Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill (2 page)

He faced her squarely. “I don't understand.”

It took her a moment to realize that he wasn't talking about the game.

“I don't understand why you had to come
here
, to this club, on this night, to get a gun. There are thousands of guns in this city.”

Zephyr looked at the black paint of the closed club door. She sighed. “The music.”

“You can hear music anywhere.”

“No, you can't. Not jazz. Not where I come from.”

Confusion made his face uglier. So did a trace of fear, finally, now that the game was done. For some reason, Zephyr didn't like to see that.

“It doesn't exist,” she said. “Jazz was never invented. And here…the Green Mill has the best jazz. Your employer demands the best.”

Joe's expression seemed to crumple.

Zephyr held out her hand. “Give me the gun.”

He stepped back. She thought he was going to try to run away. She braced herself for what she would do to stop him. And she would do it, she would. He was only human, and with the life he led he'd die soon enough anyway.

But he didn't run. He opened the club door.

Music floated out. It infused the night, rich as brassy ozone, light as pattering rain. An upright bass plucked throbbing notes, a drummer brushed the cymbal, cartwheeled a stick across his set. Zephyr heard the trumpeter mute his horn, and it all flowed out into the alley, a music made of the unexpected. A loose-limbered sound, one that made a philosophy of choices, highlighting the fact of them by pretending they didn't exist, by tripping lightly from one rhythm to the next, from key to key, as if nothing was certain, improvisation was everything, and practice was for fools.

Zephyr knew better. She knew that the musicians practiced for their master. But this was their art: to make their work seem like a game.

A game in which everything could change.

Zephyr looked at her hand, reaching for the gun.

She didn't want her hand anymore.

She didn't want her arm. Or her chopped hair. She didn't want her eyes and the way they widened to see fresh fear on Joe's face as he unslung the gun. The stories his grandfather had told him must have been accurate indeed.

Zephyr watched the gun swing on its strap as if to the music. If left in Joe's hands, this weapon could kill humans, who knew how many.

Zephyr told herself that this was why she said what she did.

“Keep it,” she told Joe.

Then she did what she was good at. She vanished.

Copyright (C) 2012 by Marie Rutkoski

Art copyright (C) 2012 by Victo Ngai