by Matt Wallace
He knocks and Moon’s door is opened by Cupid, the demon ex-assassin transmogrified to personify a horrific version of love’s cherubic messenger who recently went AWOL from Hell after failing his mission to kill Moon, and who subsequently became Moon’s roommate.
Rarefied times, indeed.
Cupid turns his gruesomely bloated face up at Bronko. A lit joint is hanging precariously from his perpetually puckered lips. The lazy and sporadic fluttering of the creature’s miniature wings slowly disperses a cloud of sickly redolent smoke.
“Is he here?” Bronko asks blandly.
Cupid nods rapidly several times, jostling the tiny burning scroll of paper hanging from his mouth. He eagerly steps aside and opens the door, motioning for Bronko to come inside.
If Moon’s apartment is ordinarily a Dumpster, it has recently become a Dumpster that also doubles as a hobo’s toilet. Half the takeout food in the borough has apparently come here to die and to slowly, and excruciatingly to the senses, decompose. The entire space is one unyielding dirty-clothes hamper, and the cloying smell of bong water clings to the walls as if sprayed there by industrial jets. Bronko has seen the inside of last night’s fondue pots that were more appealing as a living space.
Moon is curled into one corner of his trash-bin front room, wedged between the wall and his towering shelves of video game consoles and other high-end audiovisual electronics. His knees stop just short of his chin, which is covered in a full week’s worth of stubble as opposed to his regular three to four days of neglect. His eyes are raw and red and dry after shedding every tear the moisture in his body could manufacture.
Bronko steps on and cracks the plastic case of a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 for PlayStation while crossing the room. He kicks it from his path, annoyed.
Behind him, Cupid flitters over the back of the couch and settles down atop a mound of plastic Chinese food containers and crumpled energy drink cans.
“I’d ask your blessing to sit down, but I don’t wanna stick to any of this shit,” Bronko bluntly informs Moon.
Moon doesn’t look up from his stupor.
Bronko sighs. “I got a million things to worry about just now, Moon. Every blessed soul who works for Sin du Jour might be dead tomorrow, for all I know.”
Moon only smooths back his greasy, unkempt hair with his fingers methodically. He continues staring at nothing.
Bronko frowns, reluctantly bending his knees and hunkering down toward the refuse-scattered floor to seek Moon’s level.
“Listen here, boy. We’re juiced into something way too big for a line of cooks and a couple of cut-rate magicians, and that something is closing in like a big damn vice around us all. I have to figure a way around that, and the usual way I get around things ain’t gonna work this time, because I just helped stab him in the back, and I’m talkin’ literally here. We’re a man down and one of my kids may never come back from whatever dark place he’s been cast down into. It’s on me to fix all of it, and I don’t have a single damn clue how to go about it.
“And despite these many urgent and dire matters, I found myself lying awake all night, trying to decide what to do with your skinny little ass.”
Moon finally looks up at him.
His voice is the rasp of a ghost as he asks, “I guess I’m fired, huh?”
“I thought about that,” Bronko admits. “I don’t believe there’s a scenario or possibility I didn’t ponder. I thought about firing you. I thought about just beating you till blood came a-gushin’ out your damn eyes. That one appealed to me for the better part of an hour, although in the end, I had to admit to myself I was projecting an awful lot that had nothing to do with you onto that image. I thought about giving you a stack of hundreds to blow town and alleviate my guilt and wishin’ you luck as you disappeared over the bridge. Then something entirely new occurred to me, and I had to put all of my pondering on hold. Do you want to know what occurred to me, Moon?”
“I feel like you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“I am. It occurred to me that as much as I’ve yelled at you over the years, I never once asked you anything about yourself. That led me to the notion I really don’t know a damn thing about you. Who are your people, Moon? Where’re you from?”
Moon shows his first emotion since Bronko entered the apartment, and that feeling is annoyance. “What difference does it make? Why does that matter right now?”
“It matters because I’m askin’, and I wouldn’t choose this particular moment to argue with me, were I you.”
“I’m from some shitty little town in north Cali,” Moon explains impatiently. “My folks were white trash morons and I haven’t seen or heard from ’em in years. The end.”
“Ritter said he found you down in Mexico going head-to-head against some kinda witch in a contest eatin’ chupacabra guts. That true?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever had a real job before you came to Sin du Jour?”
“No.”
“Was that the first time you had folks placin’ bets on you chokin’ down some bit of awful magic?”
“No.”
Bronko nods. “Tell me about it.”
Moon lets his head fall back against the wall, hard enough to create a hollow thud. He closes his eyes and sighs reluctantly.
“When I was twelve, my old man was into a band of Travelers for a lot of cash. Some shanty Irish bullshit dice game. Maybe they cheated him; maybe he was just a dumbass. Neither would surprise me. Anyway, they dragged my sister and me out of bed one morning, three of them. My folks were already in the kitchen, my mom lookin’ shell-shocked. There was a steaming bowl of brown stuff on the table with two spoons next to it. The Travelers called it ‘debtor’s stew.’ It just looked like regular beef stew out of a can. I guess they put some bad Irish juju in it from the old country. They said they were gonna make me and my sister take a bite for every hundred bucks my old man owed them.”
Bronko’s eyes begin to darken. “What did your pa do?”
“He never even once looked at us, me or her. I remember he stared straight ahead. He wasn’t just . . . not looking at us; he was trying not to see us. It was like he decided we were already dead, so it was easier on him to pretend we weren’t even there, like we didn’t never exist.”
“What happened, Moon?”
“They started with Sunny. That was her name, my sister. The old man said it was because they made me at night and her during the day. So, we both started off life as a bad joke right off. Sunny was a few years younger than me. She didn’t really know what was happening, I don’t think. When they told her to eat it, she did what she was told. The first bite . . . it was like watchin’ the air let out of a fucking balloon. By her third bite, she looked like . . . like Silly Putty stretched over a skeleton. She never made it to the fourth bite. The stew, like, sucked the life right out of her.”
Bronko stares at him, unhinged.
“Jesus, boy.”
Moon barely hears him. He’s become lost in his own story.
“My mom lost her shit, but they just slapped her around until she shut up. They had to hold me down and pinch my nose closed. It tasted like a corpse’s ball sack. Nothin’ happened to me, though. But the three guys who made me eat the stew . . . it bounced back on them. What happened to Sunny happened to them, right there in the kitchen, only it was . . . worse. I don’t know why. But when it was over . . . when they were all . . . whatever . . . my old man finally looked at me again. He finally . . . It was like the first time in my life he actually saw me. But not really. It wasn’t me he saw; it was . . . I might as well have been a fucking racehorse or a mean-ass dog he could fight against other dogs for cash.”
“What happened?”
“He started taking me to bars, the regular human kind at first, and then he found the other kind. He’d bet anyone who’d take his action, and I’d eat whatever they put in front of me, as fast as I could. I learned quick what happened when I said no. They buried what was left of Sunny
in our backyard. They didn’t even say any words over the grave, didn’t mark it with anything. They never told anybody. They never talked about her again. It was like she was never even fucking born.”
“I’m truly sorry, son,” Bronko says, and he means it.
Moon shrugs. “When I was seventeen, my mom finally swallowed a handful of pills. The old man found her barely breathing, drove her to the emergency room. I don’t know if she made it or not. I stole three grand from where he stashed his cash in his toolbox and I took off. That was the last time I saw them.”
“You didn’t have a soul in this world to look out for you ever, did you?”
Moon stares up at Bronko. “I’m not lookin’ for your sympathy.”
“I ain’t offerin’ any. But it does explain a lot.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Moon, I look around at this hog trough you live in and all these games you play with, and I think you’re a little kid that didn’t never grow up because no one taught him how. In that light, it seems wrong of me to expect you to act like a man.”
“Thanks, I guess?”
“I can see you’re all cut up over Hara, and rightly so. I can see I don’t need to explain your part in it or how you let your team down because you already know. I can further see I can’t punish you any harder than you’re punishin’ yourself. I could try, but it’d just be to make me feel better.”
“What do you want from me, man?”
Bronko fixes him with a hard stare, the same one that’s had many a line cook pissing down their leg.
Moon corrects himself. “What do you want from me, Chef?”
Bronko grunts, satisfied. “I ain’t gonna fire you, Moon. What I’m going to do is bench your ass. You’re off Ritter’s team until you earn your place on it.”
“How do I do that?”
“By doing two things I expect you’ve never done in your life. The first is following through on something you start. The second is doin’ as you’re fuckin’ well told. I gave you a job to do. You’re gonna do that job. You’re gonna climb up Ryland’s ass until that alky teaches you every damn thing he knows.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then I’ll fire you.”
Bronko stands, turning to leave the apartment. He pauses as he confronts Moon’s costly shrine to video gaming. The executive chef calmly reaches up and pulls down the monolithic television obscuring most of the wall. Its top crashes against the overburdened coffee table, collapsing its legs and sending fast food wrappers and head shop paraphernalia flying in all directions. The screen of the television itself is shattered, and its wires yank down half a dozen assorted pieces of equipment as well.
Cupid flitters several feet above the couch, shaking a fist angrily at Bronko, who ignores him.
Moon doesn’t even stir. He only watches his employer passively.
“Get rid of all this shit,” Bronko says, waving a hand in front of the gaming consoles. “Time to grow up, boy. And clean this shit pen. Start there. That’s an order.”
Moon blinks up at Bronko, the expression on his face as open and vulnerable as anyone at Sin du Jour has ever seen.
“Chef? D’you . . . do you think they’d want to . . . y’know, work with me again, or whatever? Ritter and Cindy?”
Bronko doesn’t answer at first. Instead, he plucks the joint from Cupid’s mouth and takes a hit, drawing in the acrid smoke and releasing it with relish like an old pro, or perhaps an aging roadie.
“Cataracts,” he explains in a momentarily constricted voice, handing the joint back to the demon.
To Moon he says, “I think all they want is to see you give a shit. And sayin’ it ain’t never gonna be enough. You have to show them.”
Bronko leaves him with that, exiting the filthy apartment and slamming the front door shut behind him.
Cupid, still hovering amidst the spastic beating of his undersized wings, watches the executive chef go. After he’s gone, the demon turns toward Moon, puffing on the half-burnt joint.
“What?” Moon asks.
Cupid frantically waves his stubby arms above the broken flatscreen.
Moon sighs. “Like he said, dude. It’s time to grow up.”
SINS OF THE MORNING
The new day is a lover’s lane cop shining their aluminum flashlight through a misted car window. There’s the feeling of surprise and confusion and the acid, convex edge of shame as that damning light irradiates Ritter’s closed eyelids. They trip over the contrary acts of opening and blinking simultaneously, remaining locked in a vibrating stalemate that stabs his temples. Ritter has to grind his knuckles against his eyelids for several seconds before they’ll allow themselves to be peeled back. He turns away from his open bedroom window, propping himself up on one elbow and blinking the world into focus.
Lena sits on the end of the bed, arms encircling her scabbed knees. Like him, she’s naked, and there are bruises on her back and shoulders and neck, purple slowly fading to yellow and green, souvenirs from the wreckage of Gluttony Bay. She also has a tattoo above her right hip Ritter hasn’t noticed before. He’s traced with lips and fingertips the army ink on her right bicep, Mountain in scroll above two crossed swords. She also has her military discharge date on her left side and a black shadow kitchen knife along her right calf. He’s spent time examining all three, but this fourth design eluded him somehow.
Ritter cocks his head, eyeing the colored ink rising just above the crest of her hip near her back. Fight like a girl is written in a circle of black, white, and red script.
“How bad is it?” Ritter asks her.
Lena isn’t the least bit startled by his voice. She neither turns her body nor looks back at him, continuing to stare at the blank wall.
“How bad is what?”
He shrugs. “Everything, I guess.”
“I’m sore and I had bad dreams, and I’m scared for Darren, and worried about what’s going to happen now, to all of us.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll help Darren if you’ll let me.”
“You’ll help Darren because you owe it to him, not me.”
“You’re right.”
She peers over her shoulder at him then, eyes tragic and beautiful and framed by the sleep tangles of her short dark hair.
“I can’t forgive you,” she tells him. “Not for what you did to Darren, and not for what you did before.”
“I’d never ask you for forgiveness.”
“I can’t forget, either. If you were counting on that, it’s not going to happen.”
“I would never expect you to forget anything.”
“Rationally . . . like, on a purely intellectual level, I know you’re not an evil man. I don’t even think you’re a bad man. I see your remorse and your guilt. I know it’s real. I know you take care of all those witches in Williamsburg without them even knowing it. I know why you do it. I see the way you care about the people around you and how you’d do anything for them. I believe you care about me. I know all that stuff, but it doesn’t . . . There’s still this part of me that isn’t rational or logical and that part just wants to hate the fuck out of you, you know? It hates the things you’ve done and wants you to suffer for those things.”
“I could tell you I do, every day, but it’s not nearly as much as I deserve.”
“I’d believe you, but it wouldn’t change anything.”
“Are you sorry you’re here?”
“Yes, and also no.”
Lena looks away, rubbing her face with both of her palms until she can summon the words to express the boil of thoughts threatening to overflow her mind.
“When I came back from Kabul, I didn’t want to keep in touch with anyone from my division, not even on fucking Facebook. It’s not that they were all assholes; it’s just . . . I didn’t need to rehash everything that happened over there and I didn’t want to be made to think about it all the time. But then, sometimes, you need to be with somebody who understands, and nobo
dy back here really understands, least of all Darren. You can’t explain to someone who wasn’t there what it was like, or why you are the way you are because of it. You can try, and they’ll nod and their eyes will be all full of sympathy and they’ll repeat some shit they heard or read somewhere, but they can never get it. I like that you get it, and that you don’t remind me of being back there.”
“I do know a bit about seeing a bunch of shit no one should have to see, even if it wasn’t the same shit you saw.”
Lena sighs. “I don’t know what I’m trying to get at here. I’m not making excuses for threatening you with a knife one day and then fucking you the next. And I’m grateful you came to save us and take us out of that place, but that’s not why this happened either. It’s just . . . Everything is too ugly and too temporary to live every day pissed off at the people you like, even if you have cause.”
Ritter doesn’t say anything. He has questions but no intention of asking them.
She looks back at him again. “You never said you were sorry for any of it.”
“Do you want me to?”
Lena shakes her head. “No.”
“It doesn’t fix anything,” he says.
“I know that. I’m glad you do, too.”
“The only real penance I know of is living with it.”
Lena rolls to her left, turning and crawling up the bed alongside his body. She lies down and rests her cheek on his stomach, closing her eyes.
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she whispers.
Ritter nods, silent. He deftly and gently begins smoothing the tangles from her hair with his fingertips.
The sun seems less harsh now, and the two of them stay like that until the light across the bed turns to shadow.
EPILOGUE: DESERT RIDER
“The truth is, I don’t know a single detail about Hara’s life,” Ritter confesses.
He’s standing before the entirety of Sin du Jour’s staff. They’ve all convened on the roof of the building to say good-bye to the fallen member of their intrepid Stocking & Receiving Department. His body has been cleaned, wrapped in hemp shrouds, and dressed in a gargantuan mahogany casket built by Ritter and Marcus’s own hands.
