Morning Is Dead (9 page)

“What’s that?” Alvin asked.

“That’s Mr. Lucky’s Abortion Clinic. It used to be a Chinese restaurant.”

She grabbed him by the hand and led him up to her apartment. Alvin held the curtain open and looked out at the abortion clinic. “So that’s where all the people are?”

“Just the women.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not anti-abortion or anything but that just seems... ghoulish. So they just... what? Drive up there and go in and get an abortion and then go back out?”

“Oh, they don’t even have to go in. Well, I mean, there is a little room there if you don’t have a car but most of them are performed right there in the car.”

“And what happens to the uh...”

“Fetuses?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure. I think it has something to do with the Point.”

“Everything does. So you’re one of them?”

“Don’t say it like that. ‘Them.’ It sounds so condescending.”

“What is it? Drugs?”

“Money. Maybe sometimes for drugs. This whole town is corrupt and I don’t think we’re the only one. The Point owns everything. They have files on everyone. You get a job and then you lose your job or you quit, you can’t get work. I could whore myself but what’s that? A little here and a little there. Just enough to barely keep me alive. Dr. Lucky’s pays good money for its abortions. I can live for a year off what they pay me.”

“It seems illegal.”

“What’s legal? The police force is the biggest drug cartel we have here. If they look the other way when it comes to something like abortion selling or prostitution, then it means those people have more money to buy drugs from them. It’s all a circle. Like a circle of death. So if you don’t want to give me what I need, then I’ll just go find someone else and forget all about you. But if you think I’m going to tell you how you can stop them from detonating your house then you can go fuck yourself.”

Alvin closed the curtains. He wished he had more walls to put between himself and the abortion clinic. Himself and the whole city. May had mentioned something about hopelessness and he felt it reaching out from her. He felt it coming from her. Was he her hope? Even if it was a sad, desperate, sickening kind of hope? What harm would it do anyway? He was sterile but May didn’t have to know that. If he told her he was sterile she would just think he was lying to get out of it. April was quite possibly cheating on him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had sex. May was very attractive. No one would have to know. He had never seen May before this evening. He would probably never see her again. He was running out of time. There was no way he could make it back to April unless he did this with May. Did he want to make it back to April? He thought he did but maybe what he really wanted to make it back to was knowledge. If he could prevent them from blowing his house up, he could buy himself some more time. He could get some things sorted out. Everything had become so jumbled up and confused. Everything wanted to reach into his skull and take little bites out of his brains.

May stood in front of him, nearly crying, breathing heavily. She had taken off her boots. Her toenails were painted black. Alvin pushed her back on the bed.

“You’re like a fucking succubus,” he said.

She looked at him with big brown eyes, her arms raised above her head, offering herself to him, her knees bent over the edge of the bed. He went down on his knees between her legs. He pushed her skirt up. She wore white hip hugger panties. He opened his mouth and bit down on her pubic mound. Not hard. He chewed softly. She squirmed and moaned. He unfastened the buckle at the side of her skirt and slid it off. He continued grinding his teeth against her, moving his hands under her ass, under her panties, moving his fingertips along her anus. His penis was stiff and uncomfortable in his pants. He wanted to taste her. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had tasted April, since he had given April pleasure. He stripped off May’s underwear. There was a tiny patch of pubic hair above her sex. He pulled her apart with his thumbs and plunged his tongue into her. Her wetness coated his lips and his tongue. He sucked it into his mouth and it mixed with the blood taste and he drank it down like a cocktail. He closed his lips around her clitoris and sucked on it. She squealed and grabbed the back of his head and pulled him up. He stripped off her shirt and pulled off his own while she expertly undid the button and zipper of his pants. She pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees. His erection bobbed in front of her face. She ran her tongue along the underside and took the head into her mouth. He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her toward him until she gagged. He didn’t stop. He thrust against her. She squeezed his balls and he could feel her gagging throat against the head of his penis. He nearly came.

He pulled her off him and threw her back on the bed. She spread her legs and reached her hand down to her cunt and pulled herself open for him. He shoved it in fully on the first thrust. Her eyes rolled back in her head. He lowered his head and bit one of her nipples. Bit it harder. Pounded against her. She clawed his chest. She put his hands around her throat. She smacked him in the face when he didn’t squeeze. He squeezed gently. She punched him in the forehead. He could feel it split open. Blood dripped down onto her chest and gathered at the end of his nose as he continued to pound against her. He squeezed her throat until the veins at her temples began to bulge. She grabbed his upper arms and bucked wildly against him. He could feel her vagina squeezing him, her legs wrapped around his ass, pulling him into her. They were both covered in blood and the stink of it filled the room. She removed her hands from his arms and dug them both into his chest. He could feel his skin pop beneath her fingernails. He wrapped his hands around her hips, now wanting nothing more than to ram her as hard as possible, batter her insides, break her. He thrust against her, their skin smacking together, locked into one another with ropes of blood and smeared come and fingernails and then she cried out and didn’t stop and he let go inside of her, working himself as deep as he could possibly go.

He rolled off her and lay to her left, his muscles shaking.

“Wow,” she said.

“Tell me. You promised.” He wondered if he should tell her if he was sterile and then thought better of it. Now he had cheated on April and, in a way, he was cheating May.

“Come on. Don’t you wanna stick around? Get cleaned up?”

“I need to go. You told me you would tell me. You told me you would help me.”

May sighed deeply. “Let’s take a shower. I feel disgusting.”

“No.”

“What was the address again?”

Alvin leaned off the bed and fished his pants up off the floor. He pulled the rumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and flattened it out as best as possible. “1333 Ohio Drive.”

“And you don’t know where that is?”

“I’ve never heard of it. I’m terrible with directions.”

“It’s two streets over from you.” She explained to him where it was compared to his house.

“Why didn’t we just go there when we were by the house?”

“Because you wouldn’t agree to help me. You had several chances. I told you you could fuck me in the yard. I told you you could fuck me in the creepy sleeper’s house. You didn’t want to. Your choice.”

“And how is this going to help me keep my house from getting detonated?”

“I don’t know if it is. I didn’t give you the piece of paper. I have no idea what you’ll find there.”

“So how do I keep my house from being detonated?”

“Well, for starters, you need to make sure it isn’t supposed to be blown up. You said you lived there with your wife. It’s possible she scheduled the detonation. The detonations are all ordered by the Point. You have to go there and fill out some paperwork.”

“That’s it?”

“They make it very hard. Do you have any ID on you?”

“No. I left it at the station.”

“They’ll want that.”

“I can’t get that.”

“Look, you asked me to tell you how to stop your house from being detonated and I did that. The people at the Point are the only people who can call it off. I can’t do it for you.”

“Will you go with me?”

“I’d really like to get cleaned up first.”

“We don’t have time. Don’t you understand that? Doesn’t anybody understand that? I have
no time
.”

“I have a car. Will that help?”

“Yes, that would help immensely.”

“We can take it if I can take a shower first.”

“Fine.”

“You should take one too.”

He did feel disgusting. A shower might feel nice. “Fine.”

She stood up and he followed her into the bathroom. Looking at the small apartment as they passed through it, he could see that it was in total and complete disarray. She turned the water on and they got in the shower. He kept his back turned to her. Now that he had given her what she wanted, he felt repulsed by her. Repulsed by her agenda. He thought what she was doing was lower than fucking people for money. The scalding water stung his wounds. The soap stung them even more. The smell of the shampoo made him feel a little better about things. Then she turned off the water and he felt wrung out and exhausted. Like he could crawl back in the bed and sleep for days. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept but, since he also couldn’t remember the last time he had seen daylight, he thought he had to have slept at some point. People don’t just blackout during the day. She rummaged through some clothes on the floor and found a pair of jeans and a green t-shirt with Che Guevara’s head on it. Alvin put his dirty clothes back on. He didn’t think she would have anything to fit him.

“I hope the car starts,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t driven it in a while. People like to steal gas and I don’t have any kind of lock on the tank.”

“Great. You know, if Archer gets a clear shot at me, he isn’t going to miss. I need the car for a shield as much as anything.”

“Let’s hope it starts then.” She plucked a ring of keys from a holder beside the door and went out into the hallway. Alvin followed. She tossed the keys to Alvin. They bounced off his chest and clattered to the floor. “Good catch.”

He followed her down the darkened stairway. She pulled the door to her building open and the next thing Alvin saw was the point of an arrow only a couple inches from his heart. It had gone through her throat. He caught her under the arms before she could collapse. Another arrow, just the very tip, punched through the back of her skull. That one must have gone through her eye. Alvin ran out to the sidewalk, toward the only car he saw there, using her body as a shield and feeling bad about it. He didn’t even take the time to see where Archer might have been shooting from. For right now, he just wanted inside the car. If it didn’t go with the set of keys he had, at least he would be behind steel and glass and able to lock the doors if they were unlocked in the first place. He pulled the door open and felt lucky. He slid behind the wheel, dropping May’s corpse out onto the street, and slammed the door shut. He clutched the wheel, his hands shaking. Archer had flown two arrows. The first had gone through her jugular. The second had gone through her eye and then her brain. The first shot would have killed her if the arrow was removed, unleashing a torrent of blood. The second arrow probably killed her on impact. The Archer didn’t miss. He had shot as soon as the building door was opened. If Alvin had gone first, he would be dead. He almost wished he had. Then all this would be over.

He put the key in the ignition and turned. It was the right key. The car sputtered and he gave it some gas and it roared to life. He rolled away from the curb and saw Archer wandering back up Payne Avenue, out in the open. Maybe he hadn’t stuck around long enough to see that Alvin was dead. Maybe he had such faith in his work that he didn’t think he needed to. Pomposity was just one more reason for Alvin to hate Archer. If he didn’t end this now, he would have it hanging over his head the entire time. He had enough things to think about. He still didn’t know if he should go to this address or if he should just travel on to the Point. Ben had called it a safe house or something. Maybe they made fake IDs or detonation desist orders.