by I.B. Holder
Chapter 36 Arranging Flowers
Blade watched thirty television screens at once. His hands were busy in his lap, stringing a line of smooth colorful beads ranging in size from pebble to Mac’s feminine sized testicle. He had Stones, Mac, Feely, and Sean lined up behind him, but when he talked to them, his eyes almost never left the screens in front of him.
“Warm them, grease them, and insert them with your tongue during your next session” the beads dangled from his outstretched fist like an invitation, none of the men stepped forward to claim them. Feely shifted in discomfort sealing his fate. “Feely” He froze. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to put them in. Sean will, but you will take them out using your teeth.”
Sean grabbed the string and went over to a table where he carefully dripped oil down the beads’ surfaces, coating the string with an oily sheen. One got the impression that he liked the task, as it was more mechanical, belonging more in his world. He almost certainly would have preferred working on a bike, but at least this gave him a task with kinetic outcomes.
Blade looked at the group. Sean, or any of the men for that matter, would have done anything that Blade asked, even without the promise of money, women or power, he simply liked the consistency of his authority. They liked being on a bike and knowing every moving part was working together regardless of the destination. They didn’t really even think about it. Like Sean prepared the beads, making them shine for their next ride, he never even considered where they were going.
Feely wasn’t about to take any shit from Blade today and he let him know it in the strongest of terms. “Aw man, I just brushed my teeth! Couldn’t Mac do it?”
“Mac and I have something to talk about.” It was an ominous portent – like being told that one would have to stay after class to talk to the teacher, except the teacher is a raving murderous sociopath.
The room cleared, each man finding some reasonable excuse to walk faster than normal for the exit. Feely used a made up hunger, Stones and Sean headed toward the garage with the intent to tinker, and Mac was left with Blade. Blue and Brown whenever their video images went out, Mac waited for Blade to speak.
“They think they’ve found the first girl we took for our little pretty Barbie fuck dress-up party. Calls herself Sofia Slut or something. They got the wrong girl.” He kept a playful lilt in his murderous voice.
“Yeah, they’re pretty stupid.” Blade suddenly scowled. Bile rose in his throat, giving the decay, receding gums and nicotine painted teeth an unpleasant marinade. The spittle that crept into his words was toxic.
“But they’re looking for a first girl, and next time – they might find her” he bit the F and swung his face toward Mac.
“She won’t tell them anything.”
“But she will when they find her. There’s a new wind blowing from the federal ineptitude which lets us feast upon its rosy apple red schoolgirl.” A blade flashed from its wrist sheath as it slid into his palm. Blade tapped the monitor showing Laura moving in slumber. “Someone’s looking for her - somebody who don’t seem afraid of the dark, and he’ll find our first mistake cause he doesn’t want this to last. We need to cut our ties.”
“I told you I dropped her off somewhere between here and Provo.” Mac responded.
“Why mention Provo then?” He asked.
“I didn’t.” Mac backpedaled “I mean it could have been Leadville for all I know.”
Blade produced a packing receipt “And the satellite part, you picked that up in Provo, that’s a couple of times that you have crossed paths with that city. And it’s not that pretty, unless someone in it is.”
Blade recalled that Mac had brought Darci into their group on a ride home from a job in Vancouver. She was his girlfriend, and Blade had convinced him to share her for their usual victory video shoot. This one turned out different, because of an idea that Darci had to market it to all of the uptight snobs and slobs who’d wished they’d banged her in high school. The shoot turned into a two-week marathon and the public school patrons, who had become expendable income losers honoring boring jobs and their blathering wives, couldn’t get enough.
Darci had had enough after three days, but Blade milked the abduction angle. She was in whore boot camp and they put her into costume after costume, finally he agreed to let her go because she threatened to go to the cops. The information loop wasn’t closed around her, he couldn’t be sure who knew Darci’s whereabouts, or who would come looking. Blade wasn’t ready for his enterprise to be criminal, not yet, so he let her go. Mac took her to somewhere between their camp and Provo and let her out.
Mac could tell what Blade wanted. “I’ll go get her.”
“I sent Vorest, to cut the ties. Now where do I tell him to look?” Mac told him what he knew.
Blade gave Mac a final piece of wisdom as he walked out the door. “Drink it off, women like Darci weren’t worth the sum total of the ejaculate that had passed their lips.” Of course, Blade knew very little about the subject and it was one of the few subjects he would ever underestimate.
“I’m going to the bar.”
All he needed was a drink and then another four after it. Blade didn’t believe that Mac was capable of deception, other than self-deception. He even questioned whether two thoughts could simultaneously exist in Mac’s consciousness without a mental fission that would blow his head straight off his neck block.
