Metro (20 page)

III

THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING

E
ddie Darling really digs those romantic comedies. He's watching one right now, on the big screen in his living room. The ex-wife couldn't stand them, of course, and his boys still can't figure it out either, but screw those guys. And especially screw the ex-wife. She had to go because she had no sense of humor. That, and she never knew she was married to a monster. The people who know either accept it and move on—or they end up dead. Eddie has never cared which.

Anyway, the rom-coms.

He likes them for the same reasons Jollie Meeker hates them, which is a cosmic irony neither person is ever likely to know about. It would blow Jollie's mind to discover just how deeply Eddie Darling gets into this stuff and how well he is able to deconstruct the formulas, agendas, and social crimes these films embody. It's his way of buying into anarchy. He thinks horror films and gangster movies are far more obvious, and so he doesn't watch them. What's really, truly horrifying to a guy like him is a movie like
Young Adult
. That's the one he's watching now. The one with Charlize Theron as a ghostwriter of teenybopper trash hopelessly drowned in her own self-loathing, trying every dirty trick she knows to fulfill some tacky self-prophecy and get her old high school sweetheart to fall in love with her again, thirty years later. It's excruciating to watch. He almost can't. The film borders on directorial sadism in the way it lingers on poor Charlie's pain—but then again, she's a despicable person who never really learns anything in the end, even after sleeping with the village cripple, played by some pudgy stand-up comic he's never heard of before.

This is the deep end of humanity.

White people tortured by white people.

There are a few rom-coms out there with all-black casts, but he prefers the Caucasian variety—the way some soul brothers say they can't get enough of fine white chicks with blonde hair named Debbie. He has a theory that it's probably along the lines of why they stopped making blaxploitation films in the mid-seventies, just after
The Exorcist
came out. He was there to see all that, and the phenomenon was incredible to behold. Someone eventually did some high-and-mighty mathematical survey, and the numbers showed that huge numbers of black men and women were showing up for that one—which said to the people running Hollywood that families of color would much rather see films where white people were killing white people. (Or, you know, turning into demons and vomiting pea soup or something.) So there you had it. And here you have it now:

One of the toughest black men ever to walk the earth, mesmerized in his sofa chair with a beer, laughing out loud at the terrible misfortunes of Charlize Theron.

Hey, everybody needs a hobby.

He's seen this flick seven times. His record is a Kate Hudson abomination called
Something Borrowed
. Thirty-seven times and counting. He loves that one particularly because the problems those people have are so goddamn disconnected from anything like his world that it's kinda like watching an alien species make out on the nature channel. He's not even really sure
what
animal planet most of these assholes are actually from. It makes him almost happy, while he keeps far more malevolent thoughts at bay.

The young nubile flesh doesn't hurt either. Never hurts one damn bit. That is, after all, why these films are generally referred to as escapist entertainment.

If he were to allow his mind to wander back into malevolence, he would think about the many faces he's seen, drowning in pools of their own blood. He'd think about the night his wife found out why he called his posse the Monster Squad. The night he finally murdered her over obsessing about his obsessions.

That week, it was Kristen Stewart.

And he didn't even care, because it was all part of the whole damn master plan. All part of riding the Great and Terrible Wave they taught him about so long ago. Darian hid the body under the street and everybody laughed about it later. They're all still laughing now. He's laughing at a dumb white bitch named Charlie, who goes down hard under the excruciating hammer of her own pathetic life.

He laughs, because it's goddamn funny.

• • •

I
t's just past three in the afternoon when the phone rings.

His ring tone is the theme from
Shaft
.

He lets the first verse cycle before he leans forward and picks the thing off his glass coffee table, setting down the Blu-ray remote in its place. Hardly glances at the caller ID, because he knows who it is.

Eddie just says this: “Are we happy?”

“We're happy.”

Eddie smiles, looking at the frozen image on his HD screen.

Poor Charlie.

And that's right when some asshole kicks in the door and shoots him in the back.

• • •

S
ettling up
.

First words that come into his head.

He sluices halfway back to life and sees the son of a bitch standing upside down in front of him. He realizes his own legs are clamped together above him, realizes he's strung up the wrong way, feels the pain of a billion bumblebees buzzing in the thick meat of his upper shoulder. Feels the burn of the blood dripping down into his eyes. Spits at the son of a bitch's feet and tells him to get on with it.

But the son of a bitch only smiles and kneels in front of him, his eyeline almost matching up with Eddie's. And his perfectly calm voice comes, just like always: “This isn't about revenge, Eddie. I want you to know that.”

A hand strokes his face, in rivers of blood.

“You'll be past tense in just a few minutes. Your life is draining from you right now. I can still
save your life
if you want it to be saved. I don't want to kill you, Eddie. I never wanted to kill you.”

Bullshit.

“I can see that you don't believe me. But why would I lie? I could blow you away right here. But I don't want your
life
, Eddie. I want what is
yours
. That's how we finally settle up. For my brother. And a lot of other things. You know how this works.”

Fuck you.

“I want the keys to the kingdom, Eddie. And you will give them to me. And then I will save your life.”

FUCK YOU.

“You can hang there and grunt at me all you want. You can curse my name until the moment when you finally
do
die. But none of that will alter the inevitable. If you don't hand me the keys now, I'll just find some other way to unlock the door. And you'll be dead. And your death will have been pointless. Because I don't want revenge for my brother. I want the
keys
for my brother.”

FUCK.

YOU.

MOTHERFUCKER.

“Okay. Have it your way, old friend. We'll just wait around until you change your mind.”

Eddie sees his own men surrounding him, upside down in the dark room—this room, which is ten feet below the basement of his thirty-million-dollar drug-dealer mansion.

This room, where he's kept everything for years.

The son of a bitch standing upside down in front of him has known all about the room for years too. He knows almost everything about Eddie Darling. Except what's behind the locked door. So he needs the keys to the kingdom.

And Eddie won't tell him.

Eddie has convinced himself that he won't tell him.

Eddie thinks about being a child and not flinching when his real father died. He thinks about the years after that, learning every discipline known to the human animal. He thinks about being hardened on the street by every horror and every pleasure. Every weapon and every dirty trick. He is above death. He is above torture. He won't break.

“I know this is bad, Eddie. I know that you feel cheated and wronged in this situation. And I know you don't fear your death, any more than I fear killing you. But that's not how
we work
. That's not how our little club works. You know that. This is bigger than all of us. I must know what you know. If you die with those things in your head . . . and for some reason I
can't
get into the safe . . . well . . .”

Yeah, motherfucker. And let me tell you something right now: I just don't care anymore
.

Eddie spasms and his throat backs up in an awful grinding jangle and the son of a bitch smiles at him, and Eddie can tell that he just heard his thought—or did that last bit actually come out of his mouth through all the gagging and choking?

“Sure you care, Eddie. You've always cared about the children. That's what's bonded us for so many years. What's made us so alike, even though we are so different. I want to see them taken care of when you are gone. I want to own what you own. But I want to own it for
them
, not for me. You have to let this end gracefully. You have to step back and let me win.”

Eddie chokes again, smelling the strawberry gum finally. And he manages to laugh. And the sound rips through the room, his heart thundering to a skid in his breast, about to blow hard. His eyes glaze for three seconds. Then fill with an image of his father. His father, who becomes the son of a bitch, then becomes his father again.

Drugged
me. They've drugged me. Darian, you . . . you dirty MOTHER . . .

“Yes, my son. This is important. So important. Give me the keys.”

Fuck . . . you . . .

Eddie tries to laugh, somewhere in the ooze, but it sleets over him much faster than he can think now. Much faster than his eyes can see.

He is floating in space now.

Dying . . . this is what dying is like . . .

“Little Eddie, you have to tell me. It's very nearly over. Just trust Darian to do the right thing and give him the keys.”

No . . .

NO . . .

Yes . . .

Father.

• • •

H
e leans in and listens to the low wheezing sound of Eddie's life ending. The giant man says a series of numbers with his last three breaths, which seem to stretch to the end of everything he has, like muscles pulling back over flesh and bone and soul. The last number fades into nothingness.

Doesn't matter though. They figure out what it is anyway.

• • •

T
he code unlocks a concrete door in the room. The door is the size of a compact car. Through that, a narrow tunnel. Past the tunnel, a vault. Inside the vault, a vast computer bank.

He sits down in front of it and starts talking to it.

And the keys go into his hand, at last.

• • •

E
ddie Darling wakes up a little while later and he wonders if he's in heaven or hell. He's on his back, and his back doesn't hurt anymore. Nothing hurts anymore. He feels pretty good, come to think of it. The ghost of his father hovers in front of him, smiling. Old man Jimmy, a young adult gone bad. And then the fingers of a delicate feminine hand are suddenly sliding across his bare-naked chest, slick red nails gently scratching, teasing. His father winks at him. Charlize Theron licks his ear and Kristen Stewart giggles like a schoolgirl at his throat. None of it is sex. All of it is love. Every bit of it a terrible throbbing tease, within the windy canyons of a woman's breath. And then their lips are on him, and his father winks again and he's watching the whole thing.

And it's love and freedom.

It's perfection. It's bliss.

It all seems completely real to him, this hallucination.

This dream.

This moment, just before he really wakes up, and somehow manages to realize behind a wall of strange oblivion that the son of a bitch kept his promise and didn't kill him.

Unfortunately.

• • •

S
he struggles up and up. The fire still in her face. Tears still stinging.

Andy . . . Mark . . .

And when she opens her eyes, blurry shapes come into vague focus on all sides. The smell of paper and floor polish. The afterburn of charred soot, still clinging to her clothes. She can smell sweat there too, made into weird grime.

She tries to move and finds she can't.

Starts having terrible visions in that long flash:
Am I paralyzed? Are my legs still working?

Something touches her face, and she realizes it's her own right hand, and she breathes relief when she sees it there, wiping the grungy sweat out of her eye. She feels the cool air in that moment, then pinpricks from her tired muscles, up and down her wrist. Flexes her fingers. Tries to wiggle her toes too. Isn't sure at all if they actually move. Then she tries harder and gets more pin pricks, all up and down what seems to be her spine.

What's your name?

Jollie Malian Meeker. Self-employed.

How old are you? What's your favorite color? Can you move your legs?

Twenty-six. Purple. Trying like hell.

The room begins to solidify as she struggles to an almost upright position. This ain't no hospital. Looks like ye olde drawing room in a rich person's house. Bookcases lining the walls. Hard oak floors. A stem lamp in one corner that looks like an antique. She's lying on something that seems like an antique sofa with no back. She's still wearing her burned clothes, the jeans and button-up blouse and sneakers she's had on all throughout her escape from the House of JAM. But there's no pain—none at all.

She acts on instinct and finds she can move just fine. Nothing paralyzed, nothing broken. She checks her right arm, which seemed like it was on fire before she passed out. Her clothes are black and burned, but there's not a single scorch on her body.