by Cole McCade
“I’m not so very kind, or so very good.” A bitter twist of Walford’s lips. “And I’m not so soft as you think.” He bowed his head, his shoulders slumping. “But I understand. I do.”
“Are you harboring a secret dark side, then?”
“Don’t we all?” Wally looked up at him with that quiet frankness that made Vin wonder yet again what he saw. If he truly saw him, and yet didn’t flinch away from his brokenness, his strangeness. “Everyone has a darkness inside them. Everyone. Some of us try to burn it away by filling ourselves with light. Some of us let it eat us apart from the inside out until it devours everything we are and everything we will ever be. And some of us…” He smiled: sad, knowing, and Vin knew then that Wally had always known him for a murderer, and simply hadn’t cared. “Some of us act on it in terrible ways. Or wish we could. I won’t tell you to go, Vincent,” he said, and laid his head to Vin’s shoulder again. “But I won’t ask you to stay.”
Ask me, Vin thought, and held Walford tight. Ask me, and maybe I’ll have a reason to try.
But Wally said nothing at all, his shoulders shaking in the silence.
* * *
THREE MORE DAYS. THE GIRL came and went again, Vin a hovering vulture in the back room, unseen, unknown, feeling like a predator on her life and every life she touched. He made himself rest for those days, stretching and testing his body carefully before willing himself to sleep, to gather his strength, to gather his thoughts, to make his plans and strategize his methods, when he would need both his body and mind ready once he ventured beyond these safe walls.
Each night he tried to give Walford’s bedroom back to him; each night Walford had just clucked his tongue and walked away, glancing over his shoulder with a melancholy smile.
“Goodnight, Westley,” he said each night. “Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
Vin didn’t understand, but he did. That was just Wally, another piece of magic he’d found somewhere else and taken into himself.
By the third night, though, the restlessness was alive under his skin, crawling ants, and come nightfall he was at the window, the pane open to let in the scents of Crow City—the asphalt and the shadows, the smoke and the smell of human sweat wiped from a thousand, a million labored brows. He thought of purgatory again, of the many faceless souls stripped down to nothing but the gray clay of their mindless flesh, slaving away as their sweat soaked into the earth of the afterlife.
Sometimes he thought they were all dead here, and playing at being alive.
Wally’s soft tread at his back warned him before his voice floated over the room. “You’ve truly made up your mind, then.”
“I have.”
He turned to face Walford as the man drew closer; he was soft and pretty today, his hair loosed from its neat sweep to tumble in a bedheaded tangle, his normally meticulous clothing disarrayed, his shirt too large and open at the throat, the cuffs of his slacks hanging too long over feet left bare on honeyed hardwood floor. And Vin wondered if his life would change, if he tumbled Walford back into the bed and kissed him. Loved him. Marked him, branded him, made him Vin’s until he was an anchor holding him back from drifting into madness. Would he be using him, then?
Was that any different from how people used each other every day, just to stave off the fear of dying alone?
Yet dying alone wasn’t what Vin feared. It was living empty and directionless, and he wondered, too, what kind of life he would lead if he made Walford his reason for living.
He cupped Wally’s cheek, pale skin fine and smooth against his palm, and stroked his thumb against Walford’s lower lip; the pink curve was temptingly soft, plush and full and yielding just so under his touch, with a lushness and ripeness that promised he would be sheer madness to kiss, the kind of mouth that could make the softest touch feel like both sweetness and addicting obscenity. Those lips parted under his touch, Walford lifting dark, confused eyes to him, his cheek growing warmer under Vin’s palm and a flush of red creeping upward, coloring him brilliantly.
Yet when he leaned in, drawn by that almost hypnotized look in Walford’s eyes…this time it was Walford who pulled back, turning his face to the side.
“Don’t tease me, Vincent,” he said bitterly.
Vin caught a dark, silver-streaked lock of hair and trailed it against Walford’s cheek. “Yet you flush so prettily.”
“I said don’t.” Wally retreated a step, wrapping his arms around himself like a defensive barrier. “Don’t toy with me.” He fixed Vin with a hard, searching look. “I could tell you a thousand times that you won’t break me with this darkness inside you, and it would be true.” His throat moved in a swallow. “But you would break me by not being present. There’s something in you that sees things far away. Something that sees a somewhere and a somewhen that’s always left this now behind.” His fingers clenched in the crooks of his elbows, bunching his shirt. “Even if I talked you into staying, you would already have left me behind. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.”
“You speak of me as if I am some strange animal.”
“Aren’t you?” Wally’s smile was a thing of pain cut into his face. “A wild, beautiful animal. But you’ll only play with my heart. Bat it around like a bit of raw meat, then leave it in the dirt when it’s no longer appealing. You were right. I’m not for you, and you’re not for me.”
You’re wrong, Vin wanted to say, but it would be a lie. He tried to look at Wally and see what might be, if he stayed. If he tried…something, anything, giving in to this quiet pull between them that said if he were normal, if he were sane, if he were whole, they could kiss and tumble into bed and learn each other over long days and longer nights, talk of old loves and old pains and the small quiet dreams that made up the totality of a heart, until instead of loving strangers they could be strange lovers. Maybe that Vincent, a different Vincent, could learn to love Walford over time, and maybe Walford could have learned to love him.
But he wasn’t that Vincent. He was just a ghost of him, filled with nothing but the echoes of feelings that died before they ever had a chance to start.
“Have you ever been in love, Walford?” he asked softly, and Wally answered with one of those sweetly aching, self-deprecating smiles.
“I’ve always been afraid to even try.”
“Someone should love you.” He caught Wally’s chin gently in his fingers, tilting his face up. “I’m sorry I do not know how.”
“It’s not your time. You aren’t ready.” Wally rested his hands to Vin’s chest, light as birds. “You’ll know when you are.” Then he pulled back—quickly, sharply, and Vin could recognize the distance he was putting between them, safe and careful. “I’ll…I’ll fetch you something to wear.”
“Grazi,” Vin said. “I am sorry, Walford. Truly. For everything. I am more grateful for you than you know.”
“But you want to go. I know that leaving look in your eyes.”
“I need to do this.”
Walford made a miserable sound. “I know.”
“Tell me not to.” A last desperate plea, and yet he didn’t know if he was begging Walford or himself. That distance fell away, Walford slim and slight in his arms, pulled against his body. “Tell me to stay. Tell me not to do this thing.”
“I can’t.” Wally shook his head and gently pried free. “I can’t tell you not to be who you are. And for all that your lips remain sealed, for all that you try to protect me with your secrets, I see the blood in your eyes.” He reached up and brushed Vin’s hair back from his brow. “Just tell me it will be for a good reason, Vincent.”
Vin caught Walford’s hand and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm. “I am not certain I am the one to judge that.”
“Trust yourself.” Wally reclaimed his hand, curling it against his chest as if trying to keep the feel of Vin’s lips. “I trust you. Do what you must. Do what is right.”
“What is right may be wrong.”
“That’s
generally the way of most things, lad. That’s just…”
“Just?”
Wally smiled, yet his eyes were wet, so very deep, so very dark. “That’s just life.”
CHAPTER NINE
THEY DIDN’T SAY GOODBYE.
Vin had little to his name; only his jeans, his wallet, and his phone, and the one button-down shirt Walford had been able to find that was both large enough for him and absent of any ruffles or frills. With nothing to pack, leaving was just a matter of making himself do it.
Making himself leave Wally behind, with nothing but a thank you for his time, his kindness, the soft touch that had saved Vin’s life.
Walking out of that shop felt like walking away from every possibility he could ever have. From Gabriel. From the chance to ever return home to Venice; from his brother, reduced to nothing but memories and a voice on the other end of the line. From any attempt at rehabilitation, and a normal life. And from a man who watched him with dark eyes that spoke of witnessing a thousand leavings and far fewer homecomings, so few that there was no point in words to mark Vin’s passing.
Walford caught him at the door, and wrapped his arms around him from behind. He pressed his face between Vin’s shoulder blades, clinging warm and close.
“Be safe,” he whispered against Vin’s back. “Promise me that, at least.”
Vin couldn’t. He couldn’t promise that.
So he only covered Walford’s hand with his own, clasping it against his chest…before gently peeling free from his grip and walking away.
* * *
HE WISHED IT HADN’T BEEN so easy.
Word traveled, in Crow City. People talked in bars, in pool halls, in greasy diners and in strip clubs and on street corners. For nearly a week, Vin loitered in one place or another, listening to a snippet of conversation here, an idle mention there. Learning, too; learning how to be invisible, how to move in broad daylight without being seen, how to carry himself with a certain aimlessness that said I’m merely backdrop, just another person passing through.
He caught his first lead from a pair of little old women in a diner over breakfast buffet in the Jackdaws. We should do Casino Night this weekend, one said, leaning across the table eagerly, tucking her blue-washed hair behind her ear with a primness that matched her high, crisply articulated voice. It’s the first weekend my grandchildren won’t be up to visit me and beg for money like the little shits they are.
Up at the West Hotel? her friend said. I don’t know.
Why not?
It’s really not safe, she said, then leaned over her runny sunny-side-up eggs with the kind of glee that came with telling a story where the people weren’t people, but juicy gossip fodder. You didn’t hear? A double homicide last month. Some soldier and a call girl, of all things. They think it might’ve been a murder-suicide, but they never found the bodies.
Then how do they know they’re dead?
Blood everywhere. They did those—you know, those tests, and it’s their blood. It’s like a horror movie. Maybe a slasher got them. Maybe a slasher will get us.
I think I’d welcome him rather than listen to another of your flittering stories.
So she was dead, then. And it was Vincent’s fault. Guilt pricked at him, struggling to break past the impassive cocoon he’d wrapped himself in. He’d brought this down on her; had he minded his own business she might have walked away hurt, but alive.
He couldn’t bring her back. He couldn’t make this right.
But he could make sure that man never touched anyone else again.
Vin left cash on the table for his untouched meal, and slipped out.
To the internet next, scanning the backlogs of the Crow City Herald’s website and checking the CCPD blog and the weekly crime blotter. The murder-suicide rumor had made the fourth page of the print edition last week, the facts on the crime blotter more stark. The crime blotter reported on a call of gunshots at the scene, no suspects or bodies found, blood belonging to three potential victims, two male, one female. The newspaper was more informative, likely because someone in the forensics lab had found themselves short enough on rent to tip off a reporter. They even had his photograph, stiff and uncomfortable in his dress blues, his hair pulled back in a braid and coiled at the nape of his neck. Next to his photo was the girl’s—what looked like a high school yearbook photo, before her mouth had been drawn hard by the lines of a knowing smile and before her eyes had turned liquid with the glaze of fear.
Nanette Walker. Her name had been Nanette Walker, and she’d only been nineteen.
I am sorry, he thought. I am sorry I took dozens of years of possibilities away from you.
Rosie, she’d been called on the street—or so the girl he paid for half an hour of her time told him. Because of the rose-gold undertones in her hair. Nobody used their real names, she said. She was Della, because her old laptop at home was a Dell and it was easy to remember.
“Real sad about Rosie,” Della said, and draped her arms around Vin’s neck, straddling his lap, her weight rawboned and thin, her pelvic bones jutting up above her tiny swatch of her skirt. “But you don’t wanna talk about her, baby. Come on. We ain’t got much time, and the manager here likes to bust in, scam money out of you so he won’t call the cops.”
Vin gently caught her wrists and drew her arms from around his neck, then lifted her slight frame and deposited her carefully on the stained coverlet of the hotel bed.
“Rosie,” he repeated, and gently tucked her hair behind her ear. “Tell me more about her. Tell me about the man she went with that night.”
Della looked at him strangely. “Who the fuck are you? You a cop?”
“No,” Vin said, and wondered who had beaten the light from her eyes and pushed her into the arms of the drugs that were devouring her flesh from within the sack of her skin. “I am someone who would want to know the same about you, if someone hurt you. Tell me about Rosie.”
So she did. Eyeing him warily, she told him: that she was a new girl, no pimp yet but they were scoping her out up at the Red Lola. One of them nicer digs, you know? Girls by appointment. Rosie, she didn’t wanna be no street corner whore. Didn’t know her that well, but we’d get a smoke and a drink sometimes down at The Track, you know? She was like sixteen when her Momma kicked her out. Came from some real religious family, or something, and she went with a boy once and that was it, they put her out. She had this kinda sweetness to her. I think that’s what the johns liked. Like they were dressing up this little sweet Catholic girl like some kinda whore, and getting’ her all dirty. And she decided she was gonna be this kinda girl, she was gonna do it right. Ambitious. Kept her nose clean, kept a reputation for class. Picked her jobs like some salesman picking clients when he’s gunnin’ for a promotion. But man, we always told her don’t fuck with them Delgados. They got money, but they ain’t class.
The Delgados? he prompted.
Yeah, them that work up out of the Axe? Then her eyes had gone dark and frightened, and she’d clammed up. I don’t wanna talk about this no more.
He’d slipped a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and pressed it into her palm, then kissed her forehead and rose. Grazi. Bless you, my child.
Her wide, confused eyes had tracked him to the door. Hey…you sure you don’t want a handy or something? Blowjob? I don’t think I’d mind, if it was you.
He’d glanced back and smiled. Stay safe, he’d said, and let himself out of the hotel room.
But he’d stopped outside in the parking lot, as the glass display window of the hotel gift shop caught his eye. Little curios lined up on overcrowded shelves, including tiny collectibles made out of blown or dropped glass. He lingered on a little round dollop that suggested a mouse, in the shape it had dried in after the liquid glass had been dropped in folds. Soft amber, just like Wally’s light, with hints of rose in the curves where it caught the light.
He left the gift shop with a little paper bag in his pocket, and returned to the business of plotting a murd
er.
He found nothing at the Red Lola. Small, discreet, blank on the outside, lushly decorated in, the Madame who ran the place was tight-lipped and protective. Vin didn’t press. Making a scene would leave an impression, and he didn’t want word to get out to the Delgados.
Didn’t want them to know they were being hunted—one in particular.
Not yet.
The Axe was a bar that thought it belonged in Blackwing Downs but was unlucky enough to end up in the Jackdaws, perched on a dirty corner where its glitz and glitter and velvet awning seemed like transplants from one body onto another of a different species. Vin had never been inside himself, but a suit and tie and pack of cigarettes turned him into a tired businessman who just wanted a highball after work, and didn’t want to go home to the Missus any sooner than he had to. He exchanged his eyeglasses for darker tinted lenses and kept his head down, drinking slowly and listening to the conversations that took place underneath the general noise and music of the bar.
It was nearly a week before he saw him. Nearly a week of catching furtive, murmured whispers—oblique things that meant nothing unless one knew how to listen. Drug trade. Illegal organ trade—ah, that was where the Delgados’ reputation came in. Brute butchers who cut their enemies apart and then sold their organs on the black market. Whispers of some kind of gang war, and Vin had a feeling that his little intrusion was still being speculated about as the work of a rival gang. He was lucky he hadn’t ended up cut open and sold in pieces, but the girl…
Nanette, whispered in the back of his mind. Nanette, Nanette, Nanette.
Then another name: Louis. Louis would know where the parts went, they said. Louis had been there that night. Louis had done a sloppy job. Louis this, Louis that. And then the night Louis came striding in, a woman in a tight dress on each arm, his suit open at the neck to show a bristle of chest hair poking through gold chains. Louie! the bartender had greeted with false enthusiasm, and Vin had ducked his head, sinking into his collar, keeping his face turned away from the sight of the man who had murdered him, the man he’d last seen standing over a bloody, crying girl with his hand upraised.
