“What do you do for a crust?” the old man asked Tim.
Confused by the question, his stomach rumbling at the mention of something that might be food, Tim realized he was being asked about his livelihood. Grateful for the shadow of the underpass that hid his blush, the thought of countless anonymous men came unbidden to his mind. Searching benighted parks for someone to service their cocks outside the illusion of their normal lives, they found Tim, who needed money more than love or honesty. Tim, who now felt the bruises and stains left on him by their self-hatred more than he felt the cold or hunger. Better to stay under the overpass than try to find something new, to head out into the world where he saw shame reflected in the passing faces of every man he wanted to touch.
Blinking tears away he replied, “Oh, you know, this and that.”
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So I slept through what remained of the night until the morning sun filtered through the tallow colored shades. Sophie had gone to God knows where so I got up and cleaned up, making my way back down the flights of stairs, then went in search of breakfast. I found it, as I usually did, in a café that had lingered in our neighborhood long past time for something so genteel. However, the old man who ran the place was too determined or too set in his ways to relocate, so there was an oasis of civilization in the midst of the garbage and graffiti.
The old man in question, Simon, was out in front setting up the few chairs that would fit on the sidewalk that ran along the cafe’s wood and glass entrance. He was hatless, leaving his bald head defenseless against the rain and sun, the white cuffs of his shirt rolled up guaranteeing a farmer’s tan even as he spent most of his day indoors. His rather ample gut hung over the black apron he had tied around his waste, completing the picture of his anachronism. He smiled as he saw me approach, gesturing for me to come inside. “Voici, l’Amèricain. Come in, my friend.”
I did. It was always pleasant to step into the cafe, past the counter with its small army of white porcelain cups, wine glasses and beer mugs, to walk through the rows of round, wooden tables to the back. I don’t know if it was the steam from the espresso machine or something else, but the inside always felt more pleasant than outside, whether that meant it needed to be warm or cool.
I followed Simon’s somehow both bedraggled and formal presence, him leading me across the black and white tiles till he sat me down at one of the marble topped tables that lined the furthest wall. With my back against the somber wood I could see anyone coming and going by the entrance, which always made me more comfortable. With a professional’s eye Simon had noticed that the first time I had visited and he had seated me there since.
I ordered the eggs. After confirming that I wanted the same thing I always did Simon brought me a café crème without me asking for it then disappeared in the back to prepare the rest. I sat at the table and watched people walk past the high windows up front, seeing a good mix of what last night’s rain had washed down to this part of the city. I warmed my hands around the mug of espresso and milk, letting it cool.
After bringing out my plate Simon sat down across from me and lit one of his morning cigarillos. I disliked that he smoked at the table while I ate, but I never complained about it. The eggs, perfectly prepared with no more than some salt, pepper, and a little butter, accompanied by a bit of spicy sausage and potato galette, made this easy to do.
As I dug in, Simon exhaled a plume of smoke, signaling the start of the day’s French lesson. Simon would refuse to speak English for the remainder of the meal and I would fumble responses as best I could between mouthfuls.
True to form he started with the weather. “The winter is finally leaving us.”
“Yes. There is much raining.” I hadn’t mastered French, more or less contractions, so my language came out stilted and with a heavy accent.
“Do you and your woman enjoy the rain?”
“Yes.” The regular April rains were a welcome change from the parched plains of Umbria. But the reasons for that were difficult to explain, so I kept the answer short.
Sensing this was one of the many dead ends our conversations would run into Simon changed subjects. “How was work last night?”
“The same as always.”
My unhappiness at having a job that could have gone to an able-bodied local caused Simon to prod, “Many people here would kill to have a job at the casino.”
“They can have my job.” I tore off a piece of potato with my teeth. “If they can take it.”
Simon wasn’t sure what to make of that response, although I’m not sure if it was because of my gutter French or the content of my sentence. He took a long drag from his cigarillo. “How did you arrive here, American?”
I raised my hungry eyes from my plate, surprised by Simon’s directness. He had always been inquisitive; I suspect he had begun our French lessons as a way of teasing out whatever story had brought me to his small cafe. However, until now his questions had always been oblique. I didn’t know at that moment what had caused him to ask such a blunt question, but I knew I didn’t want to lie to him. I examined his face to see if I could determine what kind of answer he was searching.
Simon was gazing at the mirror above and behind my seat as if he could conjure the explanation out of the glass. I interpreted this as a slip of his professional attention until I heard the high, tinny sound of the bell above the entrance that announced customers. I laughed at myself a little, having let the velvety eggs and spicy sausage distract me from the front door.
Simon had been using the mirror to inspect the newcomers into his cafe. As I snuck a glance past him, my humorous self-deprecation became an earnest caution. Simon’s question made sense to me now as well. The entering trio had the appearance of men searching for someone. I shoveled several forks of sausage into my mouth, suddenly unsure if I would get to finish the rest of my meal.
The voyous were closer to being boys than men in my estimation, but that didn’t matter much. Boys could kill as well as men. Maybe better. Kindness and hesitation were easier to beat out of them. These three looked like they might be that kind. The first one in was an Algerian, tall and thin, his aquiline nose pronounced by childhood starvation and the attempt at a mustache underneath it. Following him, fair by comparison, was another Corsican, the second I’d run into in as many days, bags under his eyes and a black balaclava with a red stripe around his neck. He gave us half a smile, trying his best to appear shrewd beyond his years. The last one, his ancestry straddling Turkey and North Africa, was bigger than the others, round in a way that no diet would ever get rid of. He stopped just on the inside of the threshold, closing the door behind him.
The second one, Balaclava, stepped forward, making a show of scanning the cafe. Then he pointed to me and Simon at the back. “You there, American,” he said in English not much better than my French.
Simon rotated his girth in his chair, leveling an appraising stare at them. “Bonjour. Qu’est-ce que vous faites?”
She’d kicked off her sheets in those final moments, leaving a bloody mess for her daughter, who had set about cleaning up almost without hesitation. A brief second to confirm the end had come, a sojourn into the dining room to call the mortician, then back into room where the hospital bed had been sat for her mother to wait out her final days.
She tried to arrange the arms and legs under the sheets in some semblance of the grace her mother had tried to project in life. As heavy as a dead cat, the limbs were difficult to arrange, captured in linens. The short struggle forced her to admit she didn’t know what the old woman would have wanted.
Here she was, daughter at 42, the age of the secret to life, the universe, and everything. Decades of experience reduced to nothing, a little girl trapped in an aging body, nothing to show for it but a dead mother.
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There’s always a down swing after the adrenaline of physical confrontation. And maybe I felt bad about beating up a kid who was maybe just looking for his girl. Either way, I wasn’t feeling too great about my place in the universe by the time we stuffed the Corsican into a car. He wasn’t received by the limo some of the casino’s more troublesome, but tonier, guests would get, but just a featureless black sedan. That told me that someone wanted to make sure he was far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to just walk the half kilometer or so around to the front door again. Whatever curiosity was picking at me about the Corsican only jumped up with this new bit of information.
I asked Gaspard if Aldritch, our boss, had ordered the car, but he had just shook his head and pretended not to understand, something the French are selectively good at. I clocked out shortly after that, punching out at the old card clock and hanging my blazer in one of the employee lockers. Feeling the customary self-loathing begin to fill the reservoir left open by the adrenaline of quick violence I decided I didn’t want to take that home to Sophie. Instead I started to walk, heading out a different exit not dissimilar to the one the Corsican had been dumped out of. I kept walking towards the port as the lights of the casino’s pyramid of glass faded behind me.
Walking in the April rain I thought about what the Corsican had said. Had he meant “my girl” and gotten it wrong with his English? Was it just the case of some rich debonair prick sweeping up some local girl away from her neighborhood beau? Or was the phrase “the girl” somehow indicative of her importance in some other way? I kept walking, getting colder and wetter in the reflection of the bay and shadows of the sailing yachts and cruise ships, wondering why I was letting myself get worried about it.
Eventually I headed home to a tiny apartment stacked on top of other tiny apartments, hidden away from the city’s main drag so the tourists and the rich wouldn’t have to see where the help lived. The elevator was out again, the shaft open and abysmal, nothing but a yellow sandwich board sign propped up in front of it to mark its malfunction. I shook the rain off my coat and headed up the ancient staircase, its subway tiles leading passed the lit and unlit doors of the other tenants. Some of the doorway lights had burned out and never been replaced, while others were doused by the tenants in some form of signal communication involving the local lottery or narcotics rackets. I hadn’t bothered to figure out which.
I slipped my key into the lock about the same time, I imagined, as the sun was coming up, trying to be as stealthy as possible so as to not wake Sophie. The hat rack by the inside of the door had more personality than most of our neighbors and I tiredly said hello to it as I hung my coat on one of its hooks. I took my shoes off so as to not track any water across the tenement’s worn floorboards, fatigue causing me to wobble a little. Barefooted, I walked across the cold floors, passing through the tiny kitchen and by the small bathroom until I came to the open door of the bedroom where I stopped.
Leaning against the doorframe I watched Sophie half-sleep in the bed, somehow her blond beauty and fair skin seeming to be a perfect fit for the old brass bed frame and yellowed sheets. I smiled, unbutton my shirt and let it slip off me and onto the floor as I slouched my way over. I was beginning to doze off when Sophie spoke to me in the quiet lilting of her accent, “How was the work?”
“S’ok,” came my standard reply after a casino evening, but my sore hands and inexplicably heavy conscious made it into a lie. Not really wanting to bother Sophie with it, but selfish enough to want to unburden myself I continued, “There was some kid that I had to take care of. Skinny Corsican punk that upset some of the guests.”
Sophie cooed at that, wrapping a gentle arm around me. She always had more sympathy for me than the people I was paid to intimidate or assault. I guess after what I had seen her do, that wasn’t surprising. That was true in this case until I mentioned, “He was upset about some girl.”
Sophie’s body came fully awake then, stiffening with awareness. “He hurt a girl?” Her English had gotten better than my Italian while I was away, but she still sought clarity whenever her internal translations left her unsure.
“No,” I rolled against her, trying to hold her in place with the bowling ball of my head. “He was there because he was upset about a girl. Gaspard wouldn’t talk much about it, but if the kid got dragged into the holding room he must have been pestering some high roller.”
Sophie relaxed a bit at that, returning to her naturally soft state. Not completely satisfied, though, she ran a finger across my stubbled head. “Why would a man such as that bother a local boy and his girl?”
I still wasn’t sure the person in question was a man, but I didn’t bother saying that. “Sample the local flavor?” I shrugged, moving Sophie and the bed. “To take something from someone else? To prove that he could?” I found myself getting angrier as I thought about the alternative possibilities. In an attempt to keep that at bay I put my hand on Sophie’s thigh. It closed against the other. The wounds and surgeries had healed as best they could a long time ago, but Sophie would always be sensitive to any kind of acrimony, especially in touch, even if it wasn’t directed at her. Her experiences had left her particularly attune to anything that might transform into abuse. The Opinel knife in her nightstand was testimony to that.
“What happened to this boy?” I could almost feel her reaching for the knife as she asked the question. I had said all that I wanted to say about it but I knew there wasn’t any point in trying to avoid Sophie’s questions. “We roughed him up and then shoved him into a car. Probably got dumped somewhere out by L’Ariane.”
“Do you remember the registration number of this car’s plate?” She knew I would. I sighed heavily, feeling the bed sag.
“Yeah?”
“Give it to me.” Sophie moved herself out from under me with startling ease. “I will find out who it is and where they took him.” Wrapping herself in a shaw she continued, “And you will find out about this high roller.”
I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Why?”
Sophie smiled the tiny, cryptic smile she always gave me when she knew she didn’t need to provide an answer to get me to do what she said. “A mystery is a mystery.”
The afterlife wasn’t what anyone had told him it would be. The show Lost had made it seem like a place where all times were present. His Mormon friend had told him he would get his own planet. His Catholic mother had told him he needn’t worry about it. The paradise in which body and mind were perfected was reserved for those that were good enough. Which he wasn’t.
But the moments after a runaway car had sent him along he had regained consciousness in what appeared to be a giant library. The odor of lignin hung in the air. Rows upon rows of shelves connected and intersected, borne seats at junctions, waiting to be sat upon with one of the multitude of books to be read. Old books, new books, atlases, hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction and non.
Maybe he’d been good enough to get into heaven after all.
