Disintegration (14 page)

When I wake up in the morning there's another envelope by my front door, but it isn't yellow this time. It's white. I pick it up and set it on the table, and go to take a shower. I'm dying to know what's in there, but I need to get clean first.

I soak under the hot water, leaving the lights off, a cold beer nestled up against the bar of soap. Beer in the shower for breakfast—it's the lifestyle of the rich and famous. It isn't long before the women start to drift into my head, which is certainly better than the bodies. I think about Isadora, and the violent sex, and wonder if I'll see her again. Should I make the effort? I don't usually go back for seconds, preferring to stay a one-night stand, just some drunk they met in a bar, nobody that they'd want to look at too closely, ask questions, give a call on the phone one night. Who doesn't have a phone these days? Me, that's who. I'm used to grabbing my clothes, sneaking out, and dressing in the hallway, walking home in the middle of the night, still drunk. I'm used to kicking them out, the few I've taken back here, hoping and praying that they were too drunk to remember, that they won't show up someday asking why I didn't call. To ensure my anonymity I crush half of a Rohypnol into a beer or glass of water, and they tend to forget my face. My address. Unsure what really happened.

My mind drifts to Holly and I lean into the water, eyes closed. Is she gone for good? Is she still in town, in the state? I should let it go. But it doesn't seem finished.

I step out of the shower and grab a towel. As I walk into the kitchen, Luscious is sitting by the back door, scratching to get out. She glances over her shoulder to the other room, once, twice and goes back to scratching.

“Hold on, hold on. It's cold out there, you sure you want out?”

She glares at me.

“Okay, don't go too far.”

I open the door, cold hitting my ankles, and she darts out. I turn around and head back to my bedroom and see a strange man sitting at the table, a gun in his hand, pointed at me, dressed in blue jeans and a black shirt, with black leather boots as well. He's got the uniform on, this distorted doppelgänger, but he's not my twin. His head is shaved, there's a brass ring in his nose, and a long, angry red scar runs from his forehead to the back of his skull. When he snarls at me, one incisor juts out, his mouth a crooked wreck.

“My time?” I ask.

He stares at me, his eyes shaky.

“Did Vlad send you?”

His jaw clenches.

“I'm here as a favor, brother,” he says.

“A favor?”

“Go get dressed, we need to talk.”

I walk past him, unsure of where this is going.

“Don't bother looking for your gun. It's out here on the table. And don't try anything cute, my friend, I'm not here to make things harder.”

I dress quickly and come back out.

“I guess there's no point in
introductions,”
I mumble.

“Sit down,” he says, pointing at a chair across from him.

“You mind not keeping that thing aimed at me?”

“We'll see,” he says. “I'm just here to give you a message. We're cut from the same cloth, brother.”

“I can see that.”

I stare at the man—same stubbled face, same wardrobe, same gun, I think, and the same dead eyes, a dark, deep cold expanse that falls down his pupils.

“What's the message?”

“You're not the only killer on the payroll, buddy. And you're not the only one who can show up in a kitchen in the middle of the night, and wait outside a bathroom with a pipe in their hand, a quick stab of a long blade, a shot to the back of the head.”

“I can see that.”

“Don't trust the Russian,” he says.

“I'm beginning to see that.”

“He makes all nice, hooks you up now and then, tosses you some hot ass, but he keeps you diluted, drugged, and dependent, no place to go, no resources left, and when he's done with you, or if you somehow manage to figure it out, or stop doing
what
he says
when
he says it, BAM, you wake up one day dead.”

His hand shakes and he lets out a cough.

“How long have you been clean?” I ask.

“Three days.”

“That's it? Man, you look like crap.”

“You don't look so great yourself, brother.”

“Have you tried to get off the meds before?”

He sets the gun down and rubs his eyes. I glance at the gun and consider it.

“Go ahead, do it, put me out of my misery,” he says.

He opens his bloodshot eyes.

“I'm so tired. Exhausted. I can't sleep. They know where I am, the envelopes keep on coming, and I keep on doing what I do. But sometimes there's collateral damage. I took out a woman who was cooking crack in her garage, stringing along the local kids, screwing the boys, her own little army of sex slaves and thugs. But they were like fourteen years old, man. They started to overdose. She had a bad batch, and she knew it, and she sold it anyway. She was stuck in a circle of selling drugs to get the cash to pay her mortgage to get more drugs. I delivered a package as a UPS man and shot her in the gut. Her daughter was supposed to be at school, but she was home sick that day.”

“Oh man.”

“What could I do? She saw my face.”

A cold rock sits in my gut and I want to hate this man, but he's just like me. I don't know if I'd have done anything differently.

“I don't know what's worse, thinking my family was dead, or knowing that they're still alive.”

Something stirs in my gut. What did he say? His face crumpling, his jaw trembling. This guy is almost done.

“What do you mean?”

“There was a fire, the house burned down. There weren't any bodies to
identify—everything
turned to ash. I fell apart. I met the Russian and he offered me a job. I took it. I was drunk, suicidal, and ready to end it. He gave me a job to do, a reason to keep living. Sound familiar?”

My sight is gone. A wall of darkness descends over my vision.

“Yes. Go on.”

“One day I got a bit mouthy and he showed me a picture, with a time stamp and date that was only a few days old. It was my family, alive and well, the wife and kids. He didn't tell me where they were, only that they were alive—for now. He kept that chip in his pocket, no explanation for why I was picked, why my life was ruined, but after all that I'd done, I let sleeping dogs lie, brother. Beyond repair, this guy, if you know what I mean. No longer a functioning member of society.”

They were still alive, his family.

“Whatever the Russian did, he had me over a barrel. Maybe he staged the accident for me, and only me. Maybe my family thought I left, that I had died in an accident, or run off with some whore. I don't know. No way to get to them anyway, and if I disappear, he'll kill them all. I have to figure it out. In the meantime, I keep working.”

I stare at him, numb.

He stands up and wipes his eyes, face flushed, embarrassed at his weakness.

“Stand up,” he says.

I stand up.

“Punch me in the face.”

“Why?”

“I'm supposed to be on an assignment. I need some time. I have to figure some things out. I'll tell him the guy got away, but I'm on it. So punch me in the face.”

I look at the man, and take a breath. I make a fist.

By the time he leaves my apartment his eye is swollen shut, his ribs are bruised, and my knuckles sting. I sit down in the chair and have no sensation in my limbs, chest cold and empty. I am deflated, shot, my head filled with molasses and I can't feel my heart beat any more. I can't dare consider it. I saw the bodies, I was right behind them.

But what did I really see, the night of the accident, and later, at the morgue?

What did I really hear?

The package sits there, a thick white envelope and I don't want to open it now. But I do.

She didn't run far enough fast enough, it seems.

There's a photo of Holly, several photos. She's walking through a kitchen with a tray in her hands. She's walking through a living room with drinks in her hands. She's kneeling in a garden planting some tulips. She's walking to the mailbox, stepping out of a car, shooting baskets with a young boy, who must be her son. He looks to be about ten years old, and the father joins them, graying at the temples, they laugh and roughhouse and in the last shot she's bending over to pick up a newspaper, and her eyes are looking forward, directly at the camera, she's staring into the lens and she must know.

There is one last photo, zooming far into the garage, to a shelf high up on the wall. There's a large metal box sitting there and it has a lock on it. It's open wide, and bolted to the wall inside it are several guns—a shotgun, a rifle, stacks of ammunition, and sticking out of the back of her jeans is her handgun. She's holed up someplace. She's either run back to where she was before, worked out a deal with Vlad to leave her alone, or she's moved on to someplace else, fast.

I think the former.

I think a part of Holly likes the danger, likes fucking strange men, likes holding a gun in her hand, deciding the fate of the culprit before her.

There's a note in with the pictures, but it's short. Looks like Vlad's handwriting to me. She didn't run that far, it seems:

1111 Edington Lane

Mundelein, IL

Your call: end it, or we will.

And we won't do it nice.

The family is up to you.

I'm not ready for this. And to say I need a drink is beside the point. I stand in front of the refrigerator and twist off the cap, fling it toward the trash can, and guzzle the beer down. The fridge is full of beer, overflowing, and I guess Vlad knew I'd have trouble with this.

There's a scratching at the back door, so I go let the cat in. She eyes me as she wanders in, shaking off a bit of the damp snow, and turns her back on me, toward the cat food, and soon I hear her teeth crunching away.

This is going to require more meditation than I can handle straight. I'm at a turning point, a tipping point, and I have no idea which way to lean. I'm not that attached to Holly, this faux girlfriend of mine, this late night siren song, lulling me to sleep. And yet, I am. I've been vulnerable in front of her, the only woman to really see me since my wife and children died. Were killed, I mean. The others, I was a ghost, a skeletal frame of bones and sweat, a distraction for a night, barely something to cling to in the dark, a blank canvas on which to project whoever it was that they actually desired—an old boyfriend or ex-husband, the one that got away, the one bartending down at the corner with eyes for everyone else, the one that took her out for wine but could never close the deal. I was a way station, a stopping-off point, to fill up and get off and move on.

It's still daylight out, so I open another beer and head for the medicine cabinet. I need to consult a muse. I need to see what beast lurks beneath this weak exterior. I need to talk to Isadora. Maybe she'll slap some sense in me.

When I look up from the dining room table, the room is dark, but light skitters across the wall forming patterns, words in a sketchy handwriting, laser tracings from the outside lights, headlights and streetlamps, refracting off of the falling snow, the drapes drifting back and forth from the heat pushing out of the pipes. I've taken three happy pills now, but I'm far from happy. I fear that I cannot speak. I see a pair of green eyes glaring back at me from my bed. She hates me now, she thinks I'm leaving, and she may not be wrong. I may not come back this time, and she knows it. Not from tonight's adventure, to the Innertown Pub, although that could always happen too, but from the trip to Mundelein to see Holly. She should have run, Holly. And she should have realized that a roll in the hay was not enough to buy my forgiveness. Or my silence. I try to remember her file, to bring those pictures back into my sight, but they're blurry. I want to believe them now, to think that she's as bad as, or worse than, anybody else that I've taken out.

Somewhere there's a file on me, no doubt. And it must be a thick packet, that one. But what if I'm misinformed, what if I've been fooled all along? What if the pedophile was simply a property owner that Vlad wanted out of the way? What if Cammie was simply an ex-girlfriend, somebody who broke his heart? What if Damon was just a drug dealer, a dime-a-dozen, stepping on Vlad's territory, infringing on his block? And what if it's simply Vlad who is the impaler, the one stepping on toes, usurping his competition? Am I just the muscle after all? The meat? The cleaner?

Tonight it's all backward, and nothing is going as planned.

I make my way back to the Innertown Pub, hoping to find Isadora. The obvious thing would be to go to her house, but I don't want to be that intrusive. I want her to come to me—in my suspended state of animation, I want her to appear at my side. I'm not logical, but emotional, and it's probably a mistake.

I sit on the same stool, another bottle in front of me, a full shot of bourbon, and when I look up at the bartender he's glaring at me, arms crossed. When I look at him the second time he turns away.

I drink the beer and the place is pretty empty, a game of pool going, some darts in the back, and two lesbians at a table by the front, one with a shaved head and sleeveless shirt, combat boots and a snarl, the other with long blond hair and ample curves, lipstick, and a tight, dark skirt. The dyke is more of a man than me, and when I look at her I shiver with cold. My arms feel like alabaster and my legs are numb all the way down. I finish the bourbon in an attempt to warm up and signal the bartender back.

Reluctantly, he wanders over.

“You're not going to puke again, are you?”

“What?”

“Throw up? Not going to do it?”

“You're crazy.”

“Nobody else was in there, just you, bubba.”

I lick my lips and there's the faint remnant of something sour.

“Jesus, man, I'm sorry. Must have been something I ate.”

He eyes me with a clenched jaw, arms crossed.

“What say I make it up to you?” I ask, pulling out a twenty.

He stands still, unimpressed. I look down at my bankroll, and it's rather thick. I pause to consider a knock on a door, a long conversation with Guy about time travel, the collective unconscious, the behavior of certain monkeys on an island off the coast of Japan, and him peeling off half of his green. Retainer, he called it. I can hardly retain my water.

Twenty more hits the counter. He waits. Twenty more. He squints. Twenty more.

“Forgiven,” he says, snatching them off the bar.

He sets a beer down with a bourbon chaser.

“Do something stupid again, and you're out,” he says.

“Hey, before you go,” I slur. “The girl, from the other night.”

“Isadora?” he says.

“You seen her?”

“Not since that night,” he says. A grin appears.

“She come in here often?”

“Not often enough, if you ask me,” he says.

He wanders away and I see the mirror behind the bar, lines of bottles reflecting the light, and I hear bells ringing, the clink of glass, the door opening, more bells, two slobs in hooded sweatshirts and jeans. I look down. I'm wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. They stumble past the lesbians.

“Evening, ladies,” they say, nodding.

They find their way back to the pool table.

The blonde catches my eye and there's a sparkle at her ear, a large diamond, flashing, twinkling, and she gives me a coy grin. She runs her hand through her hair and winks. She licks her lips and shifts in her seat. She bends over to get something out of her purse, her shirt riding up, her skirt pulling tight, and I'm sure she's not wearing any underwear.

I blink my eyes and the dyke is standing in front of me.

“Hey, miss,” I croak.

Maybe I imagined all of that, the blonde.

“You got a problem?” she says.

“Many.”

“My girlfriend says you're making lewd gestures at her.”

“What? No, she was winking at me!”

She turns around to look at the blonde, who is crying into a tissue, honking her nose. She doesn't look flirtatious in the least.

“You're an asshole,” she says, picking up my beer and pouring it over my head.

“Hey,” I say.

By the time I get the beer wiped up, dry off my face, and look up, they're gone. The bartender has nothing to do but glare at me.

“That's two strikes, big tipper,” he says.

“I'll be right back,” I say. “Another please?”

I drop another twenty on the bar and head to the bathroom. I open the door and a blonde is sitting on the toilet. She's got a syringe out and is shooting it into her arm.

“You mind?”

I close the door and step out. I turn around and one of the hooded sweatshirts is standing there.

“My girlfriend in there?” he asks.

“She blond, like to shoot smack?”

“What the fuck did you say?”

The girl comes out of the bathroom, crying, holding an empty syringe in her hand.

“This jerk tried to sell me this, and you know how hard I'm trying to get clean, baby….”

My mouth opens, the tiny red mark on her arm glowing like a cigarette tip.

“…So I emptied it in the toilet, and told him to get lost, but he—”

I know what's coming and I can't even move. The sweatshirt wrinkles his upper lip and pops me in the gut. I vomit all over the both of them.