But the song’s refrain haunted Max. He wished the Beast had not feasted so well. He needed its roaring to fill him, to drown the talk of love that tantalized him with near-understanding.
Max found the broken stereo, tore out the CD tray, picked up the record. He squeezed the platter with his fingers until it snapped and splintered and shot out in fragments like a grenade.
The woman looked at him with widened eyes. “Shit,” she said. “I really don’t know why they say the things they do about you.” She pointed to the disk fragments on the floor. “Because I feel exactly the same way.”
She left, gun still in hand, without another word.
He didn’t know her name, or if they’d ever see each other, again. He didn’t care.
But he understood he’d been wounded by a shotgun blast of ideas and emotions from her, and though he would recover even before the Beast stirred to fill him with blinding rage, the shock of a different kind pain left him with the hope that he would never, ever understand or experience himself any of what she’d been through.
He understood that he was as capable of coping with such emotions as others were equipped of handling what he carried when he came calling to kill.
He took a last, deep breath of the carnage, thankful that he wasn’t anything like the woman assassin, bleeding her little pain through songs and killings and the cries of babies.
He had a secret weapon to protect him from such terrible intimacy, such awful empathy and devotion.
He headed out, carefully closing the door behind him, comforted by the certainty that the Beast would keep him safe.
ASSASSIN OF LOVE
Max found Jake at the bar on the West Side Highway and the upper forties. He wasn’t surprised. He’d been there before with Lee. Sailors sometimes stopped by. Tourists. Locals. All kinds of people. It was safe for most kinds of business. He remembered the bartender.
He even remembered Jake. He’d never realized the man belonged to the game. He’d always been as wretched as tonight.
“She’s the kind of woman who turns boys into men, and men into boys,” Jake said into his beer.
The Beast scuffled with impatience in the recesses of his mind. Neither of them liked movies, or conversation that sounded like it came from movies. It had taken Max fifteen minutes to casually make contact with Jake, quietly commenting to no one in particular about a woman who’d just left and opening up the topic of women in general. This kind of subterfuge was not his style.
He knew he’d hate this job.
He didn’t like talking. Socializing. Long set-ups. Why couldn’t he get straight shooter work? Why was his patience being tested in this way? Did his employers want him to fail?
Maybe it was time for him to start watching his own back instead of relying on the protection of his employers.
“I thought you were going to say, she turns men into girls,” Max said.
Jake scowled. “Yeah, fuck you, too. You don’t know what love is.”
“You’re right. I only know what’s real.”
“I’m in love. It’s real to me.”
The Beast surged for the throat, but Max kept still.
“I can’t stand to see her, even hear her voice, because everything turns grey and dim except for her. All I want is to look into her eyes and hear her talking to me. And dream about her touching me, and me in her, and what that would feel like.”
Star, the bartender, shook his head as he passed, as if knowing
Max was about to point out Jake’s contradictions. Instead, Max asked, “What would it feel like?”
“Like a magic carpet ride, fast and high, and far into countries I never imagine.”
Max finished his soda water. A cruise ship blew its horn. He liked cruise ships. People disappeared all the time at sea.
“She doesn’t let me touch her. She has to do everything. And she never fucks me. She’ll kiss and stroke, and put my dick in her mouth, sometimes.”
Star served them drinks —club soda and lime for Max, single malt for Jake.
“I can’t understand that,” said Max, sticking to the truth.
“Welcome to the club.”
A few more minutes passed. Max glanced at his watch twice.
Asked Star if there’d be any messages for him. Star gave him a puzzled look and said no, as if Max should have known better than to ask.
“I hate it when people are late,” Max said, pushing through the game’s next move.
“Be grateful, sometimes it’s for the better.”
“Yeah? Who are you waiting for?”
“Her.”
Max opened his mouth, but the Beast distracted him, and Max remembered it knew the game of bait and trap better than he did.
He let the minutes roll on. “She’s not really coming, is she.”
“You never know.”
Max grunted. “Why here?”
“We met. At the far end. I never sit there, anymore.”
“She come by often?”
“No.
“Do you?”
“Every day.”
“Yeah, I thought I recognized you.”
“I don’t really remember seeing you, but I wouldn’t give a shit about you if I had, either.”
“So you live in the area.”
“No. Not anymore. But I stop by because I want to see her.”
Max wanted to ask the next logical question, but the Beast didn’t like it. He needed to sound more natural. Human. He thought of the stupid movies he’d had to watch as part of his training long ago to blend in better with normal society. He wasn’t bad at being a smartass. He had Lee as a model. “They have these things called phones, nowadays.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t give it to me.”
“So go by where she lives.”
“Don’t know that, either.”
Max gave Jake a long look. “So you wait here hoping she’ll show up?”
Jake’s drink was already gone. The conversation was wearing him down. Opening him up. “Kind of. Lots of times I hope she doesn’t come. Because I get so worked up about her, it’s enough to know she might be coming.”
“Anticipation,” Max said, again sticking to truths he understood. But like the Beast, he knew anticipation was nothing without the kill.
“If she actually makes it, I get all messed up. I don’t know what to say or how to act. I’m afraid of screwing things up. I get like a little kid, hanging on her every word. Looking to please her. It’s like I want to pour myself into a glass and let her drink me and piss me out. That’s the way it is. So when she doesn’t get here, I can relax, go home. I have something to look forward to. Something to get me through the night, and the day.
“What’s really bad is after I do get to spend some time with her, I get real down, because I want to see her again, more than ever, but I know I won’t. It hurts. Bad. As bad as if she’d told me I’d never see her again. Because whatever she promises, it’s almost sure she won’t be back for a while. And I can’t get it up to hope. And that makes it hard to do anything. Even breathe. Fuck it. That’s just the way it is.”
Max followed the Beast circling around the silence until it was broken by a party of civilians bursting through the doors and settling at the window end of the bar. Star greeted them with a round of beers and another glass of single-malt for a blonde who put down a mystery novel next to the bowl of peanuts.
“Do you ever look for her?” Max asked, through the noise.
“Yeah. Found her, once. Didn’t see her again for a year. Nearly went out of mind.”
“She call?”
“Sometimes.”
“To meet you here?”
“Yeah.”
“Other places, too?”
“Yeah. All over.”
“She show up?”
“Not all the time.”
“She ever show up places and times you’re not expecting her?”
“Yeah.” Jake’s face relaxed into a smile, and his eyes caught the shine of bar lights. “In my bed, once. A couple of times on a job.”
The Beast held him back, as Max often did with the demon. He was rushing in. Even the Beast, deaf to words, understood.
He couldn’t think of anything funny to say. “I hate it when they show up at work.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“I never let them know where I get my paycheck.”
“Neither do I. But she found out.”
“Really. Didn’t sound like she cared enough to work it out.”
“That’s what I thought. Sure was a shock. Gave me hope.”
“How’d she find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever wonder?”
“Yeah. In my line of work, you don’t want people knowing where you’re going to be. But I don’t care. I hope she does it again. I just want to see her. Be with her. Whenever I can.”
“Even if you don’t want to, either.”
“I guess so.”
“Isn’t that a problem?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m in love.”
“So we’re back to that, again. And love’s not a problem?”
“No.”
“You know, it’s an addiction.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all addicted to something, ain’t we.” Jake raised his glass to Star, who pulled himself away from the blonde with the book to refill the glass.
“You’re sick.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“What do you mean?”
“People talk. You ain’t no innocent.”
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe you know a little bit about my line of work, is what I’m saying. Maybe we know the same people.”
Max was relieved that he’d been made, though the Beast snapped at the revelation, judging it to be an assault. But Jake hadn’t climbed out of his misery far enough to be suspicious of him. Max stayed on the track he’d taken, despite being tempted to keep playing the game with an answer like, nothing wrong with having fun. His superiors would have been proud. He said, “You have an illness.”
“Again, look who’s talking. Another dumb fuck sitting at a bar, and you don’t even drink, or fuck, or love, or hope. I get pleasure out of my particular disease, just like you with whatever the hell’s wrong with you.”
“Illness shouldn’t be left untreated. It can become a problem.”
“For the third time, look who’s talking. I’m not the one the sweepers and cleaners talk about after a job, dick head.”
“I’m not the one who’s being made.”
And there it was. The truth at last. The glint of bar lights vanished from Jake’s eyes. He shifted on the stool, glanced at the front door and the back, checked the street. He relaxed a little when he saw no one was coming for him. But he remained guarded. Suddenly not thinking only of the woman.
Thinking, Max was certain, that an ordinary street game was being played, that a goon was digging at a vulnerability just to see the bleeding.
Jake shifted again, planting his feet. He’d done Max’s kind of work, too. “I don’t talk about jobs to her.”
“And yet she shows up on them.”
“Someone else must be talking.”
“Doesn’t that make you jealous?”
It wasn’t a question their employers would have cared enough to ask, and Jake responded by easing up. Nothing life threatening was going on, just an old-fashioned pissing contest. That’s what he got for wearing his heart on his sleeve.
The Beast wanted to go for the throat. But Max was satisfied with how he was steering their conversation. Still, the work was hard. He’d gone through so much just to be able to get this far. It was so much simpler when weapons replaced words in conversation.
“I have to take what I can get. Or else I’ll lose her.”
“There’s a cure for the disease. Let her go.”
“Can’t.”
“Then you’ve got to fucking take her.” The Beast crept into Max’s voice, and Jake gave him a look, as did Star, and the woman with the book.
Star wiped the bar down, busied himself nearby with glasses. The woman listened to her friends’ talking for a few moments, then picked up the book and read, brow furrowing with concentration.
“Fucking her regular would make it worse. I don’t think I could keep working if we actually got together. I’d lose my focus, my concentration. Somebody would get me.”
“Killing her would end it.”
Jake gasped. Sobbed. Finished his glass with a frantic swig. He faced off on Max, all edges and angles, his face in shadow. He looked like he was falling apart. “Are you crazy? I swear, if I thought you were going after her, I’d put one in you right here and now.”
“You think so?”
“Try me.” Jake didn’t make a move.
Neither did Max. But the Beast showed its teeth, which he shaped into a smile.
Star appeared with a handset. “Phone call for you.”
Max took the phone.
“How bad is it?” Lee asked.
“I wouldn’t like to say.” Max put his elbows on the bar, leaving himself exposed to Jake, returning to the role of a provocative jerk.
“Damn. He’s there now?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s that bad?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to do her?”
“No.”
“How about him?”
“No.”
“So I can tell the boys on high you’ll handle the situation?”
“Yes.”
“That’s my man. Have fun.”
“I will.”
He gave the phone back to Star, then turned to Jake. “Looks like you’re not the only one who’s getting stood up.”
Jake hadn’t moved. He wasn’t buying Max’s cover.
The Beast gnawed at Max’s failure to be something other than what he was.
“That was them, wasn’t it,” Jake said.
“Yes,” Max said, with a touch of eagerness that surprised him. It was easier not to lie.
“They want to kill me.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Her.”
“Yes.”
Jake made his move, to Max’s throat, a short, sharp spike between his fingers. Slow, by Max’s standards. Jake had let himself go. Max locked Jake’s wrist, took away the spike.
Star frowned. The blonde reader glanced up from her book.
Max clamped his free arm around Jake’s shoulders, and together they walked out, appearing amiable and drunk.
They went around the comer, Jake breathing heavily. He kept looking over his shoulder, as if expecting a rescue. They reached a dumpster, and Max choked Jake out and left him behind the metal container. He went back to the bar.
“Is he okay?” Star asked.
“Fine. He’ll be back in a little while.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as I was the time I spotted you in the jungle and dragged you out when everyone thought you were dead.”
“Okay.”
Max finished his club soda. Star refilled the glass. Max put a bill down between his glass and Jake’s, larger than their combined tab. Star picked up the bill and Jake’s glass, wiped down the bar. Max waved off the change.
The crowd by the window began to sing. The blonde joined in for a stanza, looked to Max, went back to her book.
“Are you ever going to tell me why you dragged me out of the jungle?” Star asked.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Did you think I was dead?”
“Yes.”
Star’s brow creased. The war hung like a mist between them, reducing what they’d been and become to vague shadows. But people told stories at the bar, and even if no one believed them, whispers of what had been heard, and left behind, lingered like after-images from a
bright flash of truth.
“I see,” Star said. “But thanks, anyway.”
“You’ve thanked me before.”
“Yeah. I guess I have.”
“Are you still a vegetarian?” Max asked, a part of the character he’d played with Jake still snarling inside him, as if the Beast had taken up the identity for its own uses.
“Yes.”
“Funny. I thought working in that mob steakhouse downtown would have cured you of that bad habit.”
Star didn’t say, fuck you, as Jake might have. He rubbed a spot clean not far from Max’s glass and said, “Just the opposite. You should try seeing the world without those blood-colored glasses of yours.” He grinned, bowed his head, walked away.
The blonde gave Star a smile.
The Beast rattled the cage of Max’s head with its hunger to answer the man’s challenge, but Max rode the rage, saved it. He was still on the clock. And Star had friends in high places who wouldn’t be happy to hear of anything bad happening to him.
The afternoon wore on. The window group finally left, as did the blonde, but only after a long conversation with Star about Washington D.C. late 70’s politics. Max recognized a couple of names. Even recalled the taste of one appointee’s blood. He ordered dinner with the theater crowd.
In the lull between diners and regulars, she walked in, confirming Max’s suspicion that she was the kind who kept constant track of her prey. Like a spider, she bundled them up in silk and left them hanging in her web like decorations from a party long passed, stopping by to sip on them every now and then.
She sat in Jake’s seat. Star served her tequila. She gave the bar’s empty corners long, hard looks before she asked Max, “Where’s Jake?” She studied him in the bar mirror, through the bottles lined up on the shelves. She was just out of what could have been assumed to be his reach, but not the Beast’s.
“He ran out for a minute.”
“Left you to wait for me.”
“Yes.”
“You must be something special.”
“I’ve heard you are.”
It was her scent that caught the Beast’s attention: musky, with sharp hooks that snagged the tender flesh deep in the sinus cavities and at the back of the throat, and yet sweetened as if with brown sugar and cinnamon. The smell of her promised an infinite unfolding of rose petals and the sharp, final penetration of poisoned thorns.
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