The First

by Glen Kenner

  Sarah opens the door and gets in.

  -You boys playing nice?

  Glen Ray gets on the highway and takes the first exit to turn around and heads back to the airport garage to drop us off. Before getting out of his car I ask him for a card. I know there’s no way he has a business card. He says he’ll put his name in my shitty phone. I pull my phone from my pocket but before I can say something clever about my it, he takes it from my hand and puts his name and number in my contacts.

  -The other night, when I saved your life, I went through your phone. Sorry, but, you know, it’s the job.

  -You didn’t save my life. At best, you saved me from a small amount of inconvenience.

  Something pops into my head.

  -Did you listen to Sarah’s voicemail?

  -Yeah. That’s actually what got me thinking about her being a First. But I kind of didn’t want to tell you that back there…

  I take a big breath and shake my head. No more fucking promises.

  I let out a sigh and open my door.

  -Don’t call us, we won’t call you.

  Then something else pops in my head.

  -Hey, how much cash you have on you?

  -A couple hundred bucks maybe. Why?

  -You got three hundred?

  He gets out his wallet and counts through his cash.

  -Yeah, why?

  -Hand it over. Three hundred. You broke a friend’s phone the other day. He’s out three hundred bucks.

  -Oh, man.

  -He counts out three hundred dollars into my hand. Almost a hundred of it is in ones.

  -Did I mess up your plans to hit the strip clubs?

  -Man.

  Glen Ray leaves and Sarah and I get in my truck and I start it up. It’ll be dark soon. The setting sun is reddening the western sky.

  -It’s not safe for you at your apartment. Or my house. We have to keep them guessing while we figure this out.

  -Keep who guessing?

  -Everyone.

  16 - Firsts On The Run

  We pull up in front of her apartment building and she jumps out. Before closing the door she leans in.

  -I trust you, John. I really do. But I don’t like being on the run. It’s not my style.

  -I know. It won’t be long. I’ll find Kingsley and put an end to all of this. Probably tomorrow. And then everything can go back to normal, ok? But for now, we have to keep our heads down. Alright?

  She nods her head and forces a smile.

  -20 minutes. See you then.

  -You got it, Johnny.

  She shuts the truck door.

  First time she’s called me Johnny. That’s what my Sarah in New York called me. I let out a deep breath and watch her put in her code and go inside. A minute later her bedroom light comes on and I take off.

  Twenty minutes is cutting it close but every minute that she’s where she’s expected to be is dangerous. I drive twenty miles over the speed limit through the side streets and coast through stop signs when I can. Once I’m on Dr Martin Luther King Dr, I get the truck up to 70 before jumping off onto Vandeventer and then fly through the streets of my neighborhood in Jeffvanderlou. I back into my narrow driveway, go past my house and to my small detached garage, hit the garage door opener on my sun visor and back in and get out. I have to force myself to move slow now just in case someone is watching. Fuck it can be harder to move slow sometimes than fast. I lock the garage door and go up to my back door and go inside. Now I can move fast.

  I take my first shower in days and quickly throw on jeans and then pull on another t-shirt as I walk through the house. Turn on a lamp in the living room. Turn on the tv. Then down into the basement. I know I’ve got some spare pipe somewhere. Found it. It’s probably eight feet long so I fasten it in the vise on my workbench and cut off two pieces, each about a foot and a half long. I look at the time on my phone. 11 minutes to go. Now the fun part.

  Leaving the lights and tv on, I go out the back door as quickly as I can. It’s dark back here. Doubtful anyone can see me, though they would have seen light from inside pour out the back door for a second. If they were watching. I have no idea. I spring across my back yard, jump the short chain link fence and keep moving across my neighbor’s yard, across Cote Brilliante Ave and then a straight line across through another yard, jump another fence, do it all two more times and come out on Cass Avenue. Right under a street light. Shit. I open the fuck up and pour on full speed down the street. I have less than ten minutes to meet Sarah, assuming she got out without being seen like I did. I’ll know in ten minutes.

  Slowing down in front of Hotel Emboscada, I pull out my phone and look at the time. Took me nine minutes. Damn I’m good. Inside the hotel, Sarah is sitting in the corner with her face behind a magazine. She can hide her face, but not her buzz. And not those legs. She’s wearing a skirt and a sleeveless top. She doesn’t seem to understand how to dress for keeping a low profile. My brain wants me to explain this to her. Other parts of me tell my brain to shut the hell up.

  She gets up and walks over with a smile.

  -You showered.

  -I did.

  -You needed to. I was going to take a long hot bath in the room.

  She holds up her same bag that she had on our flight around the world.

  -You ok with that?

  I quickly tell the clerk one room, top floor if possible, and pull ninety bucks from the cash Glen Ray gave me earlier. I’ll get it to Maurice’s Maurice, but for now we need to use cash. We get a room on the sixth floor and take the elevator. In the elevator, I hand her one of the pieces of pipe.

  -If a First comes at you, smash this as hard as you can into his head. Ok? Don’t hold back and hit him as many times as you need to. Then one more time just to make sure. Kill him if you’re ok with that. Because he’ll be trying to kill you. If it’s a Third, and I can’t see that happening, but if it is, hit them anywhere in the arm or leg or the ribs. Two or three times if needed. The bones will shatter and they’ll go down. Cool?

  -Cool. What if there’s a gun in my face?

  -Kill whoever’s holding it.

  -I just wanted to make sure I have your permission.

  Smartass I say through a smile. She jabs at my stomach with the pipe and we laugh and start to spar with our pipes just as the elevator opens on 6. A heavy-set middle aged couple, in matching t-shirts and jean shorts, waits for us to get off before getting in. I hear the woman say as the doors are closing, Remember when we were like that Ronald? Ronald must have grabbed her ass. She suddenly cries out, oh you horny devil!

  Inside the room, we look around. The door lock is a piece of shit and the chain lock is for looks only. A fat fourteen year old could snap it by leaning against the door. The lock on the sliding glass deck door is broken. That sucks, but I doubt anyone would try to come in from six floors up. Still, you never know. So I have two doors to worry about.

  Sarah comes out from checking the bathroom and looks around.

  -Not bad.

  -Yeah. One night, maybe two. Better than an airplane seat or the back of a shitty sedan driving through Syria, right?

  -No doubt.

  -Want to watch some tv?

  I turn it on and toss her the remote and go back to the deck door. Something is bothering me about it. I step outside and look around. We’re a few blocks from the Loop and the traffic over on Delmar is still heavy. Lots to do on the Loop at night with so many restaurants and bars, the Tivoli, and especially The Pageant. I’d rather be staying at the Moonrise Hotel right on Delmar but even with Glen Ray’s three hundred bucks, we wouldn’t have enough cash for a few nights and meals. This shitty little hotel will do. I test the railing. It’s solid, surprisingly. Looking down I realize that just the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third floors have balconies. The first two floors don’t. That’s good. Makes it harder to come up from outside. Straight down looks like a few feet of rock or dirt, then a low hedge and then grass for twenty something feet until the sidewalk and street. Not
much lighting. Good and bad. The street is one-way heading to my left and most of the on-street parking spots are filled. I’ll have to watch this, but without much street lighting, I won’t see much. It is what it is.

  Back inside, Sarah is on the bed in her skirt and top, flipping through the channels. News, news, news, National Geographic for a few seconds, news, and then TV Land. All in the Family. She says she knows this show.

  -The guy Andy is an old misogynistic racist, right?

  -Archie. Archie Bunker. A bigot, I’d say. And a sexist. It was a really popular show in the 70s.

  -The 70s must have been fucked up.

  -Every decade is fucked up.

  We watch the rest of the show and the theme song comes back to me. I guess I never paid much attention to it back then but listening to it now, I get it. Archie and Edith just wanted to go back to the good old days. Only, those weren’t such good old days for everyone. Not even close. No matter the place, no matter the time, there’s always some people that are being treated like shit by some other people. I used to assume that I’d live long enough to see the end of that. How fucking naive.

  I look over at Sarah and she’s asleep. Huh. No bath. And no nothing else that I’m not sure was even going to happen. Not sure I wanted it to happen. She’s not a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of girl. I am a world class expert in that area. But I don’t need to complicate things right now. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, shithead.

  I turn down the tv and she doesn’t stir. So I turn it off. I pull the chair from the small desk, face it toward the door, turn out the lights and sit down with the pipe in my hand. The only light is what seeps in from under the door and a red glow from the clock radio on the nightstand next to the bed. It’s ten-thirty. If I were coming for a couple of Firsts, I’d wait until two a.m. But I’ve been doing this for thousands of years. Sometimes you have to factor in that your enemies are idiots. So I get ready now and I sit and I wait.

  The clock radio next to the bed shows 10:45 and I get up and go to the door and look out the peephole. Nothing. I haven’t heard the elevator or any other doors. Fuck. I forgot to check out the door leading to the stairs. A six story hotel is going to have an emergency exit probably at one of the ends of the hallway. I was distracted by those 50 year old tourists in the hallway. I should check the stairs now but I don’t want to wake Sarah. I’ll check it in an hour. I cross the room and barely pull back the curtains from the sliding deck door. Fuck again. That’s what was bothering me. I can’t see the street from inside. I’ll have to be on the balcony. That’s not good. I slide open the door without opening the curtains until the door is completely open. The outside air is warmer than inside the room and there’s the small city outside sounds but it’s relatively quiet up this high. Sarah hasn’t stirred at all. I bend down and pop through the curtains onto the balcony and lie flat on my stomach. The railings are dirty stainless steel about six inches apart and I rest my face between two of them and survey the street. Eight parking spots in front of the hotel from intersection to intersection. More parking farther down in each direction that I can’t make out. Of the eight in front, six are taken. Mini Cooper, sedan, SUV, open, sedan, Jeep, open, minivan. No lights on in any of them that I can tell. No sound of a running engine, but I’m probably too high up to hear it anyway. Nothing. I go back inside and leave the deck door open. I sit back down in the chair and wait.

  11:00. Nothing in the hallway. Outside: no movement, no engine sounds. Mini Cooper, sedan, SUV, open, sedan, Jeep, open, minivan. No changes. Back inside and wait.

  11:15. Nothing in the hallway. Outside: no movement, no engine sounds. Mini Cooper, sedan, SUV, SUV, sedan, Jeep, sedan, minivan. Huh. Two new cars. Just then a pickup turns the corner and comes down the street slowly, looking for a spot. In the new sedan I can see two figures inside from the headlights of the pickup. Fuck. The pickup continues on and turns left and disappears behind the hotel. The street goes dark again. The doors on the sedan open and two men get out. They’re both smoking. The passenger comes around the front of the car and looks up at the hotel while taking a long drag on his cigarette. He seems to be scanning the rooms floor by floor. Fucking fuck. Then both men flick their cigarettes into the street and turn to each other and kiss. Short and then long. They take each other’s hand and walk across the street and into the hotel lobby. Huh. I’ve known plenty of gay men, going back thousands of years, and plenty of gay Firsts. But I think I just witnessed a romantic tryst and nothing more. At any rate, they were wearing shorts and t-shirts. If they’re Firsts coming for me and Sarah and they’re carrying, they’ll need more than a few pistols. I’ll know in five minutes.

  I get ready to scoot back inside when I see someone walking up the street. He’s walking slowly past the cars, looking around between cars but then looking into each one as he gets next to a window. He gets to the sedan owned by the two guys and slows down and tries the handle. Locked. He moves on to the Jeep and does the same, then the next sedan, and then the new SUV. He puts his face close to the back window as he tries the handle. Tinted windows. Then the window comes down and he jumps back. The back door opens but immediately slams shut as the street is filled again with light. The pickup is back, driving slowly, still looking for a spot. The would-be thief is not even a teenager. He’s in the middle of the street and runs away from the SUV and disappears in the opposite direction. The SUV’s window goes back up but not before I see from the inside light a man in the second row seat behind the driver and a man in the front passenger seat. Assuming the driver is in the car, there’s at least three men in a dark SUV with tinted windows waiting outside the hotel. Fuck me.

  I twist around on my stomach and pop my head through the curtain back into the room. Still dark, no sounds from the hallway, Sarah still asleep. I twist back around and check my back pocket for the pipe and my front pocket for the phone. Looks like I’m set. Lucky me.

  It takes less than two minutes for another car to come up the street. Not the pickup but someone else, driving slow and hoping for a spot in front of the hotel. When they get along side the SUV, I jump up and go right over the railing, pushing myself slightly away as I do, and let myself drop straight down. Six stories is probably sixty or seventy feet and I hit the grass in two seconds. Nothing broken, maybe one sprained ankle, pipe still in my pocket, and I managed not to cry out. I should have been a goddamn stunt man.

  I sprint to the right to get behind the cars parked on the street and then cross over and come back up the street on the sidewalk, staying low and watching for cars coming up behind me. I get behind the minivan, shoot around it, and get behind the sedan. Look for an oncoming car, nothing, shoot around the sedan and get behind the Jeep. Do the same and get behind the sedan. The SUV is next. Now I wait and probably five long minutes go by. Finally another car comes up the street. Bonus, there’s a second car behind it. I wait for the first car to pass me and get along side the SUV and I shoot around the sedan on the passenger side and drop onto my belly just as the second car passes. The SUV is a big shiny black Ford Explorer. Looks new. I scoot back a bit and look up and get the plate number. On the ground around me I look for something sharp and spot a fragment of colored glass. Probably from a beer bottle. I scratch the plate number into my left forearm. Then I hear a window roll down on the passenger side. Someone flicks a lit cigarette butt onto the sidewalk.

  -Leave the window down. That smoke is going to give us all fucking cancer.

  A man’s voice. Middle aged. Definitely not a First if he’s worried about cancer. And I don’t hear a buzz, though I might not through the SUV. Maybe these aren’t my guys. Maybe there aren’t any guys. I don’t fucking know.

  -I’m not worried about cancer.

  Another guy. Younger.

  -Yeah. You’re going to live forever. You fucking believe all that shit, I know. But you’re not worried about how long it’s going to take that cigarette butt to decompose, are you?

  The first guy.

  -I’m in.

>   A woman’s voice.

  -No matching names checked in.

  -Check for payments in cash.

  A second woman’s voice. What the hell have I stumbled onto here? This sounds like some shit is going down but it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with me and Sarah.

  -Four rooms checked in tonight that paid in cash. Text these to Mathews, Marlboro Man.

  The older man laughs.

  -107. 111. 309. 605.

  The younger guy not afraid of cancer says he’s got it. Sent.

  605 is our room. Mother fuck. These are my guys. And gals. Mother fuck.

  -Hold on.

  Second woman’s voice again.

  -Mathews is calling. She always has to give a pep talk. This is Bryant. Yes. Ok. You’re on speaker phone.

  -Alright everyone. Teams 1 and 2 are in place. We moved Lee from the lobby to outside the back door. So it’s just three Firsts in the lobby and now five Firsts out back. You four keep it simple. You’re two drunk couples looking for your friends to keep the party going. Nothing more. Just tag the targets and call up Team 1. If things go south, get out and call it in. Everyone else is shooting to kill, so don’t get caught in the crossfire. Not shooting you is not the other teams’ priority. Ignore the clerk and other guests. And don’t fuck this up. Should be an easy job but even if it’s not, we need this to go down according to plan. We’re not the only ones looking for the targets. Irvine’s on the ground as of three hours ago. Lobby in one minute?

  Not the only ones, I almost shout out loud. Irvine? Fuck.

  -We’ll be there.

  The second woman again. Bryant.

  -Team 3 out. Ok, remember what Waters said. No messes. Just the targets. Ignore the clerk and any guests. In and out. We’ll take the elevator to 6 and make our way down. Let’s go.

  The doors open up and I scoot under the SUV. But the people on the passenger side cross in front of the SUV and the four of them group together and then cross the street. No buzzing. I can’t see their faces, but they’re definitely all Thirds. What the hell? The guys are in jeans and both women are in skirts and sandals. One of the women is carrying a large beach bag. They cross the street and I scoot back out and wait for them to enter the lobby before I shoot off across the pavement and then grass. Time to try something new. Ten feet from the building I jump as high as I have ever tried to fucking jump and I just grab onto the edge of the balcony on the third floor. I pull myself up, stand on the railing, and jump up and grab onto the railing on the fourth floor. Again on the fifth and then to the sixth. I burst through the open balcony doorway and the curtain. The night stand lamp is on, the bed is empty and the bathroom door is closed. Bad time for a bowel movement.