Metro

by Stephen Romano

  “That’s not an answer, honey. Tell me what you do for a living.”

  “I run a website and I wait tables. And I’m not honey.”

  “I was just being polite.”

  “You were being disgusting.”

  “Now, you listen to me—”

  “No, you listen to me—listen really good. You don’t call me honey. You don’t call me sweetie. You don’t say I’m your darling. None of those things are my name. Honey is insect shit. Honey is something that hippies put in coffee. Honey is not a human being and it isn’t me, so don’t fucking call me honey.”

  “I’m not used to being talked to like that.”

  “A little mutual respect goes a long way.”

  “You look stoned. You on something right now?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m making it my business. And you’d better wise up in a big hurry girl. I don’t know if the all-knowing, all-wise Mark Jones has read you the news, but right now, at this very moment, I am the best thing that ever happened to you and your silly little emo boyfriend over there. If you wanna survive long enough to digest those pancakes you just gobbled down, you start treating me really, really nice.”

  “Andy’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Look, we don’t have time for bullshit. This restaurant will only be secure another thirty minutes or so.”

  “What do you mean by secure?”

  “You were paying attention when your house was invaded by goons carrying automatic weapons?”

  “Yeah, I was paying attention.”

  “It’s kind of like that.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “You, my dear, are about one wet cunt hair away from total obliteration.”

  “The word obliteration sounds funny on you. Your accent sounds like you’re from deep redneck country. Nacogdoches, maybe.”

  “Where I’m from is none of your business. And yeah, I’m a redneck, so what? We can’t all sound like rocket scientists. But I am a rocket scientist, honey. Don’t ever forget that you are speaking to a very smart person.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Anything else on your mind I oughta know about?”

  “You should know that you’re right about me being on drugs, but that’s the difference between me and you—I’m used to being on drugs. I can focus up and do my job. You’re a different story.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I can tell just by looking that you drank way too much this morning and you do it all the time. You’re one of those people who doesn’t recover well. Probably Jim Beam Black, from the way the bags under your eyes are formed. You had a couple of Lone Stars too.”

  “You can tell I drink Jim Beam because of the bags under my eyes?”

  “I see them a lot. There’s a certain bloodshot brown to the discoloration.”

  “And you just figured I drink Lone Star because I’m a redneck?”

  “No. That, I can smell on you. The perfume doesn’t quite cover up your breath.”

  “Cute, girlie.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “And here’s what I’m telling you: Wise the fuck up. I’m your best friend right now. And I know how this story ends.”

  “Whatever, lady. My life has been turned completely upside down. All I have left to my name are my brain and my work. I’m not just giving any of those things away. You can leave me for the wolves, whatever. But I think I’d rather die than be a part of . . . well, whatever this is you people are a part of.”

  “Who says we want you to be a part of it? Who says we want anything from you?”

  “History says it. See, I sort of know how this ends too.”

  “Do you?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So tell me what you know, girlie. Tell me more about myself. Tell me my goddamn life’s story, you fuckin’ bitch, and see where it gets you.”

  “Are you sure you want me to do that?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.”

  The baggy-eyed, bedhead lady across from Jollie lets out a long sigh.

  And then Jollie says this:

  • • •

  “You’re a very frustrated person. You gave that away just by talking to me. You’re a career woman. Your work is lonely and repetitive. Your cover requires you to blend into the scene without a lot of attention drawn to yourself, which means you hide in plain view. That also means you’re not really allowed to have a relationship with anybody, but you hate the way you look and so you drink to give yourself confidence, and it backfires because you do it way too much. You hit the bars to keep an eye on the scene. You order straight shots of whiskey and chat up people who think you’re a total stranger, and you start files on those people. That’s a place where you learn a lot of what you need to know about counterculture and the behavior patterns of certain individuals, but that’s also where you indulge your self-hatred and your addictions. You score one-night stands or one-week flings whenever you can—because, hey, a girl has needs, right? And it’s not hard to do that with some drunk cowboy in the dives they tell you to hang out in. The patterns in the local hangouts are very important to watch in this town—you have to know where the hippest stuff is happening, the regular gigs by local musicians, the free shows by Joanna Blythe and Carolyn Wonderland. You especially dig the Happy Hippie Tuesday show Joanna does, and you’re still pretty amazed at how many people she packs into the place at five o’clock on a weekday. You can learn a lot about Austin from the people who walk through the door at the Continental Club, and that’s what you tell yourself at first—that you’re hanging out in the legendary overcrowded dive bar where Stevie Ray Vaughn used to ply his trade for a real and definitive purpose. That tiny broom closet full of twentysomething hipsters shouldering against burnout hippie pest dudes, all struggling through walls of beer sweat and bad aftershave and yeehaw this and yahoo that. You stumble home drunk, chase it with more booze from the freezer, and wake up with the worst hangover of your life. Which you chase with a beer back or two—or three or four. Then you make your reports, go buy more booze, check in with your contacts. You equalize your brain before you go back out to do more fieldwork. Part of what you do is all about spying on people, so you have a list of names you keep tabs on. You have to know personal habits, work routines, what these scumbags do when they’re not being scumbags. You live in a small one-room house full of empty booze bottles and Jenny Craig boxes, somewhere nice and anonymous, probably on the south side of town. You do all your business off that smartphone in your hand, which is a hunk of gadgetry more amazing than anything currently available to the public. You look in the mirror and see a woman who was once beautiful. You hate that, but you tell yourself that this is a good life. You tell yourself that what you do is worth the ruination of your looks and the sacrifice of your youth. You tell yourself that the work you do saves humanity and protects the homeland. But the sad, sad truth is that you don’t have any idea what it really amounts to. You’re one hand that has no idea what the other hand is doing. You’re lost like everybody else. Left in a very dark place with your self-hatred and your fear. You live just outside of the lives of the people you spy on. You know what every single one of them eats for breakfast. And yet you don’t know them at all. You don’t want to know them. You’re afraid of them. Just like you’re afraid of me. Does that about nail it?

  “Honey?”

  • • •

  The baggy-eyed, bedhead lady across from Jollie lets out the longest sigh yet.

  Then she says:

  “Christ . . . I need a drink.”

  • • •

  Darian’s voice is a comfort. It riptides over Jackie like waves of milk and strawberry slime. He thinks that’s really fucked up. He looks down again and sees what Darian has done to him and he wants to spit in Darian’s face, but the voice lulls hi
m, the voice puts him at ease. He doesn’t wonder why he can be so terrified, so disgusted, so angry, and so comforted all at once. As the drugs eat his mind with strawberry teeth.

  “I love you, Jackie. I’ve always loved you.”

  Squirming serpents and comforting rivers.

  “You believe me when I say that, don’t you?”

  Terrible ends and new beginnings.

  “I know you believe me.”

  It’s so goddamn fucking fucked up.

  “You won’t make me take anything else, won’t you? You want to tell me everything I want to know, don’t you? Anything you can remember that might help us. Anything strange that’s happened. Anything at all. Let me hear your voice, Jackie. Let me hear you say the words.”

  He wants to say fuck you.

  He wants to spit in Darian’s face.

  But he doesn’t want to do that.

  Instead he says this:

  “I can give you another name. It’s all I have.”

  Darian smiles again, the blades still glittering in his hand.

  “It’s all I need, Jackie.”

  • • •

  The second interview is a revelation.

  It goes like this:

  “Give me your full name and occupation.”

  “Andrew Worthington Culpepper. Unemployed.”

  “Nice.”

  “You can call me Andy.”

  “So . . . are you gonna tell me all about my life too, Andy?”

  “No. I don’t do that. Jollie’s a mutant.”

  “I’m about ready to kick her ass outta the world.”

  “She got to you, huh? She does that. You can’t take it too personally. She does it with everyone, right when she first meets them.”

  “So, Andy . . . looks like you had a little accident with your hand this morning. Wanna tell me about it?”

  “Someone tried to cut my thumb off.”

  “I’m sorry that had to happen to a nice boy like you.”

  “Are you going to help us?”

  “Maybe. I can try.”

  “That’s all anybody can do, I guess.”

  “You’re . . . very sweet, Andy.”

  “I know you.”

  “What?”

  “I know you. We’ve met before.”

  “I don’t remember that, Andy.”

  “I’m not surprised. You were pretty lit up.”

  “Ummm . . . you’re joking, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Let me guess. We met at the Continental Club. The Joanna Blythe happy-hour show?”

  “Yep. You were really drunk.”

  “And I was hitting on you?”

  “Yep.”

  “And your friend was there too?”

  “Jollie watched the whole thing.”

  “And, silly me, I just thought she was psychic.”

  “She is.”

  “Maybe. So . . . was I nice to you, Andy?”

  “Oh yeah. You were really funny. Not, like, pathetic funny. You were telling jokes and making me laugh. I thought you were attractive that way.”

  “I’m old enough to be your mom.”

  “So what? I still thought you were hot.”

  “Even though I’m a cow? Even though I got Jim Beam bags that go all the way around my eyes?”

  “You were thinner then, and not as tired-looking. It was over a year ago, I think. Maybe two years. That was back when I went out to see Joanna every Tuesday.”

  “You wouldn’t be tag-teaming with your friend, would you? Doing damage control for the loudmouth bitch?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to do that. I’m just telling you we’ve met before.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t remember that at all.”

  “I guess you don’t remember making out with me either.”

  “What?”

  “It was fun.”

  “I’m . . . sure it was, Andy.”

  “I asked for your phone number and you wouldn’t give it to me. Jollie thought I was crazy.”

  “You wouldn’t have called anyway.”

  “Maybe. Life’s an adventure.”

  “Wanna make out with me again, Andy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re kind of a slut, aren’t you, Andy?”

  “Like I said . . . life’s an adventure.”

  The baggy old lady rubs her eyes and shakes her head.

  Then leans forward, kills the rest of her coffee and says, stripping the young man naked with her eyes, one item of clothing at a time:

  “Yes. Life is an adventure. Andy.”

  • • •

  Penelope Cranston is the name Jackie comes up with.

  Darian gets on his phone and does a quick search that reveals nothing that ties the name to Mark Jones or any of his Kingdom buddies.

  But then Jackie starts really, really talking.

  He gives details and dates and smells.

  “Smells are important,” Jackie says.

  Darian sits at his side and listens.

  Patiently.

  • • •

  Details and dates and smells:

  Jackie-Boy Schaeffer is standing in the breakfast cereal aisle of a grocery store on November eighth, almost exactly one year from the moment he tells this story. It’s the H-E-B at Congress Avenue and Oltorf, one of the busiest intersections in south Austin. He’s not expecting what happens. And what happens is that he gets a whiff of something really strong in the air, something feminine and trashy. It’s the scent of a woman. Perfume and pheromones all jacked together and doing a rocket launch right up his nostrils in the worst possible way. Worst, not because it smells bad—but because he’s actually smelled it one other time in his life. Four months earlier. July twenty-second. On that day, he’d just come home from a drug deal, to the house he’s shared with his father since the day he was born. Something was lingering in the living room and in the halls when he came home that day. Like waves of cherry opium smothered in oil. Someone had been there and left that scent. Someone uninvited.

  That uninvited smell is here right now, just a few feet away from him.

  She never says hi as she passes with her half-empty shopping cart. She never turns so he can get a very good look at her face. She is hidden and camouflaged by a long down coat, but the camouflage does not hide that perfume/pheromone four-alarm.

  Jackie shadows her as she walks away.

  He does it really smart, so she can’t see him at all.

  He realizes as he stays one step behind her that she’s not even aware he’s there—bumping into her like this was complete random chance. He wants to walk right up and ask her who she is. Why did you break into my house? What is your name? Who the hell do you think you are, shopping for breakfast cereal in the same store I do that in? And while you’re at it, go fuck yourself.

  But he plays it cool.

  He stays right behind her, out into the parking lot.

  He gets the license number off her car.

  Runs it through a database and comes up with a name.

  Penelope Cranston.

  He finds out where Penelope Cranston lives and it’s a shitty one-room house on the south side of town, right behind the Continental Club. It’s so close to the Continental Club, in fact, that all she has to do to get her drink on is walk two blocks. Saves gas, and her car is shitty. Jackie comes to know all that stuff about Penelope Cranston because he gets obsessed with Penelope Cranston. He starts thinking she’s an undercover cop of some kind. But she’s such a lush—it doesn’t make any sense. Why is her disguise so perfect, if it even is a disguise?

  What in the fucking fuck, man?

  He asks his father if he ever brought this woman back to the house and he says he
’s never seen her before. His father asks if they should be worried—if they should do something about Penelope Cranston. Finally, Jackie breaks down and breaks into her house one night while she’s seeing Joanna Blythe. He does the job on stealth with some cat burglar buddies of his dad’s and searches the place top to bottom, but they find nothing. One room full of empty booze bottles and Jenny Craig boxes. A bathroom full of loose hair and dried vomit stains. The whole thing is a wild goddamn goose chase, it seems . . . but Jackie has to be damn sure. So he does what any high-tech information junkie working for a major Austin drug dealer would do in that situation.

  He hides a video camera the size of an M&M in her living room.

  And stashes a GPS reader under the front seat of her car.

  • • •

  The last interview is over quickly.

  Mark sits across from her one last time and she rubs her eyes, sighing.

  “Okay, kid, I think we might be able to do business, after all. You were right about the girl. She’s very good. And her network is solid. It might be enough to negotiate with.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “Where did you find that bitch? I’ve never met a profiler who could plug in so fast to anything.”

  “I think she’s from outer space.”

  “We might be able to do something with the emo slut too. He’s a pretty one, isn’t he?”

  “The prettiest.”

  “I must be out of my fuckin’ mind, Mark Jones.”

  “You want him, don’t you?”

  “This is business. The girl might be valuable enough to bring him along for the ride . . . but I’m telling you now that none of this will fly without the package.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s the only real reason I’m still here—the only reason this might work. You have to swear to me that you still have it, Mark.”

  “I still have it.”

  “You can’t screw me on that. It’s both our asses if you’re full of shit.”

  “I’m not full of shit.”

  “I’m recording this conversation. You’re on the record, Mark Jones. If these people think for one minute that you’ve lied to me, they’re gonna chew us up and spit us out. They won’t care at all about your smart little friend over there or the good-looking emo slut or any good deeds we’ve done for the company. They’ll chop off your head and use what’s left for fish bait. Do you understand me?”