Liars, all

I take my eyes off Tommy and watch the cruiser as it rolls down the street towards us, slowing to a crawl.  I don't like doing it, taking my eyes off him, and it's not something I'd recommend, but I can't watch the car and Tommy all at once, so there it is.

I met Tommy about three years ago, when I needed something and someone sent me his way.  I didn't like him, I didn't trust him, and I guess I still don't, but for the time being I need him and I'm pretty sure he thinks he needs me, so I guess in that regard things are on an even keel.  He calls me, like he did last night, when there's something need's doing, something that might end up something of a mess, and we put our heads together and see what we can see.

I headed up the steps ahead of him, climbing the musty staircase with the broken handrail, the carpet worn to nothing where a thousand men like me had walked before.  I'd like to think, and I used to, that there were no men like me, that I was a different breed, set apart and unique in my abilities, but we're all killers and thieves, we're all the same, and I'm nobody special.

He let us in the door on the third landing and closed it behind me.  The apartment was cramped, littered with the evidence of a thousand years of solitary life, hidden away behind locked doors and ratty, faded wallpaper.  Dust pinwheeled in the air, suspended in shafts of light stabbing through the rents in the macrame curtains.  An ashtray sat half-full on a tv tray in front of the couch, reminding me of Virden and my mother.

We walked through the kitchen, the garbage already turning in the can, and headed into the bedroom, a sad little temple to loneliness and loss and the eventually accepted belief that it probably didn't matter in the first place.  There were little nicknacks covering every surface, dried out little snow globes and painted spoons from far-off places like Spokane and Lebanon.  The one in Kansas.  Maybe she'd had something of a life before, or almost did.  Maybe someone'd taken pity on her and brought these back, one by one, trying to convince her there was a world out there after all, a great big place full of horrible little towns to die in, and not some dinky one bedroom walkup in a wasting hulk of brick and rotting timbers.

Didn't work though.  So Tommy pointed me across the room, past the woman on the bed, to her vanity sitting spotless in the corner.  I don't know why, but I expected everything to be dirty, covered with dust and long-abandoned.  I always did, but it never was.  I don't know if that was a disappointment, but at the end of the day it probably made things easier, made it feel a little less like the grave robbing it was.

The mirror was clean, and as I gathered up the rings and bangles, the little pearl earrings and necklaces with bits of amber and coral, worthless jewelry worn around the house for years and years, I watched Tommy's reflection as he looked over the room, knowing full well there was nothing else for us to take, no strongbox, no bonds or cash, no silver or family pictures even.  That's probably for the best: Tommy's got a weakness.  It's the little ones, and I don't like that much but it hasn't got in the way yet, so I'm inclined to look the other way for the time being.

I packed away the rings and such and as we turned to leave we heard the front door open.  No voices came with the sound, and that said it all.  Tommy took off through the kitchen and I was right on his heels, crashing through the back door and flying down the lopsided steps and across the yard.  Over the fence and into the alley, we split up and were gone, without even a shout to fade away behind us.

I turn back to Tommy as the cruiser slinks off into the darkness, the taillights fading embers beckoning, drawing us into some new oblivion if we would only follow, and Tommy's smiling.



25 March 2012