Danse Macabre

by Kory M. Shrum

  “What she asked for.”

  “Do you care about her at all?” Piper asked. “Do you even give two fucks about her?”

  He sneered. “I give a lot of fucks.”

  Piper’s stomach turned.

  He stood, tucking the rifle over one shoulder. “Do you give a shit about her? You’re the one who can’t spend five minutes in this house.”

  Because of you.

  “Don’t be coming around here with your self-righteous bullshit, princess. I know you think you’re better than us, but you’re nothing but a goddamn dyke.”

  Piper had never wanted to hit someone so much in her life, but she was no fool. He could take her easily. And while it wouldn’t kill her to get her ass kicked, it would bring consequences she didn’t want to deal with, from Mel and King for starters.

  If she wanted to help her mom—and that’s all she wanted—she had to keep it together. She couldn’t let this trash-talking asshole get the best of her.

  “Seriously, what’s with the gun?”

  “I was planning to use it if you tried anything stupid.”

  “Like?”

  “Move her out of this house. Pack up any of our shit.”

  There was nothing in this house that belonged to him except his clothes and a few toiletries in the bathroom. Instead of pointing this out, Piper tried to find a way to control the conversation. Keep it from escalating. She didn’t want her brains blown out by the likes of Willy Turner.

  “She needs help.”

  He laughed. His rat face sneering. “Help? Do you think she wants to get better? Tell me you’re not so stupid.”

  “You’re the one that gets her high. You give her the drugs. You’re going to kill her.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Yes!” Piper screamed, her restraint flying out of the window. “Yes, Willy, that’s what I think!”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Her mother groaned and sat up. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Why’s everybody yelling?”

  The relief at seeing her mother awake and speaking loosened some of the panic squeezing her chest.

  “She doesn’t want to quit doping,” he said.

  “Of course she does. No one wants to be sick. Mom, tell him.”

  Her mom said nothing.

  “You mean to tell me, you thought she was just gonna get clean. That she’d get away from this house and that would magically cure her fucked-up head?”

  Tears stung Piper’s eyes.

  “She was a druggie long before I came along. She was a druggie her whole damned life.”

  “Mom,” Piper said, calmly. “Mom, get up. We’re leaving.”

  “She isn’t going anywhere.”

  “She’s getting the hell away from you. You’re the problem. I can’t leave her here with you a minute longer.”

  “Because you think I’m the reason she’s like that.”

  “You bring the drugs.” Even as she said it, the accusation felt weak. Like every time she said it, it felt less true.

  She blamed him for so much more. For the way he spoke to her, to her mother. The way he stole from them and cashed her check. The way he degraded her a thousand ways each and every day. But Piper didn’t want this to spiral out of control. And the situation already had that fever pitch feel to it.

  It was a dangerous energy that some arguments had. Long, unproductive battles that left everyone spent and nothing resolved.

  “I bring the drugs that she asks for,” he said. “If it wasn’t me, she’d find some other dealer to keep her high. I’m not the problem.”

  “Yes, you are! Mom, we’re leaving!”

  Piper grabbed the woman by the upper arm, knowing in some wiser part of her mind this wasn’t going to work. Where in the world could she take her? To a clinic? To the hospital? The apartment wasn’t hers until Monday.

  But she couldn’t leave her mother here. She just couldn’t.

  But there was another hand on her, wrenching her away from her mother. One hard shove and Piper stumbled. The back of her legs hit the end of a coffee table and she fell back, slamming into it with the full force. The flimsy pressed board collapsed under her weight and momentum.

  Groaning, Piper rolled onto her side to see black combat boots stepping out of the hallway closet.

  A milk-white figure, black hair, leather jacket, and eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses that reflected the flames of the kerosene heater. An icy hand reached down and pulled her to her feet. Piper only had a second to register that she hadn’t actually brained herself on the coffee table. Lou was really here.

  Lou was in her mother’s living room, staring at Willy like he was a cockroach she wanted to cream under the heel of her boot.

  Willy, having no sense of self-preservation, sauntered toward her. He reached for his rifle, turning the gun toward her.

  Lou twisted the barrel and something snapped. Willy screamed. He cradled his hand as if she’d broken it in half. Maybe she had.

  Now Lou lifted the butt of the gun and brought it down swiftly across Willy’s face. He collapsed like a sack of bricks to the living room floor.

  Piper surged forward. “No, no, no, no.”

  Lou hesitated.

  “You can’t kill him.” Piper felt like she had to say it, as ridiculously obvious as it sounded. “You can’t.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” Lou tucked the rifle against her shoulder. Her posture relaxed.

  “Mom, come on,” Piper said.

  “What did you do to Willy?”

  “Forget Willy, Mom. Come on! Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Mom—”

  “No!”

  “Mom!”

  Her mother wrenched herself away and regarded Piper as if she’d never seen her before. That’s when Piper knew she’d lost. Her mom wasn’t coming.

  “Get in the closet,” Lou told her. And though on any other occasion Piper would have rather crawled into a sewer than that cobwebby mess of a closet, she obeyed without pause.

  Lou leaned the shotgun against the wall and stepped in after her, slipping one hand around Piper’s waist.

  “Do you want her to come with us?” Lou asked.

  Piper thought of her mother’s face. The way she’d stepped toward Willy, not her when the moment mattered. Her mother made her choice.

  “No,” Piper said, her voice cracking. “Get me out of here.”

  “Take a breath,” Lou said in the dark, her cheek radiating cold against Piper’s. “And think of where you want to go.”

  Piper closed her eyes and made a wish.

  21

  Lou held Piper close as she stepped through the dark. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find and could only guess where Piper might have wanted to seek refuge.

  Then a bar formed around them, and she was suddenly glad she’d left the rifle behind before they’d slipped. She’d had a momentary concern that he would kill Piper’s mother with it. After all, the number one threat to a woman’s life was having a partner. But Lou put that fear aside the moment she saw the hurt and betrayal in Piper’s eyes. Her mother didn’t warrant Lou’s protection.

  This bar was quieter than most bars. It was also scarcely populated. There was plenty of room to step from the thick shadows of the bathroom hallway into the main room. Piper plowed toward the bar, stomping almost comically.

  “A hurricane, please,” she said, slapping the bartop. “I have a whole lot of feelings to suppress!”

  The bartender acknowledged her order before she put her head down on her folded arms, the way children put their heads down on their desks at school.

  The bartender arched an eyebrow and gave Lou a look. “A Cherry Coke. Three cherries,” she ordered. “On the same tab as hers.”

  The bartender left to fill their order, and Lou stood awkwardly between two stools, watching over the sobbing girl.

  For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she should sit o
n the stool or if she should keep standing. She didn’t want to leave before delivering King’s messages, and she couldn’t leave Piper here.

  Lou regarded the dark room and its patrons suspiciously, but no one showed her the least bit of interest. The girl with her head down on bar sobbing drew a few looks, but those gazes slid away as soon as they locked eyes with Lou.

  The bartender arrived with the drinks. “If she’s already drunk—”

  Piper’s head shot up, and she seized the drink from the bartender’s grip. “Don’t send it back! You already made it. And sad and drunk isn’t the same thing, buddy.”

  She threw her head back and drank half of the hurricane in one go.

  When the bartender lingered, Lou pushed the sunglasses up on her head and shared one of her coldest glares. “She’s having a hard day.”

  The bartender put the Coke on the bar and left.

  “I’m so stupid.” Piper ran her nose across the sleeve of her sweater. “Why did I think she could change? Why did I think she wanted to change? I mean, I could never live like that.”

  She threw the glass back a second time, and Lou decided to sink onto the barstool beside her after all.

  “I’m sick of it. I’m so sick of wondering about whether or not she’ll kill herself with freaking drugs, or if someone will kill her for drugs, or hell, just someone hurting her. I’m tired of it. I don’t even know why I bother. If she doesn’t care enough about herself to get out of that shit, why should I care?”

  Lou sipped her Cherry Coke and said nothing.

  Her mind had already picked up the threads of Piper’s thoughts and had begun to careen off on their own.

  Who was to blame here? The drugs or the addict? Was Piper’s mother another victim of a trade that exploited her weakness? Or was she to blame for her own actions?

  Once upon a time, this answer would’ve been easy for Lou. The traders and dealers, they were the monsters. Women like Piper’s mother were the victims.

  But now… It wasn’t so easy.

  Lou’s certainty had grown threadbare. Now good men—the politicians and police sworn to protect and serve—could be as destructive to a person’s life and freedom as the men who loaded heroin onto a shipping liner bound for America. The dealers, who simply wanted to keep their bellies full and bills paid, were no longer murderous fiends but only trapped in a cycle that gave them no other opportunities.

  Then there were men like Konstantine—When the hell did it become so complicated?

  At least that much she knew. Senator Ryanson, Chaz Brasso, and Gus Johnson were the start of it. When she began to uncover the truth, her view began to shift. Konstantine only drove the wedge in deeper until she was forced to realize she wanted easy answers to complex problems—and finally understood there were none.

  Piper remained oblivious to her inner struggle. “Does she even know what it’s like? Does she even give a shit that I can’t sleep half the time because I’m worried I’m going to get a call that she’s dead? That she overdosed or burned the house down or was found in the fucking canal?”

  Lou took another drink of her Coke and offered no false platitudes to the girl crying beside her. She said only, “She’s your mother.”

  “She doesn’t act like it!”

  Again Lou found herself wondering if her father had lived to see her become a teenager, if their views would have diverged with time. Would they have fought the way that he and Lucy used to fight? Would he have loved her if she’d grown to disagree with him at every turn?

  She didn’t need to hear her dead father’s voice in her mind to know that answer. Yes. His guilt for rejecting Lucy’s truth and power would have kept him close to her side, kept him forgiving, even if affection hadn’t been enough.

  Guilt, after all, was a powerful motivator.

  “She has as much right as anyone to ruin her life,” Piper said, tipping the glass onto its edge, rolling the rim around and around on the bartop precariously. “But I don’t have to watch it.”

  “No,” Lou agreed. “You have your own life to ruin.”

  Piper gave her a wan smile, clearly unsure as to whether or not Lou was joking or being cruel at her expense. Lou forced one of the corners of her lips up into a crooked smile in order to remove all doubt.

  “God, Henry was right. Mom’s incapable of change.”

  Lou made no reply. The conversation was a one-woman show. And Lou was certain that Piper could give herself better counsel than Lou could.

  “The real question, is can I do it? Can I start putting myself first? Stop enabling her. Stop trying to protect her. Stop trying to insist that she get better because it’s not going to happen, or if it does, it’s not because of anything I do.”

  Piper ran her hands down her face and sniffled. Then she waved to the bartender. “Another please?”

  He looked ready to refuse her until Lou caught his eye. Then he had the second drink mixed before Lou slid her sunglasses back down over her eyes.

  “God, I don’t know. I’m probably as much an addict as she is. Addicted to her bullshit.”

  When she finished the second hurricane, she turned to Lou.

  “You’re a good listener. Probably because you don’t speak.” Her words had taken on an audible slur.

  Lou shrugged.

  “I’m going to lose the deposit,” Piper groaned. She ran a hand down her face again. “It’s fine. That little old lady probably needs it more than I do. But man, I feel stupid for thinking my mom would actually come live with me.”

  “You love your mother.” It seemed like something Lucy would say.

  “Yeah, but she shouldn’t have a free pass to treat me like shit just because she’s my mom.”

  “No,” Lou agreed.

  Piper didn’t seem to notice. “But I was like, ‘she’s sick,’ ‘she needs help,’ and so I wasn’t mad about it, you know, no matter how fucked up it was. Oh god, I’m whining now. Can I be any more pathetic?”

  “I like listening to you speak,” Lou said. And she was surprised to find it was true. There was a cheerful cadence to her voice that Lou hadn’t noticed before. It was more than that. Lou found the act of speaking laborious, and tedious. Lou admired how this girl made it seem effortless, and borderline fun.

  Piper looked as shocked by this praise as Lou was. “Yeah okay. So, I guess all I’m saying is that I don’t know why I thought she would change. That if I got her away from those dudes, she might actually give a shit about her life. Obviously I’m stupid.”

  “You aren’t stupid. Most of the women who deal with addicts feel the way you do. I’ve seen a lot of it.”

  “You’re being so nice to me,” Piper said. She turned and regarded Lou in the low, barroom light. Even in the darkness, Lou could see the tears sparking in her eyes. “Did you just kill a bunch of assholes or something?”

  “Only one,” she said. “Actually, I’m…”

  She wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. One of the good things about Lucy—the best thing actually—was the way she’d been able to read Lou. She knew what her niece felt and wanted even when Lou herself seemed unable to articulate her needs.

  Lou didn’t know how to tell Piper what was wrong.

  She didn’t know how to crack open this sense of unease in her chest whenever she thought of Konstantine. Of Petrov. Of her inability to lift a gun as easily as she had before Lucy died. All of that sat on top of the look in the boy’s eyes just before she’d pulled the trigger.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” Lou said finally, turning the sweating glass between her palms, feeling the condensation chill her skin.

  Then Piper seemed to realize that Lou had appeared in her mother’s house for no apparent reason. “Why did you come get me?”

  “King sent me.”

  “Oh, god, is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. But he wanted me to tell you something.”

  Lou wasn’t sure if she should deliver another blow so soon.

  Piper laughed
, her cheeks full of color. “You’ve got a strong Matrix vibe right now. There’s something I need to tell you, Neo. Did that whole leather badass look take practice or do you come by it naturally?”

  Lou wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Okay, I might be a little drunk.” Piper tipped her drink toward her, clearly surprised to find it empty again so soon. “What did King want with me? I’m dying of suspense here. Give me a hint. What’s it about?”

  “The girl Melandra hired.”

  Piper choked on a piece of ice. “Oh man. No.”

  Lou wasn’t sure how to interpret this. “She’s a journalist.”

  Piper frowned. “What story did she want?”

  “Mine,” Lou said.

  Piper put her drink on the bartop and covered her face with her hands again. “God, I’m wrong about people left and right these days.”

  Lou put an arm around the girl’s shoulder and squeezed. She had no idea if this was helping or hurting. The girl said something that Lou couldn’t understand into the crook of her elbow.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She lifted her tear-stained face and shimmering eyes. “I said I’m probably wrong about you, too.”

  Before Lou understood what was happening, Piper leaned off the edge of her barstool and pressed her lips to Lou’s. Her lips were thick, moist, and parted Lou’s so easily that she had a tongue in her mouth before she understood fully how it’d gotten there.

  One moment it was simply warm salty lips, and then their absence. When Piper pulled away, she left tears cooling on Lou’s cheeks.

  Piper’s eyes doubled in size. “Wow. That was like putting a gun in my mouth.”

  Lou had no idea how to interpret that.

  “Sorry if that wasn’t consensual, but I had to know. If this isn’t going to happen, I’m gonna get that into my head right now. Along with all the other shit I need to sort out.”

  Lou regarded her round face and big blue eyes. “You like me.”

  Piper snorted. “Uh, worship. Adore. Obsess might be more accurate. But the kiss test has never failed me. Unfortunately, the data simply doesn’t lie.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Lou admitted, turning her drink between her palms.