Know Me From Smoke, page 9
“So glad to be here again, Mr. Epic,” Stella said. She smiled at Abbie. “You look more gorgeous each year.”
“Life is treating me well. I can’t deny it.” She didn’t take her eyes from Royal. “Who’s your friend in there?” She raised her thin eyebrows and dipped a shoulder toward the kitchen.
“My roommate, well—”
“He was your roommate,” Stella said.
“Was, that’s right. Me and Stella are moving in together.”
“How nice,” Mr. Epic said. He tasted the insides of his mouth. “And what do you do, Junior? How do you, as they say on the streets, pay the rent?”
“I used to do money management.”
Mr. Epic’s head bobbed slowly in affirmation.
“But then, I got into construction. That’s what I’m doing now.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, I’m a working man. What can I say?”
“Nothing wrong with that, Junior. Is there, honey?” Mr. Epic looked at his wife.
“Not at all.” She didn’t look at her husband, but instead kept her eyes pinned to Royal.
Royal asked himself: What is this? Something odd about the way these people were staring at him and Stella. Like they were zoo animals. Or acting on a television screen. Like he and Stella were a show.
“I appreciated your gift, Mr. Epic. It was, as always, too generous.”
“Oh, Stella. You know I love having you sing at my place. You’re kind of a legend now, you know.”
“Stop,” Stella said. She shifted on the couch, crossed one leg over the other—both men registered the bare skin flashing beneath her green dress. “I’m just a half-ass lounge singer in a big damn city.” She looked to Royal and said, “Wally gave me a generous bonus for the holidays.”
“That’s nice.” Royal tapped Stella’s bare knee with an index finger.
Abbie cleared her throat, finally tore her gaze from Royal. She stood and said, “I need more to drink. Anybody else?”
Mr. Epic waved her into the kitchen.
Royal gulped from his martini glass, it was almost empty. We’ve been here five minutes, he thought. It’s going to be a long, long night if things keep going like this. “So, I hear this is a yearly tradition, Mr. Epic. Stella says she’s been coming for a few years.”
“That’s right. Something I started doing for my employees.”
“You have to take care of the troops, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Junior here might be looking for a new position, Mr. Epic.” Stella nudged Royal, sipped from her own martini. “He’s always looking for something better and, with the two of us, we might need to get a bigger place.”
“Let me guess,” Mr Epic said, “something in money management.”
“That’s right,” Royal said.
Abbie appeared again; in one hand, she held a silver tray and, in the other, a full martini glass. She set the tray on the coffee table and looked Royal in the eye. “I thought we might have some fun,” she said.
On the silver tray were four white tablets.
Mr. Epic didn’t flinch. He reached for the tray, pinched a white tablet between thumb and index finger and shoved it between his lips. He swallowed the last of his martini and grunted.
Abbie did the same.
Royal looked at Stella. Again, he thought: What is this?
Stella picked up a pill, placed it on her tongue and swallowed. Her hand clinched Royal’s. Her knuckles dug into him like jagged stones.
“What is it?” Royal picked up a pill, turned it in the light.
Abbie said, “It’s pure ecstasy, Junior. A Christmas gift for you.”
Royal admitted to himself: I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what this is. Beside him, Stella sipped her martini and, in front of him, two people he’d never have met in ten prison sentences were waiting for him to take ecstasy. He thought about Phoenix gabbing it up in the other room—what was the man up to? Royal sighed and said, “Pure, huh—what’s that do?”
Stella didn’t look at him, but she said, “It’ll make you feel good.”
“It better,” Royal said. It damn well better.
First, you notice it’s darker in the room than you thought. The flames in the fireplace dance with such elegance. What kind of word is that? Elegance? It’s a good word, you think, and it sounds like what it means. You feel Stella’s breath on your neck. Hot breath. A light kind of breath that isn’t heavy, but soft and fragile and smells of black licorice. That’s the gin. And you wave your glass at the woman called Abbie and she brings you a new martini. It tastes stronger this time. Like maybe she poured a liquor you’ve never tasted. When you speak it feels like you’re underwater, but you hear yourself perfectly, as if you’re banging a spoon against a glass. “What’s in here? I really need this recipe.”
Abbie says, “It’s with bubble water.”
“Feels good on my tongue, on my throat.”
“I know, right?”
Beside you, Stella’s voice is churning like a tire, spinning words as if the air is a highway. You can’t keep track of what she’s saying—it’s too fast. Mr. Epic is watching her, nodding, laughing.
“Bubble water is a funny name.” You know that’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s true. And that, right now, counts more than anything. “The truth hurts,” you say. And you think: The hell does that mean? But you know what it means.
“I used to lie when I was a girl,” Abbie says. “And when I was a young woman. I used to lie to everyone I met.”
“What’d you lie about?”
“I used to say I was an extra in the movies, that I modeled clothes in New York City, that I produced a documentary about lions.”
You can’t help but laugh at her. Not with her, but at her, like a man spitting torpedoes, missiles, projectiles. “What did you really do?”
“I was a waitress in a diner. I did it for ten years.”
“And then you met the man here.” You nod at Mr. Epic, but he is only nodding at Stella’s voice and you know he can’t hear two voices at once—after all, you can’t either. “He took you where you needed to go.”
“To California.”
“To the land of sun and plenty.”
“I never became what I thought I would.”
You don’t know how to answer that right away, but after a moment you do: “I know how that feels—I never became nothing.”
Abbie laughs. Abbie’s face moves oddly beneath her forehead, as if it’s a mask on top of her bones. A face is a kind of mask. A face is a mask of skin and it can tell the world different things; it can lie or tell the truth; it can laugh or cry; a face can scream at horror or squint into the dark.
“Nothing,” Abbie says.
And the whole room seems to hear it…
More people now in the room and you can see yourself grinning through another martini. Stella’s right hand is resting on your crotch, prying at your belt—you slap it away and laugh. In the corner, beside the fireplace, Mr. Epic is whispering into a young woman’s ear. You think she can’t be more than in her early twenties. Stella’s hand starts to pry at you again and you say, “How old is that girl? She can’t be old enough for him, is she?”
Mr. Epic and his partner with the ear look at you.
“What?” They say it together.
“Hey, Junior. Hey, baby…”
Stella’s breath on your ear. Her voice in your head.
“Hey, Junior. Tell me about your family. Tell me about—”
“Family?”
“Your mom and dad. Or brothers and sisters.”
“We lived in a two bedroom apartment.”
“What’d your daddy do?”
“He worked at a chicken packaging plant.”
“A what?” Stella’s voice sounds far away to you.
“He wrapped up chickens and people bought them.” You notice a long silence and you can’t hear the other people in the room speaking. Their mouths move, but no voices come out. “My ears won’t work.” A sharp pain fills your head and you turn to see Stella flicking you with a long fingernail.
“Can you hear me now?”
“Yes; I like the sound of your voice.” Her hand falls again to your crotch. “Be careful, somebody might see us.”
“I don’t care.”
“Is my face like a mask?”
“What?” Stella laughs and her throat throws melodic sound waves into the room. “You got something under there?”
Her hand prying harder now. “Where?”
“Under your face?”
“I have my bones and my blood and—”
“Anything you want to tell me?”
Another voice comes at you; it’s a whip-crack voice as hard as thunder: “Royal, my man…” Phoenix. Not the city, but the ugly man.
Stella’s head swivels, peers up at Phoenix.
“You eat dinner, Phoenix?” It’s the only thing you can think to say.
“Yeah, Junior. I ate dinner, my man. I ate me a hell of a dinner.”
Stella pulls her hand from your crotch. Phoenix clears his throat and sits crosslegged on the carpet. His eyebrows dip at his scarred cheeks.
You look at Phoenix.
Stella looks at you.
Phoenix looks from you to Stella. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”
The room is dark still, but you see Mr. Epic lean into your vision, cloud the place like a shadow. “They’re on drugs,” he says. “You want some?”
“Do I want some?” Phoenix looks at Mr. Epic like a child waiting for a Christmas gift. “Damn right. I’d love some.”
Mr. Epic drops a white tablet into Phoenix’s palm, but Phoenix doesn’t swallow the tablet—instead, he slides it into his breast pocket as Mr. Epic turns to another conversation.
Behind Phoenix, the toy locomotive spins around the white Christmas tree. It rolls and rolls and rolls, spins and spins and spins.
Missing molar in my mouth. Hole in my heart. Bullet in my hip.
Stella kept turning these phrases over in her head as she followed Mr. Epic down the hallway into his home office suite. Behind her was Junior, his hand tugging loosely at the dress tight around Stella’s hips.
Bullet in my hip, she thought again.
That phrase came to her when Mr. Epic had said, “How’d you two like to see my little gun collection?”
Junior said, “I love a nice pistol.”
Stella shook her head. The last thing she wanted to see on Christmas Eve was a gun, but she found herself following Mr. Epic seconds later, and with Junior at her side. Those phrases: Hole in my heart. Missing molar in my mouth. The drug was getting to her, making her think thoughts again and again, forcing her to toy with phrases in her mouth. And she wasn’t even moving her lips.
Or so she thought.
Mr. Epic stopped at the end of the hall, turned to her and said, “What was that, Stella? Did you say something?”
“I said, ‘Bullet in my hip.’”
He rested a hand on the doorknob. “And what does that mean?”
Junior’s voice floated through the hallway: “Stella got shot.”
Mr. Epic lifted his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”
“I got shot before.” Stella planted a palm on her hip. “A .45 slug to my hip—it’s still in there, matter of fact.”
“Like shrapnel. Or a bad tooth.” Mr Epic looked surprised. His mouth opened slightly and his brow wrinkled. “My God.”
Junior said, “Don’t worry. She said it don’t hurt anymore.”
“Not like you’d think,” Stella said.
“What happened?” Mr. Epic’s face relaxed into a curious expression, his eyes wet and questioning, his jaw slack beneath his mustache.
“It was a long time ago,” Stella said. “Some punk shot me in a bar.”
Behind her, Junior said, “I thank the stars for his bad aim.”
Bad aim my ass, Stella thought. “He got my husband—shot him dead.”
Mr Epic sighed and twisted the doorknob. As he stepped into the office, he said, “I think I have a .45 we can take a look at.”
The guns were locked in a glass case. Mr. Epic opened a combination safe beneath his desk, removed a key and unlocked the case. The guns—all pistols—were set in foam, each with their own spot carved for snug lethal slumber. Mr Epic lifted one and handed it to Junior. Stella’s breath caught.
“It’s not loaded, Stella.” Mr. Epic cleared his throat, pointed out certain features to Junior. “See this? I had a gunsmith work on it there and, believe me, it shoots true. S&W nine millimeter…”
Junior nodded. “A beautiful piece,” he said. “Here, you hold it—”
—The gun was in Stella’s hands. “I don’t—”
“Don’t point it at me.” Junior guided her hand until the gun pointed at the desk. “You got to watch what you do, Stella.”
She liked how it felt; heavy, like a tool you’d carry to get some important job done. It was like a trombone or a trumpet. Or like a pair of drumsticks. She said, “How do you load it?”
Mr. Epic nodded and said, “Press that there.”
She did. A steel piece slid into her hand. Stella looked at it, peered inside and saw Junior’s finger tap at an opening.
“You put the rounds here. One after the other. On top of each other. Slide them in. And then—”
He guided Stella’s hand to shove the piece back into the pistol, press it upwards until it stopped with a satisfying click. She said, “Oh, jeez.”
“Now,” Mr. Epic said, “Once you load her up, you just fire again and again. It’s semi-automatic.” He smiled at Stella and shrugged. “What do you think?”
“Is it hard to shoot?”
“A kid could do it,” Mr. Epic said. “I’ll have to take you two out shooting sometime—a little target practice always makes me feel better.”
“Ooh. Me too,” Junior said. “Didn’t you say you had a .45 we could see?”
“Right.”
Stella felt Mr. Epic slide the gun from her hands, saw him place it back in its carved out foam indentation. But after it was gone, Stella still felt the weight of the gun in her hand, the dimpled texture of the thing against her palm and fingers. She watched Junior and Mr. Epic handle other guns, smile and nod at each other. They were getting along, and Stella watched from behind as if the scene was playing on a television in a film.
She didn’t speak, but instead continued to feel the phantom weight of the nine millimeter in her hands. It surged inside her—it was like the heart-pounding discomfort and ache of a missing limb.
Her bare ass on the toilet seat, Stella noticed how cold porcelain can get. It was Christmas Eve, after all, but in California you wouldn’t think a toilet seat gets cold—it does, Stella reminded herself, it sure as shit does. Stella studied her face in the mirror while she washed her hands. The skin on her arms and cheeks buzzed, like flies were crawling on her, but she knew there were no flies. It was the drug doing this to her. My, oh my. I’m rolling down a big hill. Stella pried at her forehead. She noticed the topography of lines there, like roads running crossways on a map, touching and crossing against each other. It was a map to all her worry; she spread her skin and made it smooth. She let it go and the lines reappeared. No escaping all that worry. Her dead husband’s face came into her head: Why in the hell, when she was around Junior, did she keep thinking about Virgil? The two men were connected in her head, but it wasn’t true in real life—was it? No, Stella. No, they aren’t connected. How could they be? It’s just that you have this attraction to Junior, and that reminds you of Virgil.
Okay, then. Another drink?
Stella flinched as a fist smacked the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Phoenix, Stella.”
The ugly bastard. Stella opened the door.
Phoenix brushed her aside and closed the door; he locked it and squinted at her. “Alright, miss singer-lady. Tell me who it is I can rip off here.”
“I’m sorry? I don’t know—”
“You know. It’s why you don’t like me.”
“Phoenix, I—”
“Give me somebody you don’t see too often. I’m just going to do a little credit card thing, get a few numbers. Take those home and I’m all good.”
“You’re asking me to give you a mark?”
“Now you got it.” Phoenix leaned back against the bathroom sink. He scratched one cheek and it made a sound like sandpaper against granite. “You think I’m here for all the jolly good cheer? You think I’m here for networking opportunities?”
Stella reached for the door and Phoenix slapped her hand.
“Ouch, you fucker. What do you think—”
Phoenix’s hand shot to Stella’s chest, pressed her against the wall. A towel rack dug into her right shoulder. His face came close to her and she saw ridges, bumps, deep valleys of scar tissue. His eyes were solid black to her, like pond water blots in his head. His hand was strong, vice-like against her breast, stretched up toward her collarbone.
“You’re fucking hurting me, you asshole.”
“I’m not close to hurting you—not yet.”
“What are you?”
“I’m an entrepreneur, you know? I’m the type goes out and takes what he wants. You see me all over the news.”
Stella flashed back on the moment twenty years prior when that tall dude entered her bar, to the moment when gunshots sounded, to the moment when her husband twisted in a pirouette and fell face down against liquor-scented cement. Another sucker punch, she thought. The world is punching me right in the fucking face. Sucker punch city. Just like it always is, and always has been. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m not giving you shit.”
