THUGLIT Issue Twelve (9 page)

It was then that I remembered the tablet. Backing away, I fumbled with the flap of the bag, lifted out the stone table and tossed it to him underhanded. He caught
it, juggling it up to his face.

Small children on Christmas morning do not have that look of concentrated greed and joy.

"Cool, right?" I said, "Nice giant. Good giant. Just stare at the creepy tablet with the fun tentacles. Don't mind your Uncle O'Shaunessey while he looks for his shotgun."

I could have incited a grand melee between brass-bands, ninjas, pirates and porn stars in the middle of a fireworks display, he couldn't have given less of a shit. One of his hands disa
ppeared under his tenting robe.

Well… as long as he's constructively occupied.

I found my shotgun under a table and pulled the trigger, hoping Mr. Debonair had something that could clean giant brains off his precious artifact.

Before I left
, I grabbed that bottle of rum and the money I'd left for Rico. I ditched the guns and bike in an alley near the airport and didn't stop moving until I was back in New York City.

I stopped home briefly to pick something up and then went to Mr. Debonaire's office. This time the receptionist's fingernails were magenta-flecked gold and I still had no idea what color her eyes were.

"Mr. O'Shaunessey, I trust your journey was successful?"

I tossed the bag with the tablet onto his desk and sat. The cushions felt like they were filled with gravel. He rubbed greedy fingers all over it, letting out the occasional, obscene noise.

"Oh, it's perfect. perfect."

"Yeah. Perfect. You know, the strangest thing happened while I was down there."

"Oh?" He didn't look up. I watched as Debonaire's hands twitched, one getting ever closer to dropping out of sight. I looked away, just barely sobering up from how drunk I'd gotten to resist its…charms.

"A bunch of fruitcakes in hoods tried to get there first."

He twitched. "Well, they could not have been much of an obstacle."

"They were distracted."

"Good. Good. That's. Very. Good." He was whispering now.

Something was bothering me, so I gambled. "Mr. Debonaire, one of them said your name just before he died."

Debonaire looked up, a slow pan that started with the far edge of the tablet and ended with my face. Aces full.

"You want to explain that one to me?"
I said.

"You took a very long time, Mr. O'Shaunessey."

"You sent them. What is that thing really, Mr. Debonaire?"

"It is…"

"The truth." I said, but he misunderstood.

"Yes! It is the glorious T
ruth of the world. Hidden for thousands of years. Lost to us. Now, found and delivered."

"The truth about what? The uncontrollable urge to punch the munchkin? I could have told you that one by the time I was fourteen."

"You would mock the Truth?" Debonaire stood, the tablet in one hand and the other pointed at me. He spoke in that now-familiar choking, garbling language. Tongue chattering, eyes rolling in his head, he shook with the effort of containing himself as a symbol began to glow on the wall. A circle, crossed with lines that made boxes, boxes that held strange lines that curved like snakes. I found myself falling toward the symbol's center. Fear rose up and choked me, rising right up from my groin. My balls began to tingle.

Then I remembered that I'm not an asshole.

"Bullshit, Debonaire."

He stopped choking and spitting at me, his eyes rolled back down where they were supposed to be. "What?"

I walked around the desk, shoved him out of the way, and felt under the edge.

"There we go." I flipped a switch and the symbol on the wall faded. "That must have been a real pain in the ass to install."

The tablet hung from Debonaire's hands like a pet frog his mother told him he wasn't allowed to keep. "Yes."

"Under the first layer of wall paper?"

"Yes."

I brushed a hand over it. "What is that? Rice paper?"

"Yes."

"Elegant."

"Thank you."

I pulled out the revol
ver I keep on my bedside table.

"Now, can I get paid or do I need to start shooting?

I waited while the transfer went through.

"It's real you know. The tablet is real. It shall rise again." Debonaire said.

I pointed at his crotch with the gun. "Watch out. My grandma used to say it makes you go blind.

Outside I took a deep breath and looked at the business card I'd swiped off his desk.

License to fuck shit up.

I made a mental note to add "No archaeology."

b
y Leon Marks

The second I hea
r the gunshot, I start running.  We all do. Tourists, families, even the rambunctious teens who've been smoking in front of the drugstore.  Nobody can tell the bullet's origin. I look back and find the body lying in the street. A black woman whose thigh has been punctured. A tiny explosion of denim and flesh.  Seconds earlier, she was selling roses to café patrons like a gypsy. They'd tried to ignore her, turned their backs on her offerings, but she'd stood patiently, both hands presenting her bouquet for sale. Now, she lies in shock and the entire square is a battlefield.

I run toward the river, and follow the crowd into the grassy park that in a couple months will
attract hundreds of sunbathers. My heart thumps in my ribcage while my mind races backwards to this morning, when things fell apart. My wife is gone, and now I'm running for my life.

The next bullet jolts a fat woman wearing a baseball cap and a tan blazer, standing in
side the pigeon-guarded gazebo.

We sat there last summer, watching the sunset reflecting on the river,
and threw popcorn to the birds. It was the day before I left for Iraq, and she had her arm around my neck and was kissing the side of my head.

The woman clenches her chest, and blood coats her
hand as she finally goes limp. An old man out of nowhere steps into the gazebo and crouches down to whisper in her ear. Words of reassurance. He looks around for help, squeezing her hand to feel for life. I won't forget his huge bowtie. It's fire engine red. I can see it from thirty yards away, like a bright red butterfly perched under his chin.

Another shot, and I fear for the old man,
but he doesn't fall. Instead it's the skateboarder, who has long abandoned his wheels and has been running parallel to me. I slow down and turn to see him fall on his stomach. One moment he's sprinting, the next he's asleep on the grass. The back of his tee shirt has a charred hole, but no blood yet. It will come. He's young and handsome, his head shaved on one side, as if one half of him had the courage to enlist, but the other half chose to play on wheels all day. I start running again and take the skateboarder's face in my mind.

Soon his face becomes that face, the one I startled when I flicked on t
he light the night before last. His arm was around her naked breasts, his nose nuzzled into her neck, on the gold cross I had given her, and he wore a bright smile, which wasn't predatory, or even desirous. It was blissful.

She had presumed I was visiting my mother down at
the beach, like I did every Friday.

I wish I had shouted at him, or
yanked her out of bed, but I didn't. She looked so afraid. I walked away instead. I left them in the bedroom, with their legs entwined under the sheet and her saying something. I kicked my suitcase, and walked out of the apartment. I stumbled about for a couple of hours in parking lots and alleys, shouting at the sky, and it was almost midnight when I returned. She was waiting for me, her legs crossed on the couch, a cup of tea in her hand. She didn't greet me with words, just her eyes, shining with guilt.

At the river
's edge, we all turn north and run alongside the water. This is where the masses come for fireworks on New Year's Eve.

I brought her once, and she c
overed her ears the whole time.

We
're heading toward the arboretum. A few people look back, which makes them run faster. One is a woman with a young boy who is crying and can't run fast enough, so the woman scoops him in her arms and holds his chest to hers, his little sneakers bouncing behind her. People aren't screaming anymore, just running. A helicopter circles overhead. What does the pilot see? Crowds scrambling along the river like frantic ants sprayed with poison.

A p
op sounds and the mother falls. She lands on top of her boy, whose mouth is wide open, frozen in a wail. Cherry-colored blood springs from a hole in her head. The boy wiggles underneath her, shouting "Mama!" I should cry. Maybe I already am. I want to scoop him up in my arms, tell him that everything will be okay. I wave at him, as if a wave transmits compassion, and run past him toward the arboretum, into which most of the crowd has already vanished.

"Don't you think we were just too young?" she asked last night, while serving me wine and cheese.

"
Twenty-one isn't young," I said.

"
Today it is," she said. "Even my parents were twenty-eight, and that was thirty years ago."

"
We made our bed."

"
I'm just saying it's not the end of the world. People change."

"
You met him while I was in Iraq."

"
That's not true! I was completely faithful. But since you got home…what happened over there? Your mind is distorted. You're home almost four months, and you're so quiet, like we're strangers to each other. I feel like you're waiting for something. Waiting and watching everyone.  Especially me."

She turned away fr
om the conversation when a tear shone in her eye. She hung her head as she poured a glass of wine, then raised it to her lips and gulped. Afterwards, she inhaled deeply and looked at me again. My expression must have changed because she went a bit pale. She opened her eyes wide and stepped backward. I grabbed her forearm and pulled her toward me.

"
What do you think you're doing?" I said.

"
You're hurting me. Let go."

"
You can't drink."

"
Let go of me. You see? This is what I'm talking about. What's wrong with you?"

I released her.

"It's over," she said. "It's just over. These things happen."

"
This isn't a thing that happened. This is your deliberate decision to dishonor our vows."

"
The words you use. Dishonor is so dramatic."

"
Adultery is dramatic."

"
Adultery! It's like I'm talking to a priest."

"
That would do you good."

"
Such arrogance! I'm sorry I can't be as perfect as you are, but I'm not the Virgin Mary. I don't want to be judged by God or you."

"
You're an angel."

She opened her mouth to say something, but just squinted.

I leap over the stone wall into the arboretum. We've scattered among the trees. We've gone from running to hiding, and I suddenly notice the silence. The city is gone, muffled by dense treetops. I stand still, listening for another shot. I hear the strumming of a guitar. I walk toward the music and spot an old man hunched over his strings, sitting beneath an ancient apple tree. Is he deaf? His eyes are closed, his head slowly nodding to his music, safe as if in a dream.

"
Run!" I shout.

He smiles
at his guitar pick, not at me. I study the deep cracks on his face, like fortress walls.

Another shot, and
I hear a groan in the distance. I leap behind a tree and peek out to find the victim. A young man with a blonde crew cut, dressed all in blue, grabs a sapling, like a cane, to steady himself. He looks about thirty, and his sneakers shine bright white as if they're brand new. When his body finally falls, it hits a small wooden sign—a genus, maybe—on the way down. He makes no thudding sound on the grass. I hope he falls softly asleep in his blue pajamas. But they're not pajamas, they're hospital scrubs.  A doctor on his lunch break. Or running errands for his pregnant wife, who sits at home unpacking baby clothes and smiling to God as her husband's heart and brain come to the end of their useful lives under an
Acer cappadocicum
tree.

"I know this is painful," she said this morning, when we found ourselves together in the kitchen.

"
It's unjust."

"
Those words you use."

"
And what about the baby?" I asked.

"
The baby," she said. She avoided eye contact, and tossed her dirty blonde hair to hide part of her face. She had mastered this technique over the years, her way of signaling a desire to change the subject or end the conversation entirely. I usually granted her wish, but not this time.

"
Does it mean nothing to you?" I asked.

She chose this moment
to take a long sip of coffee. This couldn't be the first time she's pondered the question. To conceive a child and then so quickly make love to another man.  Our whole family in bed with a stranger.

"
It's complicated," she said. "I know it's hard. But you can't force things."

"
What about the baby?"

"
I can't think about that right now."

"
You have to. It'll be here, in your arms, in six months. You have to think about it."

"
It's too hard."

"
You've made it that way."

"
Stop with the accusations. I can't take your constant judgment."