Kind of stupid mixing in the last few lines of a Beatles song in there, but she’ll get it. I think. She said she was a Beatles fan when we first met.
She wouldn’t be kidding about that.
I hang up and refuse to play the part of some psychotic stalker-type by driving to her parents’ house, and waiting outside until I see her. Or call her again.
I should clear her crap out of here. Toss out all her People, US, and Cosmo magazines that are cluttering the end table.
Why the hell isn’t she talking to me anymore? I just don’t freaking get it.
“No. She just has amnesia somewhere, like what happens to people in Soap Operas. It happens to them all the time. Kidnapped by Stefano.”
I can still see us sliding down the hallway there, in our socks, as the Barenaked Ladies played.
Fuck this. I need to have some happy me time.
#
The city at night is a beast unto itself, electric and immortal, breathing by the sea with restless attitude. At night the neon slides off the hood of the car, bathing the wet asphalt in bright flashing lights like mini-Nagasaki love bombs.
Driving on I-5 South amid the blur of traffic. Beemers and Suburu Outbacks merge alongside Volkswagen Beetles and Smart Cars. Ach. Look at that lady driving the Smart Car. She looks uncomfortable and scared, driving behind that semi. I will never own nor ride in one of those tiny, tinker-toy cars. Seriously, it’s as though someone said, hey! Let’s build a shell around these roller-skates and call it a car! Whaddya say, Charles?
Now the lady in the Smart Car is staring at me.
“You drive that Lego like a champ!” I give her the happy thumbs up.
Now my car… this baby is a dynamo. I call her Rhonda.
Cruise, shift down and the engine drops a degree, sounding like a fiend on the prowl. Now on Denny Street, heading towards the Space Needle. People are out in clusters, walking towards the Greyhound Station, smoking cigarettes, carrying shopping bags from REI and Luli Yang Couture, carrying Chinese food and hotdogs, Starbuck’s coffees and espressos, wearing designer jeans and Northface jackets. These are my people, this is my city, and the city is alive, constantly building legends in the rain.
Oh my. She’s way too good looking for you.
“Fuck you, Perry. You’re dead.”
I slam my foot on the gas, shift, and I’m gone into the night with the city bleeding lights behind me.
CHAPTER THREE
Being a hitman isn’t as romantic as it sounds. I mean it’s not at all like they make it out to be in the movies.
First of all, we don’t wear black leather or sport high-tech Kevlar vests with a shitload of pockets for all of our high-tech gadgets and gizmos. And we don’t always wear Rayban or Tempest sunglasses. Well, I mean I wear Tempest sunglasses sometimes, but not all the time because that would be calling too much attention. There are rules to being a hitman and one of them is; dress casual.
And I dress casual, but I also look good doing it.
“Jack,” Victoria Pride says. She’s standing by the ferry dock at Mukilteo. This is one of our meeting points and she’s bundled up in a thick wool jacket. Her dark hair has gathered around her slim shoulders with a few long strands trailing behind her. She smiles.
There’s that rich smell of seafood trembling on the salty wind, smelling of thick clam chowder and battered fish. Men in suits and tan overcoats stand in front of their parked Beemers and Mercedes, waiting to catch the ferry to Whidbey Island. They read their papers and sip their Starbuck’s, talk on their cells to their wives or girlfriends. Kids run down the pier chasing seagulls, tossing crumbs and crackers to the white and gray swerving birds. The sky is watercolor shades of polished sheet metal and all is fine.
“What up, Vic?” I ask, walking towards her. I stop and hand her a disposable cell.
She flips it open and pushes play, then proceeds to watch the death of Max Perry. When the video’s over with she flips the phone shut and hands it to me.
“You played Harvey Danger while subtracting him?” she says.
I nod.
“That’s pretty sick.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. She annoys me sometimes. Vic has this air about her that comes across as highly elevated, kind of the way Martha Stewart talks to everyone else. She doesn’t talk down to people, necessarily, but she doesn’t talk to them as equals either. It’s tough to explain. I told her this once and she said I was just being too sensitive.
“Why’d you take him out on a boat?”
I shrug.
“Jack,” she says. “Jack, did you play around with him?”
“I asked him a few pertinent questions.”
“Jesus, Jack. Why didn’t you just kill him? I suppose you tortured him about Keira, right? Soon as you saw his name you probably planned the whole free session out. Poor guy.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Jack,” she says, giving me this brow-furrowed look of doubt. “You were just supposed to fly over there, put three bullets into his skull, and fly back, not engage in a free relationship therapy session.”
“Ah, he wasn’t much help anyway. What about you? Have you found her?”
“No,” she says, hands in her pockets, her eyes now moving down the shore, “and I’m not looking either. She obviously wants nothing to do with you. She’s just a silly kid. You know that.”
“Whatever.”
She hands me a white envelope and I tuck it in my jacket, not even going to count it. Eight large for Max Perry’s death, minus Victoria’s commission, not a bad weekend if you ask me.
We stand there in silence for a minute, sipping our coffees, looking like two handsome demons against the white sky. The coffee is warm in my hands and smells like almonds and cinnamon.
“Ironic isn’t it?” she says.
“What’s that.”
“Dr. Max Perry. The hush money he gave that disenfranchised young woman, she used to pay for his hit, so in a way, he paid for his own demise.”
Vic. She has a funny way of looking at things, at connecting all the random dots so the mass of fray makes some sort of psychopathic sense. I merely smile at her.
We step off the pier and walk down along the shore. The wind is full of grace and sound today, ushering scallops of white caps on the gray waters, like a knife scraping up butter.
“So are you good for a while?” she asks. The wind is kind to her. The wind is always kind to her, tussling her dark hair around, making her an envy to us mere mortals.
“You have another job?”
She hesitates and squints against the broken sunlight on the water. The ferry, called the Ebenezer, sounds its low, melodic horn, signaling her arrival. She’s a cast iron boat with a wide mouth, slowing down towards the dark brown poles of the dock. Men in bright orange vests ready the chains and planks, gritty yellow gloved hands on the steel wheels. The air becomes full of grease and oil. The ferry sounds her horn again.
“I always have another job,” she says. “This world is full of pissed off people who haven’t the soul for solving their own problems. This one would take you to Florida though and I didn’t know if you have time for the trip.”
“Well I have mid-terms that I have to study for,” I tell her. “And… I’m still in the middle of trying to find Keira.”
She doesn’t say anything more about this. Instead she keeps her hands around her hot latte as her eyes find the distant, dark gray smear that is Whidbey Island
“Have you ever been in love, Vic?”
She turns her eyes to me, gauging the seriousness of my question, and then returns her gaze to the distant island as the sounds of cars trumbling aboard the ferry fades and rises with the wind and waves.
“I remember when you first met her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy. Enthused, maybe that’s a better word. You were really enthusiastic about everything. Like a puppy.”
I scoff.
She smiles. “It was good to see yo
u like that, Jack. I was happy for you. Really, I was.” She reaches over and rests a hand on my shoulder, gives me a light squeeze.
And love is like that, at least that’s what it felt like whenever I was with Keira. It’s something Victoria will probably never understand. Looking at her I can see she’d be easy to fall in love with, but I don’t think she is capable of reciprocating that feeling. It’s not that she’s a bad person, but sometimes it seems like she’s more of a weapon than I am. And weapons are incapable of love.
“I mean, on Valentine’s Day, yes I did try to break up with her, but I also bought her a nice vase of roses and had the radio dedicate Linkin Park’s Valentine’s Day song to her. That counts for something, right?”
She looks at me like I’ve just showed up to a funeral in a clown’s suit.
“You don’t like Linkin Park,” she tells me.
“You are correct. Linkin Park’s songs are retard friendly. I think each C.D of theirs actually comes with one of those handicap stickers for your car.”
Vic offers a smile.
“Yes. Unfortunately Keira likes Linkin Park. This isn’t her fault. She’s young. But recognizing that she likes this horrid, horrid band, I dedicated a song to her anyway. Does that make me a bad guy?”
“Have you heard the song, Valentine’s Day?”
“Of course not,” I tell her, trying not to sound appalled. She might’ve asked, excuse me, have you tried stirring your caramel macchiato with your penis?
“It’s a song about losing someone on Valentines Day.” Vic tells me of this little quirk of fate and again, she’s connecting the random dots. “It’s a break-up song ya doof!”
“Well fuck.”
This is what happens to me, all the time. I try and do something good and somehow it backfires.
How the hell was I supposed to know that? Well now I’m in a mood.
“You’re going to brood all day, aren’t you,” she says.
“Don’t be silly.” But that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
#
The Elliot Bay Book Company.
Old pages of used books, the torn up paperback covers, the aroma of black ink on smudged paper mingled in with the savory coffee and baked bread scents- I love it. Usually there’s a few good looking girls that frequent this place, generally down in the lower floor by the café or they hover and flutter around the poetry or romance sections, thumbing through the latest vampire-knock-off copy-cat books that took the author probably all of three weeks to write.
Ah, here’s what I’m looking for.
How To Be A Sensitive Man in a Caring Relationship, by Dr. Maxwell Perry. It’s a freaking mauve book with bright pink letters. What guy in their right mind would willingly purchase this thing?
“That’s an excellent book.”
I look up and see this little lady who is dressed like a Presbyterian, peering at the book in my hands, smiling like I have a small hatchling cupped there.
“I bought that for my husband a few years ago,” she says. “The woman you’re dating must be very dear to you.”
Hmmm.
“Well, yes, she is.”
She smiles and pats my hand that’s holding the book. “Pay real close attention to that book. It has a lot of really good advice on how to be a more sensitive man.”
“Oh, this book isn’t for me. I mean I’m already a very sensitive man. I weep at movies. No, I’m getting this book because I met this guy,” I tap the photo of Dr. Perry, his smiling mug on the front cover. “And he was kind of a douche. A real unpleasant individual and it seemed to me a kind of irony that he would be such a jerk in real life and yet appear so sensitive on television. If you ever met him you’d know what a prick he is.”
“Oh,” she says and turns away like I’ve just insulted her guru.
The lady’s wearing far too much perfume and her outfit is garish. She has to be in her late fifties but her dye job is first rate. She has a weak neck and small bones, a slight hunch, so if I had to take her out I’d cover her mouth and nose with my hand, reach up and quickly apply pressure to the base of her neck until it snapped. No one would know. But how would I dispose of the body, here, in Elliot Bay books? How would I drag her out of here without anyone knowing? Maybe pull her down the stairs, into the café, and out the alley exit?
“Hey,” I tap her on the shoulder.
She turns and looks momentarily annoyed.
“Let’s just pretend for a moment, okay, that I’m in a relationship with this totally awesome girl and she’s completely in love with me. What do you think?”
The Presbyterian looks me over and shrugs. “You seem like a nice young man.”
“That’s right, but for some reason I messed things up. I don’t know exactly how. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing or say the right thing. Maybe she wanted flowers. I thought I did a pretty good job treating her right but… for instance on Valentine’s Day I unwittingly dedicated a pretty sorrowful break-up song to her, and then much later in the night I actually did try and break up with her. But… it was a mistake.”
“I can tell you love her dearly,” she says.
“I do.” My voice is without power and I look away.
She takes my arm the way a grandmother might and I feel the tender warmth there, some kind of strange chemistry between the molecules of her body and mine. Her touch is affectionate and makes me feel… comforted. And fuck… am I about to cry?
Here?!
In fucking Elliot Bay Book Company?
I leave and take the book with me without paying for it.
#
My Fahrenheit 2008 is parked on the Sinking Ship lot, several blocks up from Elliot Bay Books. Luckily it’s a nice day out.
Questions, questions, questions.
I should really be studying for midterms coming up. I’m getting this sneaking suspicion that Ms. Pauletto, my Humanities teacher, doesn’t really like me.
Chaos does begin with love. Before Keira I was happy. I mean I was so freaking unhappy that I didn’t even know it, which is kind of exactly like being happy, isn’t it? I thought so, but Vic’s right. When I saw Keira, when she came into my life, when we first held hands, kissed… that’s when I was truly happy. It was like discovering you could breathe underwater, and the whole ocean was now yours.
“Five Seattle Moments I wanted to share with Keira but haven’t had the opportunity to do so yet. One: Take the Bainbridge Island Ferry at night, see the city all lit up, reflecting like pure energy on the Puget Sound waters. Mmm. That’s a beautiful moment all right. Two: Dinner in the Space Needle. Sure that’s a bit cliché but I don’t think you can live in this city without dining there once. And… as far as I know, she’s never had dinner up there. So there’s a plus. Making memories yo. Three: Go see the Experience Music Project. I mean if she digs music as much as I do, which she does, then she’d love it.”
Maybe she just lost her phone. Maybe she’s been abducted by some tribe of cannibals and is currently having her femur gnawed on by Kumanja-boo. Fuck. I have no idea.
“Four: Go see a Mariners game. I know, I know, the Mariners suck, but I think a good baseball game on a warm, Seattle day is king. Smelling the clean grass, the fresh salty air, munching on some ball-dogs with grilled onions and kraut. Hell yes baby. We’d be all decked out in Mariners garb and I bet she’d look so adorable in a baseball cap.”
You know what? I’m going to the park to study and do some reading. No sense in wasting this beautiful day indoors. I’ll just leave my car parked there and come back for it.
“Five: I’m going to have to think about this one. It’s gotta be something good, something memorable, something you can only do in this city by the Sound.”
This is where I like to come and study, this park over-looking the Alaskan Way Viaduct, just at the end of Pike Place. Standing above us is this huge totem pole. This totem pole has seen it all.
Standing over there is a black man talking on his cell phone, wiping
a bit of mustard from his chin. A gaggle of kids skateboard by, hoody wearing punks who have obnoxious haircuts and talk way too loud. And there’s a man in yesterday’s clothes curled up on the bench, dreaming himself into the next day.
I stand here absorbing it all. Bearded men with distinct personalities push their bikes, a flock of urbanite young women hold small bags of good smelling strange stuff from Turkish Delights restaurant, and Bavarian Meat and Deli. They are wearing white Eddy Saber coats and dark blue Natalie Keens jackets, with large, brassy buttons. Their jeans are perfectly distressed in the knees and thighs, skin tight, and expensive. Old men sit on the cement benches smoking cigarettes, reading newspapers, feeding the pigeons. Asian kids laugh and point at the Manga comics in their hands. The air is both dirty and clean, a perfect mixture.
Maybe I’ll try calling her again. I mean, maybe she lost her phone and someone found it, erased all her phone contacts, and then by some miraculous chance, she found her phone again but doesn’t remember my phone number. This would be odd since she doesn’t forget numbers, but still…
It’s ringing. Freakin’ Marilyn Manson caller tune.
Pick-up-pick-up-pick-
Damn. Fucking voice mail again. Okay, I’ll leave another message. Clear the throat, put a happy tone in my voice.
“Hey,” I look around and suddenly I feel the happy tone in my voice get squashed. “Guess who’s not fucking talking to me anymore? I’ll give you three guesses! You remember last month when you wanted to meet my mother? And so we all went to that horrible little trendy vegetarian Indian cuisine place by the Crossroads Mall? And we were celebrating my birthday and you told my mother that next year for my birthday you were going to plan something really spectacular, insinuating that we’d still be together next year? You remember that? Well guess what. You lied to my mother. You lied to my mother! NOW HOW DO YOU FEEL?” click.
I’m coming across like a jerk. I know I am. I am not making any progress in our relationship.
I should call her back and apologize or-
“Excuse me.”
I turn and there’s this young man standing next to me. He’s wearing blue jeans (nice designer cut) and a white button up, silver cuff-links. He’s dark of skin, black hair cut short, and he’s wearing some really nice Folio sunglasses. I bet he’s a cappuccino drinker. He smiles, lights a cigarette and sits down.
Ferocity Page 3
