No Further Messages

by Brett Savory

  No reply.

  The man hangs up the phone.

  Emma listens to the dead line hum for a long time. She is crying and has no idea why.

  The man in the dark blue suit crosses the street carefully, making sure to look both ways, climbs three flights of stairs, enters Joseph’s office, sits down.

  “Joseph—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Joseph, listen—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  The man in the dark blue suit stares hard at Joseph. Contemplates whether he can risk another interruption. Knows he cannot. Decides he doesn’t care, anyway. So he just sits quietly and fiddles with a crease in his pants.

  And waits to die for nothing.

  SCENARIO B

  Gronk opened the sack of guts and carefully counted spleens, determined not to be cheated again. Elbow-deep in grue, some bastard started pounding on his apartment door. Probably the guy who just delivered the sack. Well, he could wait. Gronk wasn’t going to get shafted again. Three, four . . . okay, five. All here.

  Gronk walked to the door, unlocked it, opened it just enough so he could peek one eye out. “Alright,” he said. “They’re all in there. You can go now.” He slammed the door shut, locked it, snapped the chain on, walked back toward the sack.

  More pounding on the door. “Money, Gronk! You ain’t fuckin’ paid yet!”

  Gronk sighed, walked back to the door. “I’m not opening up again. You’ll probably shoot me or something. You’re a black-market thug and you’re going to shoot me. I know it.”

  “I won’t shoot you. Open the goddamn door.”

  “Like fuck I will.” He tried on the tough words, but they felt alien coming out of his mouth.

  “Like fuck you better!” The man kicked the door, old wood rattling on its hinges.

  “You’ll shoot me,” Gronk said. “If I open the door again, you’ll shoot me and take back the sack. I know it.” Gronk sagged against the door. “I just know you will.”

  “I’ll shoot you if you don’t open the door. I’m done fuckin’ around, so just pay up and I’ll go.”

  Gronk bit his lip.

  Another sharp kick at the bottom of the door. Gronk flinched.

  “I ain’t jokin’ around, son. You know how I roll and you know I’ll do it. Now open up!” The door thrummed with life, the thug’s fists pounding up high, his feet bashing down low.

  Breaking into a cold sweat, Gronk backed away from the door.

  “Alright, that’s it, I’m comin’ in—you’re gonna fuckin’ be sorry.” The thug threw his bulk against the door. Gronk backed farther away, nearly tripped over the sack of guts, bent down, picked it up, held it tight against his chest.

  The thug threw himself against the door again, butting a hole in it with his shoulder, just above and to one side of the chain lock. More low kicks, weakening the hinges, then one final charge and the whole door crashed inward, sending up a plume of dust and crud.

  The thug stood on top of the felled door. Gronk stared at him. Big black boots. Black leather jacket, lined with metal studs. Face like pitted concrete. Scarred, bald head, pocked with deep indents. Cigar drooping from his thick, wet lips. He munched on it once, twice.

  “Gronk,” he growled, raised the gun at his side, levelled it at Gronk’s face. “Money or death, ya little shit.”

  Gronk lifted the sack higher, curved his bony shoulders inward, squeezed his eyes shut, turned his head away, and whispered, “I don’t have any money left, thug.”

  “Don’t call me that. You know my name’s Jimmy. Why you gotta call me ‘thug’? It’s fuckin’ juvenile.” He bent back the hammer on his gun. “It’s nothin’ personal, you know? You know what I’m sayin’? I got people Igotta pay, too. No hard feelings, alright? Just stand still and take it like a man.”

  Take a bullet like a man? Gronk thought. What a ridiculous—

  Jimmy fired and Gronk’s right leg exploded in pain. The bullet tore into the flesh on the side of his calf. Gronk bellowed, dropped the sack. Jimmy fired again, missing as Gronk fell over sideways. He landed hard on his elbow. Fresh pain shot through his arm, racing up into his shoulder, covering his head like a hood.

  Then, something Gronk hadn’t felt in a long, long time suddenly rose in his chest, dulling the pain: Anger. He’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to be severely pissed.

  Somewhere far away, Jimmy apologized half-heartedly, walked into Gronk’s tiny kitchen, opened his fridge, and rooted around for something to eat. “Fuck, man, what the hell do you eat? There’s nothin’ in here.”

  Jimmy turned casually and fired again from across the room, this time driving a bullet into Gronk’s left hand. He gritted his teeth against the scream that wanted to burn up his throat and tear through his vocal cords. He fell over on his side and bled.

  You will not ruin this for me, thug. The words felt honest. Crisp ice chips of truth. But then, just as quickly, as a new wave of pain coursed through his system, those ice chips melted, drowning his courage.

  Jimmy slammed through the cupboards, chucking onto the floor a jar of Nutella, a ziplocked bag of pistachios, four crumbled crackers, and a slightly crushed box of Weetabix. He stomped over to Gronk, loomed over him, pointed the muzzle of his gun directly at his head. “Before you die, I wanna know one thing, freak. What do you do with it all? Huh?” Jimmy poked Gronk’s forehead with the muzzle of the gun. “What do you do with those sacks of organs, the crates of limbs? What sick shit do you get up to with that stuff, retard?”

  Gronk frowned, chewed on his lip. Now was his chance to come clean, tell someone about what he’d been doing. He was going to die either way, so why not at least get it off his chest? But a hard nugget of resistance had formed in his heart, his throat. He wouldn’t give up his secret. Not to this thug.

  “I won’t tell you.”

  Jimmy threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, I beg to differ. You will fucking tell me.” His breath smelled like sewage and his teeth were long, dark yellow, and crooked. He leaned back and puffed on his stogie, smoke snaking around his greasy head, curling up to the ceiling, then flattening out and drifting into water-stained corners.

  And just when Gronk felt that bolt of courage rising again in his chest—his synapses popping and sizzling, that stubborn determination gripping his will, creating a solid path of defiance—Jimmy’s shoulders slumped a little. He pointed the gun at Gronk’s head again. “Ah, fuck it.”

  Gronk squeezed his eyes shut.

  Jimmy pulled the trigger.

  The hammer did not fall. The gun just sat there, jammed, in Jimmy’s giant mitt.

  Jimmy squeezed the trigger again. Still nothing.

  “Cocksucker!” Jimmy roared, pulling the trigger over and again, to no avail.

  Gronk thought he should feel happy, elated, perhaps even graced by God to have been given such a reprieve. Surely, someone Up There was watching over him. But instead of feeling blessed, charmed, or divinely intervened upon, Gronk just felt sad. Because he couldn’t save himself. Instead, he had to be saved by events that had nothing whatsoever to do with his actions.

  Gronk sighed, and let pain wash over him.

  When he was just about to black out, he saw Jimmy—through a surreal haze of smoke, grimy light, and watering eyes—finally give up on the weapon and throw it against the nearest wall.

  Finally discharging it.

  The bullet made a neat hole right where Jimmy’s heart should be; a thin trickle of blood oozed out. Eyes wide, mouth open, Jimmy keeled over.

  Thoroughly disappointed in his performance, Gronk frowned and passed out.

  When he came to, Gronk tried to wiggle the fingers of his left hand, tried to move his right leg—severe pain in both directions.

  Someone must’ve heard the gunfire and called the cops by now. I gotta get outta here.

  Lifting his head from the floor, he looked at the sack. With his savings gone, it was probably the l
ast one he’d ever get his hands on.

  In the distance: sirens.

  When the police arrived, they found a broken-down door and a dead thug in a pool of blood.

  No Gronk.

  No sack of guts.

  I can’t ever go back.

  Blood trickled down Gronk’s leg and off the tips of his fingers as he struggled down the alleyway behind his apartment building. He held the leak-proof sack in his right hand, slung over his shoulder. It was tied at the top with wire and filled with ice to keep its contents cool.

  Gronk’s thin brown shirt and dark gray sweatpants were slicked to his skin with sweat. Almost there now. Gronk smiled despite his injuries. Swanny would take care of him. He didn’t know for sure, couldn’t remember for certain, but he thought maybe Swanny had always taken care of him.

  He rounded the alleyway’s corner and lurched under a dirty-green, torn-up awning. “Swanson’s Knife Shoppe” was stencilled in Army font on the shop’s little window. Beneath the words: a crudely drawn picture of a sharpening stone.

  Gronk dropped the sack to the cracked pavement and felt alongside the edge of the metal door for the buzzer. He had no idea what time it might be, but hoped to hell Swanny was home. His fingers found the buzzer. He pushed it for ten full seconds.

  Footsteps coming down stairs. The door swung open and Swanny stood at the bottom of the staircase. Wearing a dark red bathrobe and light green sandals, her short hair was held back here and there with clips.

  “You’re beautiful, Swanny.” Gronk managed to smile a little. It was the same thing he said every time he came over.

  Swanny looked him up and down quickly, alarm registering on her features only very slightly—the hint of a raised eyebrow, a tightening of the lips, the tiniest widening of heavily mascara’d eyes. But that was all.

  “Come in,” she said. “Hurry.”

  Gronk grabbed the sack with one hand and hobbled inside. Swanny shut and locked the door behind him.

  “Leave the sack here,” Swanny said. “I’ll come back down for it.”

  She helped him up the stairs one step at a time, opened her apartment door, and led him through. She retreated down the stairs, grabbed the sack, came up again, dropped it beside her coat rack, locked all five of her deadbolts in quick succession, hooked her three chain locks, and sat down opposite Gronk on a wicker rocking chair.

  “Do you want me to help you, or do you want to just bleed to death?” Swanny’s arms were folded across her chest. Gronk didn’t blame her for her attitude; he’d more than imposed on her these past couple of years. Free food, free money, free rides to and from his secret place.

  Free knives.

  Gronk leaned back, eyes shut, his head on a small pillow embroidered with elephants. Plastering her walls were framed posters of Harry Houdini and other magicians Gronk had never heard of. A battered old chest sat in one corner of the living room—her trunk of tricks, she called it. A deck of cards was spread out on top of the trunk; a dog-eared book of amateur card tricks sat open next to it.

  Swanny believed there was magic in everything.

  “You’re bleeding on my couch,” Swanny said, her tone chilly. Maybe he’d really worn out his welcome this time.

  She pursed her lips, disappeared down the darkened hallway, flipped on the bathroom light, returned a minute later with scissors, a washcloth, a length of gauze, and some metal clips. “Leg,” she said, moving her chair closer to the couch. Gronk used his good arm to help Swanny prop his bad leg onto her knees. She cut away his sweatpants, cleaned the bullet wound as best she could, then wrapped the gauze around, cut it, and clipped it securely.

  “Hand.” She moved her chair a little closer to the couch, but didn’t raise her eyes to meet Gronk’s. He gently maneuvered his hand to her knees, rested it there, hissing through his teeth. She cleaned and bandaged it, too. “That’ll do till you can get treated at a hospital.”

  Gronk nodded, looked away. “Thanks.”

  The ensuing silence was more than Gronk could bear. He knew this was the last time he’d be able to lean on Swanny. Felt it in the cold space between them.

  “You’re not going to die,” she said. “At least not yet.”

  “Swell.”

  More silence.

  “I suppose you need a ride,” she said.

  “No, I’ll walk. Don’t worry about it. You’ve done more than enough for me already—and over the years, too. I don’t deserve a friend like you.”

  “We’re not friends, Gronk.”

  No, I suppose we’re not. Not really.

  “Well, whatever we are, Swanny, I want to thank you for it. You’ve been kind when you didn’t have to be.”

  “I’ve been curious, that’s all. You’ve become mysterious. Still dorky, but mysterious.” Swanny cracked a small grin.

  “Gee, thanks,” Gronk said, and smirked.

  The clock in the living room chimed four times. Gronk craned his neck to get a look at it. “Four in the morning?”

  “Do you have time to sleep? You should really rest.” Swanny crossed her legs, leaned back in the rocking chair. She produced a cigarette seemingly from thin air. Lit it with a match she plucked from the same place. It unnerved Gronk every time she did it. Whenever he asked her how she managed it, she’d just say, “Magic. I’m entitled to some mystery, too, you know.”

  “The cops will be looking for me, so yeah, I guess I should lay low for a bit.” Gronk winced. Again with the tough-guy talk. Sounded so corny coming from him. Why did he even bother?

  Swanny looked like she was trying not to laugh. “I’ll get you a blanket, then, ya big criminal.” She stood up and disappeared down the hallway again.

  Returning with a blanket, she found Gronk already asleep.

  In Gronk’s old apartment, Detective Jeremy Fintner squatted over the inert body of Jimmy the thug. People meandered about, dusting this, bagging that. Bells had rung in his head when he’d found out the identity of the renter, but he couldn’t quite place the name.

  Fintner stood, walked to a ratty desk set deep into one corner of the room beside some empty bookshelves, broken hockey sticks and tattered movie posters. He slipped on latex gloves and pulled open the desk’s drawer. It squealed in protest, the wood having expanded in the record-breaking heat of the past week.

  Inside were photographs. Piles of them. They’d been cut apart and taped together again with other photographs, placing people from one picture with people from another. Fintner flipped through the various pieces, unable to discern any pattern. Some pictured smiling women, relatively recent judging by the hairstyles; others showed teenagers, definitely older, probably from the late ’70s or early ’80s—rocker-types with studs on their leather jackets, or the names of metal bands stitched into their jean jackets. Smoking, laughing, hanging out, goofing off. But all of them jumbled about, creating dif- ferent scenes than the ones in which they originally appeared. Sometimes body parts were cut out and rearranged, creating different people.

  When he neared the bottom of the drawer, he flipped to one picture in particular and stopped dead. A photograph of a thin young man.

  “Holy shit,” Fintner said.

  One of the forensic investigators asked him what he’d found.

  Fintner tapped the photo lightly and said, “I know this guy.” He turned the picture over. The name on the back confirmed it.

  He scraped the bottom of the drawer, picking up the last few cut-up pieces of photos—and realized he recognized someone else in them, too.

  When Gronk woke the following morning, he watched Swanny move around the kitchen like a hummingbird, mixing scrambled eggs in a bowl, flitting to the stove to check on the bacon. She put down toast, poured two glasses of orange juice, brewed coffee. A pretty blur bathed in yellow-orange morning light.

  “What time is it?” Gronk croaked.

  “Time to go to the hospital,” Swanny said, grating cheese over the scrambled eggs. />
  “Yeah, yeah, the hospital, I know. What time is it, Swanny?”

  She glanced at the kitchen clock, too far away for Gronk to make out. “Eleven.”

  Gronk wiped crud out of his eye. “Can you give me a ride?”

  Swanny knew he didn’t mean to the hospital. She didn’t reply.

  “Swanny, can you give me a ride?” An impatient edge crept into Gronk’s voice.

  “Sure, yeah, okay, but you gotta eat something first.”

  “No time.”

  The sound of bacon fat popping.

  “Besides,” Gronk continued, “I thought we weren’t friends. Why so much concern about my well-being if we’re not friends?”

  She turned. “Oh, fuck you, Marcus. You know what? Do whatever the hell you want. You always did before, so why should now be any fucking different?” She slammed the spatula down, turned the stove off, poured herself a cup of black coffee and walked away. When her bedroom door slammed, it knocked a framed photograph off the wall. Glass shattered in the hallway.

  Gronk blinked.

  He sat up slowly, eyes scrunched tight against the pain. He stood up, limped to the bathroom—careful to avoid the glass—and rifled through the medicine cabinet. He found some extra-strength pills for the pain, took a piss, hobbled into the kitchen.

  The toast popped.

  He scooped up some scrambled eggs and cheese with the spatula, popped it in his mouth, dumped some piping-hot coffee down his throat—the burn taking his mind off the pain in his limbs for at least a few seconds—and snagged a dry piece of toast, stuffing it in his mouth as he headed back to the hallway.

  Picking up the photograph and broken wooden frame from the floor, he glanced quickly at the picture. It was Swanny and some guy Gronk didn’t recognize, though faint bells rang in his head. Swanny looked about ten years younger. Neither she nor the guy looked very happy, but they didn’t really look sad, either. They had their arms around each other, so he figured it must be someone close to her. Could have been a brother, a friend, a lover. No way to tell, and the tiny bit of recognition he felt looking at the guy wouldn’t focus for him. He flipped the picture over, but nothing was written on the back to give him a clue.