“How’d we do?” asks Gabe.
“Four,” I say, not bothering to mention the collateral damage. “Enough.” To get paid.
“How many did she get?”
“One,” says Joe, staring at me. But a slight shake of his head tells me it was “zero.”
“One more than me,” says Gabe. “Give that girl a beer.”
Joe grabs a cold one and throws it on the tarp, not gently. It lies there, twitching slightly with the gentle motion of the girl beneath. Joe looks at me and shakes his head, and I know that somewhere behind us, gradually sinking beneath the waves, is a rifle with a full magazine. Every kill today was Joe’s, and I am not sure who I hate the most for that: Joe, Xtian, or myself.
We are silent for the rest of the ride in, mostly following the current, slow speed ahead. I do not bother to look back; you can never look back. Instead I watch the shore approach, all jagged black shapes and shadows, cold angles, mathematical. I am not quite sure where we are, or where we are going, but I know one thing for sure.
One way or another, each of us will end up right where we need to be.
Cloudy Climes & Starless Skies
12/21/2012
Come on,” I say. She ignores me. It is not at all easy getting her to do anything these past few months. Homework, dishes, laundry. Once she has herself a nice little corner to camp in, she never wants to move. Both virtually in her games, and here in real life, her room smelling of unwashed plates, empty soda, and her. Part of this is winter. Part of it is her age. And to a certain degree, I have myself to blame; I bought her the games, forbade her real-life friendships. And I have not exactly provided her with anything else to do. Because there is nothing.
We are “sleeping” again now, the events of July 4 well behind us and nothing new on the horizon. This situation has nothing to do with Xtian’s failure to pull the trigger as requested on the job, at least not that I know of—Joe did all we needed to do, and more. I doubt anyone else even knows. Rumors do spread, and there are leaks despite their best efforts, but that is unlikely, and I am not concerned. I am used to this pattern of ebb-and-flow, plenty and famine. Months or years between targets is normal, especially after a major election. There are shifts of power high up the invisible chain of theoretical command that take time to resolve themselves. I expected quiet, at least for a year or two. It is too early to worry about any of that.
I do worry, though, that Xtian’s failure is because of me, just as my near failure in DC on the subway was because of her. Like it or not, our fates are at the moment uncomfortably intertwined. And I do not like that her present state of lassitude reflects on me. I do not care if anyone else knows. I know. That she is dragging me down. And I do not like it one bit. She has been listening to my lessons, but not learning.
Enough with the games.
The ironic thing of course is that I am the one who introduced her to these multiplayer brain-destroyers. I had read that they were supposed to desensitize you, make you more capable of committing violent acts, that sort of thing. I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded worth a try. When I was her age, all you could ever do in a game was die, eventually, regardless of how many quarters you put in or how good you were. That seems like a good lesson to learn. But what I’ve learned by watching Xtian play is that all these games actually teach is that everyone is immortal. You die, you respawn with a new life. You kill another guy, he comes right back. I do not like this lesson.
“Xtian, now.”
She does not respond, but her little solider onscreen does. Her fingers dance over the keyboard; the little arms obey her commands, sniper rifle always in motion, the scope ever-so-briefly outlining a digital head before vanishing once again. Somewhere in the distance that head explodes and she gains a point. Quick scoping, she calls it. Within the span of a second she reloads her gun, pulls out a combat knife, hurls it into the air, and blows another head off. Somewhere in the distance the knife hits someone in the head, instantly killing him. What will the next chapter involve? Zombies? Aliens?
I move to grab her arm, and she shifts it away to avoid my grasp. I yank the headphones off her head but she just shrugs it off and keeps going; the volume is maxed out, and I can hear tinny, pubescent voices shouting racial and homophobic slurs at one another, at her. At least until I walk over and pull the Ethernet cable out of the router. It takes a moment and then she sees the message saying her connection has been lost. She looks over at me and hurls a slur at me.
“I told you not to use that word.”
“It doesn’t mean that anymore.”
“We are going for a walk,” I say. We are also going to meet someone, but she does not need to know that. Yet, anyway.
“It’s four in the morning,” she complains.
“And we are both awake,” I reply. But she already knows this argument is futile, is already tugging on her sneakers. We have both fallen into an unhealthy regimen, odd schedules. Up till dawn, sleeping most of the day away. No school to pretend to have, no work to prepare for. The games are not helping. Or the television. Neither of us has been out much, and we are both paying for it. Mentally and physically. I have no idea about games, but an hour of television reduces your lifespan by twenty minutes. You burn more calories while sleeping.
Shoes tied, she stands and glares at me, arms crossed. “Well?” she asks.
“Get dressed.”
“I am,” she says, matter-of-factly.
She most certainly is not. Not for December, not even for July. This is not navel-baring weather, and she knows it. She is doing this to annoy me. She is succeeding.
I reach into her closet, way in the back, and pull out a fuzzy sweater, throwing it at her.
“Where did this come from?” she asks, smelling it.
I take a deep breath. Losing patience.
“The outside world,” I say. “Let me show you.”
• • •
It was horrid out, not even cold enough to be interesting, and it was raining, a sort of irritatingly gentle mist that got in my face and hair and raised the stink off the street, tainting everything. I felt dirty and greasy and my socks were wet, as they seemed to be all the time back then. The world was ugly. And so was my mood.
“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself,” he said, once he’d settled on a street to prowl.
“Jesus had a better time on the cross,” I mumbled. He’d said we could go back when the birds sang, but dawn was a couple of hours away.
“I highly doubt that,” he said. “You’re not bleeding from the wrists.”
“That’s later, over the bathroom sink,” I said.
What bothered me most about these “walks” was that we never went anywhere in particular, just wandered around the neighborhood, playing a game he called, “Let’s see if you’re paying attention.” We would walk, and he would ask questions, and I would answer.
It went something like this:
“How many ways are there out of that house we just passed?”
“Front door. Back door in the enclosed porch. So two.”
“No.”
“Four?”
“This is not Sudoku. Five. Why?”
This took some thought. “Windows?”
“Irrelevant. Five ways out. North, south, east, west, up.”
“How?”
“You just need the right tools. We’re next to one fifty-seven. What number is across the street?”
“One-sixty.”
“Children?”
Toys in the front yard, two cars … “Two.”
“Describe them.”
“Blonde hair, blue eyes … She’s got six fingers on her left hand. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Two kids, let’s say seventeen and six,” he said. “A boy and a girl. Beater in the driveway, high school sticker in the window, bumper stickers scream ‘male teen.’ Fresh dents in the fender, tires are bald. Probably just got his license.”
“And the girl?”
“It’s cheating if you know the answers,” I said, punching his arm.
“Cheating isn’t losing,” he replied. “It’s efficient winning.”
“Do I get a prize if I win?”
“Yes. You get some fake gratitude. ‘Good girl. Such a good girl.’”
“I can’t wait to tell my fake friends that—”
He held up his hand and hissed, and I shut up immediately and listened. It took me a moment, but then I heard it, too. The sound of a bird, whistling in the dark.
• • •
“Blue jay?” she guesses. At this hour, this would be improbable, especially in this area, this time of year. And anyway, the correct answer is thrush. She would know that if I had bothered to teach her the code, but it has not been a priority and I hate using it, personally.
Regardless, we are done walking.
“Get back home,” I say. “Now.”
I give her no time to argue; she is on her own.
I vault the nearest chain link fence and vanish into the black, then hop another fence. This takes more out of me than it should, which is why I am glad that my contact is waiting for me in the next yard, beside a house we both know is vacant, since we made it that way. I would call it a “safe house” but I really do not like that word. Nothing is ever safe.
He sees me about the same time I see him and whistles again. I repeat, and he steps half out of the deepest shadows. Neither of us are fully relaxed, hands buried inside pockets, not because it is cold outside, but because we are each holding weapons.
We stand close and speak quietly.
“Been a long time, Al,” he says.
“It has,” I say. So long that I have forgotten the name I used to call him by, or whether or not he wanted to kill me. Irrelevant—names do not matter, only that we are useful to each other. Plus, he was the only one to answer his phone when I was calling around last week.
“Was that the girl I heard about?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, wincing inwardly. So much for the threat of rumors being unlikely. But he has no more to say, so maybe people have not been talking as much as I feared. At least not yet.
“I appreciate you coming,” I say. “It was short notice.”
“And short on details.”
“Is that a problem?”
He shakes his head, so I go ahead and give him the address and apartment number. It is quite refreshing not to have to speak in code. He notes that this is nearby and asks when.
“Now would be great,” I say.
“Right now?” he asks. I nod. He hesitates, but ultimately just shrugs it off.
“Fine,” he says. “Who is it?”
Now it’s my turn to hesitate. I am unsure, now that it has come down to it. But I only pause for a moment. Because this is for the best, no matter what happens.
“You just saw her,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. Part of me is surprised too. But it makes sense. So much sense. Every lesson I have taught her has been for naught. Failure after failure. She needs a real test. A trial by fire, as it were. And that is not something I can give myself. Not yet, at least.
“Is this some kind of setup?” he asks. Stupidly, as if I would tell him if it was.
“No,” I say. “It’s a job. There’s a little girl arriving at my home right about now, and when I get back there in a half hour, I do not want to find her there.”
He takes a moment to think about this, but I think he gets the gist. Or one gist, at least.
“I don’t know—”
“You owe me a favor,” I remind him. “Don’t forget that.”
He narrows his eyes for a moment. And then he remembers when I did something for him not so unlike this. Something he simply could not do himself. Outside of normal channels, unofficial, and—as I recall—quite nasty. Something neither of us will ever mention again.
I have done a lot of favors, over the years. People owe me a lot. I like that.
He paces for a moment. I know how he feels. With a group, you are just thinning the herd. But one target, one at a time, is more like downing Old Yeller. Personal. Which is still pretty easy to do, mechanically speaking, but it stings a little. He knows this well. Which is why we will be even, after this. Some things cost more than money. This is one of them.
“You’re sure?” he asks, finally.
“If I had any doubts, I would not have called.”
But there is doubt, and more. There is a brief, faint twinge of guilt somewhere in my chest. I have felt it before, long ago, and pushed it down just as easily. This needs to happen. Xtian only has at best a fifty percent chance of a positive outcome, but I win either way. These are the types of games I prefer to play.
“Thirty minutes,” he whispers. And then he is gone.
I stand there for just a moment but I am not one to wait around, so I walk the opposite direction for the corner store to buy some groceries, pulling out my phone as I walk. One more phone call to make. And then it will be out of my hands. Maybe forever.
• • •
It felt cruel, taking me out to see nothing, then sending me back just when things were apparently about to get interesting, but I knew better than to argue. And I’d been wanting to go home for over an hour, after all. So I just turned and ran down the street, zigzagging back the way we’d come, alternately skidding on black ice and tripping over hardened lumps of gray. By the time I reached the apartment everything from foot to knee was completely soaked and cold, and it was all I could do to fumble my key into the lock, lunge inside, and be warm.
Wet sneakers hit the wall with a thud, leaving puddles on the kitchen floor that Edison would complain about when he got home. That is, until he saw the jeans in the corner, and the wet socks beside the door, and the rest of my things, a trail of me leading towards the bathroom.
I didn’t even wait for the tub to fill, just wrenched the hot water knob all the way over, then added a bit of cold so I didn’t boil and slid in the moment the water was warmer than me. I ignored the hurt and by the time the tub had half-filled, I was feeling quite toasty again. I could easily have died right then and gone to heaven.
Of course, right about then is when my cell rang.
Only one person had the number for that thing, so if it was ringing, it was him, and it was something worth calling about. I turned off the water, hopped out of the tub, and grabbed a towel on my way out the door. Slipping through the dark into the oasis of light that was my bedroom, I leaped onto the bed and crawled across to the cell on my dresser. I got it on the fifth ring and flipped on my back, watching as the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling charged up, powered by the unicorn lamp on my desk.
“Under your bed,” said Edison, and hung up.
And then there was nothing but the slow creak of hot pipes fighting cold air. Except, I knew, it wasn’t the pipes. It was footsteps on the loose floorboards in the hall.
My numb fingers dropped the cell, but I didn’t see or hear it hit the floor. I was already looking for escape, realizing that the window was not an option, that it would take too long to peel off the weatherproofing plastic, pop out the screen, and climb through. The door was the only way out, and that’s where the intruder was. I was vividly aware of the butterflies dancing in my stomach, and somewhere deep in my skull I could hear Edison’s cold voice telling me that those were actually involuntary muscle contractions as my body diverted blood away from my stomach and towards my legs. Nothing romantic, just biology. Reaction. Wanting me to run.
They always run, Xtian. Wouldn’t you?
I wanted to, I did. But my brain realized that I needed to wait, that darkness would hide me better. Even though my legs wouldn’t work, my fingers managed to fumble over to the lamp switch. Then I let gravity take over and fell on the floor. Above, the glow-in-the-dark stars flickered into life, cold and green and pale. Orion. The Hunter.
I wriggled under my bed to hide, d
ust collecting on my damp, suddenly all-too-naked body as friction trapped my towel beside the dresser. Footsteps neared the door, and I crammed my eyes shut, too scared to cry. Just a stupid little girl hiding in a stupid little place. I tried to hold my breath, letting whoever he was breathe for me as he slowly entered the room, walking like Edison, moving like Edison. A killer, like Edison. I prayed he didn’t see me, not even knowing who I was praying to, just someone, anyone. Anything.
And as if on cue, the intruder’s feet moved out of view around the foot of my bed. And I was back in the restaurant, eight years old, blood on my face and blood on the floor and all I could do was stare at my hands. Run. Run. I felt dizzy as I counted to three in my head, closed my eyes, and pushed myself forward, with the intent of lunging for the door.
I never had a chance.
A thick hand grabbed my ankle from behind, sweaty palm hot and slick on my cold, shivering flesh. I must have screamed as my hands dropped out and my jaw cracked the floor, sending another loose tooth skittering into the darkness, where the tooth fairy would never, ever find it. Bleeding and in pain, I could do nothing but grab wildly, fingers finding only dust bunnies and dirty socks. And then, just as he pulled me out and into the light, I found death.
Courtesy of Edison North.
• • •
I come home to my neighbors peering out the upstairs window. I wave as if nothing is wrong, and they smile and wave back, and like everyone they go back to watching their television and ignoring me, and ignoring the world, which is how we all like it.
My door is open. In the kitchen there is water, and blood, and Xtian’s clothing. In the bathroom, there is running water. And in her bedroom, there is a broken lamp, and a little pink throw rug stained bright red.
Blackbird Page 9
