Crab Town (9 page)

Going on a date in Crab Town pretty much meant to go for a walk on the bay, which is what Jack had intended. But Nine wanted nothing to do with that. She took him out to eat at a nice downtown restaurant outside of Crab Town, spoiling him with mint cocktails and clam pasta. She even bought him some new clothes for the occasion, which made Jack feel a bit like a Ken doll.

“This is a shocking turn of events,” Nine said. “Yesterday I was trying to have you killed and you were trying to put me out of business, today we’re having a romantic dinner together.”

Jack just smiled.

“You have yet to tell me why you asked me out on this date.”

“As you said, I’m trying to put you out of business,” Jack said, then he took a sip of white wine.

“And?”

“And…” Jack shrugged. “Dropping everything to go out on a date with me meant that, for at least today, you’d be out of business.”

Nine laughed out loud. “So that’s your scheme…”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Your strategy worked brilliantly. But, you know, tomorrow it’s business as usual.”

“Not if we go on another date.”

Nine laughed again. She took another sip of wine and looked him in the eyes.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll make you deal. Every day you go out with me I’ll shut my business down. No films will be shot, no movies will be sold, no actors will be recruited. I’ll consider it a day off.”

“You’ve got a deal,” Jack said.

Nine had no idea that Jack would take the offer so seriously. He decided to go on a date with her every single day from that point on. Originally she wasn’t actually serious about shutting her business down just because they went on a date, but she found herself honoring the agreement. The whole thing amused her so much she had to keep her end of the deal. She just wanted to see how far Jack was willing to go.

After a month had gone by, Nine wondered if it was all a game anymore. She definitely had serious feelings about him, and she believed he had serious feelings about her even though he always said he was only dating her to keep her business shut down.

“Why don’t you join me?” Nine asked him. “You could be a partner in my company. You know how much I make? Twenty thousand a month, tax free. Half of that could be yours. You wouldn’t even have to do any of the dirty work. You could just be my business associate and personal bodyguard. Think about it. I’m willing to share it with you 50/50. I’d never make that offer to anyone else.”

“50/50 would be what? 10,000 a month?”

“Yeah.”

“Too low.”

“Too low? How much does the House of Cards pay you per month? Nothing? Well, I’m offering you 10,000 times as much.”

“I wouldn’t sell my soul for so cheap.”

“Come on, you can live a life of luxury. So few people live in luxury these days.”

“You live in Crab Town. What do you know about luxury? Your movie dungeon is probably the most scummy, toxic pit in town.”

“But I’m able to go on vacation any time I want. Maybe you should come with me on vacation and see what I mean. I’ll show you what you’re missing.”

Jack tapped his plate with his fork.

“What do you say?” she asked.

Jack agreed to go out of town with her for five days. They ate shellfish, swam in a radiation-free pool, they even made love a few times. Nine thought she had finally won him over, she had finally got the hero to come to her side. But on the morning of the sixth day, she woke to find him gone.

When she got back to Crab Town, she learned that her film studio had been burned to the ground. Her actors had fled and her workers were missing. She could no longer contact her distributors and clients, many of which had been imprisoned. And to top it off, her bank account was empty. Jack was behind it all.

“You probably could have convinced me to retire without robbing me blind,” Nine said to the Jack of Spades, as she watched him hammering shingles onto a rooftop.

Jack continued hammering without even looking at her.

“I actually fell in love with you, you know,” she said.

When he didn’t respond, she grabbed his leg and pulled him off the ladder. He landed on his feet, right in front of her.

“I fell in love with you, too,” he said.

“And so you screwed me over…”

“It had to be done at some point.” He walked away, toward his toolbox. “I couldn’t be in a serious relationship with anyone who profited from the misery of others.”

She followed. “So that’s it? You tear down my business, tear out my heart, and now you’re just going to dump me?”

“How can I dump you? We were never a couple?”

“But you just said you were falling in love with me, too…”

“That doesn’t mean I was your boyfriend.” He turned to her. “Now that you’ve gone clean and donated all of your wealth to atone for your crimes, I’m willing to forget the past and start over. That is, if you’d like.”

Nine sneered at him. “After what you did to me? You can’t be serious.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever considered actually getting serious with you since we’ve met.”

Nine opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated. Jack pulled a card out of his pocket and held it in front of her face. It was the nine of hearts.

“I’d like you to join the House of Cards,” Jack said.

Nine took the card.

Jack said, “My collaborators might not agree with me, but I think you would be excellent for the organization. Your business might have been morally appalling, but you were still able to create a successful empire out of nothing… and in Crab Town, of all places. If you were to use your skills to help the people, rather than just to help yourself, I think you could do great things.”

Nine paused for a moment. Then burst into laughter.

“So you’re seriously saying that you want me, a selfish murdering pornographer who’s tried to have you killed on numerous occasions, to join the House of Cards?”

He nodded. “And continue dating, for real this time. If you’re interested.”

Nine could tell that he was actually serious.

She took a deep breath and said, “You’re such an ass-hole.” He smiled at her and she found herself blushing. “…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah. I’m in. I’ll be your fucking Nine of Hearts.”

And from that point on, Nine was a new woman. She was poor and hungry, but she was happy, truly happy for the first time in her life. She was also utterly, madly, desperately in love.

Tears flow down Nine’s eyes as she looks at Jack’s cold, peaceful face. She curses herself for not protecting him.

When she rolls her vision around the room, she sees Miss Doomsday standing over her. Most of the hostages have fled the building, except for a few still cowering in the corners. One lady is pressing on a bullet wound on her thigh. She must have gotten hit in the crossfire.

Sailboat is on the far side of the room, pointing his shotgun in the balloon man’s permanently smiling face.

“You fucking shot him,” Sailboat yells.

“It wasn’t me,” Johnny waves his rubber hands.

“I saw you. You were aiming at me, but you hit Jack.”

“I was aiming at the guard,” Johnny says. “If you didn’t block my shot he wouldn’t be dead now.”

Sailboat pumped his shotgun. “You trying to blame this on me?”

“Enough,” Doomsday says to them.

“But he shot Jack,” Sailboat says.

Doomsday puts her Tommy Gun on her shoulder as she cat-walks over to them. “I saw it happen. A guard shot Jack. There was a second one in plain-clothes that we didn’t know about.”

Sailboat kicks his boot through the counter. He hears the bank manager gasp at the noise on the other side.

“We need to get out of here,” Doomsday tells the others, as Sailboat goes around the counter to the bank manager.

“Not until he tells me where the rest of the money is.” Sailboat picks up the scrawny man.

“You have all of it already,” says the bank manager. “The vault’s empty.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”