Palindrome

by E. Z. Rinsky

  “We’re here to see Orange,” I say.

  “Got an appointment?”

  “Someone told us he’d see us at six.”

  The steel-­jawed concierge swivels and shouts to Crew Cut. “Orange expecting anyone?”

  My chest tenses for a moment. I’ve never come here asking for anything. Asking a favor is an entirely different animal.

  “Uh-­huh,” Crew grunts between reps. “Orange said to send ’em into the shvitz.”

  The front desk dude nods, satisfied, then slowly stands and comes around the desk. Towers over us.

  “Weapons?” he asks, like he’s bored.

  “Yeah,” I say, handing him both my Magnum and ceramic knife. Courtney shakes his head no. The dude places my weapons on the desk, then gives us each a halfhearted frisk with hands the size of bear paws.

  “What’s in the box?” he asks, jutting his chin at the taped-­up Styrofoam box covered in a bunch of “fragile” stickers we slapped on for effect.

  “We brought something for Orange.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “You can open if you want,” says Courtney calmly, “but I suspect your employer might not appreciate that.”

  He stares first at the box, then at me, then at Courtney. You can practically see the rusty gears cranking inside his thick skull. Then he nods and slowly meanders back around the desk. Sits back down, exuding a sense of urgency similar to what you see in overworked DMV employees.

  “Change in the locker room,” he sighs, and points to an ominous, filthy doorway on the far side of the room. “You got towels?”

  Fuck. Forgot.

  “No.”

  He shakes his head at us, displeased.

  “Nobody told you to bring them?” he says, implying the impossibility of such a clerical error ever occurring on his watch.

  “No, someone did. Just slipped my mind.”

  He sighs heavily and checks under the counter.

  “We are not fucking Equinox,” he mutters, then surfaces with two ratty cloths, one brown, one that perhaps used to be white. “These are from the lost and found.” He flashes a sick grin that carries the import of these words—­nobody was exercising with these towels. “So I will need them back. After.”

  I can hear Courtney breathing beside me. I don’t need to look at his face to know he’s trying hard to suppress his horror. I grit my teeth and snatch them from the attendant.

  “No problem,” I say, then grab Courtney’s shoulder and pull him toward the locker room.

  “He wants us to go in the sauna with him?” Courtney whispers, panicked, once we’re out of earshot.

  “Worse, unfortunately,” I reply. “Unless I’m mistaken, shvitz is the steam room.”

  The locker room is floored in grimy white linoleum and smells like armpit and onion.

  “Don’t think about it,” I advise Courtney, noticing him taking in his surroundings like one might a prison cell. “Just strip.”

  I throw all my clothes into an open locker. Crosses my mind that I probably could have smuggled my knife in my shoe if I’d wanted. Not that I’m anywhere near stupid enough to try to hurt Orange in his lair; I’d sooner pistol-­whip a menstruating rhinoceros.

  I wrap the brown towel around my waist and turn to see that Courtney is standing over his towel, totally nude, as if he just can’t bring himself to touch it. The guy is built like a Somalian scarecrow. I can see all his ribs.

  “You can go in in your birthday suit if you want, champ,” I chuckle. “Don’t wanna give Orange the wrong idea though.”

  “You know this rag is probably coated in semen,” he hisses, like it’s some sort of curse.

  I shrug. “You want glamour, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

  Courtney takes a deep breath and shudders as he wraps the white towel around his emaciated waist.

  “PLEASE SHUT THE door.” The source of the voice is invisible, shrouded by thick clouds of swirling steam. “You’re letting it all out.”

  I was in a steam room a few years ago, tried it out when someone brought me into their gym as a guest, but I definitely don’t remember it being as unbelievably hot as this one. It feels like I just turned the oven to broil and stuck my head inside.

  “Gentlemen,” the voice says, “please close the fucking door. I’m trying to exercise in here.”

  I hear Courtney obediently pull it shut behind us. He’s panting as badly as I am, shocked by the heat. It feels like I’m being repeatedly smacked in the face with a scorching-­hot damp rag.

  “You two pooftas just going to stand there?” Orange’s mocking laugh rumbles like a tractor. “Come on in.”

  It’s impossible to determine the dimensions of the room. I stumble forward blindly, groping ahead like a zombie. My hand meets something soft, and once I realize what I’ve done, I retract in horror.

  “Well that’s one way to say hello,” Orange laughs joylessly. This is like the sick analog of small talk before an important business meeting.

  “I’m sorry, Orange, I couldn’t see.”

  A hand the size of a catcher’s mitt grabs me by the shoulder and yanks me forward, pushes my butt onto a hard tile bench.

  “Frank?” I can make out Courtney’s form a few feet in front of me, writhing frantically, like a dying fish.

  The enormous form next to me emits a low, throaty laugh.

  “Sit down and let’s get on with it,” Orange says, then extends a meaty arm and pulls Courtney onto a sliver of bench on the other side of his circumference. As my eyes slowly adjust, Matty “Orange” Julius’s form begins to take shape: a mountain of wet flesh rising from the mist, folds and creases that remind me of a brain in formaldehyde. I note that our host is not wearing a towel.

  “Frankie and Courtney.” Another low rumble that resonates in this tiny chamber like a subwoofer. “What do you want? I have a French lesson in a half hour.”

  Neither Courtney nor I speak. A sharp hiss of steam somewhere by our feet.

  “Here for a girl?” Orange asks. “I’ll give you an hour for half price. I recently acquired a new Thai beauty. Very flexible. And she has this delightful routine where she cuts a dime-­size hole in the top of a banana and sucks the meat out, leaving the peel untouched.”

  He’s baiting us. Testing Courtney, daring him to disrespect him again in his own lair, and asserting his dominance when Courtney stays silent—­if he stays silent.

  I close my eyes and clench my teeth, praying Courtney sees this for what it is: establishing the pecking order here as a precondition to any sort of negotiation.

  “First of all, I’d like to apologize for disrespecting you by refusing payment,” Courtney says softly from the other side of Orange, and I exhale in relief, even though the disdain in his voice is obvious, anger at being forced to submit before this tower of flesh. I imagine that the heat in this room is being generated by Courtney’s blood boiling. “Please understand this was never my intention. We came here today because we need help. I hope we can put my uncouth behavior behind us.”

  “Interesting,” Orange says. I know he’ll at least hear us out. If there’s one thing you can bank on with Orange, it’s curiosity. He’s bored. It’s to be expected from someone who spends most of their life in an underground gym. He is, after all, sitting alone in a dark steam room at six on a Saturday evening.

  “We brought you a gift,” I say hastily, before Courtney can retract his apology. “It’s in the locker room. An actual slice of cake from—­”

  “—­the Treaty of Versailles,” Courtney interrupts. Clearly doesn’t trust me to get the details right. “Eaten in Paris in 1919. Immaculately preserved. Worth a small fortune. A true historical artifact. We thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “Mmm,” he grunts. “Do you really think so little of me? That I can be bribed into forgiving you,
Courtney?” He breathes in and out a few times.

  I’m already entirely coated in sweat.

  I try to make eye contact with Courtney to decide how we’re going to go about this, but before my eyes is only meat and steam. I suspect, however, that I’d better do most of the talking. If Courtney keeps talking, Orange is gonna keep provoking him. And if Courtney cracks—­not going ape-­shit like I do sometimes, but just getting seriously irked, his downturned lips twitching, hinting at the carefully controlled disdain behind his eyes—­we’re not going to get anything out of Orange. Hell, we might not even get out of here with all our fingers.

  “We wanted to ask you about someone,” I say. “Greta Kanter. She hired us and said you referred her.”

  Orange Julius takes a moment to rub his hands through the slick fur on his belly. It sounds like someone squeezing the life from a juicy peach.

  “Greta Kanter,” he repeats slowly.

  “Yeah,” I say. “How do you know her? What’s her deal?”

  “Greta . . . I’d forgotten about her . . .” Orange makes a sound that’s somewhere between a chuckle and a groan. “Of course that’s why you’re here. I suppose I do owe you an explanation, Frankie. Her deal, as it appears to me, is simply that she’s a gorgeous kook with more money than—­”

  Orange is seized by a wet cough that doubles him over and makes the bench I’m sitting on quake. He spits something at his feet, takes a moment to recover, then continues.

  “Excuse me. More money than God. She arrived at my door a few months ago on some kind of quixotic quest. She wanted to pore through my collections, but for what she wouldn’t tell me. Ordinarily a nonstarter, obviously, but the vixen softened my heart with twenty grand. Cash. Just to look for an hour! So I let her, why not? I had cameras on her anyways in case she tried to steal anything. She came up empty, and as she stormed out, huffing, I thought to give your number, Frankie. Told her maybe you could find whatever she was looking for. Thought I’d do you a favor. You saved me a pretty penny by retrieving those forgers. Never would have hooked you up if I’d known you were gonna share the wealth with this one though.” Orange nods his globe of a head in Courtney’s general direction. “If you two want my advice, I would milk her a bit before politely cutting her loose. I met her briefly, but her aura was singularly off-­putting.”

  The steam fires up, and I realize that my heart is pounding and sweat is pouring from my forehead. I don’t know how long I can handle this; it must be close to two hundred degrees in here. Also Julius’s leg is practically on top of mine, and I’m sitting only inches from his armpit, which smells like there was a chemical spill at the synthetic garlic factory.

  “You didn’t ask what she was looking for?” Courtney asks.

  “I’ve told you all I know about her, and truthfully I have no interest in discussing Ms. Kanter further,” Orange replies calmly, then takes in a deep breath of steam. “I was hoping you two had something more interesting for me. But I’d now like to resume my bath in peace. Thank you for the cake and tactful apology. You can show yourselves out.”

  We are in his place of work, surrounded by his employees, unable to breathe, shriveling up like a pair of clams—­we don’t exactly have a lot of leverage here.

  “That cake is worth five figures,” I say.

  “I told you what I know,” he says.

  “I could throw in another three thousand dollars for you to think about it a little harder.”

  He just laughs bitterly and continues rubbing his paws around his belly and chest, as if confirming that every pore on his body is oozing rancid perspiration.

  “Five thousand,” I say. It sounds pathetic coming from my mouth.

  “I’m not holding out on you. I told you all I know. Good day, gentlemen. Frankie, best of luck. And Courtney, if you ever interrupt my private bath again, I’ll feed you shards of glass. Leave the cake at the front desk.”

  I can see Courtney’s form shoot up and make for the door, clearly relieved to end this exchange.

  I stand up, admittedly pleased to leave this smelly hellhole, when something clicks. Why did Greta think the tape was here with Orange? I turn back to him.

  “What do you know about a cassette tape?” I ask.

  Even through the wall of steam between us, I can see Orange’s form jerk to attention. For a moment he says nothing. Courtney stands behind me, itching to burst out of here.

  “What kind of cassette tape?” Orange says slowly, carefully.

  “Maybe one that . . . well we were speculating it may contain something related to . . . life after death.”

  The glare of Orange’s small black eyes pierces through the steam.

  “Tape . . . That’s what she was looking for,” he wheezes. “That . . . whore.” The sudden tremor in his voice is terrifying. “Courtney, Frankie, sit back down. We’re not done here.”

  I bite my lip. This is a side of Orange I haven’t seen before. I sit back down beside him on the bench.

  “What’s going on?” Courtney says, slowly reclaiming his seat beside the perspiring giant.

  Orange doesn’t seem to have even heard Courtney. “Egnaro’s tape . . .” he says, half to himself, half to us. “What did she tell you? What does it say?” His voice picks up intensity. He’s breathing heavily through his bulbous nose. “Tell me everything you know. And if you lie to me, you two leave here in little pieces. I swear it.”

  The steam fires up again. My face is tingling, bordering on numb. I’m sweating so much that I wonder when I’ll simply dry out. It’s getting really hard to concentrate. How much do we tell Orange? How much does he already know?

  Courtney says, “Greta approached Frank two days ago to find this tape. She said she heard about us from you.”

  Orange chews on this a moment. “Keep going,” he says.

  “She said she’d pay us three hundred fifty grand to find it,” I add.

  Orange smacks his wet lips and cracks his knuckles. “Keep going.”

  “I . . .” I try to probe my boiling brain for details that I want to share with this blob. “She wore gloves the whole time, I thought that was weird—­”

  “Yes, her gloves,” Orange says, rubbing his sweaty tummy impatiently. “What else?”

  “I don’t—­”

  “Tell me what’s on the fucking tape!” Orange roars, the echo of his rage seeming to linger for full seconds, dissipated only by the returning hiss of the steam.

  I’m about to mention Savannah and Silas when Courtney speaks up:

  “That’s all you get, Matty. Not until you give us something back.”

  Orange growls something indecipherable. For a moment I’m sure he’s about to simply lunge at Courtney and try to beat the information out of him. I picture myself wrapping my forearms around Orange’s slick neck from behind and trying to yank his amoeba-­like form off my partner, the whole thing rendered moot because there are undoubtedly cameras in here and Orange’s goons would arrive the second I laid a hand on their boss.

  I realize I haven’t breathed in about two minutes. But the fact that Orange hasn’t snapped his fingers and had us both flayed by his Ukrainians means we have more leverage than we thought: He really wants to know about this tape.

  Orange traces some kind of design on his belly. Coughs a bit but manages to contain it this time.

  “Sensible, Courtney. You may be an ungrateful, smug little self-­righ­teous guido, but you are sensible. So yes, I’m a fair man. Let’s make a deal.” Orange clears his throat. “I’ll tell you everything I know about the tape. But in exchange—­”

  “I can’t do the banana trick, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Courtney says.

  Orange pretends he didn’t hear. “In exchange, if you find it, I want to hear it first, before you give it to her. I understand that she hired you first and you two gentlemen are too honest to d
rop her, even if I could match her price. So I won’t even try. My request is humble. One listen. Fair? It’s your guarantee that I’ll tell you the truth, because I have a vested interest in your success.”

  I exhale. Doesn’t seem we have much of a choice here.

  “Okay,” I say. “That alright with you, Courtney?”

  “Fine,” he spits.

  Julius abandons his belly and leans back on the tile bench with a groan. “Okay pooftas. Here’s what I know about the tape—­”

  “Orange, um, any way you think we could talk about this in a less humid environment?” I feel close to passing out.

  “Little much for you, eh?” Orange Julius’s booming laugh echoes off the tiled walls of the steam room. He grunts and rises slowly from the bench, less standing than oozing upright. He reminds me of a flowering tea ball gradually diffusing in a pot of boiling water. “I suppose now that we’re in business together again, I can accommodate that. I’ll tell Monsieur Reneé we’ll have to reschedule.”

  “THIS CAKE IS a hundred years old?”

  After rinsing off in Midtown Fitness’s communal shower—­walls stained with rust, drains clogged with what looks like years of accumulated black hair—­the three of us retire to the lounge. The innocuous door marked Supplies in the corner of the gym opens into an impossibly unexpected space a world away from the locker room—­a palatial room even more lavish than I remembered.

  Orange must have accumulated some more crap since we dropped off those forgers: A beautiful globe as tall as a man hangs from the raised ceiling, suspended between glimmering crystal chandeliers. Bookcases stretch to the ceiling, filled with ancient-­looking volumes that I doubt anyone here ever opens. Three young Asian waitresses in tight black leather attend to a ­couple of men gathered around the poker table, the girls’ six-­inch heels sinking into the rich red carpet like quicksand.

  Orange reclines on a chaise lounge; an enormous brown leather piece that looks custom made to accommodate his giant cheese ball of a body. He’s draped in a fuzzy pink bathrobe big enough to pitch a tent under but still stopping short at his girthy upper thighs.