STARDUST

KYLE

“You can date it almost to the year. By the configuration of the offset dots.”

Jonathan handed me the magnifying glass. I flipped through the pages and went over a few frames. Even though I know everything about the comic, Jonathan kept talking because he’s selling it to me.

“Never trust the first page. They always make sure that one’s clean in the press check. Go to the second half but near the middle.”

I did what he said. Which I would have done anyway.

“The colours are just realer than the inks today. Or maybe unrealer. Comic classic colours. Pop artist colours.”

“Right?”

Jonathan nodded, like this was something we both knew but was worth saying anyway.

“Before the pop artists ripped it off for all those indie-rock hipsters who thought comics were beneath them.”

Which is messed up because Jonathan is more of a hipster than anyone I’ve ever met. When he says stuff like this I always go ‘note to self, Google what he’s talking about when the computer’s working again.’ But by that time I’ve usually forgotten the conversation. And what he’s talking about won’t matter to a doofus like me anyway.

So I just smiled and pointed to the jacket Teri was wearing.

“Reds have faded a little.”

“Nothing you can do. Red’s the most unstable pigment. And what happens to a comic when it gets loose in the world is part of the narrative.”

“But it had to be a red leather jacket? Right?”

“Right. Because of old-school stereotypes of how a slutty woman dresses.”

Thoughtful sounding. Like he’s sensitive and enlightened. Jonathan kept talking even after I handed him back the magnifying glass.

“It’s classic on so many levels.”

“How much?”

He cringed a little. Like he hates taking people’s money. I pointed to the back cover.

“It’s a little creased.”

“Less than you’d expect for its age. I can give you a two for one deal.”

“Huh?”

He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. I knew this was coming and I sure could use some. But in light of some things I’d been hearing about Jonathan’s stash I was wary.

“Last time we talked you had a supply problem.”

His eyes moved randomly to a carefully plasticked set of Steve Ditko Spidermans on a shelf way above where anyone could touch them. I knew that look. Faraway and dark. Jonathan is old. As in so old he lived through the 70s, so he’s seen some stuff. I could tell he was about to say something troubling.

“Back in the day I had to worry about product being laced with angeldust, which messed people up. Now it’s Fentanyl, which makes people dead. There was something from a blog a few weeks ago. Someone thought he was taking Xanax and got offed ’cause it was full of the stuff. In the very hotel you work for.”

“Must not of been my shift.”

He shrugged and looked away. Like it was no business of his if it was.

“I didn’t trust the guy and I couldn’t live with myself if something like that happened. So I got a new supplier.”

“You tried it yourself?”

“I can’t do that stuff anymore. Makes me paranoid. But I fed one to Selina.”

He glanced over at her, curled up asleep in a cardboard box of unsorted Drawn and Quarterlys. I don’t know how many cats Jonathan has, I just know that Selina’s the black one. Blacker than the night sky in Krazy Kat.

“And she was fine. Just got a little happier.”

“What would that even mean with Selina?”

Jonathan ignored me. As he always does when I disrespect his cats.

“The dealer’s got a good rep. I’m pretty sure the stuff is clean.”

I got out of there $190.00 poorer. $140 for the comic book which Jonathan said was worth $200. And $50 for the gummies which Jonathan said he could have sold for $60. I didn’t even want to think of how many hours I have to work to make that back.

Jonathan’s shop is on The Meadows. Same street The Stardust is on, just five blocks up. I knew exactly how long the walk would take, and I knew I was going to be late even if I hurried, and I knew Miriam was not going to be happy. But what can you do when you’re with a guy like Jonathan and he’s got everything you need?

As I’m racing as fast as I can to my shift I can hardly get my head around what I’ve got in my possession. Run, Teri, Run. 1957. By Wendell Haynes. This very comic was singled out by the Comics Code Authority, the agency formed to protect the youth from the evils of comic books, which psychiatrists and moms said were bad. Said they turned the youth into juvenile delinquents and destroyed their brains for the finer things in life. Now we’ve got internet porn and no one talks about shutting that down so I guess comics were really evil.

Wendell Haynes could draw anything. He even worked for classy magazines drawing women holding cocktails and standing in expensive houses with uncomfortable furniture and big paintings that are just splashes of paint because that’s how the artist expresses all those painful feelings that own him. Wendell Haynes even did portraits for LP covers where the singer is smoking a cigarette and you can tell from his expression that he just lost his girl.

But the same year Run, Teri, Run came out, Wendell was found face down in a reservoir. The police said he left a note but no one’s ever seen the note. There are theories in the comics community that the FBI dropped him to send a message to all men who would corrupt the youth by making comic books.

Everyone likes a conspiracy.

I only like a conspiracy if you can make a good comic out of it.

Haynes was like an eyeball on people living life at the bottom. And what they do for money. Which includes robbery, extortion, prostitution, drug dealing, gambling, torturing, kidnapping, pimping, and shooting whoever wants a piece of the money they’ve gotten from robbery, extortion, prostitution, drug dealing, gambling, torturing, kidnapping, and pimping. What you never get is anyone trying to shut it down. Whenever a cop shows up, he just wants his cut.

Here’s what happens in Run, Teri, Run.

Teri’s paying off a debt from her addiction to heroin, a word Haynes wasn’t allowed to ink so the characters call it snow if it’s good quality and horse if it’s the stuff that can kill you from one hit. Her dealer is letting her pay off the debt by servicing men in suits who she meets in a hotel that looks a lot like the rooms in The Stardust. Meanwhile, Teri’s boyfriend Lennox runs numbers out of a pool hall and the mob don’t like how his bookmaking is changing the odds on games they’ve fixed. Even though you know it’ll end badly for everyone, you keep hoping Teri and Lennox will find a way out of that world and stay out. Have a baby and a mortgage and an amicable divorce just like normal citizens. Because deep down Teri and Lennox aren’t bad people.

So even though the CCA made Haynes poster-boy for leading young people into crime, that was actually the opposite of what he was doing.  His stories were a warning to people who think there’s glamour in crime. Maybe he’s the reason I don’t work for gangsters and instead I have a job working the nightshift at a hotel where I could get shot by just about anyone who walks through the door.

I arrived at The Stardust with Run, Teri, Run and a bag of gummies and I’m really hoping for a quiet night. Not that I want to read it fast, but I don’t want to be bothered while I’m making it last. I look at everything in each frame before moving to the next one. Wendell Haynes thought about every object and colour he put into those things. And the gummies slow everything down for me to enjoy it even more.

So because of the interlude with Jonathan and the complex business negotiations for two related but very different consumables, I’m five minutes late just like I knew I would be. Miriam doesn’t say a word. Just glares at me and picks up her purse and walks out from around the counter, and leaves.

I think Miriam came with the hotel. As in the day the hotel opened someone found a package on the shelf under the front desk. MIRIAM: JUST ADD WATER AND COOK ON MEDIUM HIGH HEAT FOR TEN MINUTES. When I open the drawer under the counter and give it a sniff that dark wooden hollow even smells like her. I know that sounds mean. I actually really like Miriam. I’ve never asked but I think her job title would be manager. Which means she figures out our schedule and gets money to do repairs and handles accounting and taxes and payroll. Payroll would be me and someone I never see who cleans but doesn’t clean very well and probably a couple more staff because there’s no way Miriam could cover all the hours I’m not here. I’ve seen other people behind the desk when I come in for my shift, I’ve just never really been introduced.

Why I’m even talking about Miriam and how she left the building is because that’s how I know it was five or six minutes after 7:00 when the guy walked through the door. Miriam had just gone out a minute before and I had just popped two more gummies. The bag now had eight left and Jonathan had given me 14. So by using subtraction I knew I had six in my body. It’s not that the shifts go faster on the gummies. It’s that fast and slow stop being a thing.

I’d read maybe the first two frames of Run, Teri, Run but I didn’t mind being interrupted because like I said I wanted it to last.

This guy who’d entered the lobby kind of went with the comic. He was wearing a Dick Tracy hat, and a long grey coat, and was carrying a suitcase a little bigger than a briefcase. Guy dresses like that means one of three things. One. He’s an actor preparing for a role and he’s gone full Method. Two. He’s flat out crazy. Or three. I’ve just had too many gummies, have no sense of what century I’m in, and it’s actually me who’s dressed wrong.

The suitcase the guy’s carrying would be too small for the average visitor, even in this place. About the right size for when men travelled in a suit with a couple of extra shirts and a flask of bourbon.

He was clean shaven and took off his hat and allowed the water that had pooled up in the hollow to pour onto what was left of the burgundy carpet. There’s worse things to spill the water onto. And worse things you could spill onto the carpet. I’ve seen both.

“I’ll need a room. Don’t know for how long. So how about I pay for a week upfront.”

I turned and looked at the row of keys to see what we had available. Which was pretty much every room. The only room I’m not allowed to have a key for is the room at the back of the staff area. That belongs to the owner. Who I’ve never seen. There’s a rumour he’s in Patagonia, which I think is next to Indonesia. The owner calls Miriam on her cell sometimes and I don’t know what the calls are about because Miriam mostly just nods and listens.

One thing that isn’t in the budget right now is a computer that works. And even when we have one, it’s not like we have any of those cards you just stick in front of the lock and the door opens. So I had to figure out what would be a good key to offer him. I’ve found guests do best when you offer them a choice between two, even when the whole place is empty.

When I turned back to the guy, I was almost surprised he was still there and that he looked the same. It took me a second to remember what I needed to ask him.

“Do you want streetfront? It’s louder. But some people go a little funny staring down at the fire-escape and the dumpster.”

“I’d prefer the back side. I like as much quiet as I can get.”

“Then I can give you room 2046.”

“How many rooms do you have in this place?”

“Fourteen.”

He hadn’t given me a name yet so mentally I was calling him the man from another time and another place. The man from another time and another place grunted when I said fourteen.

“And what floor would 2046 be on?”

“The fourth.”

“Course it is. How much?”

“Sixty a night.”

The man from another time and another place reached into his coat and brought out a stack of hundreds.

“We’ll still need a credit card.”

I’m not sure why a credit card is important when they have the cash, but Miriam freaks if I don’t copy a piece of plastic with a name on it. I guess it’s so the cops will have something to go on if one of the guests brings a woman back to his room and kills her.

“What do you do with credit cards if you don’t have a computer?”

“We have one of those machines you swipe.”

“You steal it from a museum?”

You could be in that museum I wanted to say but I didn’t and took the conversation in a different direction. Trying to be personable, Miriam calls it when she gets complaints that I’m not.

“You wouldn’t believe what you can buy in this town that no one uses anymore.”

He grunted again.

“How bout I show you a credit card and you take the cash?”

“I’ll have to record the card.”

“You got a tape recorder? Go ahead and record the sound of my voice.”

I’ve heard about tape recorders but I’m not sure how they work, so I didn’t have an answer to that one. I still had half of a gummy in my mouth and swallowed it.  By now it was less like I’d met a guy preparing for a role in a movie and more like it already was a movie and I was in it with him.

He counted out $500 in hundreds and handed it to me. He still hadn’t shown a credit card and at this point I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna see one. Sometimes that’s just how it is. I’ve got some expired ones people have thrown out and I just run one of those through and Miriam’s never called me on it.

“I don’t have the change for that. Do you have anything smaller?”

“Keep the rest for yourself.”

“I’m not allowed to take money for tips.”

“Oh. Right. You wouldn’t want to lose your job working in a quality joint like this.”

I figured he wanted me to laugh at that so I did.

“I’ll still need a name.”

I put the book in front of him. He printed and signed it Chester Kane. Fast. Like it wasn’t the first time he’d used that name.

I went and got Chester his key and gave him the gear. Bath towel, hand towel, washcloth and a bar of soap.

“Your room is second door on the left when you get to the fourth floor. The washroom’s right at the end of the hall. And, um, the wifi’s been down for a while. We’re hoping to have it up by the end of the week.”

“That’s a joke. Right?”

But he was already headed to the stairs so I guess he didn’t really expect me to answer. The gummies were really hitting their stride which meant how I’d turn the bills into smaller bills and take my cut was a problem I was in no condition to solve right now. So I just put all of it in the safe and went back to Run, Teri, Run. But I was too baked to make sense of the story and just ran my eyes over the colours on the first page. Not even reading the bubbles. I remember I couldn’t believe how loud the rain was outside and how fierce the cars sounded as they sloshed along The Meadows. I wasn’t doing anything but everything had come alive. It was gonna be a great shift.

MELODY

I was the one in our family who always knew when rain was coming. It probably started at the same time on both sides of the Danube, but looking across from our apartment I swear I could see raindrops glistening on the black windows of Buda an hour before they hit our windows in Pest. They always got everything before we did.

There’s a lot more rain where I am now. Even though most of the factories are shut down I still smell steel in the air before a downpour and I could tell a hard one was coming.

Usually I manage to get to the club a good half hour before the evening shift starts. It’s only two blocks away but I don’t like walking these streets in the dark. Coming home I don’t have a choice. I’m just lucky this is a town where most people who’d want to mess with me are asleep or passed out on drugs by then.

If l leave for work now no one notices me. I just get absorbed into the deadzone of rush hour. Those three dozen citizens who’ve figured out how to land themselves a job and a car.

But it’s the time of day when there’s bound to be people in the lobby of The Stardust, so I always leave through the emergency exit, and head down the fire escape.

The bottom flight is a drop stair. Counterbalanced. When I get to the bottom I make sure the wire’s still hooked on the last step before it pops back up. The other end of the wire is secured under the weight of the dumpster. That means I can pull the steps back down to ground level when I come home. Kyle, the guy at the front desk, let me borrow the key that opens the emergency exit from the outside. I went and got a copy made and that’s how I come and go.

I left even earlier today, trying to beat the late afternoon cloudburst which came on like a million hammers on a million nails just as I walked into the Garden Wall for a coffee and a donut.

I love all those dead rosebushes pressed up against the brick. Like a message to Adam and Eve that it wouldn’t be worth getting back in the garden even if it was allowed.

It’s always the same guy there and he looks barely legal age for working in this country. Short and stocky. And you can’t tell where he’s from. Like he’s mixed with everyone in the world.

“How can I help you?”

That’s how you know he’s a foreigner. No one in a shop who was actually born in this country ever says that. You learn it from a grammar book in your home country or from a teacher who learned it from a grammar book and she makes a big deal of living in an English speaking country but never opened her ears to how people actually talk.

But aside from that, this guy’s English doesn’t tell me anything. It’s the English without pitch or rhythm that everyone around here speaks. Not like me, where my accent gets me called Dracula’s wife by the other dancers.

I can tell the guy knows where I work because he always gives me the coffee for free. I just pay for the donut. And it’s not like I ever tip. Somehow he thinks I’ll sleep with him if he pours me 75 free coffees.

It’s the same with all the men around here.  When they learn I work in a club, they want me to have all the free stuff they can find for me.

I made the donut last as long as I could, but the rain still wasn’t letting up. It was time to go to work and I threw the knapsack over my shoulder and headed for the door.

“You’re gonna get soaked. Let me lend you my raincoat.”

That’s a lot of words from this guy. Usually all I get is ‘see you again.’

But I didn’t want him to give me his raincoat and make myself even more in debt than 75 coffees.

“That’s OK. I got clothes for every activity in here.”

I expected him to laugh at this but he nodded seriously. No idea what this guy is about but I’ll assume he’s living with his family who he supports on what he makes here, and they have him on a short leash. It didn’t look like he’d ever gotten close to a woman and I didn’t want to provide the final ΔP that made him snap.

So I just went out in my track suit and denim jacket and got soaked. The air conditioning in the club would dry me off real fast but it wasn’t going to feel good.

If I’d been smart I would have taken him up on the raincoat.

If I’d been really smart I would have called in sick and stayed home with miRNA, my betta fish.

CHESTER

The fourth floor felt like about ten. It’s not that I’m out of shape. It’s about how tired I get stepping over the residue of former tenants. People whose lives got soaked into the unvarnished wood, or else trickled down the stairway and into the street and merged with the rain and the grease and everything else that runs through the gutters of this town.

When I finally made it to the fourth floor, I put the suitcase down and looked to the end of the hall. No sound except something moving in the ducts that probably wasn’t human. There was a stale smell of fried fish but nothing that had been cooked recently. Which meant I might have the floor to myself. I give thanks daily for small mercies like that.

The room numbers get even more interesting when you see them on the doors. Mine had a plastic number 20, followed by a tin ‘four’ and a brassy ‘six.’ They were attached top and bottom with woodscrews, although none were straight and being in different fonts made it look like a room where kidnappers checked in to compose ransom notes.

The room across the hall had a 20 that matched the one on my own door. Must have been a two for one deal. No added numbers. Just 20. I guess four digits is twice as classy as two and I’m in the deluxe suite.

I didn’t have the stomach to check out the washrooms right away so I opened the door of 2046 and sat on the wooden chair they’d kindly provided for those of us who make it to the fourth floor. Along with the chair there was a dresser, a bed, a sink, and a hotplate. If I owned the place I’d dump the hotplates which accounted for the smell of fish cooked in an oil that shouldn’t be used on food.

There was a roll of toilet paper on the dresser, half of it left.  Somewhere in this town there’s the same hotel only you don’t get toilet paper. That’s the no star hotel. This would be the 0.1 star hotel.

I heard honking and an exchange of swear words and went to the window.

It was streetside. The anaemic pencilneck at the desk must’ve confused it with room 20. I thought about whether it was worth a trip back down four flights of stairs and another conversation with him and decided that having a view of the street might come in handy.

I pulled out my laptop and logged in on the barbershop wifi next door. I hadn’t really needed a haircut but it gave me a chance to ask for the password, since I wasn’t betting The Stardust would have wifi, and even if it did it was safer not to use it. I told the barber about a wife and a kid who don’t exist and who were waiting for a thanksgiving message. It was Tuesday so I was already half a week late. The barber gave a heard-it-all-before nod and told me the password. The password was ‘barbershop.’

I worked for about half an hour before I was through the firewalls and into the company and had found Mr. Donald’s files in the HR department. That’s always the way. IT and accounting have real security. HR are too busy organizing training on the perils of poor cybersecurity and leave everything wide open.

Daryl Donald’s file was exactly what I thought it would be from the e-mails I’d been following. Working there for two years as an IT administrator. The performance reviews weren’t stellar. Tickets unsolved that had to be actioned by other members of the team afterhours. And Daryl had accidentally given all staff access to one of the confidential drives on the Vice President’s system. I could just see the guy. Track pants and a faded Star Trek t-shirt he’d outgrown from the potato chips and chocolate bars he brings to work every day, in a matching Star Trek backpack. Along with the healthy lunch his mom packed for him and which he never quite finishes.

It’s the unlikeliest of guys who get ambitious and feel they deserve more. If those things fascinated me I guess I would’ve become a therapist.

I wrote the e-mail and saved it and scheduled it to send to Daryl at 3:33 pm tomorrow. Should hit him smack in the afternoon dead zone.

I clicked open one of the photos I’d saved. Closeup. Just two faces.

I retrieved the instamatic camera from my case, shot a photo of the screen, and waited for the image to develop. Amazing things these cameras. Even though the detail was diminished, the old school emulsion and paper bring the people to life. You’ve got to savour moments like that in a day’s work, and I did, and then slipped the photo in my pocket and put the camera away. Then I clicked on a map of the city and found my next destination.

I shut the laptop down, hid it under the mattress, and locked the door behind me as I went out.

Back the lobby the pencilneck was still behind the front desk, but now his forehead was resting on the counter. There was a comic book open underneath, which I guess softened it for his head. 

“Anywhere good to eat around here?”

When I spoke he raised his torso in a single slow motion until he was as vertical as a person can sit. It was spooky. If you’re making a vampire movie and need extras, I recommend this guy. The robotic movements, plus the fact that he’s rail thin and his skin doesn’t look like it’s ever seen the sun. Now imagine him doing that in a coffin.

It took him about nine seconds to process the question I’d thrown at him, at which point that breathless giggle of his started up again. I forced a chuckle back and went out.

I figured I’d skip dinner. Maybe at the place I was going I could order a drink with a lime wedge in it. Get my daily dose of vitamin C.

I walked two blocks northwest on The Meadows and turned right onto Refrain Drive and there it was, just where the road curves towards somewhere I don’t ever want to explore.

Two levels and the bottom level had a neon purple sign that flashed The Velvet Inspiration in wedding invitation cursive and I’d be R.S.V.P.ing my regrets to that one. The top floor was orange deco letters that didn’t flash but probably used to, and said The Velvet Consolation. Maybe they changed the name and didn’t want to send someone up on a ladder to take down the old sign. Or maybe they didn’t think about it at all.

There was no traffic. There hadn’t been since I left the hotel. I crossed Refrain Drive at a diagonal and entered the Velvet Inspiration.

Just inside the first heavy door was a narrow foyer with a girl wearing almost nothing. She was talking on a payphone with words that make sense in some country in east Europe that borders on Mars. I could hear a man’s voice on the other end and he didn’t sound happy.

The smells were already there in the foyer but they hit hard when I opened the door into the club. I’m sure those clubs smell the same in Belgrade and Managua and wherever the hell else these girls got their start. That unmistakable mixture of talcum powder, spilled beer, three dozen cheap perfumes and walls that never forget dead smokers. There are NO SMOKING signs in here but you can barely see them in the haze. 

I sat down, took off my hat, and a server was there instantly. She was in her 50s and I didn’t get a sense she worked here as a dancer back in the day. If I had to guess, I’d say she worked in a women’s prison and this was her way of easing into retirement. She had a metal changemaker on her belt, like the kind bus drivers used to use. No one who came in here was getting out of a tip just because he didn’t have the right denominations.

“Could I get a Manhattan?”

“I think there’s a bar out at the airport that makes them.”

“Alright. Then what can I get?”

“Beer is popular. Either brand.”

“You got the usual hard stuff?”

“So far you aren’t usual so I don’t know what that would be.”

“Can you do bourbon straight up?”

“I can do rye.”

“That’s 64% of a Manhattan so let’s do it. And could I get a lime wedge instead of a cherry?”

“We’re not licensed to prepare food here. Health regulations. So you can’t get either.”

“Nice to know you and the civil servants are looking out for my health. Almost like we’re all one big family. Don’t you think?”

“I think I’ll go get you your drink.”

I’d taken a seat at the back so I’d be the one watching everyone. Mostly guys in T-shirts and baseball caps sitting alone and not one of them knew he had the exact expression of the thirty other guys in the room. But I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was the women who were sitting still as statues in chairs up against the wall, planning their next move.

I didn’t think I’d find the one I was looking for. In fact there was no guarantee she worked here, or even in this town. But with the amount of club hopping in this business everyone knows everyone and this was the place to start.

Right now I was looking for any woman who saw everything but gave nothing away. Someone I never caught looking at me because she did it when I wasn’t looking at her.

The drink arrived. I handed the server a ten and asked her to take 15% for herself, and you’d swear that change machine was a calculator, the speed she crunched it out. Took me a good half a minute to do the math and know that she got it right.

It was rye all right. At least the part that wasn’t water.

A woman showed up at the table a few seconds after I took my first sip. I hadn’t seen her in the time I’d been scanning the room, which automatically got her the job.

“I’m Melody.”

I didn’t ask for ID so I can’t swear that was her real name.

“I haven’t seen you in here before.”

I would have thought that was something to be proud about but she made it sound like a bad thing. Maybe she was fishing for where I came from. Or maybe it’s just a thing people say. Whatever the reason I turned it around on her.

“That’s a pretty accent, Melody. I’ll guess Budapest. And since I’m a gambling man I’ll put my money on the Pest side.”

“Czech Republic. The Czech Republic side.”

“See. I was close.”

“Sure.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“We aren’t allowed. There’s no way to stop it really. But I’m good.”

“So, Melody. Maybe you can explain something. I’m curious as to why there’s an upstairs with a different name.”

“The VC?”

“That’s what it goes by?”

“The names don’t make any sense and are hard for foreign girls to say.”

“Didn’t you say Czech Republic?”

“No. I mean foreign foreign. I speak English good enough. Wouldn’t you say.”

“Super good enough. So downstairs is VI? Upstairs is VC?”

“You got it.”

“What’s the difference. Are the drinks fancier? Maybe I could get a Manhattan there.”

“No. It’s just where the private rooms are.”

“Private rooms. What happens in the private rooms?”

She looked away and shrugged. 

“Just some people like privacy. This isn’t very private.”

One of the reasons I’m dressed this way is because it’s the absolute last way an undercover cop would dress. I guess the costume still needs some work.

I took out five 20s. Fanned them just enough for Melody to see what they were. Palmed three and pushed the first two over to her on the table.

“I’m guessing there are women who maybe don’t follow the rules. For the right amount of money. I’m only paying in full for the best response here.”

“There are rumours that that happens.”

“Are you one of the women who’d know from experience that the rumour is true?”

Melody shook her head. I knew her attention was focused on the money because of how hard she was trying not to look at it.

“Would you know someone who could tell me a little more about this rumour?”

“Probably someone who’s been in one of the VC rooms.”

“That’s what I thought. Here’s the thing.”

As she waited for me to say more a 20-year-old guy sitting up at the stage turned and smiled at her. The in-your-dreams glare she gave back would get her the lead in any movie I’d ever want to direct.

I finished the drink and put it down.

“Certain preferences are to be considered.”

“Preferences?”

“Everyone has them. I’m no different.”

“OK.”

“What I like is the petit type. Hazel eyes. Black hair in a pageboy cut. Fair skin and a Greek nose. A mole on her cheek. I’d prefer it to be the left cheek, but I’m not overly fussy about that. And, as I mentioned before, this person should have some experience with the private rooms.”

“My sister would meet most of your criterias. Maybe even all of them on the right day.”

“Criteria.”

“Sorry?”

“As far as I know criteria never has an s at the end. Even if you have a long list of them like me.”

“Criteria. Thanks. My English improves.”

“Your sister have a name?”

“Reverie.”

“Are these names spelled the same in Hungarian as in English?”

“What do you think.”

If you can get a smile out of Melody you’re a higher pay grade than me.

“Is there a way you could send your sister to my table?”

“No. She’s off. She’ll be on tomorrow night.”

“So I should arrive the same time as I did tonight?”

“She’ll be later than me. But there’s no harm getting here first. You might meet someone you like even better.”

Sibling rivalry. It’s there even when they grow up on opposite sides of an ocean.

“You two being sisters I’m guessing she’ll come up and introduce herself to me like you did. Right?”

“She’s the shy one in our family. They’ll announce her for a stage dance. Or you can describe her to one of the other girls. Just don’t use her name. Or mine.”

“You really think I’m a cop?”

“I don’t think anything. It just starts trouble.”

“Good policy. You and your sister got any names other than the ones you use here?”

“Uh huh. You ever dress other than how you dress for here?”

“Uh huh. I’d say we both know how to dress for a gentlemen’s club. You sure I can’t buy you a drink?”

“How about you pay me for a drink and I’ll get it somewhere else.”

I smiled and slid the remaining three bills to Melody, put my hat back on, and stood up.

“Tell your sister I have more of these than I know what to do with and I’m dying to meet her. Maybe describe me to her. If you can remember what I look like.”

Melody nodded. But she wasn’t looking at me. She might have been nodding to anyone in the room.

When I got back to the hotel, the ectomorph was asleep on the loveseat in the lobby, his legs dangling over the far arm like he was boneless. The comic book was open on his stomach and his hands crossed on top of it. It didn’t look like he’d made much progress since I checked in.

I walked the four flights of stairs and went into 2046 and undressed as far as my underwear and got into bed. In the middle of the night I woke up for a few seconds when something bit me but otherwise I slept just fine.

REVERIE

“Again.”

“No. I’ve got it.”

“It could be better.”

“I’m fine with it not being better. I don’t plan to make a career out of this.”

Melody would satisfy anyone’s description of an east European instructor. She’s relentless when she gets into coach mode. It’s no mystery why those countries produce the best dancers and gymnasts.

“I’m not talking about how it looks. You need to know everything the pole is capable of. What if the friction of your thighs isn’t what you thought it would be at a certain point on the pole, and you slide?”

“You’ve seen how strong my abs are. I’ll pull myself up.”

“What’s the speed of free fall?”

“9.81 m/s² at straight Fg=mg. If you want to be fussyand compensate for air resistance, Fd​=21​Cd​ρAv², that would bring it down to—”

“Uh huh. And your head is how far above the floor?”

That was the first time since leaving Mexico anyone bothered to care about my safety. It shook me enough that I just nodded and got back on the pole.

That’s how I got started here. In the interview I’d lied about my experience in Mexico City, naming a lot of clubs I hadn’t worked in, half of them made up. I knew the names wouldn’t mean anything to the owner, who really does have a half-smoked cigar in his hand at all times (to call everyone in this industry a cliché doesn’t do justice.) I claimed to be the Anna Pavlova of pole dancing and I could tell the name meant nothing to him.  But I knew it wouldn’t matter. Everyone North of Tijuana thinks Latinas are good at this stuff.

But after sitting and watching the other women for an hour I realized I didn’t have a clue. I introduced myself to a few local girls, but they where all as dumb as the pole and took an instant dislike to anyone foreign. Melody was different. She was in the same boat as I was. Hungarian in her case, but had survival skills in six languages, including enough Spanish that we could talk privately. I said I’d pay her to teach me laybacks and spins. She answered that if she taught me I’d owe her, and that was worth more than money in this place. So the next morning, two hours before the club opened to the lunch crowd, we started training.

Basically, you jump up onto the pole, grab it with both hands, and straddle it. Then with your right hand firmly on the pole you release your left hand and use it to grab your right foot and pull it across the left leg so that the right knee becomes a brace against the pole. At that point you can extend your upper body. Getting back up is all about ab strength.

Once you have that down you can start to play around with the gravity points. How it feels to shift the relative height of your hips and your shoulders. It’s different for everyone, so you just have to figure it out on your own. Once you’re comfortable with that it’s fun experimenting with all the spins and reconfigurations you can do while you’re inverted.

I have fond memories of the days I spent with Melody, learning the acrobatics. I still don’t mind that part of the job. It’s working the private rooms that takes its toll. And because I’m illegal, cash from those dances is the only money I make.

The regulars aren’t a problem. But every new guy requires full attention.

He could be the guy who confuses this place for a therapist’s office and you’re not sure if you’re supposed to dance for him or take notes on a pad. Or he could be the guy who says nothing and makes you do all the work, staring at you the whole time in a way that doesn’t see you but still manages to make you feel violated. Or he could be the guy who has a lot to say to some woman who doesn’t even pick up the phone any more, so he says it to you instead. Or he could be the guy who seems decent enough and who’s probably just too shy to meet women any other way, until the moment he stops being shy and you discover he’s a long way from decent. Or he could be the guy who just wants to talk about his car. Each type requires a different strategy. And because you never know which ones will turn very bad very fast, you can’t let your guard down for a second and it’s exhausting.

Which is why all of us need a few minutes to ourselves over the course of a shift. We all get it differently. I know women who find a table in the corner and go into their heads and make all the eyes that are staring at them disappear. That doesn’t work for me. I need to go physically invisible. So I head to a corner table at the back of the VC floor and sit underneath it with my back to the wall. It helps that I’m 151 cm and fit easily with my legs up tight against my chest so no one can see me.

The tables on the VC floor are there so a guy can leave his friend sitting in front of his overpriced beer when he goes with one of the women into a private room. Except that not many customers bring a friend because not many customers have one. And absolutely no one ever sits at this table. 

Melody had prepared me so I knew who it was even when all I could see was his legs. Slow. Measured. Like how men walk in the movies when they’re on the way to a meeting that has a good chance of ending in gunfire.

He plunked a couple of glasses onto the table over my head. Then stepped back and grunted in the way that men of a certain age do when they bend over to look under something.

“The server said I’d find you here.”

I expected it to be weird, but this was insane. He couldn’t have been over 40 but in that outfit he should have been 100. The guy put his whole palm over the crown of his hat and lifted it. Like when a man meets a woman in the same kind of movie I just described. His hair was lacquered and shiny from some product I didn’t think you could buy anymore. A stage light reflected in it could do retinal damage.

Grey slacks and brogues and a coat almost ankle-length and an even less interesting grey. He was like a ghost from when this town still had hope and this building housed the fanciest restaurant around and the ghost brought his wife here every year because it’s where he proposed to her.

Best case scenario, I’d exchange a few words with the ghost and then he’d disappear back into the emissions and the asphalt and the rain.

I should have been so lucky.

All the time I was thinking these thoughts he was scrutinizing me. Close enough I could see his eyes scanning my face and fixing on the mole on my cheek. I’ve gotten that from guys all my life and I’ll never stop hating it.

“Comfortable there?”

“I’m on my break. A lot of guys don’t know what that means so it works best if they don’t see me.”

“Happy to wait.”

“We’re good. I was just finishing.”

I wasn’t but I tossed the last third of the cigarette into my glass anyway. You really don’t want to touch the carpet here, so I’ve trained myself to shift onto my heels without using my hands, duckwalk out from under the table, and then stand up. It’s hard to look sexy that way but from what Melody told me, that wouldn’t matter. As far as this guy was concerned I was already hired.

Knowing I was already hired wasn’t a great feeling.

I figured I’d just hear him out and go with my instinct. Everyone who works here says go with your instinct but if they took their own advice they wouldn’t work here.

“Your sister said I should talk to you.”

“Which sister?”

“You have a lot of family working here?”

“There’s nothing like family.”

“It was Melody I talked to. From the Czech Republic.”

“Right.”

“You from The Czech Republic too?”

“Venezuela.”

“Must’ve been rough on your mom picking you two up from school.”

“Are you always this much of a dick?”

“I’m actually on my good behavior tonight. The people I’ve talked to say you’re just what I’m looking for and I don’t want to mess things up.”

“Imagine what you’d be like if I wasn’t just what you were looking for and you wanted to mess things up.”

“Well, you’re not going to believe the proposition I have for you.”

“Órale, vámonos.”

Always toss in a couple of words from your native language. Ones that just fill space and don’t require him to say anything back. It makes him feel cool and it gets bigger tips.

He picked up the drinks and followed me to the farthest room. The one that Ahmad watches the hardest.

I closed the door behind us and looked straight into the camera no one can see. Which is how I signal to Ahmad that this one is iffy so keep an eye on me.

In the reflection of the big window I saw my new friend put the two glasses on the low table you can dance on if that’s all that’s required. It’s the only furniture in the room other than loveseat, which if we’re being honest gets way more action that the table. All the private rooms have two-way mirrors installed. It’s required by law, and it means that we can’t see out but anyone can look in. The right money makes sure nobody does. Ahmad manages that.

Ahmad has every skill you need for his job. What’s weird about it is that I can go weeks without seeing his face and he sees every inch of me, on every shift.

I’ve only had one tense moment with Ahmad in the entire time we’ve worked together. And it wasn’t in the club.

I’d been thinking it would be great to come home to a pair of eyes that don’t care if I’m dressed or undressed. So I went to the pet store to buy a fish, since fish are the only pets allowed in my apartment. The second I saw this purple betta swimming in its little plastic cup I fell in love with her. None of the other fish were doing anything much, so it was like this fish was signaling that she felt the same way I did and we just had to be together. But as I was reaching over for her I heard a voice I recognized speaking a language I didn’t. When I looked over to the rodent cages, there was Ahmad, with his little girl, looking at gerbils. I almost had a stroke. Just the thought of Ahmad and me under the fluorescent light facing each other like normal people. I’ve never felt so naked. So I left fast before Ahmad could turn and see me, and I’m doing fine without a fish. Though one night I dreamed that a woman came in just after me and bought the purple betta and gave her a good home. I could tell the woman worked in the same business as me, and could relate to life in a glass bowl.

I stopped thinking about fish when the new client slapped $500 on the table next to the couch.

“I should introduce myself. My name’s Chester.”

For a few seconds I had trouble breathing. As if his size required so much oxygen there wasn’t enough left in the room for me. But I got it under control as he bent towards me, offered his hand, and shook it like a man whose contracts are always a handshake. Then he stepped back and sat on the far side of the couch, making sure there was lots of space between us. He didn’t strike me as a guy who liked small talk so I started in on the rules.

“Here’s how it works. We agree on—.”

He waved it off.

“That handshake is the only physical contact we’re ever going to have.”  He reached in his pocket. Pulled out two cigarettes. Put them between his lips. Lit them both and passed one to me. It’s a move you usually only see in movies as old he was trying to look. I wanted to slap myself to make sure this was all really happening.

Then he reached into a side pocket and pulled out a polaroid I could tell was a photo of a computer screen. When I didn’t reach for it he held the photo about 35 centimetres from my face.

“Since you’re one of the two people in the picture I’m betting you can tell me something about the other one?”

I looked him in the eye and nodded.

“He pays well. Right?”

I sat back. Didn’t look at anything. Didn’t say anything.

“You and Melody. People can say what they like, but intelligence is in the genes.”

“What makes you call us intelligent?”

“You knew not to touch the photo and you both know better than to talk about clients. But I have a few questions that need answers. That’s what the $500.00 is for.”

“OK.”

He nodded.

“When you’re together he takes pictures with his phone. Right?”

“Lots of pictures. That’s mostly what he wants.”

“Thought so. He lets you take them?”

“Yeah. He likes that.”

“You’re doing great Reverie.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled a bigger stack of bills and just held on to it.

“You only get this if you decide to take the job. If you don’t take the job the $500 I put down is still yours and it’ll pay for us never having had this conversation.”

“OK.”

“His phone. He doesn’t have face recognition. Does he?”

“No he’s always punching in a code.”

“I thought so. I’m guessing it doesn’t work in this light.”

“Or he doesn’t trust it. A lot of guys are like that. They drink too much. Anyone could get the phone and hold it in front of their face.”

“Right. So you know what I need. And just to make things perfectly clear, if you want to walk away, you still keep the $500. If you decide to take the job, the K I’m holding is the first half. You don’t come through I want it back. You come through I give you another K. What do you say?”

I grabbed one of the rye and gingers, leaving the money for the time being.

Memorizing phone codes is the new Murphy scam. Someone gets the passcode and a partner nabs the phone on the street. Gets to the bank info before the guy sobers up.

This setup he described was way too easy for what he was paying. So I knew he was after something big. And it’s hard to pass up that kind of money for so little work.

“What good will the passcode do if you don’t have the phone?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“But you don’t want to overthink it. Do you.”

It wasn’t a question. I drank slowly pretending I hadn’t already decided. It’s pretty hard to look anywhere else other than the mirror, and I was trying not to meet his eyes in it. Not that it would have mattered. The few glimpses I’d got of his facial expression told me nothing. If I had to guess what he was thinking I’d say he was reminding himself that he was out of clean shirts and underwear and needed to hit a laundromat later tonight.

“Alright. I’m in.”

“That’s very good news for both of us.”

He pulled out his phone and showed me his number.

“Text me your schedule. With arrival times as accurate as you can make them.”

I got my phone and keyed his number into my contacts. I didn’t want to record the name he’d given me so I typed James Knox Polk. No Mexican has trouble remembering the gringo who stole Texas.

He didn’t say anything else. Just tossed the stack of bills onto my lap, put his hat back on, and got up and went back out into the rain, which had just started up again. In this room you can always hear it against the fire-escape.

He hadn’t touched his rye and ginger and I’d only taken a sip of mine. I never drink at work but I downed both of them in a minute and then stood up and left the room. I don’t recommend that if you’re my bodyweight and in heels. I barely made it back to my happy place under the table where I sat for a long time smoking and trying to think of something happy.

DARYL

The meeting with Millicent was feeling a lot like my last meeting with the faculty of a university I no longer attend.  I’m not going to name it because it gets enough promotion just by existing and doesn’t need or deserve my help. Let’s just say it’s considered by many to be the best school for science and technology on this continent. If not this planet.

My paper was flagged because Dr. Raban said its thesis and the proof of it were identical to what Fahire Hisar had proposed. And since Fahire had submitted hers 47 minutes before I submitted mine she must be the honest one. Clearly, I’d waited until she uploaded it to e-mail, hacked into the university server, found it, paraphrased it, typed it up, formatted it, and submitted it. All in 47 minutes.

And the staff here are supposed to be good at math.

What actually happened was that Fahire came up to me after Dr. Raban’s game theory seminar saying she was interested in something I’d said about the Nash equilibrium. And I was dumb enough to open the file on my tablet and show her what I’d been working on.

I was summoned to the student judicial committee to defend the integrity of my paper. I’d titled it Von Neumann, Nash, Tucker: How the fathers of game theory built a ladder to scale the prison wall. One of the members of the committee said that I’d come up with a better title but that a better title didn’t mitigate criminal behaviour. Another member disagreed about the title, taking exception to the word ‘fathers’ as metaphor, which ‘screams patriarchy, and in the name of incontrovertible first principles are we ever going to get past that?’

When they told me that Fahire was in a separate room being questioned at the same time I laughed. When the one who’d liked my title asked why I was laughing I said that I was laughing because we were playing out the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The one who’d taken exception to my title said that if I found humour in deception, mendacity, and shame, a comedy club would be a better fit for me than the most prestigious science university in the country. I wanted to point out that comedians get cancelled even faster than academics these days, but I was tired of these people and just wanted the meeting to be over.

Fahire got off, even though there was no proof against either of us. I doubt that it had anything to do with the time sequence of the submission. When in doubt, punish the white girl.

Game theory is a joke. That was my thesis, and apparently Fahire’s too. It’s a joke because the argument starts with a unilateral decision. And unilateral decision-making presupposes restricted information. That information systems are subject to entropy is hardly news. My point was that any encryption strategy—analog or digital—is also subject to entropy. I even came up with an airtight proof. Oh, right. I forgot. I stole it.

Actually, the situation between me and Fahire provided a real-life example of the thesis. Nice meta-irony.

They told me I had until midnight to collect my things and leave the campus from which I would be persona non grata for 99 years. I said 89 would have been more mathematically resonant since it’s a Fibonacci number and the product of 89 x 365.24219 is still guaranteed to be a number larger than my remaining days. Unless they bought into Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence in which case not even ∞ would suffice because we’d be back doing this with minute variations each time the universe rebooted. Inevitably in one of the reboots I’d be a mass murderer and obliterate everyone in the room. When none of them responded I got up and walked out.

Game theory got one thing right. Criminal savvy always trumps fairness.

After getting expelled from one of the best schools in the world, I landed a low-level job in a slimy investment company. And my performance is substandard even here. Or so Millicent, the head of its HR department, had been telling me before I was distracted by memories of past injustices.

I pulled myself together and did my best impersonation of someone who gives a shit.

“So what do you suggest I do to improve my performance?”

“Objectively, Daryl, you perform as well as anyone. Better than many.”

“Last I checked that was a good thing.”

“We’ve been through this. The problem is in the way you talk to people.”

“Do you know how many calls I’ve had on how to use the VPN?”

“These are new technologies Daryl.”

“I’m not asking anyone to build a can opener. I just expect them to use one without my help.”

“An interesting analogy. Since can openers are used to get into things and a VPN is used to keep people out of things. Also I might remind you that the security breach we had was related to your implementation plan.”

“Given that I was the one who informed the CEO that we were woefully behind in having such a plan, then built it and trained everyone for it, it’s unsurprising that I’m the one who’s going to be held accountable. I can’t help it if the staff are idiots incapable of following procedures.”

“Are you suggesting, Daryl, that our staff is different from the staff of other organizations?”

“We’re not a Fortune 500 company.”

“Might I suggest, Daryl, that more is gained by encouraging success than by censuring failure.”

“A noble sentiment, Millicent, expressed with the eloquence I’ve come to expect from you. Are we done?”

“For now.”

Back at my desk in the sub-basement—some cryptogenius thinks putting us in a concrete bunker prevents hacking the server room—I noticed a new e-mail. With a suspicious URL, as though this were a test to identify the employees who get tricked by phishing requests. Except that I’m the only one here who creates those tests. They’re a lot of fun. I can see why God got off on dropping random ordeals into Job’s life and watching them shred his nervous system.

The guy who wrote this e-mail claimed to be a friend of Todd Ramsey, who works in our company. That gave me a chill. And the tone of the e-mail was too aggressively unprofessional to be phishing.

The man said he was starting an investment brokerage and Todd had recommended me as the most knowledgeable person he’d ever met when it came to cyber-security. He said there’d be a lot of money in it for me. I could write him back, but if I didn’t, he was in town and would drop by and introduce himself in the next few days. He didn’t say where he planned to drop by so I figured it would be wise not to be anywhere I usually am.

I ran some diagnostics on the e-mail and found it had been set up as a scheduled release for 3:33 today.

Here’s the thing. It may be easy to find me. But it’s just as easy for me to find the person who found me. And I was pretty sure I was better at this than he was. Which was why he was after me in the first place.

It took me ten minutes.

His hardware was in a hotel called The Stardust six or seven blocks away. That meant he’d come into town specifically to see me. Not just locate me as a cyber-presence but actually interact with me, flesh and blood. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing but right now my best bet was to install myself in a hidden cranny and plan my next move.

Shouldn’t be hard. This is a town of hidden crannies.

I’d been here since 7:00 am and done well over a day’s work. So I packed up and left the building and walked our town’s main drag which street signs simply call The Meadows. The Meadows slices diagonally southeast from the sadly indestructible Richardsonian city hall—on whose clock 9:11 is as frozen as the 1927 carved above it—and ends abruptly at a block’s worth of mangled shopping carts, graffitied rubble, and inert vagrants.

Before the droughts came the lot was an unlandscaped greenspace so my best guess is that The Meadows was named by someone in municipal planning who privileged the destination over the journey.

Just across the street from The Stardust is a narrow lane that has no name either on signs or maps and ends at a metal gate topped with razorwire. The only business still operating on the lane is a lonely coffee shop whose angle gives a full view of The Stardust.

The shop has a name, but you have to have lived here a long time to know it. The smashed

mosaic tiles over the door used to spell ‘The Garden Wall.’ The sign pairs well with the dead

rosebushes against the crumbling brick.

I went in and sat up at the window so I’d have a full-on view of The Stardust. There was a single lit room on the fourth floor and in its window I saw a man in a fedora scanning The Meadows and everything in its vicinity.

I couldn’t imagine a guy like that owning a computer or a smart phone. But maybe that was the point. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

I hadn’t planned on him seeing me but I was glad it worked out that way. That his eyes didn’t stay on me meant my hunch was right and he’d never seen me before. That was a small comfort.

The only employee in the place walked over to me. His voice was just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the coffee maker and the refrigeration unit.

“I like your T-shirt.”

I didn’t do anything with that. I have three of these T-shirts, and I only wear them so that I’ll look like I’m such a computer nerd I could never be a threat to anyone.

“Just coffee. Nothing in it.”

“No problem. And it’s free.”

“Free?”

“Yeah. Because it’s your first time.”

As though caffeine is a new drug and creating addicts is a loss leader on future return. His smile didn’t improve things.  It was the smile of a stranger on an elevator telling you he could sure use a hug.

“I know everything about my customers which is how I know I’ve never seen you here before.”

That’s so creepy it amazes me that anyone comes in here twice. But I let it go because I didn’t want us to talk more than we had to. He brought the coffee over and I drank it very, very slowly.

At 7:00 the guy on the fourth floor still hadn’t returned to the window. And no one had appeared in any of the other windows. I got up and put down a $10.00 bill which as a tip percentage is mathematically incalculable, given that the bill was $0.00, tax in. Maybe I got played. Maybe saying there was no charge was a trick to activate an agreeableness gene I’ve never been accused of having. 

But really, I was paying for an excuse to kill as much time here as I needed to if I had to continue my surveillance later on.

I left The Garden Wall and crossed to The Stardust. Two girls were standing in front of the barbershop next door to the hotel. Texting. I’ve seen them there before and my guess is they’ve figured out how to tap the barbershop wifi. There’s no way in hell that girls this surly and hermetic have boyfriends, so they’re probably texting each other. Hoping that someone from school might notice them and think they’re popular.

As I reached the far sidewalk one of them bent over to stroke a black cat and it scratched her and she used the obvious expletive and then told her friend she had better things to do and walked away. The friend didn’t even look up from her phone.

There was no one in the lobby of The Stardust other than the clerk who was asleep in a chair behind the desk. His head was tipped back as he snored and his mouth was open to the crumbling ceiling medallion. There was a comic book in front of him open to page 12 and 13. I couldn’t see a service bell, so I just knocked on the counter.

When he opened his eyes he didn’t seem surprised about where he was. Or embarrassed about being asleep on the job. Or even mildly startled. But his pupils were dilated. One more than the other. So I guessed he was on a ton of dope. I probably would be too.

“Any rooms?”

“Rooms?”

As though that was a strange thing to ask a concierge, if I can call him that with a straight face.

“I’m not sure what my plans are. I just wanted to know if you still had occupancy. In case I end up needing it.”

This time he responded with the stoner laugh. That uninflected, barely audible laugh that consists of the limbic system taking way too long to call a meeting with the prefrontal cortex and the two eventually agreeing to wake up the brainstem and make it tell the vocal cords to laugh.

“There’s, like, no one here. Ever.”

“Funny. I saw a guy in the window. Dressed like a gangster.”

“Yeah. Well it’s him and one other guy we see every month or so, when he’s not getting along with his wife. And a working girl on the second floor. She’s been staying in room 6174 for a month or so now. Oh, and there’s a couple of religious guys on the top floor.”

“Religious guys?”

“You know. White shirts and thin ties and Bibles. They leave early in the morning and don’t take the free coffee. Just go door to door selling God.”

Where would you even start on security training if you hired a guy like this? Was what I was thinking. And that I wouldn’t drink the free coffee in this place either.

“You said something about a working girl? Meaning?”

“You know. From the club around the corner. My guess is they’re not employed legally so it’s hard to get references for apartments. We’ve had them since forever. They’re no trouble. They don’t bring work back to the hotel.”

The things you learn.

“The guy with the hat. Sounds like he’s been here for decades.”

“Nah. Just checked in yesterday. Said he might be here for a week.”

I didn’t acknowledge that information. Just changed the subject.

“This place got a gym or a spa?”

That started him laughing again. What is wrong with me?

“Alright then. If I decide to stay, I guess I don’t have to reserve.”

I went out. The religious guys and the guy who came and went were non-starters. I didn’t think club girl was my problem, but I don’t underestimate anyone in that business. One of the women in our operations department cleaned out all the cash boxes one night. When we investigated, we found out she’d been a club girl. Went by the stage name of Paradise. No one ever saw her again so she probably headed back to Montenegro or São Paolo or wherever.

I went back into The Garden Wall and I think the server was a little scared to see me again so soon. You get that from guys when you’re a woman as grumpy as me and come back into their space right after you left it. They’re worried you’ve just gone home to grab your can of mace or a pistol.   

“It’s the coffee. I don’t know what you do with it but it’s magic.”

“Do you want a butter tart to go with it this time?”

“Do you have a dinner menu?”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah. It’s something a lot of restaurants have. Dishes that are more than a snack and have all the food groups. Big portions of the unhealthy ones.”

“Yeah. There are places that have that.”

“The name made me think this was one of them. The Garden Wall. Sounds established. Maybe even historic.”

“The original owners were a Priest and his brother. It was to remind customers of how Jesus and the disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane after their last supper.”

“Right. I remember that from Sunday School.  They were still hungry so they grabbed some coffee and butter tarts and ate them in the garden.”

He was at a loss for an answer to that and I felt he’d earned his tip just from having to deal with me.

“I’ll just have another coffee. Anywhere I can get a paper?”

“Is that still a thing?”

“Never mind.”

He was right. Even if a paper would cover most of my face, it would be more conspicuous than staring at my phone. Anyway, I didn’t have to wait long. The guy in the fedora hit the street looking so much like a gangster no one would ever think he was a gangster. The classic Hollywood disguise is counterintuitive, but I get it. He’s not trying not to be noticed. Everyone sees the outfit but not the face.

I threw down $10.00 again. If I keep paying tips like this and the guy will have a shrine of me in his room. Back at the basement apartment where he lives with his mom and half a dozen aunts and nephews who showed up in this town one by one because, heaven help us, it’s better than where they came from.

I followed my man to the corner of Refrain Drive and watched him enter the Velvet Inspiration. Then I went home.

I’d found out where he was staying and one of the places he went. A fair payoff the few hours I’d spent on the problem.

It shouldn’t be hard to keep an eye on him as I planned my next move.

I didn’t have a clue what that would be.

REVERIE

It’s common sense that the trunk of a car wouldn’t be climate controlled, I just never thought of it until I got thrown into one.

But I guess the world is full of things most people don’t bother to think about. Like why women in clubs never tell you where they’re really from.

Here’s how it works. If you meet her in a club and she tells you she’s from Venezuela that’s code for any Spanish-speaking country that isn’t Venezuela. Since Venezuela is the Venn diagram where beauty pageant density and plastic surgery density intersect, people figure it must have the most beautiful women in Latin America. (Seems to me the phenomenon could just as easily mean the opposite.)

If she really is from Venezuela then she says she’s from Colombia. 

It’s not that the dancers here are worried they’ll track down our families and tell them what we’re up to. It’s about protecting everything you possibly can about who you are. Your real name. Your real home. Your real history.

But if a client drops a lot of money and keeps coming back to you, give him little nuggets. Like your actual nationality. It makes him think he’s different from all the other guys.

So I told him the truth. That I grew up with my parents and an older brother in a two-room apartment at 15 Avenida San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Lucia, Mexico City. Santa Lucia’s not a terrible colonia. Just not one that you’d boast about being from, or that a tourist would ever wander into. And if you escaped a Catholic education, or you tuned out whenever the nuns got talking about saints, Saint Lucy was the one who saved her virginity by gouging her own eyes out. Which I guess is a mood killer even for a rapist. I’d opt for gouging out the eyes of the rapist, but that’s just me.

The second I saw him reach for his phone, I launched into a narrative pretty close to the one above. That’s how you bring off the password scam. All the women here have done it with someone. Once you confirm you have the password there’s a guy waiting outside, hoodie up, head down. He snatches the phone from the mark and runs, then passes it invisibly to a guy in a sport jacket half a block up walking the opposite direction. Even if there are street cameras it’s too many moves to put together.

But that’s not your problem. All you do is get the password and get paid and you’re done.

So I told my story to the client and it froze him for a second. He could tell I was giving him something real, which meant I was confident and relaxed about having my eyes on the phone as he keyed in his password. I’d carefully set my own phone next to me, where he couldn’t see it, and I was so sure of myself that even before he’d finished keying I pressed send with the OK icon, letting Chester know we were all good.

There’s a lesson in hubris. We were light years from all good.

As soon as I’d sent the message, I realized that his password was ‘Reverie.’ That sure as hell threw me. And my eyes went back to the phone when they had no business doing that. And he noticed.

The bad side of being small is that it means I’m easy to grab and carry out of the exit, down the fire escape, and into the trunk of a car. The scariest part was the last flight of steps, which falls when the weight on it passes the centre of gravity that keeps it horizontal the rest of the time. When we hit the tipping point I was sure we were going to be thrown onto the asphalt.

I imagined the sirens. I imagined the EMS workers strapping us to twin gurneys. I imagined the surgeons piecing us back together. I imagined the nurses assuming we were a couple. I imagined them positioning us so that we were motionless and staring at each other. I imagined the day we were pronounced medically unsalvagable and they switched off our life support.

Compared to that, the trunk of a car isn’t so bad. That’s what I was thinking when the vehicle lurched backwards and then tore into the street. I moved my arms and legs as much as I could in the space, and confirmed I hadn’t broken anything.

The good thing about growing up in Santa Lucia was that I could live at home for most of my school years. By the time I reached the age for primaria my Dad and my brother were able to scrape up the tuition for the best English immersion school in CDMX. The teachers were old hippies who’d left Harvard for a place their trust funds would stretch further, and that offered an endless supply of psilocybin. That’s why I speak better English than most of the people born in this town, for whom its their first and only language. After preparatoria I was accepted into medicine at Universidad Nationale Autonoma de Mexico. But when it became clear that that was going to be more years than we could afford, I switched to studying civil and chemical engineering, completing a double program in four years. With that I was sure I’d have a high paying job and permanent residency here in no time and be able to send money home.

Still working on permanent residency. In the meantime, I have to keep taking basic math classes at a community college where I just show up for exams that I can ace in my sleep. It allows me to keep renewing my student visa and not get deported. Right now I’m between visas due to yet another ‘adjustment’ to Federal legislation. This is code for the country getting tax money out of us and then getting rid of us without looking like that’s what it’s doing.

That things didn’t go the way I’d planned is irrelevant right now. What’s relevant is that my chemical specialization was polymers, so I know a lot about polymethyl methacrylate (specific gravity 1.19) which you likely know as Lucite. Think of me in transparent size-five Lucite shoes with a 6.3 cm platform and a 15.25 cm heel tapering to a 0.7 cm² surface area at the point, a heel to toe ratio that, standing, puts 58.7% of my weight onto the ball of my foot. At 0.385 kg per shoe, my footwear constitutes 86.5% of all that I’m wearing (piercings in) and the pressure on each of these heels, with my weight distributed evenly on both feet, is 1,393 kilopascals. Give or take. With those numbers you can calculate my weight to within half a kilo. Make sure to show your work.

What makes Lucite a great polymer is the acrylonitrile groups that form ultra strong interactions between the chains. That’s why we wear them on stage. We aren’t likely to break a heel.

Here’s what else is good about them. They’re a weapon.

A dancer friend in Zona Rosa once wacked a guy through the head with a shoe very like mine. Heel went through the periosteal layer of the skull, the meningeal layer, the arachnoid, the pia mater, and finally came to a stop four millimetres into the frontal lobe. I don’t think that’s incommensurate with the stuff the clientele in that place dish out. But the courts gave her two years at the Centro Feminil and they know best.

So be educated about your weapon and use it accordingly. I usually keep my footwear on when I’m with a customer. But if I sense it going bad, I’ll coyly pull one shoe off and keep my hand on it. Men love having you semi-discalced and don’t bother to imagine that anything’s up. Sure, you have more power in your legs, but that only helps if you’re positioned right, and the strike is harder to direct accurately. Whereas a good swing with the shoe in your right hand can take out an eye. I’ve never done that, but I have delivered a quick blow to the windpipe, which is a great nerve centre. It doesn’t take much to have the guy wailing for his mother until Ahmad gets there.

Sorry. My thoughts are usually a lot more organized. I guess that’s what happens when you get kidnapped.

The guy who put me here goes by the name of Todd, which is almost a default setting for men who come into the Velvet. I’ve had about a dozen Todds since I started in this line of work, but who knows? Somewhere there must be a guy with Todd printed on his birth certificate.

Todd’s a bad guy to underestimate. He knew where the back door was and had me down the fire escape, and in the trunk of the car in 15 seconds. Ahmed’s fast but not that fast.

Todd’s a regular and we have him on video. But so what? We don’t know his last name and aren’t even sure about his first name. We don’t have a clear image of his face and the only people who could ID him are me or the other girls. And like that’s gonna happen.

But he did leave me with my shoes on. And with my phone. Which is thanks to Ahmad chasing him as far as he could and distracting him as he dumped me in the trunk.

Todd talks a lot about his car, and much of what he says about its capability violates the laws of physics. But if you’re in my profession and the guy tells you technical nonsense the way Todd does, the best way to keep the money coming in is to make your eyes big and nod like this stuff is really interesting but way beyond what your tiny brain could ever comprehend.

Another reason to listen rather than talk is that you never know what information could be useful to you someday.

Here’s what turned out to be useful. Todd drives a mid-70s e-series Jaguar. Which means no luminous trunk release inside. But it also means a latch with a wire release.

I pulled off both shoes (No way I’m running with one of them on.) The best thing going for me was that the stereo was turned way up, which meant he wouldn’t hear anything coming from the trunk. The Jag’s updated sound system was blasting Bad Guy by Billie Eilish, which I guess Todd doesn’t get enough of in the club. Or maybe it helps him relive the magic. It’s heavy on bass so probably he was using it to drown me out if I yelled for help. Not that he needed to be worried. The e-series is loud. A V-12 engine with 400 Newton-metres of torque and a roar that, according to Todd, emulates the growl of the eponymous jungle cat. It’s probably how he’d like his women to sound in bed. I’d mostly describe it as deafening. Even more so in this case, given the poor state of the exhaust manifold, whose emissions could kill me faster than hypothermia or being jostled to death by the lousy suspension.

From the way he was stopping and starting I could tell that we were still downtown. So it was now or never.

I hit the inside of the trunk upholstery where I was pretty sure I could reach the cable even if I couldn’t see it. The trunk molding is stronger than it looks and I was in a terrible position for a good swing. But my third attempt cracked it, and my fourth widened the gap enough for me to get the heel in and use it as a lever to snap off some of the stuff. Two further whacks and there was a big enough hole for me to get two fingers in and break off even more. Both my nails broke, and it hurt like I’d just lost fingers and I absolutely did not care. I found the wire and I pulled upward with all my strength until I heard the CHUNK of the latch release. And that CHUNK was the best sound in the world.

I waited until he stopped at the next light, then pushed up the trunk and got out and ran.

One option was to get a car between myself and him and keep it between us as I screamed until someone helped me.

Yeah, right.

I just kept running.

Todd had wasted his time going around a block of one-way streets, which meant we’d barely gotten any distance from the Club. In fact we were on The Meadows, right across from the vacant lot next to The Stardust, where Melody lives.

He’d have no problem parking on this block, which wasn’t in my favour. But even so I knew I’d have a good jump on him. There’s something wrong with his left knee. I noticed it whenever he walked up the stairs to the VC. So I knew he wouldn’t be as fast as me. I figured that if I went through the lobby I might be seen by someone, and Todd’s the kind of guy who’d pay people to tell him where I went. So I headed up the alley, found the wire attached to the bottom stair of the fire-escape (in this job you share tricks like that with the other dancers) pulled it down, put my left foot on the bottom stair and kept it there as I released the hook, and then ran up the steps. I was more careful than Todd had been at the gravity point, but I knew he was far enough behind me that the stair would have risen all the way back up before he could get a piece of the bottom step in his hand.

I ran up the second set of steps and banged on the emergency door and screamed ‘open the door’ in English and then Spanish and then English and then Spanish, which would be a good indication to Melody that it was me. In between episodes of screaming I stopped for a second to text Chester where I was and what was happening. That may not have been a good idea, but in my profession there aren’t good ideas. Just bad ideas and really bad ideas, and this felt like it was probably just a bad idea. I pressed send and went back to pounding and screaming.

“This little stunt is completely unnecessary. All I wanted to do was talk.”

Todd sounded like he was right below me, but I didn’t look. Just kept banging and screaming ‘help’ and ‘open the door’ as many ways as I knew how. It’s unlikely anyone around here would call the cops just because someone was in trouble, but I come from the most Catholic country in the world, so the outside chance of a miracle is a hard delusion to let go of completely.

When I was ten-years-old a street cat climbed a jacaranda down the street from our apartment and from there made it onto the ledge of a condemned building surrounded by a metal wall with coiled razorwire at the top. Getting up turned out to be easier than getting down, and the cat got trapped on the ledge. I’d hear it meowing when my brother walked me to the pesero that took me to school, and again when he met me at the pesero after school and we walked home together. And I remember people on the street discussing how the animal might be rescued. Most of their ideas had to do with ropes and a basket and a very long pole and even at ten-years-old I knew none of their ideas would work. That’s probably the moment I first thought about becoming an engineer. As for the cat, it went silent after a few days and everyone just got on with their lives.

I wondered if I’d end up like that cat.

Todd was right underneath me now, trying to keep the conversation going.

“You know, you owe me for damage to the Jag.”

I just kept yelling and banging on the door.

The keys of the unseen belong to Him and to no one else.

He knows all that transpires. On land and on water.

AHMAD

A leaf falls anywhere in the world and He knows it.

You may think my mind is wandering when I run these words through my head, but the opposite is true. I learned the technique from my cousin, Khaled, who is an air traffic controller. Running lines through our heads absorbs the clutter of the mind and keeps us focused on the task. More than that, it forces us to come up with the lines in English, which improves our facility with the language.

Sometimes I can’t come up with the English and I make a mental note to solve the problem after my shift is done. It’s late when I get home and my wife and daughter are always asleep. But  before going to bed I feed the gerbils and then spend a few minutes looking up the words I couldn’t translate. So far tonight I’ve been able to put English words to everything.

In the months I’ve been here I’ve remembered, translated and refined dozens of passages like this. Maybe hundreds.

My screen is divided into nine smaller screens and I see everything that happens in the rooms. The signals. The fear. The anger. The body language. But mostly the eyes. The eyes know trouble even before the mouth knows to scream.

I see patterns I don’t know how I know. Patterns that predict when things will go wrong.

I often sit with Reverie when she’s taking a break. Or rather I sit in a chair on the second floor while she sits under the table next to me. As she’s invisible to me, I see nothing improper with the interaction. Reverie is a ruthlessly secular person and likes to quantify ideas that tend towards vagueness and abstraction. Once she suggested to me that Allah might have a screen like mine, only instead of nine camera views on an xy axis, Allah has an infinity of squares, with an x a y and a z axis and a final axis that can’t be described on a 3D Cartesian grid, but that might be referred to as Δt. A set of coördinates that extends to infinity, allowing him to follow every thread of time and space, backward to its beginning and forward to its end.

She laughed amiably after she’d said this, which I took to mean that she meant no offense.

Not only was I not offended, I consider infinity theory to be a good metaphor for omniscience.   And a reminder that I’m not Allah. A reminder that I’m an ordinary person doing an ordinary job. A reminder that I cannot see into the future, or even into every corner of the present world. A reminder that I just need to keep my eyes on the women in the squares.

Despite what you might deduce from these cogitations, I am not a devout person. People in this country often find it hard to understand, but the lines I know by heart are simply like the air I’ve always breathed. And one cannot easily stop breathing air.

Reverie’s square was top centre, and my eyes were on the bottom left, because even though she hadn’t signaled I was worried about Fairytale, who was with a customer who’s been a problem in the past, though usually after two and a half more drinks. I was also keeping a close eye on Nightengale, in the middle square, who was doing something that could get us shut down if the customer was a police officer. So I had a lot of information to monitor. When that happens I pick the lines I know best and run them over and over in my head. It keeps everything else out of my mind except for the squares. Sometimes I even get vain about it and think that I’m capable of seeing everything at once.

It was as if Allah chose that moment deliberately. And punished my vanity by allowing the customer to grab Reverie and carry her out. Faster than my eyes could get to that square.

I know the man well. He comes here a lot for Reverie specifically, and he’s never been a problem. He mostly just tells her things and she listens and they take photographs of themselves on his phone. So I wasn’t giving her square as much priority as I should have been, and it wasn’t until they showed up on the screen that covers the halls and the stairways that I got going.

No fireman’s lift. The man just put his arm around Reverie’s waist and carried her out of the room and towards the exit.

This may sound like a difficult thing to do, but Reverie is light. I happen to know her weight exactly.

One night, just after a customer had finished his session with Reverie in one of the private rooms, I received a text from her. Turn to the wallpaper and measure the height of the pattern, to the point where it repeats. I looked at her square and saw her standing on the low table all the private rooms are furnished with. She was looking at the camera and miming the act of opening a drawer. I pulled open my desk drawer and discovered a 30 cm ruler that had not been there the day before. I used it as she requested and texted back 20.21 cm. Now measure the width, she texted back. I did and texted back 12.3 cm. She texted back With that you can calculate my weight. Confused, I stared at her image in the square until I understood. The wallpaper in the private rooms is identical to the wallpaper in my office. I held the ruler to the screen. Reverie’s image obscured 7.2 repetitions of the pattern’s height and her shoulder width obscured 2.9 repetitions the pattern’s width. But then I was stuck, and texted The calculations will be erroneous due to your distance from the wall. It was strange seeing her on my screen, looking at her phone, turning, stepping down from the table, placing her phone on the floor in a sequence of lengths, then returning to her stance on the table and keying a response which I received in moments. My heels are exactly 91 cm from the wall. I texted a ?. She texted back. And?  At which point I recalled how Amanat Khan Shirazi determined the visual compensations for the calligraphy embedded in upper regions of the Taj Mahal. I took a pad of yellow paper and made a 5cm = 1m scale drawing of the room and Reverie’s position in it, then drew perspective lines and calculated her proportions in relation to the height and width of the pattern. I asked Google how to estimate a person’s weight from measurements of height, breadth and depth, and used the information for the final calculation. I get 48.2 kilos, I texted her. She read my answer, looked up at the camera and smiled.

There have been many—the mathematicians Al-Khwarizmi and Srinivasa Ramanujan spring to mind—who consider computational truths to be a manifestation of the divine. So I was thankful that Reverie had encouraged me in this practice. I tell this story as an example of her problem-solving skills, which will serve her well in the circumstances I’m describing. And to explain how her weight proved conveyable for the man in question, who was broad-shouldered and looked to possess the fitness level of one who works out in a gym.

Ten seconds after I saw the image on the hall camera, they were out the emergency exit and down the fire escape. By the time I got outside and onto the fire escape they were already at his car. And I was doubly-annoyed at myself, because the man had a limp, and if I’d been giving her square the attention I’m paid to give it, I could have got there in time to get my weight onto the top edge of the drop-stair and hold them on its precipice while I figured out what to do next. Though thinking back on it I’m not sure what I would have done at that point. We all might still be out there.

As it was, I made it to the first landing of the metal stairs just as the apparatus clanged back up. Which meant I was stranded in the interzone. Too high up to say I’m outside the Velvet Inspiration and two far below the first-floor ceiling to say I’m outside the Velvet Consolation. It was the absolute worst place to stop and think about what to do next because it put me right under the single white light mounted on the brick of the back wall. Reverie had her feet on the ground now, and the man had his left hand like a vice around her upper arm and they were standing behind a vintage white Jaguar. It was an older model requiring a key to open the trunk, and he was just returning the keys to his pocket as I arrived. With the same hand I saw him withdraw an object that glinted through the purple dusk that you can almost taste in an industrial town like this one. A Glock 43, small and mean and daring me to underestimate it.

Keeping his eyes on me he returned the gun to wherever he kept it concealed under his jacket, deposited Reverie roughly in the trunk, and slammed it shut. My being there diverted him from noticing that Reverie was still holding her phone. Which is something.

I decided not to risk continuing down the stairs, but I did memorize the plate and model as he backed out and drove away.

When the car was out of sight, I went up the fire escape, along the hallway of the VC, and down the stairs to the VI. A rowdy bunch of men were interfering with the dancer on the stage, and it occurred to me that I should tell the servers to be more diligent about checking IDs. Then it occurred to me that I couldn’t solve every problem that arose in this place. Or in the world for that matter.

Back in my office I pressed the three numbers on my phone. I hung up after the first ring, figuring I’d be better to do this on the landline.  When I did that a dispatcher picked up almost immediately.

“911. What is your emergency?”

It was the expected question, but the asking of it opened up realms of consideration.

I knew Reverie was waiting for her student visa to be renewed. It’s not generally a problem because she doesn’t get anything from the club other than the cash that men put in her hands. But if the police get involved she’ll be going back to Mexico City.

I’ve got a work visa, but I’m still waiting on my permanent residency. And I might not get it if I’m involved in something like this.

With a brain like hers, I knew she’d find a way out.

At least that’s what I told myself as I hung up the phone and went back to looking at the screen.

The phone rang. I knew it was the dispatcher calling back, so I let it go to voicemail. Which no one in this place ever listens to. In the event of them tracing the call and dispatching emergency vehicles, I’d tell them that, as is so often the case, a potentially dangerous customer had left hastily after I dialed 911.

My cell phone rang. I didn’t like that. It meant they’d recorded the number even though I hadn’t waited for them to pick up.

I looked at my own phone and considered texting Reverie, then realized that if the man heard a chime it might alert him that she still had a phone.

When I looked back at the screen the top centre square looked awfully empty with just the wallpaper staring back at me.

CHESTER

I lucked out. After talking to Melody I thought there might be a few more links in the chain before I found the girl I was looking for. But when I asked the server for Reverie she directed me to a table Reverie was hiding under and I knew instantly that this was the one from the photos on Todd’s laptop. The only surprise was that the mole was on her right cheek, not the left. Which just meant that Todd had mirrored the photos after he downloaded them. People still think that confuses the software.

Reverie had texted me her schedule. She didn’t work Wednesday but would be back on Thursday. Thursday I was there for her whole shift but nothing went down. Same with Friday.

Saturday it happened. Reverie told me he comes early in the evening, before too many people are here. So I arrived by seven and took my usual seat at the back table of the Velvet Inspiration, which gave me a good view of the stairs.

But it was a busier than usual for this time of day, largely due to a group of young men seated up at the stage, who were making a hell of a racket. They were probably underage, and in a town that cared they would have been IDed and thrown out. Instead, each one had ordered an entire pitcher of beer for himself and was drinking it without pouring it into a glass. Seasoned imbibers who disdained the aggravation of transferring beer from a large vessel to a smaller one. I decided that their being in here would likely work in my favour and I’d get even less attention now.

When Todd arrived there was no mistaking him for any of the usual rabble. He was a person of such confidence and style you’d swear this was a members-only casino in Monaco and he was scanning the room for a baccarat table. His eye fell on a man in a dim corner, dressed to look like a bland accountant and making a bad job of it. Todd nodded seriously to the man and continued on up the stairs. I hoped that meant he didn’t even notice me. I know everything about him but he doesn’t know a thing about me and I’d like to keep it that way.

About 10 minutes later I got a text from Reverie. I don’t want a record on anyone’s phone, so I told her not to send the password electronically. Just have a thumbs up ready to go and tell me later.

She sent the thumbs up. We were in business.

I moved over to the table just under the stairway so that I could see the legs of anyone coming down it, and Todd’s Cucinelli suit would be hard to miss. I had my Colt with me but I didn’t think it’d come to that. I’d just tell him that I was packing and likely I’d reach in and find the phone in his inner jacket pocket. I’d head quickly for the back exit and he’d never see my face.

After that I’d check out of The Stardust and this disguise I’m wearing would disappear. Forever. Though it’s not such a bad one. A whole lot better than what I had to wear to that clown conference. And you don’t want to know what I was into the clowns for.

Here’s some advice. Never think about clowns when you’re on a job like this. You just might turn into one.

Because it was right then that a woman I’d never seen before walked in and sat down across from me. I was pretty sure she didn’t work here, and not a lot of single women come into this place if they don’t.

Track pants and a white T-shirt with a picture of a banana on it. Highlighter yellow with spots of sharpie black. Like how a little kid thinks a banana looks. It seemed like too stupid an image to be code for a particular service the girls here offered. Maybe the fully dressed and sloppy look was a niche market for college boys. Except I sure as hell couldn’t be confused with that. And what she said confirmed that wasn’t her gig.

“I decided to find you before you found me.”

Which meant she was who she was supposed to be. Though the plan was for me to approach her, not the other way around. She certainly wasn’t what I was expecting and I didn’t know yet if that was going to work for me or against me. I figured the best plan was to keep her talking.

“Found me for what? I don’t believe we know each other.”

“Interesting. Can people who’ve been spying on each other be said to know each other? A question of semantics when you get right down to it.”

I didn’t do anything with that.

“And the idea of leaving the office and finding you in the back of my car didn’t appeal to me.”

When that turned out to be all she had I turned over one of my cards.

“My plan was to be sitting in your apartment when you got home from the office. But either would work.”

“Personally, I think it’s better to meet somewhere in public on a first date. And this is the perfect place for that, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m not sure what I’d say.”

“You’re surprised though.”

“Why would I be surprised?”

“From your expression I’d say you thought I’d be a guy.”

“Fair enough. But regardless, I’m happy you’re here. You saved me some time.”

“Time is money.”

“On that note. I’m fairly sure you know what I’m after.”

“The e-mail you sent was pretty easy to decipher. You’re looking for anyone who’s got Todd’s access codes and any other protocols he’s been using to embezzle from the company. Which I’m sure you’ve discovered he’s really good at. So good that the money he’s already appropriated would last him into the next century. At least if he was content to live a modest but idyllic life in Saint Kitts. And when I went broke into your hard drive I saw you’d run the same scam on similar crooks in three other cities.”

Hard to believe anyone who messed up that badly at her job would be able to find all that out. I didn’t like it. I was sure I’d covered my tracks better than that.

It was right about then that an Arab guy ran past the table and up the stairs so fast you’d think immigration was on his ass. You don’t see a lot of Arabs in these places and I’d noticed this guy a few times before. I think he’s supposed to be the bouncer, but he spends most of his shift hiding, the way illegals do. I would have made more of it if I hadn’t been giving the new girl my full attention.

“That you’re here and the police aren’t makes me guess that you didn’t report any of this to your supervisor.”

“Seriously?”

I wasn’t quite sure where I should be taking this conversation. If I’d known she’d be coming into the club tonight I’d have been more prepared. I looked over at the dancer on stage, but she wasn’t much of a help. The song she’d chosen to end her set with was just starting up. Half the girls in here dance to it and I’m beginning to know the lyrics by heart.

white shirt now red my bloody nose

sleepin you’re on your tippy toes

creepin around like no one knows

think you’re so criminal

The lines aren’t sentences, they’re just a pile of words. And the singer doesn’t sing, she whispers. The guys up front who look like they should still be in after-school care can’t seem to get enough of it. They rock their beer pitchers to the beat and spill a fair bit of their allowance money doing it. Promising young men, all of them.

This time when the song came on, one of the bunch ran onto the stage and climbed the pole and was trying unsuccessfully to turn himself upside down and hold himself just by his legs. It’s a move the dancers in this place do all the time but this kid kept sliding down the pole and having to start again, so I guess it’s harder than it looks. The server and the DJ came up and encouraged him to take his seat again and it took a while.  (Shouldn’t the Arab bouncer be on this? Is what I should have been thinking.) Probably they were concerned with liability if the kid fell and incurred a head injury. I wouldn’t have stressed about it. Not much brain to damage.

Entertaining as this drama was, it wasn’t solving any of my problems. I turned back to Daryl but she didn’t give me anything. She was smarter than I’d bargained on and was making me work as hard as the guy on the pole. And about as successfully. I decided it was time to make my pitch.

“So I assume you want in. Which was my plan all along.”

“Fifty-fifty, right?”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“And I shouldn’t get half — why?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ll very soon have his phone, which I’ve paid handsomely for.”

“Which is no good without a password.”

“Which I already have.”

“Sure. You need the phone for two-factor authorization, and kudos for getting that. But what I’ll bet you don’t have is the passwords for the off-shore banks that funnel the money into accounts with half a dozen fake company names in randomized amounts that are always under $10,000, and made to look like consulting fees. That’s the link that matters most and that’s what you want me for. I’ll guess you got into his hard drive and found something that told you he likes coming to this place. But you couldn’t get into the accounts and you’d seen enough to know I’d have better access than you, or at least that I’d know how to get it. And you also knew that if I already had the passwords, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to keep them on the company system. Or any system outside the neurotransmitters of my long-term memory. What were you planning? Did you think you could ask me for the codes and I’d give them to you for free?”

The Arab came back down the stairs and this time I took a good look. He wasn’t running now and it was the posture that struck me. Like he was shouldering a death in the family. There was no way for me to connect the dots, but everything about him suggested that something was really wrong upstairs, and I had a sinking feeling that that something was going to affect me. Daryl wasn’t interested. The creepy vocalist whispering her addled lyrics and the room ambience in general were making Daryl jittery. For all her posturing I knew she didn’t have any experience in places like this and couldn’t tell what meant trouble, and what was just SOP. Which meant that if I kept her here long enough I’d gain the upper hand. So I swallowed the rest of my rye, gently placed the glass back on the table, and kept quiet. I waited until the song was over and the whistles and cheers from the boys up at the stage had subsided as much as they were going to before making my pitch.

“I don’t expect anything for free. In my experience if you give your coworkers a fair cut, things go better and no one comes looking for payback. What you need to know is that I found e-mails from your personal computer that meet every description of insider trading. I’m more than happy to leak them. Even if you escape sentencing, you’ll never work in the business again.”

“You’re an extortionist too?

“Blackmail is overrated. Brute force is underrated.”

“So what you’re saying is that if I don’t give you what you need, and if I call your bluff on the e-mails, my life is in danger?”

“Assume whatever you like.”

“Here’s what I think. I think that if force was really your game you’d never have sent the e-mail. You’d just have shown up at my apartment and beaten the passwords out of me. I think your game is intimidation.”

“It’s common sense to start with low risk, low expenditure. And only escalate if you have to.”

“Do I look worried?”

I wasn’t sure of the best response to her forced composure. A new song by the same singer had started up and I took another look at the stage. It didn’t help. All it told me was that as a venue for business meetings the Velvet Inspiration is not conducive to staying focused on the agenda. The boys in the front row had moved on stage now and were lying on their backs, flailing their arms like dead bugs, and laughing harder than that activity really deserves. Even though they were far enough from the pole that they weren’t causing the dancer any real problems, she kept looking over at the DJ who just shrugged in response. Likely this wasn’t the most inappropriate behaviour the club had ever indulged. It’s times like this when I think I’d have been happier in an era when everyone dressed the way I was dressed for this job.

These unhelpful ruminations came to an end when my phone chimed. Another message from Reverie. And not a good one.

“Who is it?”

I couldn’t see much point in keeping her in the dark at this point.

“Someone on our team.”

“So I’m hired?”

“No. You’re taken hostage. Let’s go.”

“Cool. Where to?”

“To the hotel I’m staying at. It’s right around the corner.”

“You planned it that way?”

“Yeah. Just like I planned for you to be a dame.”

TODD

This car has cost me a LOT of money. All of it mine. And a most of it paid on behalf of people who had no business even touching my ride. You think you make a little money and you’re ahead? Well you aren’t. You’re surrounded by idiots you end up paying for because they can’t take care of the simplest things.

Like when the car you’re still paying for gets taken for a joyride and smashed up and the adjuster won’t even entertain the idea of refinishing the exterior to what it was when you bought it. And with a crap paintjob you won’t get your money out of it when you resell.

I drive a 1975 Jaguar e-Type, black leather interior and white exterior with porcelain finish. And NEVER go black and white if you don’t intend to spend a fortune on finish.

Here’s why. Black leather shows its age worse than any other colour. I know this because I just had the seats redone by Ralph, at Compleat Leather. Ralph is the kind of Englishman who corrects you when you don’t pronounce his name Rafe, which is how I have to spell it in my head to get it right and make him feel good about himself and give my leather his best care. Rafe doesn’t get that I’m paying him to work, not to talk. No. For Rafe my money is not enough. I have to share in The Knowledge. E.G. ‘Ideally we want to maintain a PH level of 3.5-4.5. But due to the aging of the leather—very fine leather indeed, sir—I must utilize a product that sustains a PH level of 7.0. And mind that you stay consistent with the product chosen, for fear of corrosion from mismatched lubricants. Why, just the other day an Aston Martin DB5 rolled in—’

Thank god my phone rang. Rafe is good. But I want this job done before I’m too old to turn the key in the ignition and drive out of Compleat Leather.

As for the clear coat, a certain ex-girlfriend (better described as the ambulatory deca-pronged destroyer) possessed adamantine talons instead of nails. Diabolical tools designed for the sole purpose of trashing the passenger leather and door upholstery, and slicing into the exterior latch recess. (Now I know the real reason a wise motorist still plays the gentleman and makes sure to open and close doors for every female passenger.) All of these little slashes went through to the primer and the shop got the colour match off which meant a whole new paintjob and a new ceramic coating. Whatever chemicals the nail salons use, the body-shops could learn from.

Which is why this ungovernable dancer with similarly avian claws was going in the trunk. And I assure you my manner of conveying her there was gentle and respectful and involved less physical contact than what had been negotiated in our contract, which I’d paid for and strictly adhered to. I cannot say the same for her. The contract gave no provision for her memorizing my phone password and colluding with someone who planned to steal from me. 

My plan was simply to drive her out to the docks and go over my new contract with her. Something along the lines of how she was a criminal and I could call the authorities and have her deported back to Montevideo or wherever she was trafficked from. (These girls give everyone a different story.) Or she could tell me who she was working for. When she inevitably responded that the people who got her to do this were the same ones who trafficked her and she was as good as dead if she gave them away, I would answer that that was unfortunate but as she wasn’t a citizen of this country, it wasn’t really my problem.

The bouncer followed me half-way out to the car but retreated when I showed him the gun. Another immigrant from the look of him. Probably illegal. So he wasn’t likely to do anything about it.

I was not happy when I heard the trunk pop. I was not happy at all. And surprised that she tried to make the hotel rather than just lose me. Which she could have done easily given my bad knee from the accident and don’t even get me started on the cost of that repair (the car I mean—— Kashawna my physiotherapist comes twice a week now and the knee is getting a lot better—-thanks for asking.)

Reverie’s obviously done this scam before, because she knows her escape routes. Like that wired drop-stair that she disabled before I could get to it and which left her stranded on the second floor.

She screamed for help in two languages, then stopped to do something on her phone, and then screamed for help in two languages again until someone came to the emergency door and let her in.

I figured the smart thing to do now was go in the front entrance and pay the desk clerk a visit like the law-abiding, high-tax-bracket citizen I am.

The Stardust was even worse inside than outside. It’s the hotel of your nightmares. The one you have to stay at when the airline reroutes to a mid-continental city where every other hotel was sold out months ago for the Jehovah Witness conference. The lobby smelled like housekeeping has never made it into the budget and the same towels have been changing hands since the place opened.

The desk clerk was asleep face down on a comic book.

There’s a couple of ways to do this, I thought. The first option was to wake him up gently and offer him some money. If he shook his head, I could just keep offering more until he talked.

I chose the second option. Lifted him up by the hair and smashed his head back down onto the counter. I figured the comic book would soften the blow enough that he wouldn’t be incoherent.

“Wha–?”

“You’re going to tell me about everyone who’s staying in this hotel.”

“That’ll take—.”

“That’ll take no time at all.”

“There’s a couple of guys on the fifth floor. White shirts. Clean haircuts. They have Bibles too.”

“Not them. Next.”

“A sad guy whose wife keeps kicking him out. I worry that someday he’d do himself—”

“Not him. Next.”

“Uh. Oh. There’s a guy who just checked in. Dresses like he’s in a black and white movie.”

I didn’t like that. It sounded too much like someone I’d seen out of the corner of my eye in the club when I was giving a nod to Inspector Dixon. I’m surprised the Inspector still goes to the Velvet since the time we were both there and I recognized a local blogger who calls himself a journalist raising his phone to shoot a video of The Finest in an inappropriate setting. I got myself between the Inspector and the guy’s phone and managed to get him out a back door, into the Jag, and the hell away from the Velvet Inquisition. Be discrete but direct when you run into a cop at the Velvet. It reminds him that you could need a favour someday.

But right now I was a lot more concerned with the guy dressed like a private eye in a forties flick.

“From your expression I’m guessing he’s a friend of yours?”

It wasn’t a question but the kid said it like it was. I was on the verge of thumping him again just for being persistently annoying, but decided to save it for when I needed info. Advanced interrogation methods require self-discipline.

“What room?”

“2046.”

“Seriously?”

The kid widened his eyes and nodded.

“And that’s on the 2nd floor?”

“Fourth. There’s a girl on the 2^rd floor. She’s kind of living there now.”

Blood from his nose was dripping on the comic. I retrieved a napkin I’d pocketed at the club and handed it to him. He didn’t use it on his nose. Just used it to clean the blood on the comic and ended up smearing it around and making it look worse. His nose continued to drip onto the pages. When he figured out what was happening he leaned into his chairback so that the blood dripped onto his shirt instead.

“Any idea what this girl does when she’s not in her room?”

“Probably works at the club around the corner. The Velvet Conscience I think it’s called.”

“What’s the number?”

“What? Of the Club?”

I reached over and smashed his head down again. I think it made the bleeding stop. He made the sound of someone inhaling slowly through his mouth, but the lack of any expression of pain was remarkable.

“The number of the room where the girl on the second floor lives.”

“2046.”

“You said that was where the guy who dresses like a gangster is staying.”

“Oh right. Sorry. I confuse the rooms because the numbers are so big. And, like, cause you’re scrambling my brains.”

It was impossible to get a reaction out of this guy. I couldn’t imagine anyone being worked over and being less interested in the fact. I grabbed him by the hair and scrambled his brains a third time.

“Number.”

“She’s in 6174. I think.”

I took hold of his shirt and pulled him over the counter and onto his feet, which I could tell he hadn’t used for a while.

“Sounds like you better take me there yourself.”

When Chester and I came through the lobby of The Stardust we saw Todd in front of the desk and I heard him say, “Sounds like you better take me there yourself.” Then he grabbed the desk clerk by the scruff of his loose shirt (easy enough to do since you can’t really buy shirts tight enough for a kid that thin), dragged him over the counter, got him on his feet, and then pushed him towards the stairs. Chester and I looked at each other and Chester shrugged and followed them.

DARYL

I followed Chester because clearly I’m insane.

We were just reaching the first landing when I heard Todd ask the clerk to point out the room. Then he gave the kid a shove back down the stairs and if he hadn’t managed to grab the rail he’d have hit us as we came around the landing. Which was probably Todd’s intention. When the kid saw us he just continued on down the stairs. Unsurprisingly. Problems with people like us would be way above of his pay grade, and I pegged him as an employee inclined to underperform rather than to overdeliver. When he turned to continue down the stairs I saw that his shirt was covered in blood, its source explained by the darker blood congealed in his nostrils. That’s unusual in a hotel employee. That he didn’t seem much concerned with the fact was even more alarming.

We caught up with Todd on the second floor where he was shouting at the door of 6174.

“Let me in and we’ll decide what kind of deal will work for everyone.”

He’d stepped back and was looking at the door like he was about to kick it in and then turned back to Chester and me. I hung back instinctively. Chester pulled a Colt .357 from under his jacket and walked forward. Which meant that the bullets would be almost point-blank range if he fired them into Todd’s chest. That’s what I was thinking he was going to do.

But at the last moment Chester moved his arm over and down and blew off the doorknob. The door swung open. No deadbolt. The locks in this place are just for that illusion of security everyone wants to believe they have when they live in a box full of strangers. Chester nodded to Todd to go first and without even looking at me he waved me to follow. And yes, it’s crazy that I followed and the only reason I did was the fact that someone who worked here had randomly chosen 6174 for a room number. In a hotel that probably only had a dozen rooms. Six thousand, one hundred and seventy-four being Kaprekar’s constant and incontestably the coolest four-digit number there is. In my defence, the first paper I submitted to Dr. Raban was on Kaprekar’s constant.

It felt like good luck. It was not. And why in heaven’s name would I expect it to be, given that the subtractive inevitability of 6174 creates an infinity loop?

I feel I’ve never truly left room 6174.

MELODY

The only explanation for how I turned out is a reprogramming of my genetic code.

My parents met in the last year of communism and had me five years later.

If times and places could be given metaphorical temperatures, I was born at -273.15 degrees Celsius. Absolute zero for an economy. Absolute zero for a political structure. Absolute zero for feeding a baby. I’ve only ever seen one photograph of my parents holding me as a more or less newborn, but absolute zero is a pretty good description of their facial expressions as well. I have a theory that the sum of these absolute zeros altered my gene expression and made me do what I do. Thankfully we’re on the verge of an epigenetic breakthrough and if I’m lucky science will repair the sequence to prevent transgenerational inheritance.

That’s if I even decide to have a kid. If I do, it won’t be in this town.

Mom taught mycology at Eötvös Loránd University. Everyone else in my family from as far back as you can go is a scientist. Other than me, no one got off track. So I have a lot of catching up to do.

It was my night off and I was reviewing the enzymes in DNA methyltransferases for my exam on bioinformatics and my head was pounding. I looked up from my screen and over at miRNA my betta fish and couldn’t remember when I’d fed her last. She wasn’t looking good. She had that semi-intentional swish of fins and gave a general impression of drowning, which is counterintuitive in a fish.  I’m no ichthyologist but the pet store people tell me that that look means too many days without feeding, or deoxygenated water. Feeding was simpler than changing the water so I decided to tackle that job and leave changing the water until tomorrow. I realize this is a half-assed response to animal care, and could result in recoding the histone miRNA she’s eponymous for, but I was exhausted. My lower back was sore from a move I’d tried on the pole two nights ago and I’d already swallowed 30 mg of cyclobenzaprine. Dropping two pellets into the bowl was all I was up for. But I’d forgotten where I’d put the Aqueon bottle, and I was standing, looking around at the room for it, when I heard pounding.

All kinds of things pound in this place. The boilers. The radiators. The plumbing. But the location was wrong for any of those. This sounded like it was coming from the emergency door, which faces the door to my room. And then I picked up faint sounds of Ayuda. Abre la Puerta. Ayuda. Which in terms of people I’ve told about the fire escape reduced the possibilities of who it might be to Reverie. That’s a perk working at the Velvet Catastrophe. You can run to my place when there’s trouble.

When I reached the door and opened it, it was Reverie all right. I’m always amazed at how far I have to look down at her when she’s not wearing those shoes, which she’d been using to pound the door with. She’s always talking about how she can do anything with them. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s used them to chop vegetables or change tires.

She followed me across the hall into room 6174, and as soon as I’d locked the door behind us, she launched into a narrative in Spanish spoken at the speed of sound. I understood ‘hijo de puta,’ ‘zapatos,’ and a whole lot of ‘chingas’ but I knew I wasn’t going to get the story if she kept on like that.

“En inglés, por favor.”

She stopped and just breathed for a few seconds, looking at the shoes and trying to figure out if she needed them right now. When she decided she didn’t, she opened the top drawer of my dresser and put them in there and then slammed the drawer closed again. If there’d been a lock on the chest I’m sure she’d have asked me for it. Who can blame her? Shoes like that would be dangerous if they fell in the wrong hands. It was weird having her standing there nearly naked and I was trying to think of what I could offer her to wear, which would take some creative thinking given our difference in size. In the future I’ll be more prepared for surprise visits from co-workers. As it turned out there were more pressing matters, which she informed me of in English once she’d caught her breath and decided that conversation would be a good way to use up her few seconds away from people who meant her harm.

“There is a very bad person out there who will probably find out I’m here and try and get in the room.”

“Right. Well, thanks for dropping by.”

Before she could respond I heard people ascending the stairs. At least three. And I was pretty sure they were coming to my room. We both stopped talking, hoping we could pretend no one was home and being pretty sure that wasn’t going to work.

A voice I recognized shouted something about making a deal, but in the tone that guys use when what they really mean is they’re going to make you do exactly what they want.

A gun went off, the door swung open, and three people came in. The first one I knew from the club. He calls himself Todd, and he’s predictable enough that that might even be his real first name. The type of guy who makes so much money he’d be wearing a suit like that anywhere in the world. What I knew for sure was that Reverie knew Todd better than I did.

The one behind Todd calls himself Chester, which I don’t think anyone has been named since they made suits like the one he’s wearing. A few days earlier I’d had a conversation with Chester and put him in touch with Reverie, a referral she’s probably wishing now that she hadn’t gotten. Chester had a Colt .357 on Todd, though for all the interest Todd took in the gun it might have been a long-stemmed rose.

A girl in her late twenties trailed after them, wearing the T-shirt for a band that goes back so far they’d even hit the sell-by date in Budapest when I left. I’d bet any money she was born in this town, went to a college 100 km away, graduated in hotel management or some pretend subject like that, then came back home because no one else wanted her. Makes you grateful that universities keep those people as far from the real students as campus geometry allows.

All I knew for sure about her was that she was into something way over her head.

Todd stepped to the centre of the room and looked around at us like we were stock prices on a display board. I stood by the table next to my copy of Computational Genetics and looked down at miRNA in her bowl, imagining a reaction for which she could be the catalyst.

Todd pulled out his phone and held it up.

“I’m guessing this is what everyone wants. I wonder which of you has the stones to come and take it from me.”

No one else looked too surprised at this inquiry, so I guess I was the only one in the room who didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

Thinking he was in the same league as Todd, Chester began to negotiate.

“I think we all have an interest in common and I think we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement which will allow all of us to walk away with a nice little package and go on with our lives. Wouldn’t that be a swell deal? I think it would be a darned swell deal.”

The guy actually talked like that, which might explain how he was dressed. There was a very strange vibe in the room right about then and I remember thinking that we were on the verge of a group trauma that could alter gene expression for all of us. Really, it’s amazing the stupid thoughts you have when everything goes to hell.

That’s also when I saw that Todd was focused on Reverie and I knew that his intentions for her were very, very bad.

“Right now the best thing about you is that you’re just the right size for me to get some answers.”

Before she could run, Todd grabbed her with his left arm and pushed up the window with his right. I think he expected the window to go higher. It astounds me that those 100-year-old buildings were built before air conditioning, and yet they didn’t think you needed a window to open more than 40 cms to cool things off. As Todd was pushing Reverie’s torso through the window she kicked back and got him in the lower abdomen, which didn’t really hurt him, but didn’t improve his mood. She managed to pull herself out and try to escape but he caught her again and was angry now. Like you get when your opponent fights back and hurts you and so you stop trying to go easy. He punched her in the left kidney and shoved her back through the window about half-way. I could tell he hurt her a lot with the window-frame this time.

I think Todd’s idea was to maneuver her so he was dangling her by the ankles above the street. Making her a hostage while he interrogated all of us.

Reverie didn’t scream but I could tell by how her legs were flailing that she was terrified.

Chester, still pointing his gun, continued his plea for non-violent conflict resolution.

“Can we all agree that physical force is in no one’s interest. A lesson history teaches time and again.”

 As he spoke Todd managed to look backwards at him while maintaining his hold on Reverie, who was squirming in absolute panic by this point, probably wishing she’d remained strapped to her weapons of choice, rather than hiding them uselessly in my drawer.

“I implore you, Todd. Bring her back in and let’s discuss the matter like civilized people.”

I don’t know where he had it concealed but Todd responded to Chester’s reasonableness by producing a Glock 43 which he fired before Chester could pull off a shot. Fairly accurately considering he was shooting backwards. The bullet hit Chester in the right obliques and he went down.

It got real for me when I saw the blood shoot out of Chester’s side like a hose. That was when I knew Todd was capable of anything and that I had to act.

I shouldn’t have chosen that moment to break miRNA’s bowl over Todd’s head and rake his face with the broken glass, but I honestly thought Reverie’s centre of gravity was on our side of the window. I swear she moved forward at the last second. Which meant that when Todd let go of her she fell to the pavement.

In the brief moment of her passage, I braced myself for the crash. I had no idea what it would sound like. A crunch of breaking bones? A dull thud? A scream? A splash of fluid released from a membrane?

In the brief duration of Reverie’s fall, part of me wanted another of Todd’s bullets to take care of me so that I’d hear nothing at all.

REVERIE

Everything the pole teaches you about working upside down got relevant when Todd pushed me out of Melody’s window. I fought back the best I could without the aid of my lethal footwear—I still maintain that the shoes could too easily have been used against me if I’d worn them in a room of enemies—but he’d managed to get me about halfway out and keep me there with the weight of his body.

The only plan I had at this point was examining the brick and feeling around for something that could help me. I didn’t like it, but having my upper body inverted wasn’t that unusual a position for me, and it gave me more options than if Todd had hung me out there by my wrists.

There was enough street light to give me a glimpse of something that might work. But it was just a little further down than I could reach. I decided to hedge my bets in case Todd chose to let me fall out the window. The one thing I absolutely didn’t want was to land on my head. So I stretched downward which gained me an extra 10 cms and allowed me to get the fingers of my right hand into a deep crevice in one of the bricks. The bad side of this plan was that my hips came farther onto the windowsill, which meant that if Todd let go of me now I’d fall to the pavement.

I didn’t think he’d do that. I was pretty sure he just wanted to terrify me to get information which I didn’t really have. When he figured that out his next step would be to keep holding me out here as he interrogated anyone in the room who’d have an interest in me not dying. That meant Melody, since we’re best friends at the club and each of us has the other’s back. And Chester, because I had Todd’s password and hadn’t told him what it was yet. I was pretty sure the new girl wouldn’t care one way or the other.

My strategy was a bad one, but I’m not a fortune teller. Todd is textbook ADHD. Short attention span and gets furious if he can’t change his game every few seconds. So I was 93% certain the question period would be short lived and that when it was done, he’d pull me back in and terrorize me in new and unpredictable ways.

I was wrong. There was the sound of breaking glass and swearing and suddenly Todd’s weight wasn’t there to hold me.

As soon as I felt myself go, I pulled my lower body into a pole-inversion ball position, which brought my legs out the window quickly and gave me more control over the spin. Before removing my fingers from the niche in the brick, I pulled up hard enough for my body to flip 180 degrees. My fingers were still hurting from where the nails had broken, and my kidney ached from where Todd had punched me, but neither of those ailments were high on my list of complaints.

Now I was facing away from the building with my shoulders directly above my hips. I dropped straight down, relaxing my body out of the ball position as I descended.

It’s only the second floor, but it’s an old hotel with high ceilings in the lobby and I’d calculated the drop to be 5.3 metres. (Judging distances is an important element of working the stage and gaging the time it will take drunk men to reach you when they have the impulse to stampede in your direction.) If I was right about the height, the entire fall would be 1.04 seconds, give or take a few hundredths of a second which meant that when I was halfway down I knew that that half had taken 0.735 seconds. I used the remaining time to remember how parachuters land. Bending into the knees, tucking in the chin, and rolling to the side. I wish a) that I’d practiced that move a few times by climbing to the top of the pole and dropping and rolling onto the stage; b) that I’d had more than 0.305 seconds to think through all of that; and c) that I hadn’t wasted 0.08 of a second wondering if the Lucite shoes would have absorbed some of the impact. My conclusion was that the force of the landing would have driven the heel up through soles of each shoe, through the epidermis, the plantar fascia, smashed through the calcaneus and talus, compressed all of the above into the lower tibia and fibula, and made a pretty decent mess of everything south of the knee. It’s a safe bet that this would have put an end to my career as a dancer. It might also have ended my career as a person free to move through life without the help of prosthetic limbs or motorized appliances.

My last and pointless thought was too terse to bear a meaningful numeric value. Let’s just say that in the final Δt = t₂ — t₁ I was glad that the shoes were stored safely in Melody’s drawer.

CHESTER

I underestimated Todd. I didn’t think that a guy like that would be packing heat. Had I known it I’d definitely have put a slug into the back of his leg. I’m not heartless. I’d have chosen the one he already favoured.

The real problem was that I couldn’t be sure if disabling Todd would save Reverie or send her to the pavement.

Those were my thoughts when Todd drew and fired and the bullet ripped through my right side.

I’d never been hit before, but I’ve heard lots of descriptions of the pain so I knew this was no ordinary bullet.

Reverie was still struggling in the window but I’d dropped the gun and couldn’t move. I was beyond pain. The very idea of pain was slowing me down. And then the feeling that I should be able to get on top of it, which didn’t help. It just paralysed me more. The result being that now there was no way I was going to be able to get to the window and help her. Which I would have done. Injuring people when I don’t have to does not make a job go better.

In addition to Reverie being the one person in the room who would fit through the window, she was also the only one of us dressed in lingerie. That’s got to make hanging out of a window by the ankles even less appealing. I’m sure Todd’s plan was just to scare the life out of her so she’d tell him what she knew about the plan. Not knowing that she knew nothing about it.

I was in so much pain I could barely process what was happening. But not so far gone as to miss seeing Melody grab the fishbowl and smash it over Todd’s head. At that point I think he loosened his grip on Reverie but didn’t let go. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and guess that he believed there was more of Melody inside than outside. An easy calculation to get wrong in the heat of battle. The blow to the head didn’t disable Todd, it just made him even angrier than before.

Melody must have known that we were all in trouble if she didn’t keep at him. And so she slashed his face with the jagged remains of the fish bowl. Whatever else the Czech curriculum covers, they sure teach their young women how to fight. Todd shouted the expected profanity followed by the expected obscenity and let go of Reverie.

But Reverie was past the tipping point. I’m still stunned she didn’t land on her head, which would have killed her for sure. The screaming started a second or two after I heard bones break, so I knew she was alive and conscious. The volume of her screams told me that her head was OK but that she’d broken everything else.

I forced my hand onto my side to try and stop the flow. That was a bad idea. It just made the blood flow faster and I didn’t have enough strength to apply pressure. Releasing my hand and looking at the blood on it was an even worse idea. So I gave up on trying to help myself and watched what was happening in the room.

I expected Todd to be angrier than ever and want to kill all of us, but then I saw that he had a serious problem. A big shard of glass had gone into his eye and broken off. Despite that, he forced himself to stand up. He circled once, and then back the opposite way, and at some point in the second circuit he pulled the trigger again. I think he was in shock and didn’t know what he was doing and wasn’t aiming at anyone in particular.

The bullet went into Daryl’s left knee. Pieces of which exploded in every direction and the sound she made was more of a squeal than a scream. I summoned all my energy and tried to sit up and see what had happened. Another bad idea. If I had to describe the pain I’d say it was already into the red, and that trying to move pushed it off the meter. The hole in my side was gushing even more blood now and the way its arc intersected the spray of Daryl’s blood would probably have been beautiful to someone seeing it in a movie, curled up under a blanket with a piping hot beverage.

Though that’s probably not the best analogy. It was more like time moving in a succession of frozen pictures. As if I were examining the reel of a film one frame after another, back when they were 24 fps.

Everything I’m describing happened in a matter of seconds after we entered room 6174, and even though I’m probably missing some details, the important ones are burned onto my memory as though it were emulsion.

Growing up, my dad owned the only cinema in our town. And he was successful for a while. The problem was he mostly liked the old movies and didn’t care if no one showed up or that running the film did nothing more than illuminate a sideways pyramid of motes in an empty room. Eventually it got so he couldn’t afford staff and he had to project the movies himself. Some nights he took me with him and taught me how to load the film and run the projector. The first time I did it I didn’t get the holes onto the sprockets properly and I remember the film slowing and jerking frame by frame until it got to a point where it froze up on the image of a woman coming down the stairs. It was beautiful. Like the gods had made time stop because they wanted her for themselves. She melted along with the film into the heat of the bulb, all brown and orange and bubbly.

That’s exactly how Daryl’s exploding knee looked as I was trying to move, which did nothing but remind me I’d never get out of this room on my own initiative. Daryl’s screaming came in repeated bursts, and her mouth was a perfect oval, more open than I thought a mouth could go. The sound overlapped with Reverie’s screams from outside. But Daryl’s screams were longer and with a shorter space between them, so the sound of the two women together was like two records stuck in two sets of grooves and coming through a radio with the dial halfway between stations.

Todd was still turning in circles, swearing, experimenting with his new monocular status, until something came over him and he knelt down and put his head out the window. I guess he wanted to see what had happened to Reverie. If Todd has feelings for Reverie beyond her being a toy he amuses himself with when he’s done playing with the Jag, I don’t want to be the therapist who helps him unpack that stuff.

Melody would have been wiser just cut and run. As it was, Todd managed to get a leg up and kick her back against the wall. She hit hard and immediately went as limp and silent as Daryl, which was a relief only because it was one less person screaming.

I think this is when Todd’s adrenaline gave out and the trauma began to sink in. When he withdrew his head from outside it took some effort for him to turn over into a sitting position with his back to the window. Maybe the glass had gone all the way into Todd’s brain, because his legs and torso started twitching. I wondered how he’d be after this. Maybe he’d talk funny and not be so good with stock prices. It would be some sort of justice if he ended up standing on street corners selling pencils or whatever they hire those people to do now.

Daryl’s good leg gave out and she went down sideways, smacked her head on the chest of drawers, and was out cold. This caused a big arc of blood to shoot out from her knee, and now she was bleeding from her ear as well.

I looked down at my own blood. I was bleeding like a stuck pig and I knew that the bullet was still in me. That bastard hadn’t just used hollow-point. I’ll bet anything he scored an x on the tip of the rounds and greased them. All the stuff that you’re not supposed to do because the gun can misfire or explode in your hand. But if you work at close range and your plan comes off, it’s worth the gamble for the damage it delivers. However he’d managed it, the bullet had ripped a hole in me like a barn door and then splintered into fragments of agony. I knew that if I twisted even a half inch more, the pain would put me out and my blood would escape faster than ever. Even as it was, I knew I didn’t have many seconds of consciousness left. I lasted long enough to see that Todd had dropped the gun and was struggling to get his phone in front of his face. I had a feeling that whoever he planned to call wasn’t going to be 911, but a number that would mean something a lot worse for most of us.

At that moment I remembered something my dad said to me. Right at the end. He gestured from the bed for me to come closer to him and when I did, he leaned right in. “Son, I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say. It won’t make sense to you now. But someday it will.” He started coughing again and the nurse was looking at me like maybe I should come back later. But Dad got it together and the nurse took away the tissues of brown guck he’d coughed into and went out with them. Dad leaned even closer this time when he spoke. “Whatever hell you think you’re living through, five years on you’ll look back and realize it was heaven compared to where you are now.”

Dad was right. What he’d told me didn’t make any sense at all.

But if five years on meant something worse than this, then bleeding to death in 6174 would be a blessing. In fact, at that moment, I craved extinction so badly that I’d have prayed to any nothingness out there that has the power to grant it. Because if there is a hell, I’m going there. And we all know hell is customized for each recruit.  For me it would mean life starting up again and repeating itself exactly. And then again. And then again. Forever. Think of that. The devil re-reading the only book he ever wrote, through eternity, and I’m a character in it.

The last thing I remember was my eyes falling on the one object in the room that was still moving.

The betta. In the middle of the floor. Surrounded by broken glass. The streetlight from the top half of the window fell on the metallic blues of the fishscales, and the colour kept changing as the fish flipped around the way Reverie had been doing when she was trying to keep herself from going out the window. The only real colours in the room were the red of our blood and the blue of the betta. Everything else was shades of grey. Even as it died, the fish was beautiful in its changing colours.  Cobalt, sapphire, lapis, teal, celadon, cerulean, indigo, twilight azure, purple dusk, and finally the inkiest black. The most beautiful colours that ever were.

AHMAD

I’d never wanted to escape the stale air and second-hand smoke as badly as I did when 911 called back and I let it go to voice mail. Cold and damp though it was outside, I slipped out the back door and proceeded across the parking lot. A different person might have felt that the space contained a residue of the Jaguar, its driver, and poor Reverie. I did not. I believe objects are either there or not there.

I headed arbitrarily down Remain Drive and turned left onto The Meadows. I don’t know what I was thinking, other than that I’d handled things very badly. I felt as though I were in the abstract scenario of an ethics class. A scenario that asks if a man should leap onto the subway tracks to try and save someone who has fallen in front of a train that’s only seconds away, and that has an even chance of annihilating both the rescuer and the inert figure. Or if he should accept that providing for his family is more important, and stand his ground on the platform like everyone else.

We’ve all asked ourselves similar questions, and then told ourselves that such scenarios are unlikely ever to visit us.

My thoughts were interrupted by the approach of a black cat missing part of its left ear. The cat stopped two metres before me and was easy to make out, despite the fact that both streetlights were burnt out ahead. A sudden break in the overcast sky had just illuminated the street with a full moon. The cat’s eyes even lit up for a moment when it moved its head.

The convergence of the black cat and the full moon made me chuckle, despite the gravity of recent events. Since arriving in this country, I am continuously amused to discover people who consider themselves scientific, yet still feel that a black cat crossing one’s path means bad luck. My sister, who works on a psychiatric ward, says that her coworkers predict an increase in psychotic outbursts during nights of a full moon. Such beliefs would be laughed at by physicians, scientists, or anyone else in my country.

These thoughts were interrupted by a gunshot and then a terrible scream. I hastened forward and the cat ran past me.

I was across the street and half-way down the block from The Stardust, where someone had fallen from a window. I was close enough to be fairly certain who it was.

I heard a second gunshot.

First aid teaches us to assess a situation before running towards it. I scanned my environment and discovered a phone booth half a block ahead. I went swiftly towards it. Along the way I came to an alley. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake I had in the club, so I walked five metres up the alley and hid my phone behind a garbage can. I didn’t think the police would be able to tell where my SIM card had been at that moment, but time is coded along with everything else now, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

I came out of the alley and continued quickly to the phone. As I dialed 911 for the second time that night Reverie’s screams were like a knife entering my skull and then slicing downward through my spine.

“911 what is your emergency”

“I am reporting a woman fallen from a window of the Stardust Hotel. She’s conscious but has broken bones.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“A phone booth across the street. I’m looking at her now.”

“Are you able to assess the patient?”

“No. There were gunshots. I’m keeping my distance.”

“Can I have your name?”

“No.”

“Sir. Our resources are very stretched tonight. It’s a full moon.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you any more.”

“You have a moral and a legal obligation to tell me. If this is a prank, you will have diverted resources from others, who might die.”

“It is not a prank. I am a grown adult and have a family. Please hurry.”

I hung up. As I walked back to retrieve my phone, I heard the payphone ringing. I kept walking. When I reached the entrance to the alley I heard my own phone ringing. Which meant they’d made the connection with my aborted call from the club. I swerved away from the ringing instinctively and found myself in the middle of the street.

There are moments when one’s life arrives at a forking path. A time and place where one of two actions could affect the lives of many people, and even change the possibility of lives leaving or entering the world. That the outcome could never have been different offers little comfort, as we stand at the fork imploring all that we are to make the right choice.

I was close enough now to confirm the fallen woman was Reverie. Had she turned to face me I could probably have made out the colour of her eyes. She was using both arms to try to move one of her legs from under her. But that clearly led to an excruciating pain. I heard the pay phone ring again. Seven times. I heard my cell phone ring again. Seven times. I’m told that in this country gamblers consider the number seven to be lucky. I almost wished I was a member of that community so I could benefit from such luck.

It took all of my will not to call out to her. I knew that there were very bad people behind the illuminated window above and that it would not be wise to draw their attention.

The black cat crossed my path again. Given the location where I first encountered it, the cat’s current position seemed inexplicable.

I felt as though my feet were glued to the asphalt.

There should be sirens by now, I thought.

TODD

I probably should have been thinking ‘my life will never be the same.’ But instead I was thinking how interesting the world looked all of sudden.

The right eye’s always been my weak one, so now it’s happy that it gets to do the heavy lifting. Gets to do all the lifting from now on.

The world changes with one eye doing everything. There’s no big picture anymore. You focus on different objects one after the other. Like frames in a comic. It simplifies things.

All I knew was that someone smacked me over the head and then slashed my face. I didn’t know who did it. I fired again to keep everyone the hell away from me and someone screamed, but I wasn’t sure who.

My next thought was that this was a good time to consider the lessons of Master Steve, my zazen meditation coach. Master Steve encourages me to feel a wistful sadness when contemplating the transience of all things. To accept that we take part in the drama for a flash, and then go out like a candle, forgotten forever once all the candles that knew us have gone out. He tells me I shouldn’t cling to life. Or to the things in life. Which is hard. Because I do love the Jag. And the way Reverie’s body spins around the pole.

In an attempt to summon just such a wistful sadness for the loss of my eye, I crouched down and put my head back out the window so I could see Reverie on the ground.

I didn’t mean for that to happen. She’s light and probably twisted just at the wrong time. Her movements never cease to amaze me. Somehow, she had flipped upright like a cat and managed not to land on her head.

I could tell she saw me. Even though she was facing away from me, the way she’d broken her body meant her head was tipped back and her face was turned upward to the night sky. In the pool of light from the streetlamp there was no mistaking the hazel of her eyes. Her face was upside-down to me, like it is when she inverts herself on the pole. Which I hate, because whenever Reverie performs she’s devoured by the eyes of those idiots sitting up at the stage.

I also hate that now I only have one eye to look at her two eyes. And it’s the colour that won’t let me go.

Usually when people divorce, they fight for who gets to have more days with the kid. My parents fought for who got to have no days with the kid. Mom would pay for the most expensive prep school she could find. The next year Dad would beat her with an even more expensive school. And the next year Mom would beat Dad. Summer camps, same deal. Loser had to take me at Christmas and holidays. Mom got stuck with my university years, mainly because Dad was onto a new family by then. No big deal for either of them since after first year, I stopped coming home for Christmas.

But in my last year everything fell apart. The Ponzi scheme my grandfather had made his money on got discovered and Mom’s family was wiped out. And when Mom stopped being able to pay for school, Dad stopped having any reason to. So I didn’t get to finish the year and didn’t write my bar exams. But my residence was prepaid, so I was stuck at a school I couldn’t afford to attend and my former friends wanted nothing to do with me. That’s when I struck up a friendship with Nerea, the woman who cleaned the halls. I’d always make a point of going out and saying ‘hi’ to her when I heard her talking Spanish with the other cleaning staff. She wasn’t quite the twin of Reverie, but close. Even had a mole like Reverie, just on the right cheek rather than the left. Really, the resemblance was amazing. The height, the weight, the alabaster skin, the straight black hair. And the same hazel eyes. When I told Narea how unusual her eye colour was for a Latina she said ‘My parents immigrated from a little town in the Basque Country called Gernika. Spanish isn’t even my first language.’ I think she liked me better after seeing how mortified I was about making such a stupid assumption. She started knocking on my door after her shift and we’d get coffee and talk for hours. She didn’t have money for school but she was teaching herself as many programming languages as she could. She wanted to get into cybersecurity, which was the next big thing in systems, she said.

One Friday afternoon, as though materializing from my daydream, I saw Narea from the window of my room, walking across the quad. I couldn’t believe what she was wearing. Gladiator stilettos, metallic purple crop-top, and a tight leather skirt as black and shiny as a hearse in the rain. I’d never seen her dressed that way. I ran out of the residence and followed her to the street just as she was walking towards a Jag XJ6 Sedan with three guys in the car. It was a hot night and they had the converted roof off. The driver threw the passenger door open and barely slowed as she jumped in. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I could hear Narea laughing at it even after the car had turned the corner.

Everyone knew those guys. They were next-level rich and wouldn’t have given me the time of day even back when my tuition was being paid.

I walked back to the residence and packed up and got on a bus to my dad’s place. When I arrived two days later, he said it would cause too much stress on his wife and their new baby if I stayed at the house. He put me up in a hotel and three days after that he had me on a flight to the company I’m still working for. The owner owed dad a favour.

Funny. The two things that have given me the most pleasure these last months are the Jag and Reverie’s body. And yet I’ve damaged both of them and been hurt back each time. It’s got to mean something, but it would take a wiser man than me to explain it. Where’s Master Steve when you need him?

The way Reverie was positioned I thought she was kneeling. But when I looked closer with my eye, which was still getting used to figuring out depth perception, I could tell she’d broken both legs and they were at a weird angle with the shins pointing forward. The mess of broken limbs was still propping her up which meant she couldn’t move at all without hurting herself even more. I was thinking there should be sirens by now. But there weren’t.

I thought I might have seen someone standing in the middle of the street, but peripheral vision is a whole different game with one eye. Before I could adjust my head to confirm it, someone who turned out to be Melody was on top of me, trying to push me all the way through the window. Which was completely impossible. I kicked her back against the wall which got her out of the picture, but someone in the room was still screaming. I pulled my head out of the window and turned to see that it was the banana girl. As I was turning to face the room I saw her fall sideways, bang her head on the dresser, and stop screaming. It looked like I’d hit her in the knee when I fired the Glock, which I really shouldn’t have done since I had no idea who she was or what she was doing her. There are a whole lot of things I would have done differently in those seconds if I were able to take another run at it.

At this point I was sitting on the floor with my back to the wall and my body started twitching. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t see anything because my alive eye was crying from the pain in my dead one and my only thought was that if I could get hold of my phone and somehow get it to my face it would come on—that is if it could still recognize my face—and I could ask it to call Inspector Dixon’s number. Even if I could just say ‘help’ into the phone he could locate me. Anyone else getting here before he did would mean big trouble. And Dixon owed me.

KYLE

The first thing I saw in the lobby when I opened my eyes was the guy who checks in when he isn’t getting along with his wife. He was sitting upright on the loveseat with a can of beer in his right hand. And even though he was fast asleep he kept it balanced on his right knee. I had no idea how long he’d been like that, but it’s an amazing thing to be able to do. Not that anyone would notice if he spilled it. The stain would just blend with everything else that’s been spilled on the carpet since The Stardust opened.

He’s come down to the lobby in the middle of the night a few times in the past. I guess he just wants to feel less alone.

I glanced at the digital clock with the big numbers on it. It said 3:14:16 A.M. Miriam bought the clock so I could have no confusion about when my shift starts. That doesn’t really work though, because when I’m getting to my shift it’s not like the big clock is on my wrist. When I told Miriam it would make more sense if she bought me a watch she said I’d just lose it.

Something went wrong with the clock and now it’s exactly an hour-and-a-half slow. Which means it was really 4:44:44. I’m adding about half a minute of seconds for the time it took to figure out all this math. It’s not exact but I decided to think that the numbers were all 4s because that keeps things simple and not many things are simple for me right now.

But it was stranger than just what the clock said. Because I felt whole days had been erased from my life. Like, did I go and see Jonathan and buy those gummies and Run, Teri, Run yesterday? Or was it sometime last week? I checked the calendar, but that was no help because I couldn’t really remember anything that had happened over the last few days that would tell me what day it was.

My eyes were sore and really dry and I rubbed them for a while and when I was able to focus again I saw there was blood all over my shirt. I also saw that the key to room 6174 had been left on the front desk.

That didn’t make any sense. After the recent events in 6174 I didn’t think dropping off the key at would be high on anyone’s to-do list.

But there it was.

I decided I’d better go up and look around. I took my phone because it was a good bet I’d be calling 911 again.

When I went upstairs to 6174 I couldn’t believe it. A few hours earlier I’d heard guns go off and a lot of shouting. Given the way I’d been treated by everyone who wanted to be in that room, I decided I wouldn’t investigate, I’d just call 911 from down here. I knew there was someone screaming outside so after I made the call I went out the front door and found a woman I’ve seen here before. She’s a friend of the occupant of 6174 and I’m pretty sure works at the same club. Only now she’s on the ground and screaming, so she was the ‘thunk’ on the pavement. Her legs were pointing in unnatural directions When I looked up, I saw the man who’d dragged me over the desk and pushed me up the stairs. He was leaning out of 6174. One of his eyes had a big piece of glass sticking out of it and was dripping goo.

One of the drops of goo even fell into my own eye. I think that’s when I threw up and passed out.

I have no idea how I got back behind the desk. If the EMS guys decided to pick me up and dump me back in the chair that’s fair enough. But I don’t know why the cops didn’t wake me up, cause I’m pretty sure they would have had questions for me. Everyone else has recently.

Unless they were so busy with worse crime that they still hadn’t made it over here and somehow I woke up and walked back to my post and just don’t remember.

Maybe I’d misdialed 911 and got some other service and they just hung up when I said to come to The Stardust. I can’t really remember the call.

But what about the key on the desk? Did someone who has nothing to do with the cops come here? And did I even make a call?

The keys to every room in this hotel should be shaped like a question mark. I bet the next time I open Run, Teri, Run the pictures will be gone and it will just be a different coloured question mark in every frame. Maybe if I wear a shirt with nothing but question marks printed on it someone, someday, will come up and give me an answer to something.

I don’t know how long I stood in the doorway of 6174 trying to figure out what had happened. Trying to figure out anything at all. I think I would have fallen back to sleep leaning against the doorframe except that the guy who stays here when he’s not getting along with his wife had woken up and was walking up the stairs on the way back to his room. When he got to the second floor he said, ‘Hi, Kyle,’ and I just said ‘hi’ back because I can never remember his name, even though he writes it in the guest ledger every time he checks in.

After that I went back into 6174 and pushed up the window and looked down.

There was nothing there. No police tape. No blood. Not even a patch of damp, like there would be if someone had cleaned it up. Then I remembered that it was raining hard earlier, so maybe the rain started up again and washed everything away. And rain dries up pretty fast in this town.

Except it couldn’t be the rain, because I could see where I’d thrown up. I knew it was mine because I could see the red bits of the gummy in it that my stomach hadn’t quite digested.

A Buick coming along The Meadows pulled to a stop in front of the hotel. The driver rolled down the window, looked up at me and yelled:

“Anywhere a guy can go for a good time around here?”

It took a second but then I remembered it was a few minutes after 4:44:44. A nothing time even on Saturday night. Too late for yesterday and too early for tomorrow.

“There’s a 10:30 service at the church on the corner of Main and Cross street. But the marquee sign out front says they’re offering an early bird service at 8:30 for anyone navigating a dark night of the soul. That’s only. Um. Three hours? Or so. I think.”

The man called me an asshole, rolled the window back up, and drove off.

Right after the car disappeared around the corner, Selina walked by.

There’s a little door in the back of Jonathan’s shop with a flap that lets the cats can go in and out. So that for a couple of hours every day Selina can leave the store and turn into a superstition. I know it’s Selina because of how she’s missing part of her left ear from when she got it caught in a trap Jonathan set when a rat had chewed right through the poly-sleeve of PLASTIC MAN No. 5, 1955: PLASTIC MAN AND THE MAN WHO BROKE THE LAW OF GRAVITY, and turned the most valuable item in his store into pillow stuffing. Cats pull away fast, but the trap still took a piece of her ear. And Jonathan never managed to kill the rat after all.

What’s strange about seeing Selina on the street is that at some point I’ve seen her every hour of the 24. But whenever I go into Jonathan’s shop she’s always there, asleep in a box. It’s like Selina can be in two places at once.

She was walking with such confidence. Like nothing scared her. Not rat traps. Not firearms. Not even getting thrown out a window. She looked like she knew everything about everything, including what had happened tonight but that she wouldn’t tell me, even if she learned how to talk. Can’t say as I blame her. I wouldn’t share info with a species that sets out traps, fires guns, and throws people out of windows.

I pulled my head back in and took a good look around. The bed was unmade and the garbage bin was overflowing with woman stuff. But that was it. Whoever cleaned up the blood and gore cleaned up good.

There was a blue betta fish in a little bowl on the table. Even though the bowl was full of water and the water was fairly clean, the fish was dead. But not like anyone had done anything bad to it. Other than letting it die.

I left 6174 and walked down to the bathroom on the second floor. The light was out even when I flipped the switch because I hadn’t got around to replacing the bulb like Miriam told me to. But the light from alley lamp over the fire-escape outside was bright enough through the pebbled window to show there was no blood or anything else you don’t want spilling onto your shift.

The woman in 6174 was the only person who used that bathroom so she kept her makeup on the back of the sink. A couple of little glass bottles had been knocked to the floor and had smashed and one had glitter and was bright purple as the light caught it. That was it.

I went back down the hall, locked up the room, and went down the stairs to the lobby. I followed the drops from when my nose had been bleeding across the carpet back to the counter. By now I wasn’t even sure the bleeding was from the guy who’d come in and banged my head onto the countertop. Sometimes I just get nosebleeds. Particularly when I do a lot of gummies.

What I do know is that I’d never felt worse. The nausea. The pounding behind my eyes. The empty ache that my whole body had become. This must be how Wendell Holmes felt going into the reservoir, I thought, as I sat down and opened Run, Teri, Run.

No question marks. The pictures were still there. There was a place my blood had smeared and its imprint was on the facing page in perfect symmetry. Which sucks because now the comic would be worth way less. I stared at the two patches of stained blood, sure that the pattern would tell me something. But it didn’t.

I read a few pages of Run, Teri, Run. It was nothing like what had happened. The people weren’t the same and the story wasn’t the same. But it was as though the story of what had happened to me since I bought the comic was printed between the offset dots and I was the only one who could see it. And as soon as I realized that, I also realized that my ability to see it was fading fast.

I closed my eyes tight and counted to ten. Backwards, because it’s harder. When I opened them again the comic was telling me everything that was wrong in my life. I wanted to stop that happening so I turned to the copyright page and saw that it was published in 2018.

Last year.

So it wasn’t the original classic. It was a reprint of a classic.

I should have known not to trust a guy from the 70s. And there sure as hell was more than cannabis in those gummies.

They always cheat you with too much or not enough. I guess a serene person would say that it balances out that way.

I just sat there. Not thinking anything. I wasn’t asleep but the rest of the night kind of disappeared. At least until it was 6:00 am and time to make the coffee that no one but Miriam and I ever drink.

Except that even that wasn’t true today. At 6:30:01 the guys with the bibles came down, poured out two coffees, and grabbed some packets of whitener and sugar. One of them had blonde hair and glasses. The other didn’t.

“I see you changed your mind about the coffee.”

The one with the blonde hair and glasses turned to me with a terrified look. So terrified you’d think I’d caught him breaking into our safe and stealing the five $100 bills Chester had given me. (And as soon as I thought that, I wanted to go check.)

“We’re not allowed to have hot drinks. It’s for two guys who live in the vacant lot across the street. Normally we don’t like to give people something that’s prohibited to us. But we figure the benefit of bringing warmth to the homeless at this time of year makes it the right thing to do.”

The one without blonde hair and glasses looked at his friend and spoke fast, like the way you do when you’re trying to keep the other person from messing things up.

“When we’re in the field our tenets need to be supple.”

“Lest they turn brittle.”

“And more than ever we trust to our faith for guidance.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. But I didn’t need to say anything, because they put lids on the cups and put the sugar and whitener in the pockets of their shirts, looked at me and said God be with you, picked up their bibles, and went out. I hope they enjoyed the coffee. It’s not really all that bad.

I don’t know why but I was really sad after they’d all gone and almost wished the guy who wasn’t getting along with his wife was still there with me in the lobby. Even when he’s asleep it’s company.

I did the math with the clock when Miriam walked in. It was 7:00:00 exactly and I figured I should say something that showed I valued such professional behaviour.

“Good morning, Miriam. And might I just say, your punctuality sets a good example.”

“Glad you think so. Though it’s pretty much accidental since I can come or go anytime I want now. And what in the name of the undead has happened since I saw you last? The bar is low for personal appearance at The Stardust, but a shirt covered in blood falls measurably below the dress code.”

“I get nosebleeds. This was kind of a bad one.”

“I guess I better budget for a truckload of tissue boxes next fiscal year.”

She walked past me and produced a key to the office that belongs to the owner. No one has ever opened that door when I’ve been here, but I’m learning not to get spooked about things that have never happened before.

“Come on in, Kyle.”

I almost didn’t want to. I mean, like, what am I going to see? I’m thinking maybe there’s a skeleton in a chair missing its head. Or a jar of vinegar on a shelf and when you brush off the cobwebs there’s a fetus in it. Or the head that used to go with the skeleton.

But it wasn’t that at all. Just a wooden desk and some file cabinets. Smelling like mustiness and rot and dead things.

Miriam took an air freshener out of her bag and put it on the desk so that the room would smell like mustiness and rot and dead things and air freshener.

She sat behind the desk and gestured for me to sit in the chair across from her. She then leaned towards me with her elbows on the desk.

“The hotel came up for sale. The owner was asking a fair price and gave me an even better price for not having to list it with an agency. He’s out of the country and avoiding those headaches is worth it to him. So you work for me now.”

“I thought I worked for you already.”

“Yeah. You really, really work for me now. If I want to continue to let you. Do you want me to continue to let you?”

“I mean, I guess I think I want you to continue to let me?”

I wasn’t sure I said that one right. Like when there’s so many parts to a sentence you might be saying the opposite.

“Why don’t you go get that comic you were reading.”

“I, um, I don’t know if I was—.”

“Go get it.”

I went back to the counter but it wasn’t there and when I went back in Miriam was pulling Run, Teri, Run out of her bag. Like a pickpocket. I hadn’t seen her take it. She probably would have done well with the people I met last night.

“This isn’t yours?”

“I think maybe it could be mine. Is that, like, a trick?”

“Yes. To make a point. That it’s not very professional to read at work. Which you’ve been doing as long as you’ve worked here. You think I don’t know what you get up to?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“Uh huh. Well, I was concerned about what you’ve been bringing in here so I stopped by to see that little friend of yours at the store where you bought it.”

“You know about Jonathan’s store?”

“That’s right Kyle. I follow you everywhere. You can’t hide from me!”

Miriam made a pretend scary face and leaned towards me over her new desk. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or look ashamed so I looked at the air freshener.

“I told Jonathan, who incidentally does not have your best interests at heart, that I’d call the police if he wasn’t straight with me.”

“Straight with you?”

“That’s right. It’s just as I suspected. This comic is banned. Which means you’ve brought illegal print-matter into the workplace.”

“It was banned in 1957.”

“Exactly. Criminal goods that you’ve brought into my establishment and have the audacity to enjoy while on the job. You’re not only hurting yourself, you could get me shut down.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“It is not.”

“The banning took place because of the 1954 Comics Code. Which is so long ago I’m not even sure you were born yet.”

“Watch it.”

“If you’re interested the Comics Code was brought in by a psychiatrist named—.”

From the way she was looking at me I knew she wanted me to stop saying things, so I did.

“You bring criminal goods in here again and you’re fired. I see you walking into that Jonathan’s store, you’re fired. Do you get it now?”

Even in the state I was in, I got it. It was smart of her to talk around the whole situation like that in case there’s hidden surveillance here and they’re listening to us in Patagonia. This way what we’d been saying wouldn’t hurt either of us.

“You smarten up and actually try at this job and we’ll send you for training.”

“We?”

When she didn’t say anything, I tried another question.

“Training?”

“Hospitality training. It exists. And we’ll start by getting you a better uniform.”

She stared at me for a while then. I don’t think I’d really ever had a conversation with her before and this was starting to feel like one. And what she said next felt like she was reading out loud from a school assignment.

“When I was in Grade 10, I used to watch this show about the universe. It was hosted by a famous astronomer, and I remember him saying that everything in this world, including our bodies and brains, is made up of particles from dead stars. But even though we’re just made from stardust we’re able to think and reason and discover our origins. Which means that the universe reorganized its particles in order to understand itself. The moment I heard that I was determined to be a physicist.”

“You’re a physicist?”

“No Kyle. I work in a hotel. Just because you’re determined to be something doesn’t mean you’ll be that thing. The week I graduated high-school, Dad left us for an ‘exotic dancer.’ I heard she went by the stage name Purple Dusk.”

“That’s an actual stage name?”

“A lot of men in this town go for an unusual skin tone. Immigrant women play it up.”

“So where was she from?”

“I don’t know, Kyle. How about Easter Island. Do you get that there’s a point here you’re missing?”

“Sorry. I think the nosebleed took a lot of blood from my head. I won’t mention her again. Unless she checks into The Stardust.”

“She checks into The Stardust she’s a dead woman.”

“Right?”

“Right. Now focus Kyle. The point is my mom never got over it. She got sick right after and someone had to pay the rent. The Stardust had just opened and the one good thing about it was that it was close. My mom died eight years ago but I still live there.”

Some people would start to cry when they told a story like that but Miriam looked as far from crying as a person can get. She didn’t say anything and the best way to describe her at this point was like someone who might explode. I didn’t want that so I thought up a question just to keep the conversation going.

“Do you still watch videos about physics?”

“Yeah. And I always grab the science magazines that get thrown out whenever they tear down another school. I figure if someone paid to print it on paper it might even be true. I like the things in physics and mathematics that take my mind off the nightmare of living in this city. Like how Schrödinger’s cat exists in multiple states until she’s observed. Or how the Klein bottle has an infinite surface even though I have one small enough for a key fob.”

She reached in her purse and pulled it out and showed it to me and it looked like a glass elephant eating its own trunk. I was glad she didn’t ask me to examine it because I was pretty sure I’d just break it and more of me would start to bleed.

“Not that I do much with the knowledge. Other than using Kaprekar’s constant for a room number on the second floor.”

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about but this time she saved me by asking a question.

“You ever have a dream, Kyle?”

“I dream all the time.”

“I don’t mean when you fall asleep at work. I mean a dream of something you might like to do with your life.”

“Like. Ambition?”

“That’s what I thought. Listen, Kyle. A lot of people have a dream. And usually it comes to nothing at all. Other people never think beyond whatever makes them happy in the next hour. But sometimes those people wake up one morning and get to work and do something incredible.”

“That’s. Woah. That’s a lot to think about.”

“Tell you what. Don’t think about it now. Right now think about actually doing your job. Then in a week or so think about what I just said.”

We talked about practical stuff then. Like the new uniforms we’d be getting. Classy ones. I love that. I always hated this navy blazer that makes me look like I take tickets for a three-hour cruise in an old TV show.

Miriam says she’s going to give me more money and more responsibility if I’m prepared to step up. Which has never really been necessary in the past. But imagine if our guests have alligator suitcases and I have to order limos and learn how to shampoo their expensive little dogs. It’s probably something that just happens in your life that you have to work at things. But I am going to miss getting high and seeing where we all go when we fall asleep.

When we were done, I took Run, Teri, Run, dropped it in the waste basket, and went out of the hotel. A police cruiser was parked in front, and an officer was standing outside the car, but I couldn’t see his head because he had it through the open window on the passenger’s side and he was talking on the radio. He must have heard me because he pulled his head out and was still holding the radio but had stopped talking on it. He looked hard at me.

“Do you work here?”

“Yeah. Just got off my shift.”

He kept looking at me for a while and then looked over at where I’d thrown up. After that his eyes went up the side of the building and stayed there for a few seconds and then he looked at the vomit again and I was pretty sure he knew it was mine. After that he looked at my shirt. Then he stared into my eyes the way only a cop knows how to do.

I knew he’d seen the little bits of illegal gummy in the vomit. Jonathan used to tell me to make sure the Finest never saw me with the product, because they teach cops how the colour is a little different than for the normal candy gummies. I figured the officer was going to reach in the car and get latex gloves and a kit containing tools for chemical analysis. He’d take a sample of the gummy with lots of my vomit included and put it in a plastic vial, and then he’d walk over to me and use small scissors to cut out a piece of my shirt that had blood on it and then use tweezers to put it in a zip-lock bag. Then he’d tell me to sit in the back seat of his car and he’d get in the driver’s seat with the samples and use a machine they keep next to the police radio that can match the DNA of my vomit to the DNA of my blood. They probably have a machine that tells them if a gummy has drugs in it too. Miriam’s right. It’s amazing what science can do now. Those gummies probably had so many different drugs that as soon as the officer had the results he’d handcuff me and read me my rights and drive to the station where I’d be booked and put in a cell. They’d assign me a lawyer who would go with me to court and when the judge gave me 10 years each for every drug they found in the gummies, my lawyer would just nod at the judge and then lean over and whisper to me that this was a great deal, all things considered, and that I should take it. And then some tall men in uniforms would put me back in handcuffs and walk me out of the courtroom to a van that’s just a box on wheels with a single door on the back. A lot like those boxes that rats walk into thinking there’ll be a snack, but when they get in there’s just a bunch of other rats and no way out. While I’d be thinking this, I’d feel a push from a stick in my back and I’d have to walk in. They’d chain me to a bench alongside men who’d killed their wives, either by shooting them or by throwing them out a window. And the van would take me to a jail where they’d keep me until I died. Which is back luck even for me, since this was the last time I was ever going to do drugs, let alone vomit them up. What with Miriam offering me a career that has upward mobility if I make the right choices.

But that’s not what happened. After he’d looked at my shirt the police officer looked me in the eye again. And this time he was less like a cop and more like a regular person.

“I guess it was a rough night.”

I didn’t know what kind of answer I was supposed to give to that but I could tell he expected something.

“I get nosebleeds.”

He shook his head and then reached through the window and put the radio back. Then he walked around the car and got in and drove away.

When I got home I didn’t even undress. I just hit the bed and fell asleep and didn’t dream about anything.

The best kind of sleep.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This has been an Albatross Event.