Polite Fictions

Special Receptacal End

Greetings, loyal and attractive Polite Fictions addict/junkie/reader. 

We - the Contributors of Polite Fictions - have been drinking heavily, spitballing, and generally abusing Livestock trying to suss out what to do with the spectacle that you have been reading.  How do we kill the Monster.  How would Dr. Frankenstein do it?  Why would you even WANT to kill a badass monster like that when it could most definitely move furniture and vacuum and stuff.  Silly evil scientists.  But we must.  Kill the monster.  We think it may have the Pig Flu.

What have we come up with is this.  Grain alcohol is the better bet regarding dollar to dollar value, goats don't run when stared at amorously, and Canada, apparently, has a vagina.

I kid, I kid.  Sort of.

But seriously, folks.  Here's what we have decided.  Instead of one author ending this lurid pulp, we will be having a "Directors Cut" ending.

What does that mean?

That means that each author will craft his/her own ending. 

Awesome.  I know.

Or, it may be a giant clusterfuck and I'll have to take the blame and dodge flaming torches and the like.  Whatevs.  Get in line mofos.

Welcome to the end of the fist installation of Polite Fictions.

Get Goating.

But Charlie new better than to do anything other than wait when it came to what her mother's next move might be.  Long ago she'd learned that spending even a minute anticipating anything when it came to Claudette was akin to throwing herself from a cliff with some utterly misguided belief that the way she held one of her arms on the way down would cause her to be able to land on her feet and walk away unharmed.  She knew better, especially in light of the fact that Claudette had just wiped the bloody knife across her shawl and Charlie had already envisioned her washing it, wearing it again, and casually explaining the stain away as an old accidental coffee spill.

But even if Charlie did believe she could anticipate Claudette's next move, Claudette was leaving nothing for her to go on.  Claudette had walked slowly over to her, wrapped her hand around Charlie's elbow, leaned into her face and, just when Charlie thought she was going to be told what to do, Claudette's eyes clouded over and she mentally disappeared...

...no piss stained, shot up man was laying half-conscious at her feet.  No duct taped joker was sweating bullets where he lay backwards on the floor moaning and struggling in feeble desperation against the chair he was taped to.  No ape-like bastard was laying out front with a knife wound in his neck.  No daughter of hers was standing stock still and staring at her with a knot in her gut that was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

Claudette was gone.  She was slogging her way through the thick sand of a sun stained beach in the Caribbean.  The brim of her giant sun hat bounced in the light wind, Jackie-O sunglasses covered her face from hairline to cheek bones, and a carefully tied swimsuit cover hid the backs of legs she'd kept from public view since back 30 years ago when she'd taken her last trip across the stage and let the wild things in the audience have one last look.

"Claudette!  Claudette!  Over here..."

her old pal Madge was saying, her voice tripping along the wind, and the skin at the back of her waving arm taking on a life of its own.  Madge, already blushed red from the sun, had set up camp on the beach underneath a huge and brightly colored umbrella.  She was sitting comfortably on a canvas beach chair surrounded by an over-sized beach bag, two or three paper back books, and a small cooler.

Claudette made her way to the shade of Madge's umbrella, let her own over-sized beach bag fall to the sand, and looked down to take in the bright red lips that Madge had formed into an,

"Oooooohhhh...you look pissed!"

Claudette took a seat in the canvas beach chair next to Madge, caught her breath and said,

"I'll just never know if I did the right thing."

"Lemme get you a beer," Madge offered, hefting forward over her own girth to reach for the cooler at her feet...

"Mom!  Mom!  ForfucksakeCLAUDETTE!" Charlie yelled until Claudette came back into the moment in which she immediately leaned closer into Charlie's face, further tightened her grip on Charlie's elbow, and raised the knife she still held to Charlie's neck.

"Do exactly what I tell you or I'm going to the Caribbean alone,"  seeped through Claudette's teeth and slid to the corner's of her mouth.

"The Caribbean?  What are you..."

    As Claudette pushed the blade of the knife even harder to Charlie's neck, Charlie quickly reached her free arm around her mother as if to embrace her in a hug, and found the pistol where it always was at the small of her back in the waistband of her pants.

For a transient moment, Slick believed he must be dead. The thought of embracing his eternal release snaked its way from his brain, warm and oddly welcoming. Please to join us? May we add another hatch mark on the body count tally? Slick thought, striking a flame that set fire anew to his neurons. The space was dark, but Slick still shuttered his eyes and allowed the thought of dying to drift down the length of his spine and course warmly through the fibers of his tired muscles before landing in his gut. Once there, he felt it spread out and latch on, like a lover clinging to hope no longer found in abandoned promises. Could he embrace it? Did he want to hold close the idea this all could end in death? What had Charlie gotten him into? Had he really just jammed a blade into another man's throat?

Maybe, the jury's still out, I have no idea, and fuck, yes, you did.

The walls surrounding him in this new destination seemed too close, and the ceiling too stunted. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a tiny sateen pillow to rest his weary head - hard earned, he'd hope they'd say - upon, maybe a little extra room at the bottom to stretch out his legs. Could he even still feel his legs? Slick crab walked his fingers down the length of his left thigh and was relieved to find his sense of touch intact. Sadly, the funk now emanating from the hollow of his shoulder wound, an unfortunate marriage of what he imagined infection and sin would be like, assured him his sense of smell also remained unsullied. A sigh escaped from between his dry lips and Slick allowed himself another moment to consider his query. It was a tight race, but the pros seemed capable of overtaking the cons if things got any uglier, and Slick had already taken in a fair dose of ugly today. When you've felt the loss of everything you held close to your heart, when your body looks like the muse of an eccentric artist who throws globbed orbs of clotted earth and burnt umber onto a virgin canvas and forsakes brushes because they like to dig in with their stained fingers, well, you've probably earned the right to call your finished masterpiece "Death Warmed Over," Slick thought.

He opened his eyes and waited as they slowly conformed to the changing set of rules darkness operates under, then languidly swept them over the confines of his new accommodations. The walls were indeed close, but not as confining as he'd originally assumed. Not exactly a bronze casket, he thought, but no one's going to accuse me of putting on the Ritz, either. He chuckled quietly and let his chin fall against his chest as he lowered his aching head. A hidden room. Perfect! "They're not just for spooky old mansions anymore!" he muttered, disappointed he had no second to play off. If he broke back through to the other side, he'd try that one on Euri. He imagined the hulking man erupting like a volcano in laughter. Assuming, of course, the beast even knew how. Assuming even more so that he was still alive in the great divide.

Slick could hear noises on the other side of the wall. A liturgy of numbers backed by the quiet song of glassware connecting with table tops wafted through the air like steam. The wall separating Slick from his cohorts and enemies (and he wasn't sure just how those numbers stacked up yet) was as thin as the layers in the buttermilk biscuits Charlie prided herself in achieving. Laughing Whore? Is that what she'd said? Wasn't that the name of the band they listened to over beers at that bar filled with faceless clones in Cincinnati? The night Charlie was the only one on the dance floor, her body swaying, arms skyward, like some angelic marionette? No, stupid, Slick thought, that was the Ethereal Vapors. Maybe it was the Rejected Injections? Whatever it was, they were horrible, but the variety of pink-hued drinks Charlie had enjoyed over the course of the evening helped her make things up to Slick for suggesting they stop in Cincinnati in the first place, and the memory of that was all it took to make Slick smile for the first time in hours.

"Tell me about the Laughing Whore," Charlie repeated, slower this time to give the bound man in front of her the benefit of the doubt. Roman ran his dry tongue across his cracked lips, a job that provided results about as hopeless as this day's events were looking to be, and hoped he'd stall the girl's question at least one more time. The third time she had to inquire, Charlie's patience had waned just enough to provoke her to punch Roman in the eye. The contact felt good, and she relished the welt that immediately began to rise on his pale face. It reminded her of the dough she nurtured for the cake donuts she loved to make in the quiet hours of the morning, uncovering mounds of yeasty dough that had grown like alien pods and punching them down. "I'm done talking. You've heard my question. The floor is now yours," Charlie said, punctuating her command by kicking Roman's uncomfortable throne over and then delighting in the crunch his bound hands made when the weight of his body and the chair landed on them.

"How do you even know about the Laughing Whore, Charlene?" Claudette whispered. The sound of her mother's hushed inquiry probably wasn't a good sign, but the sight of her coupling the quiet question by wiping the blood from the knife Slick had dipped in Aloysius' neck across her shawl and then waving it in her direction was definitely more so. Charlie sighed and waited for the next move.

When you let the inside of your head go all to shit, the outside follows suit. When you get things right inside your head, the pieces fall into place. Charlie's father had taught her this. She quietly pulled out her old trick, murmuring, "three point one four one five nine."

"Ah," said Claudette, "it must be time for pie. I'll make tea." She went for the tape.

Charlie's mind settled. Action replaced chaos.

"Two six five three five." Irrational. Transcendent. Mathematical. No matter how large the circle, the circumference is known. Even if you can't see the other side. And no matter what a clusterfuck it looks like from where you stand, it is always a circle.

"Eight nine seven nine three." Where was Doug? Most likely in a dumpster. This had not gone well at all. It was not going as planned. Was there a plan? Who is in the circle, and who is out? Does anyone know where the line is?

"Two three eight four six." The letter had been more trouble than it was worth. She had tried to play God, writing that letter. She had tampered with the progression of things. She would not let herself think it had been a mistake. Just another cog in the wheel.

As usual, she had overestimated Slick's powers of reasoning. He didn't know he was being set up. He still didn't know. Stupid bastard. Charlie felt her heart soften in ways she wanted to submit to. She always had a thing for a man she could save. Just not one that smelled like piss at the moment.

"Two six four three three." Charlie and Claudette hoisted Slick under the armpits, helping him stumble across the floor. Charlie waited while Claudette slid open the old speakeasy paneling, Slick weighing heavily on her shoulder. She let herself stroke his cheek with her free hand, and then helped Claudette shove him into the hidden room behind the bar.

"Eight three two seven nine." The circle came around, appearing before her as clear as could be. Charlie looked at the three men - two taped and one dead. She ripped the tape off Roman's mouth, relishing the look of surprise and pain.

"Tell me about the Laughing Whore," she said evenly.

Watching the blood drain from Roman's face, Charlie knew she'd done her math right.

    Charlie considered her options. They were, admittedly, few.  Slick stood near her, seemingly useless. He raised a hand to touch a cheek recently reddened by Charlie's own smack then lowered it slowly.

    There was a time and a place for everything and this was neither the time nor place for anything Slick had in mind.  Charlie was certain of that, she only hoped her simple yet eloquent communication explained the idea succinctly enough.

    She moved her body, feeling it, keeping only her arm, heavy with gun to Euri's head, still.  Everything else she flexed quickly, expressing herself in tense motion.

    Her elbow flexed with the memory of her first kiss and its aftermath, her toes curled and uncurled with the ghosts of beaches between them, her knees tensed and relaxed remembering that night in Ohio.  Her free hand, its skin alive with the touch of Slick's face, curled as if once more kneading her first lump of dough.  Every line of Charlie's body spoke of her past while preparing to secure her future.

    Enough of this shit, she told herself and then stopped.  Slick was, what was Slick doing?  He was letting his mind drift, looking at the shotgun he carried with a faraway look.  Come on, Slick, Charlie cursed at him mentally, get in the game. But Slick was having none of it. Her own distraction at his distraction was getting dangerous, she knew.  Fuck him, then, she decided.  She could handle this herself. Maybe.

    No. Maybe was what got you killed. Life handed Charlie a bag of lemons and she decided to hand them back wrapped in a towel. Right to the gut. Like mobsters did, she thought. Fuck, no, stop letting your mind drift, she railed, before you're as lost as Slick. Focus.

    Someone started to giggle. Highly inappropriate, Charlie decided. Then she realized she was the one making the noise.  Well, fuck.

Yes, Aloysius was tired. The thunder, though, the thunder in his ears would not let him rest.

He knew its origin. Its vibrating warmth enveloped him in its dark crimson blanket, spreading down his chest just as the chill grasped its way up from his toes. At what point will they meet, he thought, and tear open the void so I can fall through?

As Aloysius receded, the room grew larger above him. One man reached to close the space between; one woman smacked the opening wider. Another looked dumbfounded; his seated partner, found dumb by design.

He could not understand their words under the rumble rushing over him and he slipped farther down. He saw fingertips and a silver flash. He saw scuffed and caked soles. He saw sawdust and grime.

His eyes, at last, found Claudette.

Her lipstick-stained filter and its remains stoned down upon Aloysius's chest and, in that instant, his cigarette heart rekindled from the momentary spark.

He heard himself gasp.

Aloysius closed his eyes; he smiled. He was no longer tired. He knew where thunder went to die.

Claudette pushed her thumb on the tiny chrome lighter and bowed her head into the flame until it kissed the tobacco and paper.

"Now, children," she said, the smoke rising like a cobra enchanted, "the crows among us are equally black."

Charlie found her voice. "Getthefuckoffme," she muttered in one guttural word. "Get. The. Fuck. OFF!" Louder this time.

Slick lifted his head, surprised at the strength he heard in her voice. He pulled back slightly, and she was up in a flash, her stance wide, ready to fight. She shook her bloody shoulder and turned her neck from side to side like an athlete preparing for a big game. For a moment, Slick wondered if he was seeing things. He was sure the wound had been mortal; sure he'd heard the gurgling of a punctured lung; sure this had been the end. And yet he must have been mistaken. It looked grazed, if anything. 

"The hell," he whispered. "Are you some kind of fucking cyborg?"

Charlie didn't waste any time answering him. In the moment since she'd regained her footing, she grabbed Aloysius's gun, the tangle of limbs and blood barely registering to Euri's shocked face, and in a second, she was behind him, the muzzle pressed to his head.

"Jesus Christ, Slick, who is this guy, anyway?" She let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't hear from you for months and months, then suddenly you show up with a bunch of ... of ... foreigners!"

Slick stood, slack-jawed. She was safe -- bloodied, but safe. He took a step toward her, then another. He took the shotgun from Euri's slack hands -- man, that guy was no good under pressure, thought Slick. Five minutes of things not going his way and he turns into a ragdoll, Slick laughed, distracted for a fraction of a second. He turned to Charlie, his hand outstretched, moving toward her face; his fingertips stroked her cheekbone. He leaned in gently, his face mere inches from hers as he turned expectantly to finally -- finally! -- kiss her.

Smack! The crack of fingers against hot skin sent him reeling.

"Oh my God, asshole, you cannot possibly be serious."

Charlie had never trusted her mother.

Sure, she believed effortlessly that her momma would do everything within her power to see that Charlene was brought up to survive; she even knew In a fairly concrete fashion that her mother would do the standard lay-down-her-life thing that most all parents would. In these things Charlie trusted Claudette implicitly.

She trusted that Claudette would never put a condition on her love, and she trusted that there were no boundaries to that love. What Charlie didn’t trust her momma with, though, were the innermost places of her spirit where all the things that she couldn’t readily take for granted on the day-to-day --like hope and comfort and other equally-wild imaginings-- were stored up against wear and fading.

This caused a state of constant discomfort when Charlie was in Claudie’s presence, resulting in her mother trying that much harder for Charlie’s regard. Charlie faked real good, but Claudie read her real good, too.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

“Teach me possum! Teach me possum!”

He lie there, he lie there, he lie there. There were tens of years stuffed into every single minute that he was immobile and board-like. Charlie would lose her four-year-old mind if he didn’t move soon, she was sure of it. Her impatience throttled at her so hard that it made her want to let fly with great, bruised tears. By the time she was five, she would learn that the sooner she sat beside him on the carpet, the sofa, wherever, the sooner she grew quiet and a reasonable facsimile of still herownself, her daddy would be magically re-animated; it was only then that she would get a turn.

She mastered Playing Possum roughly a month before her seventh birthday. She had listened as Douglas spoke to her about how a mind could make a body believe anything it wanted, could tell that body it was meant for hibernation more convincing than than some stupid old lumbering bear’s, could tell that body to make its pulse and its breathing  a fairly imperceptible thing.

Charlie had always just believed in her daddy, trusted him with every secret she ever tucked away from the peering eyes and pointed noses of humanity at large. On some level she held the realization that when they played possum he was teaching her great and important things that not everybody had the privilege of knowing. The act of stilling her body’s movements, in time, lent to complete awareness of her frame when it was in motion. Yeah, she was excellent on the fake, alright.

What she didn’t realize --not until after his death, anyway-- was that her training had begun with what she believed was a game between father and child. Douglas wasn’t simply engaging her or passing time with her, he was readying her.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

She had amazing breath control, but she often had problems in the patience department.

Fuck, Slick, FUCK, if you would get off of me I could snap some things into their proper places.

Her impatience was a liability, she knew this.

get off me, Get Off Me, GET OFF ME, GETOFFME

When it got like this, she knew she might become a detriment to herself. In order to keep this from happening, she had developed the habit of replaying concerts she’d seen, note for note, movement for movement, painstakingly detailed, deep in her head. She forced herself to go there now, to watch.

She trapezed herself across a jangling bassline, skipped easy rope under the shim of maracas. She was just past the acidic razor of guitar riff when Aloysius’ wet gobbling insinuated itself into her attentions. She was calm enough now. She was sweeter with her internal monologue.

I mean, it's handy that you plunged that hulking asshole into darkness, but if you would get off of me I could explode into movement and fuck this situation into some sort of order.

If Slick would get off of her, she could explode into movement and fuck this situation into some sort of order.

Slick cradled Charlie's body with his own, pressing wherever he could to find a pulse, a breath, any one of the thousand signs a living body routinely flashes.  He found the wound instead, hiccuping blood. He pressed the base of his palm over the wound and whispered into her ear.  He couldn't tell if he was whispering out loud.

You're not dead.  Not yet.  Your body's still pumping blood, so you're still alive.  You're just in shock.  You're in shock.  Blood squeezed its way around his palm.  Slick pressed harder and prayed.

Aloysius stared in disbelief at the crumpled bodies, then at Claudette, collapsed on the floor in the same crumpled attitude as her daughter.  A little pistol lay cradled in her hand.

"Euri," Aloysius said, "please see to Mrs. LaCroix and take her weapons. Check her thoroughly.  Get her a drink.  And cut Roman from his chair".

"Claudette," he began.  Something passed over his face then, a weather system sweeping across his forehead.  "You should have used the shotgun.  You would have gotten me for sure".

Euri kicked the pistol away and picked up the shotgun.  Claudette submitted to a quick pat-down, squeezing her eyes shut and sobbing.

"I couldn't take the chance of hitting my baby, ah shit ah shit ah shit".

Aloysius nodded.

"Just save her, please. Call a doc. Let me call a doc".

"Claudette, I have longstanding business to attend to here".

"Bastard".

"What about those two?" Euri asked.

Aloysius harrumphed and sat down on a chair.

"Maybe this one can help us," Aloysius mused, nudging Slick with one white leather shoe.

Slick shook his head. "No".  He spat some blood and started again. "Not unless you call a doctor in.  I don't give a shit about me. I've been dead for the last few hours, I figure. But you save Charlie. You save Charlie and I give you what you want".

"But young man, I want what I want, right now. Do you see?  I am not involving doctors until you give me that thing I want.  Maybe then.  After you tell me what's hiding inside that sad-clown letter she wrote you. After you tell me where my fucking money is".

Slick blinked some liquid out of his eye. "Goddamnit," he said. " Goddamn you too".

Aloysius shrugged.  Yes, the shrug said, goddamn me. What else is new?

"Alright," Slick said. "I'll do it. Maybe you'll help her, maybe you won't. I guess it's worth a shot.  But I need a fucking cigarette for this".

"Euri," Aloysius gestured. "A smoke for the helpful young man".

"Christ," Slick said, "have you seen those black things he smokes? I've been breathing in that Russian tar crap of his for the last two hours.  Not to impugn your employee's taste, but I need a real smoke".

Aloysius reached into his jacket and plucked out a pack of Marlboros between two sausage fingers.  "You're a funny young man," he said, drawing out a smoke and inserting it between Slick's lips.

"Light?"

"Of course". Aloysius snapped out a tiny chrome lighter and leaned forward.  Slick took a grateful, lung-searing drag.

"Thank you," he said, and slipped a blade into Aloysius' larynx.

They stood around her like an unholy halo, each in place like a number on a clock. Euri straddling the door which was twelve, Claudette at six by the bar, Roman at seven shoved to the side, collateral like always, just barely there, and Aloysius at ten. Slick was the little hand.

Half-blind, head-smacked, he made his way to her: a half-step. a mis-step. a half-step. a side-step. a mis-step. He moved as he could: slowly, desperately, deliberately in time toward her. 

Euri licked his lips, tickled the roof of his dry mouth with his tongue. Roman felt his jaw relax and the duct tape went slack at last.  Claudette's ash broke in pieces on the floor and then the cigarette fell, hit the wood without a sound. An ember burned.

Aloysius watched Claudette. He saw only her: not her daughter's blood seeping closer to his patent tips, not that skinny boy, beaten and on his knees now, not his brother Roman tied in silver tape to a chair and bug-eyed. He saw Claudette. Just Claudette. It was almost enough to forget the only proof -- that fucking picture -- of the only real crime he ever did.

Euri's healthy wife handed Claudette's stupid husband the phone and he took it. It was fast money for him -- a delivery, a quick drop-off -- and he needed it for that girl, his daughter, and her what? cake-cooking school? Something like that. The tricked-out phone had enough blast to wound when it popped -- a threat was all, just a slap and an i'm fucking her now kinda thing -- but he bled there, right there, enough blood leaking out to kill him and it seeped all over Charlie's track meet and all over Charlie's shoes. Claudette never looked Aly's way again.

And now? Still now: her eyes were not on him. Just on her. 

Slick crawled the last bits: a grasping hunch this way. a moan there. nails to dingy floor. On time, he collapsed his body over Charlie's. Not to cover her up, not to protect her, but because it was all his body would do. His blood, her blood, a sticky mess: an ink of another kind written out on their shirts, the only letters that ever mattered.

Outside, the crows got sober, straightened up and bombed a dead mouse. The pigeons fought over crumbs laced in cinnamon and anise, her crumbs. The mourning doves preened and prepared.

Claudette met her cigarette on the floor. It made a sound the heart can't bear.

He was struggling to focus, to pierce the tendrils of curling smoke that filled the dark room and the thin film of drying, darkening crimson that caked his eyelashes, casting a filter of blood-dimmed tide across his perceptions. To take stock of the situation before him and find the opening, the weak link in the chain, that tiny sliver of daylight that would somehow lead him though this and out to the other side.

"Slick," Charlie had said all those years ago, when they were first introduced. "What kind of stupid fucking name is that?" And he didn't answer - just grinned in that halfway grin he had, the one that made him look smart and dangerous in the way nice girls couldn't resist - and in that moment, he recognized that she understood: it was an honorific as much as a name, a testimonial to the powers of instinct. He had never been the fittest, but he'd always found a way to survive. "Like a cockroach, " Charlie had said, later, as things began to fall apart.

She'd been right, of course. And as he squinted and tried to bend light and see around the rippling wall of muscle and violent possibility that stood before him, he caught the faintest shift in shadows in a whisper of falling ash and then the heartbeat blaze - drawing deep, holding - of a cigarette flaring bright with oxygen and paper and tobacco stained with chemistry and then, behind it all, thin lips drawing back from a crippled rosetta of teeth and

Oh, no. Oh, dear sweet god, no.

And he blinked once, hard, and suddenly he could not shift his field of vision fast enough, away from what he'd seen and what it implied, and before he even had a chance to be crushed by the enormity of the knowledge that all the birds - the fierce raptors and drunken crows, mourning doves and all the simple pigeons who had fallen in the hours and years before - had come home to roost... he saw her. His weak heart leapt, and she leapt with it, moving across the room as the blood-dimmed tide turned to rose-colored glasses and despite himself, despite the terrible ache and sorrow of knowing what must come next, he felt happy to see her.

She was only a step or two away from him, eyes growing wide and mouth opening to form what he knew would be his name, when Aloysius' tree trunk of a left arm shot out and caught her by the hair and lifted her free of earth, gravity, reason.

Roman was having a bad time.

The muscles in his lower back had started to tense thirty minutes ago.  Now his legs were spontaneously cramping, as if someone were trying to pull his toes out through his ass.  The taste in his duct-taped mouth had gone from cheeseburger-sour to rancid, and his nose felt unaccountably hot.

The nose thing, he decided, was definitely the worst part of the situation.

Then he craned his neck to the left, where Claudette sat, shotgun on her lap and a fresh cylinder of ash hanging from her mouth, and realized there were far worse things than a burning nose.

Claudette leaned forward and patted his cheek.  Her hand smelt of Pall Mall tobacco and menthol.

"You're pretty," she croaked out. "But you're not my type".

"Thirty years your junior and tied to a chair? Mom, he's exactly your type".

Claudette snorted.  The perfect cylinder of ash dropped neatly onto her shawl and disintegrated.

"You mind your manners, baby girl," she said.  "You brought this thing here into my house, this little" - and here she grabbed Roman's chin and yanked his face close to hers - "piece of trash krasniya mafiya shithead". She let go of his face and shoved him out of arm's reach. "Whatever the fuck he is".

Charlie had nothing to say. She leaned her body against the bar and wished she were back in the bakery, or just outside the bakery door, taking a drag of a smoke in the day's first light, tongues of warmth from the bakery door lapping at her neck while the cold dawn teased goosebumps from her bare arms.

"What we do now, Mom?"

"Claudette checked the pocket of her sweater for shells. "Baby girl, we wait".

Charlie pulled at a lock of hair that had somehow ended up in her mouth.

"Mom, don't call me that. What are we waiting for?"

"Whatever you say, Charlotte.  We're waiting for Aloysius".

"What's that? Allah wishes?"

"Pretty much.  Aloysius is a Russian with a nice Irish Catholic name.  If he shows up, get his name right.  He's sensitive about it".

"I don't want to talk to that shithead".

Claudette shrugged. "He's not much for talk. Not like your friend Slick.  But I figure if Ivan here has come for you, then Slick isn't talking to anyone.  Except for Aloysius, maybe".

Charlie looked up, caught by a change in the light from the doorway. A shadow was filling it up, growing until it filled the entire doorway, until there was nothing but a corona outlining the bull-like shape of some grotesquely outsized human being. Then the shadow stepped politely over the threshold, and the absence of light took on muscle, blood and bone, a broken fist in the skin of a man.  The thing nodded his massive head in her direction.  Is that courtesy? wondered Charlie.  Suddenly her legs had no strength. It reminded her absently of falling in love.

"Hello Claudette," Aloysius said.  He held his hands at his sternum as if he had just removed a hat.  "I am here for my man."

He nodded again.  This time, Charlie realized, he really was bowing.

"And I am here for your daughter".

She almost missed the figures behind Aloysius: a man in a dirty suit holding up someone else, a blood-soaked scarecrow with a drained face and matted hair.

Slick, she thought.  She saw one pain-crazed eye roll around and settle on her face.  And she was running to him before she even knew what her legs were doing.

Aloysius looked like Brando looked in Apocalypse Now. 

His hands looked like three pounds of ground beef.  Each.  His eyes were a sharp Cobalt blue and when he set his gaze on you, well, you knew you were Proper fucked.  Not in a menacing way, mind you.  It was more a feeling of calm.  A sort of peace that you hear about in articles or stories of hypothermia.  The body just gives in, and then, it's time to shake hands with the Devil.  Sweet euphoria.  Any port in a motherfucking storm.

"So, den.  Dis de guy dat you tell me about?"  His voice sounded like angels harps.  And used motor oil.  Viscous and ink black and filling all voids.  He was most certainly where the rubber hit the Road.

"Yea.  Aint he pretty.  I keep telling him he looks fantastic in Red, Al."  Euri.  Amateur night ant the Improv.

"Al?"  His own name rolled of his tongue like a mouthful of pea gravel as the man-giant lumbered from behind the Mechanics table. "I have asked many times dat you refer to me as Aloysius.  My mammochka give me dat name.  It is belong to my Father and my father's father.  Who are you to...I have told you about dis, Euri.  Do not make me tell you again."

The silence from Euri was his reverent proclamation.

There was some more bad noise between the two men.  Then laughter.  Laughter that made you feel like you were chewing on tin foil.  And carpet tacks.  The last thing Slick heard before he lost consciousness again was the angel harp/motor oil sound.  His voice.  Unmistakable yet fragmented to Slick due to the mass amount of blood loss.

"It is time dat we end dis detente."  *blackout*  "Bring de car."  *black out*  "Roman."  *blackout*  "The girl."  My girl, Slick swallowed his words and chased them with the blood in his mouth.  My girl you freakishly intimidating, fucking Bear-man motherfucker!  *blackout*

When he woke - consciousness aided by one of Euri's amyl nitrates- the pain was absolute zero.  Past the point of unbearable.  Now, the pain was completely rotational.  And, in the midst of it all, the one thing occupying Slick's mind was.......

Shit, man.  She used to dance there.  Right fucking there.

  

 

Aloysius was tired.  He was tired of chasing rumors and ghosts and he was tired of waiting.  He was tired of watching the sunrise.

Someone had said too much.  Someone had heard just enough.  Time was of the essence and the money was the money.  All things were valuable now and whispers of spies and lies and cops that were dirty was more than he needed.  And Euri.  Fucking Euri.  Ends were loose and it was time they were tied.

He looked at the clock.  Stavi had been gone long enough.  He should return with Slick shortly.  He should.  Stavi was something of an idiot.

Not that Roman was any smarter.  Still, he only had to get the girl.  How hard could that be?  Her father had been easy enough. 

Aloysius waited until the sun was well above the horizon, put out his cigarette and closed his eyes.  Aloysius was tired.

                                      *************************************

The taste of duct tape is an acquired one.  Roman watched the women, the old, ugly woman that he'd probably have to fuck to stay alive, and the beautiful, young one that he'd think of while doing it.  Death, as an option, was looking better and better.

He should have kept his mouth shut.  He could have grabbed the girl easy enough, but he had to make a scene.  Too many movies.  Movies had done to organized crime what pornography had done to sex.  Everybody needed a money shot now.  Everybody needed to be a fucking wiseguy.

The tape was tight and his hands felt like a memory.

                                      *************************************

Claudette sat with her back to the door.  Her gun was pointed at the duct taped man.  Her mouth was pointed at Charlie.  Her lips moved and opened wide and her keyboard smile filled the room.  It looked like her tongue was in jail.

Her words were lost in deep, hoarse laughs and even deeper coughs.  Her words were thrown into the room and they fell on no one.

                                        *************************************

Charlie looked through her mother and studied the outline of sunlight as it framed the bar door.  It was bright like promise.

He had said things like that about the future.  He had placed his mouth upon her ear and let his breath glide across the waves of her hair.  He had said the future was bright and that it was theirs for the taking.  He had said it was a promise.  He said lots of things when he thought it was foreplay and then he would follow it all with hands and whiskey-tinged kisses. Then he'd be inside her and they would watch the sunrise over a haze of flour and unkneaded dough.  Her face would be cradled by the cups of her hands and his by the small of her neck.  He talked a good promise.

But then she heard just enough and the letter wrote itself.