Anyone Can Die

by James Lepore

  Pat took Lorrie’s hand and started across the plateau. As they were nearing the two Indians, one of them, short, but stocky and well muscled, stepped in front of them.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Have a beer with us.”

  “No thanks,” Pat said. “We don’t drink.”

  “But we saw you drinking beer before. You have it in your knapsack. You don’t like Indians.”

  The tall Indian had come up from the path and walked around to face them, standing next to his friend. The third was still standing near the boom box, about ten feet away, sipping beer.

  “They don’t like Indians,” the stocky one said to the tall one, who was holding something in his right hand that looked to Pat, at his first quick glance, like a knife. Looking again, he saw that it was a barber’s razor, its shiny curved blade fully extended. The sun was past its zenith now, but still blazing. In its harsh glare Pat could see the stocky Indian’s teeth, white and even and glistening under his mustache as he smiled broadly.

  Taking aim at these teeth, Pat stepped forward and hit the stocky one with a right cross directly in the middle of his face. He crumpled immediately to the ground. Pat put Lorrie behind him as the tall one showed his knife, his eyes dark with anger. Pat nudged Lorie backward, toward the pickup, away from the cliff, watching carefully as the third Indian also pulled a knife and joined his partner. At the truck, Pat reached behind him, grabbed a two-by-four, and in a long sweeping motion swung it at the tall Indian’s head. He ducked but not quickly enough to avoid a glancing blow, which knocked him to the ground. Pat immediately swung the lumber again, against the Indian’s rib cage, a blow that he knew would cause him great pain and debilitate him for days. As Pat was delivering this blow the third Indian rushed at him, his knife high. Pat turned toward him in time to see Lorrie swing the knapsack with five cans of beer still in it against the side of his head, spinning him into the front fender of the pick up, where he hit his head with a clank and fell to the ground.

  “Fuck,” said Lorrie, taking in the three Indians in various degrees of consciousness on the ground around them. “Fuck all.” Her eyes were blazing as hot as the sun.

  “You’re not mad at me, are you?” Pat asked.

  “Mad at you?”

  Pat picked up the razor and the knife and with a heave of his long, powerful right arm, flung them as far as he could out into the desert. “We have to go,” he said.

  “Mad at you?” Lorrie said again. “Are you kidding?”

  On 522, not far from Taos, Pat found a spot to park, slightly elevated, in the evergreen forest just off the highway, with a view of the road of at least a mile or two in each direction. Behind them was a rushing stream and beyond that the outline of a small motel, probably a fishing camp. They waited in silence, watching the highway. Pat’s adrenaline had been coming out of his pores, but he was calm now, able to think. His life had been a rough-hewn one since his father died when he was fifteen and his brother went off to the army a year later. Away from home, working on different projects, he spent his nights in bars, where he had his share of run-ins with the local crazies. But he had never faced a man with a knife before, or a weapon of any kind. He felt like he had passed a test, punched a ticket. And then there was Lorrie. If the Indians had hurt her, they would all be dead now. This thought, a simple statement of fact, confirmed for him that he had done the right thing in marrying her, despite the feelings of inadequacy that were more or less with him all the time.

  “I’ll go to Paraguay,” Lorrie said, breaking the silence. “But I have one condition.”

  “What’s that?” Pat asked.

  “We save all the money. When we get back we’ll buy a house.”

  “Will it be enough?”

  “More than enough.”

  “That’s fine with me. I agree a hundred percent.”

  “We can still work and go to Sacred Heart nights.”

  Lorrie, who worked days in a lawyer’s office, had thirty credits under her belt going part time to the small Catholic college in Bridgeport. In the past winter, Pat had taken a three-credit geology course there at night, selected by Lorrie. He had loved it and gotten a B, amazed that he could acquire an understanding of how the earth’s rocks were formed, the very rocks he grappled with in his work.

  Paraguay, he thought, we’re going!

  “How long should we wait?” Lorrie asked.

  “They’re not coming.”

  “You were unbelievable back there.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “I mean it.”

  “It’s a good thing you picked up the knapsack. You saved my life.”

  “No Pat. I saved you from killing him.”

  “Killing him? No way.”

  They were silent for a second. There was very little space between them in the front seat of their small car. The smell of the tall pine trees that surrounded them, cooked by the sun, wafted sweetly through the open windows. Lorrie turned sideways to face Pat. She put her hand on his shoulder and pressed down on the muscle and bone beneath.

  “I don’t know if I want to see that look ever again,” she said.

  “What look?”

  “The look in your eyes when you hit the tall one with the two-by-four.”

  “How do you know it was a two-by-four?”

  “I know my lumber.”

  “Do you know how much I love you?”

  “Till death do us part.”

  “Yes Lor, that much and more.”

  GOD’S WARRIORS

  Megan Nolan emerged from the bowels of the Abbesses Métro station into a cold and raw late afternoon in January of 2001. Rawer and colder, it seemed to her, than when she had entered the Métro near her apartment in the Latin Quarter only twenty minutes earlier. To catch her breath, she lit a Gauloise and stood near the station’s covered entrance. A passing businessman slowed to stare at her as she stood and smoked. Her strawberry blond hair flowed down to the shoulders of her dark green, au courant wool overcoat, which itself flowed down to the tops of her knee-high Prada boots. Under the coat, she had on faded jeans and an ivory-colored cashmere turtleneck sweater. She did not wear jewelry in Montmartre as she had heard stories of the sudden knockdown and necklace-, or worse, earring-grab by marauding boys. Her hair and her gold-flecked green eyes were her best accessories anyway. She did love jewelry though, to wear and to sell, which is why she was going to see her friend Annabella Jeritza, the widowed gypsy fortuneteller whose shop was only a few blocks away near the obscure little Olney Park.

  Skirting the Square Jehan-Rictus with its ridiculous Je t’aime Wall—a mass of blue tiles with stylized “I love yous” in various languages written on them—Megan headed east on Rue Yvonne le Tac, whose name always made her smile because she had stolen Yvonne Taccopina’s boyfriend in high school and then broken his heart like it was a dry twig. And Yvonne’s too, into the bargain. In her shoulder bag was a white gold, heart-shaped pendant in its original Raumet velvet box, given to her for Christmas by her current boyfriend, Alain, whose father owned the Raumet chain. This Annabella would find a buyer for and receive a ten percent commission. At Harry Winston yesterday Megan had located a similar pendant priced at $7,800. She expected to net $2,000, which she would add to her account with Pictet & Cie, her private Swiss banker on Avenue des Champs-Élysees.

  Alain would no doubt eventually ask her why she hadn’t worn the pendant, which would give her an opportunity to tell him that she decided what she wore and when, not him. She could sell it if she wished, couldn’t she? Or was it a gift with strings? Alain, who was lithely and sensuously beautiful, and whose unconscious sense of superiority exuded from his every pore, was, when all was said and done, a twentyfour-year-old child who could—and would—easily be brought to heel. Only three years older, Megan felt ancient compared to her new lover, too worldly wise for her own good. Not a good feeling, but there it was, and there was all of Alain’s unearned money, his very real sexual charms, and of course his father�
��s jewelry.

  As Megan strolled along Rue Durantin, she was stared at by the lost boys, whores, pimps, drug dealers and pickpockets—the cream of Paris’s low life—who hung out in and around the bars and greasy spoons that lined the avenue. Clutching tightly to her bag, her naturally proud and erect bearing making her look taller than her five foot seven inches, she tossed her hair in defiance and moved with apparent casualness through the carnival that was Montmartre, especially on market day, when the tourists showed up in busloads to be victimized. At the corner of Rue Caulaincourt, she ran into two prostitutes whose garish makeup and fantastic dress she had used in a story about slut chic that the editors at Cosmopolitan had bought thinking they were on to something new in the world of fashion. The mother-and-daughter team named Marie and Michelle had been agog with pride when Megan photographed them and gave them fifty dollars each for their “personal story and image rights.”

  Megan stopped to chat, noticing as she did the girls’ pimp, a large and muscular mulatto named Sky, watching them through the plateglass window of the pizzeria on the corner. It was Sky who had actually taken the girls’ hundred dollars and signed their names to the releases that Megan carried in her bag at all times. Sky had hit on her, and Megan’s smile in response had not been one of complete dismissal. Afterward, she made it a point to stop by the pizzeria—Sky’s office—to chat him up. A graceful and attractive man of about thirty-five, with close-cropped hair and incredible light blue eyes, Megan was not going to sleep with him, although in another lifetime she might have. Her instincts however—the instincts of a woman alone whose only protection was her wits and her cunning—told her that such a man would be worth knowing, if only to have a friend in the wilds of Montmartre.

  On the next block, Megan turned into an alley that led to a weed- and rubble-strewn courtyard that serviced several of the six-story apartment buildings on Rue Durantin and the street behind it, including Annabella’s. In the good weather, she would sometimes find Annabella in the courtyard hanging clothes or sitting drinking tea with her gypsy women friends, some of whom were young mothers watching their children playing. Megan, beginning around the age of sixteen, was acutely aware of the envy and jealousy she aroused in other females. Their eyes were paintbrushes dipped in fear and hate. Annabella’s friends—gypsies to the bone—painted her with the hottest of colors. Though she was allowed to pass unhindered because of her friendship with the old fortuneteller, she was hoping not to have to deal with any gypsies on her way to the back entrance to Annabella’s shop. At the end of the alley, she slowed and stood behind a rusted Dumpster to survey the scene ahead. Relieved to see the courtyard empty, she was about to step from behind the Dumpster when she saw Annabella hurtling across the ramshackle wooden porch at the back of her building and down its three steps to land sprawling and twisted in the weeds under a naked clothesline.

  Before Megan could react, Annabella’s son, a swarthy and arrogant little man whom Megan had seen once or twice about the fortuneteller’s shop—reeking of alcohol each time—emerged from the back door, through which he had obviously thrown his mother. When he reached Annabella she was trying to rise, and he helped her by grabbing her by her brassy orange hair and lifting and turning her to face him before slapping her twice across the face with a fully arcing forehand and backhand, the backhand jarring her loose from his grip and knocking her back to the ground. There Annabella lay, inert, her rouged cheek resting on an old magazine—it looked like Paris Match to Megan—while her son leaned over her to say something before spitting on her and turning to go back into the building.

  Megan took a step toward Annabella and then stopped as her friend lifted herself on one elbow and began in halting strokes to smooth her long cotton skirt down her legs, which, stick-like and clad in stockings rolled to just below the knee, had been exposed almost to the waist when she first hit the ground. In the old gypsy’s profile, Megan could clearly see the welted hand mark on her right cheek, its reddish hue deepening by the second so that it looked like it had been painted on, part of a costume or ritual. Megan remembered—she would for a long time—the cloud of rouge that had risen from Annabella’s wrinkled face as each downward blow from her son’s right hand landed with a sharp snap like the lash of a whip. Megan remained in place, only her eyes visible over the top edge of the Dumpster, and watched as Annabella slowly pulled herself to her feet. Searching the ground, trying to steady herself, the old palm reader spotted something and then stooped to retrieve the multicolored kerchief she wore at all times on her head. Carrying it in her hand—the bobby pins must have gone flying—she walked unsteadily but not without dignity into the building.

  Eight months later, near the end of a hot day in early September, Megan stood at the filigreed wrought iron fence that bordered the grassy playing field of L’Ermitage International School in the leafy suburb of Maisons-Lafitte, west of Paris. Through the fence’s sturdy bars, she could see a group of middle school girls, eleven- and twelve-year-olds, playing soccer amid the elongated shadows cast by the chimneys of the nearby seventeenth-century castle that had given the town its name. The girls all wore the same black shorts and Nike sneakers, the teams differentiated by the colors of their L’Ermitage-embossed T-shirts. The girl she was interested in, Jeanne, had just scored for the green team. Megan did not know the score as she had arrived mid-game and there was no scoreboard, but she knew the goal was important by the way Jeanne’s teammates surrounded her in brief exultation before setting up for the ensuing kickoff.

  An older girl, a freckled American-looking blonde around sixteen or so in a chic blue skirt, striped top and the ubiquitous Nikes, was doing double duty as referee and scorekeeper. When she blew her whistle to end the game, Megan leaned in as Jeanne passed, fifty feet or so from the fence, as she made her way through the post-game handshake line. With her raven-black hair and dusky coloring, Jeanne looked nothing like the rest of the girls, but her flushed face and the sparkle in her dark, piercing eyes—her team had apparently won—spoke of a happy child, her place in her small world secure. Megan knew this had not always been so.

  The girls gathered their gear along the sidelines and headed in groups of two and three to the school. Megan watched Jeanne until the last possible moment. No one had noticed her watching the game. And certainly no one knew that she had contracted to fund Jeanne’s tuition at L’Ermitage, a seven-day, twelve-month boarding school, through the end of her twelfth year, a sum that would eventually exceed $90,000. Most of this money she had already extracted from the by now desperately-in-love Alain Tillinac, and given it with special instructions to Pictet & Cie.

  On the short train ride back to Paris, Megan watched the small towns and countryside roll by for a while and then, images of a happy and healthy Jeanne fresh in her mind, allowed herself to recall her first, and last, meeting with the child, who was at the time chained to a filthy bed in the rear of an apartment in a housing project in the Paris suburb of Florentin.

  “We have your man,” Sky had said over the phone, giving her the address. “Do not delay.” In thirty minutes, she was there. Boiko Jeritza was there as well, sitting in a stuffed chair in a dark living room, his mouth duct-taped shut, his hands tied behind his back. Boiko’s wild eyes followed them as Sky led her into the grimy kitchen where he showed her the photographs, sixteen in all: of children—boys and girls—naked or half-naked, some forlornly posing, some having sex with men. One of the men was Boiko. In the same folder that had held the photographs was a list of customers, some highlighted in yellow, some with amounts in euros next to their names and addresses. Before Megan could speak, they heard a noise from a back room and there they found Jeanne.

  The plan was to frighten Boiko into submission, but Megan now believed he was dead. Was, in fact, sure he was dead. She had been to visit Annabella a half dozen times since and had not seen Boiko once. Two weeks earlier, she summoned the courage to ask the old gypsy about her son. They were drinking tea laced with whiskey late one night
in Annabella’s back room. The old gypsy’s face had healed, but occasionally Megan would see her lightly brushing the back of her fingers across one cheek or the other. Annabella had put down her cup on the oilcloth-covered table between them, and said, “He is in hell.”

  “In hell?” Megan had asked.

  “With Satan, where he belongs, and can do no more harm”

  “He’s dead?”

  Annabella smiled before answering, looking Megan in the eye for a second or two. A long second or two.

  “Yes, but you know that he is,” she said finally.

  It was Megan’s turn to be silent. Missing, gone away, did not mean dead. Was she fishing? Tying to confirm her suspicions? Or did she, as Megan more and more was coming to believe, have the second sight that gypsies spoke of quietly and revered?

  “How did he die?” she asked, at length, returning her friend’s stare with equanimity. She had not survived the last nine years on her own in Europe and Africa by giving any cards away.

  “He was slain by St. Michael, the archangel.”

  “At your request?”

  “Using his instruments on earth.”

  “Annabella, you’re scaring me.”

  “God’s warriors do not always appear to be so.”

  Megan sat back in her chair and shook her head slightly. Sky had disappeared for a while as well, but he had soon returned to his office at the pizzeria, keeping his beautiful eyes on his whores and their customers. He had asked for another two thousand euros, for expenses, but he seemed unchanged, his usual breezy and menacing self.