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.
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“Boon Swa.” I always began in French even though they brought me in because I was an American.
Other than some of the casino’s employee bathrooms the holding room was one of the building’s smallest. It was large enough for a grown man to take a few paces or to get some space if another man started swinging, but not much else. Four walls of a faint yellow, a little longer than wide.
Centered towards the back of the room was a single chair behind a small table. Although the table was there mostly to set things on, like a beverage or ID, it was bolted to the floor and had a small restraining ring near the middle. For this reason it often caused the people who had been brought to the room to be anxious. And most people who were brought to the room were already nervous.
Stepping in briskly, I noticed the man there now wasn’t nervous. In a reversal of the normal situation, Gaspard, the pit boss who had called me in, looked sweatier than normal. He stood with his receding hairline and stooped shoulders near the room’s camera as if he were ready to shut it off at a moment’s notice. Gaspard’s uniform wasn’t disheveled at all, though, so I guessed the Corsican sitting in the chair hadn’t caused any trouble. If he had, I would have heard about it by now, either through the earbud or by word of mouth. Despite all the glamor casinos try to drape themselves in, working in one can be incredibly dull. Routine and procedure are the top priorities. It’s a bit like prison that way.
After issuing my greeting I examined the sitting man more closely, trying to get a better idea of how I knew he was Corsican the moment I stepped in. I nodded curtly to Gaspard and moved closer. The Corsican was dark-haired and unshaven, managing to look slick with rain even indoors. He had a steam shovel of a nose and at least one tattoo poking out from under his white shirt collar. I couldn’t see his feet, but I imagined he was wearing motorcycle boots. But it could have just as easily been some knock-off brand of athletic shoe. It was the leather jacket that made me think of motorcycle boots and I knew better to make assumptions about things that could be verified.
He didn’t look like the type who would try to cheat a casino. Out in the gambling hall he would have attracted a lot of attention from the black tie players. And he didn’t look French. That is to say, he didn’t look like a guy who came from a people who had managed to lose World War II twice. But his nose and other features still had a Gallic cast, which is why (I decided) that my brain had leapt to him as a Corsican.
He smiled at me with small, uneven teeth, pitted with neglect and brown with coffee and cigarette stains, though he was younger than me by a good 10 years. Seeing that smile in that face I decided that this kid should be out smuggling, running whores, or collecting loan shark debts. So what was he doing here?
Turning to Gaspard I switched to English in the hopes the Corsican didn’t speak it. “What’s going on?”
Gaspard shrugged his narrow shoulders causing the casino blazer to move like it was controlled by a puppeteer. His grey eyes darted to the Corsican then back to me. “He was disturbing one of our guests.”
I felt my eyes imitate his ocular dance. Back to Gaspard I said, “And I’m supposed to…?”
He shrugged again, his blazer moving up and down on its invisible strings. He didn’t speak, because the answer was obvious, the same as it always was. I was there to scare the Hell out of him.
Without taking my eyes off Gaspard I reached up into corner and pulled the plug on the camera, my superior height easily clearing him. The indicator below the vacant lens blinked out. Gaspard continued to stare at me, giving me a bit of mock concern, speaking in French too fast for me to catch, but all a part of the show that the crazy American had just shown up. I took off my casino blazer, broadening my wide shoulders as I did, getting a good stretch in while showing off my size. I put murder into my eyes and then rotated my body like a tank so the Corsican could see it.
I had seen professional cheats and rich, self-important children cower at the routine me and Gaspard were putting on now. The Corsican was unsettled by it, just barely shielding the apprehension that crawled up into his eyes, but he wasn’t frightened. He probably knew what was coming next so he was bracing himself for it.
That meant there wasn’t any point in wasting time. I slowly walked over to him, unbuttoning the cuffs on my dress shirt, just another stage tool to ratchet up the tension. By the time I crossed the short space and finished rolling up my sleeves the Corsican had raised his chin and the fear had gone out of his eyes. It left only a defiance that practically dared me to hit him. So I did.
Not in the chin or face as he was expecting though. If someone saw him being dragged out of the casino, some high roller taking a drunken stroll or the children of the ultra-wealthy trying to score something illicit in one of the back alleys, I didn’t want his face to be bruised. Also, I didn’t want to give him what he wanted.
I landed a fist into his solar plexus, pushing all of the air and confidence out of him in one solid strike, causing him to bend over in the chair. Grabbing him by his greasy hair I slammed his forehead into the table, not hard enough to leave a bruise, but enough to continue the stun. Pulling him back off the table I kept going with him until the front legs of his chair were off the floor, then I kicked the back legs out from under him. I let go of him long enough that he could tumble backward, smacking the back of his head into the wall then sliding down to the cement floor. Then I grabbed him again by the front of the shirt and lifted him off the ground so I could lean forward to whisper a couple of memorized French phrases.
They were generally meaningless threats, something for the mark to hear while worrying about my fists or my imposing size or the crazy in my eyes. Things like, “We don’t like your type around here” or “What makes you think you can act like this?” or “You should be more respectful.” In the case of troublemakers I couldn’t touch I salted in a mix of legal or parental menace. But seeing as I didn’t have much in the way of restrictions with the Corsican I let my hands walk him around.
I dropped him again, letting him fall to the floor like a deboned fish, giving him a few kicks to soft tissue in order to make sure he stayed down. I circled him, barking choice insults and phrases as I did, mostly to gauge his state. He managed to shoot me a few scornful glares, each one earning him another kick.
While I was doing this, Gaspard went around us, moving to open the door at the back of the holding room. It was nearly invisible, only a seam in the wall that most people wouldn’t see unless they knew it was there. It opened up into a labyrinth of utility hallways lined with steam pipes and electric routers. If one knew the proper path you could take this to a little used back exit where a limo could be waiting or, in the case of someone like the Corsican, they could be dumped by the trash hundreds of meters away from anyone important.
I picked him up by his shirt collar, my right fist back in preparation for one more blow, when my curiosity got the better of me. Instead of another line of rote intimidation I gritted out, “Why are you here?”
The recognition in his eyes told me that he understood English, which was rare. His stilted response told me that he didn’t speak it very well, although I suppose that might have been the pain I put him in. Either way he managed, “He’s got the girl.”
The response caused me to let go, him slumping to the ground again. I stared at him as Gaspard moved forward to drag him towards the back exit, the leather jacket tight enough that it cinched the Corsican under the arms as Gaspard grabbed him by the collar. I shook off my doubt and followed, locking the door behind us then helping drag the poor sap to whatever alley we’d be dumping him in.
Pulling him along the gray concrete of the utility hallway my curiosity got the better of me so I asked Gaspard, “Who was this guy bothering?”
His brow dotted with the sweat of dragging the young (and rather light) young man, Gaspard shook some of it off in drops. “No one to concern yourself with.”
Annoyed at the implied superiority of the answer I gave the Corsican an easy shake and asked him, “Hey buddy, who were you bothering?”
A low groan was the only reply from the kid, but Gaspard shot me a nervous glance from under a paling brow. “Don’t bother with this American. You don’t need more trouble.”
I shrugged. He was right, of course. But that had never stopped me before.
Armed with foreknowledge by the thermometer that hung outside her window, the cold still surprised her. Or the lack of heat. She turned that around in her head to keep herself distracted while walking the dog. The short jog provided the frost opportunity to begin crystallizing the top layer of any exposed flesh.
But soon she was focusing on the cold to keep the thoughts that idea produced at bay. It wasn’t the cold, but the absence of heat. Without an external source to renew it thermodynamic energy gradually disappeared until every system gave into entropy. Her, the city, the planet. Old men lying in their houses cocooned by the now empty rooms they kept closed.
Everything.
Barely inside her home she picked up the phone before she got her gloves off. Dialing his number, her words nearly jumped out at the sound of his voice. “Hello, Dad?”
