Disintegration (19 page)

Turns out that Holly didn't live that far from me, and something about that bugs me. Did she bring me in? Did she suggest me to Vlad?

Back north on Seymour and a left, across the tiny island that is downtown Mundelein, the rain keeping the sidewalks empty, Flowerama with a flock of pink flamingos staked into the ground. A sculpture of a boy and girl playing with a ball, one of those gazing balls, shiny and blue, and those sculptures always creeped me out. The static movement, their features just a bit too harsh, like they were dipped in plaster while still alive, arms stretched out, asking to be saved.

Past my old house and farther west to Ivanhoe I go. The houses are larger there. Her company bonus must be bigger than mine. A right turn and up the road, the houses push back farther from the road, spread out, the oak trees older, eighty years and more. Eleven-eleven, make a wish. I pull up to the address, and into the driveway, and sit at the end of a long stretch of black tar. It eases back at a slight incline, a circle drive in front of a stone and brick mini-mansion, front porch ringed with evergreen bushes, the drapes in the windows pulled shut, tight. I take the gun out, replace the bullet I shot, and close it. It feels heavy in my hands, and I sit there, numb, staring at the house. There is no movement, but lights glow a dull yellow behind the heavy drapes.

The car door opens and in slides Holly, wet, with a gun in her hand, pointed at me.

“What are you doing here?” she gasps, pulling the door shut behind her.

“You know why I'm here.”

“Well, you're doing a pretty sloppy job of it.”

I stare at her, the pale salmon blouse clinging to her body, rainwater running down her pale flesh, into her cleavage, nipples poking through the thin fabric, goose bumps across her neck. I still want her, even after all of this, the things I've seen.

Motion in front of me and the curtain parts, a man with dark features and glasses on, and at his waist, the boy, pushing the curtain back farther, wanting to see too, despite his father's protests. The drapes shut.

“Nice family.”

“Go,” she says. “Leave, and I'll pretend like you were never here.”

“Vlad knows I'm here.”

“Tell him I was gone.”

“Are you going?”

She pauses.

“No.”

“Why not? Why not run?”

“I'm too tired to run,” she says. “And he said I was done working, free to go.”

“And you believe him?”

“I don't know.”

“He sent me out here to kill you, Holly. I saw the tape, the interrogation room, the playground…”

She flinches.

“…and, I mean, Jesus.”

Her teeth chatter.

“He's not going to let you go, Holly.”

She sighs. Her shoulders slump.

“Goddamnit,” she yells. She pounds the dash with her hand, her tiny fist leaving dent marks in the heavy black vinyl. The tears come, finally, heavy sobs.

“Why won't he leave me alone?” she wails.

I reach out to her and she pushes my hands away.

“Damnit,” she sniffs, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

“Can you buy me some time?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“Tell him I wasn't here. The cars were here, tell him you went inside, the luggage was here, but you couldn't find me. Tell him you don't think I ran and ask him what to do. Play dumb.”

I nod my head.

“Ask him if he wants you to sit on the house. He'll yell, but he'll send you back out here. We'll be gone by then.”

“Where will you go? What about your husband, the boy, do they know about all of this?”

“My husband knows a little bit. Not all of it. My son, no, he doesn't know a thing. I'll tell him we got new jobs, tell him we won the lottery, I don't know. He'll believe anything. I have money.”

She sighs again. “I thought he'd leave me alone. After all I've done for him, I thought…”

“I know.”

“I'm an idiot.”

The car is quiet. She stares at her hands, not moving. Again, the drapes part, just the boy this time, and just as quick, he's gone.

“You better go,” I say.

“I know.”

“Thanks, Holly.”

“For what?”

“The time, for being there. For not putting a bullet in my head.”

She grabs my face and points it toward her, leans in and holds me for a moment, her jackrabbit heart fluttering in her chest.

“Go. You need to go,” I say.

She kisses me, the heat rising up, her tongue into my mouth with a rough thrust, her hands holding my face and I flash on my apartment, her body close, her pale skin beneath me, eyes locked with mine, sweat on her upper lip, legs wrapped around me. She breaks the seal and pushes away.

“Some things you can't fake,” she says, and she's out the door, back into the rain, the hollow thud of it closing, and I see her run toward the house, tucking the gun into the back of her pants.

I forgot to ask her almost everything that mattered. But maybe it doesn't. She worked for Vlad, she did things, horrible things, and so did I. Whatever happened to my family, she had nothing to do with it. She was facedown on a nightclub couch, blowing guys for coke, when this all went down. She wasn't behind anything, but I know who was.

It's time to find out if my family is still alive. What I do then, well…I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I start the car and back out. I don't need to see her reunion. I don't need to know her husband's face, or the boy's laughter.

The drive back is nothing but water, and I don't remember much of it at all. I'm in shock, uncertain about what comes next. I park the car, walk into the apartment building, and trudge up the steps. I need to talk to Vlad, but I'm not sure how to find him. I mean, I can't just walk up to his front door and ring the bell. No, I need to keep that to myself.

I come to my door and it's slightly ajar. I hear laughter from behind the door. I pull my gun and listen. The door pulls open.

“Don't be a stranger,” Vlad says. “Come in, come in.”

The table is filled with glasses, a clear bottle in the center, playing cards scattered across the wooden surface. The two Frankensteins stand up, dull clay faces, the head of the table reserved for me.

“Sit, sit,” Vlad says.

He pours me a glass, eyes to his men and with a nod of his head they sit. He raises his glass.

“Ostrovia,”
he says.

The men grunt an echo and I take a drink. We drain our glasses, and slam them on the table.

“No problems?” he asks.

His cellphone rings. It sounds like “She Works Hard for the Money,” by Donna Summer, and I stifle a laugh. He hunches over the phone, a short series of yes and no answers, ending with the word
good
.

When he turns around, there is color in his cheeks, a light flush.

“So Holly, done? Taken care of?”

“Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Yes, I'm all over ears. Speak.”

“She wasn't there, you see, I went into the house…”

I don't see it coming. It's a recurring theme. A hard slap across the face and I rocket back in the chair, tipping over, banging my head on the floor. The muscle is on me and has me upright before I can even move, a handprint across my left cheek.

“Liar!” he screams.

“No, it's…”

“Shut up,” he yells, his nose in my face, two vise clamps on my shoulders, digging in, and I wince.

“Hold out your left hand,” he says, and walks to the kitchen.

I don't move. I'm not holding out my hand.

They move fast, grabbing my shoulder, my arm, and my hand is slammed flat on the table. I resist, pulling my arm back, and it gets me a shot in the jaw, blood ringing my teeth. I keep on, and a punch in the gut, once, twice and I'm out of air.

Vlad is back with a cleaver in his hand, a gleam in his eye and spittle flying from his lips.

“I have great disappointment for you.”

“Vlad, wait….”

“No more waiting.”

“I can go back, I'll sit on the house, she'll come back….”

“No she won't,” he says.

I pull at my arm. One goon wraps a meaty biceps around my neck and starts squeezing. The other holds my hand down, stars shooting across my vision, my throat closing.

“It is like restaurant. Bad manners to not leave a tip.”

The cleaver comes down and severs the end of my pinkie finger, embedding the blade in the dining room table. Crimson spurts in arcing pumps of blood across the scattered cards. I open my mouth to scream and Vlad stuffs a cloth in it.

“Get the torch,” he yells.

I'm holding my left wrist with my right hand, the pain shooting up my arm, sweat running down into my eyes, and the Russian block clicks on a tiny blowtorch, something you might use on, say, a crème brûlée.

“No, no, no…” I scream, muffled by the cloth.

The mountain at my arm holds my hand down while the other beast holds the torch up to my pinkie, the flesh burning, a wet sizzle as he holds it closer and closer, the blood cooking, cauterizing the wound. It smells like a bad steakhouse in here, and I feel the bile rise up in the back of my throat.

“There, done,” Vlad says, like a proud papa.

The bleeding has stopped, burned to a halt, but the pain in my finger is shimmering up my arm. Vlad opens my mouth to pull out the cloth, and pours the bottle of clear liquor down my throat. I choke and gurgle, swallowing some of it down.

My eyes turn up to Vlad and he punches me in the face.

I fall to the floor and whimper, eyes closed tight.

“Stupid fucker,” Vlad says, slightly out of breath. “I knew you would fail me. I sent the reinforcement, just to be safe.”

What does he mean?

“It was an easy shot, even in the rain. Her head exploded like watermelon dropped on sidewalk.”

Holly.

“So hard to find good help. Am I right, boys?”

The men chuckle. My God, Holly. I failed her.

“I gave you option, simple choice. Now she sleeps with her family. Three shots, instead of one. Pity.”

He steps over to me, and leans down.

“Nobody leaves me, except for the earth. Got it, big man? You work for me forever.”

A hollow blackness spreads across my chest. The boy, her son, he didn't have to die. I was weak, and now this has happened. I should've taken that shot. Everything I touch disintegrates before my eyes. I'm a curse upon the land I tread, an abomination, a scourge. There's nothing left, and so I embrace it, the emptiness, I fall into the abyss, and become one with its void, the last bit of my humanity spilling out onto the floor.

When I come to, it's dark out, and I'm lying on the floor. There's a throbbing at my hand, the pinkie finger, and I remember. There's a scuttling about, claws tracking over the floor, and a blur of gray dances past my face. My cat. She's home.

Playing with the tip of my finger.

“Luscious, no…”

She bats it past my head and into the kitchen, and knocks it directly into a hole in the floor by the heater. It's gone now. It was of no use anyway. Worn out from her bloody little game, she laps at the water, oblivious to my pain and suffering. I push myself up and sit at the table. I pour another glass of the foul, clear liquid, and drink it down. My throat burns, but I keep it down. I've developed a tolerance for this gasoline.

I crawl over to the bed and collapse. There is dried blood up and down my arm, but the finger is no longer bleeding. I paw the pill bottles out of my jacket and toss them on the bed. I manage to squirm out of my jacket and drop it on the floor, catching my finger on a button, screaming out into the night. The cat scatters, and I don't blame her. She may want to give me a wide berth. I curl up in the fetal position, too exhausted to make the next move, too weary and weak to care.

My old mantra.

I just don't care.

I'm slipping back down and I'm okay with that. Maybe I never should have climbed out of the hole that I dug. I'm no hero. There's nothing sacred about what I do. The faces of the dead flicker over my eyes and I try to block them out. As I pass out, one face remains, and it isn't Vlad, as I expected.

No, it's a young girl's face, with pigtails, her soft eyes glimmering as she pulls the trigger, leaving me shocked and dazed on the sidewalk. I need to see how dark I really am. I need to know if there is anything worth saving. I'll track her down, and corner her, and make her understand. You don't poke a feral dog and then sit back and watch it growl.

Maybe nothing will happen, and I'll know that I have a limit, that there's still a shred of decency left in me. Or maybe I'll see it through, the animal that I am. I don't know.

I run my finger under warm water at the sink and it stings. It throbs. I bandage my finger, gingerly, and try not to bang it on anything. I fail. Repeatedly.

I spend the next several nights prowling the local bars and clubs, looking for my little friend. The first night I stand across from the doorway, the apartment she entered, and watch to see if she shows up. No sign. Maybe she doesn't live there. Maybe it's a friend instead. I keep my eyes peeled for the rest of her wannabe goth yakuza, but no luck there either. What if they don't even live here—drifting down from the suburbs to have a little fun once a month? If that's the case, I'm screwed. I stand and smoke cigarettes, an old habit that I've taken up again, waving off the homeless asking for change, ignoring the drunk whores that stumble past asking what time it is, eager to bum a smoke.

On the third night, I start hitting every bar within spitting distance of the place she tasered me, and spread out from there. I wander through Double Door, Estelle's, Borderline, with no luck at all. I repeat the circuit, and then call it a night.

The fourth night, I get lucky. She saunters by in a pink and black plaid skirt over black leggings, combat boots, and a short magenta jacket with white fluff around the collar. Her pigtails give her away.

I follow her into Estelle's, and sit down next to her before she can utter a word.

“Hey, friend,” I mutter as her eyes go wide.

She stands up and I plant a firm hand on her shoulder and shove her back down. I wrap my arm around her like we're hugging out an old remembrance.

“I'll scream,” she says.

I take my left hand, gripping the gun, and shove it between her legs, wincing at my finger banging the inside of her thighs. For a moment her face shakes, and the picture jumbles, a wave of pain surfing over me.

“Do it and you're dead.”

Her face goes cold, lower lip beginning to tremble, and Sam the bartender wanders over.

“Smile,” I whisper in her ear, running my tongue up the side of her neck. She tastes like poison.

“Hey, Sam, what's the word?”

“Since when are you two all chummy?” He beams.

“Oh, you know, buy a girl a drink and it opens all kinds of doors.”

He nods, looking at the girl.

“Bud and Beam for me, what do you want, dear?”

“I'm fine, for now—”

“She'll have the same.”

Sam walks away.

“Listen, party girl, we're going to have some fun, got it?”

She nods her head. The drinks arrive and I toss Sam some bills.

“What is it you Russian whores say?” I ask.

“I don't know.”

“Come on, say it. You know what I mean.”

“Ostrovia,”
she whispers.

“OSTROVIA!”

The glasses clink and we down the shots. I hand her a beer and she's trembling. A long worm crawls around inside my guts, and I hesitate for a moment.

“What's a fair trade for a tasing, Pippi? What do you think? For a little time spent splayed on the sidewalk, soaked in my own piss, as you run through my pockets and steal my cash?”

The door to the bar opens and her eyes shoot to the movement. Two skinny punks in leather motorcycle jackets come in, nobody she knows, if the slumping shoulders are honest.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you tasered me and took my money. What's a fair trade for that?”

“I have the money,” she says. “Most of it. I mean, I can get it. I can give it back.”

“That's kind of beside the point, isn't it, Pippi?”

“My name's not Pippi.”

“It is tonight.”

I reach across myself to grab my beer, the gun still nested between her legs. I drink down half, and set it on the counter.

“Drink up,” I say.

Bass throbs in the background, but I hardly hear it. Her heart is all I can feel, the rapid, scattered loping of its beat, a thin rivulet of sweat running down her neck past her collarbone to settle between her breasts.

“You think you're pretty tough, yeah? Bit of a gunslinger?” I ask.

“Huh?” she questions.

“You stomp around the neighborhood, tough girl, all fluffy sweaters and glitter, a hard candy shell, but I think you have a gooey center, I think you're soft.”

Her gaze goes blank.

“No, I'm not,” she breathes.

“Well, let's see what you're made of. Just the two of us—
mano a mano
. Let's play a little game. Still got your taser, right?”

“Yeah,” she whispers.

“Let's see how much you can take. Turnabout is fair play, right? We'll start it low and take turns, I'll tase you, and then you can tase me, and we'll see who the last man standing is. Fair enough?”

She looks down into her lap. I push the gun in a bit farther and she emits a small groan.

“I don't know,” she stammers.

She takes a long pull at the beer bottle and turns to look at me.

“You're a real asshole,” she says.

“You have no idea.”

I can see the wheels turning. There's a small black tear tattooed beneath her left eye. And suddenly, she seems hard.

“Let's go then, I don't want to waste my whole evening on you.”

She's standing up before I can do anything, walking out the door. I put the gun in my pocket and follow her out. She makes a left turn at a graffiti-riddled wall, slanted blue letters and mushrooms six feet high dotted with glowing lights and half-naked fairies. Clouds run over a black sky, sliding in front of a pale moon, and off into a glittering row of ancient oak trees fly a swarm of bats, blending slowly into the dark expanse.

She stands in the garbage, eyes gone cold, hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets, huddled back up in a recessed nook behind a row of garbage cans. She looks cold, and for a moment, fragile. I realize this isn't me, isn't what makes me tick—she's just a girl. She has a family somewhere, no doubt. I wonder how much older she is than my own daughter. I sigh, and stuff my hands into my jacket pockets.

“Fuck.”

I can't do it.

“Change of plans. Here's what we're going to do, Pippi,” I say, as her eyes dart all over me, tracking the gun, which is put away now, watching my hands.

“I'm going to close my eyes and count to three.”

She looks up and down the alley, and back to me.

“When I open them, I want to see you gone. Go home. Call your mother. When's the last time you called your mother?”

Her eyes blink and she studies me, shivering in the cold, great clouds of exhale filling the space between us.

“I don't know.”

“You know.”

She takes a breath, wrinkling her nose. “Couple months?”

“Is your dad still around?”

“No. Not really.”

I make two fists and then release them, rubbing my eyes for a second.

“Go home, call your mother, and tell her the things she needs to hear. The things you need to say. Take a hot shower, sober up, put on some sweatpants, make a cup of tea, and remember who you used to be.”

“Why the fuck should I do that?” she asks, the anger slipping back in, her guard going back up as she sees a way out of this alley, this night.

“So you don't end up like me,” I say.

I close my eyes and start counting. I'm trusting she won't decide to suddenly find her taser, and some courage, or scream for the police. I have no reason to do this, but I do it anyway.

“One…”

I take another breath. I'm so tired. Cars slip by on Damen Avenue, and I hear laughter, a cellphone ringing—but her hands aren't on me yet.

“Two…”

There are heavy boot steps and a garbage can falls over, broken glass, and the cold air around me moves, a breeze pushing over my numb skin.

“Three…”

I open my eyes, and she's gone.