Blackbirds (25 page)

  I wept for her.

  I did not weep for Aaron.

 
 

 

"That's a great story," Miriam says. "I really like the way it proves nothing about your grandmother's magic powers, the way she says something's going to come true and then she goes and stabs a little boy to death to make it true. That's super. I
totally
see why you believe this stuff."

  Hairless's smile fades. His tone is sharp, steely.

  "You watch your tongue, or I will bite it off. Oma was a true spirit. She saved my life when I was too weak to do so."

  Miriam says nothing. She just feels the pulsing ring from where Harriet hit her.

  The small, stocky woman paces back and forth in front of the tub, fist still tightened.

  "She also taught me that the universe has rules. Rules that are hidden from men, unless one is willing to look deeper, to kick over the log and see what squirms underneath."

  Hairless pulls out his satchel and shakes it. Something that sounds like dice clatter together. "I collect bones. It is what I read."

  Miriam coughs. "Great, you've got the voodoo, too."

  For a moment, the Hairless Fucker says nothing. Then he nods. "Yes."

  Miriam's not so sure. She thinks he's lying. Maybe he convinced himself of it, or maybe he's just hoping to convince others.

  "Still," he says, "you have abilities far more precise than most. You have abilities on par with my oma. That impresses me. It
thrills
me."

  "Happy to be entertaining."

  "I always need good people in my organization."

  "And what organization is that?"

  "Acquisition and distribution."

  "Drugs, drugs, guns, drugs, sex slaves, drugs."

  His eyes twinkle.

  "I can't help you," she says.

  "You can. You have vision. You're not a moral person."

  "That stings," she says. And it does. She says it all snarky, but it genuinely stings. An evil man like this thinks he's found a bird of his feather? "I'm a bad girl, not a bad person."

  "There is a difference?"

  Miriam's eyes are two knife-holes, out of which pour hatred.

  "I did not think so," he says, stroking her diary with long fingers. "You will work for me, then. Welcome to the team. The organization appreciates your unique skill-set."

  "I'd like to discuss my benefits."

  Hairless chuckles. "Oh?"

  "I don't need health benefits, because I drink too much, and I smoke even more. In fact, right now I'm kind of ready to gnaw my hands off for a cigarette. So, in return for saving you some money with those health insurance companies – they're vampires, don't you know – I propose that you simply let my friend, Louis, be. Just let it lie."

  "But what of my suitcase?"

  "I can get it for you. Let me go to him. I can get the case, no questions."

  "You're offering this to me? As a negotiation?"

  "I am. I'll work for you if you spare him."

  She sees him consider it. The offer passes before his face like a shadow. He cups his chin. He rubs the flat of his hand against his Hairless Fucker head. But then she realizes: He's just putting on a show. Hairless is mocking her.

  "Hmm," he says, dragging out the consonance. "No."

  "Fine, then I don't work for you."

  "You are not in a negotiating position. The lowest, sickliest wolf in the pack does not negotiate with the alpha for a bigger bite of the kill. It is not done. You would not respect me if I gave in to your wishes. I sense you are a, how to put it? A
get an inch, take a mile
kind of girl, yes? I give a little now, and you walk all over me. I am not your father."

  "No shit. Your dull, Eurotrash seed couldn't father a donkey. Though I'm sure you've tried, you froo-froo piece-of-shit donkey-fucker skinhead."

  "Besides," Hairless says, ignoring her. "You obviously care about this man in the truck. That is a no-no. I must take away those things you care about, so all that is left is me."

  He approaches the tub after setting her diary down on the closed lid of the toilet.

  He puts one foot on the tub's edge. He floats his hands above her hips – he does not touch them, but his fingers hover. They hover up over her stomach, her tits.

  "I am all that you need to care about. My approval. My smiling face. They know."

  Harriet and Frankie – the "they" in question – shoot looks to each other. Frankie looks uncomfortable, but Harriet's dull eyes dance for a half-second; they flash like mirrors.

  "Your first task for me–" His nimble fingers, each pointed like it's nothing but bone sharpened to a narrow tip, drift over her collarbone and neck. Miriam has a tiny daydream in which her hands break free and (like she's the Bride of the Incredible Hulk) she brings the shower-head down out of the wall, burying it into the Hairless Fucker's shiny dome. "Is to tell me how I die."

  She hawks a looger, spits it at his eye. Bullseye. "No."

  He wipes it away with the back of his hand.

  "I know that all it takes is skin on skin," he says.

  Then he grabs her chin with vice-grip fingers –

  The big sonofabitch pulls a curved blade, a kukri, out of nowhere. It comes down on Hairless, or that's what it's supposed to do. Instead, it kisses air as Hairless deftly pivots and presses himself back against the railing.

  His face is a grinning, crimson rictus. A skull with bloodstain lipstick.

  Hairless lunges at the addict.

  The blade cleaves the addict's head right down the middle.

  The gun does off.

  Hairless's brains fly like someone tossing out muddy washwater.

  – and he presses her cheeks so hard that her teeth bite into the inside of her mouth.

  He holds her there like that, staring into her eyes.

  "You saw," he whispers. "You saw how I die."

  Miriam nods, as much as his grasp will allow.

  Beaming, he lets go. He's eager. Excited. "Tell me. Tell me, now."

  Miriam grins a rueful grin.

  "I kill you," she lies. "Me. I shoot you
right in the fucking head
."

  Hairless searches her face. His gaze is panicked.
You can make me have my vision
, she thinks,
but you can't make me tell you the truth
.

  "She's lying," Harriet says. "I can see it."

  Hairless steps away.

  "You'll tell me," he says, still unsure. "You'll tell me so I can beat it. I will beat fate. I will sidestep death with your help, one way or another."

  "Doesn't work like that," Miriam says, tasting the coppery penny-taste from where she bit into her cheeks. "You can't beat the system. The house always wins."

  "I am different."

  Hairless's phone rings. He holds it up, looks at the number, then snaps his fingers at Frankie. "You. Let our new employee have her rest."

  Hairless answers the phone as Frankie ducks through the doorway and comes back with another syringe.

  Miriam struggles, hoping to bring the shower down, maybe the whole house.

  Frankie sticks the needle in her neck.

  "Yes?" Hairless says on the phone.

  The world hems in from the edges. Rimmed with blur and shadow.

  "You have the location?" she hears Hairless say, but it's like hearing him through the glass of a bubbling fish-tank. His words slow. Honey, molasses, black tar. "You know where the trucker is, then?"

  Louis
, she thinks.

  Once more, she tongue-kisses darkness. Lights out.

 
 

 

Miriam's mother sits at a table but doesn't notice her. Can't notice her, probably. That's the frustrating part. Miriam hasn't seen the woman in eight years, and this doesn't even count because it's a dream, and she knows it's a dream.

  Her mother is a pinched woman, shrunken and dry like a shriveled apricot. She's not that old, not really, but she looks it. Time – fake time, dream time, the time in Miriam's own crazy head – has taken its toll.

  "It's almost over now," says Louis behind her.

  The tape over his eyes shifts and bubbles, the way soft drywall rises and falls with a tide of hidden roaches.

  "Yeah," Miriam says.

  "What are we looking at?" Louis checks his wrist like he's looking at a watch, even though no watch is there. "Twentyfour hours or thereabouts."

  Her mother opens a Bible, studies the pages.

  "But if the sacrifice of his offering be a vow," her mother says, "or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day he offereth the sacrifice, and on the morrow also the remainder shall be eaten. But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnt by fire."

  Idly, lost in thought, Miriam nods. "That what it is? Funny how you know that, because if you know that, it means I know that, and yet – I didn't know that. I haven't seen the time since the… car ride."

  "Could be that the subconscious mind is a powerful little booger."

  "I suppose so."

  "Or maybe I'm something bigger, meaner, something outside of you. Maybe I'm Death himself. Maybe I'm Abaddon, Lord of the Pit, or Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. Or perhaps it's that I'm just a bundle of thread cut from the mean, uncaring scissors of Atropos – I'm just the tangled skein of fate lying on the floor at your feet."

  "That's great. Thanks for fucking with me in my own dream."

  Her mother speaks again: "For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison."

  "Shut up, Mom." To Louis, Miriam says: "That's her telling me I have a filthy mouth."

  "It's you telling you that you have a filthy mouth."

  "Whatever."

  "What happens next?" he asks.

  "Nothing, I guess. Last I checked, I was hanging from a dirty showerhead in a moldy cottage found somewhere in the approximate middle of New Jersey's sandy asshole. As such, I'm not really making any plans."

  "So you're done with trying to save me?"

  "Well, looking at my options–"

  "Give, and it shall be given to you," her mother interrupts.

  "I'm talking, Mom."

  Her mother continues: "For whatever measure you deal out to others, it will be dealt back to you in return."

  "As I was saying!" Miriam barks, hoping to jar her dream mother out of her Bible-quoting reverie. The woman doesn't budge. She's like a kidney stone lodged in the urethra – not going anywhere. "As I was saying, I'm out of options. I'm done trying to play savior, done thinking I can make a difference."

  "That's awfully fatalistic."

  "Fatalistic. Fate. Fatal. Would you look at that? Ain't language a crazy bitch? Stupid me, never drawn the connection before. Fate and fatal. That tells you something, doesn't it? It tells you that all our lives are a donkey-cart ride over a cliff's edge. Everybody's fate is to die, and why try to stop it? We all tumble into darkness with the donkey, braying and hee-hawing, and that's that, game over. I see the fatalities of people. I see how their fate plays out. And I haven't been able to do dick about it before, have I? It's like trying to stop a speeding train by putting a penny on the tracks."