb. There is a finality in his voice that frightens me. My throat is tight and my voice has fled. I sit on the floor, dumbly nodding my agreement. At least, I think, at least he’s stopped waving the gun. Please, Alex, keep talking…
"This," and he beats his fist against the floor, "is crazy. All of it. It’s a lie, a trick of the mind. We pretend it’s solid. Unchangeable. But not for us; everybody knows better. That’s why they have to sell us the lie. To keep us from changing the world, David, and remaking it our way. Space is just the cage they put us. But we can… Break… Out.
"Static time is an illusion, part of the trap. The truth is, I’m still living parts of yesterday, and I can already see tomorrow. You know this is true, and you refuse to live it. What do people say? Listen to them: ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.’ ‘Watched pots never boil.’ ‘I’ve had a really long day.’ You’ve said these things yourself, and never grasped the truth behind the words!"
His eyes are watching a place a thousand yards beyond this tiny room as he continues his speech:
"I am bigger than mere flesh, in directions you cannot fully understand, and I’m moving ahead. Now. I’m sick to death of waiting. Don’t mourn me, David: we’ve already met again. You need to see this. I love you.
"And death is only the beginning."
I watch in slow motion…
He raises my weapon…
To the side of his head…
…and sends a single .45 caliber hollow-point through his skull.
Everything changes.
Indescribably. Irrevocably.
His left hand drops into my lap, the gun still hot, and my Gauloises is burning a hole in the carpet where I let it fall it. After a moment, the smells of burnt hair and cordite overwhelm me. I consider vomiting as I watch blood seep into the carpet from a dozen bits of meat and bone that enhance the scattered mosaic of book covers, in a way almost poetic. One piece, I realize, is an ear. Whole and perfect, it sits alone and separate but for a small amount of flesh attached, and slowly stains my dirty, faded rug.
My head is ringing painfully, my eyes burn and itch.
I sit and stare in morbid fascination for an eternity, maybe longer.
Then I take out a fresh cigarette, Gauloises, and light it.
I’ll have to clean the carpet.
…Alex.
Impossible, I think, for the second time today. And I still don’t know what I mean.
There, in the once-empty space between me and a brick wall, is Alex.
He’s holding his hand out to me and his face betrays fanatical urgency, as though my confusion might cost us our lives.
I realize he’s right, and I let him take my hand.
Before I have time to understand what happens, he steps back, through the wall, and pulls me slowly into the brick.
Everything is darkness, and I feel a wet sponginess pressing all around me, heavy and terrifying. I cannot breathe.
Slowly, light returns. Dim, incandescent. We’re standing in a broom closet, and I tangle with a mop bucket as I make my way to join Alex. For the second time today, he’s holding a door and looking at me as if waiting for me to see.
No bell rings this time as I follow him through a kitchen into a grimy restaurant, where we attract odd stares from the diners and staff. I realize then that I’m covered in dust and tiny bits of brick, and my hair is a tangled mess. Alex, by contrast, is clean and neat. I vow to look up the meaning of a word at my earliest convenience. Until then I banish it from my repertoire. Clearly, I don’t know how to use it correctly.
The night air braces me once again as I step out to the street, and a waning crescent of moon is suddenly high in the sky. Alex is incongruously far ahead, his casual gait having carried him farther than my mad rush can keep up with.
The walk gives me time to think.
If it weren’t for Alex, I would never have made it to the big-time money. After his suicide, I kept our appointment with the Spaniard. Needing a story to explain his absence, I came as close as I could to the truth: Alex had crossed me, so I’d killed him and taken his woman. I had his money, some of it stained with blood, and the deal went through. Within a week, the story had spread.
Seemingly over night I had offers pouring in. Street-cred is powerful stuff, and I worked the angles. Alex’s old contacts were loyal to the money and the drugs, and suddenly I meant business. I rode that wave as far as it would go. No longer a junior partner, I shared profit only with myself. Within a month, I had a condo and a car. Inside a year, I was a major player. I didn’t even notice when Karen left me. My dreams were coming true. My nightmares, too.
I couldn’t stop looking for the next big score. Suddenly alone, I was a junkie and the edge was my junk. I made three or four runs to California every year, and then I hatched a plan. Meticulously, I set it up. I lied. I wheedled and cajoled, trading favors for promises. I skipped a run and created a drought, letting supply fall below demand. Prices rose. Then I called in my markers and sprang the trap. Everybody had to count on me. Everybody. I would have made at least a million on this one buy. And things began to unravel.
And then, Alex. Uncanny, inexplicable, Alex.
I watch him enter a small alternative-looking nightclub up the block. Dusting myself off and raking my hair with my fingers, I jog the last few paces and pay my way inside to join him. I find him already seated in a booth, placing a drink order with the only waitress. I ask for gin and tonic: no ice, two lime.
We sit wordlessly for a time and listen to the music, loud and overpowering. The song is a recent release, Living Dead Girl I think is the name. The bass line is relentless, hard and driving.
Finally, I light a cigarette and hold the pack out to him. He looks at it and smiles, wide and shameless, before the distance returns to his eyes. Then he takes the pack and lights one for himself. At last, he leans in close and speaks:
"You must have questions, David."
I strain to hear his words through the music, but his voice sounds exactly as I remember. Exactly. Right down to the terrifying finality and the thousand-yard stare. I struggle to find words, and he spares me by speaking again.
"Children deprived of love always turn to magic. That’s me, David. But I can see now that it’s not you. I’ve been unfair. Forgive me."
Bewilderment swallows me again, an inky blackness that covers my mind, and I try to push on through the veil of confusion.
"Are you a ghost?" I ask lamely.
"You don’t believe that hocus-pocus bullshit, do you?" His question is rhetorical, and this time we both know it.
"I thought you did."
"Don’t think for me, think for yourself. Do you want to see real magic? Watch, and I’ll make the waitress get your drink right."
As if on cue, the waitress arrives with our drinks. His is something dark and bubbling. Mine is perfect: gin and tonic, two lime, and no ice. Somebody even squeezed the lime for me. I sip it, looking at him across the rim of the glass, before I call his bluff.
"Alex, anybody could have done that."
"Exactly. But what you must remember is that I did do it. And now we have very little time. Give me your gun."
No, Alex, not again.
"Why?" I ask instead. "I have cigarettes this time."
"I know that," he replies, gesturing with the Gauloises I gave him as if he might dismiss my obvious concern as just so much smoke. "But the time has come for me to do something for you that you cannot do yourself." Again, I hear the finality in his voice.
"Why?" I repeat.
"Because you’re not ready. I was selfish and headstrong last time, but I’ve grown since then. And you have been looking for me in the wrong place. The wrong place, David. Now give me your gun before that place takes you and keeps you for good."
I notice Paulo’s two minions enter the tiny club. One speaks to the bouncer while the other scans the room. How did they find us?
Alex sees without looking, and answers my unspoken question.
"They’ve been checking all the establishments around here since you disappeared. They’ve had a lot of time to look – you were slow walking through the wall." I was okay as long as nobody said it. Now I’m reeling again, off balance and dazed.
"David, give me your jacket. Now."
I comply without thinking. I feel numbness coming on again.
"Good. Now take my coat and give me that gun." That gun. The same weapon I watched him use to splatter brains into my apartment. His brains.
Once more, I silently acquiesce. Somehow, Alex is changing. His features swim before me. Do I hallucinate? His face isn’t quite settled before he stands from our booth. He stops to write a phone number on a napkin, which he shoves into a pocket of my jacket. The police will call that number, I know, and someone will identify my body. Who? Does Alex have other friends?
I watch him leave cash on the table, enough for the drinks and a tip. I can’t believe this. He’s going to die again, and he stopped to buy my drink.
"Now, David, put on my coat and make slowly for the back door. Keep low. There’s going to be a bit of a fuss, and I’ll be too busy to look out for you."
Then my features settle completely onto his face and my eyes watch me across the space between us. He straightens the lapel of the jacket that he wears, my jacket, and smug satisfaction is the only way to describe him.
He’s doing what he’s good at, I finally realize. He’s Alex, and This is what he does. I rise and make my way slowly toward the back. The music has changed, and Prodigy’s Mindfields pounds from the sound system, rocking the ecstatic mass on the dance floor.
He’s five paces from the table when he raises my gun and starts shooting into the crowd. Paulo’s boys return in kind, finding their mark repeatedly.
A wave of panicked bodies carries me out into the night, and Alex’s coat is warm and safe around me. As I ride that human tide to the street-lit side walk and police sirens echo in the distance, I find myself alone with my thoughts…
He died for me.
Again.
This is what he’s good at.