By Sam Tallent

Brut

Running the Light

Random House

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Copyright © 2026 by Sam Tallent

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Epigraph is from “It’s Expected I’m Gone,” writen by Mike Watt and performed by Minutemen. Used by permission.

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Ebook ISBN 9780593978917

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ep_prh_7.5a_157700235_c0_r0

This one’s for Lund

I make certain

That my head is connected to my body.

No hope?

See, that’s what gives me guts

—Minutemen, “It’s Expected I’m Gone”

Part

I

1

There were two men in Tama, Iowa, until one killed the other badly with a shotgun at intimate range. The killer continued to Fort Dodge where he knifed a second man—liver, heart, liver, liver—in the parking lot of a reptile expo. In Nebraska he ate a fried pork cutlet pounded the circumference of a hubcap.

“Do they have a machine back there?”

“Nope. Just a mallet. It’s crazy what meat will do.”

At a sporting goods store outside of Omaha he purchased a one-pound bag of pistachios, electrolyte paste, a pair of size-11 Nike Monarchs, a .22 Ruger and a box of bullets. The driver’s license he proffered was one of three in his possession. He asked if he could pay in cash.

The counterman snorted. “This was still America, last I checked.”

He rented a room at a hotel with a hot tub and a gym. He prepared the weapon, attempted sleep and burnt the day subjecting his body to intervals of punishment and reward.

At dusk, the GPS led him to a chain restaurant he remembered for the babyback rib commercials they ran in his youth. He sat in the car and stared at the entrance; whenever a white man used the door, he compared his face to the face of the man in the photos on his phone. This was most of the job. Pistachio shells amassed between his feet.

Inside the restaurant the lights became brighter. A woman exited, followed by a man, his man. His eyes followed them to a red Mazda. She had to go up on her toes to kiss him. The Mazda departed, his man waving goodbye.

He was crouched on the passenger side of a gray Pacifica—Missouri license plate 091752—when the van unlocked remotely. He duck-walked around the hood, weighing the footsteps. Close, closer—“Turn around.”

His man’s face flattened, registering this wraith with the black gun out in front of him. “What is—”

“Turn. Around.”

Smoothly his man spun. He joined the gun to his back, pushing his man toward the car.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Who are you?”

“Just an arbiter.”

—

Sighing, panting, his frustration plumed visible in the cold. He considered the man pinned bleating beneath him. Helpless, vulnerable. With his face he apologized to the world. The predictable cacophony beseeching creation.

“Please!”

Begging yet more grace.

“Please!”

Perverting his dignity.

“Please please please!”

There was never anything new.

Disgusted equally by the man as with himself for allowing this indecency to befall him, the arbiter, eager to herald the quiet, produced the Ruger, and the man lost his voice down the barrel. Finger pressured steel.

Klik.

“Oh good.” He tried the trigger again. The firing mechanism’s metallic denial was lost to the belching of toads. “Very good.”

Getting to the water’s edge had been more of a procedure than he’d assumed. The man had slipped descending the hill, dragging the arbiter down onto his hip and caking the firearm in mud. Now both of them were useless. A mosquito flew in his mouth. He spat. “Really, very good.”

The arbiter governed himself via systems. His tools were precision and speed and stratagem. Swift operating was proper operating. This was not that. He’d scoffed when he read the assignment: “the asset must be realized on the southside of the pond.” Asset. Realized. The blocking of a play directed by a child.

His gut was that someone had been wronged here, maybe even ruined, by this man now groveling in the mud. The lore didn’t interest him. What mattered was the man knew why they were here, and he did, his eyeballs greedy, bursting, desperate to take it all in before it became impossible to see.

“Pleasepleasepleaseplea—”

The vulgarity of cowardice. It was important to the arbiter that he was different from this man: he hoped his own death might inspire him. He gripped the gun barrel and swinging the butt like a gavel imploded the pleading man’s nose. He hammered repeatedly, dusting teeth, pulping lips, a nightmare backlit by moonlight digging a passage to hell. The feeling of a spoon in nearly ripe mango, the initial resistance concealing the softer flesh below. Mud splattered. Bones gave.

Quiet.

He knelt beside the body, blinking sweat from his eyes. An owl cut across the night like a porthole and he watched it because there was no one else to see it. He disassembled the gun and pitched the components into the center of the pond. The body, per his instructions, remained.

Wet earth coated his dungarees and inside of them his legs were heavy as he high-kneed the cattails to avoid losing his shoes to the muck. At the car he peeled off his sneakers and socks. As he removed his pants, his knife fell out of his pocket. He sucked his teeth, said the word “excellent.”

He disrobed completely and poured a bottle of water over his head, his chest, his hands. To the squirrels watching in the high branches he appeared a celebrant concluding a ritual, a demon or oni, some lesser god, inhuman. Nude he smoked, studying the motion of the alfalfa swaying in the fields across the pond. He bagged his cigarette butt with his clothes and shoes and set the bundle in the passenger seat and put on underwear and sweats and the last of Benny’s shirts.

With the hot air blowing full blast on his bare feet, he backed the car out of the reeds and turned onto the unpaved road. The clock on the dash read 00:07. Thirty-three years ago was the day he was born.

—

He parked the car in front of door 8 and took the bag from the passenger seat and followed the gravel path behind the motel to the dumpsters and buried the bag beneath a layer of trash.

In the room he sent a text message from the provided phone then removed the SIM card, snapped it in half and dropped the hemispheres in a glass of water along with the device.

With the lights off, the room was depthless black and he lay staring until coronas of light emerged at the rim of his vision. Beneath the tawdry sheets, thinking of nothing, he experienced the darkness as a palpable thing, the weight, the totality, and he allowed it to crush him and disappeared from himself.

In the morning he dressed quickly, ready for his jog, only to remember his shoes were soaked. He sat on the edge of the bed passing a hair dryer over his sneakers watching The Price Is Right. He overbid every item. He didn’t know the cost of things.

The man at the front desk said there was a shoe store just down the street.

“How about a library?”

“Brother, I’m not the guy to ask.”

—

The librarian showed him to the computer and told him the first fifteen minutes were free and he thanked her and waited for her to leave before he typed the password into the box. He created a new email—Sumo123456Sumo followed by, as always, the date—and at exactly noon the message arrived.

DEAR NEPHEW.

WE RECEIVED YOUR LETTER. CONGRATULATIONS. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. YOUR TUITION HAS BEEN PAID. WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT DINNER ON THURSDAY THE 20TH. SAN FRANCISCO IS BEAUTIFUL THIS TIME OF YEAR. WE SENT YOUR CARE PACKAGE TO THE MAIN POST OFFICE. BEST. UNCLE.

After deleting the message and deactivating the account he searched MAIN POST OFFICE SAN FRANCISCO and printed a map from here to there. The directions totaled three pages and the librarian stapled them together. “Going on a trip?”

“Yes ma’am.” The sound of his own voice surprised him: in the last week he’d said less than five hundred words aloud. “That’s the plan anyway.”

She smiled, sweeping an errant bang behind her ear. “To California?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She laughed. “You keep calling me ma’am but you’re older than me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve never been to California.” She rubbed her chin with the knuckle of her index finger. “I’ve barely been to Iowa.”

“You should go.”

“To Iowa?”

“Anywhere. It’s a big country.”

“So I’ve heard.”

—

In North Platte he traded the car for a blue Ford Fiesta with dealer tags and eleven hundred dollars cash then continued to Sidney where he pulled off the highway at a motel attached to a truck stop surrounded by wheat fields embossed molten bronze by the gasping sun. He scraped the breading from his chicken fried steak and lingered over coffee reading a William Johnstone novel while the truckers watched Sunday Night Football on a miniature black and white TV.

At halftime he bought a pack of cigarettes and nodded to the men gathered smoking around a space heater in a clear plastic tent.

“…that’s what I get for letting her sleep in the truck.”

“Can’t never trust no lizard.”

“It was like to freeze.”

“She was colder.”

The flip of his Zippo drew eyes as he smoked a Newport, the flame illuminating the memories of acne in the hollows of his cheeks. He shut the lighter and tucked it in the watch pocket of his jeans and hooked a thumb through his belt loop and stared at the fire.

“Never had a Zippo,” a trucker told him.

“They’re more hassle than they’re worth.”

“Sounds like my wife.”

“Don’t get me started.”

Across the parking lot bathed in a cone of fluorescent yellow light a young man in high-cut shorts stood in a tight huddle with two women. The women, one wide and tall, the other short and frail, wore miniskirts and boots and puffed down coats. The broad one punctuated her sentences by clapping the back of her hand against her palm, causing the young man to flinch, while the other woman, her hands hidden in her pockets, turtled her chin into her jacket and bounced on her heels.

The arbiter left the tent and walked through the lot, weaving among the big trucks. Approaching the trio, he saw that the young man was barely more than a boy—sixteen maybe, older he hoped. He watched from out of view as the large woman removed the boy’s hat and posed with it on her head. The boy reached for it but she had a foot on him and her arms were long and she teased him until the arbiter emerged from between the trucks. Seeing him, she stopped immediately and assumed a flattering posture. The other woman unzipped her jacket, exposing her bare breasts, offering, promising, but he met the boy’s eyes and motioned with his chin and the boy, tailing at a learned pace, followed him to his room.

On the bed the boy sat Indian-style, his long legs incongruent with the rest of his compact frame. He played calm, familiar, the veteran in control, but above his lips—pouting, ridiculous—his eyes were ceaseless. Small talk failed. He said he was thirsty. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“No,” said the arbiter, continuing, as if by way of explanation, to say his name was Owen and he owned a roofing company and he was traveling to Salt Lake because he’d heard it was supposed to storm.

“Have you always been a roofer?”

“I’m not a roofer, I just sell them.”

The boy leaned back against the headboard, letting his coat play open to reveal collarbones as pronounced as jug handles. “I’m not a Christian, I just pray.”

The man leaned against the TV stand. He had an odd way of crossing his arms: he cupped his elbows in the opposing hands, forming a basket low across his stomach, as if he were holding a baby or bound in a straightjacket. He stared at the space above the boy’s head, his legs crossed at the ankle.

The boy said he was quiet.

The man’s jaw flexed.

“That’s fine, talking’s a waste most times.”

“How old are you?”

“How old should I be?”

“I’m not a pervert.”

“We’ll see.” Arching forward, hands and knees, the boy crawled down the bed.

“Tell me your age.”

“It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On what you mean. I’ve been alive for a while but I just recently started living.”

“I was born in 1991,” said the man.

“I wouldn’t have guessed.” The boy knelt on the end of the bed, their eyes level.

“You’re not eighteen.”

“And you’re not a roofer.”

The boy extended his arm, reaching for his chest, and the man saw it clearly—the chips in his fingernails, the cuts on his forearm, the cumulative effect of countless small disasters and the resulting momentum that ensued. He turned his head and stepped aside. From a fold of money in his chest pocket he peeled two hundred-dollar bills and held them out. “Can you get pills?”

“Oh,” said the boy, receiving the money like manna.

“I need to stay awake.”

The boy said he could and the man told him if he wasn’t lying there was another two hundred waiting for him. The boy left and returned giddy. He said they were 30s, extended release: “I don’t always have much, but when I do, I have all of it.”

The man gathered his coat from the chair and tossed ten twenties and the keycard on the comforter. “I’m paid until Tuesday.” The room became colder when he opened the door.

The boy looked from the money to the key to the floor to the man. Weary met confusion, the storm of his face, but then he smiled and the man nodded and stepped outside. Relaxed, the boy slumped into the bed, his palms flat at his side, and the man thought of a painting he’d seen of a saint or a martyr in a church in a country far away from and different from here.

—

One of the pills and an audiobook biography of Jerry Lee Lewis carried him through Rock Springs, Wyoming, but outside of Green River he jerked awake to the screaming friction of his tires hassling the rumblestrip and he pulled off the highway into Little America.

The man at the front desk offered him a soft-serve ice cream cone. He ate it in three gulping bites.

“You’re on the second floor beside the pool.”

“Do you have anything else?”

“At this early hour, our clean rooms are limited.”

“I understand.”

“Would you like earplugs?”

“No thank you.”

“Is there anything else, Mr. Beaujolais?”

The arbiter snatched up his face, his eyes galvanic with a frenzied intensity that made the deskman step back from his keyboard. “What did you call me?”

“Mr. Beau-jo…I’m sorry, I knew I would butcher it.”

Beaujolais glared at the receipt.

One night = $108

Payment method: cash.

Parking permitted: blue Fiesta, BXC991

Occupant: Robert Beaujolais.

“Sir?”

He teetered on the edge of his own vision as it tightened to a pulsing white hole. The cords in his neck became visible, the individual fibers striated and pumping in accordance with his flabbergasted heart. Dizzying, déjà vu—this was a place he hadn’t been in a while.

“Sir, are you…”

“Brain freeze.” He braced himself against the counter, unlocked his knees. “The ice cream.”

“Oh.”

“I wolfed it.”

“I was about to call an ambulance.”

“Well I’m glad you didn’t.”

The concierge laughed. “Me too, that would have been tough to explain.”

Robert Beaujolais agreed.

2

He opened the curtain to find it was already night.

Alone at the counter he drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. He ordered biscuits and grits and ham that was advertised as country but was actually cold cuts sliced thick and pan-fried. He ordered a small draft beer and then another, pondering his mistake while the waitress painted her nails.

Mr. Beaujolais. Real though it sounded fake. Few alive knew him by that name. He’d seldom heard it since the Marines, the dainty French syllables gnashed to bits by woodchipping American jaws. As a child his name was othering, an audible border dividing him from the Cartwrights, the Evanses, the Lockharts, all the names without nuance indigenous to the prairie, as ubiquitous as Grama grass, useless and fecund.

Upon accepting his current position, a name change was recommended; the firm handled it in-house. For the price of five thousand dollars Robert Francis Beaujolais was erased and he received a passport and a driver’s license bearing the name of the person that he’d since become. The slip-up, though minor in this crossroads, was worrisome, a mole signifying a greater cancer: How many similar errors had he committed unnoticed? The question wasn’t what was he thinking but rather why wasn’t he thinking. Small bullets, big holes.

“You want another one?”

The arbiter pushed his glass toward the waitress. “No thank you.”

“Good call,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to wind up having any fun.”

—

Salt Lake was bright and clean.

Reno was the opposite.

Early Wednesday morning from the north he entered San Francisco, crossing the bridge people thought about when they thought about Out West. The icon sang with the diffuse light of the sun through the fog, a latticework of liquid metal as delicate as a sugar sculpture trembling above the ocean and hanging between the clouds. At the toll booth he rolled down the window, dropped his change in the basket and welcomed the city into his lungs.

Women wearing tight clothes made of textiles engineered for astronauts jogged behind strollers up the Presidio. At a red light he watched an elderly Asian couple pick aluminum cans from a trash barrel and on Lombard near Fillmore a man wrapped in a blanket craned his neck and gawked blindly at the sun, his chapped mouth gaping, swallowing the light.

He parked on O’Farrell at a string of empty meters and double-checked the car was locked before he started down the hill. He passed shopkeepers furling security grills and spraying hoses on the sidewalk and delivery men navigating loaded handcarts around still-sleeping homeless and bespoke businessmen staring at their phones. He stepped over broken glass and vomit and spilled takeout cartons. Smelled bread baking and coffee, trash and hash and human waste. Children’s laughter brayed out of windows beside fighting or lovemaking in unknown languages and public radio and jazz and country and rap and distorted guitars over drums and what he thought was a sitar, the alarm clock for the city rubbing sleep from its eyes.

He found the post office and showed identification at general delivery and took the package to a taqueria on Hyde Street and ordered posole and sat in a red vinyl booth. Inside the manila envelope there was a smaller envelope closed with wax. Once his soup arrived, he cracked the seal with a butter knife and removed the contents: a cellular phone, one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills, and a key adhered with a piece of masking tape on which was written the number 17. He put the cash in his wallet and added the key to his key chain and turned on the phone and input the pin. To the steaming bowl he added cabbage and sliced onions and the juice from wedged limes, scrolling the phone as he ate, panning through pictures and videos of a middle-aged man with a sharp nose and thick white hair that reminded him of a wolf. There were pictures of the man from all angles, close-ups of his lupine face, a video of him entering a silver car followed by a still frame of the car’s license plate, then a video of the man parking the car in front of a brick building with a glass door flanked by plaster columns, the camera panning up to a window on the third floor. He studied the man until even the broth was gone.

Preloaded into the phone’s map application were three addresses labeled Home, Work, School. The School address led him all the way down Turk, behind the Painted Ladies and the university, to Stanyan where he turned left and then right into the park. At a honeycomb of grass tennis courts he parked and found the bay of lockers matching the picture in the phone. He put the key in the lock of the locker numbered 17 and opened the door. The grain of the leather, the satchel’s familiar weight. He hid the bag in the spare tire compartment and shut the lid, then paused to watch a congregation of geese cross the sky in a broken horseshoe like a hair in the iris of the eye of the world.

—

A revolving door. A nodding doorman. A wine-colored carpet like an incongruous tongue lolling across the checkerboard tile.

“Just one night?”

“Two actually.”

“My pleasure.”

“I don’t have a credit card.”

Looking up from his keyboard, the concierge’s eyes expanded and contracted, as if mirroring his ears. “I’m sorry?”

Beaujolais repeated himself.

“I’m afraid we require a credit card for the deposit, sir.”

Beneath the desk, below the deskman’s line of sight, Beaujolais opened his wallet and counted thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. “I was in Sacramento last night and, well, I guess I had a couple too many and I left my card at the bar.” He smiled and placed the stack of bills on the desk beside a bronze placard inscribed with a one hundred percent customer satisfaction guarantee. “The firm was able to wire me some cash while my new card is being processed. I was hoping you could hold this in the safe as a deposit.” His inflection was polite but not asking.

The deskman eyed the stack of blue hundreds as if in fact they were orange. “This is very unusual, sir.”

Beaujolais laid his forearm on the desk, exposing his watch. His face remained unchanged. “Don’t I know it.”

“I’ll have to ask my manager.”

“I’d be dipped if you did.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Just a thing people used to say.”

—

He dreamt of a hillside encrusted by glassine snow and up and down the incline he was tracking something or being tracked. He was shoeless, and though he felt his feet dig into the powder, the sparks of snow between his toes, he left no footprints, and he understood this was his advantage and awoke very cold.

There was a split of prosecco in the minibar and he drank it in the shower straight from the bottle, turning the water from cold to near scalding, confusing his body into a state of alert.

He opened his bag and found fresh underwear and socks and a clean linen shirt and glared out at the city through the high window. Within the rigid grid made evident at this vantage the dots of light moved forward and backward like the visible circuitry of sci-fi spaceships. In the small towns he wasn’t uppity about accommodations but given the opportunity, he embraced opulence. Grandeur was one of his few remaining pleasures: thread counts, rainfall fixtures, eggs Benedict just as easy as picking up the phone. He had no people but he had money, the wanton spending of which gave him a brief glimpse at satisfaction. In a life dependent on anonymity, luxury was a form of notoriety, and the flashes of sentience afforded by magnificent settings were a few dots of color in the emptiness of his life. To be allowed near beauty was to be accepted as beautiful and he thought of this as he looked out at the city abutting the water, America’s continental masterpiece, fingering the velvet drapes.

—

The bartender picked up his glass. “Another one?”

Beaujolais nodded. “And one for him.” He lifted his chin toward his target. “Whatever he’s drinking.”

The bar was busy but manageable, a colony more than a hive. He’d established himself on the far side, leaning against a digital jukebox spewing the inorganic music made by children born online. Young professionals crowded the barstools, Brooks Brothers, Charles Tyrwhitts, Robert Reids, twentysomethings with more money than style loosening their ties after another shift at the blood factory. Between rounds of reposados they danced with each other beneath patches of Technicolor, their unbuttoned J.Crew shirts exposing the delineations of their uniformly hairbald chests. An older crew watched them from the recessed booths, a bask of crocodiles licking their teeth at the gazelles across the oasis. Occasionally they rose from their vodka diets and Michelobs to take turns in the oscillating light, spinning until their shirts stuck to their bodies and their faces burned red.

Beaujolais watched the old men dizzy themselves while he waited for his drink. Their despicable, desperate, manufactured joy made him hope to die sooner.

The bartender placed another vermouth in front of him before delivering the drink to his target. The man—black hair, black sweater, icicle chin, thin lips like twin bruises that would break beneath your own—peeked up from the book he was reading and the bartender pointed and Beaujolais raised his glass. Briefly the man reciprocated, tilting his new martini by the stem before his big eyes fell back to his book—Camus or Sartre, Maupassant maybe, something hackneyed and reeking of clove cigarettes.

“Precious motherfucker.”

Beaujolais maintained observation, throbbing with denial. The flash of pink tongue wetting fingertips—another page turned. He waited for the eyes to rise, for the lips to curl, invitation, possibility, hope: none came. He put a fifty beneath his glass and entered one of the toilets.

Midstream, he heard the door open.

“Thank you for the drink.”

“Martini, huh?”

In the mirror, his target smiled. “That’s what I ask for. It’s easier than ordering a gin and ice.”

“You like it dry?”

“As the desert wind.” He opened his mouth, shook his head slightly and screwed his eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I said that.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

“I sound like my mother.”

“Your mother was Blanche DuBois?”

“She was blanched alright.”

“What are you reading?”

“The Stranger.” He rolled his eyes, finding the ceiling once again. “I know, I know.”

Beaujolais went to the sink. The reader turned on the faucet for him. In the harsh overhead light, the discrepancy in their ages was brutal. The texture of their skin. The thickness of their hair. To be allowed near beauty is to be accepted as beautiful. Who was the trite one now?

The reader yanked a paper towel from the dispenser. “You’ve never been here before.”

“How would you know?”

The reader handed him the towel. “I would have seen you.”

“Not with your nose in a book.”

“Have you seen me?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, before?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve been here before?”

“No.”

“Then where did you see me?”

“I see you everywhere.”

“Was it Dante’s?”

“You think you’re one of a kind?”

Feigning injury, the reader pouted, sucking his bottom lip. “You think you’re one of a kind?”

The arbiter stepped forward. “But I am.” Pressing into him. “I promise.” Locking the door. “I’m nothing you’ve ever seen.”

3

At exactly nine o’clock the following morning he watched from behind his steering wheel as the silver Karmann Ghia parked in the spot reserved for L. Harriman. He snuffed out his cigarette and compared the license plate to the photo. He swiped. The driver was the man on the screen.

L. Harriman walked with a brisk self-importance, pausing between the columns in front of the door to adjust his tie in the reflection. Harriman opened the door himself because the building hired no doorman. So far the intel was good. The blueprints he’d been provided depicted a straightforward floor plan. Compared to the private Harriman residence, with its gates and security patrols, this was less worse. There were no optimal settings for this work. He was accustomed to operating in a theater of shit, and while San Francisco was among the most heavily surveilled, it didn’t matter: cameras only provided evidence in courts of law and he’d never let it get that far. On this earth he would suffer no more trials.

He lit another menthol and stared at the window. He was about to be alone up there. It was as close to primo as they come. The secretary got her teeth whitened on Thursdays. She was gone until one, sometimes two, Harriman’s girl—it was all in the dossier. In his seven years of arbitration, the intelligence was never less than stellar. The only problem was you still had to read it.

Harriman’s office was on the third floor. Also on the third floor: an actuary and the Committee for the Protection of Elderly Asian Americans, neither of which seemed likely to run toward the sound of gunshots—not that they’d hear anything. The length of the suppressor was cold against his rib cage. At least his weapon was in order.

He’d brought the man from the bar back to his hotel and after they’d used each other he’d cast him into the night and fallen immediately to assembling and disassembling the firearm, a Beretta M9 threaded to a Wolfman silencer—his mandatory assemblage—a process that was as close as he came to meditation. His fingers still smelled like gun in the morning, and he thought, Good omen. Then he remembered there was no such thing.

He rolled his balaclava into a cap with his gloved hands and crossed the quiet street. The time was thirteen past according to the clock in the lobby. The building smelled of the chemical approximation of lilac and lemon. Two women were waiting for the elevator and he occupied himself with the building’s registry until they were gone.

The stairs were concrete and his tennis shoes upon them created snuffling noises similar to a pug dog breathing. One, two, three flights.

At fifteen past he paused to listen before he compressed the bar on the third-floor fire door and entered a hallway decorated on each end with potted aloe plants. Opposite the elevator, above two chocolate leather easy chairs, a mass-market painting of a stallion in a meadow hung askew on the slate-blue wall.

From the provided blueprints he knew the farthest door opened on the receptionist’s office. Inside the office were three additional doors. The first door on the right led to a kitchenette. The second contained a toilet. The door on the left was where L. Harriman received his clients, and it was in front of this door where the arbiter now stood, at seventeen past the hour, gun in hand, safety disengaged.

The conversation on the other side of the door was muffled but one-sided: L. Harriman was on the phone. It would be so much better if he never knew their names; it seemed a trespass, a transgression greater than the act he was about to perform. To know a name was to understand a lineage. There were previous Harrimans, potentially subsequent. Sons, a daughter—the severing of a chain of human beings.

He put his ear to the door: laughter. He pulled the balaclava over his face.

The door opened inward. Behind a desk sat the man who looked like a wolf. On the man’s face, as his eyes transferred the image of a masked, gun-wielding, black-clad intruder to the parts of his brain that registered such stimuli, his lips transformed from carefree smile to open-mouthed puzzlement to the theme park caricature of terror, a rotoscope of the human experience rendered in the time it took the arbiter to level the pistol and point it at his face.

“But—”

A pâté of teeth, lips and tongue exploded out the back of L. Harriman’s skull. The impact sent his office chair skittering. The arbiter fired a second bullet and Harriman, propelled by the chairback’s spring-loaded mechanism, ejected violently forward, bouncing off the side of the desk and crumpling to the floor.

Cordite. This is what God smells like. Refractory in nature, this comet of satisfaction, this fleeting profound peace.

He rerolled the facemask and crouched over the body, careful to avoid the blood. Emanating from the device, he heard a faint whisper. He held it to his ear. A woman’s voice: “Dad? Did I lose you?”

He ended the call before exiting Harriman’s chambers. As he was reaching for the doorknob to the hall, the door—magically, impossibly, terribly—opened inward, revealing a thin woman with hair the blue-black of crow’s feather.

“Dio mio,” she squealed.

Neither of them were supposed to be here.

Equally startled, she assembled herself quickly, pressing her lips tight beneath a single elevated eyebrow. “Okay, yes, hello.” In her left hand she held a drink carrier plugged with twin paper coffee cups. A pine green Michael Kors bag dangling from her elbow matched the color of her eyes. She was beautiful and it was a shame.

Automatically, sans thought, he stepped aside and she entered the room and set the carrier and purse on her desk. She sat and pressed a key on her keyboard then looked up at him, the light from her awoken computer screen highlighting the annoyed ridges in the skin below her hairline. “How can I help you?”

She spoke carefully, focusing on the bucking syllables of this English that was not her first language. He couldn’t geo-locate her accent beyond European: she sounded like a fortune teller in a cartoon.

He felt his hand rise but he prevented it from reaching inside his jacket. From her viewpoint, as he stood silently with his wrist bent oddly, it appeared some kind of tic, and, assuming him to be neurologically impaired (the firm had a history of representing accident victims), she un-tensed her face and smiled, speaking even more painstakingly: “Hel-lo, sir. How may I help you? Do you have an ap-point-ment?”

The arbiter started to nod but aborted mid-tilt and the resulting headshake seemed yet another symptom of his cognitive damage.

“Are you here to see Mr. Harriman?”

He twitched.

“Okay. Let me see if he is available.”

She spun in her chair and tapped on the door. “Mr. Harriman? I know you do not have anything scheduled until after lunch, but there is a man here. I am assuming personal injury. Mr. Harriman?”

She stood, turning her back, and the gun was in his hand. She opened the door, but in the second between aim and fire, she stopped herself and turned back to her desk. “I forgot. Your frappuccin—”

Gun.

Scream.

Trigger.

At this distance, as if detonated from within, the side of her head popped, painting his face with its contents, and through the wound, whatever it was that kept her body upright escaped and she fell to the carpet where another bullet equalized her skull.

Top tempo, double-time, the speed of continuation. Bounding down the third stairwell, he heard a woman wail like she’d discovered the death of all life. He was on the street when the secretary in the neighboring office dialed 911. He ran, feeling the warmth of the pre-noon sun as it met the blood on his bare face. At the car he attempted to reach in his hip pocket for the keys and noticed the gun was still in his hand. Things like this meant he was certainly about to die.

In the nascent period of his career he’d worked in big trucks: murdered-out Navigators, lifted Broncos, ostentatious holdovers from his private security days. With experience, his preferences changed. For metropolitan operations he chose small vehicles, and as the Fiesta emerged easily from the tight spot, he would have commended his own foresight if this wasn’t the end of his life.

Beale Street the sign read and the water to the left of him meant he was driving south. He knew, even through the haze of discomposure and self-lamentating acrid disdain, that at this moment it was his job to mitigate liability. The gun, the car, his clothes—he was covered in blood.

“I’m covered in blood,” he said.

He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his jacket but the waxed cotton only spread the mess. He couldn’t remember a time when his situation had been this utterly fucked. Beale ended at Bryant and he turned toward the water. At a red light at Embarcadero he realized he wasn’t breathing. You need to be here right now. This is the only place you are. He closed his eyes and dug his palms into his eyelids and dragged them down his face, smearing blood like war paint.

“Okay,” he said, exhaling loudly. “Alright. Okay.”

He opened his eyes and focused his attention, reducing each moment to the novel component parts. It was very simple: seconds become minutes and those minutes become your life. Now was the time for binary decisions.

Black or white.

Yes or no.

Live or die.

Left or right.

He looked both ways. In one direction the Bay Bridge spanned the gap to Oakland. The other way led to more San Francisco and NorCal at large. His initial instinct was to flee the city, to head inland and ditch the car in the abundant roughness looming across the sea, but the bridge was a bottleneck, one with tollbooths and cameras, and while he didn’t know if the slaying of a prominent lawyer and his secretary merited a roadblock, if one existed it seemed like an obvious placement would be at the end of the nearest bridge.

He signaled right, but turned it off after one click: driving deeper into the populated peninsula didn’t interest him. I’m covered in blood. Again he wasn’t breathing. A horn honked behind him, then another. He looked up. The box truck in front of him turned, revealing a third choice, an option, a prayer in one word.

Through the traffic light, abutting a boardwalk, a weekday-empty parking lot extended into the water like an abbreviated runway. He parked the car in the farthest corner, where the asphalt overlooked the ocean, and he turned off the engine and got out of the vehicle and leaned against the guardrail inhaling great gulps of the wet air as if he might lift up and float away. Between drifts of white foam, the water rolled in a humping patchwork of cerulean and cobalt and cornflower and cyan, shades and hues of infinite splendor, the total palette of blue and its variations augmented by the differing intensities of daylight breaching the cloud cover above. Below him, against the concrete wall, waves crashed into florets, and he leaned into the resulting sprays, letting the sea lick him clean.

When the blood was gone, he peeled off his jacket and his shirt and his shoes and dropped them off the platform before returning to the car for the gun and depositing it likewise, piece-by-piece into the roil, followed by the paper license plates and the contents of the glovebox. He sent a text to the only number he had saved before tossing the phone in as well.

The cool planks of the boardwalk were a relief after crossing the hot asphalt barefoot. Other than a pod of homeless men passing a bottle down a bench, the promenade was abandoned at this hour. In just his chinos he walked past shuttered stands advertising cotton candy, lemonade, fudge, hair-braiding; past pole-mounted binoculars offering views of Treasure Island or Yerba Buena, and machines that flattened pennies into keepsakes for the price of four quarters.

The only open business was a small café attached to a souvenir stand where the weary merchant watched him select a pair of flip-flops, board shorts, a San Francisco 49ers ball cap and a hooded sweatshirt bearing an otter curled around the word Monterey. He bought the new outfit with a damp hundred-dollar bill then put on everything but the shorts and ordered two fully dressed hot dogs and an orange juice from the café. While the proprietor prepared his meal, he went into the bathroom and changed into the shorts, burying the pants in paper towels in the bottom of the trash can.

He ate the hot dogs in a total of five bites, sipping the sweet cold sunshine as he trucked the side streets on foot in what he hoped was the direction of his hotel. Occasionally his fingers touched the place on his chest to the left of his sternum where his gun formerly resided, feeling the emptiness there on the surface and internally, both on his skin and deeper, somewhere below the flesh.

4

DEAR NEPHEW

YOUR AUNT IS QUITE ILL. WE BOUGHT YOU A TICKET. WE WILL PICK YOU UP AT O’HARE SATURDAY AT SIX PM. DON’T MAKE US WAIT. UNCLE

He clicked Print on the attachment and stared at the screen until it blurred in and out of focus like a pixelated painting. He closed the message and wiped the account and left the business center, stopping at the front desk on his way to the elevator to extend his stay a final night and ordered another liter of Chivas.

The previous day, after making it back from the boardwalk, he’d barricaded himself in the room. He suffered the last twenty-two hours in the grip of a barbed-wire mortal certitude, his ear to the door, his knuckles bloodless around the handle of his hawkbill blade. Any noise announced his most gruesome murder. Eventually the stillness became too much and he attempted to exhaust his bone-digging anxiety with self-flagellation, falling into a circuit of push-ups, crunches, burpees and dips, exercising with a penitent’s fervor, pacing the room, chasing himself for miles across the carpet, gulping cold chicken-breast sandwiches with bottles of pale ale while the clock bled minutes, fostering festering paranoia, waiting for another email to re-magnetize the needle in the compass of his life.

5

BEAUJ

Hows it hanging grunt? jk i know its stuck to your leg. I def dont miss the heat over there. My mom keeps hollering about the AC bc Ive had it cranked since i got home. I told her id pay for it. same as the water bill. I practically live in the shower. Told her i spent the last fourteen months sweating in a metal box smelling 22 pairs of balls—well 21 and a half counting Walters. I set the temperature to 65 but i still wake up with wet sheets lol. Finally got a piece of pussy the other night. This girl i went to school with. Shes not much to look at but she fucks good. The first time i nutted straight off but we ran it back and im gonna see her again this weekend. If I feel like im gonna cum too quick ill just think of you. That should do the trick lol. Anywaze. You still planning to hit me up when your times up? I think youd like it here. I never lived in Charleston as a grownup. Turns out it doesnt suck as long as your 21. We could get a place downtown near the water. Stay getting laid. I dont know if you remember that guy Dinsmore? He was the redhead with big ears in E Battery told us he used to microwave bagels and jerk off. He got a hold of me on facebook and he says his uncle is looking for guys to work private security. The money sounds bonkers. I guess you just babysit rich fucks. Celebrities sometimes. Said he spent a week with Carrie Underwood flying all over on a private jet. Idk maybe hes full of shit but I think im gonna see whats up with that. If its good ill make sure we get you on when your out. Who knows. Maybe we could work together. Tag team Taylor Swift. Either way. Keep your head on a swivel and the baby powder handy. I dont miss anything about that place but if i had to pick anything itd be you. C U soon. Benny

6

He woke up very hungry and decided to go out. The concierge said his best bet at that hour was Chinatown and offered to call him a cab.

Beaujolais declined. “My legs still work.”

It had rained while he was asleep. The streetlamps tinged the concrete cast-iron, a hallucinatory varnish of violet-orange like walking on miniature sunsets, a phenomenon unnoted by him as he trudged in a turbid stupor. He popped his collar against the brisk night, dodging doddering disco dinosaurs and raging midnight scions, schools of joybound berserkers darting in and out of the bars on Clay Street like hummingbirds chasing the nectar of the final last good thing. Voices and laughter and cover band music, the sounds of humanity, mirth and joy. None of it roused him from his groggy convalescence and he moved like a zombie, divorced from life and those who lived it, inverse and opposite, detached from this place, any place, any person, anywhere.

The ramifications of too much drink and misaligned sleep rendered his senses blunted, as if his head was encased in a brick of wax, but beyond his hangover, the cancer at the core of his rotten temperament was his unshakeable conviction that any step in any direction was fatal. He wasn’t sure how fucked he was, or if he was even fucked at all. There’d been mistakes in his labor. Improvisations. In his profession most mishaps were due to forced actions in a small window, the seizure of a limited opportunity, and as long as the job was done, the ends never failed to justify the means. It was quietly understood security guards or mercenaries occasionally fell in the line of duty. A secretary was harder to quantify.

Before this the worst outcome he’d suffered was a minor shoot-out on a clandestine film set in Jackson, Mississippi. He’d been forced to interrupt a shoot (locale: the basement of an animal shelter) via brute force. It was exactly what people envision when they think of arbitration, heavy assassin techniques: slit throats, scatterguns, ponds of blood. Five dead including the target, a boutique pornographer with a proclivity for casting animals in his productions. While he’d created a surplus of bodies, the probability of witnesses coming forward and admitting their involvement in a dog-sex movie was a near-zero number.

He had no reference point for what awaited him tomorrow. It wasn’t like he could compare notes with co-workers in the break room. There was no fraternity in his life. The only other person he would have called a friend within the organization was Benny, and they couldn’t talk anymore. Three years, nine months and seventeen days. Sometimes he thought they were both better off: if connection is vulnerability, he was the safest man alive.

Beyond receiving their emails and packages and sending his final confirmation text, he engaged in no contact with anyone in the corporation. A plexus of technology prevented the various organs within the body from ever having to communicate. On Wednesdays, his account balances increased. The firm was an efficient one and after the first few months he’d never given much thought to the engine of the money machine. He knew where not to look at a gift horse. But now he’d misaligned the mechanism, the teeth of his gear were either too sharp or too dull. A methodical operation demands methodical operators. The gore show he directed yesterday was anything but calculated and the resulting vibrations endangered the delicate gadgetry. Surely they would be killing him, whoever they were. It was odd to consider his end. For the majority of his adulthood he’d failed to consider himself real.

In the first month of his deployment a boy no older than thirteen had walked into a makeshift Catholic church in Sirte, Libya, and detonated an explosive belt, propelling over forty pounds of screws, bolts, nails and lug-nuts into the bodies of six Marines who were there helping the deacon hang a sheetrock wall. Two were killed, one was seriously maimed, and three suffered minor wounds. Beaujolais had been among the lucky three, but unlike the others, his wounds became infected. He spent eight days in a cot sweating out bags of IV antibiotics while a kaleidoscope of nightmarish hallucinations played out in the hippodrome of his mind.

While his body recovered, his psyche remained frail, a thing both porous and liquid. The substance of him seeped out his vessel and he began to see himself, the Actual Him, as separate from his body. The doctors called it dissociation, a common side effect of your buddies getting chunked all over you—to escape into the space between. He was the voltage in his circuitry, the charges between neurons, an occupant of his skeleton, a resident of his mind. The decisions he made were simply signals he sent, levers pulled. While he touched and shit and bled and came, these physical feelings were as real as a photocopy, the result of a game of telephone played between him and the simulacrum. Due to the secondhand nature of his interface with existence, he felt no guilt for his actions. As a thing beyond flesh, he was emancipated from the rules it abides. His culpability was that of the voyeur: all he did was watch.

Up until this point, this disconnect protected him from the question of his mortality. Steam dissipates: one cannot kill an idea. Confronted with this abrupt end, he was remarkably nonplussed. His death, while unpleasant, would be indirect, another phenomenon to be observed.

He had no notion of fleeing: it would be better to be done with the matter. No doubt their powers extended into all aspects of his being. They were the ones who gave him this life and they could just as easily take it away. Freezing his assets was a non-issue. Death was preferable to poverty: he’d already inherited the earth. He’d traveled a tremendous distance from the dirt-floor farmhouse molting on the prairie of his youth. The range between his spartan beginnings and his current splendor was the measurement of his life. He knew how nice clothes hang, how exquisite sheets slept, the differences in leather. Sensual pleasures were how he experienced his body: he armored his mech suit in fine consumer goods.

There was satisfaction in wealth, an unaffordable confidence. He didn’t own property but his watch was worth a condo. To return to the cave and clap for the shadows on the wall, to live a life ungilded…In regards to humility, the point of no return was the coordinates of his own grave.

He and Benny, back when his atmosphere was still hospitable to foreign life, talked about simplifying. Some land, a cabin, a pond, a life, a future, together—

That’s enough.

Benny exuded a gravity more powerful than Beaujolais’s disassociation; tethered to Benny, he was able to claw himself hand-over-fist back into this body of his, reconnecting—it was nice. He loved it, certainly, he did. And on the good days, the cool days, the rarest of the rare days, the frictionless, smooth days when their unjagged pieces grooved right into a shape you might call solid, the days not precursed by sleep-weeping night horrors or disqualified by bouts of plate-smashing, gun-hiding, psycho-sado-sexual-self-hatred, there were days that had a way of tricking him into thinking he just might be the owner of his very own perfect soul.

This is what he lost when he lost Benny.

This second death failed to rile him.

Tomorrow he was going to Chicago. To be killed by The Killer of Killers. Studded, dudded, fit to be buried—if these great violators tendered him a final request, rather than absolution: I’d like to leave on my sunglasses, to recognize the Face of the scorching Light.

As his legs carried him autonomously down the sidewalk, a persistent exhaust of bilious burps scorched the tube of his esophagus—he was empty. The lack of substance was painful. He remembered Benny jabbing him in the rib with his long stupid finger: “You gotta eat, Beauj. That’s what us humans do.”

Benny, perfect Benny.

Maybe I’ll be seeing you soon.

The concierge’s suggestion was accurate. Long lines consisting of a Chinese majority extended out the doors of the restaurants on Clay Street; cast in the light glowing red through ubiquitous paper lanterns, those waiting took on an air of accursed resignation, patiently queued to be damned. The menus were not in English. He joined a random line and, due to his singularity, was shortly ushered from the back of the herd to a stool at a sawed-off bartop.

An elderly woman brought him a pot of green tea and a menu and he asked her for a bowl of tendon soup but she clicked her teeth and shrugged and walked away, returning with a young girl who spoke clear English with a Southern California lilt. From her he ordered pea greens and a bowl of tendon soup and a bottle of plum wine with ice, which was sweet and floral and not to his liking, and when the vegetables arrived, the old woman understood the word beer and held her palms in front of her vertically six inches apart and he held his twelve inches apart and she said something to the bartender who opened a large bottle of Tsingtao with the back of a butcher knife and handed it to the woman with a mug. As he reached for the bottle, she made a shushing noise and poured the glass half-full of lager then added a dash of the plum wine and nodded at the fortified shandy. He’d never tasted anything like it and he smiled his approval. The woman winked and waddled away.

The greens were tender and served in garlic sauce and the soup, full of chunks of gelatinous connective tissue and noodles as thick as his thumb, numbed his mouth like cocaine residue; he slurped at it greedily, mixing wine and beer and listening to the insane din of Mandarin and Cantonese and Hunanese and feeling a sense of loss for all the languages in the world he’d never get to hear on account of him being about to be dead.

From a liquor store on Kearny he bought a small bottle of Rémy Martin and a pack of mint Nat Shermans and sat on a park bench sipping the cognac, admiring the persistence of a group of teenagers attempting to leap their skateboards down five stairs. After suffering a battery of assaults at the hands of the laws of physics, one of the youths successfully floated down the staircase and rode away smooth. His comrades celebrated his achievement by slapping the tails of their boards against the concrete, and he heard whooping and applause from across the cracked blacktop basketball court where, seated on a bench exactly opposite his, two women, noticing him notice them, stopped their cheerleading. One waved and the other slapped her hand down, giggling.

Though they were seated he could tell the women were tall at a distance. Between them they wore barely enough cloth for one garment. One was white and one was black and their tube dresses were orange and blue respectively. The sheer fabric hugged the contours of their bodies, showcasing their long muscular legs, and their broad shoulders bulbing like turnip heads.

The woman in blue smiled as he came near, revealing a significant gap between her upper front teeth.

“Pardon me, ladies.”

“Pardon me,” said the one in orange.

“Ladies,” said the one in blue.

He held his cigarette like a baton between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you have a light?” The one in orange reached down the front of her dress and found a transparent pink plastic lighter. He bent to receive her flame.

“What kind of cigarette is that?” Her voice sounded pinched, as if squeezed like toothpaste from the back of her throat. The gap between her top lip and her snubbed nose was notably wide.

“Nat Sherman.”

“How decadent,” said the blue one. She held a hand-rolled cigar between her thick fingers. Smoke swirled out of her lips. She turned her head toward her associate and he saw the coiled ligature of her neck stand out against her smooth skin. “Annie used to smoke those.”

“Annie,” the orange one said. “Poor Annie.”

The blue one nodded slowly, a glimpse of human sadness.

“Well,” he said, turning. “Thank you for the light.”

“Don’t run off,” said the one in blue, returning to herself. “Here.” She moved down the bench toward the other woman. “Have a seat. Scoot your big ass, Janette.”

They said they were Janette and Milly. He said they could call him Benny. Janette took the bottle when he offered, tilting back half of the remaining liquid as her Adam’s apple pumped, and he toked her cigar lightly in return.

They asked what he was doing and he said he was in town for work and nursing a vile hangover and they laughed intermittently as he described the old Chinese woman and his meal, dabbling his sentences with vocabularic flourishes and, as he allowed himself in the presence of women, speaking with his hands.

“And she was ancient. I mean older than honey, honey.”

The smoke from their cigars was piquant and rich and left him giddy and less tense and Milly told him to have the rest of hers and found a packet of fresh White Owls in her clutch and he watched intently as she cracked the cigar open like shelling a prawn and emptied the dry tobacco between her heels. Concurrently, Janette unrolled a sandwich bag fat with green cannabis nuggets and pinched a few to fine powder in her calloused palm before tipping the pungent mound into her compatriot’s emptied leaf. He watched with an almost hypnotic ardor as Milly rolled and licked and sealed the cigar, and when it was tubular, he marveled as she inserted the length of it into her mouth and retracted it through her pursed lips.

“Jesus, baby,” she said, running a lighter up and down her creation. “Haven’t you ever seen someone roll a blunt?”

“It’s just…you’re just…so elegant.”

The women exchanged looks. Janette tilted her head and batted her lashes, touching two fingers to the tip of her chin. “We’re not like the other girls. But neither are you.”

“I hope no one else is like me.” He took her lighter from her and lit her cigar.

“And a gentleman?” Smoke clouded her, an obscured person, and he couldn’t really see her when she smiled. “I thought all the good guys were gone.”

“Not yet,” he said.

—

They bought a bottle of honey-flavored whiskey and opened it in the train car and when they arrived at their stop Janette threw the empty bottle and they heard it shatter far away. Turbaned Malaysian men in matching blue overalls pushing handtrucks overladen with enormous wheels of cheese paused their work to watch as they skipped down the center of the street with their arms linked, the girls lifting him like courtesans, their knight in chamois armor, and him in the middle holding their shoes, appearing to the world at large like a chorus line of beautiful bastard barnstormers, moving, forever moving, in the direction of The Noise, the origin of which—whether internal or external—was not for him to say.

On a street choked with graffitied box trucks they moved single file like blood cells through a plaque-encrusted artery, Janette leading, Milly behind, and he felt the throb in his sternum as the reverberations through the empty cabin bodies brought the hair on his neck to its feet.

The street ended in front of a warehouse. Despite its concrete construction, the building appeared to undulate—the bay door quivered like a metal sheet drying on a clothesline and Milly entered a code on a keypad to open it. Inside, a behemoth with barbarous face tattoos swept their bodies with a metal-detecting wand. Once he was satisfied, he stepped aside, revealing a long hallway, and the music came barreling down the chamber, an avalanche of decibels, crushing and physical, pouring through a purple glowing doorway at the end of the hall. Through it they entered the nexus of all riot, an assault of sound and light—arms, legs, feet, hands—pieces severed separate from their bodies, floating in a facsimile of fog. The tufting clouds rendered the room dimensionless, and beneath this false heaven the occupants grunted and bucked, a squall of humanity awash in an ocean of lasers piercing the smoke like bullets of pure light. He saw them in the far corners when the strobes fell upon them, the piles of naked bodies savaging each other, skin stacked in heaps mounded and humping like the floor was made of bifurcated worms. On a low stage affront ramparts of speakers, a small man bent labored over turntables, his face lit from below by a single red bulb, a djinn, an efreet, the devil on holiday in this VIP circle of hell.

He felt a hand on his shoulder: Milly was saying something but her voice was lost. He followed her eyes down to her palm: a clutch of pills like an Easter basket. He selected one.

“Thank you,” he shouted. “Just thank you.”

She smiled.

He downed the capsule dry.

She took his hand and pulled him and he allowed himself to be taken, repeating himself as they disappeared into the sea of flesh—thank you thank you thank you—he and the night receiving each other, sacramental, swallowing the other whole.

7

r u still looking for new guys?

yeah

ok i know a guy

who?

we were over there together

hes getting out this week

hes good?

yeah

really good

the best

worker?

hes perfect

okay send him my way

sweet done thanx

np

u wont regret it

lol

why would you say that?

thats like the worst thing you can say

8

The sound of the fist pounding the door was like a barb set in the core of his brain and it yanked him reeling like an ancient gar unknowing of life above the water, rising from the depths of a placid deathlike sleep to deposit him on the cragged shores of consciousness where the light was hard and agonizing and the air itself was poisonous and impossible to breathe.

“No,” he demanded, thrashing, tearing at the sheets.

The fist attacked the door again. Infuriated by the persistence, he fired out of the bed, but his feet snarled in the overtucked bedding and an entire symphony of pain tuned their instruments in his forearm as his elbow dented the metal lid of a discarded room service tray. Condemning existence, he hobbled to the door and threw it open nude.

There stood a bellhop. “I’m so sorry, sir.” He held out his hands defensively, like speaking at gunpoint. “But your wake-up call.”

“What about it?”

“We’ve been calling but you didn’t answer.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten thirty-seven, sir.”

For a few of his life’s most beautiful seconds his mind was a place too clear to accommodate the subtraction of integers. “Ten thirty-seven.” He repeated the sounds like a parrot—“Ten thirty-seven”—blowing life into them, giving them weight.

His flight left at 12:05.

“Fuck fucking fuck.” Ascertainment shocked his heart and he pumped electric blood. He slammed the door and reopened, flinching the bellhop. “Gogetmeataxinowimmediately.”

He threw his suitcase on the bed and descended like a corpse hound, tossing his belongings, digging up his life. Balling and smashing, he jammed the bag until the zipper pulled smooth. He scanned the room in a grid pattern, raking his eyes through the ruins. A familiar high heel, women’s size 15, orphaned under the bed. Holding the totem, snippets of the night previous returned intermittent and stroboscopic: the tablet of bliss and inspiration—dancing, oh how they danced—spinning like a tree of smoke in the variegated lights—champagne like rainfall, countless mouths licking him dry—a man with a dog collar handing him a chain—writhing in a cage beneath an avalanche of foam—an emaciated man wallowing in the bathroom trough—Feed the pig! Feed the pig!—“If decadence is the sun, depravity is the moon”—such a powerful tongue.

He pulled on a navy cashmere sweater and a pair of corduroy floods. His own skin disgusted him. The inside of his mouth tasted like bowling.

In the cab he demanded proaction from the driver, enticing him with a promise of “real money.” The driver responded gamely, accelerating with aplomb and darting from lane to lane. The effort caused Beaujolais to shut his eyes, his finger hovering over the window controls in case he really did puke. He thought he had some benzos somewhere and he unzipped the bag in his lap. Instead of medicine, in the pants from last night, along with his wallet, cigarette butts, a Moët cork, and an eyeliner pencil, he found, astonishingly, three torn condom wrappers. What a waste: if there was ever a night to forgo protection, it was a conjugal visit on death row.

He arrived at the ticket counter after the start of the boarding process. The agent tagged his suitcase, noting that though bags were due at the gate forty-five minutes before departure, exceptions were made for first-class passengers such as himself.

“I’m first-class?”

“Correct, sir.”

“First-class.”

“First-class, sir, yes.”

He sneered, perceiving condescension.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

Yes, there is actually, I’d like to murder the world. “No, just surprised.”

“You didn’t book the fare?”

“No. My…employer.”

“Well, they must value you highly.”

“That’s why I’m surprised.”

She laughed.

He didn’t know what was funny.

Following her instructions, he used the premier access security lane and sprinted to the gate with three minutes to spare.

The agent said they’d been waiting for him. “Don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere without you.” She said he could catch his breath but she was wrong.

9

BEAUJOB

What say jarhead? I cant believe your dumbass got out with your dick still attached. Those inbred ragheads must be dogshit if they couldnt even ice you. Ill be at the airport with a bottle of fireball and i might even share it with you AS LONG AS YOU DONT FORGET TO BRING THE THAI FORMULAS!!! Im serious! The red bulls at home are bullshit compared to what we got over there. You cant even get RIP-IT unless you order on ebay and the prices are fucking jacked. Remember that time you me and OMalley shotgunned those chinese tallboys on watch? I was like to die. For as fucked as enlistment was i sure do miss how wired we got. Everything is so quiet over here. Life is so fucking slow. All i do is lift and play CoD and drink. Mom says i should get a job but i think i earned a couple months of couchlock. My sleep schedule is still a mess. Sometimes i go days with out a wink and then ill pass out for 24 straight. The VA doctor has me on some medicine but it makes me feel weird. Gouged out. Its like im far away but wayyyyy too close. Idk. i think im just missing the boys. Im hoping its not so rough for you. Im thinking we can drive up to Myrtle after you get settled in. spend a couple days at the beach. Get your dick wet again. Youll only have to be at the hotel until the 1st then we can move into the spot. Its sick man. We got this big ass balcony that overlooks King Street. You couldnt be more in the middle of the shit. If it was up to me id just have you move in with me right away but my mom isnt into it. I swear she isnt as bad as she sounds. the place is just small. Shes excited to meet you. Ive told her all about you. Well not everything. If she knew some of the shit we got into over there she d probs have a heart attack. God. I sound like such a fag. Call me when you land stateside and let me know your flights on time and all that. See you reallllll soon.

Benny

PS: if you come home without the thai formulas you might as well not come home

10

The return to earth jarred him awake gasping. He swiped his mouth with his wrist and opened the window cover: the sky the same color as the tarmac, all endless black cement.

As soon as he collected his bag from the belt, two men in black jackets swarmed. One was the color of almond flour, a yellow jaundiced hue, slight of frame with quick eyes and a bristle of short-cropped red hair that dissolved into a skin fade above his ears. The other was a piggish, hulking bruiser, Hmong or Mongolian, one of the sumo Asians. His head rested like a cube on his shoulders, his fat cheeks bulging—he looked like a full-grown adult baby. Neither gave their names but the redhead knew his and told him, in a satirically thick Great Lakes accent, to follow them.

“Aren’t you going to pat me down?”

“You just got off a plane.”

“I need to use the toilet.”

“Hold it.”

He reached for his luggage, but the ogre’s hand swallowed his forearm. “I need my toothbrush.”

The redhead cocked forward with the confidence of a bladed bantam rooster. “I’m running the show.” He pulled the lapel of his jacket back, exposing a Smith & Wesson M&P. “Say it.”

“You’re running the show.”

“Sounds good to me. Does that sound good to you, Bobo?”

Bobo nodded.

He retrieved his toiletry bag and walked to the bathroom to perform his futile maintenance. Brushing the residual film of sweet wine off his teeth, he looked at his twin in the mirror. “Bobo,” they said to themselves.

In the cellar of his mind, entombed beneath reason and perspicacity, the voice of the oldest part of his brain advocated for the preservation of self. He considered the mountain of Genghis DNA dwarfing the urinal behind him—the lizard tongue hissed louder: Run. The thought of Bobo at top speed tickled the corners of his mouth, a fantasy as empty as the soap dispenser: he wasn’t a coward, not yet, and there was still a chance to become anything.

Bobo carried his bag outside to a waiting Lincoln Navigator while the redhead crowded his six. He climbed in and sat across the pair on a rear-facing seat.

The tank started rolling, tinted windows deadening the world passing by. He asked if he could smoke and the driver surprised him by cracking the window and he and the redhead fed their ashes to the tiny slit of light.

The Mongolian laughed at something on his phone and turned the screen toward the redhead.

“Where is that?”

“Cambodia.”

“Is that a python?”

The Mongolian nodded.

“And he’s just fucking it at the mall?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Can I see?”

Bobo unfolded his grin. “What did you say?”

Beaujolais smiled. “Where are you from?”

“Duluth.”

When the big SUV stopped, the arbiter exited the vehicle sandwiched between his captors. He found himself standing in the budding dark, a bustling street called Superior. Titanic buildings built of tectonic plates looked like glaciers fabricated by machines and in front of them, end to end, vehicles lurched between stoplights. He scanned for addresses, bus-stop numbers, the names of businesses: a deep-dish place advertised an eight-pound pizza. The cold air damp with the steam of hot dogs and exhaust. “Live comedy! See the stars of tomorrow, tonight!”

Bobo took him by the arm through a revolving door that spun them into a vaulted lobby. The redhead said something to the security guard and the guard laughed and they entered an elevator and listened to a defanged instrumental rendition of a Mötley Crüe song as the car ascended twenty-four floors.

The doors split and the Mongolian shoved him and he was confronted by a sprawling penthouse. Of an open loft design, sparse and industrial, the unit encompassed the entire floor. Red brick. Polished concrete. Exposed copper pipes. Bolts of muslin hanging on chains from the ceiling divided the flat into chambers. Projected on a far wall, a black and white film played without volume. Jusqu’ici tout va bien read the subtitles. Jusqu’ici tout va bien.

He heard cackling and followed the sound to the source. Standing at the counter of a stainless steel kitchenette, a tall man with twin gray braids poured Baileys into a coffee cup. His face was slim and rodential. A silk robe of a tiger stripe design hung open in the front, exposing the man’s spindly frame and concave chest; eyeglasses hanging off a gold-link croakie nestled in the declivity. He set the liqueur on the counter and sipped from the mug, punctuating his quaff with a resounding “Ahhh.” It was then that he noticed the trio.

“Oh, hello—hello! Welcome! Come come come come come.” He stepped around the counter with his arms flung wide, further gaping the robe to divulge the pearl-handled cowboy pistol holstered to the hip of his Dior jeans. “Yes yes, come now. Bienvenidos, good evening.”

Beaujolais couldn’t place his accent: the e in “hello” was flattened to an a while the w in “welcome” was chiseled to a v: like French with German intonation, the warble of this bleeding-edge hybrid sounded both old world and brand-new.

The man shook hands with the rooster and Bobo, punctuating his greeting with cheek-to-cheek kisses bestowed in the European style. The goons accepted, begrudgingly American. He paused in front of Beaujolais. “And you must be my pen pal.” He put on his glasses and assessed the arbiter over the top of the frames. “Hello, nephew. Or should I say Robert? Bob? Mr. Beaujolais?” A ring of white powder encrusted his left nostril. He tilted his head and smiled, breaking creases in the border of his mouth, and Beaujolais allowed himself to be gripped by the shoulders. “It is I, dear boy, your uncle. Welcome to our family reunion.”

He traced his fingers down Beaujolais’s bicep and, seizing the thick arm, spun Beaujolais alongside him, as if presenting him to the other two men. “Hopefully your cousins were not too harsh with you. Were you, boys? I told them to play nice, but when you send dogs, only an idiot is surprised when they bite.”

He snapped his teeth together and the henchmen (honest-to-god henchmen) laughed. Beaujolais felt himself being led toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Looking for a nip? How was the flight?”

He swallowed. “It was fine. Thank you for the upgrade.”

“Of course, of course! The bare minimum, really. Mandatory in this age. One cannot expect a man to do what he would not do himself. They call it first-class but it is still a flying hen coop, is it not?” He pulled a stool from under the counter and tapped the seat. “Americans do many things correctly but luxury is not on this list. Plush is one of your many words for weak, as if being comfortable would cause your cocks to wilt and fall off. Hence cowboy boots and stiff denim, no singing at the footie match. Now.” His fingers danced across a selection of bottles on a shelf. “One would assume you to be a whiskey man but I think that would be incorrect. Brown liquor is too steadfast, too traditional, a mallet when a gentle breeze would suffice. Vodka is too boring for such a dashing lad and gin is, well, gin is for cleaning silver. Tequila is for the daytime, rum is for the afternoon— Here we are.”

He selected an ovoid bottle and three stemmed glasses and set them on the brushed steel counter. “Come, boys,” he said, beckoning the goons. To Beaujolais he whispered, “I even call them like dogs. I should serve them in a dish on the floor.”

From a bucket in the sink he scooped ice into the glasses and poured liquor then tipped back the rest of his Baileys and coffee and filled his mug with the same. To the three men he handed each a glass and raised his own. “Proost and all that.”

The liquor was oaky and sweet, like honey filtered through a tree stump, and Beaujolais emptied his glass in one quick draught. His host pushed the bottle toward him and opened the refrigerator and laid out trays of cold sausages and hunks of cheese and bowls of cherries and olives and a loaf of dark bread, talking the whole time about the merits of brandy and the differences between Armagnac and cognac and various other gnacs of which Beaujolais had never heard. To the dogs he handed, noticing their distaste for the liquor, bottles of Amstel beer. He showed them a tattoo of a boar on his back and demonstrated a Polish folk dance and sliced an onion into slivers, rambling while they ate, pausing his diatribe only to snort white powder from a drifted pile he kept on a plate in the cabinet above the sink. “It becomes a matter of need versus want and, for me, I need to want something in order for me to want to need it. We are all animals sniffing the mud—well, not always mud, if you see what I— My god, I forgot the mustard.”

When the food was gone he cleared the plates into the sink, and while Bobo and the redhead smoked cigarettes in the lee of an open window he led Beaujolais around the apartment, explaining the origin of various objects: an authentic mulga wood boomerang from the geographic center of Australia, a pickelhaube helmet dug from the trenches of Verdun, a piece of the Challenger shuttle blown clear to the coast of Cuba where it was surfaced by a lobster diver who had no idea what he’d found. Uncle said that humanity was best defined by its ephemera.

“Do you know what that word means?”

Beaujolais said he did.

“Do you think I used it correctly?”

“I think I would have used novelties.”

Uncle picked up what he claimed to be Keith Moon’s cowbell. “Novelty means the unfamiliar. A cowbell is familiar. It is not a jarred fetus. Not a shrunken head.”

Beaujolais shrugged.

“But they are not novelties.”

“Okay.”

“It is not okay.” Uncle’s eyes paused their stimulated wandering and landed intensely on his guest. “Explain your reasoning.”

Beaujolais’s confusion doubled. To still be alive was puzzling, especially here at this lunatic soiree. His intuition read this reception as a prelude, a bit of foreplay before the final crimson act. I already bent over once. “Ephemera. From ephemeral, meaning lasting for a short time.”

“It is a problem of scale,” Uncle protested. “Micro versus macro.”

“Ephemera is a phenomenon enjoyed for a limited period.” He lifted a Zulu spear. “These objects retain their impact beyond their lifetime. Therefore they are not ephemera.”

“But even a millennium is a blip in the grand scheme.”

“Blip. Fun word.” The arbiter hoisted the spear to his shoulder, feeling the generations of craftsmanship in the perfect honed weight. “Anything can be a cavity if the tooth is large enough.”

A shadow fell over him and he glanced back: the huge Asian baby looming. He smiled at Uncle, jousting an eyebrow. “Speaking of novelties.” Relinquishing the spear to the monster, he walked to the open window, cigarettes in hand.

The city, a grayscale palette flowering white and yellow buds. Behind the buildings the lake rippled like a bed of melted lead flowing off the edge of the horizon, a moat buffering the sky from the impact of man. He lit a cigarette, coughed, rubbed his eyes. He was tired.

Uncle pressed a button on a remote control and gristling industrial music growled out of wall-mounted speakers.

“This is Big Black. They are from here.”

The music was awful; Benny would have loved it. Beaujolais ashed on the concrete and rubbed it in with his shoe. Across the room Uncle and his dogs talked in a huddle. The redhead looked over at Beaujolais. His mouth formed the word Now?

Uncle nodded, emphatic.

Here we go.

An argument ensued. He couldn’t hear them over the clanging guitars, but the redhead plain disagreed with Uncle’s directive; pointing toward Beaujolais, he pulled back his jacket like he had in the airport. Uncle laughed. The Mongolian stood by, emotive as a sand dune. Uncle threw his arm around the redhead’s shoulders and put his lips to his ear and patted him on the chest. Whatever he said seemed to allay their discrepancy. The redhead, coddled, nodded his head diagonally like a pendulum. He snapped something to his partner and the monster shrugged. Then, staggering Beaujolais’s dead heart, the redhead and the Mongolian boarded the elevator. Uncle fingered a keypad. Ding.

He never saw them again.

Upon the elevator doors sealing, Uncle turned to him and threw up his hands and eyebrows. He decreased the volume of the incongruent music and walked to where Beaujolais sat, stopping at the counter for a bottle of calvados and two glasses; Beaujolais held while Uncle poured.

“Those boys.” Uncle alighted the windowsill and folded his leg to rest his thin ankle across his knee. “So eager, so stupid. They think they are in the film when they are merely projectionists. I envy them. The narcissism of youth. May I have one of those?”

Beaujolais tossed his Shermans.

“Where did you pick these up?”

“The Marines.”

“Surely Uncle Sam did not sell chocolate mint cigarettes.”

“I lived with a guy who knew a guy who smoked them.” He offered his lighter, but Uncle was already immolating the end of his cigarette with the blue torch flame ejected by a lipstick tube made of pure gold.

“Ah, verrukkelijk.” Uncle blew his exhaust in a thin stream from the corner of his mouth. “This guy you lived with. His name was Benjamin, no?”

Beaujolais leveled his liquor, tipping the meniscus of the amber liquid to just breach the lip without spilling.

“My apologies. No one wants to be read the story of their life.”

The liquor tasted like coffee brewed with apple cider and paired well with smoke. Uncle mused gaily out the window. Absent the other two men, the apartment took on a cathedral quality Beaujolais detested, too much space to do nothing in. The silence buttressed.

Perched on the windowsill high up in his ivory castle, Uncle’s defenestration would be easily achieved—a plot manufactured in the synapses responsible for lust: killing Uncle would amount to onanism, an act of empty low gratification. What’s a head to a hydra? Further stifling—his pernicious congenital curiosity: this was the man ghostwriting his eulogy. Every puppet wonders exactly how many hands are inside of him.

Uncle went to refill but Beauj covered his glass. “I’m good.”

“Is it not to your liking?”

“May I speak freely?”

“You are American. That is how you speak.”

“I think we should cut to the chase.”

“Cut to the chase. I know this phrase. Cut to the chase, you dirty rat.” Uncle leaned forward, abrupt and eager. “May we talk like gangsters for the rest of the night?”

Beaujolais could only exhale a small noise. Uncle’s question struck him with the same impact as if he’d been told his mouth was being replaced with an anus.

“Can it, toots. Put your knees in the breeze and tell your story walking.” The brand of Uncle’s smile was that of adolescent sleepover conspiracies. “Would that not be fun?”

“I don’t see how this conversation can be fun.”

“Fun is something that is shared. A man alone can only entertain himself.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Uncle hoisted his glass in the air like a Roman candle. “A toast! To you, Robert!”

Uncle’s glass glanced his.

“Chin-chin, old boy. Thank you.”

No one told him it was Opposite Day. “Thank you? For what?”

“For being who I hoped you would be.”

“And who’s that?”

“A man! A man, Robert. Most men— Uno momento.” Uncle loudly and wetly cleared his sinuses and arched a lunger out the window. “Hideous, I know. I ate a late dinner and I fear there is not a worse accompaniment to cocaine than clam chowder.

“Now, as I say, most in your position would have fled, vamoose, attempted a disappear. A trope as old as Shakespeare, this one. Go the way of a small-town coward, drive a milk truck, forever looking over your shoulder until you break your neck and die. I knew a man who joined a monastery. The order embraced him, granted him robe, the whole deal.” He trilled a birdlike whistle. “Shweet-shweet. Smooth, man. Until his brothers forcibly relieved his priority for attempting to sell the proprietary recipe of their century-old liqueur. To me, I think you are the kind to abscond to one of those helltrap countries in Asia where the air is like cling film and mothers give birth on Vespas. But no. No no no. Not you.” Uncle jabbed his index finger into the reflex button of Beaujolais’s kneecap. “You. Are. Smart. And you are brave. You did the unpleasant thing when an easier option was available and is this not what draws the hemispheres on the map of a man? This. This right here. This is a man.” Daintily, with the back of his fingertips, Uncle paintbrushed Beaujolais on the bicep, the shoulder, each clavicle, the meridians of his chest. “And men, sir. Men are what I need. Men are valuable. Because men are rare. Therefore, yes, I say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being a man.”

Beaujolais, finding no ashtray, dropped his cigarette butt in his glass. “You’re giving me too much credit. Coming here was the easy thing. Running would have been hard.”

“Forgive me but I do not believe that you believe that.”

“You would have found me.”

“Maybe.”

“You would have.”

“Now it is you who are giving too much credit. It is true that we would have searched for you, but you are cunning, resourceful. Not all of our employees are as capable as you are. You met them. Do you think Jumbo and the Woodpecker would have found you? They are Saturday morning cartoons. Like from Tintin. Did you have Tintin? You understand though. It is not beyond rational thought to assume you could have escaped our net. But you know this as well.”

“You seem to think I know everything.”

“Correct. And that which you do not know you are eager to learn.”

“I thought you were going to kill me.”

“Exactly.”

“I showed you my belly.”

“Sorry? I am not familiar with this expression.”

“I surrendered. That’s not honorable.”

“On the contrary.” Through the window and in-from-nowhere, a nightwind harassed them with the warmth of skeleton fingers, and Uncle, gathering his robe around him as he stood, reeled the heavy glass sealed by the aid of its sill-mounted crank. Once it was closed, he surveyed the shut-out darkness. “Cloud collapse. Heaven is coming to pieces.” Resettling on his roost, Uncle rearranged his braids. “As I say, by boarding your flight, coming here, you jeopardized your life, but still here you are.”

“Where else was I going to go?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

“It was suicide by proxy.”

“Maybe you are suicidal?” Uncle paused—Beaujolais’s blank to fill in: maybe he didn’t know everything. Uncle continued: “It is of no matter. It only enhances my respect. Suicide is not for the weak. Those that condemn suicides as cowardly have never put a gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger.”

In his seat Beaujolais rearranged himself. Above his flat mouth his eyes remained stones.

“I make no joke. You have to possess immense fortitude to be your own end. It is not the behavior of recreants. It is by definition a courageous act. Suicide is the only brave thing. You know this.”

Not wanting to see whatever Uncle’s face signified, the arbiter stared at the concrete, but when he felt Uncle’s hand land atop his own, his body uncoiled, usurping his host’s touch. “So I’m free to go then?” The volume of his voice surprised him.

Uncle clicked his tongue. “Unfortunately not, my boy. But this is something else you know.” He sighed. “How many targets were you assigned in San Francisco?”

“She was supposed to be having her teeth whitened.”

“This is what our source told us.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Surely a man of your quality understands the worthlessness of supposition.”

“I work on the information provided. You provided that information.”

“And you provided two extra bullets.”

“What happened was the only thing that could happen.”

“And the surveillance footage backs your claim.”

Beaujolais felt his seams tearing. “Footage?”

“Yes.”

“My face was covered.”

“We know what it looks like.”

“You’d sell me out.”

“This is a business. We sell things.”

“I could kill you.”

“And become Rapunzel?”

Beaujolais stammered.

“The elevator code.”

Beaujolais’s face jerked from Uncle to the elevator and back. If his eyes were lasers they’d core the earth.

“Sit down, Robert.”

The arbiter deflated absolutely.

“Oh nephew, dear nephew, please understand. I do not begrudge you. She was collateral damage. This is how we define her. But just because we call her that does not make it her name.” Uncle bowed with a flourish and, maintaining his bend, moonwalked backward into the kitchen. He went to the cabinet above the stove and retrieved the plate of cocaine, pirouetted, and returned on long strides, his back arched, Mr. Natural, to offer his guest the bounty. Beaujolais refused.

“Well then you see.” Uncle buried his nose and horked mega. “It is all rather tragic. The girl whose face you eradicated, she, like each of us, was cursed with a father. However her father, like me, is cursed with immense power. He lives in Europe but his influence denies borders. The target you were hired to remove represented this man’s interests in America, him and many men like him. The girl wished to attend university in America, and the lawyer hired the girl as his secretary as a favor to the powerful man. But the lawyer and the girl, their relationship surpassed the professional. We are hired to kill this philanderer, just him. One target.

“Well.

“As you can imagine, the father’s desolation is tremendous. He is, after all, Italian, humanity’s exposed bleeding heart. The ripping of hair, the rending of garments. This is a real mamma mia! Vendetta, Robert. Vesuvius. He yearns to paint Tuscany with the blood of the assassin’s still-beating heart. This is a quote. He posted it on Facebook. Luckily, as you know, we only go one way, like an Austrian girl post-university. Obviously he has no way of sussing our identity, our location. It is our job to insulate ourselves from exactly this situation and in this precaution we are entirely ironclad.”

“Besides me.”

“Did you say something?”

“You think I’ll tell him where to find you.”

“Oh, Robert. Your innocence is like a choir singing directly to my soul. But no, of course not, you lack such information. Our communications are encrypted on our end. Even if you wanted to, there is nothing you could tell him that would aid in his revenge. Even this penthouse is burnable. On the other hand, we, of course, can provide him your location to the minute. Not that this is our intention. I say it only to illustrate the disparity of our capabilities.”

“Thanks for explaining.”

“A joke?”

“If you have to ask then no.”

“The game is no fun when you hold all the cards.”

“Is this a game then?”

“Everything is.”

“I preferred it when you spoke plain.”

“Right. We are supposed to be cutting the chase. My apologies. This cocaine is boffo.”

“Why am I here?”

“Because you are going to kill him.”

“Him who?”

“Massimo Di Giovanni.”

“Is that…”

“The archangel of Florence.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? Have you not been listening? Allow me to turn down the music.” The bleating mayhem abated. Uncle descended to the party plate and dusted his nose like a beignet. “Wow oh wow wow wow wow.”

“Why do I have to kill this guy?”

“Because you are our best man!”

“That’s not true.”

“Maybe not, but you were. Before—”

“Get someone else.”

“There is no one else. This is you. You are this.”

“Why?”

“Must I say it?”

“Pretend I’m stupid.”

“Because neither of us care if you die.”

“And if I say no?”

“You will not.”

“I might.”

“Incorrect. But if you did, there are two detectives downstairs waiting to arrest you.”

“For what?”

“A double homicide in San Francisco.”

Somewhere inside him a tentpole snapped and the entirety of the apartment’s plentitude collapsed upon him with the weight of the history of human failure. He felt the universe buckle and tighten, the ligature constricting, burying him, caving him allthefuckingwayin, and he understood he now formed the diamond center of a planet lonelier than this one, one without life, one without air—he gasped: “You’ll have to kill me.”

“Why would I do that?”

He flashed to his time immured in the hospital bed, the loss of autonomy, the illusion of free will and how quickly it was revealed. “I won’t go to prison.”

“Then we have an agreement.”

“If you want to call it that.”

“Would you prefer we dubbed it an accord?” Uncle studied him quizzically. “Good god, man. Your pallor.” Splashing brandy in a glass, Uncle stood and handed it to him. “Here. You Americans and your dramatics. Stella! Stel-la! No. You will not go to prison. You will perform this task, a task in which you are competent, and I will pay you handsomely, leaving you to whittle away the rest of your hot-body life in bathhouses and discos.”

Uncle plopped on the bar, balancing the stimulant platter on his knee. One of his braids had come undone. He re-plaited the errant locks with his spider fingers. “We know you, Robert. You were responsible. You saved. A nice sum. We know the total of your accounts. We put it there—”

“And you know how to take it away.”

“If you do this, and we both know you will, we are more than happy to double your holdings. That would set you up for a lifetime, multiple lifetimes depending on where you choose to live them. So please, let us cease this blathering. I have grown bored and, in this life, that is the worst thing to be.” Uncle locked eyes with the arbiter. Raised the bottle. Smiled. “He is one man, Robert. Kill him. Please. After that, you can begin living.”

Resigned, defeated, Beaujolais lifted his glass and touched it to the bottle.

Uncle slapped his thigh, spilling the plate to the floor. Jumping to his feet, flurrying a dervish of white dust, Uncle danced a crooked jig. Singing in either Dutch or French, he tipped the bottle to his lips, cascading brandy down his chin into the divot in his chest where most men kept their heart.

11

Hello. My name is Dinsmore. Benjamin Stephenson gave me your number

hello

He told me you might be looking for a job?

yes i am

i can start in eight days

Okay. Did he tell you anything about the job?

no not really

he said it was security

Yeah. Pretty much.

They’d been living together for two years, downtown Charleston, in the apartment above the bookstore. Their days were long and they filled them with each other. Hunting. Fishing. Bike rides along the river, cookouts and crab boils, overnight trips to Savannah and Saint Simons and Cape Fear. He was learning to enjoy tailgating and black metal. Benny applied moisturizer before bed, softening in his sleep.

They worked when jobs became available, one driving the other to the airport, the car waiting when they returned. Benny climbed quick. When people thought of a bodyguard, they envisioned his dimensions, and he was funny and charming and didn’t care about remaining alive. Clients always gave him top reviews. Beauj (that was what Benny called him) lacked the personality of his roommate (that was what Benny called him) but he made up for it in professionalism and his decisiveness under pressure.

Life post-discharge was skull-gouge boring. At least on the job they carried guns. From what he could tell, they were mostly status symbols, a signal you’d reached a certain tier. Only once had he even touched his weapon and that was in response to a rabid fan of a YouTube star brandishing what turned out to be a homemade pepperoni roll. He hadn’t been sleeping much that week because he saw what the pills did to Benny, the sluggishness, the somnambulance, the distance they put between him and himself. It was better just to lay there, beside him listening to him sleep: it felt like dreaming. Neither of them had ever had so much money. They spent effortlessly and they were happy.

Happy was all he could call them.

Beauj loved Benny. Benny loved the Carolina Panthers and first-person shooters and lifted trucks and tubing and whiskey and “bikini babies” and cornhole and processed meat. It was like they saw in different colors. The prescribed trappings of Benny’s projected male identity fit on Beauj as poorly as the key-lime bass fishing shirt Benny bought him for his birthday.

“You feel that? It’s like you’re naked. It breathes, brother.”

The shirt also lived in the closet, but the birthday card he kept in the same fireproof box as his passport for it was the most precious gift he’d ever received: handmade by Benny from a piece of folded plain copy paper, BEAUJ MAN writ large in black Sharpie on the front and opening to reveal, in Benny’s left-leaning caveman script, TO ROBBY BEAUJOLAIS, THE BESTEST BUDDY A SHITHEAD COULD EVER ASK FOR, or, if you could read Benny like Beauj could, TO ROBERT, WHO I LOVE MORE THAN THE WORLD WILL ALLOW ME TO SAY.

It was a card of a child’s design and it was perfect, like Benny, his Southern boy in this big man’s body, aw-shucksing, hellfiring, thanking people kindly in his drawl as sweet as the tea he drank.

Beauj warned him. “You’re going to get diabetes.”

“It won’t be the sugar that kills me.”

Sometimes Benny woke up screaming like his soul was being eviscerated. He lived with a monstrous anger. There was neither an angel nor a devil on his shoulder. He was unpredictable in public, menacing. Supermarket clerks occluded him with a dismaying rage. He accused men in parking lots of “eye-fucking” him. The world brought him to tears and he hated himself for it. It was worse when he was drinking. His behavior got them 86’d from their favorite places.

“I’m sorry, Bobby,” the bartenders said.

“I know. Me too.”

Beauj warned him: “Someone is going to kill you one day.”

He tried to talk to him because more than anything he wanted to listen, but whenever Beauj voiced his concern, Benny took off in his Ranger with the camper shell he could sleep in. “What are you, my fucking girlfriend?” Leaving Beauj there to figure it out.

Even when he was home he wasn’t—sometimes he locked himself in the bathroom and made the tub into a gravity bong. Spent long hours sequestered on the balcony, his death mask illuminated by blue cellphone light, a case of Twisted Tea diminishing, fighting the war in his mind.

He worked to redact these vignettes from their history, but in maintaining this omission, the negative space came to define him: it wasn’t always bad unless it was.

Still he tried.

12

In the limo were eight women more beautiful than he knew to exist, each of them exotic and hypnotic, marvels of symmetry dressed in garments configured for their perfect bodies by designers whose names he’d read but never heard, platonics gleaming with diamonds and platinum and gold, rubies, sapphires, jade, shimmering with the pure light of which they were actually constructed, these curated treasures of a nineteen-year-old basketball prodigy worth two hundred and eighty million dollars.

Next to him, pointing his phone camera at the women, the prodigy’s brother hollered, “You know what fucking time it is!”

Beaujolais checked his watch. They were still on schedule, somehow, to arrive at their allotted time. The limo was driving to an awards ceremony, “the Oscars of sports” was how Dinsmore described it.

“You’ve never heard of the ESPYs?” Benny chided. “You’re so fucking gay.”

When the assignment for the basketball stud came through, he’d offered to switch with Benny. Dinsmore refused. “You know our policy—you can’t be a fan on the clock. I’d bet you’re the only guy we have who doesn’t own this kid’s jersey.”

Benny was quiet on the drive to the airport. At departures he didn’t get out of the car.

“See if you can get a picture.”

“I’m not gonna do that.”

“What if it was Ariana Grande?”

“You’d be the one getting on the plane.”

The prodigy didn’t speak much but he was consistently polite. He paid for Beauj’s burrito bowl after they finished at the children’s hospital, their first stop on an itinerary that included an autograph signing at a Foot Locker followed by prearranged stops at Armani and Gucci wherein the stores were cleared of other shoppers.

The prodigy’s brother met them after the hospital. The brother was impetuous and looked like an early prototype of the kid, one with more fat, less height and a round, bloated face. He referred to Beauj as Paul Walker and continuously sipped a candy-colored liquid from a stack of Styrofoam cups. Unlike his brother he talked incessantly. Spent money like it was his. Beauj heard him introduce himself as the prodigy’s brother, bodyguard, producer, manager and guru. He told anyone who would listen he was the reason for the star’s success.

“I taught him everything he knows. That stepback three? All me. That jabstep? All me. We’d be teammates if it weren’t for the struggle. Someone had to keep shoes on his big-ass feet, yaheardme?”

Beauj spent most of the day diffusing situations the brother created. Some inferred slight would occur and the brother, offended, heightened the stakes. Similar hazards often befell Benny. Beauj knew what to look for. Twice he had to physically insert himself, separating the brother from a confused fan.

“You lucky this white boy’s here, motherfucker. I handle mine. He ain’t the only one with the chopper.”

During one particularly heated incident, the prodigy himself interjected, pulling his brother into the Gucci store as Beauj blocked the door with his body. “Come on now. Come on. This isn’t Gallier Street. These are nice folks. Nobody disrespecting you. They just happy to see me. Come on now.”

“They don’t know who the fuck they talking to.”

“They ain’t talking to nobody. Yaheardme? Stop acting foolish.”

“Motherfuckers spilled my damn Guaf.”

The brother loaded item after item onto the counter. Once the prodigy paid for them, the brother left without taking the bags.

“Excuse me, sir,” called the clerk. “Your bags.”

“Grab that shit, Paul Walker.”

Without looking back, Beauj told him that wasn’t his job.

Now they were in the limo, the prodigy, the brother and a cadre of lithe flesh. Sitting on the opposite side of the long cabin, Beauj could barely see his client through the haze of pungent smoke. From what he deduced, the brother’s only real responsibility was rolling the string of blunts they enjoyed throughout the day, as well as playing music off his phone, a lava flow of decelerated rap that sounded like it was bubbling through tar.

For the most part the women talked among themselves, snapping selfies with their lips pursed and singing along to the chorus. Occasionally they broke formation to take runs at the prodigy, but entering his airspace put them at risk of being intercepted by his brother; like a handsy, lascivious moon, he never left his brother’s orbit, reaching out with curious fingers to honk and squeeze. He made Beauj think of a grizzly bear at a stream, big paws swatting pink flesh. His eyes were dark, ravenous: I eat what I catch.

The driver cracked the partition: they’d arrived. Beauj excused himself as he made his way to the prodigy, moving on his knees down the limo as if crawling through a mineshaft. “Excuse me,” he said, repeating himself until the young millionaire registered him in the din of skin and sound. “We’re here.”

The women shrewed when Beauj opened the door, burping smoke and noise onto the waiting horde of cameras. He offered his hand, steadying them as they writhed free, holding their skirts down to protect their bald modesty. The brother followed with his Styrofoam cups and his scarlet suit, a price tag still dangling from the pants. Finally the prodigy’s signature shoe touched the red carpet and the long legs and the longer body emerged to the cheering of the assembled, here is the Boy King, the future of the world’s new favorite game, and the star raised his awesome hand, beneficent—“Hey, bay-bee”—and the women formed a harem around the brothers and marshaled thusly they proceeded down the carpet with Beauj bulldozing the way.

A member of the prodigy’s PR team rescued them. As she conferred with the star, Beauj studied the layout of the lobby, finding the doorways and exits, formulating plans A through Z and iterating thereon. The variables were minor, and he was on the cusp of assured until he noticed the brother staring.

Narrowed to darts, the brother’s eyes loured upward and Beauj followed their line of sight to the top of a grand staircase where two men in black suits accented in purple and gold glared down unwavering. One of the men formed his hand into a palsied claw and held it in front of his chest. In response the brother contorted his own hand into a different mangle, calling, “JM. Eighty-niners. Mud clique, bitch. What’s up, then? What’s up?”

Beauj couldn’t hear the rebuttal from the men on the staircase, but he did see, as one of the men swept back his suit coat, the butt of a Glock poking out of the top of his tailored pants. It was then he realized, semi-epiphanous, there’d been no metal detectors: at no point had he been made to disclose his firearm, which meant neither had anyone else. The discovery barely had time to raise goosebumps before he saw the brother’s chubby hand reach behind his back and pull from beneath his tailcoat a Cobray M-11 semiautomatic extended magazine pistol.

Insensible reaction. Muscle memory. Go. A few billion neurons jumped a few trillion synapses and in one sweet movement Beauj commandeered the brother’s arm and recurved his wrist at a disagreeable angle, pinning the gun between them. The brother yelped and Beauj reached between their bodies and tore the pistol away. Controlling the weapon, he forced the brother by his bent wrist toward the bathroom, his eyes never leaving the men on the staircase.

Once inside the men’s room, he relinquished the brother’s arm and dislodged the clip from the magazine and cleared the chamber and dropped the gun in a trash can at which time the brother landed a blow to his upper chest. Beauj ducked the next punch—a wild, sidelong hook—and rising from below, buried his shoulder into the brother’s stomach and rammed him spineward into the wall. Bear-hugging, he separated the brother from the ground and bounced the back of his head off the tile—bong, bong—sacking him to the floor.

“What the goddamn—” the brother began, but Beauj grabbed his lapels and brought his head to the sink. “Don’t do me like—”

Beauj planted his knee in the brother’s kidney and turned on the cold water. He texted the prodigy one-handed.

When the star arrived, Beauj barked at him: “Stop!” Beauj nodded toward the flooded tile, heaving, feeling his heart ricochet off the cage built inside of him. “Wet…floor.”

—

Dinsmore called him at three a.m. He was still awake.

“Yep.”

“What the hell happened tonight?”

“I don’t—”

“That was rhetorical.”

“I was going to call you tomorrow. Today, I guess.”

“Too late.”

“You know?”

“Of course I fucking know. Everyone knows. It’s all over the internet.”

“What?”

“Here—open my text. Call me back.”

The text was a link to a website called WorldStarHipHop. He clicked it and his phone browser opened to a video titled “JASON BOURNE FR FR!!!”

The video started with a woman’s face filming herself in the lobby of the awards show. She is discussing her varying levels of attraction to specific athletes when, over her left shoulder, the prodigy’s brother starts gesticulating. She turns around to commentate (“The ESPYs is big ratchet, fam”) but the gun reveal silences her. Then Beauj enters the screen.

From her angle, surrounded by hundreds of people engrossed in similar acts of digital narcissism, it’s easy to understand, as she follows Beauj escorting the brother past a mass of people primping and priming and posing and posting, how the scene went unnoticed in real life. As Beauj moves them into the bathroom she tails them and it almost looks like horseplay between friends until, from the doorway, she captures the gun’s dismantling.

Here the footage deteriorates. Holding the camera blindly around the corner, she frames pieces of him exacting sure precision violence spliced with shots of the ceiling. Once the brother is in the sink, his face turns toward the camera, and the camera shakes as she screams, “He Jason Bourne, fam! Jason Bourne looking fine as hell!”

The video, all seventy-three seconds, was posted at 10:07 p.m. Total views: 1,233,298.

He found his cigarettes and put on a sweatshirt and stepped barefoot onto the balcony. The hotel was near the airport. Below him a blue tarp stretched across the swimming pool rippled like fake water and he leaned on the railing and lit a smoke and stared across a green space behind the parking lot out at the runway where the planes worked up the courage to jump and escape the earth. Dinsmore answered before it rang.

“I’m so sor—”

“How does that happen?”

“He was the client’s brother.”

“I’m aware of who he was. We spoke with Mr. Thompson. As you can imagine, he was ecstatic. Where was he while you were filming your little movie?”

“With a member of his team.”

“And where were you?”

Smoke bled from his nostrils like tusks made of ghosts.

“You know this is fucked, right?”

“He was inebriated and about to spray a room of people.”

“And if he did, where was the client?”

“Sir, with all due respect, there are no ifs, there is only what is.”

Dinsmore guffawed. “Where the fuck did you pick that up? I didn’t know I was talking to Bruce fucking Lee. Let me tell you what it is, Sensei. What it is is a cluster fuck. You pulled the pin on a shit grenade and now I gotta jump on it.”

“I understand.”

“Clearly you don’t. Hold on.” While Dinsmore spoke to someone else Beauj thought about Benny, their rich life spoiled. I’m sorry, honey. We finally had something nice and I broke it.

Dinsmore rejoined the call. “Christ on the weeping cross. It really rains when it makes up its mind to.”

“Dins, look. I understand. Say no more.” Smoke scuffed Beauj’s voice. “Just forward my check.”

“Beauj, I’m gonna give you some advice, so here you go—shut the fuck up and listen.” Dinsmore coughed, cleared his throat. “Goddamnit. Look. Since your highlight reel went live, we’ve received call after call from people looking to hire the real Jason Bourne. UFC fighters. Royalty. All those creeps in Dubai. You’ve become quite the commodity in the last six hours. These cocksuckers want to put you on TV. Late-night shows. Good Morning America. Ellen, Beauj. L-N.”

“Sir, I don’t want to go on Ellen.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

The line was silent, baited: Beauj did as he was told.

“Good. Now here’s the situation—and no, you’re not going on fuckin’ Ellen. As it is, we could book you solid with work for the next six months. Big money, huge names. Your calendar could be air-fucking-tight and with the money we made off you we could buy the whole squad gold-plated Desert Eagles. But there are rules to this shit. And one of the big ones is the security can never be a distraction.” He sneezed. “Dianne, can I get some fucking cough drops in here, please. Christ alive. Everyone thinks they could do my job better than me. Once a fucking week one of you circle-jerking retards will suggest we hire some washed-up wrestler or fighter who’s gone to seed. Think of the publicity, Dins. Great idea, right? Good. That was a test. You’re learning. Thank you, Dianne.” A wrapper crinkled and for the rest of his soliloquy, a lozenge tinkled against his teeth.

“Well the main reason we don’t hire Kimbo Slice or whoever, besides their lacking the training you need to do this job—Wait…” The click of a keyboard. “Shit, yep. Damn. RIP. Anyways. You know what I mean. A celebrity can’t secure a celebrity. If we send you out with…I don’t fucking know…Rihanna or…Tony fucking Romo, the goddamn paparazzi is gonna be up your ass—you’re fucking viral. And that’s exactly what Kim K wants, more attention. Sure, it won’t last. Some dying kid will do a brand-new dance or a movie star will call his assistant a faggot and you’ll be yesterday’s news. But no one wants to hire yesterday’s news. They want to hire you, the super soldier with the pretty face and the tight black sweater. If we want to milk you, and believe me, some of the higher-ups would love nothing more than to put a bucket beneath you and sit on the fucking stool, we have to act now. You know how stupid people are? They’re like babies. If it’s not in front of them, it’s not there. You could work this whole thing into a fucking Senate seat if you wanted to. And that’s your business. Go for it. You got my vote. But what happens if, in a few months from now, once the heat’s died down and you’re back to being just another jumpy jarhead dipshit, let’s say, in the course of your duties, you have to choke out some super-fan or god forbid pull your weapon. Boom. This whole cycle fires back up again and we’re right back to where we started. I don’t know how to break it to you, Beaujo, but every move you make, good or bad, is going to be cannon fodder for the rest of your fucking life. So when you say you understand, forgive me if I think you’re mistaken.” Dinsmore crunched his lozenge. “Alright,” he said. “Now you can fucking talk.”

Black filled the periphery of his vision. What he could see was reduced to what he could touch: the railing, the chair, the cigarette still burning. Depth disappeared. Space flattened. Near and far were the same. He closed his eyes and opened them, then stared into a distance uniquely his own.

“I…I was just doing my job.”

Dinsmore sighed. “I know, bro. That’s what makes this so hard.”

“There’s nothing I can do?”

Another sigh then silence. The sound of mutual breathing. Beauj opened his mouth—the world he could see, the world he envisioned, fading in and out. The balcony was on the fourth floor. Maybe that was high enough. Only one way to find out.

“Well.”

Just a single word, but it was like hearing all of them, every word in every language: in this moment he understood the time between this word and whatever followed was the intermission dividing the first and second acts of his life.

“Shit. Yeah, alright. There might be something else.”

13

The mattress was exquisite. Lying upon it yielded a soporific condition different from sleep, a deeper thing, dormancy or stasis, like a reprieve from being alive.

He came awake in a realm of deep-space black. Skirting the curtain, a single scythe of errant light cleaved the infinity. He remained in bed watching the blade’s thickness waver. Good morning, Chicago. I didn’t think I’d see you again.

“Come, Lazarus, rise.” The curtain retraced and the sword of light engulfed the room. “I was loath to guess how you take your coffee,” said Uncle, nude beside a towel. “Let us break bread. Today is just like yesterday in that it is unlike any other.”

As Uncle set out plates and jam and butter for the baguette, the arbiter brushed his teeth and washed his face and dressed in a faded denim shirt and brown corduroy pants. The coffee was excellent as was the bread and he ate while Uncle puttered about cleaning the evidence of the night before. In the daylight, without the goons or the imminent threat of death, the space was lovely and warm. Uncle told him to put on a record and he chose an album by a group called Television because the man on the cover was arrestingly beautiful.

“Voilà,” Uncle said, spinning to bloom the floor-length black and pink kimono he wore. “Of all the boons of the Orient, silk is only third to opium and gunpowder.” Uncle instructed him to feel the quality of his garment and they talked about their preferences in textiles, Uncle interrupting to commend him for his taste. “It is rare that I am able to discuss the finer things, not with the cadre I keep. A whore is a whore no matter the cost of her company.”

They discussed Chicago (“The lack of pretense is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness”) in comparison to America’s other prestige cities: according to Uncle, Manhattanites were “drone ants who all fancied themselves the queen” and to live in Los Angeles was unfathomable. “The vapidity it must necessitate! But the weather, they say. As if sunlight is worth the price of your soul.”

He claimed Montreal was the only place in North America conducive to human life, and Beaujolais asked why he didn’t live there. “Have you not heard? Montreal is in Canada, my friend. One does not move into a mansion to live in the attic.”

“Where did you move here from?”

“I moved here from Pittsburgh.”

“But where are you from?”

“It is a story longer than it is interesting.”

“I’m literally a captive audience.”

Uncle laughed. “Would you like more coffee?” Beaujolais followed him to the kitchen where Uncle gathered the makings of a French press. While they waited for the electric kettle, he told the following tale.

“I originate from Belgium but my passport is Dutch. Rotterdam is where I derive my provenance. My father was a salesman. He followed money. Occasionally he toted my mother and I in tow. Malmö. Aarhus. Cape Town for a summer of sunburns and arbitrage. But to Holland we always returned.

“I attempted university in Copenhagen but dropped out to live in Christiania with my sweetheart. She left me for a mutual friend, a hash dealer from Morocco who had a motorcycle and a thirteen-inch penis. I saw it. I understood. I roamed for a bit. Whenever I appeared from my stupors, I often found myself living with political people. The type of leftists who lean so far they become back-to-back with fascism. I shared none of their ideals but the rent was negligible. I networked well. I was offered an opportunity to smuggle munitions.

“This was the early nineties. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia. Eastern Europe was on fire and inside of the smoke the bold became rich. The hierarchies were a poorly built scaffolding. Those at the top kept falling off. I was lucky because I was apolitical. While the Trotskyites and the Leninists were arguing, I worked.

“By thirty I had more money than my father ever saw, but I invested poorly and what I did not lose, I spent. I found myself penniless living on a houseboat in Lake Shkodra. I spent my days reading philosophy and drinking rakia with Albanian fishermen. My best friend was an old man named Tinto. We played chess every night and he brought me sardines. One night he was complaining about his nephew. Apparently the kid was causing trouble. What kind of trouble, I asked. Tinto said his nephew was hardheaded and strident and was coming to stay with Tinto for a spell. Bring him by, I told him, as I was eager for someone new to converse with. Tinto and his ilk were good men but they were lowborn, the sons of fishwives.”

Steam spouted from the kettle and Uncle removed it from the burner. “The nephew’s name was Nikola,” Uncle continued, twisting the knob on an egg timer. “He was a strapping lad, smart and funny but myopic with youthful enthusiasm. The source of his trouble was news to me and I listened while he informed me of a burgeoning civil war in a place called Kosovo.

“Kosovo, Robert. It means field of blackbirds. His voice might as well have been the sound of a cash register. Nikola had been caught with some Soviet RPGs and his trip to the countryside was not a vacation. He was—how do you say it…on the lam. Such serendipity. I went straight to the bar with a Rolodex of my old contacts and within three pints I had a bounty greater than Nikola’s anarchists could ever have hoped for. God, to be young enough to call yourself an anarchist without being embarrassed. Of course he died pretty early on in what followed, but not before I established myself.”

The timer buzzed and he twisted it again after pouring the water over the grounds.

“There were so many sides to that conflict and I was supplying all of them. Soon I was a millionaire again but this time I was smart. While everyone else was throwing darts at tech companies until the bubble burst, I invested in an African mineral mine. I may have been wrong about the internet but diamonds are forever. The proceeds from that endeavor were spent on American real estate. The market was down. City blocks were going for pennies on the square foot. This place cost me less than twenty million—not the apartment, the building, my friend. I came to this country and bought as much of it as I could. Baltimore, Dover. Cleveland, Detroit. Pittsburgh. Chicago. Memphis, Jackson, North Dakota.

“I own three percent of eleven states, an American success story fit for a stamp, but I keep in touch with the old gang—the security company, the specialty firm that employs you. And while the revenue they generate directly is a pittance, they have proven to synergize splendidly with my more legitimate investments. Knowing who is to die is exceedingly helpful when it comes to predicting the market. Remember the man in Erie, Pennsylvania? He owned a steel mill. The man in Miami? A shipping magnate. Popular culture has taught us that contract killings are a deeply personal undertaking, the ultimate victory of pathos over logos. But in the vast majority of cases, at least among the echelon of clients we cater to, taking out a contract is as impersonal as sending an email. There are outliers of course. For instance, the man whose daughter you killed. However, the instances in which revenge is a factor are minute. Our clients are not scorned nor jilted nor petty. These are calculated business decisions. We are the bared fangs of capitalism. With my teeth I chew the world.”

The egg timer rang on the counter and Uncle slowly depressed the plunger.

“Ostensibly we are deathmongers but this definition is shortsighted.” He filled an earthenware mug for his guest then poured himself. “We are akin to a mobster telling a boxer to take a dive, but our boxer is named Dow Jones.” He splashed his coffee from a bottle of Baileys then flicked his chin toward Beaujolais’s.

“No thank you.”

“I hope you understand, Robert. I harbor no malfeasance. I owe my livelihood to men like you. You spill blood and from this trickle flows an ocean of profit.”

“I’m moved, thank you.”

“No, Robert. I am the thankful party. Salud.” He raised his mug, nodded and sipped. “Now tell me. Have you ever been to Paris?”

14

RE: Jason Bourne

Uncle

I spoke with Beauj and explained our situation. As per our conversation yesterday, he has been severed. However, it is my opinion that his talents could be utilized in other branches of the business. He is a proven asset and exhibits an almost detached poise. He has a knack for creative problem solving, good intuition, and is confident without being prideful. I have attached his military service records. They are impeccable and highlight his prowess in both tight quarters and distance. Finally, he has no familial ties, no girlfriends, no known issues with substance abuse. Therefore, with respect to our respective stations within the organization and your expertise, I feel he would be a prime candidate for arbitration.

Please let me know how you would like to proceed.

Dinsmore

15

Traffic was light in the city. Once they were on the highway, via the carpool lane, they reached the airstrip in less than half an hour.

Uncle’s jet was cream-colored and conical and reminded Beaujolais of a porpoise. Uncle referred to it as a “bizjet” and called it The Flying Jew, a joke about the aircraft’s long nose. The four-person crew spoke Dutch and French and English and along with Uncle and Beaujolais they shared a bottle of champagne before takeoff.

“Do you need anything before we go?”

Beaujolais leaned forward in his seat, blushing. “You mean, like, a passport?”

Uncle patted his chest and dug his hand into his breast pocket and tossed a blue booklet across the cabin. “I had one made.”

The captain said, “Seatbelts everyone.”

The pilots were ruddy men who Beaujolais took for siblings. They’d worked for Uncle in his past enterprise manning carrier planes for cargo drops in Rhodesia and the Balkans. They took turns flying and whichever pilot wasn’t at the controls sat with them and played backgammon and drank steadily from a magnum of Alsatian white. In-flight lobster was served as well as caviar and a salad of heirloom tomatoes, pomegranate and goat cheese. When they reached Icelandic airspace, Uncle ordered espresso and unzipped a leather portfolio, his sole carry-on, and removed a tablet. “Would you believe it Alphonse if I told you this trip was young Robert’s maiden voyage to Europe?”

The pilot arched his eyebrows and pressed his lips tightly. “This is true, Robert?”

Beaujolais nodded.

Alphonse pivoted in his seat. “Are you hearing this, Henry?”

“I am,” said the other pilot. “If I knew you were cherry I would have laid down a tarp.”

“Oh la vache! To experience Paris again for the first time.” Alphonse leaned forward and pinched the arbiter’s cheek. “You are a lucky man. Where will you stay?”

Beaujolais shrugged.

“Allow me to show you,” Uncle said, pushing the backgammon board aside. “He is staying here.” He woke up the tablet and tapped the screen then dropped his finger onto the center of a map of Paris. “In the second.”

Alphonse whistled. “The second.”

“Montorgueil.”

“Which métro? Sentier?”

“Oui.”

Alphonse leaned over the tablet. “This location is superior to my first visit. The first occasion I travel to Paris, I sleep that night on the ground in a train station near Montmartre. The only money I have I buy coffee and cigarettes from a PMU. The old man called me a faggot then he offers me fifty francs to suck his dick.”

From the cockpit: “The easiest money he ever made.”

“Never mind him. His wife is Chinese.”

The active pilot protested: “She’s from Taiwan.”

“In that case, I am from Flanders.”

Uncle received an espresso from the attendant and as she walked away she said, “Paris has many suitors. Each of them fall in love with her, even the ones she fucks.”

“Annabelle, the mouth on you.”

“That is where I would start.” From a tin box Alphonse pinched a bit of snus. “Will the monsieur have time to explore?”

“He will have time. His meeting is not for a few days.”

“To be young in Paris once again.” The pilot pinched a nostril closed with his thumb and snorted with the other. “Have fun, mon ami. Drink un petit jaune for old Alphonse, and remember to wear a hood. Parisian women are all veterans, especially the virgins.” The pilot stood and shook hands with Beaujolais. “Bonne chance, monsieur,” he said, opening the cockpit door. “Ring the bell if you need me.”

“Now now now now.” Uncle sipped his espresso. “Do you need to use the toilet?”

Beaujolais laughed. “What—no.”

“Are you certain? Because if you need to shit, there is no better target than Reykjavík. We will arrive in Paris in a few hours. As I told Alphonse, you will not immediately go to work. Massimo is in Rome until the middle of the week. This will give you time to become acquainted with the city. You will reside here.” Uncle planted his finger on the digital map. “Our friend resides here.” He dragged his finger and the map moved. “The posh fuck. As you can see I have compiled prudent information and a full dossier on our friend. Oh, my—where are my manners? I have failed to introduce you.”

Uncle closed the map and opened the gallery to a photo of three individuals styled immaculate. “Here he is, in the middle. Massimo Di Giovanni. L’arcangelo di Firenze. The archangel of Florence.”

In the photograph the man is standing on a mezzanine beneath a chandelier. His black suit clings to his dimensions. A tangerine ascot tied jauntily beneath the face of a gondolier, his olive skin shining. His lips, bent amiable beneath his pencil mustache, pair incongruous with his eyes, their anchored focus neither rakish nor unbothered. To his right is a tall man with long arms that hang to his knees. His forearms bulge out the sleeves of his silk shirt, anchored like pendulums by hands the size of omelet pans. A dazzling young woman steals focus as she brushes back a truss of blackest hair, the shade of the refusal of light.

“You might not recognize her with a face,” said Uncle, delivering a playful nudge, “but you two met. The big gypsy is his lieutenant, Darlochi Benivici. He looks like a scamp, does he not? What I would give for a hardman of his capabilities. In all likelihood, any success you have in Massimo’s adjudication will be a direct result of Darlo’s failure.” Uncle exhaled sharply. “Oh my. Your face. Annabelle! More wine, please. This man needs a drink.”

Annabelle arrived with a new bottle and a fresh bucket of ice. Uncle snatched her wrist and pulled her down onto his lap. “Annabelle, my bella Anna, let me ask you something, dearest. If you were in Paris, what would be the first thing you would do?”

“Simple,” she deadpanned. “Board the train to Amsterdam.”

Uncle cackled, squeezing her around the waist. “Annabelle, my Annabelle, your talents are squandered here. Well maybe not all of them. Have I shown you the improvements to the sleeping quarters?”

“No.”

“Would you like a tour?”

“I do not think I could spare the thirty seconds.”

As he released her, Uncle howled. “So ripe with bon mots. Is dat alles waar je tong goed voor is?”

“Je zou eens moeten zien hoe ik een envelop dichtplak.”

Uncle firemanned the steward over his shoulder, spilling the bucket of melted ice, and the pair squealed in their unidentifiable language as he hauled her giggling to the room in the rear of the plane.

Alone, the arbiter poured a glass of wine. He studied the tablet. The more he learned, the more he drank. By the time the pilots announced they were twenty minutes from landing, he’d attained a clearer picture not only of the man he was to kill but also the inherent impossibility of his assignment: palpable as smoke, deadly as fire, Massimo Di Giovanni was, by any conception or definition of the word, untouchable. Castles were less fortified.

The bottle was empty again.

16

Are you home?

yes

Meet me at pier 17 in an hour

i thought i was fired?

1 hour

1 hour from now?

JFC

No

59 minutes from now

17

Beaujolais sat smoking on a blue plastic barrel when Dinsmore pulled into the dock. Dinsmore offered his hand but Beaujolais stepped onto the dinghy of his own accord and Dinsmore reversed and pointed the vessel toward the channel.

The dinghy was rubber and it skipped like a stone, the nose rising and dropping more severely with speed. Birdclouds. Daymoon. The glassine sun corrugating fish scales on the water.

Beneath his sunglasses Beaujolais studied Dinsmore: the killmonger belied nothing, captaining them into endless blue. Blind as to where or why they were going, the unsurety manifested as dreadful anxiety: “It’s like riding on diamonds,” he regretted.

Dinsmore tapped his ear, jabbing his chin at the outboard motor. Beaujolais hailed the propeller for mincing his lame poetics.

They bobbed in silence.

As the shore shrunk and the ocean swelled, Beaujolais stared seaward watching the water deny and reflect the sunlight, feeling the mist on his face and bare arms and tasting the salty tang as it rang down the back of his throat.

After nearly fifteen minutes of undistracted chop, the dinghy slowed. Dinsmore sidled next to a buoy and passed a rope around the eyehook, mooring them. He reached between his legs and opened a cooler and produced two brown bottles. “For my money, Yuengling is the best cheap beer.”

“I’d never heard of it before I moved out here.”

“I think it’s just on this side of the Mississippi. It’s sure as shit not in Chicago. When I was growing up in Baltimore, we used to steal Natty Boh’s from our dads. Now I can’t stand Natty but this kind of reminds me of it.” He tilted the bottle back, grunting his approval. “Goddamn that’s fucking good.”

“I have the same deal with craft beers. In Colorado, when we were kids, microbreweries were just becoming a thing, so everyone’s garage fridge was stocked with Fat Tire and boutique IPAs. We’d get hammered on twenty-dollar six-packs. Now the smell of hops makes me gag.”

“You like Coors Light?”

“I prefer the banquet beer.”

“What’s that?”

“Coors Original. Yella bellies. That’s what they call it.”

“Why do they call it banquet beer?”

“I have no idea. I don’t think anyone does.”

A Coast Guard helicopter skirted the cloud canopy and they sipped America’s oldest beer while the fatbody trundled along gracefully as if pulled by a guide wire. Dinsmore pointed his bottle. “You ever ride in one of those?”

“A few times. Benny a lot more.”

“How’s he doing?”

“The same. He’s been calling me JB.”

“JB?”

“Jason Bourne.”

“How’d he take the news?”

“I didn’t tell him I was fired.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Well you might not have to.”

Beaujolais’s eyes sliced a path from the fading helicopter to the rear of the vessel where Dinsmore was opening another beer. “I didn’t hear you.”

Dinsmore repeated himself at a volume befitting their solitude. “Did you hear that? Why else would I be here? You think I flew in for some of your bullshit pulled pork? It’s black biker week. You ever tried to find a hotel room during black biker week? Shit.” He flicked his bottle cap, rocking the vessel with his laughter as the tiny metal disc bounced off Beaujolais’s stunned forehead. “Jesus Christ, Beauj. Close your mouth before a bird flies in there.”

He didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well good news—you don’t have to talk. I’ll talk. But first we have to turn off our phones. Good. Now listen. And if you repeat any of this, I’ll have no choice but to kill you. And not in the ha-ha way. I’m serious, Beauj. This is serious. Are you a serious person?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Say it. Say ‘I’m a serious person.’ ”

“I’m a serious person.”

“Again.”

“I’m a serious person.”

“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I’m telling you this. We want to offer you a job.”

—

His first assignment was in Moorhead, Minnesota, on the North Dakota line, a bald man with a miniature arm like a fiddler crab that he killed in the kitchen of a bingo parlor. After the deformed man he traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he employed a high-power rifle to end the life of a Mexican national come stateside for his mother’s funeral. Next came trips to Lansing (vice president of a regional ginger ale/golf course), Tulsa (brake pad manufacturer/bathhouse) and Pottstown, Pennsylvania (heir to a vacuum fortune/parking lot of a dirt track).

He traveled often that first year, never turning down a job. He was grateful for the work and the money was preposterous and the remorse wasn’t as acute as he feared: he’d killed enough people to know that some of them deserved it.

The real crime was lying to Benny. He let him think he’d been promoted because that’s what Dinsmore told all the guys in an email:

Beauj has been hired full time by a single client. Don’t ask him who it is because if he tells any of you, I’ll kick his ass. But for real, not knowing is safer, for him and for all of us. You don’t want to be on this Christmas list. Please respect the severity of this request.

Benny never asked. Beauj received this as a gesture of love rather than disinterest. The lie festered. One morning Beauj woke first and set out to exhaust himself on a long run along the eastern shore to the parkway across the peninsula and down the West Side. The exercise ploughed his mind, creating a fertile bed for his thoughts to root, and from these sprouts grew decision trees he pared down to manageable bonsais.

He returned home pumped-up with two lattes and a pair of manhole-sized cinnamon rolls from their favorite bakery. He opened the door with the sincere intention of telling Benny about his new job, but it was too late: Benny was already posted in front of the flatscreen, Xbox controller in hand, a tall boy clamped between his knees.

Vacillating, Beaujolais placed the coffee and baked goods in front of his roommate and kissed him on the cheek.

“Oh shit,” Benny said, covering his mouthpiece with his hand. “Is this from Brown’s? Let’s go! I fucking love you, dog.” He rescued his attention from the screen, looking up with the olive green eyes Beaujolais coveted most. “Hold on now.” He cupped Beaujolais’s calf, stroking the back of his knee with his finger. “What’s the matter, good-lookin’?”

Beaujolais opened his mouth. Tell him say it do it now—“Nothing, I didn’t—I forgot to grab my dry cleaning.”

“Shucks, I got something you can grab.” Benny pulled him onto his lap. “How was your run?”

“Brutal. I think I earned a treat.”

“I think you are a treat.” Benny’s lips in the crook of his neck, a uniquely private annihilation, a thing he could never imagine, more than he ever deserved—the truth didn’t compare to this feeling. He didn’t need honesty as long as he had this.

18

As the jet made its final descent into the mouth of the yawning yellow sun, honeylight flooded the windows to such a degree that when they touched down at Charles de Gaulle, rather than men or women, the cabin occupants, doused fully golden, appeared as idols, relics or personifications of God’s love.

Beaujolais double-checked the cabin while Uncle hugged the crew goodbye, wishing them well in either Dutch or French as he smooched the air beside their cheeks. Annabelle’s embrace lingered, Uncle whispering into her hair, her laughing, “I promise, I will.” She sounded sincere.

With that, Uncle and Beaujolais entered a waiting silver Mercedes-Benz G-Class and it took them from the runway out of the airport onto the A3, crossing the A104 where Uncle tapped the driver’s shoulder and pointed at a towering IKEA and the driver said something in a guttural provincial French, talking with his throat like an Israeli. The driver continued in his toad-throat dialect as they bisected the N3, entering the outer suburban precursors until the highway doglegged to the right toward the scraped remnants of Fort de Noisy and the city came on like a crescendo. Building rapidly as if assembling itself for their visit, the neat houses with their elongated chimneys gave way to taller structures as they entered a city built of art deco roses. They crossed the D20 and Rue Charles Delescluze, penetrating her finally inside the Périph ring road and she pronounced herself, receiving them as they went deeper on Rue Belgrand through Belleville circling the Fontaine de la Place Gambetta and continuing on the titular avenue watching the joggers in Square Samuel-de-Champlain run beside the graves of her conquests, turning on Avenue de la République where she moaned, and for a moment he thought he saw her, on the face of the Monument à la République—but no, as they joined the Rue de Turbigo, she is too large to see for she is living and she is breathing and he felt her close in on him and he gasped when finally, once more finally, he heard her, the sound of the voice of beauty, as she screamed her name from atop the gray zinc roofs crowning her ubiquitous army, the signature stone-faced buildings simultaneously sober and elegant with their mandatory wrought iron balconies, the double windows with shutters like reptile eyes, and she pulled him across Sébastopol to Rue Étienne Marcel, dragging him inward, plunging to her sweetest depths, and inside of her he was her child and he was her lover and to him she was the ideal beyond perfection, and in the place where he told himself secrets—Oh my god—because she was right here, and there existed no circumstance to impress her, she would never feel him inside of her, she would never know his name.

The sun was down when the car stopped on Rue d’Aboukir. Uncle turned to him. “So, young Robert. What do you think of Paris?”

Dumbfounded, radicalized, a newborn apostle, Beaujolais shook his head: for this song there weren’t any lyrics, no voice worthy to sing its praise.

Part

II

19

Up three flights of circular stairs, behind a heavy oak door, the apartment was of the open floor plan Uncle preferred. Waxed hardwood. Stainless steel kitchen. Eggshell walls dramatically unadorned. Beneath modern furniture designed sans concern for the angles of human anatomy an ancient rug ran the length of the room diagonal, connecting the bed in one corner to an ivory Bösendorfer piano in the other. On the eastern wall a floor-to-ceiling window was a hard white portal and pouring through the thick glass the sunlight took on a granularity that rendered the room illusory, a space between spaces like heaven’s waiting room or the antechamber of a space orbiter where one acclimated to new air.

On arrival, after a cup of tea and some brandy, they’d had another mandatory sleepover: Beaujolais, wholly exhausted/existentially burnt, in the bed; Uncle, alcohol/trazodone, on a bianco leather couch beneath a Willem de Kooning.

Uncle made them espresso in the morning, stirring in brown sugar until it was the consistency of paste. “I bought this apartment for the light,” he said, standing at the window with his hands on his hips. “I find it hallucinatory. Like a womb, no? When I attempted to learn the piano, this is where I practiced.” He lifted the key cover and rang a B-flat. “I spent two of the best months of my life in this room, or so I was told. Have you ever smoked opium, Robert? I had to have the mattress replaced.”

“It’s stunning.”

“There is a boulangerie nearby. I dream of their roasted chicken.”

The arbiter said he was hungry.

“Great—we sup, then I leave you alone. The only way to experience Paris is unsupervised and unjudged.”

“Can I brush my teeth first?”

Uncle flipped Beaujolais a set of keys. “Robert, you must remember, and I cannot stress this enough—you can do whatever you like.”

Down the staircase Beaujolais, dressed in a linen shirt and a pair of khakis selected from a bevy of options tailored as if on a mannequin of his body, followed Uncle out of the building.

The streets were narrow, the sidewalks slimmer, and sporadically they pressed themselves against the buildings to allow the passage of bicyclists sneaking by. Uncle talked, Beaujolais listened, parsing the sagacious pearls from his superior’s stream-of-conscious blathering. Advice included greeting shopkeepers upon entering any shop, ordering small beers instead of pints, and the total avoidance of Moroccans, Algerians and Ivorians.

“I am not racist, Robert, just a slave to common sense.”

Uncle was explaining the finer points of scoring street-level hashish (“Let them whistle first, then you, like flirting cowbirds”) when he halted abruptly beneath a battered blue awning and pressed his face to the glass door. Inside the shop a frumped woman read a magazine on a stool. Uncle tapped on the glass and the woman looked up, her annoyance plain, and shooed him with a dismissive wave.

“Madame. S’il vous plait.”

Her response was inaudible.

“Madame.” Uncle spread a fan of euros and slapped them against the glass. “Je veux dépenser de l’argent.”

Eyes flaring, she closed her magazine, limping. They heard the deadbolt unlock and she cracked the door. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Vous voulez quoi?”

“Merci d’avoir ouvert!”

“Alors?”

“Nous venons d’arriver d’Amérique et je voudrais acheter des sardines.”

“Vous voyez pas qu’on est fermés? Je buvais mon thé au calme.”

“Attendez!” Uncle counted five twenty-euro bills and threaded them through the gap. “Tenez! Prenez-ça. Pour le dérangement.”

The woman stared at the money, an amalgam of incredulity and embarrassment forming itself on her face. “Qu’est-ce que vous me voulez exactement?”

“Rien du tout, tenez, vraiment! C’est pour vous.”

The woman frowned. She pinched the bills between her thumb and forefinger, handling them as if they were a befouled diaper.

“Parfait!” Uncle beamed. “Pouvons-nous entrer maintenant?”

The woman grumbled.

“Madame? C’est possible d’entrer?”

“Je crois que oui.” She stepped aside and Uncle thanked her repeatedly, pulling Beaujolais in behind. She looked at Beaujolais and, not knowing what to do, he tendered an awkward bow.

The room was small and unlit. Display shelves of small colored tins formed the perimeter. Over the counter a painting of a silver fish jumping on a line.

“Je m’excuse pour mon ami,” Uncle said, stifling a laugh. “Il ne parle pas français. Vous parlez anglais?”

“Non.”

“Not at all? Pas du tout?”

“Dépêchez-vous, s’il vous plaît! J’ai pas que ça à faire!” Despite the language barrier, Beaujolais detected the exasperation in her voice. “Et mon thé refroidit!”

“Bien sûr, bien sûr, on va faire vite!”

The woman clucked her tongue. Dragging her lame foot, she returned to her stool.

Uncle clapped Beaujolais on the back, forcing him forward into the center of the room. “The French act as if they are bigger than money. Bullshit.” He nodded to the woman, smiling broadly. “Yes yes, you feeble old bitch. No one is bigger than money. You can pretend all you want but what you would subject yourself to for one thousand euros would shame your mother’s name.”

Beaujolais smiled politely.

“Yes. Well. Tell me, Robert, what do you know about canned fish?”

—

They sat in a small park eating crude sandwiches of mackerel smeared across torn pieces of baguette. The fish flesh was creamy and picante and not as salty as the sardines they had in the commissary on base. Uncle was crazy for them: he’d arranged to have two cases shipped back to Chicago, slurring the unwitting proprietress in English as she thanked him profusely in French.

“Merci beaucoup, monsieur.”

“Eat slime, you rancid cur.”

On their walk to the park—a collection of benches atop threadbare grass facing a rectangular raised gravel bed populated by old men, all of them smoking, waiting their turn to throw smooth metallic balls at a smaller metallic ball, a game Beaujolais knew as bocce but Uncle said the French called pétanque—they’d stopped at a corner store for bread, fresh-squeezed orange juice and a couple cans of blonde beer. Uncle mixed them shandies in paper coffee cups, commentating on the game.

“See how that man arcs his toss? That prevents the ball from rolling. Look. See how the ball lands and sits? Masterful, just masterful. If you were to ask these men to define physics they would struggle to name one aspect. Yet they waste their lives conquering its rules.”

Further down the park a man strummed Bob Marley on a guitar. “Redemption Song.” “Three Little Birds.” Children chasing each other around a play structure accompanied him with laughter.

“This is nice,” Beaujolais said.

Uncle agreed. “The previous days have been quite chaotic, no?”

“Yeah.”

“This is why I flew us out early. A man needs to decompress. Your countrymen do not understand this. Leisure is not an American pursuit.” He dug a filet from the tin with his fingers and dangled it whole into his mouth.

“You said I had a few days. When does he arrive?”

“We have no ETA. He is mercurial but not when it comes to business. We will see him before the summit.”

“The summit?”

“A meeting of like-minded businessmen. Professionals in adjoining fields.”

“Is that why you came with me?”

“Very good, Robert. I hope this does not hurt your feelings.” Uncle winked, cleaning the fish oil off his fingers with the brown paper shopping bag.

“I don’t know what I’d do here by myself.”

“I knew a woman in Belfast. ‘Paris,’ she said. ‘What a lovely place to sit and read.’ ”

“I like reading.”

“I imagine your job is very lonely.”

“It can be.” He sipped his drink. “It is.”

A child shrieked. They turned their attention in the direction of the playground where two boys stood over a third. The injured boy bawled, rocking on the ground and clutching his knee to his chest. A woman came running, the boys gave way. She knelt, talking softly, hugging the boy into her.

Uncle belched. “Hopefully that boy retains this memory, the occasion when he was hurt and received consolation. Maybe one day it will make the world seem less vicious.”

“That wasn’t my mother. ‘Walk it off, Bobby, crying don’t fix nothing.’ ”

“Now as an adult you kill people for money.”

Their laughter was explosive, discharging, freeing; the old men paused their game until it subsided, watching them gasping for air. Beaujolais wiped the tears from his face and poured more beer into his cup. He ripped another piece of bread off the baguette and motioned with the hunk to a row of neatly planted trees. “Do you know what kind of trees those are?”

“Is this rhetorical?”

“I think I want to be the kind of person who knows what kind of trees those are.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to see a flower and know it by its name.” A subtle zephyr stirred the branches of the unnamed tree and he paused to marvel at the burnished leaves as they fell earthward in a swirling cascade of copper verdure.

“Shit.” Uncle checked his watch. “Shit, shit—we are late.”

“Late for what?”

“For lunch.”

“But we just ate.”

“Robert,” Uncle said, rising off the bench. “This is France. Here the eating only ceases when it is time to sleep or fuck. Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Are we fucking?”

“No.”

“If it were just the two of us, I would gladly sit here all day.”

“It is just the two of us.”

Uncle stopped packing their picnic makings in the paper sack. “Robert, your intelligence fluctuates wildly. Someone is expecting us.”

“Who’s that?”

“Someone it is best not to leave waiting.”

20

YOOOOOOOOOO Slipknot is coming to Charlotte!

lol when?

Three saturdays

We have to go

march 12?

yeah!

damn

i have to work:(

Call in sick

i cant

Yes you can

Ill text dins

do not do that Benny

i cant

im sorry baby

wtf

Y?

i just cant

Bro

dont call me bro

Thats fucked

Ur fucked

im sorry

let me buy the tickets you and terry can go

I dont want to go with terry i wanted to go with u

;(

i know

i want to go with you

but i cant

Whatever

its not wahtever

it was nice of you to ask me

BRO IM OVER IT

omfg

you know i hate it when you call me bro

Bro

Bro

Bro

Bro

21

To call it a restaurant was to disregard the word’s intended meaning.

Located on a side street off Faubourg Saint-Denis in a peeling brown brick building, the restaurant, viewed through the smeared windows, was reminiscent of a gutted laundromat. The room smelled of smoke and sweat and burnt fat. Racing forms and newspapers strewn across the scuffed linoleum reminded Beaujolais of a kennel. Lit in a blaze of abrasive halogen, tired men in soiled overalls or pitted chambray workshirts appeared the personified images of ex–Soviet bloc propaganda. Against a scabrous mahogany bar they leaned smoking cigarettes and drinking espresso or draft beer from glasses dwarfed miniature in their big hands with knuckles like shelled walnuts. Lemons floated in jars of clear liquor on a shelf, the sole decoration besides a framed sepia-toned photograph of a jockey hugged tight to a horse trotting mud.

In the anterior of the room, metal chairs with oval backs guarded unadorned circular tables. Seated at one bare arrangement a woman dressed in every variation of black stirred a cappuccino. Her skin was pale but not anemic, the color of rosewater candy. The length of her dark hair was short enough to be hidden entirely beneath a vaulted beret. Her long face dripped to a point at the chin; bracketed between high cheekbones, her mouth formed its centerpiece. An imbalance of her lips—the lower thin, the upper bowed—rendered her default expression a snarling pout, giving her face a disarming, sarcastic tinge.

Uncle greeted her. “Ciao, Gianna.”

She did not stand to receive them.

Uncle enclosed her extended hand in both of his. “Please, call me Uncle. Or how do you say it? Tio?”

“Zio.”

“Zio, magnifico. Italians have all the best words.” Uncle pulled out a chair and sat. Unsure of his station, Beaujolais remained standing. “I apologize for our tardiness. You know how this city can be.”

“I know Paris well, thus I avoid it.”

“You do not regard the city positively?”

“Paris regards itself highly enough.” She sipped her cappuccino. “Are you having a drink?”

“Of course.”

“And your shadow?” She lifted her Hershey’s Kiss chin toward Beaujolais.

“Oh my, yes, Robert, what are you doing? Stop looming like a wretch and join us. Gianna, this is my…How would you describe yourself, Robert? My mentee? My familiar? Here.” Uncle stood up and held out his chair like a maître d’ and Beaujolais sat. “There you are, sir. Thank you for joining us. What will you be having?”

“Give me something I’ve never had before.”

“Done. And for the lady? Something stronger than coffee?”

“No,” Gianna answered unamused. “If you order a cappuccino, prepare to be judged.”

Uncle went to the bar. Robert looked at the woman. Reflected in her Gucci sunglasses, his face appeared nervous. He held out his hand. “Hello, I’m—”

“I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“You are the man who is killing my father.”

Rigid as the chairback, Beaujolais straightened as if his spine sought to escape. In his own body he felt unwanted, his skin wringing a film of tepid sweat from the flesh underneath as it withered and molted away. The effort of muting his outward distress left his face blank and stupid and weird: I’ve been set up. He remembered the bevy of rough men at the bar. Would he have to kill all of them? Would he be allowed to kill Uncle before he died? He was scanning the vicinity for a weapon when he felt her fingers on the back of his hand.

“I have upset you.”

“Me? No.”

“Yes I have. Please, allow me to make apology.” She removed her sunglasses and placed them on the table, offering her eyes. “This is not my intention. Uncle has failed to explain. My name is Gianna Di Giovanni. Massimo is my father.” She inhaled sharply through her nostrils. “Amara was…is…”

“Oh.”

She unclasped her clutch and removed a pouch of Fortuna and he watched her fingers build a cigarette, eager to look at anything besides her face. “In the stores, I could not locate my brand. We rolled Fortuna in university. So…You must understand, to you I have no anger. You cannot have anger with the servant. I do have anger but my anger is reserved for my father. I loved my sister. She was beautiful and she was simpatica but she was not smart.

“When I hear she is to go to America, I protest, but my father is not a listener. If she wants, he gives. He says she will be safe. ‘She is strong,’ he says to me, ‘both of my daughters are strong.’ He is correct but not in total. I am strong. Amara however…” She wet the paper with her tongue and rolled the cigarette sealed. “Sleeping does not imply you are dreaming. She is dead. I want to kill the person responsible, but you are not this person. This person is my father. I know he is this person. Do you understand?”

He flicked his lighter. “Yes I do.”

She accepted the flame. “Good.”

“And thank you.”

“You do not need to thank me. A person does not need to be thanked for…how is the word in English? Razionale?”

“Rational?”

“And what is the opposite?”

“Irrational.”

“Grazie.” She plucked a strand of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “I am these words. I am rational to an irrational degree.”

“Here we are.” Uncle placed a tall glass of cloudy liquid in front of Beaujolais and raised his own. “Champagne is fine and cognac is grand but this pastis is mine so please do unhand. Cin cin, Robert. To your health.” The liquid smelled like anise and looked only and exactly like four fingers of ejaculate. Robert champed a sip while Uncle drained half of his glass. “How do you fancy that?”

“It’s different.”

Gianna guffawed. “Ricard looks like sperma.”

Uncle quaffed his remainder. “If only.” He signaled the barman over and handed him his glass. “Encore une fois et une bière pour ma mule. Gianna, are you certain you will not have a drink with us? They have a spumante. Or maybe a kir?”

Her cigarette sizzled as she dunked it in the dregs of her cappuccino. “I prefer to be sober when I discuss business. But I will eat.”

“I ordered a whole chicken with potatoes and asparagus.”

“Eccellente.”

Uncle requisitioned Beaujolais’s drink. “I ordered you a beer, Robert.”

“That stuff is foul.”

“It’s no Bud Light.” Uncle batoned a finger between his party members. “I trust the introductions were made?”

“Yes,” Gianna said. “Robert and I are now like the old friends.”

“You two cut quite the silhouette. A winning pair, like pocket aces.”

Beaujolais received the glasses from the barman. “Gianna has been very kind.”

“Oh has she?”

“Please, say no more of this. I wish to continue, but before we proceed, Robert, I need you to agree to one request.”

“It depends.” He reached for his cigarettes. “But yes, if I can.”

Uncle crooked his arm around Beaujolais’s shoulder and gave him a shake. “Of course he will. It is the least he can do.”

“Robert, you say I am kind, but I am here to help you murder my father. Please refrain from placation, this is evil work we perform. I am asking you to transform into the devil.”

—

The chicken was the best he ever had and he told them both twice.

Gianna and Uncle both preferred white meat; given the rest of the bird, Beauj ate without quarter. The skin, rubbed with rosemary and sage, cracked audibly as his knife bit into it. He smashed the red potatoes with his fork and floated his plate in pan sauce and made small sandwiches with buttered bread, listening as Uncle and Gianna explained in hyper-acute detail the setting and circumstances surrounding the assassination of Massimo Di Giovanni.

This week, representatives from Southern Europe’s preeminent crime organizations were gathering at the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont—a church, he gathered—in Paris’s fifth arrondissement (“Neighborhood, Robert. Now if you could please refrain from speech”). Organized hastily in response to a recent influx of foreign operators from China and Russia, the meeting was to be held under the banner of strengthening domestic networks to ensure an ongoing mutual prosperity. Emissaries from Italy, France, Spain, Albania, Greece, Croatia and the lesser Mediterranean nations were to attend as well as upwardly mobile North African interests, including a self-professed Libyan pirate king.

Similar events had taken place in recent years but none of them had been successful. Two hazards factored most prominent in these failures: the inherent and ancient rivalries of the parties involved and the efforts of law enforcement. Anti-crime task forces from Europe and the global West had used past conclaves to clear file cabinets of stagnant warrants. Mass arrests further weakened the rust-eaten bodies of the traditional machines of power, and while there was nothing to be done about generational blood feuds or INTERPOL’s incessant lust for justice, there were a few agreed-upon rules of engagement, the strongest of which were built on a communal foundation of the fear of the wrath of God.

Even though Europe as a whole had strayed from the path of the Lord, most of the continent’s criminal elite still very much feared His vengeance. Their procedures were whispered in the dead tongues of the old world. The Catholics thought the Islamists dogs, and the Muslims saw the Papists as blood-drinking homosexuals, but they were similarly bound by oaths, vows and rituals of Abraham. Where formerly dishonor served to deter their worst instincts, in a post-ethical world the only fortification preventing the reign of chaos was the threat of eternal damnation. Thus certain asylums were granted clemency—funerals, for instance.

Therefore, in order to avoid external and internal disruptions, the accord of Saint-Étienne, the largest conglomeration of Europe’s contemporary criminal ruling class, was happening under the guise of their sole sacrosanct camouflage, the funeral of the daughter of the king of the kings: Amara Angelica Verduliana Di Giovanni, the beloved second daughter of Europe’s last remaining godfather.

Under this veil they would perpetrate their treason.

Robert was to attend the funeral with Gianna, presenting as her lover. After the service, Gianna would provide the necessary proximity for Robert to carry out the assignment and would aid in his escape, “to the most I am able.”

“A dab of grease is all we need,” said Uncle. “I assure you, my firm is the industry vanguard, and this solemn young cannibal is our best.”

“I do not aim to impeach your skills, Robert. No doubt you are an excellent man, but my father surrounds himself with excellent men. He is never without Darlo.”

Uncle set down his fork. “Gianna, with all due respect, the men in your father’s employ would not cut it in our operation. What have they done to earn their positions aside from being your father’s pub chums? Extort vintners? Mislabel parmesan?”

“To say this is to value them less than their worth.”

“I exaggerate, yes, but my rapier scored the point. I have imported for you a completely different specimen.” Uncle swept his hand over the arbiter like a model showcasing a minivan on a gameshow. “Robert is a graduate of the American Marine murder school, the most trusted name in death. Uncle Sam rewired his mind. Removed his repentance. His soul is a grenade and his cock sprays lead. He kills, he shits, he fucks. He has been responsible for the closure of more than eighty accounts. (Is that all? he thought, swallowing more flesh.) And these men, they were no macarons, they were bang-bang Americans. What you are asking of him—”

“Is my voice the only one we have heard?”

“Fair enough. What we are asking of him has been described as impossible. I myself have used this term—it is inapt. A more accurate word is demanding, formidable. However we choose to describe this project, it is not disproportionate to his skills. You said yourself you wanted a devil. This one right here can kill God.”

In an effort to rid his esophagus of clotted grease, Beaujolais cleared his throat.

Uncle, exultant, lay on his side across the bench. “Hark, child, do you have something to say?”

“No.”

“Cease carcass-picking and speak freely. No one will steal your bones.”

Stalling, he wiped his face with a stiff cloth napkin leached of all softness by innumerable launderings. There was one thing. “There is one thing.”

Uncle twirled the frayed end of his ludicrous Viking braid. “I love how coy you are with your words. In no way is it taxing.”

“It’s just—won’t he recognize me?”

Uncle’s brow lowered, smushing his eyes supercilious. “Elaborate.”

“The surveillance footage?”

“Oh, that.”

Beaujolais had never actually seen someone pshaw.

“This is not a concern.”

Beaujolais snorted. “Maybe not for you but for me—I bet he could get his hands on it. If he doesn’t have it already.”

“I will be honest, Bobby. You surprised me.” Uncle formed himself to a seating position like a man collapsing in reverse. “I did not think—how do you lot say it—you bought what I was selling.”

“Please,” said Gianna. “I am feeling excluded.”

The arbiter spread his hands on the table. “There’s no footage.”

Uncle, nodding, slowly.

Beaujolais’s top lip bulged as he dragged his tongue across his front teeth.

“Do not make this face, nephew. To become mad now would be a wasted emotion. I concocted a stick because I feared a carrot would not suffice.”

“I am sorry but I do not understand,” said Gianna.

“Robert has been brought here under partially false pretense.”

The arbiter clawed his cigarettes. “Partially.”

“Yes, Robert. Very good. I so enjoy this verbal tic of yours. The repetition is so charming.” Uncle leaned over his beer, pinching the glass between his palms, elbows akimbo. Clearly bristling, his eyes sharpened to dire almonds, insectoid, predatory. Beaujolais thought of a praying mantis. “Yes. Partially. A single false aspect. I told you Gianna’s father knew your face and that you were the target of a manhunt. This was a lie. But I also warned you, if you failed to join me on our gentleman’s holiday, I would eradicate every penny you own from all possible ledgers. And this, you rhetorical savant, was veracious.”

“Please,” said Gianna. She smiled at the barflies turned curious by Uncle’s theatrics. “There is no need to use large voices.” Emulating a civil tone, she asked Beaujolais, “You are receiving money, yes?”

“Plenty,” said Uncle. “Too much.”

“How much?”

Despite their contention, the men cut each other baffled glances.

“Well,” Beaujolais stuttered. “I mean…”

Gianna corked her eyes. “Americans are most strange about money. In Italy, woman is the Madonna and the whore. In America, she is money.”

“It is considered impolite,” said Uncle.

“And we are such polite people.”

Beaujolais kited her a smile: You are the definition of really something.

“It is rude to discuss large money with poor people. We”—Gianna licked her cigarette sealed—“are not poor people. So I ask you, is the sum in excess of two hundred thousand euros?”

Beaujolais leaned back in his chair. Aping insouciance, he tapped his cigarette on the table. “I would need to check…the exchange rate.”

“And the other two hundred when it is done.” She flicked her hand as if to say it was implied, like duh. “Of course.”

“Of course,” Uncle agreed, shoving away from the table. “This round’s on you, Bobby.” He clapped the arbiter’s shoulder as he went to the bar. Beauj jumped: he was surprised anyone could still reach him out here, hurling lightspeed past his most ridiculous dreams.

Gianna laced her fingers around her unlit cigarette. Her eyes fell, lingering for a moment; when they rose, their former warmth evaporated, the geniality replaced by sullen calculation. Beaujolais lit his cigarette then held the lighter for her. Her hands shook, as did his: four hundred thousand bottle rockets were inside of him.

“When he was alive, my grandfather was a farmer. He grew cattle and olives and grapes. His farm was fifty kilometers from Florence, up on a small hill. He was happy. The love poured out of him, blessing the ground. The cows were happy, too.

“My father brought us to the farm when we were girls. One trip, in the boot of his little Fiat, was one million euros. My father said to his father, ‘I am an investor.’ My father was triumphant. He said everyone will become rich.

“The next day, the excavators came. They ate my grandfather’s farm like termites. Where once there was grass now there are buildings. Where once there are sheep now there are cars. They ate my grandfather, finally. Amara found him. In the barn where he taught us to dribble a football.

“When he…goes, he left the money, my father’s money, for me and my sister to have when we are venticinque, twenty-five. The paperwork was ironclad, like a battleship. It is our money, but Amara…Amara.”

Gianna paused, snagged on the barbwire of this personal, unmarked border.

“I am finding it difficult to describe to you my sister. She was too many things to tell you. Amara was…Amara was impatient. She is like a…a…un palloncino?” Gianna formed her fist in front of her mouth and blew into it, causing her hand to expand with each exhalation.

“A balloon?”

“Sì sì sì sì, a balloon, Amara is a balloon. So full of life she floats away. If she waits any longer, she will pop. Una anticonformista. When she becomes a woman she wants to go to America and see where the hippies come from and my father sends her and arranges her a job. My father knows this man. His friend, his ally. This man defiles my sister. When she objects he threatens her. He is an American lawyer, he knows American law. She is afraid and she informs me and I inform my father. He is disgusted, he does not believe. Not my baby, not my angel. To her he lends no comfort. He does not protect her. She was not supposed to be there—in America. In America she becomes dead.

“When my father hears, he says he is destroyed. ‘Sono rovinato!’ I believe him. A daughter must believe her father, the world is governed this way. But my father is not subject to these rules or any others. I hear him on the phone. He says, ‘My daughter is an angel.’ He says, ‘We must not waste this.’ I hear him. This is not the voice of a ruined man.

“He says we must bury her in Paris, in the same soil as her favorite poets. Stronzate. My sister has never read a poem. I say, Papà, you are not thinking, allow me to bear this burden, but he insists. Paris, Zucca, Amara deserves to be buried in Paris, it is the only place beautiful enough to keep her forever. Now it is my turn to insist. Because I know the smells of a barnyard. My grandfather taught me the odor of shit.

“I acquire the guest list, I see what is happening and— Merda!” Her neglected cigarette had burned to her fingers. “I apologize,” she said, sinking the butt in her coffee cup. “I must appear an actress to you.”

He poured water from a carafe and pushed the glass toward her.

Her lips left a heart on the rim of the glass. “Have you lost a person you love?”

He nodded.

“A sibling?”

“He was like a brother.”

“A friend?”

“He was…the real deal.”

“Death is the same for all of us. Only our responses differ. My father will not allow himself emotion, either this or he is incapable. But to secret his evil this way is the outrage final. If he allowed her to be buried in Marradi, in Toscano, in the same dirt as my grandfather and his grandfather and all of our grandfathers, I am capable to forgive him. Instead he parades her to Paris and her death becomes the tent in which he hides his wickedness. He forgets she is his daughter, my sister. My father forgot this. He has forgotten about human beings. He thinks money is the blood, there is cancer in his blood. My father gave my grandfather one million euros, now he is dead. My grandfather gave my sister and I one million euros, now she is dead.” Her fingers on the back of his hand were the same temperature as if they’d dug out of a grave. “You are here to cure my family. We can be sick no longer. When Amara dies, my grief is a flame but in the face of this I have become inferno. Send my father to hell, Robert. In hell my fire is nothing.”

With this she seemed to rescind, a tide drawn in by a tremendous and secret polarity. She inhaled and exhaled with precision, perfuming Beaujolais with the odor of her core. “I am tired.” She collected her belongings into her clutch and redonned her sunglasses. Beaujolais stood. “Uncle gave me your phone number. I will send for you tomorrow or the next day. Thank you for listening to me speak. It seems in life we are able to express ourselves better to strangers. There is no past in which to become stuck.” She looked over his shoulder. “Tell Uncle thank you for lunch. Wherever he is.”

“I will.”

As she went to leave, she touched his arm.

“This is not vendetta. Vendetta is romantic. My father is not deserving of romance. This is only what there is.”

He watched her leave, competing for eyespace with the workingmen whose heads, as if magnetized, snapped in unison to her backside.

After ten minutes of waiting for Uncle he gathered their empty glasses and brought them to the bar.

“C’était votre copine?”

He turned to the workmen. A man with dirt all over his face leered through a tooth-poor grin.

“I’m sorry?”

“La gonzesse, c’était la vôtre?”

“I don’t speak French.”

“The girl,” said another man, this one short and squat like a piece of rolling luggage.

“What about her?”

“Are you fucking her?”

“No.”

“No?” said the first filthy man. “Es-tu un pédé?” The men laughed, including the bartender.

“I don’t know what you said.”

The little man’s face was a goblin’s. “He asks if you are a faggot.”

Beaujolais laughed. “Oh, yes, wee.”

22

Hey. I’ve been calling you all day and it keeps going to voicemail. Maybe your phone’s off. I don’t know. You’re probably at the gym. Just call me when you get this. My flight doesn’t board for half an hour and I just want—I need to talk to you, okay? I don’t like where we’re at and— Just call me, alright? Please, Benny. I hate this, I fucking—I hate it. This isn’t who we are. Whatever is going on I want to make it better. You’re the only thing that matters to me in this world and I can’t— Fuck. Call me. Please.

23

The apartment was cool, the air dry and sterile, and ensconced in the void of the blackout curtains he napped in the cave-dark until early evening.

When he woke he went to the southern wall and pulled the curtain aside and lit a cigarette and sat on the windowsill. Outside night fought day to a standstill, the nexus time when the purpled corpse of the golden hour renders reality violet. He watched the pedestrians move in the soft light, envying them, pitying them, above.

From what he gathered over the course of two cigarettes, Parisians, both the men and the women, wore billowy, straight-legged pants and swished in long strides with their hands jammed in the pockets of trench coats or contoured bombers or the utilitarian canvas chore jacket he needed to own himself. These were a people of purposeful indolence. No one lingered on foot, they sat, on benches, on curbs, at tables in front of cafés. The French they sent wafting up to his window was of a softer and rounder variety than the brutal dialect grunted by the men in the tavern. The abundance of laughter surprised him; by this feeling he was confused.

He drank three glasses of water and showered and brushed his teeth. He dressed in gray chinos and a navy sweater he deemed British-passing, Canadian at least.

He walked until he found a cash machine and with one thousand euros swelling the front of his pants he stopped at the first café and ordered an espresso in nervous troglodytic French. “Bahn jor. Espresso. Mercy.” He placed a note on the counter and emptied the demitasse cup by the time the barista made change, fingering the coinage as he walked. Rue d’Aboukir ended in a roundabout where it along with five other streets formed the spokes of a wheel surrounding a statue of a bored-faced man astride the back of a rearing warhorse. An army of identical egg-bodied black Toyota taxis formed a hive around the center. The buildings encircling the swirl appeared to be made of coral. He walked through an arched arcade impregnated with shops selling brands unknown to him. He leaned against the word Lafaurie and smoked. It felt like anything could happen. Excitement zapped the gaps in him, screeching like bats: this is what it meant to be thrilled.

He wasn’t hungry and even if he was, from what Uncle said, only boors and tourists ate dinner before nine p.m. Cellularly, he abhorred the notion of presenting as either of these demographics, a peccadillo that annoyed Benny immensely whenever they’d traveled together.

Benny, who preferred Pensacola to New Orleans.

Beauj smiled, wiping a dander of ash off his cheek. You would have hated it here.

His watch read a quarter to seven. He decided to walk until dinner was no longer gauche. Gauche was a word he knew.

He considered the five streets piercing the roundabout. Three of the arteries led away from the direction he’d come from and he started toward the closest of them when he tripped on his undone shoelace. As he knelt to retether his boot, he noticed, in his periphery, a man twenty paces back spin on his heel and duck into an alcove with comedic precipitousness. Writing it off as a bit of local eccentricity, Beaujolais continued, but minutes later, when he turned to allow passage to an elderly woman pushing a shopping wagon on the narrow sidewalk, he saw the obvious man at his three o’clock trailing by half a block.

You’re being paranoid.

He suppressed his alarm until he saw, four blocks further, the same man reflected in the circular traffic mirror mounted above the mouth of a garage exit.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine.”

He walked until he happened upon a door opening onto a courtyard. Stopping, turning, performing a show, he made sure to never look behind him as he broadly scanned the enclosure for witnesses. Finding it barren, he stepped inside, positioned himself behind the heavy metal door, removed his belt and listened.

When his tail entered the courtyard the arbiter dropped the looped snare over the man’s head and cinched it tight beneath his chin. The tail managed a single high-pitched yelp before the arbiter turned around and yanked the belt over his shoulder, a simple machine, lifting the man off the ground and hoisting him back-to-back into the corner of the precinct.

When the man stopped struggling he released the tension on the belt, dropping the man hard to the stone. Air returned, the man gagging on its importance, and Beaujolais recontracted the leather. He repeated this process, slackening, throttling, until the man was suitably docile. During the oxygenated intervals, if the man attempted to beg through his wheezing terror, he strangled him.

“I’m going to let you breathe, but if you scream, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

The man clasped the tip of his forefinger to his thumb, forming a quivering ring.

“Okay. Okay is good.” Beaujolais relaxed the noose and spiked the toe of his boot into the man’s rib cage. The man yauped. “Who sent you?”

“Non lo so!”

“What?”

“No know! No know!”

He wrenched on the belt, bending the man’s head at a sickening angle, right against the edge of all he could take. The man’s fingernails snapped on the paver stones.

“Who sent you?”

The man choked post-laryngectomoid through his crushed vocal cords, an inhuman sound akin to the vibratory hum of a tattoo gun. “No name! No give no name! Please!”

Beaujolais tested the leather and the man gagged as the belt cut into his throat. The sulfur stink of scared urine in the air.

“Who sent you?”

“The woman!”

“Which woman?”

“Black hair!

“She had black hair?”

“Sì. Neri. Hair like night.”

“Why did she send you?”

“She say I am to follow you. See where you go. If you go airport or train, I am phone her.”

Beaujolais pattycaked the man’s body until he found a small flip phone. He opened it and searched the directory. A single number saved. After one ring, he heard her voice.

“Pronto.”

“Gianna.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you upset?”

“Should I be?”

“He is just eyes for me.”

“You thought I was gonna run?”

“Please do not be offend.”

“I don’t. I’m not.”

“Where is he now?”

“Underneath me.”

“So he is dead?”

“No.”

“He is nobody.”

“I can tell.”

“If you kill him, this can make trouble.”

“Are you asking me not to?” He heard her swallow.

“Thank you, Robert.”

“But I will kill the next one.”

“There will be no more.”

“There can be no more.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Beaujolais removed his knee from the man’s back. There was a pause as he waited for her to talk. Finally she asked what he was going to do now.

“Go on a walk.”

“I see you tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I might go to the airport. Maybe catch the next train.”

“You are funny.”

“How do you say funny in Italian?”

“Divertente. But for you we say buffo.”

“Buffo.”

“Sì.”

“Do not be buffo, Gianna.”

Beaujolais pressed the phone against the ground until it snapped. “Don’t move.”

The man did as he was told, a pet at the end of a leash.

“Remove the belt from your neck. What’s your name?”

“Zeppi.”

“Do you know my name?”

The man handed up the belt. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” The arbiter fed the belt through the loops of his pants. “Zeppi, if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

“Sì. Yes. Okay.”

“Stand.” On his feet, Beaujolais could see he was no more than eighteen. His arms were long, gangly. He’d been crying. “Sing.”

“Che?”

“Sing. Sing a song. Any song.”

“Fratelli d’Italia. L’Italia s’è desta. Dell’elmo di Scipio…”

“Louder.”

“S’è cinta la testa. Dov’è la Vittoria?”

“Walk.”

He followed the singing boy out of the courtyard like brothers playing a game. A man rode by on a bicycle, a woman walking a small white dog. The boy strode the sidewalk. Where the pavement dead-ended, he marched in place.

“You’re going to sing all the way home.”

“Stringiamci a coorte! Siam pronti alla morte…”

Beaujolais pointed in the direction they’d arrived from and the boy jumped like a greyhound, running with the grace of a neonate attempting its first steps on earth. He lit a cigarette and sank into a crouch and hugged himself, warming his fingers under his biceps. Like a river the gray street carved between the stern buildings and the boy raced across the water sending the song of his miracle caroming off the canyon walls: let me tell you/a story about/the night my life/remained my own

24

good news!

Wut?

i don’t have to work this weekend!

Sickkkkkk

i know!

What should we do?

well

What lol

slipknot is playing in Vegas

!!!

are you down?

!!!!!!!

??????

Duh!

gooooooood

our flight leaves at 5

Holy shit

FR?

fr fr

Dude

Leaving gym now

perfect

hopping in shower

Wait for me Smiling face with horns emoji.

:D

<

25

It was as if Las Vegas simply materialized.

For the majority of the flight the window of their first-class seat was an oval of plain void, as interesting as a broken TV. But somewhere past Area 51 (and the even more off-the-record sites Benny claimed housed entire subterranean metropolises built for the nation’s elites to ride out the looming apocalypse), as if bubbling up from a reservoir of sheer brilliance and appearing the exact opposite of oil, pinpoints of light erupted on the face of the darkness.

“It’s like looking at the stars in reverse.”

Strewn like diamonds on a cloth of black velvet, the lonely lights assembled themselves gradually into islands. As their elevation declined, the archipelagos glaciated, forming a luminescent pangaea, a world built of light, the individual bulbs accumulating in an avalanche of lumens, a ransom of inorganic whites and reds and yellows and blues humming with neon’s perfect fraudulence and suddenly, as if opening his eyes, the lights were all he could see.

“It’s so ugly it’s beautiful.”

“Kind of like you.”

“Holy shit.” Benny tapped the glass, pointing at a massive Ferris wheel. “We gotta go on that.”

Beaujolais squeezed his hand. “We can do whatever you like.”

Benny drained the last finger of rum and coke, his fourth or fifth, Beauj lost track. He’d been drinking vodka seltzers himself and the stewardess was attentive. Her hospitality had him feeling immaculate, awash in an alien jocund content. Today was the best day he remembered.

On the flight to Atlanta they’d watched most of Dodgeball, starting it synchronized on their seatback screens as they drank a bottle of prosecco between them. During the brief layover, they snuck into a family bathroom and savaged each other fantastic. A couple of stuffed Sbarro slices rendered them comatose for the first half of this second flight, but they made up for it by ordering doubles while Wedding Crashers played. For the last half hour they’d been openly holding hands, a real milestone, a gesture more nourishing than food. Not even a missile to the fuselage could take away this feeling.

“Flight crew prepare for landing.”

As the world outside the airplane rose up to meet them, Benny stroked the inside of Beaujolais’s palm. “I can’t believe we’re in Vegas.”

“Vegas, baby. Vegas.”

“Dibs on Vince Vaughn.”

“No way. I’m Vince Vaughn.”

“Let’s both be Vince Vaughn.”

Beaujolais rested his head on Benny’s firm shoulder. “As long as no one has to be Favreau. He always looks damp.”

“Are you ready to party?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“This isn’t boot camp, Marine. This is the shit right here. Lost wages. Agrabah.”

“What happens when something happens here? I forget.”

“I’m serious. Let’s go absolutely mental.” Benny turned his head and buried his mouth in Beaujolais’s hair and speaking directly to his skull he said: “I’m going to be a problem.”

26

He discovered the Seine at Pont Neuf, dipping beneath the surface street along the northern bank and following the river east. A derelict in a sleeping bag lying propped on one elbow read a Manchette novel by the light of a portable gas stove. Nearest the water, giggling lovers dangled their feet off the steep embankment, their faces flashing visible by the light of the phone screen they shared. He breached a clutch of teenagers in knocked-off jogging suits. Gauging him, they paused passing an acrid-smelling joint to stare meanly out of their skin-fades, emulating the hard scowls they copied from American movies celebrating the ruthless actions of violent men, impersonating him.

He walked the length of the Île de la Cité before realizing it was a separate piece. He didn’t think—no, he was certain: never in his life had he accidentally and unknowingly set foot on an island. He asked himself how this happened. A man on a bench hummed to the ravens pecking the scraps of his baguette.

“Bonsoir,” the man hailed.

“Hey, how you doing.” Moving it along.

He recrossed southerly and smoked on Quai de Montebello noticing how the river-reflected moonlight tinged the church across the water a luminous hyacinth hue. The building looked familiar, the picture beside a blank test-answer. Honestly he thought he knew the structure from one of Benny’s video games, the one where the guy swan-dived from perilous heights only to land safely in piles of hay.

“Holy shit that’s Notre Dame.”

He stroked the sides of his face from temple to chin then collected his hands in front of his mouth and held them in the posture of prayer. “Notre fucking Dame.”

He found a tabac and pointed at the display case while repeating the word “Marlboro.” He stood outside drinking a glass of cold vin blanc, smoking and watching the crowd. They looked delicate and with them he felt no kinship.

A pair of brassy Boston accents honked like saxophones above the orchestra of passersby. Two young women, hale and blond and quintessential, bounced around the corner. Stripping his character of heterosexuality, he interrupted their perfection to ask if they knew a place to eat.

“Use your eyes, bud,” said the taller of the two. “There’s a restaurant every ten feet.”

“I mean somewhere where they, like, speak English.”

“They all, like, speak English.”

“Really?”

“Y-e-s,” she said nodding slowly, elongating the word, crucifying his intelligence.

“Don’t be a bitch, Meg,” said the other girl. “What she means is they all speak English, at least in the touristy parts. They don’t like it and they’ll treat you shitty but they want your money.”

“That makes sense.”

“Just say ‘puis-je avoir’ before you order.”

“Pwee ja vwah?”

“Close enough. It means may I have. It’s polite and it looks like you’re trying. Then you can butcher the rest.”

“Alright. Thanks. Sorry to bother you.”

“Oh, like, no problem.”

“Don’t be such a cunt, Meg.”

He finished his wine, ordered another, drank it quickly and returned to the street. The temperature had declined but the wine was fortifying and coupled well with the city’s intoxicating vibrance. He felt giddy and eager and bulletproof, his gait nearing a bound. He didn’t know where he was going and that was fine: any step made in Paris was superior to any step taken in all the previous locations of his life.

He peered into the dining room of a restaurant, judging the clientele, repeating this process up the street, moving on if he deemed himself underdressed. After a few blocks of Goldilocking—Benny’s sobriquet for Beaujolais’s grueling pickiness—he settled on a place.

He was seated at a table jammed against a wall of exposed brick and beams, handed a menu and abandoned for what seemed a long time. When the server did come, he ordered pwee ja vwah vin blanc and when the server asked in French which kind, he smiled, repeating pwee ja vwah vin blanc and the server sighed and brought a carafe of dry white wine and a menu written in English. After a purposeful, pointed absence, the server returned, and Beaujolais ordered an asparagus salad and a bowl of beef stew. He studied the dining habits of the other tables while he waited for his meal. Aside from the delicacy with which they handled their silverware, most notable was the duration between bites: from what he could tell, to swallow twice within five minutes was poor etiquette. An image formed in his mind, surfacing from a war zone: a family squatted behind a destroyed wall, holding roofing tiles smeared with food. In order to expedite the time it took to shovel the meal into their mouths, they held their makeshift plates inches from their faces.

He’d been in-country less than a week and it was the first time he’d ever seen true hunger. He was riding point on a convoy beside the other fresh grunt, a smart-assed beanpole from somewhere down south, Private Benjamin Stephenson. The ravenous family horrified him, as did everything he saw. Aching to dispel the pervasive, corrosive anxiety, he elbowed his new friend in the shoulder.

“Check it out, Benny. They eat like you.”

I’m in Paris, Benny.

It was odd to be thinking of him this much. Having refused the urge so long, allowing these recollections yielded a delectable taboo pleasure, sweet scandal, the indulgence of a fetish both disgusting and private: remembering him hurt and it felt good. He’d dutifully suppressed such reminiscences, framing them in his mind as worthless navel-gazing, as constructive as masturbating with sandpaper. He’d seceded from the place Benny existed, expatriating deeper inside of himself, wandering lost in the gaping gray hollow, seeing with his fingers: he too was a ghost.

I wish you were here.

His entire body rang with this sonorous truth. He radiated, voiding—the undeniable memory of blood: their organs fed them to each other, their tongues tasted the same: he heard his laughter inside of his own. Together they were loved, were love, and for one elongated perfect moment, their star burned a hole through the firmament of this awful life, revealing Paradise and Inferno. What mattered was he wasn’t alone.

27

The cab dropped them in front of the Luxor ten minutes before midnight and they went to their suite and made love until one. Aftercare took the form of roulette, craps and tequila. Breakfast on the balcony watching the sun eat the pyramid. Like sleeping in a dream.

Blood Marys by the pool abraded their hangovers. In the sportsbook they ate White Castle sliders while Benny lost five hundred dollars on the Syracuse men’s basketball team.

“I just needed eighteen fucking points.”

“That’s a lot of points.”

“Not against Colorado State it’s not.”

He consoled him standing, back in the room, flattening him against the glass, giving the Strip a show.

In the shower Benny said he knew a guy who could get Molly. He went to the lobby for more beer while Beaujolais lay on the bed.

That guy is gonna come meet me

when

15

kk

im gonna rest my eyes

You need anything?

blue gatorade

I got you

—

He had, upon waking, six missed calls from Benny.

“Are you okay?”

“He fucked me.”

“Who?”

“He had a gun.”

“Are you okay?”

“I got in his car and gave him the money and he had a gun.”

“Where are you?”

“He wanted my phone but I said fuck no and bailed.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“I’m in the book.”

“Come up to the room.”

“You need a key for the elevator. I couldn’t get a new key without a fucking ID. I’m gonna kill him, Beauj. I am.”

“Oh baby.”

“I have to.”

“I’m coming down there. Whatever you do don’t move.”

—

He found him in the sportsbook standing astride a six-pack containing one remaining Corona and a bottle of orange Gatorade. He reached for him.

“Don’t do that.”

“Hey.”

“We gotta find him.”

“Benny.”

“I know his car.”

“Let’s go to the room.”

His eyes were pink. He looked like he’d been crying.

“Let’s go upstairs, talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He cupped his hands around his mouth: “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

For a moment, not a single eye in the crowded room saw any of the forty screens. The sportsbook was in a recessed pit and from atop the escalator, a pair of security guards stared. One spoke into his radio. The other smiled, his hand on his taser.

“We need to go.” He put his hand on Benny’s lower back but the bigger man spun, toppling sideways into a rack of betting forms. Beaujolais bent to help him but Benny sprang. The security guards moved to head him off at the escalator, but they were slow and Benny lived at lightspeed. Beaujolais charged the near staircase, once more into the breach.

Saturday, March Madness, the Las Vegas Strip: there were worse places on earth but he only knew because he’d seen them.

He zigzagged through the slot machines, navigating past the restaurants watching his six in the screaming machinery and avoiding straight lines: the table area, the high-roller room, scraping the bellies of the abundant bars.

At the pool he asked the bartender if she’d seen the man he was with earlier.

“Do you know how many people there are?”

Running called attention so he walked with intent, tight and quick, a man who’d kill for a toilet. The crowd was thickest on the interior casino floor. What amounted to humanity these days. The hemispheres of his brain filibustered in unison. His rational mind said to go to the room, lie down, wait, but intuitively, in the meaty cores he most trusted, the zones calibrated to the weight of death, flashing red lights carved lone syllables on his judgment.

BAD.

DIRE.

GO FIND GO.

He called: voicemail. Called again: same. What could he be doing without money? The answers made him ill.

He did another lap but in his haste he became disoriented. Lost in a space designed to confuse and beguile, he began seeing the same oxygen tanks, the same novelty T-shirts, the same security guards—they’d added a third to their ranks, a man with a badge and a gun on his hip. Real police.

“Fuck.” There was nothing else to say.

His anxiety condensated into a cold film and ossified. He reminded himself to breathe, did so, forgot. The passing of time like a guillotine pulley.

In the aisle between table games cheers and adulation surrounded him, congratulations, the emptiest type of noise. He felt the pit boss eyeing him and fled toward a bay of dark glass doors.

Outside: the world: scorching bright outrage. Here were four lanes of vehicles delivering and taking. A long taxi queue fed people to a row of waiting cabs. A shuttle bus unloaded a crush of elderly Asians in matching green visors. Seeing all the vehicles at once, the conveyances with their many destinations, magnified the impotence of his pursuit. Futility suffused fear, the siren Grace singing: This is not your fault.

He commandeered a valet, holding up his phone to show his screen saver.

“Have you seen this man?”

The valet squinted. He shaded the sun with his hand. “This fucking guy. Hey, Garcia.”

“Wassup?”

“Wasn’t this the guy?”

Garcia lifted his sunglasses. “Oh shit.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“Yeah, man. He cut the cab line like ten minutes ago. A bunch of people were pissed but he kept saying—what was it?”

“I am the reason you’re allowed to be here.”

“That’s right, that’s right.”

“I think he was tweaking or something. Is he…?”

At the edge of his vision the world flickered. “Did he say where he was going?”

“No, sir. But it must have been important.”

The valets dashed to their work. He envied their jauntiness. It felt necessary to be able to move in all directions along every axis all at once. He stared at the picture on his phone, a candid of Benny taken at sunset on Perdido Key. He stood at a three-quarter angle holding a Yuengling bottle in the same hand as a fat cigar. Shirt open, the low light cutting triangles beneath the ridges of his abs. Behind him the ocean extended: it would have been easier to find him in there.

The photo captured Benny in a moment between words, unposed and easy—Benny hated it. He thought he looked drunk, and he was, no argument, but to Beaujolais the man in the picture with his bottom lip caught in luscious transition looked like the young Elvis, a masculine dominant androgyne from a planet where labels no longer applied.

“You don’t see me for how I am.”

“I think you just defined love.”

The phone screen fell dark. Benny was gone again.

He sat on a ledge beneath a bedraggled palm; all around him the fronds chopped knife blades of the sunlight. He appeared another luckless day-drunk, an orphan of fortune rained upon by razors: no one could assign a value to what he’d lost.

For some time he envisioned Benny at work on the drug dealer. What he imagined was horrible. He knew what Benny was capable of—it was part of the reason he loved him, his peacemaker: violence provided safety. Think of an atom bomb.

When the phone vibrated he didn’t feel it, gripping it like to break, but then the screen glowed, light replacing nothing, and his breath became a solid object the exact circumference of his throat.

“Benny?”

He heard arguing on the other end. Benny’s voice and another, angry, accented, loud. “Just shut the fuck up for a minute. Jesus Christ. I’m fixing it. Beauj?”

“I’m here.”

“Meet me in front of the hotel.”

“I’m out here now.”

“Bring money.”

“Yes.”

“Tell him you have money.”

“I have money.” His voice echoed on speakerphone.

“Did you hear that, Abu?”

“This is not my name, motherfucker.”

“Money. Mon-ey, Abu.” Benny laughed. “Okay, we’re coming back. You’ll have to pay this cabbie. He’s pretty fucking pissed.”

Beaujolais had to give the driver two hundred dollars before he’d unlock the doors. Benny exploded out of the taxi. “There you go, Abu,” he yelled into the driver’s window. “Buy another goat to fuck.”

Beaujolais snatched him away from the cab and spun him to face him. Lolling, as if free from their cords, Benny’s eyes blinked asymmetrical. From a cut on his wrist his arm bled. His shirt was torn. They stood in front of each other but only one of them was there. If the police came he’d need to check Benny’s pockets for contraband. This didn’t need to get worse but that never stopped it before.

Benny’s head snapped down toward the curb, and in recovery he rocked backward two steps—Here it comes—Beauj bending his knees, preparing to duck the left hook Benny threw whenever he didn’t know what else to do. He was ready for anything until Benny smiled.

“Beauj.” Benny lifted his eyes; on Beaujolais’s they landed like napalm. “Beaujy Beauj my bougie boy.” He stepped forward, burying his forehead lightly in the center of Beaujolais’s chest, whispering to the muscle: “I fucked it, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay.”

“I fucked it good, but that’s what I—”

Beauj muffled the rest with his body, crushing Benny into him, deep as his flesh allowed. He shut his eyes. Benny’s breath on the skin above his heart. He held them together.

Upstairs they slept.

When they woke it was time for the show.

28

As he ascended the stairwell the fickle flames in the gas lamps breathed erratic life into his shadow, expanding and retracting the form as if it were a separate entity entirely.

In the apartment on the bench by the door he found two boxes. One was wrapped in brown butcher paper and contained a pair of chocolate calfskin gloves, a black knit scarf, an egg-shaped clamshell cellular phone, a metro card, a folded subway map, a hawkbill hinge-knife and a glazed fruit tart in wax paper. The second box was a crushproof hardcase containing two hundred thousand euros. It was like being surprised by your own soul.

An envelope taped to the butcher paper wore Uncle’s self-important scrawl.

Nephew

Here are two boxes. One of them is from me, I assume you can figure it out. I apologize for disappearing earlier. The drink/food/flight rendered me shambles. I hope you explored the city. It is good we are here in the fall, this is the best time for a visit. The summer is sweltering and crowded, the river ripens, it stinks.

Here are some tools and treats. I do not believe you will need a firearm previous to the event. Paris is no place for cowboys. I have taken the liberty of stocking the ice box with some essentials. I also had my stylist pick out a few sets of clothes based on my estimation of your measurements. I hope they suit you;)

Tomorrow morning please arrive by ten to the metro stop circled in red on the map. Give yourself an hour for transit. The trains here are capricious—they are French, after all. Sleep well.

Your doting Uncle

PS: The tart was flown in from Lyon this morning. Best to eat it immediately lest it becomes stale.

—

Beaujolais opened the refrigerator: pomegranates (“You know it means grenade, right?”), storybook oranges with the green leaves still attached, a wedge of cheese, a plate of ham sliced translucent, mineral water and six bottles of La Chouffe. The freezer was empty; he snugged the hardcase inside of it and put on the leather gloves and attempted to open a pomegranate and ruined them.

He stoppered the drain and turned on the water and ate the tart seated on the toilet lid as the tub filled. He stripped nude and sat in the near-scalding water playing a game of sorts wherein he filled his mouth with beer and submerged himself fully before swallowing, tracing the sensation of the cold liquid as it flowed through the corridors of his overheated body.

Swaddled in a cashmere robe, he smoked a cigarette by the window. He leaned out the sill allowing his hair to dry. Eleven bells chimed. “That’s a lot of money.”

—

He awoke damp in soaked sheets, his heart in his chest but barely. He’d been dreaming of explosions. The sensation of falling on the tip of his tongue like a misplaced word.

He sat up and checked his watch. The smell of exhaust permeated the room. He went to the open window and looked down to see two sedans entangled in an orgy of metal. Two men who he presumed to be the drivers shoved each other. Onlookers swarmed.

He lit a cigarette and watched the altercation develop. Punches thrown poorly. Looping overhands like the kind exchanged in movies. No footwork, no jabs. He laughed at the masquerade. The fight ended with both men heeled and gasping. The crowd dispersed unsatisfied. He dropped his butt out the window. Maybe this too was a dream.

Push-ups. Crunches. He brushed his teeth in the shower and ate an orange over the sink. Sitting on the counter he examined the subway map over a double espresso, noting the names of the stations and the number of stops on scrap paper: the thought of being busted studying a map in public was dreadful. Confident, he folded the map and tucked it into the back pocket of his stiff new cords along with the directions. He returned to the window and tested the temperature with his hand. Judging the day brisk, he dressed in layers, each garment snug without clinging. From the box he selected the cellphone, the metro card, the knife and the scarf.

He opened the freezer and just stood there.

Door. Stairs. Door. Street. Left. Left. Right. Right. Right.

He entered Les Halles station and swiped the card and projected surety as he walked to the A platform and barged aboard the packed train toward Cergy le Haut. Three stops later he affected swagger transferring to the southbound L.

He shoved into a corner seat. Three swarthy workmen in grout-smeared union suits huddled around a phone screen watching homemade pornography. An exhausted mother slapped her son in the back of the head for spitting on the floor. A girl and a much older man tongue-kissed with flagrant aplomb. A wheelchair-bound panhandler holding a photo of a gangrenous wound pointed to his bandaged leg. Written on the back of his wheelchair:

DIEU M’A ABANDONNÉ

ET VOUS?

At Chaville Rive Droite he exited up graffitied stairs and crossed the skybridge. The length of the passageway was transparent including the floor, and below him the track stretched out like the spine of a dragon. He descended the far stairs and followed a corridor of hurricane fence into an abandoned lot where children in school uniforms rolled logwise down a hillock of black dirt. He stood by a row of Vespas and smoked, squinting at the colorless sky. Powerlines. Crows. He couldn’t find himself on a globe.

A black Tesla braked in front of the station. The back window cracked. Gianna’s face behind sunglasses.

“Buongiorno, Robert.”

“Good morning, Gianna.”

Cold air humming through vents on the ceiling rendered the car frigid. He closed the vent above him and Gianna spoke Italian and the air stopped completely. Between them a tray table built into the back seat housed a carafe of coffee and mugs resting on saucers. The china tinkled as the car pulled away.

“How was your journey?”

“Fine.”

“Far, I know. I cannot be in the city too long. It begins to eat me.”

“Is this still Paris?”

“This is Chaville.”

He looked out at the rows of tightly packed houses. “A suburb?”

“No,” she said. “This is not anywhere.”

Old homes passed by his window, two-story steep-roofed dwellings, limestone and brick mortared in a mishmosh like imitation igneous rock. On Gianna’s side of the car, grand modern single-family dwellings sat back from the street protected by wrought iron gates.

“These houses are nice,” said Beaujolais, feeling the silence the same way he felt the cold.

“Yes,” she said flatly.

“It’s all so much older over here.”

She nodded.

“Is something wrong?”

She removed her sunglasses and turned from the window. She pursed her lips into the corner of her mouth and tapped the frames against the glass. “My apologies.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“It was wrong to send Zeppi to watch you.”

“I would have done the same thing.”

“It was foolish. An error.”

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

“You do not understand. I have created a…we say responsabilità.”

“Responsibility?”

“No no no. A problem. A risk.”

“Liability?”

“Sì, yes.”

“How?”

“He is my cousin.”

“Oh.”

“He will be at the funeral.”

“I see.”

“He is loyal, but he is simple. I worry he will become confused.”

“You think he’ll tattle?”

“He told you about me, correct?”

“I didn’t give him much option.” He remembered the knife in his pocket. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“No. We are here to take photos for my Instagram.”

He assumed a translation issue. “I’m sorry?”

“If we are to appear as a couple, we need to appear as a couple.”

The car turned onto a dirt road overlooking a valley. Bailing wire sagged between wooden fenceposts, dividing the verdant swathe into individual tracts. Viewed from this height, the olives and grapes and peaches planted in tight formation reminded him of the intricate cornrow braids favored by a rapper Benny liked, the bushes as the hair and the soil in between them like patches of visible brown scalp.

The car parked on the lip of the valley. Gianna gave her phone to the driver and took Beaujolais’s hand. She told him to remember they were in love. The driver photographed them in pantomimes of jet-set romance: Gianna’s head thrown back smiling as the two champagne flutes she’s holding overflow with Beaujolais’s bottle of Krug; her piggyback as he tromps a field of dandelions, her chin on his shoulder, her lips to his ear; his head in her lap as she dangles grapes into his mouth, his tongue curious and probing against the latte cream of her thighs.

“Molto bene,” said the driver. “Ora bacio.”

She looked down at the arbiter, her eyes like shards of bottle glass. He detected embarrassment. “He wants us to kiss.”

“Well we shouldn’t disappoint him.”

She lowered to him; the merger of two beautiful objects. She tasted like coffee and tobacco and something alien, almost balsamic, a sweet salinity he understood to be the flavor of the feminine, a taste from a memory of a bedroom in the attic of his youth, him and a girl, a nice girl who he loved but not in the way she needed, a girl with loop bangs, her baby-doll T-shirt in a ball on the floor, a girl with a hungry growing heart and there he was inside of her but still detached, doing this for her, the rise and the fall.

It seemed unreal, something implanted, a dream within a dream. He heard the voice he used, the one he practiced—“Do you like that?”—asking sincerely because he didn’t know and never would.

“Robert?” Gianna squeezed his arm. She was smiling. “You are a good kisser.”

The heat in his cheeks told him he was blushing.

—

They lunched at a sidewalk table in front of a café. Sandwiches, ham and brie cut with a peppery green Gianna called rocket. The driver ate in the car, leaving them alone to concoct the caption for their digital coming-out party. She proposed The lesson of death is learning to live but written in her native Italian, which Robert admitted sounded poetic but also very on the nose.

“What does this mean, on the nose?”

“Heavy-handed.”

“Robert I do not know your American slang.”

“Cloying. Purposefully poignant.”

“Overt calculation?”

“Sì.”

“Do you have a proposal?”

Beaujolais told her he was concerned that, no matter how profound the caption, posting pictures with her lover on the eve of her sister’s funeral might appear distasteful.

As counterargument, she showed him her grid: her last nine posts were photos of her and her sister, an epigraph spanning the entirety of their lives from shy toddlers hiding behind their grandmother’s housecoat to knobby teenagers in patent leather shoes to a pair of stunning young women dancing on a table at a Grecian nightclub.

“I have mourned, Robert. I have torn my dress for all to see.”

“It’s pretty fast is all.”

“You are not Italian. Life is only the period between funerals.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so. I say it, so it is okay.” The way she said okay made him smile, the o almost shouted while the kay wilted away. “And if you think I am appearing to be cold…” She reclaimed the phone, touched it a few times, and returned it to him. “My father.”

Replacing her on the screen was a man with her exact same nose. He stood on the bow of a yacht festooned in a bumper crop of ingenues raising their glasses in toast, his mouth grinning teeth.

“Inconsolabile.” She sneered. “You see this girl? The sow with the fat breasts?”

“It’s kind of hard not to see her.”

“She was two years younger than Amara in school. Look at his messages.”

“Let me guess.”

“Sì! And her barely nineteen!”

It was difficult to imagine the girl in the picture successfully running. “You can get in your father’s DMs?”

“What are DMs?”

“His messages. You can access his account.”

“Robert, of course. I know all of my father’s passwords.”

He thought about what she said. “So he likes them young.”

“Shut up,” she snapped.

“Easy, I was just kidding.”

Gianna frosted, icy and precarious. “A joke? A joke about a man who fucks little girls. You think this is funny?” Her voice sounded anything but.

“Funny is up for interpretation.”

“Interpretation.” She was like a pair of scissors, separating from herself to violently recombine. “Today when we kissed, was that…Have you kissed before?”

He drained the remaining water from his glass, as if drinking it drop by drop.

“I say this because you were like a child.”

“You said I was a good kisser.”

“I was being nice.”

“What are you being now?”

“When we were girls we practice to kiss on our arms. This is like kissing you.”

“I guess I’m out of practice.”

“You are handsome. You maintain your body. You should be kissing all the girls.”

He’d left his cigarettes in the car and it was killing him. “I kiss…people.”

“What does this mean?” Then: “Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“This is a relief.”

“Why?”

“I think I am at fault.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Gianna stirred her espresso, the liquid moving with the fluidity of this new information in her brain. “When we look at the pictures, my driver says, ‘He is kissing you like a finocchio.’ ”

“I assume that is a great compliment.”

“No no, is the opposite. The word, not the people. Italian men are molto afraid of this word. To be called this word is cause to fight. I do not use this word because I have friends who are…like you.”

“Faggot is a fighting word the world over.”

“Italian men are very scared for people to think they are omosessuale.”

“That’s probably because, to the rest of the world, Italian men look like the biggest fags alive.”

“But you do not look gay.”

“I forgot to pack my tank top and roller-skates.”

“You are not—we say checca.” She pursed her lips and dandied her wrist.

“I know. I take that as a compliment, not being—” He mimicked her foppish gesture. “Not because I think it’s bad, but, well—yeah, actually, I did think it was bad. Everyone around me said it was bad.” He needed to smoke or he would die. “Now I know it’s not bad or good, it’s just me.”

“This is good. You are happy.”

“I don’t know.” He picked up her cigarettes and shook them and she nodded and he loosed one and exchanged the box for the lighter.

“You have lovers.”

“Of course.”

“Only men?”

“I don’t know if all of them would agree to that label.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know all the new terms. I need them to have a cock.”

“Never with a woman?”

“Not since the first time. It’s funny. I hadn’t thought about her in, shit, twenty years.”

“You thought of her when you kissed me?”

“Yeah.”

“Because it was not pleasure?”

“We were kids. We used each other. We each got what we needed.”

“Have you had a boyfriend?”

“One.”

“You were together a long time?”

“Yes.”

“You loved him.”

“Very much.”

“Yesterday you said you lost someone.”

He nodded.

“I am sorry.”

29

The concert was loud and malodorous.

As soon as they entered the venue, a postmodern bowling alley with an East Coast greaser aesthetic vending red-wine slushies and tater tots covered in gold leaf, Benny abandoned him to hurl his body against energy drink aficionados. Beaujolais went to the balcony. Armed with only a twenty-two-dollar Jack and soda, he watched the show with the same enthusiasm he reserved for airport security. He knew he loved Benny, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

The first band wasn’t bad. While a pair of longhairs hammered away on drum and bass in a funky primordial lockstep, a bald twentysomething, severe, outraged, plucked a distorted banjo, raging poetically against various machines.

The next band had experienced semi-major celebrity in the early 2000s. One of their songs was used in the soundtrack of a street-racing movie, the first installment in one of the most successful film franchises in the history of schlock. He sang along to the choruses, the lyrics flying out of him like locusts unearthing.

When the second band finished and the lights came up, the mood hardened. Tense expectation impregnated the thick air, the galvanization of bodies steeling. It wasn’t the real thing but it was close, the feeling this feeling aspired to, when your blood was red lasers and your body knew it might die: now would be the time to tell somebody you love them.

He scanned the squall of pink faces, found Benny with his hands on his knees gulping air. Shirtless, his glistening chest heaved with respiration, his sweat-lacquered pectorals. The five-inch shorts he insisted upon clung to his hewn thighs. A wall of meat with lips like Swedish candy. Even his skull was alluring. How is it only I can see something so perfect? It made him want to stand on a soapbox and ring a cowbell over his head: Hark! Behold! The maximus, the ideal, the planet’s last remaining blessing, worthy of the lust of the world.

Seeing him, his Benny, his fucked-up, beautiful Benny—the only way to describe it was thankful, not just for the miracle of this body but that this body still existed at all.

Benny had attempted three times the termination of his own life. Beaujolais understood. They’d both been Over There at the horror show, where all there was to do was watch your friends die. People saving dog meat for their birthdays. Did you hear they use their babies as grenades?

After that, life had a way of pushing right up against you. Beauj compartmentalized. Benny deemed his coping performative and cavalier.

“Look at Bobby Cool, the dead-eyed ghoul.”

It was only a matter of size. Beauj was smaller than Benny. He took up less room within himself. He and his emotions rarely bumped into each other, unlike Benny, who was his flesh. Benny slept in the bed with his nightmares. Too concrete, too hard, too authentic. Emotions showed on him like dew on grass. His pain was dazzling, it took your breath away.

Twice he’d stood next to a hospital bed caressing Benny’s limp hand, empty of tears, empty of feeling, breathing only when the ventilator decompressed again. Benny’s mother repeating herself: “If there was ever a reason to thank God.”

In those moments when it felt like his atoms were in riot, Beaujolais was unable to experience anger: even when he was losing him, he understood why he had to go. Many people confuse living with enduring but not him.

Call it trauma bonding, call it Stockholm Syndrome, call it codependency. He simply called it love.

His hand roamed again to the zippered pocket on his pants leg. The ring was still there. He felt it, the little hard future. Made of metal reclaimed from an M4 Sherman used in The Last Good War. So absurdly unnecessarily masculine, so Benny.

Through the smoke Beaujolais beamed down on his beloved like his own personal satellite. Finally their eyes kissed and Benny waved like Forrest Gump. Beaujolais formed the words I love you with his lips, and Benny smiled, pressed his thumbs together, and curled his index fingers into an M. He held the heart above his own.

The lights turned off. No one saw each other. Somebody screamed, “Here we fucking go.”

There was a noise like a bandsaw and it escalated as the blade cut into the expectation and a new sound soared out of the guitar cabinets like the engine of a kamikaze jet. When the bass line came in, one thousand voices erupted in the darkness:

I’ve felt the hate rise up in me

Kneel down and clear the stone of leaves

I wander out where you can’t see

Inside my shell I wait and bleed

—

After the show they texted to meet out front. Three cigarettes later Benny emerged with a tallboy of Pabst in each hand. Two young meatbags trailed him like puppies. Beaujolais recognized them immediately as Marines.

“Boys this is my buddy, Beauj.”

Buddy. Like a jar of acid to the face: how the pendulum swings.

They introduced themselves as Silvio and Maupin. They were active 27s, linguists. They’d driven in from San Diego that morning and had to be back by 20:00 the next night.

Beauj whistled. “That’s one hell of a bitch of a turnaround,” he said, easily slipping into this version of himself.

Silvio unzipped his fanny pack and produced an orange tube with a white lid. “Luckily we have an extra driver.” He rattled the bottle. “You want one?”

Beaujolais glanced at Benny: pupils pinned, his jaw a coiled spring. Clearly he’d been made the same offer. Knowing him, he’d eaten it with his nose. “Why the fuck not? Sleep is a bad word.” Adaptation: Excuse me while I disappear from myself.

Silvio shook an orange oval into Beaujolais’s outstretched palm and he popped the pill into his mouth. Sans permission, he took a swig off of one of Benny’s tallboys. A half pint of Southern Comfort circulated. He bummed away smokes. The grunts were talking about bottle service, girls, all that jazz. They hailed a taxi:

“Take us to the club.”

They were rejected for improper attire. Audibling to blackjack, the linguists balked at the minimum.

“Twenty-five bucks a hand? Fuck this.”

Beaujolais couldn’t agree more.

A half hour later they were somewhere on the Strip denting a case of Modelo with velocity, amphetamine reptiles basking in the light of one million false suns. Everyone was talking and nobody had ears. Inventors and innovators. They were already millionaires, they were just that smart.

Benny was soused, the speed in his body the true spirit of his machine, holding him up, giving him shape. The linguists were fine enough. Funny, reverential. Young Marines loved old Marines because that is all they hoped to be. Beaujolais stressed there was nothing glamorous in their history, but the machine ran on triumph. Somewhere in the hyperbole and the aggrandizing and the righteous self-flagellation was the truth, in that truth was horror, and in that horror, Benny.

“There was fucking eight of ’em, man. Motherfuckers. Nestled in there like fucking rats. I looked over at Melendez. He was batshit. A good Marine but Jesus Christ, loco en la cabeza. There wasn’t much to him by then.

“I was down to my last mag, but I still had some baseballs, so I tossed a flash through the window, then a frag, a little after-dinner mint. Soon as we heard that second bang we were in there. Pop, pop, pop. Letting it spray. Chewing up the walls. That dust gets so bad, like chalk. You fucking eat it, man, like the big bad wolf. You eat their fucking houses.

“We cleared the first room, the second. We had four bodies but we knew there was eight. We saw them on the heat. We flipped that place, turned it inside out, we still couldn’t find them. Then Melendez says, ‘Peep this.’ Out back there was this little garage.

“Footprints in the sand. I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Hand me another one of them beers.

“I dumped a flash in the shack, bang, we rush it. Sand, smoke. It was a workshop. Santa’s little helpers. They got buckets of nails. Ball bearings. Scrap metal all sharded out. Must have been a shitty cake.

“There’s this rug and it looks wonky and I pull it aside and uh-oh—a little trapdoor. I look at Melendez. He holds up his finger. Shh. He’s tiptoeing. There’s this gas can in the corner. He brings it over and starts pouring it out on the rug. Maybe he’s gonna try and smoke ’em out, I don’t know. He’s been in-country longer than me and, like I said, loco.

“Well.

“He folds the rug up like a taco and tells me to lift the hatch and I do and fucking Melendez, the motherfucker, he shoves that rug in there and kicks the can in on top of it and plants himself on the door. Soon enough they start banging on the lid, begging and all that.

“I reach for my zip ties, thinking we got some POWs, but Melendez looks at me like, Are you crazy? There were some filing cabinets, those old heavy metal bastards like you see in shitty office buildings. We stacked them on the door. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. Best I can figure is the fumes from the gas are gonna choke them out, incapacitate them, make them easier to bring in. I didn’t know.

“Anyways.

“He leaves and I follow him and we’re standing outside and we take off our goggles and it’s dark, man, real ducking fark. We’re swimming in ink. Beauj, what did Simmons used to say? Must have been the moon’s night off ? You think you know dark until you’re out there, but you don’t, you don’t know shit about dark.

“It was so bright when Melendez lit that flare, it was like my eyeballs popped. It was so bright, it was like I didn’t see it until he tossed it. And I saw that fireball shoot up out of the ground. And I heard them. And then I didn’t hear them. And it wasn’t dark anymore.”

—

Four across in the back of a taxi.

“A strip club, any strip club.”

A parking lot.

“What’s the cover?”

“Wow.”

“Beauj will pay. Beauj has money. Beauj is rich.”

Soft blue neon like electrified water. Music made with computers. Lyrics as empty as the room is full.

“We need dollars.”

Flesh, all the flesh, inedible beneath the plastic. Grinding, grinded, ground.

“I wouldn’t get off of her until the neighbors complained about the smell.”

Every color, every shape, hair harvested from corpses.

“I think she likes you.”

No touching.

“Don’t be such a pussy!”

“No touching!”

“What did I say about touching?”

A leg. An arm. A portal from where life emerges.

The idea of the idea everyone is being sold.

“How about a private?”

“How about a Private First Class?”

“I’m gonna go smoke.”

“What’s up your fucking ass?”

I know what was up yours.

“If you go outside you can’t come back in.”

There is no alone, only less close.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“Can I smoke in here?”

“Need a light?”

Fire, something real.

“I bet a dance would cheer you up.”

“I’m gay.”

“That’s okay. So am I.”

“How do you do it?”

“You pay by the song.”

“No, I mean this. Doesn’t it feel like lying?”

“You tell me.”

“I bought a ring.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“No it’s not.”

Laughter, something real.

“Is he here?”

“Depends what you mean.”

A voice he knew better than his own:

“Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Through the light, the face he dreams of is ugly.

“They finna smash his ass.”

Left, right, left, left, right. It’s like dancing.

“Oh god.”

He loves dancing.

He loves him.

“Oh my god.”

Violence, the realest thing of all.

30

Gianna was different on the ride back to Paris. Where formerly her reticence was as stiff as a flak jacket, now her guardrails were gone. She kept touching him—fingers on his wrist to underscore a talking point, a playful shove to cosign a laugh—glowing with a new congeniality, effusive, unafraid.

Beaujolais suffered these platonic gestures like miniature castrations. He didn’t want his belly rubbed, he was neither neutered nor declawed. Just because I’m not attracted to you doesn’t mean I can’t fuck you.

He grinned, he beared. There was a play in this emasculation bit: If she was gonna let him curl up in her lap, he’d let her pet him. His ego was just another thing he had to kill.

Fifteen minutes later the car released them on a side street in the Latin Quarter in front of a bookstore. Leeward a crate of worn paperbacks, a dollop of orange cat lapped milk from a frisbee. Above the door a threadbare Union Jack advertised the language of the literature therein and a triad of students chortling in British accents posed for a picture in front of their banner. Behind the camera, a familiar voice: “Stop smiling like political prisoners! Rule bloody Britannia!”

Uncle returned the phone to the youths and they thanked him. He bowed, wobbly with a potential drunk.

Gianna poked her finger into the small of Uncle’s back. “Do not move, fiend.”

Uncle’s laugh chased the cat inside. “To die by your hand would be one final pleasure.” He turned and received her digit, bending to administer a phantom kiss to each of her cheeks. “And look here.” He repeated the greeting on Beaujolais. “The American in Paris. How does this Tuesday find you?”

“Robert and I shared a romantic morning at Parc de Saint-Cloud.”

Uncle’s eyebrows bounced. “Oo-la-la, save me the details. If these pants get any tighter, they will tear. Have you eaten?” He winked. “I mean food.”

“Plenty.”

“Then let us walk. The sun is out, the students are rambunctious. Today is our gift to unwrap.”

The buildings here in this part of the city were painted the muted pink of edema skin. The streets were barely alley-width and along them men seated at Go boards harangued each other in Arabic and he remembered a café in Damascus where his outfit spent six hours growing panicked on endless little cups of coffee while they waited for tank fuel to arrive.

The street widened as they joined Rue de la Harpe and the sidewalks darkened beneath the shade of striped awnings, the storefronts begging consumer indiscretion from behind their immaculate glass. Maybe-models sucked on cigarettes at café tables, deepening the hollows of their already harrowed cheeks.

Beauj fell into his preferred position at the tail, following behind Gianna and Uncle as they flâneured arm-in-arm. Uncle purchased a sleeve of chestnuts from a man roasting them in a hubcap.

“Look at them, the browned men with their artichoke eyes and old-world clothes. I admire them, a simple life, theirs. Roasting their nuts, carving their way. A refuse barrel lid, a coffee can, a dream. American itinerants could learn a thing.”

The nuts tasted like a car on fire.

They took espressos standing at a tabac counter on Boulevard Saint-Michel watching a deformed street performer wrench music from a squeezebox; Beaujolais dropped a coin in the mutant’s hat before they entered the Jardin du Luxembourg. Down a gravel path fenced in by horse chestnut trees and the occasional paulownias they discussed whether the accordionist was a born freak, the victim of postpartum disfigurement or, as hypothesized by Gianna, cursed by a Roma.

Uncle scoffed. “Surely you say this in jest?”

Gianna’s face was grave and she shook it.

“But the myth of the magical gypsy is, well, a myth.”

Gianna stopped abruptly, spit and rubbed the expectorant into the gravel with her shoe. “You do not need to understand a thing in order for it to exist.”

“But I want to understand, I do, I do.” Uncle, as he walked, assumed the posture of the egalitarian television interviewer, hands behind his back, forward tilt, all ears, revealing for a moment his actual age. “I am lost, dearest. Turn your lantern my way.”

“Do you know the term psychosomatic?”

“Addict insane?”

“Che?”

“Sorry, go on.”

“Said simplest, it is the belief that merely believing you are ill can cause you to become ill.”

Uncle nodded to his subordinate: “Are you following, Robert?”

“Yeah,” said Beaujolais. “Believing the curse makes it real.”

“Sì,” Gianna agreed. “You are cursed, and your life will become that of the accursed.”

“And what if I think I am a beautiful Honduran teenager with a prick like a baguette?”

“Another joke,” she said, her voice tectonic with restraint.

“Of course it was a joke! This is all a joke!” Uncle’s braids levitated as he spun circles with his palms facing the sky. “The only choice is how hard you laugh.”

“Sei proprio un bastardo.”

“Then prove me wrong, please! I beg of you! I would love to learn how the evil eye can render a man a goblin.”

Gianna halted and turned, planting herself in front of the old man. “Explanation is the bastion of the intellectual coward, a house of mirror glass. Explanation is the siren luring the incomprehensible to crash against the rocks of reason. Explanation bulldozes oral tradition, paves over folklore. In your haste to create fact, your apologia disregards history. You exclude generations of human phenomena. Why? Because it is older than your science. I am made tired by this sanctimonious need to quantify all experience. Can you not see out of your eyes? The world is too large, too wondrous, to be organized on shelves. To think there is an answer to all of this is to deny the true facts of existence.”

Gianna and Uncle stopped, entrenched in their didactics, and Beaujolais continued down a set of concrete stairs, entering the heart of the park. Encircled by lawns of grass and dying wildflowers, a massive pond gleamed like the face of a clock; palm trees represented the numbers, and between their trunks, seated in metal green lawn chairs, readers and eaters and loafers and smokers ticked away the seconds of their lives. A blanket of clouds fat like plumes of soot threatened the churnings of this idyllic machine. He burned a cigarette. The smoke trailed downwind toward a boy harassing a gaggle of geese lazing in the murky water. An obese man wearing a hilarious red jumpsuit eyed the child from a bench. Whether he was the child’s guardian or an admirer was unclear, but Beaujolais decided the child was in no danger; the boy could easily escape the crimson blob even without any legs.

He reconvened with his party at a concession stand. Gianna handed him the largest wineglass he’d ever held, wide and deep and round.

“This is shaped like a tit,” he said.

She smiled cheekily. “How would you know?”

They situated themselves at a table below a tree with thin leaves as delicate as copper foil. Uncle toasted Luxembourg for its largesse. Beaujolais tasted his drink. The effervescent orange liquid delighted him. “Is this a…Damn, what is it?”

“Aperol spritz,” said Uncle. “Aperol, prosecco, and orange married in a devil’s three-way of delight.”

“It’s very refreshing.”

“In Italia, Campari is king, but the spritz is our queen.”

Rattled from their branches by a brisk wind, a confetti of tawny leaves foliated their table. Beaujolais thought of a hot bath and spiced wine; he decided to get soup as soon as he was able. “I’ve never had a Campari.”

“You will.”

The arbiter sat forward. “Can I—I have some questions.”

Gianna fingered the orange slice from her cocktail. “Have you attended an Italian funeral?”

“No, not, like, real Italian.”

“When I was a girl, a funeral lasts five nights. The family sat with the body for three days, a mountain of flowers to cover the smell. Once this was done, a day for the neighbors and friends. On the last day we carry the body to the church. After a ceremony it goes into the earth.

“In some parts of Italy, this ritual persists, but our family is modern. My father, my uncles, they pretend to fear God. My generation is too busy. We worship ourselves.” She raised the segment of orange to her mouth and bit off the tender flesh. “We have reduced this process to two days. Tomorrow we will sit with family. My father has rented a house. You will meet my family. Darlo. My father.”

“Your father will be there?”

“He never misses a party.”

“Why don’t I just handle it then?”

In Gianna’s eyes twin volcanoes erupted. “Because, if you, as you say, handle it tomorrow, then you will have robbed my sister of not just her life but also her funeral as well.”

The four words caught him like a rabbit punch to the Adam’s apple—You will have robbed—and he coughed on his mouthful of spritz.

“I am sorry.” Gianna handed him a napkin. “I misspeak.”

Uncle offered him a glass of water but it too proved unagreeable. After a slew of awkward hacking/wheezing attempts, he managed to force out “All good,” and conducted her to continue.

“I will send a town car for you in the morning.”

“I’ll need a suit.”

“You will need two suits,” Uncle clarified. “They are being tailored as we speak to be delivered this evening.”

Beaujolais tested his straw. “I expect they’ll have some questions for me.”

Gianna shook her head. “They will not.”

“What if they ask how we met?”

“My family are not the type to ask questions.”

“How should I act?”

“Act like a man you think I would fuck.”

“Now this!” Uncle braced them each by a shoulder. “This is fun. Guerilla theater delivered with the highest of stakes. Maybe we can find a role for me. I propose blind priest with a penchant for buggery! ‘Excuse me, madam, I was looking for the doorknob.’ ”

Beaujolais felt like a raft with a tiny hole in some part of him. “You’re gonna be there tomorrow?”

Gianna sighed. “Tomorrow is solo for family.”

Still gripping his shoulder, Uncle gave Robert a squeeze. “Alas, poor Yorick, but it seems you are on your own.”

Beaujolais’s glass was empty. He crushed ice with his teeth. He kept expecting at least one of them to ask him what he thought. This whole operation was ripped from a page in a girl’s diary, too much cloak, not enough daggers. He was an excellent killer but he was far less skilled at patience. Tomorrow’s bloodless playdate was an unnecessary extravagance. It was as if she was having fun. “Anybody want another drink?”

Uncle craned his head, pondering the sky now as gray and lifeless as freshly shorn fleece. “She appears likely to piss on us.”

“We have more to discuss,” Gianna said.

“Shall we continue this tête-à-tête indoors?”

“I quite enjoy the cold.”

Uncle formed his lips into the shape of a smile but his eyes stayed neutral, the face of acquiescence. “Very well. In that case we need something brassier, fortifying, and maybe something to pick at.” He shoved himself out of his chair and made off toward the concessions.

Gianna finishing-touched her cigarette and tapped it against her wrist. “Uncle is not habituated to subordination.”

Beaujolais snapped his lighter open, playing her puppy. “Lucky for you I am.”

Behind her veil of smoke, Gianna tilted her head. “When this is finished, what will you do with the money?”

“I can’t worry about that now.”

“Why?”

“Bad luck.”

“Pretend it is the day after, you have this money. What do you do?”

“I don’t know. Go somewhere. Try to make it last forever.”

“You will not miss the work?”

“I hope not.”

“What do you envision?”

“A beach, a beer, a babe. That’s what everyone says.”

“You are not everyone.”

“I am not anyone.”

“What a lucky thing to be.”

There was a tinge to her voice, a darkening. He lacked the exact word to describe her energy. Instead he thought, This is weird. He didn’t crave a cigarette but he dug them out anyway. Upon reaching for his lighter, her fingers stayed his hand.

“Robert, I do not mean to be rude, but whether it is because you are American or because you are homosexual, I am unable to assess your level of intelligence. Therefore I must ask you plainly, in this endeavor, are you aware of what it is we are actually attempting to accomplish?”

“Did you just call me dumb?”

“Do you know the stakes of this game we are playing?”

“Look,” he said, freeing his hand. “I don’t mind if you think I’m stupid. But I don’t think what we are doing ought to be described as a game.”

“That is only one element of what we are doing.”

“A big element. The element.”

“We are attempting to create a vacuum.”

“I am attempting to kill your father.”

“How do you not see what is so close to your face?”

“Why don’t you just fucking tell me then.”

“When my father is gone, there will be no one left to fill the space he occupied.”

“Yeah, no one else but you.”

And with that, like saying I love you or I don’t love you anymore, shape was applied to the formerly formless, defining her perimeters in red ink. “See, Robert,” she said. “I knew you were cunning.”

“You mean…”

“You know what I mean.”

“Does Uncle know?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Think of it as an interview.”

“Are you writing a book?”

“For a position I hope to be soon available.”

“I’m not looking for a job.”

“Why take a job when you already have a calling?”

“No thank you.”

“I see.” Her cigarette end hissed as it drowned in the remnants of her drink. “Maybe I was correct.”

“About?”

“Maybe you are dull.”

“Maybe.”

“Or perhaps you lack creativity.”

He struck his lighter. Smoke billowed. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“I am not so sure.”

“And why is that?”

“Because what I am offering is greater than your ability to imagine.”

Through the smoke her face was ethereal. Only her angles showed. She grinned and it was terrible. In her teeth he saw treachery and in her throat he saw pride and in her eyes he recognized her, because he knew exactly what it looked like. “You should just ask me whatever you’re gonna ask me.”

Gianna snaked her head across the table. “A partnership.”

“Between who?”

“You and I.”

“In what business?”

“Make way, excuse me, suck it in.”

To the sound of Uncle approaching their heads snapped. Gianna leaned back in her chair but as she rescinded he heard her whisper, “Mastering the world.”

“Here we are, look at that. Sustenance has arrived.” Laced between the fingers of one hand Uncle held three long-stemmed glasses with truncated bowls. In the crook of the same arm nestled two bottles, one of olive oil and another of kirsch. “Robert, help me, damn you. Do I look like fucking Plastic Man?”

Beaujolais took the bottles and Uncle swept his opposite arm over his head and delivered to the table a plate of roasted fingerling spuds piled beside vulval-pink calamari. For his final trick, from the inside of his tan Dutchman’s duster, a baton of whole wheat bread.

“Fuck me,” Uncle said as he collapsed into his chair. “Seriously, go ahead.”

Gianna clicked her tongue, marveling at the spread. “Where did you purchase all this?”

“I bought it off a tinkerer. I traded him a hunk of sheep’s milk cheese and…” Uncle dabbed his forehead with a silk scarf, his face the same florid rose as the squid. “Oh fuck it. Repartee is exhausting.” He motioned vaguely. “The bistro near the tennis courts.”

“They allowed you to take the bottle? The plate?”

“Allowed. Ha.” He produced a handful of euro coins from his pocket and tossed them in the air. “They allow you to do anything if you have enough of these.” The change thumped like hail. “See, they even allow you to litter. Now spot me a drink.”

Once the libations were poured, heeding Uncle’s tutelage, he doused the calamars et pommes de terre aux échalotes et citron in a healthy bath of olive oil.

As always, Uncle raised his glass: “To money and having lots of it.”

The liquor was a new addition to Beaujolais’s ever-expanding palette, a confrontation of bitter cherries, almonds and grain alcohol. “You are supposed to sip it, you donkey.” They ate the salad—Uncle called it a salad—with toothpicks.

“I realized something when I was on my mission,” said Uncle, his lips glistening with oil. “Gianna, why would your boyfriend be carrying a gun?”

“How do you mean?”

“We are to believe Robert is but a humble Romeo. If so, at the service, why would the front of his made-to-measure suit be bulging with a concealed weapon?”

“I see.”

“Won’t everyone have guns?” asked Beaujolais.

Gianna covered her chewing mouth. “Those expected to have guns will have guns. Do you expect you will be expected to have a gun?”

“I can keep it hidden.”

“He can keep it hidden!” Uncle laughed. “Robert, sweet, simple Robert. Let me ask you something, dear boy. Just how deep is your asshole?”

Beaujolais prevented his face from moving.

“Can you fit a silenced pistol in your anus? Because when you put on this suit I am having made for you, it will be your only option.” Uncle picked up a potato and spiked it in mayonnaise. “I can keep it hidden. Christ, man.” Uncle chewed as he talked. “What concerns me is that this oversight is indicative of a greater failure. For the good of everyone at this table, we must ensure we consider every element of this affair on a microscopic level. These men we are locking horns with, not every one of them is a paisan grown fat on rolled-back Fiats. For every five bloated wannabes from the neighborhood, there will be at least one highly competent operator.”

Beaujolais arranged himself at his full seated height. “I mean, as much as it embarrasses me to say this out loud, I am a Marine.”

“Yes, I know. The few, the proud, etcetera. I also saw the commercials, Bobby. As much as I respect my adopted country’s preeminent fighting force, come Thursday, you’ll be just another war criminal. The security employed by the men in attendance are a cross-section of every elite acronym in the world.”

Gianna nodded. “At least ten carabinieri or GIS are invited. Antiterrorismos. Nucleo Operativos.”

“Italy, where even the fascists wear suede.”

“Every hand cleans the other, sì? Is this the phrase?”

“We would say washes.”

“Every hand washes the other?”

“Close enough.”

“Grazie.”

“Now what was I saying? Oh yes, Robert, look here. I do not aim to indict your acumen. You have been a boon to my business, but this thing here, as you say, is a real buzzsaw. One would have an easier task killing the Pope. After all, if, per se, a bomb were to go off or mass poisoning, the perpetrators-slash-survivors of such a mass culling would become the undisputed vice lords of the entirety of Europe. Every caution has been taken to ensure the confidence and safety of those in attendance. Counter-counter-countermeasures ad infinitum. Even the caterers were subject to background checks. Navigating this will necessitate the fusion of your total skill set. You are playing one big game of ghost in the graveyard but your opponents are actual spooks. I know because I recruited some of these maniacs myself. They are dangerous, nephew, and while it is true I will not be necessarily dejected if they string you up and flay you raw, call me a soft touch but I would prefer if you lived.”

Beaujolais expelled air sharply from his nose. “That’s very big of you.”

“What can I say? I bear this tender heart like a cross. But in all sincerity, resist fucking up.” Uncle reached across the table to tousle Beaujolais’s hair but the arbiter swatted his hand aside. “Fantastic, keep those reflexes sharp. Now, Miss Di Giovanni, what intel can you provide about the actual day?”

With an unsettling elegance, Gianna dragged her fingers through her hair, gathering the abundance into a single blue-black tendril and harnessing the length into a ponytail with a red silk ribbon she clenched between her teeth like a viper’s tongue. “The guests will arrive at ten. We will be there to receive them, ourselves arriving at nine. Depending on my temperament I will either stand with my father in front of the church or sit near the entrance for the guests to deliver their condolences. You will be by my side but you will not be expected to speak. Once the guests arrive, we will be seated. The padre will speak, no one else. After the ceremony, a period of aperitifs and finger foods. My father will use this time to extract sympathy from his compatrioti and rivals. The men can speak freely. The church denied the polizia surveillance. There are no insects in the walls.”

“She means bugs.”

“We are friends with many cardinals.”

“And the cardinals eat the bugs.”

“My father does not often take alcohol but on the occasion he does he drinks beyond control. If you see an opportunity at any point after the service…This is your expertise, not mine.”

“And what happens once it’s over?” asked the arbiter.

Gianna screwed her eyebrows down. “My father will be…dead?”

“No, I mean for me. What’s my exit strategy?”

“This is where it gets fun, Bobby.” Uncle’s tone was that of a man with a plan. “You’ll escape the same way rats have always escaped Paris—into the catacombs!”

“The what?”

Uncle’s jaw hung limply as if the tendons had been severed. “Dear god, son. I could plumb the depths of your historical knowledge with just my flaccid cock.” Uncle explained the vast labyrinthian network of ossuaries and retired mining tunnels below the city’s southern half, comparing the passages in his tipsy summation to the circulatory system of both a giant and whale while using the word veritable no less than three times. “…and once up the ladder, Bob’s your uncle! Free at last, free at last.”

Beaujolais could only shake his head. “I think I’ll just catch a taxi.”

The rest of the conversation was more straightforward.

Robert asked if it was possible to hide a sniper rifle in the church (“No”) or at the very least a submachine gun (also “No”). Finally he inquired if there were contingencies in place for a botched attempt (Gianna and Uncle, nearly in unison, “No”).

“It’s just a shoot-out at that point?”

Uncle pointed two finger-pistols across the table. “Bang bang, baby.”

“How do I get paid?”

Uncle blew invisible gunsmoke off his index finger. “Gianna?”

“I will have it delivered, same as the deposit.”

“How can I be sure you won’t fuck me?”

“I imagine you will kill me if I do,” she said. “I would prefer to avoid this.”

The clouds stole the sunset as they finished the bottles. On the back of his wrist Beaujolais felt the smallest kiss of cold. He raised his hand to his face: an ice crystal, delicate, intricate, vanished.

It had begun to snow.

31

The bouncer’s teeth cut into him as they break beneath his knuckles but he doesn’t feel them because as they snap he is focused completely on preventing the other man’s elbow from bursting the bones that house his eye, and he steps sideways to allow the blow passage and the force of the unlanded attack carries the man off balance and as he falls Beaujolais plants his foot into the cap of the man’s knee and the joint bends inward and he will never walk the same. Among the blur of arms and legs and feet and hands—Benny, there, crushed beneath an avalanche of another man’s body, but Benny is controlling the head because even wasted, fucked-up and annihilated, he knows the body follows the head because they are attached at the neck.

The punch, a straight right to his temple, rocks Beaujolais sideways and he nearly goes down but somehow he doesn’t and he covers up, catching the subsequent strike in the meat of his forearms, and he steps backward and peeks through his guard and sees the man is dressed like they all are—black shirts, black pants—and implanted in his ear is the black device they use to summon more of them from the black place. The man snaps a jab that glances off Beaujolais’s forehead. His boxing is good but when he next extends his arm Beaujolais ducks like they taught him to do on Parris Island and he steps in and rises into the man’s armpit and catches the arm and snaps it.

Silvio or Maupin, one of them isn’t moving. And he remembers Avery and Tull and DeHaan and Sutton, how when they weren’t moving the flies landed on their sandy faces and how if they’d been there for a while the flies laid eggs inside of them and he remembers when they finally found Richardson how the cats from the village were pulling long strands of him out of the hole in him. How the sight of licorice made him sick.

“Cops.”

More lights, these lights, in this city built of lights—everyone is running. He goes to Benny and he sees the man’s blade collecting even more light and it flashes all pure wet heat and the light bites a chunk out of Benny’s arm, and it looks like chocolate syrup or grenadine but never what it actually is, and now he is on top of the man who has taken this piece of his Benny, and he is the hinge between his life and death.

When he is finished with the man’s face, his hands hurt and Benny is screaming or laughing, it’s hard to tell anymore.

Have you looked at the cobblestones on your road to perdition? Did you see they were actually skulls?

And they are running because running is still honest, one foot after the other, connecting the present to the future, eradicating the past, running because they are alive and they know they can be this way forever, and as they run toward the Rolex glistening on the wrist of God, Benny is right there with him because he will always be with him and somehow despite everything he still has the ring.

32

The heavy, wet, fast-falling snow gridlocked the Rue de Tournon. On the east side of the street the sidewalk was wider and he hugged tight to the buildings to allow space for the scooters escaping the mess. Occasionally he joined other Samaritans to muscle a vehicle from the slush, heaving at the bumper until the tires gained purchase, a spittle of gray mush kicked up as their reward.

He stopped in a tabac for more cigarettes and a mug of steaming vin chaud ladled from an ancient copper cauldron by a woman of similar vintage whose smile consisted of a single purple tooth.

As he crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain a young man with bushy sideburns stopped him to borrow his lighter. The sideburns man spoke in lurches, his mangled English shotgunning in spurts as he collected the words one-by-one.

“I am go to the…beer vendor for to drink…before I ride the train…I go to Bayeux…my father is now dead and my mother…is…sad.”

Closing in on the river, he heard what sounded like discordant singing but as he continued the racket adopted the signature call-and-response of a chant. The protesters’ volume rose as his fellow pedestrians slowed, the sidewalk gradually clotting in a bottleneck. He popped up on a fire hydrant to peer over the crowd.

Like a swarm of wingless bumblebees, a human chain of protesters in high-visibility safety vests blocked traffic in both directions. Some gnashed behind balaclavas and bandannas, others wore their discontent proud, but beneath their reflective garments they wore black en masse. Banners of sewn-together linens spread diagonal across the roadway. Spray-painted letters demanded NOUS VOULONS TOUT and RAS LE BOL. A raggedy drumline accompanied their salvos en ensemble with the free-jazz riot of counterprotesting car horns: Ladies and gentlemen, now presenting The Worst Band in the Land.

From his vantage he spotted a stream of people diverting down a side street and he hopped down and followed them. The street funneled them into a square, the nexus of five avenues. Of them he chose the most abandoned and soldiered into an industrial corridor.

Squat warehouses muscled out the buildings. Box trucks and pallets. A forklift approached; spotlit in its headlights, a bulbous rat flashed across the street tailed by a cat. The driver, not wanting to squash the feline, pulled the wheel, causing the cart to go akimbo on two wheels, dumping its load. Beaujolais heard the crates crack. He jogged the half block to find the ground strewn with prawns. He helped the driver pick the shellfish out of the snow, the pink crustaceans strikingly penile atop the stark white. When they were repacked the driver held up one finger and darted into a nearby garage and returned with a plastic bag full of plump shrimp. He wrapped the bag in a length of paper towel and along with a can of orange soda handed the package to Beaujolais, bowing repeatedly. The arbiter, accepting his odd bounty, bowed in return.

He opened the Fanta and walked along whistling an LCD Soundsystem tune, peeking in the storehouses and staying out of the way: this piece of the city was the domain of men, brawny men, men who kept their heads down, men with long arms and wide palms, men wearing coveralls and union suits and ghutrahs and taqiyahs and dastars and phetas, men who wore boots, trudging with begrudging servitude, emerging through plastic curtains rolling drums of oil and vinegar and cooking wine, grunting beneath sacks of beans and rice and flour, carrying geese and ducks and chicken, guinea fowl strung on poles, bearing the burden of goat corpses and pig bodies and quarter-sides of beef like firemen salvaging rescues from a zoo.

He passed an open door belching a strong aquarial odor. Inside an objectionably fluorescent room Asian men in rubberized clothing considered pallets of amberjack. At the front of the room a man with a clipboard stood on a beer keg shouting and pointing. His voice contradicted itself. The individual notes of his locution plinked like BBs up from the bottom of his throat to form words that fluttered like birdsong. Behind the auctioneer an assembly line of workers chain-brigaded tuna off a truck, synchronized human replicas moving in lockstep, handing-turning-handing-turning, a cigarette pinned in every mouth.

The auctioneer banged his clipboard on the keg lip and a yellowtail was hand-trucked away. His voice dropped as he announced the next item. Beaujolais couldn’t see what it was, but the way the bidders gawked drew him in. Gasps from the back of the room, a squeaking like a hospital gurney, and the crowd parted to allow, wheeled on a metal stand, the smooth pale carcass of an adult male requiem shark impaled on a colossal hook.

The scale attached to the hook-chain read two hundred and forty-one kilograms. The monster’s heaviness altered the atmosphere. From the snout like a missile full of knives to its liquimetal flipper blades, the beast seethed with horrific intent, unbelievable, of a dreadful magnitude too authentic to exist. Violence incarnate, an organic weapon, no god’s creation. A true nature’s child.

The phone vibrating jarred him up on his heels, driving his head into the top of the doorframe—“Fuck”—and he stumbled onto the sidewalk, rubbing his head and swearing. He tucked the bag of shrimp under his arm and looked at the phone screen. “Fuck fuck.” Sigh. “Gianna.”

“Ciao, Robert.” She pronounced it Row-bear, giggling. “Have I interrupted?”

“Interrupted what?”

“You sound perturbed.”

He smoothed his fingertips across his skull’s budding topography: somehow he had both a dent and a bump. “I’m fine. I…got some shrimp. What’s up?”

“We have a problem.”

“We? We do, do we?”

“Sì. We. Oui we, sì.” She belched an oily laughter.

“What kind of problem?”

“I intended to speak with you earlier, but…I forgot. I forgot to forget and forgot. If you forget, you forgot. This is a rhyme they teach us.”

“Gianna.”

“There is a chance…I fear there is…a chance.” She sounded softened, pliable, dissipating, as if she was blowing in the wind. “I may be reacting…in modo eccessivo.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Drunk?” In the background a man laughed and she shushed him. “No nononono no. No. Why do you ask?”

“Who are you with?”

“Wallace.”

“Wallace?”

“Do I mispronounce? Wallace? Wall-ass.”

The fact this man insisted on Wallace instead of Wally was all Beaujolais needed to dislike him. “And who is Wallace?”

“A friend.”

“A good friend?”

“As good a friend as I have.”

“Wallace.”

“It is a beautiful name, no?”

“No, no it’s not.”

“I like it.”

“Do you trust Wallace?”

She paused. “Yes, actually.” Consideration gleamed in her voice. “Yes, I do. Quite often.”

“You had to think about it.”

“I am in a reflective mood.”

“Hold on.” He left the bag of shrimp next to a man sleeping on the sidewalk. “Alright that’s better.”

“What is better?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“My cousin is leaving work soon.”

“Your cousin.”

“Sì.”

“The one you sent to follow me. I made him sing a song.”

“He will be done working soon. You can catch him.”

“Gianna, listen to me.” He looked around. He hadn’t paid attention and now he was the only person moving through this place where he was. “Wallace better be rock fucking solid.”

“He is. I promise. To Wallace I promise…many secrets.”

“I don’t know him from Adam.”

“Who is Adam?”

He thought of the shark dead on his hook, the impotent frozen vigor. “This isn’t how I do things.”

“I do not know how things are done.”

“Just use your brain.”

“I am only attempting to maintain our safety.”

“Our safety,” he said.

“I made a mistake, I admit my mistake, you remove my mistake, no more mistake. You are mia gomma.”

“What does that mean?”

“Che cosa…When you write in pencil and need to remove it?”

“An eraser,” he heard Wallace say.

“Sì sì, grazie, this word. E-ray-soar. You are mia eraser.”

“That’s not how this works. I was contracted for one job. I’m not on call.”

“But I call you. We are on a call, no?”

He held the phone away from his ear: this was the first time he considered killing her. “Just tell me where he is.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.” And the line fell silent as the wires communicated the sound of it becoming real to her.

—

Zeppi left the bar with a woman and they unlocked her bicycle from a metal grate. With a hand each on the saddle they walked the bicycle, the moonlight bruising the snow silver. On the boulevard, sparkling in the lights, they shared a sloppy embrace flagrant with youth. Zeppi blew her a kiss as she rode away, like releasing a bird from his mouth.

Only the arbiter saw, trailing by a block. The distance made every corner a prayer. He wasn’t wearing the proper shoes for this type of pursuit and his footfalls were heavy. The lack of preparation made him nervous and in the space his confidence abdicated glowed an angular rage. At one point, having lost the boy and with him all hope, he disputed whether to kill Gianna or Uncle or himself—he heard a gate slam, and just like that he was alive again.

The gate was wrought iron and he opened and closed it quietly and followed Zeppi into a greenway where tall lampposts invented islands of light. There was no overlap among the bright coronas and between them they walked in complete negative, the arbiter increasing his speed in the grass. Entering the final dark patch, Zeppi stopped to see what was there, and the blade penetrated him below the belly button, carved upward, retracted and reinserted into his neck. He never returned to the light.

33

Abutting the only house he ever lived in was a farm raising cattle, llamas and goats. He only saw the goats when they gathered on the roof of the milkbarn, looking down on his father’s untended acreage with their regal noses snooted up in the air. The llamas rarely ventured near the fence line and when they did they spat yellow ooze. He told the llamas he hated them and threw dirt clods. About the cows he felt the complete 180 opposite.

The cows were nice. They didn’t spit slime or judge you for being poor. The faces they made chewing cud reminded him of his grandfather jawing a plug of Red Man. Their bovine eyes reflected no criticism, and to them he revealed the truth of himself, considering the cattle among his closest friends. Many a day he spent standing at the fence feeding them store-brand breakfast cereal straight from the bag and reading dirty jokes from a book his uncle left behind. Sometimes it looked like they were smiling.

Every day after school he ran down the long dirt driveway and, after dropping his book bag on the bench in the kitchen, he stopped to yell “Dad, I’m home” up the staircase to where his father floated the hours between abattoir swing-shifts on heroic doses of Frank Zappa and Red Dog beer—no need to wait for a response. Next he snagged the cereal and repaved the footpath between the mudroom and the pasture, charging across the broken-brick patio out into the driveway and never failing to graze with his fingertips the net on the basketball hoop implanted off-kilter in the flattest part of the dirt. If he had to pee he saved it for the ant mound behind the woodpile, giggling at the devastation. He was endlessly fascinated by the ants and the industry of their bustling ziggurat. He once trapped a grasshopper and after clipping off its meaty rear legs he dropped the living remains on the ant pile and sat for two hours rapt by the eradication of ants systematically deleting the insect from existence. His dad said it was a weird thing to do but probably pretty cool if you were there to see it. His dad said beetles were the real motherfuckers.

“Don’t believe me? Go out to the property line and look at the ponderosas.”

Standing among the blighted pines it was hard to argue. They looked like ghost trees. Gray-barked, hollowed out, slowly dying forever. He liked to pick their leprous skin, peeling it away in long strips to reveal the wood underneath as hard and white as bone. Into this wood he scrimshawed his vocabulary with the knife his grandfather gave him, passing the time until his friends arrived.

He assigned the cattle names and established a hierarchy. Bruno was the biggest and he presided over the smaller ones, Duke and Buster, because he was their dad and he raised them alone. Like his own mother, Duke and Buster’s mom lived in Tucson because the dry air was better on her skin. Their moms were extremely busy with their new families, but that was okay because Robert and the cows were strong; the new kids needed her more. Sure, Bruno would love to be running around Phoenix in a brand-new Pathfinder or taking trips to Cancun drinking margaritas on the beach, but somebody had to raise Duke and Buster. Someone had to be the adult.

When Robert’s grandma died they had to go to Laramie for a week. Him and his dad and his uncle and his cousins went to a football game at the college and there was a real-life cowboy who rode up and down the sideline whenever the home team scored. Even more exciting, the grocery stores in Wyoming sold Count Chocula and Boo Berry and Frute Brute.

Robert bought a box each, with his own money, and couldn’t wait to share with his friends, but when they finally got back to Colorado, only Duke was waiting at the trees. Same as the next day, and the next day, and all days thereon.

A few weeks later during dinner, his father’s eyes wandered away from The Simpsons and happened to land on his boy. Finding him visibly dejected, he was moved to break their typical high silence to inquire what had Bobby’s “panties in a twist.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing. Hell nothing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like Grandma died again.”

“You can’t die twice, Dad.”

“Thank god for that. Now come on. What’sa matter? “

The way he sighed reminded his father of his mother. “It’s Buster and Bruno.”

“They in your grade?”

“No.”

“Younger?”

“No.”

“Older?”

“No. They live next door.”

“The McClennans’ hired hands?”

“Nevermind.”

His father put down his fork. “Did somebody touch you?”

“They’re cows.”

“Who’s cows?”

“Buster and Bruno.”

“But those are boy names.”

“And?”

His tone reminded his father of his mother. “Roger. And where’d you meet these…fellas?”

“They live next door. Well they did, but they’re missing.”

“Oh.” His father looked at his patty-melt.

“I haven’t seen them since before Grandma. I don’t know where they went.”

“Where they went.” His father scratched the tuft of steel-wool chest hair poking out the collar of his river driver shirt. “Aren’t you a little old to be out there talking with cattle?”

“They don’t talk, Dad. I talk, they listen. Geez.”

“Well.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe they’re just busy.”

“Cows don’t have jobs, Dad. God.”

“Maybe their grandma died.”

Robert aborted delivering himself a mouthful of Easy Mac. He looked at his father, considering the source. “Their grandma.” His brow bent beneath the weight of the possibility. “Cows have grandmas.”

“They have to come from somewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they have parents, their parents had parents.”

“You’re right.”

“No shit.” His father took a good drink off his beer. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Who does?”

“Who does what?”

“Pays you the big bucks.”

“Christ, Bobby, you got more questions than I got answers. The show’s back on. Hush and eat your burger.”

34

Lying at his feet when he opened the apartment door, the arbiter found a manilla envelope. He picked it up and exchanged it for the ashtray on the table by the window and emptied the crystal receptacle into the trash can on his way to the shower.

In the process of solving Gianna’s problem, his coat and sweater took on a lot of blood. He walked back in just his T-shirt and pants and now he removed them and stood in the hot shower letting the cold run out of him. When he was finally comfortable, he reversed the valve and grimaced beneath the icy water counting backward through clenched teeth from fifty to zero and reengaged the hot water and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of beer and returned to the shower where he drank and gratified himself soporifically.

Enclothed in the cashmere robe (he decided if he were allowed to leave Paris the robe would go with him), he sat by the window with a fresh beer and opened the envelope.

NEPHEW

Lunch left me disheartened. I delivered your suits myself, hoping to call on you but you were out. Luckily I still have a key. I trust no umbrage I let myself in. I do like this apartment. The sun splashes honey on the walls. Hanging the garment bag I was afflicted w/ an inspiring reminiscence of squirreling away a nut of cocaine in the bedroom somewhere. This letter stands as proof of my memory. This draft is my third attempt. The first draft was bonko madness. Wine spilled on the second. I have termites. They eat holes in my peace. Gianna is a prickly rose. I handled her with the wrong gloves. Before our meeting I elevated her in my mind. Now I see she is exactly what she is. We are toys because to her everything is. Still I admire her aspiration. Here she has ordered a comet down on her father but what does she know of velocity? mass? the impact and resulting crater? Avoiding situations such as these elongates your life. I have many tools in my shed, I am more than capable of digging out. But you are not me and you cannot be me. The burning bush I am beating around: there is a chance I have conscripted you to be righteously fucked. This inkling churns in my stomach. Did Uncle Sam teach you to deny intuition? The shrill voice of my divine cocksucking feminine sings a song of retreat. The French have a word. Levant. A tidy way to say ‘tuck tail and run.’ Regretfully the time to levant? for levant? has passed. Because levant is an adult word and we are in business with a child. And kids say the darndest things. The girl will squeal, Nephew, squeal like a fat little piglet grown delusional on Daddys cream. I do not mean This crude entendre is unintentional. I mean she is not trustworthy. I have sponsored enough coups, I know how they feel. After they shoot the general they turn around and shoot the dogs. Are you not on her leash? Have you read Sartre? Huis Clos? Death must enter life only to define it. Gianna lives among furniture she does not relish. No Exit, my boy. You are trapped in this. The girl is a beartrap and your foot is in her teeth. CHEW IT OFF! CHEW IT OFF OR BE AMPUTATED!

I have just read what I have written. It appears mostly gibberish. My apologies. It is too late in the day to rewrite clearer for I am due at a massage appt. What an utter waste of time.

Gianna = BAD

Simplified it for you. I am but a nut but so says my gut. I hope she is not the death of you, of us. For all I know you two are already in leagues reading this over the phone like school girls. If so, fair play. I am not your enemy is what your enemy would say. Let the record show I brought you here to do business. I apologize if this is something else. Do the job and leave, son. Death is all that remains for you in Paris, but can you think of a better place to go?

Uncle

He set the letter in his lap and pinched the bridge of his nose and moved the flesh around until his eyes resumed their normal orbit. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to think of it, it was that he physically couldn’t: he wobbled on stilts over blasted delirium, the type of exhausted to which sleep is but a Band-Aid. He needed the rest cicadas enjoyed in twelve-year cycles, a stay of dis-existence.

He left the letter on the chair and drank two glasses of water and belched resoundingly in all the emptiness. He set the alarm and turned off the lamp. In the black distance between the bed and the ceiling lived a fluttering confluence of eddying sparks. There were times in his life when he had been more tired but it was best not to think about them before bed.

35

Benny didn’t disembark the plane with Beaujolais and the other recruits on Ship Day because he took a bus down from Charleston with two other Carolinians; the three Sandlappers sat in front of the airport downing sacks of Wendy’s hamburgers as Beaujolais and his fellow poolees stepped for the first time into the cableknit Savannah heat.

Benjamin Stephenson was tall, his limbs exaggerated, his arms hanging gangly beneath the roof of his broad shoulders. Someone asked him what his tattoo was of and he said it was a gamecock. It was hard not to fixate on his hair, a muddy-brown mop hacked into a moronic Amish bowl cut. It had to be a joke, one final act of rebellion before laughter was outlawed. Benny confirmed this suspicion on the bus ride to the Depot, saying as he shook out his mushroom cut, “My dad always called me Dickhead so I figured I’d become a dickhead for real.” He thought it was funny. Beaujolais agreed: he agreed with whatever Benny said.

At the receiving building on Parris Island the bus stopped and the lights turned off and they were told to put their heads down and “expose their identification” and they waited in what they learned was called a stress position for a duration registered interminable by their hyperspeed eighteen-year-old brains. Then the lights flared and the door opened and The Man in the Funny Hat rattled the bus with his voice, screaming about how he was their mommy and demanding to be referred to as such—“Say it!”/ “Yes, Mommy!”—barking into the backs of their heads, spitting on their necks, pushing himself into the space they reserved for their girlfriends, “Do not fucking move” followed by “Move move move move,” chasing them up the aisle and off the bus and onto the Yellow Footprints where he circled them like a shepherd dog and pinned with the total terrified admiration of sixty-six all-the-way-open eyeballs he said the men who stand on these footprints forfeit their souls to him, “You just died,” welcoming them to their Real Certified Lives, saying he was their mommy.

They were just then only now born.

Life became a succession of verbs. Measured, weighed, tested, inspected, assessed, shorn, fitted. Their blood was removed and catalogued and married with vaccines. Their teeth were counted and tapped. Soldering happened in their brains, their heads shrunk, hacking their minds. They were introduced and indoctrinated and committed and recommitted. They promised themselves to the universe. Prayed, proscribed, bargained. Wept, bled, tore. Pity ran rampant. Two for flinching or worse.

In the damnable predawn Mommy’s voice clapped like thunder in the mist of their dreams, firing them like objects submerged in deep water through the skin of their scant respite, rocketing from their cots as cognizant as husks.

“Who wants to quit? Just say the word. I’ll send you home bleeding back through my fucking pussy. This is the death house, motherfuckers. You’re here to learn to die.”

Mere tenants of their flesh, renting space within themselves from the United States Marine Corps, their individuality dissolved into the greater machinery, reducing them to instruments in Mother’s philharmonic of sadism. Any and all preconceptions they held regarding their abilities, their fortitude, who they thought themselves to be, were murdered and exhumed and killed fresh daily. For some this assimilation was difficult, but to Benny and Beaujolais it came natural: to resist was to die twice. They embraced depersonalization. Surrender was victory. Pain ceased to exist when they didn’t either.

The flavors of their stoicism differed. Benny was a fatalist who believed in predestination.

“All of us are going to die, Beauj. We’re just waiting to find out in what order.”

Beaujolais found it endearing, this adherence to a child’s notion of fate. It was too silly to take seriously—it was all so ridiculous, wasn’t it? The costumes, the rituals. Such chicanery. “Today I asked a man named Mommy for permission to go to the bathroom and do you know what he told me? No.”

If only they could all just stop for a minute, turn to one another and admit it: Yes, I am scared, I think I’m too young to die.

Mommy began to call them Bed and Breakfast or B & B. They took chow together, teamed for buddy runs, alternated laundry duty to allow the other stolen winks. As a team they attacked challenges with the reckless disregard of eighteen-year-olds who were attempting to impress each other. Their bodies paired well.

In their third week, as they trained hand-to-hand in the cake-batter mud of a torrential rain, Beaujolais confirmed two suspicions. Firstly, he was a better fighter than Benny: despite his inferior reach, Beaujolais’s left dinged Benny’s chin at will. When Benny finally fell, Beauj pounced. Riding high to prevent Benny’s escape, dominating via leverage, he became rigidly conscious of the textures of his sparring partner’s body, discovering the plates of flesh slabbed like adobe to his back, the cords in his arms as thick as anchor chains, the power beneath him, pushing back, bucking, entangled, full of blood—it was exactly as he feared.

Off to the showers.

Everything was a test.

Benny kept asking him what his deal was. “I think I’m sick.” But he didn’t think, he knew. He’d been sick his whole life. Tainted by this thing in him around which he grew all twisted. They said it was normal but it didn’t feel normal. The awareness was an ever-closing fist, suffocating, binding, like being wrapped in wet rawhide and left in the sun. Claustrophobia in his own body—he ran from the feeling, jogging laps on the track between mandated exercises. After each mile he stopped to sit in the wet grass and eat junk food. He’d been designated underweight and as a result was prescribed double rations. Chow was unanimously awful so he fought his underweight allegations with an hourly influx of calories provided by Pop-Tarts and granola bars and the other latchkey treats available at the store on base, eating refined sugar until his tongue was smooth.

Of civilian life he missed chicken fingers and grilled cheese. He tried to envision his father’s face and failed. Private Beaujolais posted no letters. It seemed wrong to bother his father. He had his model trains and his science fiction novels and that woman with the short gray hair, and together they had sobriety and the New Age church on Singing Hills Road where she could flash him the goo-goo eyes every Sunday as he played bass guitar in the nondenominational band.

“They even let me sing sometimes, Bobby.”

It was nice and he was happy for him. He’d done his best. He knew it wasn’t easy raising a boy like him in a place like that. He loved his father the same way his father loved the Denver Broncos—the idea, what it represented, unflinching. He understood the impermanence of parents. His mother had no home in him. When his cousin called to tell him she died he thanked her and hung up the phone. He had a new mommy now and she said he had to eat.

The weirdness between him and Benny dissipated, not as a consequence of time but crushed dutifully by Beaujolais’s veteran hands. Suppression is what he did. He’d learned to suffocate longing in middle school, diverting the air to allow friendships to breathe. Immediately their camaraderie returned. They found their old rhythm like session musicians. Bed and Breakfast were back. Top speed on the buddy run, first team over the rope wall—every new accolade served as evidence of his compromise. The abjuring of truth: it was like dying, but everything was. He’d never been closer to another man and all it cost was the sound of his own heart beating.

“The sky isn’t blue unless I say it is. You’ll drink my piss and tell me it’s Seven Up.”

Over the ensuing months they were each other’s shadows. They shaved at neighboring sinks. Jogged in lockstep. They talked about the future at length, the lives they envisioned. “I’d like to get a boat,” Benny dreamed, “and charter it for tours. Nothing fancy. Just enough room for some rods and some coolers. I’d hire it out cheap. I mean, shit, you’re gonna pay me to go fishing? Twist my arm. I’d take them out to all the good spots I know. Make sure they caught at least a buzz. Sounds alright to me. Cash, baby. Fucking cash. And also—the best part—you get to meet new people every day. Flirt with the wives. Run through the daughters. ‘Can you show me how to hold a pole?’ ” There was that laugh again. “That’s the fucking life, man. And you can call it corny, but shit, you’re giving people an experience. Helping some kid land his first fish? Taking old-timers out for one last spin? That’s a fucking memory, man. Fuck. Doesn’t that sound pretty sweet?”

The vulnerability, the naivety, the gusto. “Yes,” said Beaujolais, swooning: it was so sweet it altered his blood.

36

He woke chilled in the night and stumbled to the thermostat to jab blind and illiterate at the buttons on its face. By morning the room was sweltering. He came-to to the alarm in a hothouse, the sheets wet and transparent and clinging to his body like filo.

He went to the sink and slurped water from the tap before inserting his head in the stream. The cold water on his neck confounded his matrices and he dropped to his palms on the kitchen tile, bellowing life into his dull ember of consciousness with a hundred stiff push-ups.

He made coffee and drank it standing by the window. Uncle’s letter sat on the chair. He reread it honed in the sharp early sun, a pacing nude empyrean. There was something about how sweatily Uncle obfuscated his intention that caused Beaujolais to think he was utterly full of shit. The effort reeked of performance, a man flailing out ahead. The buddy who wants to sleep with your wife so he tells you she’s been cheating. I am not your enemy is what your enemy would say. The demure self-satisfaction. Might as well have dotted the eyes with hearts.

He didn’t need to fuck women in order to fear them. Every man knows the awful capabilities of a beautiful woman when she’s bored. Patricide was how Gianna entertained herself. She would have made a fine CEO. Uncle wasn’t all wrong: She had offered him a job, a seat at the table inside her new Rome. The proposal underlined her lack of allies. If she was turning to him she was spinning. The road out of treason is a lonely one. The only person she could hire to kill him was himself.

He sparked the burner and fed a corner of the letter to the fire and with the flaming screed he lit a cigarette then dropped the smoldering paper in the sink and felt the energy released.

He took down the garment bag from the closet: black coat, black shirt, granite pants hemmed above the ankle, each fitted like skin. Leafing through the neckties, he said, “Gianna wouldn’t fuck a guy in a tie,” and folded his collar down into a mandarin. Still inspired, instead of brushing his hair back, he parted it to the side like Benny used to, bringing the hair forward from the crown and curling the comb under with a flick to create what they jokingly referred to as “the wave.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, smiling at how much he opposed his reflection. “I hate this guy.”

The cellphone jiggled on the countertop. On the screen, a single letter: G.

“Hello.”

“Good morning, Robert.”

He dropped his voice an octave. “Is that my baby girl?”

She snorted. “Oh no.”

“What’s shaking, toots?”

A full guffaw: “Robert. I forgot how you speak.”

“Am I making you wet?”

“Remember, you are not expected to speak much.”

“Gigi. I missed your voice. Your mouth. Where are you, sugar?”

“I am preparing at the hotel.”

“What are you wearing?”

“I am alone at this time.”

“Well in that case—”

“No. I say this to mean we can speak without pretense.”

“Okay.” He returned his voice to his own. “This is better.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t actually do that voice.”

“Good.”

“But I think this guy talks that way.”

“This has been my experience.”

“Are you very experienced?”

She mimicked laughter.

“Do they always call you Gigi?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

“I do not like they think they are the first to call me so.”

“Have you ever had a Robert?”

“The odds are likely.”

“You could call me Bobby.”

“I would never let a man named Bobby enter me.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Would you prefer a different name?”

“It’s not too late?”

“I doubt anyone will remember your name even after you tell them to their face.”

“Haven’t you been telling all your girlfriends about me?”

“My father did not invite my friends.”

“What about your family? You didn’t tell them about dear Robert?”

“We are burying the person who I would tell.”

He allowed a silence to signal she’d been heard.

“I need to finish my makeup. What do you wish for your name to be?”

Beaujolais watched in the mirror as his fingers rose to realign the ridge of hair canted atop the face of a man attempting to appear to be someone he was not. “Benny,” he said. “Call me Benny.”

“Benny. Bellissimo. Benny’s car will arrive at ten.”

—

After forty minutes the car stopped and Beaujolais heard the chauffeur exit the Lincoln followed by the recession and approach of leather shoes. The back door opened, spilling a crash of pure daylight across the black leather.

“Nous sommes arrivés, monsieur,” said the driver, a neckless fireplug with a head as bald and round as a snowman’s.

“Dess oh lay,” Beaujolais responded automatically. “No par-lay.”

The driver blinked his cow eyes. “Here. Now here.”

Theirs was one of many black vehicles parked in a cul-de-sac from which two gated driveways forked like antennae. Drivers moved among the cars smoking and pouring each other coffee. His driver motioned to the gate on the right. Behind it up a slight rise more black vehicles peppered the driveway of a cream-white château. “Go there,” his driver managed.

In the basket Gianna had prepared for him, along with two bottles of champagne, sliced peaches and a cold-packed tiramisu, was a note outlining his responsibilities.

Bring these to the house when you arrive. I will introduce you to my father. He will talk at length. After you will wait in the side house with the other men.

The other men.

It felt wrong not to have a gun.

Leaning against the trunk he lit a cigarette and repeated his name like an amnesiac.

“Benny.”

At the gate he bent to speak into the security panel.

“Benny for Gigi.”

The gate yawned.

“Gigi loves Benny.”

Looming at the terminus of the long unpaved driveway, the château was a standalone version of the city’s ubiquitous white boxes, the gray slate roof tiered and sloping to a steeper angle halfway down. The sound of his shoes on the compacted dirt was the sound of walking home from football practice. The driveway, lined by stentorian skeletal trees, bisected a sprawling lawn, the grass yellowed by frost and patched with scabs of unmelted snow like wounds in the flesh of the earth.

He wove among the cars, noting that many of them contained drivers, their faces lit by phone light behind tinted glass. Goons, he thought, chuckling. He nodded at one of the surly faces, his gesture unanswered.

A pyramid of broad stone steps rose to meet the mansion’s front door. He climbed the stairs in bounds, wanting to appear eager: he assumed he was being watched. He knocked on the door before he saw the doorbell and suffered an awkward moment of indecision until the door opened and he was greeted in French by a weathered housekeeper.

He said it like he’d practiced in the car: “Bonjour madame. Je suis Benny. Pour Gianna.”

The housekeeper nodded and left. He could tell by her footsteps as she walked away that the room she crossed was as tall as it was empty: they always were: the chandelier glittering thirty feet above fresh-cut flowers on an oval table aside a lonely purposeless chair. If he ever owned a house, it would open into a room, not a holding pen. He was glad not to be invited in.

He was pondering if the term butler had a feminine form when he heard Gianna’s voice.

“Gigi.”

“Amore mio.”

She embraced him. The housekeeper looked away from their charade.

Gianna led him by the hand beneath the chandelier past an arrangement of fresh lilac. Through one of the three doors they walked into a kitchen where copper cookware dotted the walls like turtle shells, and continued through a series of impressive rooms, moving ever closer to a clatter of Italian voices shouting for supremacy. Finally, in a lavish den, gathered around a hearth constructed of ancient stones, they discovered the source of the conversation.

Assembled on two rigid couches, each of which appeared to be as soft as the fireplace rocks, four women and two men engaged in a bombastic debate. Their histrionics sealed them off from Gianna and Beaujolais. They watched unnoticed as if behind one-way glass. It was like walking onto the trading floor of some backwoods stock market, a place where lips and fingers communicated equally. Their hands slashed and stabbed and sliced, carving a space for their voices in the muddied cacophony. Beaujolais was reminded of the invocations of comic book sorcerers, Doctor Strange and Professor X locked in telepathic warfare. He felt like a peeping Tom and he communicated this to Gianna, whispering out of his slapstick grin.

“We can come back.”

She squeezed his hand, nodded slightly. “Pazienza.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“It seems serious.”

“Serious, sì, very.” She smiled and for a moment they could be in love. “They are ordering lunch.”

One of the two men stood, rising above the other voices. In his sixties, maybe older; his ochre skin and bottle-black hair scrambled quantification. He was lean and long-torsoed, the arms in his short-sleeve linen shirt corded with rowing-machine muscle and the blotchy melasmas of a sun-dappled lifestyle. When he spoke, he arched his back as if forcing the words up from his belt. Everyone else in the room wore shoes but this man’s feet were bare, Roman-toed, the skin a lighter shade that reminded Beaujolais of the specific brown of a Wendy’s Frosty. His voice belied his station: wispy, brittle, Massimo crackled like the leaf of a dry cigar.

“Domani sarà una festa! Dovremmo mangiare leggero oggi. Un po’ di frutta. Un po’ di carne. Un po’ di pane. Non impazziamo!”

“La cucina è piena di cibo,” protested one of the women, a waxy beldam shriveling in the shade of a preposterously floppy hat. “Sembra un fottuto supermercato!”

“Non voglio più mangiare quella merda francese.”

The other man represented an outdated Massimo design, a brother or uncle with a single gray eyebrow as coarse as boar’s fur. He pounded the arm of the couch. “È troppo ricco! Il loro burro è come la crema pasticcera.”

The woman threw her hands in the air like a sumo tossing salt. “Che cazzo ne sai, vecchio caprone?”

“Più di te, stronza amareggiata.”

Gianna stifled a laugh.

“Basta!”

Massimo knelt and placed his hand on the knee of the argumentative woman. “Lucia, manda una delle ragazze al posto vicino alla stazione. Quella con le olive buone. Dille di prendere delle cose. Le cose che ci piacciono.” He pulled a sheaf of euros from his pocket and counted off a clutch of notes, the bills snapping stiffly as he peeled them. “E dille di passare dal panificio e prendere un po’ di pane, quello al rosmarino che mi piace.” He bowed his head and held the bills out to the woman, a type of offering.

The woman snatched the notes with her venous claw and with a snort she rocked herself off the couch, shoving Massimo as she passed, and Massimo threw himself to the ground, rolling and splaying out like he’d fallen from a great height. “Mi hai steso, cretina.”

Beaujolais stared at Gianna laughing at her father playing corpse on the floor. He was certain she harbored tremendous evil. She tugged his elbow, and if she’d ripped his arm off and ate it and sucked the blood from his stump, it wouldn’t have surprised him.

“Come. Meet my father.”

The arbiter experienced a tightness in the equator of his forehead. Radiating from this meridian his line of sight crystallized and slashed about the room.

“Papà. Tutti quanti. Vi presento Benny.”

“Benny.” Massimo’s face was a scale as he weighed this name against others. “Oh, Benny! Benny, sì, of course. Benny.” He repeated the syllables as he resurrected himself. “Ciao, Benny, hello.” He offered his sun-bleached hand. “You are Benny.”

“Yessir.” The deception reverberated in him centrally, ringing through the space of his body. “I am Benny. Ciao, Mr. Di Giovanni.” He said it was a pleasure; in a perverted sense it was: there was no doubt he was absolutely alive.

“No, Benny. No no no. Simo, please. I am Simo.” He clapped his hand on Beaujolais’s shoulder. He flashed his daughter’s easy, bone-crushing smile. “I do not know this Mr. Di Giovanni. Who is Mr. Di Giovanni?”

The arbiter assembled his face into that of a human being. The man I’m going to kill.

—

He did his best to remember their names, but they were introduced with such speed and alacrity that he stuck with ma’am and sir. They were each an aunt or uncle to Gianna, although, as she explained during a mission to the pantry for champagne flutes, not all by blood or marriage. Lucia, for instance, was her mother’s longtime psychic before she passed. Post-mortem she became the conduit through which the grieving husband communicated with his dead wife, ascending to a position of spiritual counselor. Lara, who at a tight forty-seven was the youngest of the women present, was the former lover of Gianmarco, her father’s older brother and most tenured lieutenant.

The young couple sat cross-legged on cushions on the ground, Gianna serving the tiramisu on bone china as the aunts lobbed simple questions, their intrigue restricted by their varying fluencies in English. Beaujolais kept the answers short and pithy, playing the role of Benny as an aloof rake.

“Harvard for a bit but who wants to spend four years in Boston?”

“Saint Petersburg, but I’d go from the jet to Gogol back to the jet.”

“She was reaching for the tongs and I thought, I’d like to have her on my plate.” (Gianna: “Benny, hush!”)

While Beaujolais engaged in badinage with the aunts, Massimo and his brother watched, affecting eyeless smiles and nodding whenever he turned to answer their gaze. Massimo chipped in occasionally, offering “To be a young man in this world,” or “The lives of young men are the envy of old men.” Otherwise they resided at a distance.

Occasionally a man entered and handed a cellphone to Massimo. His presence was a cloud. Gianna whispered “Darlo,” but he knew who it was. He’d seen him trapped in a photograph. His body was a bludgeon. Neither man looked at the other directly. They alternated furtive stabs, clawing each other with their eyes. When their gazes finally intersected, Beaujolais registered an electricity. This man too would likely need to die.

Waves of food arrived in no conventional order. Desserts as appetizers for charcuterie. Strips of wet vegetables in different-colored bowls. Dried tomatoes sweet as candy. The women heaped his plate, speaking the love language of aunts across all decent universes.

Despite their smokescreen of conviviality, grief permeated the conversation, the memory of their lost daughter/niece/sister exploding like landmines in the subtext of every interaction.

“These olives were Amara’s favorite.”

“I ski, Papà. Amara was the snowboarder.”

One of the blood aunts, a woman named Lorenza or Luchenza—Gianna’s mother’s sister—attempted to tell a story about her niece’s confirmation.

“Amara and I, we are very same. When she is…tredici?” She flashed ten fingers then three. “She wear my dress I wear for mia cresima. My mother, Gianna’s nonna, when she see her, she is say, ‘Look. Lorenza. She is beauty.’ I laugh, I think she is talk of me. ‘Thank you, Mamma.’ Ha ha. But no. She is…Com’è? Confuso?”

Gianna poured her more champagne. “Confused.”

“Sì, sì, she is think I am her sister, mia zia, and Amara is me.” She twisted the stem of her flute between her thumb and forefinger, bringing the bubbles to life. “If God say, ‘Lorenza. You and Amara.’ ” She ticked her index finger left-right-left-right and clicked her tongue like a turn signal. “ ‘You trade?’ I say yes. I say very yes. God, please, yes.”

Gianmarco, elbows on his knees, leaned forward, cleared his sinuses, swallowed. “When she is cresimata, Amara, the priest, he bless her. He say, ‘God bless you.’ Amara, she say to priest, ‘God bless you more.’ The church all laugh. She is always making laugh.” He regressed back into the couch.

Gianna always found a bit of business to attend to whenever the silence hardened. Handing out napkins, collecting silverware. As she turned to hand him a stack of plates, her eyes were red and moist.

“Are you doing okay?” Asking her, he realized he didn’t really care.

“I am tired. I will go for…a small sleep?”

“Nap.”

“Nap, this is me. Papà, show Benny the chalet?”

“Se hai finito con lui,” said Topo, the oldest aunt, no more than a hunched hump, her body crooked like a seahorse. She unfurled her reedy fingers toward Beaujolais and he stepped closer, a good sport. “Vorrei mostrargli la mia camera da letto.” With this, she spanked his rump, igniting a fuse of laughter in the other women.

“Topo!” Gianna spurted. “Bestia eccitata!”

Lara reached across the couch to slap the crone’s arm. “Ti spezzerebbe come legna da ardere!”

“Sono pronto.”

Beaujolais’s painted smile nearly cracked. “What did she say?”

“Oh god, do not make me repeat.” Gianna waved her hands, calling them off. “Buon dio. Presto, Papà, remove my man from these hens.”

“Yes yes,” Massimo said, standing. “They are like to peck him to scraps. Benny, follow me. Gia needs her rest. It is how she maintains her beauty.” The father kissed his daughter’s cheek. “While she makes nap I show you the property. Meet my friends.”

“You meet, I nap. Go.” Gianna started to leave but, catching herself, stopped and elevated on her toes to kiss her lover. The women whistled, va-va-vooming. Gianna brushed the backs of her fingers off her chin, flicking them at the women: “Voi diavoli.”

Tonto hissed. “Dice Satana stessa.”

“Benny, you enjoy coffee, yes?” Massimo led him away from the coven of cackling shrews. “This champagne delivers me head pain. Let us take an espresso.”

Beaujolais followed his target through the empty rooms, dizzy with the stuporific surreality of this uncanny stage play—the mansion, the Italians, the groping—and him the only actor with a finished script. All he could think was, This man, the one showing him the record player’s diamond-tipped stylus, the one pointing out Mongolia on the globe.

This man.

He fought to corral himself, to be present, to stay here. Tomorrow’s throbbing heartbeat obliterated anything Massimo said, and deeper, louder, beneath this pounding cadence, an echo in the void:

Now. Do it now.

With that heavy atlas.

With the cord to the blinds.

With your hands and feet and teeth and skull.

Now. Do it.

“Benny, you are yawning. Do I cause boredom?”

The arbiter’s head rattled as he crawled back into it. “No. I’m sorry. I just— I think I could use that coffee.”

In the kitchen Massimo pressed two buttons on a commercial-grade machine and while the device inseminated water into grounds, he extolled, his hands in constant motion, a treatise on espresso’s superiority, condemning “the thin shit water” Americans drank as the cause of the nation’s obesity epidemic. “To drink your coffee, cream and sugar is necessary. The day starts with fat and sweet. All day, the brain cries, ‘More fat! More sweet!’ You start the day as a pig, you end the day as a pig. This is better.” He offered Beaujolais a tiny cup an elf would use. “You take this in two drinks, bang bang, fatto, you go on your way. No sugar, no milk, solo potere—only power. What a man needs. Come. I find my shoes.”

They took their coffee on a cobblestone patio standing beneath an umbrella supplying unnecessary shade to this wan sunless noon. The espresso was bitter and syrupy and immediately effective. Beaujolais’s mouth started to jog. He asked questions and interrupted the answers, all give, no take. In the throes of absent blather he regretted to hear himself inquire what Massimo did for work. Receiving this information for the first time, his hyper-driven brain, operating in fractions of shards of microseconds, commandeered the wheel and threw on the blinker, forming the quasi-question “Or I guess you’re probably retired?” He gawked dumbly.

Massimo tilted the last drips of his coffee onto the point of his tongue and flashed an exculpating smile. “No more espresso for Benny. I doubt you sleep tonight.” He placed his cup and saucer on a Barcelonnette table and motioned for Beaujolais to do the same. “Leave that, leave that. I show you this now.”

They walked a path of hard, slick stones. The backyard swelled and rolled, a lake of bleached gray grass stiffened by winter’s flirtation. Long sycamores with their bark like zebra hide demarcated the property line. Nestled back in the trees a mother-in-law suite puffed smoke from its chimney. Beaujolais envied the little far-off house. He wanted a cigarette but he didn’t know the decorum. He was relieved when Massimo opened a tin of Davidoff Primeros, leaning in eagerly when his host offered his flame.

“Good,” Massimo said. “We are both stupid.”

“I need to stop.”

“Same but I am only a man.” He winked. “Earlier you ask me what I do for work. What does my daughter say?”

Beaujolais turned the question over, feeling for a serrated edge. “She said you were in business.”

“What type of business?”

“I don’t like to pry.”

“What is pry?”

“Dig.” He exhibited digging.

“Yes. Pry.” He mimicked Beaujolais’s pantomime. “To pry is bad.”

“I don’t like when people ask me how I survive.”

“How do you survive, Benny?”

Beaujolais acknowledged the joke with a puff of air across his vocal cords. “By any means necessary.”

“You are Machiavelli.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“No. Some of us are Medicis. You have money, yes?”

“Yes, I have money. But I wish I didn’t.”

“Your parents?”

“They died.” He honestly didn’t know if he was lying.

“Did you prefer your mother or your father?”

“My father. Definitely.”

“How was he?”

“He was quiet. He liked rock and roll. He played it in the house real loud and my mother used to yell at him. He made sure I didn’t need anything.”

“And your mother?”

“She was tall. I remember her hands. Her fingers were very long, like mine.”

“So you inherit the money, yes?”

Beaujolais nodded.

“But you say you wish you did not have the money. Why do you wish this?”

“Well, I mean, because…then they would be alive.”

“But you do not know them. And what you do know is not flattering. Your father was obnoxious, inconsiderate of others. Your mother was a gigantessa. Is not money preferable?”

Beaujolais, unsure of how Benny would answer, defaulted to silence.

“This is rude. I apology.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Money is what allows us to be ourselves. Without money, you are nothing. A man cannot be himself if he is nothing. Look.”

Approaching from the east a flock of egrets spread across the bone-white sky. Beaujolais followed their progress as the birds swirled and reshaped, an orchestra of feathers conducted by the wind.

“When I was a boy, mio zio, uncle, my uncle, he collect coins. When I go to his house, he show me his coins. Teach me their history, their names. Stater, trite, hekte, daric, drachma, florin, denarius. My favorite is asses because I learn English in school. My asses are copper, your asses are bronze, this kind of thing. My teacher, she yell, but I say, ‘This is history!’

“Mio zio, he have many many coins. Three or four safes entire full of coins. Old coins, even pieces of coins. My zia, she say, ‘Your love for your coins is more than your love for me.’ My uncle smile, make his arms like this.” Massimo shrugged. “The coins are his passion. He read coin magazine, coin book. On weekends he travel to coin conferenze and at Sunday dinner, he show me what he buy. ‘This coin is from the Roman empire. This one is from the Greeks.’ And I say, ‘Throw it in the trash.’ Our little joke.” Massimo paused to chisel ash off his cigarillo against the instep of his boot. “When I am fourteen, my uncle, he is not coin professional, you see. The coins is his svago, hobby. He works with my father. He needs new money to buy the old money. This is the joke he make. As I say, when I am fourteen, my uncle, he die at work. Shot. My father is also shot, in leg and arm, but my uncle—” Massimo simultaneously touched his temple and popped his tongue out of his head.

“I’m sorry,” the arbiter lied.

“No no no, listen, listen.” Massimo spread his palm in the center of Beaujolais’s back, guiding him through his anecdote. “Mi zia, she give me the coins. She say, ‘I do not want the coins in my house. Take them, Simo, take them away.’ When she say this I am—I cannot speak. Me! Unable to speak. Can you imagine? I am rich, you see. But I am also torn. Can I sell these coins my uncle love? Is that of disrespect? I ask my father. He say the coins do not belong to my uncle now. They are my coins, I can do what pleases me.” His cigar met his lips and he exhaled erratic designs. “I find coin shop in the directory. Do you remember directory? The book with the numbers?”

“A phone book. The yellow pages.”

“Sì sì, I call the shop and I say I have a primo coin collection, the best of the best. The man, he say, ‘Bring it here, little boy, heh heh heh.’ He is think I am young, I am stupid. He is surprise when I arrive with two of my father’s big men. The coin shop man, his attitude change. He inspects my uncle’s coins with great reverence. Hours he spends with his micro glasses, his microscopio. When he is finished, his face is fretting. He say to me, ‘I am sorry, but I cannot offer you much money. This is a beautiful collection. One rich with history.’ I remember he say this exact—rich with history.

“I say yes, I know. Doi. My uncle was rich, I want to be now rich also.

“The man, he twist his head. He say these coins are very old and in them we read the story of mankind. ‘They make good exhibit in museum, but I do not own a museum, I own a coin shop.’ ”

Massimo tossed his cigarillo, and Beaujolais, permitted, dropped the butt he’d been holding. “My father’s big men, they puff their chests, but the man, he will not waver. ‘There is no market,’ he say. ‘They are not good investment. Doubloons. Morgan heads. Flying eagle. Saint-Gaudens. People want these coins, gold and silver, investments.’ This is when I understand.” He held his hand flat sideways like a cleaver and severed the next three words: “History”—chop—“is”—chop—“worthless. You see? My uncle, he spend his life collecting trash. For him they are precious. He love them. But to love something does not grant this thing value.

“I once knew a man, a strong man, a bad man, a man you do not want to meet.” Massimo stopped strolling and lowered his voice conspiratorial. “He love shit. Shit, Benny. Real shit. He is like addict. He wants for a woman to shit on his stomach and feed him this shit with a spoon, like gelato. He loves it, he pays for it, he dreams of shit.

“Now does this mean I want to pay a woman to shit on my stomach? Does the gelateria offer a new shit flavor? You see what I mean? You may love shit or Japanese cars or REO Speedwagon, but it does not infect me. One man does not decide what the next man needs. My uncle, I learn from his mistake. He collect history, I collect money, and I take it wherever I find it. If there is money here, I go here. If there is money there, I go there. I use money to make more money. I breed money. My family, we are farmers. Goat, sheep, cattle—now we farm money as well.”

A pair of concrete benches formed parentheses around a firepit. The men sat across the ashes. “When your parents die, this cause you tremendous pain, sì?”

Beaujolais nodded.

“When they are gone, you are alone?”

Over Massimo’s shoulder, the house was small and far away.

“You say you want parents, not money, but it is not parents you want. You want connection, an end to your alone. Love.” Massimo toed the remnants of the passed-away fire. “I am old man. When I am your age, I do not listen to old men. They do not speak loud enough, and now my voice is their voice. So listen to an old man. The things you want, they are my uncle’s coins.”

Beaujolais affected the posture of someone to whom this was new information.

“When I meet you today, I am expect Gia’s typical Vespa boy. A fool with a haircut, eyes behind expensive sunglasses, and when they are remove, the eyes never look into my own. But you are not this man. You wear no glasses. You look me in the eye. You shake my hand. Gesù Cristo.” Massimo’s laugh reminded Beaujolais of the purple felt vampire on a show he watched as a kid. “You hear? I tell you I sound like the old men. This is why I refuse liquor. One champagne, my mouth become acquedotto. What I am say is you are strong, Benny. You are strong. And you become strong when most become weak. I think you need be grateful.”

“Grateful for what?”

“If your parents live, who are you?”

“Their son.”

“Okay, if you are the son and not the orphan, if they smother you in hug and kiss, if you receive love, care, are you the same man if you were not the same boy? I know these children. Vitello, veal, take take take. Their parents, they say, ‘Look, look, the world, it is beautiful! Eat it, hear it, touch it, whatever you see, you can have.’ These children, with their magnifiche lives, their eyes go blind. Is this what you prefer? Rich boy on the Jet Ski, carefree, look at me. Is this your preference?”

“I think I would have liked the chance to know what it’s like.”

“Chance. The flip of a coin.” Snorting thickly, Massimo spat in the firepit. “With my daughters, when I hold them, when they are babies, I promise to protect them from chance. I give them my total, my whole. I love Gia. I love Amara. They make me lucky. I do things, big things. I ruin myself. Now Gia, she hate me. And Amara…If I knew who kill her, I…I will…” Massimo’s chin fell to his chest, his jaw heavy with the weight of the unspeakable. Minutes passed, the father inhaling, calm, measured, exhaling with the same control, reassembling himself.

If I knew who killed her. The fragment cracked like an egg on the arbiter’s frontal lobe. It didn’t make sense for Massimo to say anything to Benny about Amara’s grisly fate—at least not on purpose. The lack of calculation—

Massimo honking his nose in his handkerchief aborted further rumination. His voice was thinner than a razor blade: “What is the gift you receive from your parents?”

“Uh.” The question’s baldness appalled even him. “Are you asking for a dollar amount?”

“Money is a curse. What is the gift?”

“If you say life, I’m out of here.”

“Pain, son. The gift is the pain. Pain, real pain, this is precious. Pain is beton.” He hammered his fist into the bench. “Concreto.” Pounding. “Pain eats your attention. Pain provides an option. Destroy the pain or die.” Meat met stone, wet and heavy, until blood dripped down his wrist. He gasped: “Those in pain forget…they only feel it because…they are alive. No pain, no life. I work my life to keep my daughters from pain. Pain is the one thing they do not have. As adults, they seek it, the reality of it, the truth.” He secured the loose end of his handkerchief between his teeth and knotted the dressing tight around his knuckles, beaten raw as carpaccio. “If I am you, I do not mourn these parents. I say to them, ‘Mamma, Papà, thank you. Your death allows me to live.’ My daughters are not as fortunate as you. Their father is alive. Do you understand?”

Beaujolais said yes, and Benny echoed him, in the farthest place away.

37

For eighty dollars you can jump off the top of the Stratosphere. Benny said he wasn’t scared but still let him go first. They watched a video on how to do it and the man gave him a jumpsuit and Beauj changed behind the curtain. An elevator brought them higher. It was just the three of them up here, all alone with Paradise. The man secured him: the clips, the straps, the harness. “Any last words?”

“Benny.”

The jumpsuit was tight. There wasn’t a good place for the ring box.

“Why are you kneeling?”

“Benjamin—”

“Stand up right now, Beauj.”

There wasn’t a good place for this anywhere.

“I’m just tying my shoe.”

He was ready to jump.

—

I love you.

“I’m not like you.”

I love you.

“You faggot.”

You love me.

“I fucking hate you.”

Please just let me love you.

“You make me want to die.”

Because maybe—together—you can learn to love you too.

—

After Las Vegas, he stopped wondering if it was going to happen and reserved his concern for how.

Benny necessitated a certain volume, but he didn’t think Benny could do it if they were in the same room, not if they could see each other. A text was too clinical, too quiet. Over the phone would be preferable. It would probably be best to be alone when he found out. Nothing physical to tear into, no one to witness him break apart.

Instead it was a note, Benny’s block font on a brown paper bag:

B

We met when we were scared. I thought together we might be less scared but I was wrong. Im still scared and I dont think I ever wont be. And youre still scared too but now youre scared of me. Youre not going to leave so i am. Sucks. Goodbye.

B

Benny’s phone rang the first two times, straight to voicemail the subsequent hundred. Texts and emails unanswered. A deluge of DMs unseen. In the moment when he thought he might completely disintegrate, Beauj drove to Walmart and bought an XBOX. The kid across the hall helped him set it up. Showed him how to create an account, search for gamer tags. He made his name B3NNYCALLM3, added L0bsterPutz as a friend, waited. Wept.

He stalked Benny’s frequent ports of call. The bar with the big nachos. The GameStop by the Wingstop. He bought a ball cap and rented a car and parked on the corner and kept vigil on the door to their apartment in the rearview. Nothing was too preposterous: he’d never been in love before.

On the third day he abandoned “the rules” and logged into Benny’s email. The same password unlocked his Instagram. His messages were a red room where he traded despicable media. Genetic mistakes, machine-shop catastrophes, military drone murder—Benny cry-laughing to it all. Beauj recognized some of the men with whom he exchanged these cursed videos. Their faces peppered Benny’s feed, posed with babies or rainbow trout or automatic weapons, their sunglasses never not on in the into-camera videos they filmed behind the steering wheels of their trucks. Besides them Benny followed military influencers, white male podcasters, rotten-brained meme pages, race-baiting prank channels, alphas, sigmas, rise-and-grinders, a bevy of entrepreneurial concierge pornography actresses, monster trucks (not the drivers, the trucks), fantasy football soothsayers and bands with logos that were impossible to read.

Beauj lost an entire afternoon in Benny’s schizophrenic search page plunging the hole with no bottom. The scroll depicted complicated interests. Disparate phenomena caught his eye: Here lived men, men like them, men with bodies and faces. These men occupied panels beside androgynous women with severely cropped hair and people whose beauty outfaced gender. Their nebulous perfection told the story Beauj had been begging to hear. Benny thought it was a big deal when really it was a small deal, because it fit in a much larger thing: there were too many attractive people in the world to know how you felt about all of them. He dreamed of meeting them all together, all these people Benny looked at in secret without liking them. Why is it so important to you, this need to know what you are?

He could have spelunked forever, but the dissonance hurt his eyes. He went blank to clips of Benny’s favorite comedian, the moonfaced bro-bro he quoted whenever he made a grilled cheese. He had to admit he was funny.

Using Deebo$amuel29349 as a skeleton key, Beauj hacked Benny across the internet. His meager footprint yielded pyrite. The transponder in his car hadn’t triggered any toll fees. None of their shared accounts had shipped goods to a new address. His credit card statement showed a $43.17 transaction on night one at a gas station near the ocean, nothing since, but he was still in the habit of using his debit card for everything, and his banking website used an old email, another thing Beauj didn’t have.

He called their friends and interrogated lightly. When they asked him what was going on, he didn’t know what to say.

He called the hospitals, left his phone number, called them back.

Reaching the end of the labyrinth, he confronted the Minotaur.

“I’m sorry to have to call you.”

Shelly Mae thanked him in her serpent tongue. “Benjamin is lucky to have such a good friend. Any friend of my son’s is a friend of mine.”

Say “friend” again, bitch. I can read between your horns.

He dreamed of Benny’s car, of Benny’s voice, of Benny’s body, but he never saw his face until Tuesday, the fifth day, when he found him in front of the Applebee’s near the racetrack.

He was doing his rounds, going from the bar with the pickleback shots to the diner with the crispy onion rings, and cutting through the parking lot skipped the light on Galveston. That’s when he saw someone wearing an M&M’s NASCAR jacket with the shoulder patched in the same place as Benny’s, someone whose nose bumped like Benny’s in profile, someone who clamped his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and blew smoke out of the right side of his mouth, and Beauj left the car running, and someone with Benny’s voice said flatly, “No fucking way,” and now they were both running, striding the parking lot, beating twin rhythms on the new asphalt, aglow with metal-halide luster, and his beloved leapt like some mutagenic deer, spanning the entire breadth of a concrete planter, and he understood, bearing witness to this feat of atypical athleticism, that the man he was pursuing, this man who represented the circumference of his world, was cheating in this race, bolstered by, most likely, if he knew him—and his life’s greatest hope was that he did—crystal methamphetamine, and he took this into consideration as he focused on his breathing, locking in like a man giving chase to his own fleeing soul.

They ran in front of a cookie store and a home goods store and a store that only sold containers and a store where every item was under five dollars and a store that sold everything there was. Sleepy turtles and porcine gerbils and a pile of dachshund puppies, their eyes still crusted with birth, watched these other animals at play in the big cage on the other side of the glass, and after the large stores came the little stores and like a film reel played on loop the men appeared over and over on the windows, an experimental movie projected in the glass, and he was made yellow by the Golden Arches and blazed purple by a Taco Bell and for a strange hallucinatory juncture, when he was forced to double back, he burned with both colors simultaneously and also neither at all.

At the end of the lot the pavement ceded to a rising green incline. Benny struggled in the wet grass but his boots secured more purchase than Beauj’s sneakers. The huntsman tumbled down the slick angle as Benny achieved the summit, disappearing into the darkness there where he discovered a soaring retaining wall blocking his deliverance. Beauj threw himself loping in the angle of Benny’s retreat, bounding down the hill to follow his quarry alongside a grocery store, running into the only open space, a gap between two cargo trailers. Realizing he’d inadvertently trapped himself down a lumpers bay, Benny’s disdain echoed out the mouth of the tunnel thunderous and fulminating, and Beauj dropped in a spasm of battlefield muscle memory. Crawling on his belly in the shaft, he smelled the piquant odor of Benny’s indigenous combustion. After five days it was like breathing air.

And there he was. Panting, doubled over, haloed in brutal white—Benny. It was like seeing your home on fire. For a while only their respirations reverberated down the aluminum corridor, creating a hum in the throat of the tunnel. He approached incremental, unprovoking, loath to spark anything physical: he doubted his capacity to defend himself: he feared he’d allow himself to be destroyed.

Benny’s back straightened, his hair matted to his florid face. Beauj froze with his movement, but Benny simply sat on the loading dock and bit a cigarette out of his pack. The lighter’s burning reality trumped halogen’s prosthetic radiance. Smoke billowed.

“I…,” he began, faltering. In the place where words should follow, Benny roared, primogenial, the sound of a dying lion.

Beaujolais understood. He couldn’t agree more.

He gravitated to the far side of the bay. He wasn’t as tall as Benny, he had to push himself up to perch. He stared at the distance between his feet and said to the concrete below, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“And?”

Beauj adjusted Benny in his peripheral. “And what?”

“Am I okay?”

“Looks like we’re doing the same.”

Benny lay back on the platform. His T-shirt wasn’t long enough. Beauj saw his ribs protruding. The skin baked a darker cimarron. He looked like he’d been at the beach.

“You been at the beach?”

“What is this, Beauj?”

“It’s just a question.”

“This life, what is it? This whole thing.”

“I don’t know.”

“We all just wait around waiting. It’s a big glass and everyone’s filling it up.”

At least when he screamed it made sense. “You look like you got some sun.”

“A couple nights ago I was down the water having a few beers with these guys I met and one of these guys starts talking about some computer chip. The fastest computer chip they ever made. It whips the shit out of the computers we got now. Twenty-seven zeros faster, some number I never heard of. This chip proves parallel universes. Quantum—quantum something. He says things are connected, everything, all of us. The chip proves it. Say you take some apples and you set them up just right. He says you can fuck with one apple and the other one, like, feels it, because the universe bends in half like a magazine. Like if time is a piece of paper, you just fold it, and the beginning and the end are in the same place.” He brought his hands together above his stomach like closing a book. “Like this U, this U thing. Have you heard of this?”

Beauj moved infinitesimally closer. “I don’t think so.”

“Me either! And this is exactly the type of shit we should be hearing about. He showed us a video. It’s legit. Quantum, the whole thing. You mess with apple A over here, it’s like you messed with apple B over there. And it’s like bam. We’re apples.” With his hands he established two apples. “I think you want to be apple B. Apple B isn’t fucking everything up. That’s apple A.” He sat up. “You don’t want to be apple A, man.”

Benny turned his head. His eyes remained low. “Apple A is the one fucking it up.” The side of his face sucked and puckered: he always gnawed his cheeks on crystal. “Apple A.” He held his palm flat. “Apple B.” He held his other palm flat. “I hurt”—he touched his palms together—“you feel it. When you hurt—” He dropped one hand, leaving the other by itself. “I don’t feel a fucking thing.”

“That’s not true.”

“Why don’t you hear me when I say things?”

“I hear you.” Getting closer.

“I don’t feel anything, Beauj. Not just about you, about everything. I think I used to but I can’t remember.”

“You did.” He could almost touch him. “I remember.”

“Of course you remember. I’m the first apple.”

“I don’t think we’re apples, Benny.”

“An apple never thinks it’s an apple.”

“You’re probably right.” He grazed Benny’s neck with the tip of his finger.

“What the fuck.”

“You felt it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” He reached for him and with paramount softness caressed the patch between his earlobe and chin. “But you felt it.”

Benny leaned into his touch. “I can feel bad stuff,” he said. “It’s the good stuff…When shit’s right it feels wrong. I can’t tell anymore.”

“I think you can. I think you’re tired.”

“I’ve been tired.”

“Come home.”

“I haven’t been sleeping.”

“You can sleep.”

“I haven’t been sleeping at all.”

“Me either.” It was impossible but he had his arms around him. “I’ve missed you.”

“If I could go to sleep forever I would. Wake me up when it’s better, skip all the shit.”

“You’re gonna have to sleep a long time.” He gulped the smell of Benny’s head, huffing it, getting high. He felt his breath through his shirt, the shape of his mouth burrowing. Benny spoke into his chest and he heard it there: “What they don’t tell you is you’d never know the difference.” He pulled away. “Never ever.”

Benny hopped off the ledge.

38

The men were big in the small house. Massimo introduced them: Darlo, Antonio, Amedeo, Filippo, Vincenzo, Matteo, Tommaso, Antonio, Elio—each had a nickname as well.

He shook the hands that were offered, nodded to those that were not, and selected a bottle of Birra Moretti from an iced-down bucket on the floor. He popped the cap with his lighter. One of the men remarked he had never seen it done like that, and Beaujolais showed him how to do it. The man cheered. Over his shoulder, Darlo smiled, and the arbiter thought, That isn’t how you smile at a stranger.

There were sandwiches on a cake tray and shrunken arancini footballs, olive variegations, lengths of squid like unrolled scumbags, and red peppers miring in oil. A sink, a refrigerator, a cast-iron woodstove. Ash like dandruff dappled the firebox. A ladder connected to a loft space but no one was above them. The house was one large undivided room and in it the men gathered in pods. One cluster watched a muted football match, another slapped dominoes on an antiquarian oak table, the black surface mirror-smooth and wildly skittering the bones; the oldest man noted their totals in a newspaper margin, sipping coffee from a bowl.

“Vuoi giocare?”

He told him he didn’t speak Italian. The scorekeeper didn’t understand.

The football game had been abandoned and therefore it interested him. He sat on the couch in the best position to observe Massimo. He was showing Darlo something on his phone and Darlo laughed and Massimo shoved him in the way of brothers. He said something to him before stepping outside, cigarillo in hand.

By himself now, Darlo’s smile abated, clocking in or out. He raked his dark eyes across the room, swiping past Gianna’s new boyfriend once, twice, then remaining.

Beaujolais appeared enthralled by the soccer, but it felt like another game was starting. You didn’t stare at people like that, only objects. The unabashedness: a specific, charging thrill.

Darlo was becoming closer.

Now here beside him on the couch.

The immediacy of their atoms colliding—the reaction—and Beauj readjusted himself to the parting of Darlo’s wet lips. “You need to find a better hiding place.”

At this distance the precise symmetry of Darlo’s face made it difficult to speak. He was handsome for a man his age, maybe even striking, and Beauj noticed, stuttering: “I’m not— No I’m just—”

He was nervous in the most implausible way, like choking on the ghosts of butterflies. He pointed his bottle at the television. “The game. I’m just watching the game.”

“You are a fan of our football?”

“Sure. Who isn’t?”

“Me, I’m not.”

“You’re not?” He seized the opportunity to be a man, repeating the things he’d heard them say, keeping his face straight. “…if you think in triangles, it’s beautiful, really beautiful, once you learn to watch it.” He’d been talking for a while and his tone made him want to die and be forgotten.

Darlo nodded, looking forward. “So you’re not hiding.”

“I’m right here.”

“A true football fan.”

“Big-time.”

“Who’s playing?”

He was drowning and the tiny acronyms in the corner of the screen were no life preserver. He stopped squinting. Dust flew off his lashes as he batted them: “The orange team and the blue team.”

Darlo laughed, so generous Beauj could have kissed him. “I knew it! I told Simo, look at him hiding. He said maybe he is a fan, but no one is a Venezia fan, and they’re playing Lazio, and Gigi is too much of a hippie to date a fascist, but then again, with Americans these days…Where are you from, in America?”

“Colorado.”

“Boulder. The University of Colorado Buffaloes, right?”

Beaujolais crossed his legs, unsure. “That’s right,” he wagered.

“I have been.”

“Really?”

“I went to university in Kansas. It is right beside you. We drove over for the March Madness. I love basketball.” Darlo canted an eyebrow. “Let me guess, you love basketball, too?”

He was a dense man, his shirt sucked tight against a reasonable paunch and unbuttoned past good taste. Rings choked his ape fingers, a silver bracelet on his wrist. Jade dust floated in the chocolate of his eyes. His hairline receded in a horseshoe but what remained was thick. His bass mouth had a way of collapsing: he looked like the Grinch when he smiled. “College basketball is still pure. Better than professionals, more like the European game. They pass, play defense, not catch, shoot, flop. If I want to see that”—he flicked his chin to the TV—“I watch this shit.”

“I’ll drink to that,” tilting his beer: he had the barest idea of what was being said. “How long were you in America?”

“Three years.”

“You get around much?”

“No, I was stupid. I studied straight through. Summer semesters. Internships. I saw some things. Denver, like I say. Fargo. Fair-go. Fair-go, Nurth Dah-ko-ta, donchyaknow. Milwaukee, which I thought was a bit like Copenhagen. The river and the bicycles. I went to Oklahoma on three occasions.”

“Why Oklahoma?”

“My roommate was from there. Thanksgiving. In Tul-sa.” He twanged the syllables. “I couldn’t believe they actually talked like that. Ah hell.” He cleared his throat. “Ah hey-yell. Ah hail. That’s it. Ah hail. It’s like in the movies. You don’t have an accent.”

“There’s no accent where I’m from. No nothing, really.”

“Do you think I have an accent?”

Beaujolais laughed.

“I didn’t realize how bad my accent was until I go over there. At orientation, this black kid called me Spaghetti Eddy. It stuck. Stick?”

“Stuck.”

“Stuck, ‘Eddy’ stuck. I still have friends who don’t know my real name.”

“Your English is excellent.”

“You flatter me. Your consonants are hard and my tongue is too soft.”

It felt insane to be doing this. “We can be a mouthful.”

“Luckily I have a big mouth.”

If this were a cartoon, smoke would be pouring out of his ears. “Why Kansas?”

“They have an excellent agricultural science program.”

“You’re a farmer.”

“We all are.” He grinned his simian smile. “My father.” He gestured to the men gambling around the table. “He’s the bald one with the ponytail, the Albanian. He grows canapa for these guys.”

“What’s that?”

He connected his thumb to his forefinger and brought them to his pursed lips.

“Ah.” Beaujolais rocked his head back then nodded in dwindling increments like his head was a ball at the end of its bounce. “Canapa.”

“Sì, I grew up down the road from Massimo. My father had a farm. He thought he was Wavy Gravy. Peace and love, chickens and pigs, orgies. It was too groovy to last. We made apple…sidro?”

Beaujolais failed to translate: Darlo’s mouth was too pink and annular.

“Cider, apple cider. We had an orchard. Cherries, olives of course, every farm has olives, but mostly canapa. Acres of it. We only harvest the top branches. Beat the rest for hash and feed the stalks to the pigs. They were very happy pigs.”

“So you went to Kansas to learn how to grow pot?”

Darlo screwed his face almost sympathetic. “No.” He puffed on a sleek black stick that looked like a flash drive. A cloud of musk and diesel. “You smoke? It’s King Louis.”

“I go crazy on that stuff.”

“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

Beaujolais was unsure what he wanted or what was wanted of him.

“I went to Kansas to see how you grow things in America. I wanted to be modernized, learn the cutting edge. We do things a certain way in Italy, the way of our grandfathers and their grandfathers and so on. These methods are outdated, they rely on variables. Weather, soil, sunlight. American farmers are more scientific. They have all that land to tinker in, to innovate with. Sustainability. Aquaponics. You will not hear these words at the cooperativo in Umbria. If you bring them up, they call you a faggot.”

Darlo’s eyes flashed, a test Beaujolais recognized. “Shit,” Beauj blustered. “Nothing wrong with wanting to know what’s coming next.” He uncrossed his legs and spread them. “You must have had a pretty good time over there.”

“You think farm school sounds fun?”

“I mean the girls.” He lowered his voice like when men talked about pussy. “A pot farmer with an Italian accent shows up to Kansas? You must have been drowning in it. I bet you were the Wizard of Oz.”

Darlo twirled the vaporizer in his fingers like a miniature baton. “More like Dorothy.”

Beaujolais’s skin rippled. He was primally keenly alert. He anchored his eyes on the television. Darlo’s face was an invitation: lips spread, eyes cervine. Beaujolais glanced over his shoulder: other men, other games. He retrieved a cigarette—before his lighter was out of his pocket, Darlo’s hand was in front of his mouth.

“Allow me.”

And he did, he allowed it, leaning in and inhaling new fire, an agreement, sanctioning. The smoke parted. Darlo smiled.

“What’s your brand?”

“I’m not loyal. I’ll smoke whatever.”

“That’s good to know.” Darlo stood and stared down at him. “See you tomorrow.”

Beaujolais watched the soccer. The visiting team lost.

—

“Would you like to hear a story about Gianna?”

“…since she is this tall.”

“…Massimo! He cry! Simo, strong Simo, he is cry like baby. I am like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck, you know? I say, ‘What the fuck, man?’ He say, ‘Cenzo, I am having a little boy.’ ”

“…expecting a boy. Doctor say boy. Mamma say boy. But then, the nurse, she say, ‘Is not a boy.’ ”

“…fat baby, like little zucca. Pumpkin. So we all call her Zucca.”

“…walk when she is one.”

“…read when she is three.”

“…she is crying. ‘Baby, baby, why do you cry?’ She say, ‘Zio Antonio, I do not want to be dancer. I want to be zookeeper.’ I say, ‘Oh, Zucca. You can be anything you dream.’ She say, ‘Anything?’ I say, ‘Yes, baby. Anything.’ She say, ‘I change my mind. I want to be a giraffe.’ ”

“…best swimmer in the region.”

“…the soloist.”

“…she say, but I want one. I tell her, ‘When you are old, you have cannoli when is ever your pleasure.’ She say—how is the English? ‘Elio, como si dice ma allora sarò grasso anch’io come te?’ ”

“But then I will be fat like you.”

“…she get the lead role. ‘This is wonderful, Zucca!’ She say, ‘But I only audition to get out of class!’ ”

“…waltz, classical, tap, jazz. What is the one? For the blacks?”

“Hip-hop?”

“Sì. Hippo.”

“…English, Spanish, French. English, Spanish, French. I forget the fourth.”

“Italian, buffo.”

“…any university in the world.”

“…do not fret, Zio. Cambridge is not so far.”

“…but when her mind is firm, nothing prevent her.”

“…same as her father. Exact.”

“…like her mother. Like mirror, sì?”

“…her other boyfriends.”

“…the one with the big hat.”

“…the retard.”

“…more short than her by a meter. She is like a tower next to him.”

“…Terrence. But he is like mouse. Gianna is a Di Giovanni. She is a bear, you know?”

“Trust me, I know.”

“A bear.”

“Summertime. We go to lake. Sun. Boats. Terrence, he wear rosa sweater!”

“Pink!”

“Sì! Pink! Pink sweater to lake! Gianna say to him, ‘Terrence, you look like a cock!’ We never see Terrence another.”

“…Carlos, but he go back to Venezuela. He lose green card. Drugs.”

“Is always the drugs.”

“…the tall one, he is like Frankentstein. From Austria. He eat like donkey, dumb as donkey—”

“Hung like donkey.”

“Why you say this type of thing?”

“…her sister.”

“…terrible. Very all terrible.”

“We will find him. We will not deliver him to the police.”

“Figlio di puttana.”

“…with my own hands.”

“…no father should see this day.”

“…his own daughter.”

“…sad day.”

“The most sad.”

“Saddest.”

“He needs to retire.”

“If Gia was a boy, we all work for her.”

Beaujolais’s phone rang.

“Well hello, Zucca.”

—

Between them in the back of the town car, glasses of Chambord and soda rattled in their cup holders.

“What else?”

“Is it true you were born a boy?”

“Oh god.” She lit another cigarette. “My uncles make a blind man wish he was deaf.”

“They speak very highly of you.”

“I am sure. High enough to get over themselves.”

“You’re folksy tonight.”

“I am drunk, Robert.”

Beaujolais confirmed the partition was still closed. “Who’s Robert?”

“Do not worry. He speaks no English.” She rapped on the glass and the divider slid open.

“Oui, madam?”

“I want you to tongue my asshole until I melt.”

“Oui, madam.” Heat came out of the vents.

“See? We can talk.” She dashed more liquor into her glass. “We can do whatever we want.”

“I need to be clear tomorrow.”

She lampooned her jaw firm. “I need to be clear tomorrow. A-mur-rica. Marl-or-bo-ro.” She laughed. “You need not be so serious.”

“This is serious.”

“Tonight is not tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is just tonight but later.”

She gritted her teeth, narrowed her eyes, withstanding an invisible sun: “Tomorrow is just tonight but later.” Trenchant laughter. “Who speaks like this? You sound high.” Her eyes flumed. “We should get high.” She unlocked her phone, the screenlight a flash bomb in the window-tinted dusk.

“Darlo tried to get me high.”

“You talked to Darlo?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Darlo does not talk to me.”

“He talked to me.”

“He must like you.”

“Gianna.”

“Call me Gigi, my American stud.”

“I think you and I and Uncle should talk. I feel like you’re underestimating what’s happening.”

“I am not estimating in either direction.”

“This is a real jackpot.”

“I do not speak cowboy, Robert.”

“It’s going to be messy.”

“Lionel.”

“What?”

“Lionel Messi.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

Her thumbs pecked the surface of her phone. “Marl-or-bo-ro.”

—

The driver parked and opened the rear passenger door and Beaujolais followed Gianna across the street. The man she’d been texting had a Canadian accent. Keys jangled on his chest, dangling on a tied shoelace he wore around his neck like a lanyard. He called Gianna Geeze Whiz and gripped her waist firmly as they kissed each other’s cheeks. He unlocked a door and held it for Gianna and cut in front of Beaujolais and positioned his face very close to her ass as they went up the stairs.

Instead of furniture there were milk cartons, candles not lamps; reflected in the wavy windows, their tiny flames surged enormously. The acrid stink of recidivist quadruped foulings. He used to have a ferret but “it became too much.” He said he didn’t need anything, that it all gets in the way, “time is its own reward.”

Gianna flopped into a bulbous red lovesack the same shape and color as a kidney bean. She lifted her leg in the air and the man removed one boot then the next, sniffing each stocking loudly as he peeled them.

“Wallace, you pig,” Gianna cackled.

“When I die, I want to come back as your socks.”

Beaujolais watched from the windowsill, repelled by whatever this was. He understood how Wallace’s act might work on morons, but he would be ashamed to be who he was. Behind the arbiter the fire bloomed. He checked the time on his phone, subtracted hours, tabulating sleep.

“Get me stoned, pig.”

Wallace squealed, imitating swine. “Do you want to get high or do you want to get high?”

“I want to be high.”

“Heard chef. But you’ll have to roll over.”

Gianna flipped onto her stomach. Her dress bunched, exposing the creamsicle half-moon cleft of her buttocks. “Is this how you mean?”

Wallace ogled. “It’s not not how I mean.”

Beaujolais’s fists remained in his pockets.

“But no,” Wallace continued, “get up. You’re on my stash.”

Gianna moved to the floor and Wallace crouched and got his arms under the beanbag and like rolling a beached whale he flipped the chair over, unearthing a cache of plastic boxes. By his cellphone flashlight he picked among the stockpile, selected a box and said, “That’s your big boy.”

Wallace folded arachnid into a seated cross-legged position. Beside him on the floor was a music box and he opened it and tore a length of aluminum foil off a roll and positioned the sheet spanning his lap. He opened the container and tapped a lump of brown powder onto the foil. “Hand me that pen, love.” Gianna reached him a ballpoint and he removed the top and clamped the nib between his teeth and ripped it from the tubing and spat it out. “Come down here.”

Gianna collapsed into the blob.

Wallace handed her the pen tube and she plugged one end between her lips as he held the aluminum for her. “Remember, sip—”

“Don’t suck.”

“She’s learning.”

His lighter sparked beneath the foil and he held the flame in place, the sheet flashing like the belly of a thundercloud, rippling electric blue heaven. Her breath through the straw tooted a thin reedy whistle, playing the wrongest note. Smoke entered her and occupied portions of her body until it replaced her.

Beaujolais looked at the ground, disagreeing: the feeling the time for action has passed. Gianna retched. It sounded like oxygen was useless to her. She coughed like her life was poison.

“Good girl,” Wallace said. “Very very very good girl.”

Beaujolais flipped the switch in the bathroom. Embarrassed his life included this moment, he opened the toilet lid and loosed his stream with a purposeful disregard. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and smoked. Checked the phone. One new text from the only other person it could be:

Tomorrow

Mailbox across the street by the shopette

Light a cigarette and stand nearby

DO NOT look at me

x

Another dispatch from Uncle. The last one was beginning to make more sense.

He imagined her out there dis-existing in the beanbag—either he possessed zero understanding of Gianna or worse he understood her perfect. He wanted to attach a car battery to her, instill a re-ignition. If this is how you treat yourself imagine what you’ll do to me.

In his experience exploiting humans he’d found if you let others build you to their blueprints, it was easier to become something they needed. The shape you take is meaningless: your purpose is who you are.

This was not his purpose. His business was obliteration. He was not a goon nor gigolo nor factotum—he was a master killer, and this depraved cabaret bespoiled him. Reeking of a grotesque brag: Look how much I can hurt myself. He wasn’t impressed: there was already enough pain in the world, you didn’t have to make up your own. With his mind he styled her father a corpse, making him look like they always did—paused, static, free—manifesting death, picturing the red oasis: Massimo, frozen, drained of his most precious gift, a rosebud of blood planted like a navel in his forehead—

I won’t have a gun.

He quoted Benny to himself in the mirror: “You’re either fucked or you’re fucking.” He slapped his ridiculous futile face.

His business depended on order. Arbitration was a scripted endeavor. Adhere to your blocking, memorize your direction—Gianna wasn’t classically trained. Bad actors always want you to improvise. The heresy of action as reaction.

Reacting is when you literally died.

She had never killed a person and this was the big difference between them.

He thought of a thing he’d overheard once while on the security detail of a famous movie producer: “All these kids want to be Jackson Pollock, but no one can paint me a bowl of fruit.”

The faucet leaked water in a trickle and he splashed it on his face. Benny used to say Beauj catastrophized. Beauj always wondered where he learned that word. He questioned his face in the mirror: “Are you fucking or are you fucked?” His reflection seemed unsure.

At least there was Uncle. Uncle knew killers, knew killing, that It was just One Thing. Of the three of them he’d been evil the longest; he understood It best, the way It All worked. Uncle provided the blood to nourish the world’s great money trees; he found hollow men to harvest it for him, gray men like Beaujolais. At least he knew his rank in their order. Gianna was out of line: she thought she stood somewhere else. She didn’t know about It yet. That there are people in this world who tell the waves where to break. Men on earth who give names to the stars. Her hubris wasn’t unique and he refused sympathy. She’d never witnessed death’s testimony, how fervently life clung to itself. Someone needed to show her what It looked like, what It was all about—he was most likely this person and it bothered him.

Above him the bulb flickered. He dropped his cigarette in the toilet, heard it hiss.

“Tomorrow,” he said. There was only one face in the mirror. “After that comes after that.”

He opened the door, unfurling a tongue of light in the dark room. The pale bottoms of her feet. Something round worked between them. Boarlike breathing. The chair was no help. His footsteps were loud. Wallace was getting to his knees and Beaujolais punted his face. Only his stride not breaking. Following savagely through.

Tumbling. Falling.

Gianna didn’t move, couldn’t move. A needle had her pinned.

Wallace struggled to assemble himself in the shape of a table on the floor and the arbiter slid onto his back and compressed his knees to his chest and pistoned his legs violently outward and the table flipped.

He stood slowly, gathering himself, seeing where he was. In the light of the bathroom’s yellow rectangle Gianna’s feet were going green. Wallace, curling inward like a long pink grub, bleated through his fingers. It looked like he was holding his face on. Their shadows crossed, gradients of darkness. You’re not the only one who’d prefer I wasn’t here.

He found her pulse, finally—it was like she was hiding it. She was dying and he thought about it and then he thought about the money and he plucked the syringe and collected her and brought her to the tub and turned on the cold water and let the shower run. Weren’t you supposed to rub their forehead? Her heart was below her breast but touching her there felt indecent. Just earlier today she was beautiful.

When she came back, he rewarded her resilience with hot water. She said she was thirsty. He went to the kitchen for a glass and when he returned the air in the bathroom was thicker, warmer. He handed her the glass and stood there. “Do you need anything?”

“Smoke.”

He lit a cigarette. She dried her fingers on his pants. “Anything else?”

She pointed to the toilet.

“Are you sick?”

“Sit. Please.”

For a long time he looked at the ground, then even longer at the wall.

When she spoke, it was from somewhere else. “What happened?”

He told her.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.”

She considered this.

“I can—”

“No.”

“It’s your call.”

She asked for another cigarette and he lit two. She smoked hers carefully, holding it out of the shower stream. “We are…”

“Did you say something?”

She made no sign that she did. Then she said, “It is not what you think.”

He turned his head so he could see her. Smoke and steam leeched her face of angles, smudging her: she was flattened. “What you saw is not what you saw.”

“I know what it looked like.”

“I…I love him, I think. È l’unico modo…This is how I can give myself to him.”

All he could do was look at the floor.

She said “our father” and he heard her. She said he loved them too much.

She was crying.

This also wasn’t his job.

Water beaded on his upper lip. His shirt stuck to his back. The room was opaque, codified, congealed. She explained how her father loved her, and he remembered a night Benny’d taken him fishing, just the two of them. It was a hot night and they were a few miles out when a freak fog fell. The immediacy of the phenomenal onset. As if a cloud had imploded, entombing them in dense bales of gray cotton candy. Shrouded, vaporeon, the world disappeared, taking with it their relationship to distances and reducing them to their simplest shapes.

This was a lot like that.

He stood and Gianna sat up in the tub.

“You are leaving?”

“I need to sleep.”

“Stay. Please.”

Pitying her brought him no feeling beyond what it was. “What time is the car coming?”

“It come.”

“What time?”

“In the morning.”

“Gianna.”

Her floating hair fanned out like seaweed above her nipples. She looked like a mermaid, a sick one. “Why do you stare like that?”

“I’m tired.”

“How can a man be tired of this?” She cupped her breasts and juggled them. “What do you think?”

“Your lower back must hurt.”

“The cowboy makes a joke.”

“I need you to take this seriously.”

“I am. I do.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Look around you, see where we are. Is it not serious enough?”

“This is a dollhouse.”

“Vaffanculo.”

“Tell me what you think we are doing.”

“You are watching me bathe.”

“I want to hear you say it. What are we doing?”

Gianna slid down the wall of the tub, sinking chin-mouth-nose until only her eyes were above the water; obstinate, bratty, they blinked.

“I will walk away, Gianna.”

Her lips surfaced: “You cannot.”

“You don’t decide what I can do.”

“But if you leave, I have to tell them where to find you.” She dipped beneath the water. When she emerged he saw her clearer. “Perhaps you are the one who is unaware of what is going on.” She giggled. He regretted not letting her die.

“Men only want a slave or a mother, to control or be controlled. Even you, un frocione senza cuore, still you need a woman to define you. Can you not see I am moving in a direction? All I want is to hold your hand.”

Slowly Gianna submerged herself, staring out beneath the water, her eyes sharp and still as glass. It would be nothing to keep her down there forever. I will have to, he admitted, probably, eventually. Not now—he was curious: he suspected, in the living parts of him, that he didn’t really care if he died.

Only the skin of her lips breached the water. “Tomorrow a monster is killing a monster for a monster. This is what we are doing, Robert.” She was a hole he stared into. “Then we are the only ones.”

—

That night he dreamed of alligators or crocodiles. He always confused them. Whether he was sleeping or awake.

Part

III

39

“911. What’s your emergency?”

“He’s dead. He shot himself. He’s dead.”

“Who shot himself?”

“He’s dead.”

“Okay and what is your name?”

“He shot himself.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Benny.”

“Okay, Benny. Who’s injured?”

“Benny shot himself. Benny’s dead.”

—

The door was unlocked when he got back from the chicken place and he mentioned this to the police, how Benny never left the door unlocked unless he planned on leaving soon.

“I put my key in the door but the knob turned. He wasn’t in the living room so I yelled for him. I walked through the kitchen, checked the balcony. He wasn’t in the— He wasn’t in…his bedroom. The bathroom door was open. We— He never went in my room. There were red feathers everywhere. From the pillow. I didn’t move the pillow. It smelled burnt in there. His gun was on the ground.”

“When you found him, what did you do?”

“I picked up the firearm and cleared it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s what you do.”

“So you secured the weapon and then what did you do?”

“Called yall.”

“And how long had you and…”

“Benjamin. Benny.”

“How long had yall lived together?”

“Since we got out. He got out a little before me and he— He set it all up. For us.”

“You said he got out before you?”

“That’s right.”

“Of prison?”

“The Marine Corps.”

“Oh, that’s…Thank you for your service.”

“Tell him.”

“So. You came home and he was in your bed.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any notion why he did it in your bed?”

Because the other bed was ours. “No, not really.”

“Not really.” The officer scratched the side of his head with his pen. “Did he have any girlfriends?”

“No.”

“Nobody?”

“Officer, can we talk about something off the record?”

“That would depend on what it is.”

“I’m just thinking about his mother.”

He answered the rest of their questions.

“I think that’s about it. Is there anything else we should know on our end?”

He told them he just didn’t understand.

“All right. Well, I’m sorry to have to do this, Mr. Beige-o-lass, but we’re gonna have to ask you to clear out. Anything with a gun, we gotta let the lab boys come in. You can grab some clothes and whatnot. I just gotta watch you do it.”

They went to his room to observe him pack a bag. He collected some shirts from the closet. Pants and a pair of shorts. He needed cash. Opened the safe. Saw the ring box lying open. They understood: he was crying and it was their job to watch.

40

When his phone alarmed he was already showered and shaved and was sitting by the window smoking and drinking coffee with just a towel covering his lap. He checked the phone incessantly, unsure exactly of what he was expecting to receive. He felt like there had to be more to this: today was today.

He laid the towel on the floor and stretched his body in a bright wedge of golden morning, growing himself in the warm parameter, a sun pig, one breath followed by another because that’s how it goes.

He downed a glass of water, refilled it again. Sleep had come in thin sheets and he’d torn them. He was off to a bad start but who wasn’t. Drink water, fuel proper, go slow until it was time to go fast. It was about preventing the little stuff from becoming bigger stuff—there was barely enough room as it was.

By a quarter-till he was dressed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put on the shoes and thought about many different things. Most pressing was an unawareness of what happened afterward, if there was an afterward. He decided to leave it alone. Everything depended on whatever came right before.

More water. At least he looked nice.

The car was waiting for him. For eleven steps he was in the world. The driver asked him in French if he was warm enough and Beaujolais smiled. Neither spoke after that. He shut his eyes. It was hot in the car.

Traffic started far from the church, millions of dollars of shining black metal fighting to deliver the aggrieved. Maybachs and Range Rovers and Phantoms and Lexuses inched with the propinquity of migrating elephants. Frequently his driver put the car in park and got out to look at what was going on. One minute. Two. Beaujolais squeezed the upholstery. The lack of forward motion was like waiting to die. He told the driver he would walk.

He lit a cigarette and held it away from his body to spare stinking the suit. Pedestrians crossed between the stopped cars, turning their heads to follow the gridlocked parade as the procession blocked intersections, barricading perpendicular traffic. Discord pestered the morning frantic, pillaging the solemnity. Anxiety thrummed thick as cologne. A pack of mourners harangued a taxicab attempting to breach the procession. Pummeling the hood, booting the doors. A belt buckle cracked the windshield and the men cheered until a bent old nonna—the angle of her body the shape of an L leaning forward—scolded them in Italian, and they began to adjust each other’s collars like chastised boys, snickering as they smoothed their hair.

A man and a child held hands across the street. As they passed the primping men, the man stooped to whisper in the child’s ear.

The boy couldn’t believe it. “Vraiment?”

“Oui.” The man formed his hand into a gun. “Mafia. Pew-pew-pew.”

He arrived at a marvelous white dome and stood gawking at the grandfather of every American capitol. It didn’t look like a church but maybe it was; he was no expert in finding God. Teenage girls and Japanese flashed peace signs on the colossal stairs, their teeth shining to shame the marble, mourning nothing. This couldn’t be the place but it also could be and not knowing made him feel stupid and unprepared and like he might die.

He noticed a flood of somber people continuing down the sidewalk on their way toward a busy church.

“Goddamnit,” he said.

Approaching the church, he found its face frustrating. The architecture lacked cohesion, like an assemblage of leftovers, as if two churches were stacked on top of each other. The first level read older than the second, more stern. Stone columns framed the door like a handlebar mustache, forming a mouth that scowled beneath a pediment like a single gray eyebrow. As the church soared, it changed, rising to achieve a charming flamboyance. There were people up there carved into the stone, long vertical windows, a rosette like a cyclops eye. A belfry jutting off the east side disrupted the symmetry. He stepped back, cocked his head: “It’s crooked.” The church tilted leftward, toward the pinnacle, bent by the weight of its cross.

A farcical box for a ludicrous puzzle.

There were more effortless ways to kill yourself.

Maybe Benny was right. About him. About everything. Maybe he was a narcissist. Perhaps the fear of an unspectacular end was greater than his need to continue. It wasn’t insane if you knew him. Going big versus going home—Benny would have understood. He wouldn’t have had to explain himself.

And you said it wasn’t love.

A concrete island extended like a bib from the church and he stopped to chain another cigarette. News vans parked on the rim of the expanse, further choking the bottleneck. Men in blue vests aimed cameras at people holding microphones. They spoke in different languages. He overheard British English and stopped.

“…to Paris from all over Europe, surfacing from the shadier fringes of modern society to pay their respects to the late daughter of Massimo Di Giovanni. Di Giovanni is the alleged head of La Intensa, a criminal organization based in Central Italy with ties to human trafficking, drugs, gambling, extortion and racketeering. La Intensa are the figureheads behind last year’s FIFA bribery scandal as well as the exposed plot to kidnap the wife of the Albanian prime minister. Di Giovanni suffered the death of his daughter in a brutal gangland slaying last week at her internship in San Francisco, California. The perpetrators are still at large.”

He checked his watch, turned around: a chain of black cars made austere deliveries. Life went on behind them, and beside the entrance to a shopette, Uncle leaned against the mailbox.

Beaujolais joined the sidewalk down the street. At ten feet he stopped and positioned himself in a pocket of shade. They looked away from each other, two men smoking, nothing to see.

“I like your ponytail.”

“Black does not agree with me. I look like I play the trombone.”

“This is the nicest suit I’ve ever worn.”

“It suits you.”

“Can I keep it?”

“Of course. It is perfect. You look exactly like a hitman.”

Beaujolais stopped smiling. “Why are we talking?”

“Are you talking to me?”

“We should be careful.”

“We are. Look behind you. The orange van.”

“I see it.”

“Phones are out.”

“I thought this place was clean?”

“Inside the church, yes. But the rats will always pick through the trash.”

“What’s that building?”

“The Pantheon.”

“What is it?”

“The home of every god.”

“So it’s a church?”

“No, the gods moved out. The rent was too high.”

“What is it now?”

“Another place to take pictures.”

“I thought it was the place at first.”

“Yes, if this were a movie.”

They looked like they were rehearsing speeches.

“Do you know Saint Stephen?”

“No.”

“He was the first apostle martyred.”

“I don’t know shit about Jesus.”

“And when he proclaimed his face, he did it ceaselessly, and at him they gnashed their teeth.”

“Did he live over there?”

“No, over there. The party is in his house. L’église Saint-Étienne, the church of Saint Stephen. Ironic, really. He said God was everywhere, not only in the temple, and for this they stoned him to death.”

“Who were they?”

“I digress. There has been a development.”

“Fuck.”

“Maintain your direction, I am coming closer.”

“What’s the development?”

“No guns.”

“That’s funny.”

“Truthfully.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“It is out of my hands.”

“I’m dying.”

“Many hearts were broken.”

“You’re killing me.”

“Officers.” Uncle smiled at three nationales strolling. “Bonjour,” he said, adding, quieter, “Off you go, hunt your truffles, pigs.” A pause, then: “Last night I organized an informal soirée. Drinks, spit-roasted veal, some ketamine. As the night progressed, the African contingency prickled some nerves, specifically the pirates.”

“I forgot about the pirates.”

“They prefer it that way. Apparently they have a proclivity for mixing gunpowder with their cocaine.”

“The pirates are snorting gunpowder.”

“And cocaine.”

“You are lying.”

“I agree, it sounds fantastic, but this morning a memo went out mandating none of the invited would be granted access if they were armed.”

A pair of young women exited the shop, cutting directly between them. Uncle followed their sashay, facing Beaujolais head-on.

“You’re looking at me.”

“My god.”

“Look back over there.”

“The advancements in textiles never fail to astound.”

Uncle was holding a can of beer. Beaujolais told him to turn around.

“Right, right, subterfuge.”

“So no guns.”

“Nunca. Zilch.”

“What about Massimo’s guys?”

“It seems rude to ask.”

“Rude.”

“Quite.”

“Fuck.”

“The metal detectors are impressive.”

“I’m fucked.”

“I took it for good news.”

“How?”

“I find it prudent not to offer my opinion in matters to which I am ignorant, but I never quite understood how you thought you were going to shoot your way out of this.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“I fancy it more romantic this way, very dime-store, Tarantino without the cheesecake and feet.”

“Are you drunk?”

“What’s the matter, Bobby? You have school tomorrow?”

“Do you have my money?”

“She said it will be delivered like the first time. COD on DOA.”

“I’ll need proof.”

“Yes, pudding.”

“Hard proof.”

“Diamond.”

“If she reneges, I’ll kill her.”

“Promise you’ll let me watch.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be there too.”

“Godspeed, Prince of Mischief.”

“I’ll find you when it’s done.” It looked like he was talking to himself.

He crossed the street and stood near where the cars were letting out and opened the phone. Three minutes ago Gianna had texted she was five minutes away. Assured nobody was looking, he disinvited the combat knife into a trash can. He thought about what Uncle had said while he waited for her. Not being able to shoot someone was only very bad if they were still able to shoot you. He popped his knuckles, rolled his neck, bounced in his good body. His task pronounced its dimensions, defining itself, becoming crystal: Go slow, be simple, whatever you think precision is—do that and then some more. Small, smaller, smallest. Compensate. Reduce. Think of yourself as a grain of rice.

He felt the phone move in his pocket.

“Hello…Yeah, see me on the curb?”

She stumbled getting out of the Escalade, a blackbird with a broken wing. She fell onto him, and he wrapped his arms around her like he was supposed to.

Benny, I’m Benny, and I love her very much.

“Is anyone looking at us?”

“Some,” he told her. “Not many.”

“I feel like I am nude.”

“Did you sleep?”

“How could I?”

“How’s Wallace?” He hoped it was bad.

“I am here, Robert.”

“Benny, Benny, Benny.”

“I am talking to you. I cannot be here and in last night. Do you understand? I am only right now.” She peeled herself from him and pushed her clutch into his hands. “Hold this.” She tipped her sunglasses down. “Hand me my lipstick.”

He inhaled through his nose so she could hear it before unclasping the bag. Inside his fingers felt something flat and metallic, a surface like sandpaper, a honed spike at one end.

Her glasses reflected his question. “Would you mind holding on to my bag?”

He tested the object’s sharpness. “Not at all.”

She inflated her chest and let the air out slowly. “These people, they make my eyes twitch. I do not wish to talk to them. Have you seen my father?”

“He’s on the steps.”

“I am irradiated. My blood is like snakes.” Another long coiling exhalation. “What if—”

He took her hand. “This is what we are doing. This is what it is.”

She clung to him, avoiding condolences. Women crossed themselves at the sight of her. From the crowd two men with earpieces appeared and he and Gianna followed the bodymen through the throng. He wanted to tell them, I was like you but I changed. Massimo waved from the stairs.

“Zucca.” He opened his arms and she went to him and he spoke to her softly. Everyone saw a father and a daughter except the arbiter.

“Benny.” Massimo offered his hand; he hated having to take it. “Thank you for being here with my daughter.”

“There is nowhere else I could be.”

“This is the most worst day.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “Sincerely.”

“Papà.” Her voice was rigid with restraint, as wispy as her father’s. “Non credo di poter restare qui con te.”

“Sì sì, tesoro mio. Benny, here, please take my angel. We are seated in the front.”

They emptied their pockets and walked through a metal detector. The security guard opened Gianna’s clutch and removed the nail file and she snatched it from him and pretended to smooth her press-ons.

“Ouais ouais ouais,” the man said, handing it to her.

Beaujolais took her bag. She crossed herself before entering the church.

Across the floor of the great hall, fingers of warm light reached through the windows of the roof, slaking sun on the slender stone columns rising up to bear the weight of the ribbed vault. Arches connected the columns creating aisles nestled with relics and idols of anguish depicted in paint or stained-glass. On each side of the altar, twin spiral staircases uncoiled to the organ loft; a stone screen bridged the gap between them, ribboning down the balustrades like a limestone wedding veil. The craftsmanship made him believe in men instead of God.

Above the altar Jesus wept on a cross. The chairs faced away from His despair; in them sat every type of man wearing every shade of black. The arbiter appraised them. He spotted Uncle standing in the back beneath a bust of a man frozen in unfathomable horror. He thought of the last time he was in a church.

“Benny?”

Gianna sat. He joined her.

A door opened in the back of the nave and Massimo entered with his cadre and the priest. The men greeted Gianna individually and he stood to shake their hands. He recognized many of them from yesterday but only one of them spoke to him—Darlo the Grinch, pulling him in tight. “Hello, Buffalo.” Beaujolais recognized the shape of the hard lump Darlo pressed into him. “Have you been taking care of our Gigi?”

“Of course.”

“Has she been taking care of you?”

The priest’s hand was of velvet softness. Gianna knew his name and he bowed so their foreheads were touching. “Lei è con Dio.”

She nodded stiffly, her sunglasses draining tears, and the priest touched her shoulder and she took his hand and kissed the back of it and he formed the sign of the cross. “Nel suo nome.”

Beaujolais watched the priest disappear behind a column and reappear in the elevated pulpit. The design was kind of like a cherry picker. Ornate wood panels formed a type of barrel anchored to the column; beneath it a carved figure strained beneath the weight. Above the priest, attached to the column, a wooden dome spire covered the bucket, and Beaujolais thought of the bonnet dryers in his mother’s hair salon when he was very young. The pulpit looked like a beer stein and it felt maddening to stare up at such a thing in reverence. He clenched his teeth.

The priest began.

41

Benjamin Gerald Stephenson was a man of complex ideals. He was a seeker and a searcher, but as is the curse of the forever curious, he rarely found what he was looking for.

Benny, as his family called him, was a warrior and a patriot. As a boy he always told his mother Shelly Mae that he was going to be a Marine, just like his father and his grandfather. She wanted to believe in him, but Benny was a scrawny little thing, so she started feeding him.

Anyone who knew Benny knows he ate like a mule. I remember when he was a little boy, and we still had the congregation on the south side. We were at a picnic and there were tables set out with all these desserts the ladies brought. My favorite was Sammy Lauf’s blueberry cobbler. I’d been thinking about it all week. I know I shouldn’t covet, but I was already sinning in my head with that cobbler. I was fixin’ on a big slice with some of Miss Murphy’s homemade plum ice cream. But when I got to that table, the cobbler tin was missing.

Now, I asked Sammy. I asked Miss Murphy. I asked my wife. I was hounding everyone. Nobody knew where that cobbler’d run off to. But then here comes Benny.

Benny Stephenson, I said, you wouldn’t know where Miss Lauf’s cobbler tin might be, do you?

And he said, No, sir. I don’t reckon I do.

And I said, Are you sure, son? You don’t have nary an idea?

And he said, I wish I could help you, sir.

And I just about died laughing, because he was just as blue as a Smurf. His face, his hands, his forehead. It was like in a bank-robbing movie where the bank robber opens the money bag and that dye bomb explodes. I couldn’t be mad at him—I should have been, but I couldn’t. And that was Benny.

Now, I don’t reckon none of that cobbler went to waste, because when Benny grew up, he grew up. And just like he said he was gonna do, he signed on to join the Marines. Benny served three tours in defense of this country. While deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, Benny received multiple combat ribbons as well as a Silver Star for acts of valor in the Battle of Marjah. I had the pleasure of speaking with some of his brothers-in-arms yesterday and they all told me Benny was funny, Benny was goofy—I heard some wild stuff, but none of them failed to mention his bravery, his courage, his unfailing loyalty. One of these warriors, Benny’s roommate Robert, told me a story that I’m going to recount here for yall today with his permission.

Benny and Robert were in Iraq for Operation New Dawn. Their fire team was ordered to secure a building in a village outside Mosul. As they approached, the enemy opened fire, and Benny got separated. Robert and the rest of the team were pinned down for what he said felt like an eternity, but then all of a sudden there was an explosion and the firing stopped.

When Robert peeked his head out to see what was going on, he saw smoke and dust pouring out of their target. Then he saw muzzle flashes in the debris and he ducked back down. Next thing he heard was Benny’s voice over the radio. Target secured.

Benny had snuck up on the enemy, crawling on his belly in the sand that Robert said was hot as molten lava. At a distance of thirty feet he’d thrown a grenade in a half-open window, dropping a perfect dime just like he used to throw on the gridiron as varsity quarterback for the South Charleston Razorbacks. Before the dust settled he ran into the wreckage and sent six of our enemies to be judged.

Robert told me their platoon commander gave Benny quite the hiding for going rogue, but he couldn’t argue with the results. In the end his actions not only ended the lives of the terrorists, it also saved the lives of his brothers. Robert laughed as he told me this story. And when I asked him what was so funny, he told me when he’d asked Benny why’d he’d done what he’d done, Benny told him, and I quote, “I guess I got to missing football and I had to see if I still had it or not.”

Isn’t that Benny, folks? Curious to a dangerous degree. He was always poking around, experimenting, digging. It makes sense that someone with so much love for the world also felt so much pain. He carried a heavy heart and it was this weight that ultimately dragged him down. Some of us are just magnets in that way. Whatever it was, his pain has abated now, and he’s with God in paradise. I do believe that to be true, in fact I need that to be true. Because if a man with Benny’s courage, Benny’s sense of service, Benny’s sense of right and wrong, can’t get into heaven, what hope do the rest of us have?

In His name we pray.

42

“Amen.”

From well above his head the priest dragged his hand down and in slow sweeping movements performed the sign of the cross, carving an X into the dignity, and the crowd responded “Amen.” The priest descended the pulpit while the attendees awaited further instruction, none more eager than Beaujolais.

The family said nothing as they milled away, some stopping to touch Massimo or Gianna lightly on the shoulder or the cheek. Words couldn’t reach them where they were.

Both spoke during the service: Beaujolais pretended to understand. Gianna’s eulogy soared but in delivering it she seemed to have broken somehow, and she drifted back to her seat. Her body locked during Massimo’s portion, disallowing her head from turning to see her father on high, and she remained in mortis for the duration of the ceremony.

The catatonia still consumed her presently; she appeared captive, exuding nil. She only moved when her father touched her.

The arbiter noticed. That’s something.

What was burning off Gianna made his blood feel sharp. She thrummed in a low vibration. Intensifying cold calculation. It was the feeling before lighting a pipe bomb, the potential of it all blowing up in your hands.

There was nothing to be done so he sat there: he knew what inconsolable meant. The grief a molten cup at the core of you, and it’s everything to keep it from spilling. His hand went to the leather clutch in his lap. That was something, too.

Massimo whispered into the side of his daughter’s face and she nodded faintly. “Take care of her,” he told Beaujolais, leaving down the aisle, stopping, turning around, turning around again. He didn’t look like he knew where he was going.

Beaujolais watched the church change while Gianna recalibrated. People checked their phones, bar carts wheeled in and he noted through which doors. Faces peered down from the gallery, observing the exhibition; he measured the angles between himself and the center of their heads.

Around him people grouped appropriately, still shy with sobriety, talking to those they understood. The Americans ordered “big beers” from the bar and boasted over them with Irishmen and Canadians and subjects of the British crown. Balkans grunted against the suits straining the breadths of their backs. The Spaniards were either Adonises or profoundly ugly, a data set without median represented by solely 1’s or 10’s. A sect of blue-eyed Aryans honked in a Scandinavian tongue, their blond-almost-white hair the opposite color of the African contingencies—

“The pirates,” he whispered, allowing himself to marvel momentarily at what exactly his life had become.

The pirates were lean men with feverish yellow eyes and you could imagine their fingers tying knots. Their sheening black skulls reflected the kiss of a recent blade. In the chest pockets of their matching funeral suits scarlet silks blooming in lurid contrast appeared to be the skin of their beating hearts. One pirate wore the same flourish on his wrists and Beaujolais assumed him to be their king and for one electric second he met the man in his jaundiced eyes. Swirling in those pits he saw chaos and mania and bedlam and vigor and every other sin he was guilty: in the next life he was preparing for, it would be his goal to never see them again.

Massimo and his inner circle gravitated to the chancery. Beaujolais’s eyes surfaced the fronts of their coats, searching for what he’d felt on Darlo’s chest. In the back of the chamber, a shard of white light ebbed and receded. Another door: this private entrance detected no metal.

“I need to smoke,” she said.

He had forgotten she could talk. “You want me to go with you?”

She didn’t answer, lost in herself again. Her face looked like a prosthetic, unoccupied. Finally: “The money will be in the apartment. After.”

He thought of the suitcase tucked in the freezer, his future bundled in neat stacks. “I’ll need assurances.”

“In this life there are none.”

“You know what happens, right?”

Gianna had not moved since her eulogy. When she faced him, it was like stepping on a landmine you’d buried yourself. Her hand ripped between her breasts and clawed savagely, scandalizing him; he heard a little pop. It was like she had plucked out her own heart, this hard crimson stone. Pendent to a chain of diamond-scabbed gold, the ruby was the size of a cannellini bean. “Take this,” she said. “Collaterale.”

“I don’t know what it’s worth.”

“It was my mother’s.” She lowered her face, tipping her eyes out over her sunglasses like cauldrons, all that awful scalding aspiration. “I want it back.”

“What if I fail?”

“I collect either way.”

He zipped the gem inside his interior breast pocket then patted his thighs dumbly, once, twice. “Do you want me to wait? Until…”

“It is of no matter to me.” She stood and took her clutch and removed a lipstick and dropped the purse into his lap. She kissed his ear. Her voice barely audible, buried alive: “My father killed himself a long time ago.”

She left him holding her bag.

For an extended period he sat there not looking at any one thing in particular, losing himself in the bokeh. He closed his eyes very tight and opened them. The room returned to focus.

No guns.

Some guns.

A gun.

“Alright.”

He found a water station and poured and drank and refilled a glass and put his hand in his pocket and stood holding his beverage, presenting himself as a nervous interloper and not acting in the least. He skipped his eyes around the room, definitely not watching Massimo the whole time. Opportunity increased with proximity. You have to be close to tell a secret. The distance of life from death. He thought of the steps to get there, reduced them. Benny said he was quantum: the first thing and the last thing occupied the same space. You just had to put them in order.

The arbiter anchored himself to Massimo and moving at a prescribed idle began to trace a slow orbit around the perimeter of the room, human detritus circling the ultimate drain. This is where the killing truly started.

As his net tightened he stopped to faux-marvel at the relics, his arms crossed and head tilted, pronouncing his scrutiny on the artifacts as he considered them not at all. Standing before a painting wherein a roster of angels reveled on the tiers of a wedding cake of clouds, he watched Massimo’s men cajole him to accept a glass of champagne; the second he took without convincing. A tray of shots arrived and Massimo fired one back. After his third champagne he took off his jacket and hung it over his chairback and Beaujolais saw.

No gun.

The arbiter, navigating by the stars, tightened his arch. As Massimo received his fourth glass, Beaujolais stood near the chancery affecting the posture of a man who was only slightly bothered to be alone. He tapped his finger against his empty glass, observing the pacing, and it wasn’t until he felt the moment sublimate physically that he just-so-happened to look at Massimo. The godfather waved at him. “Benny, come and sit with an old man.”

The men opened the horseshoe and a chair appeared. He nodded to the men he recognized and sat beside their boss.

“Your glass is empty, why?” Massimo took his bereft flute. “I am not paying for glasses to be empty. Where are the girls? Luigi, trovaci una bottiglia.”

A man fired out of his seat and was gone.

“A drink for Benny, yes, a nice drink. There is nothing else to do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Please with the sir. Nobody call me sir. Call me Simo, I call you Benny, these are what we are called. Here we are, a nice drink.”

The man who’d left returned with a foaming bottle and Massimo took it from him and filled Beaujolais a glass. “Cin cin. Al mio angelo.” The wine was extremely cold and tasted like a river stone. Massimo chugged off the bottle.

Beaujolais commended the service. He used the word piety without any confidence in its meaning.

“What is it you say in America? You get what you pay for?”

“Quel prete è un truffatore,” said the man to Beaujolais’s right.

“Sei un truffatore,” said another. The men laughed.

Massimo wiped his chin with his wrist. “How goes Gigi?”

“You know how she is. I’m giving her space.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” Either Massimo nodded or his head lolled. “I give her the space. I give her the moon, but she say, ‘No, Papà, I need the space.’ ”

“She’s tough.”

“Tough? What is tough?”

“Duro, Simo.” Beaujolais turned at the sound of the voice. Leaning against a column, Darlo smiled like a frog. “We say duro,” he explained, converting Beaujolais’s meaning.

“Duro, sì, Gigi is duro.”

“Incredibilmente duro,” said Gianmarco, who in his aged finery looked like a community-theater version of his brother.

“Il più duro,” said Massimo. “With Gigi’s finger, you write your name on a diamond.”

Beaujolais nodded. “When she talks to me, I listen, but I don’t press her. I wait for her to talk. Sometimes I wait a long time.”

“You are a blessing here, Benny. Gia is a woman and a woman needs a man. It is make me happy she is not alone.”

“It’s the least I can do.” He took out his cigarettes. “Simo, do you think I can borrow your lighter? They took mine at the metal detector.”

A few of the men chuckled.

“Yes, let us smoke.” Massimo stood, collecting himself carefully, and Beaujolais followed him out the private exit to a bricked-in side yard where three men were smoking in the shade of a twisted apple tree. Standing on a crate against the wall, a fourth monitored the street. One of the men spoke Italian and Massimo shook his head. He introduced Beaujolais. The foursome regarded him.

“Three of my best,” said Massimo, laughing at his own joke.

He lit Beaujolais’s cigarette then puffed a gray balloon out of a cigarillo. One of the men was in his shirtsleeves. Harnessed in his armpit, the grip of a Glock glistened dully in the sunlight. The man saw Beaujolais see the gun. The man smiled. His teeth were a yellow gate. One of the men produced a flask and they passed it among themselves. The man went to put it away but Massimo intercepted. “Ho comprato quel liquore. Lasciami assaggiarlo.” He swigged, grimaced. “Minchia.” He handed the flask to Beaujolais without rescrewing the cap. “This tree is like my brother.” Massimo jabbed at the crooked trunk. “Old and bent.” Two branches protruded from the tree like arms and Massimo bobbed between them ducking and feinting. “Thin and broken.” He threw a right-right-left-uppercut combo, covered up, jabbed-jabbed. He stepped backward but his heel caught a root and he tripped, landing on his hip in the browned grass.

Startled, the men, like a pit crew, fell to helping their boss. The man with the yellow teeth bent over, stretching his arms and exposing his flank, and Beaujolais saw how easy it would be to take his gun and do it right here—yoink, shove, spin, one two three four five six, up on the box, over the wall, hellogoodbyegone—Massimo was back on his feet, the men dusting grass and dirt off his backside, the cigarillo still clenched in his teeth.

“Perhaps I am needing an espresso. Perhaps I am thinking I am drunk.”

One of the men offered his arm but Massimo slapped it away, barking in Italian, and the other men laughed at the Samaritan. The arbiter followed his quarry. Back in the church the ragged sight of Massimo brought his viziers to their feet. They surrounded him and spoke rapidly and swatted his coat with their pocket squares. Gianmarco took off his own jacket and held it out but Massimo shooed him away.

“What happened?”

He didn’t need to see Darlo to feel him. “He tripped.”

“Tripped on what?”

“He was shadowboxing.”

“Old fool.”

“Does he have another suit?”

“How should I know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

The group began to move in procession toward the sacristy. Darlo lingered near Beaujolais, taking up the rear.

“How are you enjoying yourself?”

Beaujolais didn’t respond. They entered a long hallway.

“This must all be so exciting. Hand in hand with the Mafia don, and all you had to do was fuck his daughter.”

Beaujolais stopped, halting Darlo with his body. “Are you saying something? Can I translate?”

Darlo’s mouth split his head into halves. “Is it like you imagined? Like being in the movies? Do not forget to ask him a favor. He cannot refuse today.”

“That was his daughter’s wedding.”

“Maybe you ought to propose. Get down on your knees.” Darlo absorbed the distance between them. “Have you thought about that?”

Massimo and his flock reached the end of the hallway and continued up a staircase.

“We should help Simo.”

“Simo.” Darlo snorted. “Yes, go help your dear pal Simo.”

“If I’ve done something—”

“Don’t you get tired of lying?”

Beaujolais stopped talking, potentially forever.

“Everyone is always lying in this family. You lie, I lie. We have to lie to be with them.” Beaujolais felt Darlo press into him: there was suddenly nothing else there. “Together we can be ourselves.”

Torso to torso, they stood in the hallway alone. Darlo’s breath on his neck, coffee and champagne. The only thing between them was the gun. A thought occurred and he smiled. Darlo reciprocated.

He was never any good at this.

Beaujolais flicked his eyes to a door across the hallway then snapped them back to Darlo’s as if tethered by elastic. Darlo arched a single eyebrow, the rubber tightening. Safe in this solitude, they stared at each other. Darlo cupped his crotch.

“No, not here.” Mooring their eyes, Beaujolais backed himself to the door. “Give me a second. To get ready.”

Down a narrow stairwell, a small cellar lit centrally by a nude bulb. A folding chair, a card table, a brimming ashtray. Shelves of cleaning supplies, the bite of bleach. A toolbox lay open on the floor.

He hung his jacket on a bare nail and layered atop it his shirt: whatever was coming, he’d receive it with his chest.

The door opened and he was prepared to see anything. Darlo, solo, loomed.

“Yesterday, on the couch, I felt—”

“Lock the door.”

“I could smell you.”

“Don’t speak.”

“Like an element—”

“You. Do not. Speak.”

The room was small, one of them was larger inside of it, the space between them barely allowed billions of millions of trillions of atoms. Their bodies cast shadows on each other. Darlo reached for Beaujolais. The arbiter seized him and pulled him forward. His hardness betrayed him. “You are not allowed to look at me.” He used his tongue like a serpent. “Turn around.”

Darlo obeyed.

“Get on your knees.”

Darlo subjected.

Beaujolais graced the bad man’s cheek with his fingertips, teased Darlo’s lips with his thumb, playing with him—Darlo engulfed the digit greedily and Beaujolais refused him. “I am a privilege.” He gripped the still suckling jaw. “Did I tell you you could have me?”

Darlo was starving.

“You are an object. I decide your use.”

He tilted Darlo’s chin and stared down into his property. Their arrangement inverted them, turning them upside down, and Darlo smiled in reverse, perverting his yearning, and the arbiter saw them, all of them, the ashamed, the regretful, the ones who wanted this but not him, and into their neck he plunged the nail file, again and again and again—blood like a sprinkler head from the perforations—and again—his forearm becoming very warm—and again. And again. And again.

And again—

The file snapped. Darlo’s hands proved ineffective corks for all his new mouths. He just kept pouring out of there, a sound like guac guac guac. He looked at the arbiter and then he looked at nothing and slumped sideways and was dead.

For a time he listened intently to the sound of the body not breathing. He might have felt something if he were a human being. Instead he said, “And we’re off.”

He set the gun on the card table and in the toolbox he found paper towels and reddened them sitting on the stairs cleaning the blood off his shoes. He checked the weapon and saw it was loaded and tucked it under his belt, the cold steel like home against his back: You don’t know what you mean to me.

At the top of the stairs he listened to the door like the whole world was out there. Silently he measured a minute, counting off sixty small, important miracles. It was all happening and he was aware of it and it was like eating fire.

Up here it was much less dark and both he and his eyes adjusted. In front of him a prismatic girder of solid sunlight pierced the corridor at a forty-five-degree angle and pooled in a kaleidoscopic pinwheel on the staircase. It looked like the portals in Benny’s games, the ones where if you died, you started over.

He examined himself for blood in the gold skin of a statue of the mother of God. He went to the landing and looked up a granite stairwell. This would be a bad place for it to happen.

He was nervous. A shred of a song came out of him like heat lightning: “If you’re gonna scream”—he looked behind him and saw nothing—“scream with me.”

The stonework exacerbated his footsteps. At the top, two rooms at one and three o’ clock. Behind the doors they were alive in there. How many? Five? Ten? It came down to a matter of bullets.

A toilet flushing, a door opening—seeing Beaujolais, the man ceased whistling. “Oh, ciao, Benny.”

He thought his name started with an A. “I just came up to see if yall needed anything.” The man’s face flummoxed. Beaujolais audibled: “I help? Massimo? I help you?”

“Ah,” the man said, piecing. “Stay. I go see.”

The man opened the door and stood in the threshold and spoke into the room. Gianmarco answered, the protest plain in his voice, arguing with Massimo, rising, waning, tuckering out. Finally the man ushered Beaujolais in.

In the room the men formed a phalanx around Massimo sprawled out on a daybed. He wore a robe and his hair was wet. “Benny,” he said, covering himself modestly as he sat up. “When I fall outside, you see, yes?”

“Yeah, I saw.”

“Yes! Good, okay. They are saying I fall because I am the drunk. I tell them, to them I say, I am no drunk. I am boxing with the tree and the tree catch me a lucky punch. Tell them I am true!”

Beaujolais nodded. “It’s true. You ducked when you should have dodged.”

“Esattamente! I am duck when I should be dog.” He sipped from a bottle of Peroni. “Where is my daughter? I want to see my daughter.” Massimo collapsed in around the demand, begging.

The arbiter offered to go find her.

“No, you stay, they go.” He pointed to the door with the bottle. “Leave us. Go, go, get out. Get the fuck out. I do not need to hear anymore of how I imbarazzo. Perhaps when your daughters die. See how you compose youselfs. See if you have a drink, see if you have a drink or two, you motherfuckers.”

In the eye of Massimo’s storm, Gianmarco remained halcyon. He pivoted on his cane and said to Beaujolais with performative calm, “Benny, do go find Gia, please.”

“Fine, send the boy. I cannot expect you to walk, you are too fat.” Massimo jibed his brother’s gut. “Here it is. Hello, tummy town. We share what I have but you become fatter than me. How do you become fatter when we eat the same?”

Beaujolais recused himself and immediately attempted to eavesdrop, but without him in the room, the brothers no longer needed to be polite and they returned to railing in Italiano. While the arbiter located his niece, Gianmarco addressed his brother in the language of their blood:

“Are you such a pig that even in mourning, you have to have it all? Grief is not something you can hoard. You cannot keep it all for yourself. I loved her too, Simo. Me and Lara, Antonio. You are not the only one who weeps.

“When you went away to Gorgona, the girls stayed with us. We raised them like our daughters. Lara made their clothes, I taught them how to read, we took them to the museum and afterwards I bought paints and brushes and let them paint on the walls of their room. This is your room, I told them. There is always a room for you here.

“When Octavia died, I remember feeling very bad for you. And I felt bad that I didn’t feel bad myself. She was not my wife. I loved her, but it wasn’t the same as this. Nothing has ever been like this. Amara—Amara was all the most beautiful parts of Octavia. And she was even more beautiful, because she was everything I love in you, Simo, but without the parts I hate.

“Today I feel like I want to die. I think this morning, I think, death is better than this. And if this is how I feel, I am astonished that you have not yet killed yourself. You astonish me, brother. Because if I am you…

“This is pain, this is true pain. This isn’t like with Dad, or Mom, that guilty pang of relief. No, Amara’s type of life was so very alive that when it dies you can feel it not living anymore. I see you feel it and it humbles me. To see you is to see a strong man, but you know this, everybody knows this, Massimo Di Giovanni, the strong man of Tuscany, this is who you are. You are what we needed you to be. You gave to us, all of us, all of this. Hear me when I say thank you. I could not do what you’ve done.

“What has happened to our family is the complete opposite of good, but you must think of what we do and who we do it with. We are in league with fearsome men. These men do fearsome things. They exist past the limits of what even we see as beyond. They make me feel outdated, these men, but they respect you, and if they don’t, they know better than to appear disrespectful.

“I know, if there was one day where it seems as if you could appear less than solid, that day would be today. But men like you aren’t afforded such days. This is why I need you to appear whole, your strength is what keeps us safe. And, so, as your brother, as your colleague, I am begging you, for the sanctity of what we do, for my own safety, for our continuance, pull yourself together. Because if you do not, by god, these animals will pull us apart.”

Massimo made a slow wet flatulence with his mouth. “Stop being so dramatic. I’m fine, we’re fine. Now do me a favor and fuck off for a while.”

In this world they never spoke again.

43

“Is it the spicy ranch or the garlic sauce?”

“I don’t care.”

“No, I forgot it last time and you flipped.”

“Get whatever.”

“Stop playing your game for a second and talk to me.”

“Hold on.”

“Jesus Christ, Benny.”

“What, man?”

“Spicy or garlic?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m getting spicy then.”

“Spicy, yeah, sure.”

“Thank you. Did it really need to be so difficult? Bye.”

44

She said she couldn’t do it but he said it was easy. “Just say ‘watermelon.’ ” He knocked on the door. Her father said her name.

“When you’re ready: ‘watermelon.’ ” Before she could say anything he toed the door open. Briefly, without letting himself be seen, he glimpsed Massimo on the edge of the daybed. His eyes were in his head and nowhere else.

“Ciao, Papà.”

“Mia bella.”

The door made it difficult to hear but “watermelon” would be unconfusable. Four fat disparate syllables, three chances to change her mind. “I won’t come in until you say the whole word.” Ultimately he was the judge. He’d already decided not to kill her. Why turn off the money machine? Gianna was an oil field. All he had to do was keep drilling her. Together they could empty the world.

From how he saw it, Gianna was broken a long time ago and she’d followed the wrong manuals in her reassembly and put herself together wrong. Patricide wasn’t enough for her, she had to become her father, to sit in his chair. No one would figure to blame her: she’d camouflaged her stink for so long her family thought it was just her perfume.

Unfortunately the arbiter was senseless. He didn’t rely on the world to tell him what was going on, he depended on what was already in him. His gut told him this was a coup: he was her insurrection. Your bridges are soaked in kerosene, Gianna, and here I am an unstruck match.

The ramifications intrigued him, how far their momentum could carry him. She said she was moving in a direction. He’d been drifting, in search of a new anchor—his old one shot himself in the face. The uncertainty was exciting. To feel it made him wonder if he might be alive.

Massimo was about to die, he was certain, and this gap in their knowledge was the actual tragedy, this disparity between the future and the lack thereof. He felt it as an impatience, a needling pressure, the awareness that it’s all up to you.

He untucked his shirt, moved the gun to his hand and enabled the weapon’s lethality. The door was cold as he pressed against it, playing it by ear.

Massimo, in woeful Italian: “…but this is not my name. Your mother gave you your life, but I gave you your name. Is that not the same thing? You are what you answer to, your name is who you are. When I call your name, and you do not answer, I begin to think this is not your name anymore. I think maybe it never was.”

Gianna, also in Italian: “Mamma named us, Papà.”

“My angel, Octavia, my darling.”

“But you made us who we are.”

“Oh, Gigi.”

“You are in everything.”

“My darling.”

“You are inside of me.”

“You are better than me in every way.”

“I know, Papà.”

“I love you, my Zucca.”

“Wa-ter-mel—”

He shouldered the door, gun in hand. Saw Massimo see him, registering stimuli. Raising the Beretta acted as a pulley on the don, bringing him to his feet. The arbiter corrected his draw, and over the barrel he witnessed a father shield his daughter.

Things like this were supposed to move you.

Instead he dropped to one knee and fired a bullet into Massimo’s throat. In the small room the detonation of the gun abolished all sound, and hearing it Massimo’s body jumped as if pulled by more strings and he landed on the daybed facedown in a pile of pillows. Another bullet, a spigot of brain like vomit on the wall. He might be sleeping except for all the blood.

Gianna was screaming but he couldn’t hear her. What happened to her father turned her red, changing her face forever. One of them tried to protect her and she’d never forget who it was.

The gun was in his belt and he was tucking his shirt and he went to the bathroom and saw a beast and wiped the blood from their chin. Urgently accursed, he moved forward due to lack of options, controlling himself down the stairs like his whole body was rigged to blow.

He entered the chancery. The men looked at him unwitting, hopeful by default. He exuded henpecked. “Well fellas, I think I need a drink after that.”

In the nave the chairs had been cleared and reassembled around tables. He didn’t see what they were eating, he was that nonchalant, but behind his countenance steam exploded out of pipes and planes crashed into each other.

Uncle sat with his eyes buried down the front of a woman’s dress. When his attention finally summited her chin, he saw his nephew not staring at him. The arbiter nodded and Uncle’s mouth parted in wonder, witnessing this miracle.

Outside there were cigarettes and he appeared in clouds of smoke. In front of the Pantheon he’d seen taxis and he got in the first cab in the queue and parroted sounds to the driver.

High noon in Paris. The buildings wearing the sun like a burden. On the streets everything continued and they were a part of it and this was the maximum triumph of his life. Stopped beneath fluttering robinia trees, one of the odd-shaped buses pulled aside him. The people aboard knowing where they were going, at home in this beautiful place. What a fantasy. He rolled down the window and breathed in the city like he might somehow keep it all in him. The light turned, he was moved, and he thought about this place and all the other places, the worlds to which he could never return.

45

The desk was made of Savanna pine and behind it the lawyer asked if they wanted something to drink. Shelly said she’d gladly take anything. Beaujolais declined. He didn’t need anything from them.

“I guess we should get right to it.”

Benny had named him his sole beneficiary. It was right there in the will but Shelly didn’t understand.

“I just don’t understand,” she said.

The lawyer looked at him.

“Who leaves that much money to their roommate? It just doesn’t make a lick of sense.” She was really hamming it up.

The lawyer steepled his fingers. The degree framed on the wall said his name was Jacob Younger. “How long were yall…living together?” There was a wink in the way he said it but his face was plaintive: Are you really going to make me be the one to tell her?

Beaujolais hadn’t intended to talk but Shelly’s performance—her ability to pretend—exceeded his capacity for discretion. “We’ve lived together since we came home. We lived together before that, too.”

“Yall were pretty close then?”

“What does this have to do with the will?”

“I’m not sure. This is all fairly irregular.”

“Nothing fair about it,” she whined, attempting demure.

She was disgusting and he wanted it in writing. “Take the money, Shelly. You need it, you can have it. She can have it, right?”

“Well, no. Not legally.”

“But he doesn’t want it.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Stephenson—”

“Miss.”

The lawyer blinked. “I’m sorry, Miss Stephenson, but what yall want and don’t want has no bearing here.”

“I’ll write her a check.”

“Benjamin left behind more than money.” He was looking at Beaujolais when he said it. “When we were going through Benjamin’s effects, we found some letters in a box.”

Shelly sat forward in her chair. “What kind of letters?”

“They seem to be correspondences between Benjamin and Mr. Beaujolais. They date back to—”

“That’s none of her business.”

“Robert.”

“It’s not.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this.”

“You’re the only one acting, Shelly.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Beaujolais turned to her, facing her for the first time since he’d waited his turn to shake her hand at the funeral. How he looked at her should have melted her face. He thought of the voicemails and the text messages, all the ways he tried to help the man they loved. We had a chance, now we have nothing.

He wanted to poke her in the center of the forehead. What’s going on in there? Are you asking yourself the same questions? It’s your fault, you know. You turned him into a wasteland, blasting him with all that shame. I pioneered him, Shelly, but he wouldn’t let us name the landmarks and he got lost.

He yawned. Rest died with Benny. Sleep only severed the days.

“You look tired, Bobby.”

A crack appeared on the surface of him.

“I haven’t been able to sleep. Doesn’t seem like that’s been a problem for you.”

“You have no right to talk to me like that.”

Across his mask the fissures spread.

“Save it, Shelly. No one’s watching.”

“Where do you get off ?”

He shattered: “Do you know how fucking stupid you are?”

“Mr. Beaujolais.”

“It’s a fair question, sir. Are you stupid, Shelly? It would be better. If you were. Stupid I can understand.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? You don’t have any idea?”

Shelly made her face apologetic for the lawyer. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“Your son, Shelly. I was into him and he was into me. We were—we loved each other, we were in love. We used the same bar of soap when we showered. We slept in the same bed, and at night, when he woke up on fire, I was the one who held him. He put his head right here.” He slapped his chest. “Right. Fucking. Here. And I told him he was safe, and I told him he was beautiful—Oh my god, he was so fucking beautiful, if you could have seen how beautiful he was.”

Jacob Younger pressed a button on his desk phone.

“You could have helped me, but you didn’t, because boys will be boys. It wasn’t anything that a bowl of chicken and dumplings couldn’t fix. Cold beer. A dash of Jesus. As long as he had that, he was saved, right? Well I hate to break it to you, but since you did everything to make your own son terrified of telling you the truth, it falls on me like, just like everything else. Benny didn’t believe in Jesus, Shelly. He didn’t believe in anything so he shot himself in the face.”

“Sir, please.”

Two men in black windbreakers formed a barricade between them. He was officially trespassing but he knew the rules—he was untouchable.

“If you’re stupid, then you’re the stupidest person I ever met, and I hope you are. Because if you’re not stupid you’re fucking evil. If there’s a heaven and you get in, somebody mislabeled hell.”

46

The cab hadn’t fully stopped when he shoved the driver a hundred and opened the door.

“Change,” the driver protested. “You change, man.”

Beaujolais waved him off: “No mercy.”

Somehow he was on the sidewalk in front of the building. In the cab he’d thought of Mario jumping down the pipe to escape goombas, teleporting to a whole new level: there didn’t seem to be any way to do what he was doing and he thought about that up the stairs.

He felt light, the density of dreams, as if he could bound from landing to landing. Someone was eating lunch—ginger, cardamom, anise. There was cheese in the refrigerator, jam and bread. The tension wrung a humor out of him. “Sand-witch.” He was hungry: it was funny he was still human.

He eyed the doorknob for irregularity but he didn’t know what he was looking for. Much of life he’d failed to witness. If I live, I’m going to start paying attention. As close as he came to prayer.

He keyed the door and opened it and stepped into the apartment and in his periphery something moved and sans thought, alarmed silently, he dove before the shotgun boomed. He found himself deaf on all fours and in this devolved shape he scrambled primally, achieving the ottoman—for one placid glimmer he was a boy on base—and the furniture bucked violently, raped by the shotgun’s riot, and he saw the reaper blade slice as the barrel swung over and he sprung and latched the gun hand and levered it savage against his shoulder, forcing the elbow wrong: the twangy snap of the hinge disarticulating reverberated in him. The shotgun skittered and he reached for his Beretta, but the man stomped him, disconnecting the arbiter from his only security.

The men stood, pitting. Against the apartment’s grandeur their discrepancy appeared crass and tacky. His assassin was younger with skin as black as his intention and he was taller by at least half a foot. Up in his face his eyes seemed further away, high on fire and magic. He cupped his lame elbow, projecting despair, a deplorable pouting quality. The arbiter feigned a high left, raising the man’s guard like a drawbridge. He pounded twin hooks into the exposed brisket, bowing the giant, and given his head, the arbiter seized it and rammed the face with the crown of his skull.

Impact like fireworks: white explosions on a black background: in the teacups, spinning loops.

He heard the man hit the ground and he wasn’t far off.

The room undulated, brighter now, throbbing like a nightlight: I am the most goddamn tired. Beneath him the man dragged along on his hip. The arbiter considered him struggling to create distance. He looked like a slug. Slug, he thought, crawling toward a gun.

Surfacing, as if, like, Oh, yeah, he beat him to it. “Who?” he said, aiming the ugly device.

The slug retreated, slithering in his own blood.

The arbiter repeated himself. Speaking hurt his brain and he punished the slug with a bullet, making a mess of his thigh.

“What? What?” He couldn’t hear himself anymore. He touched his forehead, feeling the line of divots where the man’s teeth had snapped.

He considered his executioner, the faucet of dark blood leaking from his leg: he didn’t look up to the job. He was more of a pirate. The arbiter stepped on his bullet wound. A noise like your life was escaping. “It will hurt less if you talk to me.”

“Pas d’anglais!”

The arbiter rocked to his back foot, relieving the pressure. “What did you say?”

“No English! Français, no English! Désolé, vraiment désolé!”

“Well.” He returned his weight to his front foot, juicing the accused further. “No parlay Francis.”

“Arrête, enfoiré!”

“Goddamnit,” he said, cursing his inability to hear what people told him.

Kind of like surfing he leaned on the man, alternating on and off with his interrogation: “Who. Sent. You.” The man writhed, convulsing, coughing spasmodic blood. Torture established his trust: “Okay then.” The man remained limp despite the burden of the arbiter’s body weight. “No English.”

When the man recouped consciousness, the arbiter was squatting by his head smoking.

“Mon sewer or madam?”

“Quoi?”

He menaced the pirate with the red tip of his Marlboro. “You, here. Mon sewer or madam?”

Marooned in a rectangle of windowlight, perfect and illusory in this frame and shining with a placental mixture of sweat and blood, the assassin’s obsidian face reflected, in its dawning, insult rather than misery. “Monsieur,” he croaked. “Je suis un homme.”

Beaujolais studied him. “Un mon sewer. Un mon sewer, wee? You, here, to kill me? Un mon sewer?”

Incredulous, the man nodded. “Oui. Monsieur. Tu vois pas que j’suis un putain d’homme?” Despite his indignity, the executioner’s proud face bore no shame.

“A man,” he decided. “It was a man.”

Satisfied with his understanding of things, the arbiter leveled the snubbed shotgun and watched what happened when you pulled the triggers.

On his heels he sat smoking until the bloodpool threatened his shoes. He went to the sink and drank water and washed his hands and face. He took the cheese plate from the refrigerator and sat on the couch and fed his worrisome dizziness, eating the chunk of comté like an apple, staring at the body, trying to see it for what it was.

A mister. A mister had sent this corpse, not a missus, un monsieur—promised in French, not Italian. By a pirate.

It made the most sense.

Uncle’s a fixer, this was a fix. In his apartment even. They’d plumped a big pillow for him and he nearly slept on it forever. Everything made sense to him and that’s why he didn’t believe it: it felt like at some point in the last forty hours his head had been disconnected and dipped in boiling wax. There was a film on his lens, a smearing. Blown speakers replaced his eardrums. All he could taste was smoke.

Right now if someone came up to him and said, Hey, hey, Beaujolais, I bet you think you’re a pretty boss dude, he’d say, I have to take your word for it. I can’t speak for myself anymore, but I’ll try:

The battle of humanity is the dissonance between how we define ourselves and the reality of who we are. We’re valorous or wise or have good taste in movies. You are the stories you tell yourself and god forbid you ever find out you’re lying. That, well, actually, what you aren’t is what you are. You are the descendant of wretches, a prince of a gutless kingdom. Cowards propagate bloodlines, warriors die in the mud. This is your history.

And when you figure it out, brother.

That every decision contains the potential to become the rest of your life.

Oh brother, then you’ve figured It out.

He pressed his palms into his eyes until all was null and colorless: the world was reshaping again. What had Benny used to say? Listen up, slapnuts. He needed to listen up.

He went to the body and emptied its pockets: a pack of gum, a couple euros, an unused phone. On the chair by the window he found an overcoat with a fat box of double aught in the pocket and he broke the shotgun and ejected the used shotshells and introduced fresh hell to the only friend he had left.

It would have been better if it was Gianna—she was small. Uncle was the face of an iceberg. His enormity hid under the skin of the world escaping measurement, too big to reckon with, bigger than his concept of size. The scale crushed Beaujolais’s confidence, a uniquely private annihilation, and he felt like a prism through which traveled previously unknown spectrums of light. Internal whiplash, spiritual concussion, helmet-to-helmet with God because this was not His kingdom anymore. He was Somewhere Else. A heaven of possibility. Where a man can be surprised by the fact that he is not dead. The novelty—not just in your face but down your throat, reaching with Its perfect fingers—this place ripped your heart out if you were lucky.

I want to live, he thought, admitting the vile truth: “Yep.”

He stripped and inspected himself and dressed in layers of black and in the closet he found a tennis bag and stashed inside of it the nubby shotgun and the small gun and the money and the cellphone and the extra shells and drank the dregs in the bottom of the French press as he wolfed a sausage cold.

He was down the stairs and on the street before he realized he didn’t know where he was going. He checked his watch. How long does one sit with the corpse of their father? This was the exam and he was failing.

He glanced in each direction on the quiet street. Such unfathomable peace. It felt like the kind of thing where an explosion in the distance blasts the sky white and every dog is barking because the windows are popping and the electricity shearing off the powerlines arches in blue diamond cascades as the earth breaks open into churning asphalt chewing up cars and school buses, and the fire spreads until it’s all there is, and the men in the helicopters and gunboats weep behind their square sunglasses, their tears as useless to this world aflame as the bombs they ride on top of.

But no.

This wasn’t like that.

See, those are flowers. Hear the children? Birds still sang and it was incredible.

From a tobacco counter he bought a fresh pack and a Red Bull and drained the can in one long drink and continued up Boulevard de Magenta smoking. He walked for a long time without getting any closer, two mobile devices in tow—surely Uncle had his location. In the shadow cast by this assumption, paranoia grew like fungus.

“I’m supposed to be gone already.”

He sounded pitiful and that’s exactly what he was.

Crossing the river he stopped on the bridge. Lazy with weak current and dulled by the overcast afternoon, the water appeared a depthless, solid gray. It looked far enough, hard enough. He thought it could be peaceful. Adjusting to terminal velocity.

Ultimately he refused.

There was still a play here, but only if Uncle thought he was dumb. A lot of people did—stupid or cocky, the masculine form of foolish. He was used to being underestimated. People always said he looked shorter in pictures: they were surprised when he wasn’t that small.

Above him the clouds tore and, stamped by the right-now-radiance of the unveiled star, the river regained dimension, no longer singular, shattering apart. Highlights like fish scales coursed life down the riverskin, flashing in the method of circuitry. He stood in the white warmth of the sudden hammering-down sunlight. This feeling—the ability to feel—it was all so out of the question. The outrageous inviolate beauty. To lose this, to become oblivion, this was the fear of death.

I am afraid, he thought, rejoicing.

He opened the phone and pressed the button, he and the line both ringing as he waited for the devil’s voice.

“Stand by,” Uncle instructed. “My environs are tumultuous. I will ring back.”

All he could do was look at the phone: this was either better or worse.

Stand by he did, riverside, beneath the bridge. For seventeen minutes Beaujolais smoked cigarettes while envisioning gun battles. The phone jumped in his hand like a backup heart.

“We need to talk.”

“But you are the talk, dear boy. All of Paris is gaga. Vogue wants you on the cover.”

“What’s going on?”

“You accomplished the unthinkable.”

“Tell me. Plain.”

“The cat is officially away and the mice are reveling.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“You have all the time, Robert. You stole Big Ben!”

A flyboat traipsed down the river, the ones that look like a greenhouse where tourists pay to drink champagne in a glass cage. “I need you to tell me what’s happening.”

“Gianna, the poor darling, found her father dead in the sacristy. Her boyfriend was not there to comfort her. Seems he is nowhere to be found. Are you in Brussels already? You really should stop in Bruges. It is just like the movie.”

“What movie?”

“You know—blimey, what’s it called?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Where are you?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Now you speak plain, nephew, the liquor is loud enough already.”

“You know I’m still in Paris.” The volume of Uncle’s disbelief caused Beaujolais to jerk the phone away from his head. “Bravo,” Beaujolais deadpanned. “You can really act.”

“You stupid, stupid bastard. Listen—” Uncle hacked again, his breath returning in spurts. “Leave! Leave as I say this. Airport, train, hire a car, buy a motorbike, steal a blasted boat if you have to—do this now if you want to remain a living person. Leave, have left, be gone. Become nothing! You stole the teeth from the lion’s mouth! Confine today to your memory and forget it!”

“You want me to leave?”

“Rot op, for fucking fucksakes.”

“I’m confused.”

“Ditto.”

“I thought…”

“Are you still thinking?”

In Beaujolais’s myriad simulations, this solution never presented itself: when a liar isn’t lying it sounds like a lie. “I need to see you.” He moved the phone to escape Uncle’s cackle. “You shouldn’t be laughing. I wouldn’t be. If I were you.”

“If you were me, you would be wiser, savvier.”

“I’m serious.”

“You are anything but.”

“Meet me and I’ll leave.”

“Why? So you can kill me?”

“Or you can kill me. We can play it by ear.”

“Anteaters eat ants. It’s in their name.”

“You aren’t an ant. And even if you were, I can’t eat you. You control my accounts.”

“The freeze was lifted already.”

He saw a lane. “You can freeze them again.”

“You have my word.”

Beaujolais impersonated the sound of laughter.

“Have I dissuaded your trust?”

“Anteaters.”

“Fair point.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter if you take my money.”

“Neither of us believe that.”

“I hear you can make good cash brokering information.”

“I see.”

“There’s three bad people in this. I know who the other two are.”

“There you go, GI Joe. About time you started thinking with your stones. Hold the phone, please.” Over the quiet line he heard a rapid tap-tap-tapping followed by a pair of sharp snorts. “One sir, two sir, three bags full sir.”

“There’s this one last thing and that’s what it is. The last thing.”

“You scallywag.”

“All I need is five minutes.”

“You nasty little thorn.”

“Five minutes and then it’s the rest of our lives.”

Their syncopated breathing was his heart’s own echo.

“I guess,” Uncle said eventually, “my question is…why?”

“You could say I had a good teacher.”

“My nephew, he flatters me. But please, though, illuminate me, bring me to light.”

“Gianna is doing something. This isn’t what we thought it was.”

“And who is this we?”

“She wouldn’t have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Exactly.” His patience was burning, rendering like fat. “Did you hear me?”

“Do you remember the train station near the park? When it snowed?”

“I think so.”

“Where the dwarf played the accordion.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.”

“Luxembourg. Around the corner there is a bar with a white horse on the marquee. One hour.”

“Okay.”

“One drink, then I can never see you again.”

“And I bet it just breaks your heart.”

47

I. DISPOSITION OF PROPERTY

I BENJAMIN STEPHENSON [full name] of 3 FRANKLIN STREET CHARLESTON SC 29401 [address] being of sound mind, not acting under duress or undue influence, devise and bequeath my property, both real and personal and wherever situated, as follows:

Beneficiary

Robert BEAUJOLAIS [full name], currently of 3 FRANKLIN STREET CHARLESTON SC 29401 [address], as my BEAUJ [relation] whose last four (4) digits of their Social Security Number (SSN) are xxx-xx-1023 with the following property:

EVERYTHING I HAVE IN TOTAL INCLUDING ANY PERPETUITY

48

He rode nestled between two men, both of them sleeping, one with his hands flat on his shoulders and his arms crossed in the classical fashion of a vampire in his coffin, the other a snoozing Indian man whose freely bobbing head sporadically jostled awake to glare at the car with accusatory eyes.

He exited the station and walked one street then turned around and went the way he should have gone. Down the block he saw the pale horse.

Before navigating the train ride, he’d stopped in a hardware store to purchase two items; presently he fondled one of them, watching the bar from a doorway a few buildings down, exposing and retracting the blade, testing the tip with his finger pad, gauging the necessary pressure.

He put the box cutter in his pocket, seeing Uncle coming.

He gave him a minute.

The bar was nearly vacant, biding the pre-cocktail lull time. He asked for a Guinness but the tap was broken—“Brock, is brock,” the barman squawking.

“Monsieur—” Uncle waved from a booth in the corner. “Une bière Picon pour mon ami, l’idiot.”

He didn’t look at Uncle while the barman prepared his beer but he did compare his location to both exits and the door to the toilets: these kinds of things can happen anywhere.

He set his beer on the table and removed the satchel and sat beside Uncle on the bench. The older man eyed the duffel. “What’s that you’re carrying?”

“Nearly a quarter of a million euros.”

“Is it heavy?”

“No, but the other stuff is.”

If you’d seen him earlier you might recognize he’d been at a funeral, but in his current position, florid beneath a neon Gitane Cigarette sign, Uncle’s sodden finery appeared the costumery of some tinhorn lounge act or the host of a quiz show on a lesser-known network of hell. “Well, here I am, meeting your demands.”

“How does it feel?”

“Did she pay you the other half?”

“What do you think?”

“Then why did you do it?”

Beaujolais flashed the ruby. “She made me feel pretty.”

“Is it real?”

“What is?”

“It’s the size of a gerbil’s heart.”

“Tell me everything that happened after I left.”

“Get right into it, eh? It’s true, you know, what they say about Americans and foreplay.”

“I don’t care what you have to say. I’m tired of listening to you.”

“Do not harsh my mellow, Robert. I am not the one who fucked themself.” Uncle sipped his beer, painstaking, punctuating his assertion. “The priest made an announcement, a gas leak he claimed, the phony, lying to his sheep. We vacated, waiting for the firemen, but none came, and the Italians remained in the church. Gossip splashed on the sidewalks. The ambulance stirred further questions. Rather than answer, the police raised barricades. Still we saw the two body bags. Who did you put in the second?”

“Darlo.”

“Darlo, dear, dead Darlo. Huh. I assumed Gianna until you called me.”

“Where were you when I called?”

“At a café, haggling with a Slovakian woman about her pussy.”

“And where was— Wait, what?”

“I wanted it, she did not want to give it to me, back and forth, the dance.”

It was like trying to talk to a giant soap bubble. “Unlock your phone.”

Uncle dug out his device and showed it to his face and surrendered the rectangle to the table. “Voilà.” His breath smelled like a leather chair.

“How do clients get ahold of you?”

“Encrypted portals.”

“So you can’t tell?”

“That’s the idea.”

“How do they pay you?”

“I prefer bouillon but these days it’s all crypto.”

“High-tech.”

“Maybe to a farmer.”

“Massimo was a farmer.”

And it all blew into him, like opening a window, a squall ripping through him, glowing red his dying coals. “Show me the transaction for the SF job.”

Letting his eyes roll, Uncle pinched a dainty pair of pince-nez glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “This is all for naught,” he said, pecking at the phone, “but what warden denies a last request? Here you are.”

Benny, like all men of his generation, dabbled in cryptocurrencies. Beauj entertained his enthusiasm: the two of them under a blanket on the loveseat, Benny’s laptop on his lap, the precious narcotic proximity. Beauj knew there were things called wallets. Wallets were like an address, they told you where the money came from. He wrote down a nonsense string of letters and numbers. “Alright, now pull up the Massimo transaction.” Uncle smeared the screen with his thumb. The arbiter compared the addresses: “They’re the same.”

This information compressed Uncle’s forehead. “How can you tell?”

“They came from the same address.” Beaujolais copied the wallet string and searched it in Uncle’s account: nine transactions, dating back six years. “She used his account.”

“But…”

“She knew all her father’s passwords.”

He waited for Uncle to speak, an intolerable fomenting silence in which he repeatedly died. Finally: “She really is a piece of fantastic.”

The murderous quiet coagulated, killing their beers. Uncle hailed the barman: “Nous avons besoin de renforts.” Reinforcements arrived. Beaujolais groped for his glass. “When I got back to your apartment, there was a man waiting for me.”

“I see.”

“He’s still there.”

“And you assumed he was mine.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was a pirate. And he told me.”

“Told you what?”

“It was a man.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“Un mon sewer. He was French, I don’t know.”

“Sounds like it. I should have bought you a necklace.” His phone shuddered and Uncle reached. “It seems…I have received…another…deposit.”

Beaujolais confirmed the sender. “Fucking bitch.”

Uncle tsked. “Two million.”

“It’s too much. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Or she does.”

“She doesn’t. You don’t know her.”

“And I doubt I ever will.”

Beaujolais, feeling futile, dropped the phone in his full beer glass, personifying his situation. Uncle stared at it foaming. “Waste of a good beer.”

“You can buy another one.”

“I would never drink that swill.”

“I meant a phone.”

“Oh, did you?” Uncle sucked off half his pint. “Nephew, why so droll? This is ace detective work. Allow yourself a smile.” Pointing at his emptying glass, Uncle held up two fingers and the barman nodded. “When you are happy, then I am happier. I live to bring joy, this is my purpose.” The eccentric downed his glass. “Look how happy I am.”

The barman brought replacements. Going to clear the old glasses, he stopped when he saw the sunken phone. Uncle told him to leave it. “Un pari,” he said. “We are settling a debt.”

The barman muttered and skulked.

Beaujolais nosed his beer. “I think she killed her sister.”

“She seems quite precocious.”

“She’s not gonna stop.”

“I told you to leave.”

“I am, soon.”

“Bon voyage.”

“As long as you don’t touch my money I’m a goner.”

“I do not need your money, your big money, your big bag full of big money for the big man.”

“It’s all I have.”

“You really are so pretty when you devalue yourself.” Uncle’s hand picked up Beaujolais’s. “You have these and they are plenty.”

The barman shook his head at this perceived tenderness. Peacocking his revulsion, he snatched his coat from a peg and left them alone to go smoke.

“I have no intention of bothering you, nephew, but I can be skittish. Do not be surprised if one day you see me at the next cabana ordering a bucket of Coronas. I like to appreciate my investments, check in after market close.”

“I’m off the market.”

“You need to comprehend.” Uncle scooted his hips down the bench and made his voice hard to hear in the empty bar. “Some things are big.” He held his hands parallel to each other. “And some things are big.” He widened the distance between his palms. “What you did today was very big. Unprecedented, off the charts. Magnitude of this size, we do not yet have the technology. The tremors, your impact, you touched all the corners of the globe. Two million is only the deposit.”

“Fuck.” His head wobbled like the numbers reduced his brain to marbles. “They want me alive.”

“They want the privilege.”

“Are you going to collect?”

“I have peanuts at home.”

“The marker is on my name, my real name.”

“Such a great name.”

“How did she get my name?”

“I gave it to her, you gave it to her—ménage à trois always blur the specifics.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Uncle tinned his voice robotic: “I am an android, does not compute. Malfunction, malfunction.”

“You can say whatever you want.”

“Why not call Gianna? Invite her down. To meet you. Alone.”

“Why don’t you call her?”

Uncle raised the glass his phone was drowned in and held it to his ear. “Hello? Gianna? Robert thinks I am fucking him but I told him you are more his type.”

“I can see why you made it so far. You’re really good at this.”

“The trick is telling the truth. No one expects it.”

“I didn’t know you were a bounty hunter.”

“The market dictates the services.”

“How often do they want the person alive?”

“Rarely.”

“What should I do?”

“Destroy yourself. Shave your head, change your gender, scar your face with oil.”

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“You need convincing? She is a woman, Robert. Silk is not bulletproof. Their logic usurps rectitude. The only promise they can keep is to bleed once a month.” Slurring: “The sole positive, the fickle cunt, is her temperament. Rich girls are always vacillating, very good or very bad. Her scheme was not the balm she hoped for. It will come to her.”

Uncle’s mouth was as close as Beaujolais allowed. Outside the barman turned away and spat.

“If I am giving you the God’s honest, I was quietly elated when you rang me. Forgive me, but I smelled a hoodwink. She was right to attempt your removal. Pop pop, bang bang, avast ye mateys, and in my flat of all places. Looks clean as a call girl’s fingernails. Exactly what I would have done, if I was her, once I finished pleasuring myself in a full-length mirror.”

“You think she’s right?”

Uncle blew air through his lips. “Are you slow? Yes, certified, yes.”

The arbiter sat back, stacking himself on his spine.

“Do not be like this,” Uncle said, lampooning Beaujolais’s austere posture. “What is this face? I apologize, nephew, I forgot to wear my kid gloves. You are not a child so do not respond as one. She is following best practice. They call it cleaning for a reason. I clean, you clean, we all scream for ice cream. But I see you, you are filthy, certainly not clean—”

“Stop saying ‘clean,’ neither of us are clean.”

“Such towering insight.” Uncle brought his glass to his lips. “You should write a book in your retirement.”

Beaujolais flattened his lips into a thin pink line. On the street a van passed, blocking the windows, and their interspace dimmed. Uncle fell to the shadow: the arbiter didn’t have to see him to know who he was.

“I’m leaving.”

“If you mean that, dear boy, then goodbye.” Uncle hoisted his deplenished stein. “It was a pleasure, I hope to never see you again.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. There is one thing—”

“Let it go, child.”

“—that bothers me.”

“Drop it.”

It was already in his hand.

“I am an old man, Robert.” Uncle massaged his lower lumbar. “My back is sore from turning stones. Can this be the end of it?”

The arbiter agreed.

“Good, now come, as you say, bring it in.”

Uncle opened his arms and leaned forward and the arbiter mirrored him—excepting the hand in his pocket. As he placed his free hand behind Uncle’s neck, he whispered: “How did he get in there?”

Uncle’s body stiffened: “How did who…get in where?”

“The pirate in your apartment.”

Uncle fought, becoming bigger, his body inflating with realization, but the box cutter was already ventilating him—three inches of steel repeatedly perforating the bull’s-eye center of his back—and he deflated, struggling initially but, like a baby, the arbiter held him, consoling him, muffling his cries, Uncle’s outrage spuming disbelief and deathfoam, soaking the arbiter’s turtleneck. Clutched in this most intimate embrace, Uncle ran out of himself: where first there was something then there was everything and now there was nothing at all.

49

The barman couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he shouldn’t have to, he was sure of that. They had their own bars now. He remembered he wasn’t paid enough and then he remembered he was the owner. A man like him could put up a sign.

They stopped hugging and the younger one collected his bag. What did he get for this type of thing, the trollop—probably dope, based on the circles around his eyes. And look at the old one: arms on the table, head hung, broken. He’d really done a number on him. It looked like he’d been stabbed in the heart.

That’s why you don’t fall for whores.

The rent boy came outside and buttoned his jacket. The barman sighed through his nose like a donkey. “Go.”

“I’m leaving.”

“To other bar. No here.” The barman picked another cigarette out of his packet. “Go to other bar, bar for you, you and him. No go to here again.”

“I can’t go anywhere again.”

“Fine, but no here, too.”

50

“And what is your destination?”

“What’s the next departure?”

“The bus to Rotterdam departs at eighteen-twenty.”

“Great.”

The woman touched the screen inside her cubicle. “Cash or card?” Her d sounded like a t.

He slid the money under the window and she replaced it with a lesser amount and a ticket. He’d never thanked someone more sincerely.

There was a little shop and he bought two sandwiches—ham with butter and an egg salad/cucumber/dill—and water bottles and stood at a table facing the largest area of the grand hall. He ate one of the sandwiches and drank the waters and returned to the counter and bought two more bottles and placed them in the tennis bag along with the last sandwich and found a chair in the corner and set the bag in his lap and he thought about what was inside of it, where he was going, and the many borders dividing him.

He’d decided, if asked the purpose of his visit, he was an American soldier seeking pleasure. He found the role difficult: his passport was fake but the money wasn’t, nor were the guns. He consulted the board: the time for mistakes was passing.

A trash can seemed the likeliest option. To go back outside was imprudent: this was already reckless. He audited the station, appraising the garbage cans; seated on a bench beside one of them he noticed a man dramatically detached. By his complete disinterest, he pronounced himself vividly. The station was full of similar apathetic men.

Benny used to chide him for this, his propensity for projection: “You’re paranoid, Beauj.”

Look who’s talking.

He looked at the board again. In six minutes they’d announce the platform. In twenty-one minutes he was gone. A man sat down on a bench and didn’t immediately point at him and say, There he is boys! Get him! It was godawful, not knowing, like being stretched by stallions in the totality of directions.

He approached a man wearing a pin that said Ask Me in English! and the man told him the nearest toilet was by platform 12 but, for his money—Dave Schober, Dearborn, MI, USA—the best bathroom was down the stairs past platform 7 because it was private, “one of those new, you know, gender ones?” and “it’s kind of tucked away down there.”

He found the bathroom and locked the door and extended the infant changing table and emptied the bag and fieldstripped the shotgun and wiped down the components before wrapping everything in more tissue and burying it in the trash. He repacked the bag and used the toilet and flushed and washed his hands. In the mirror, his face of exhausted caution. Vigilance, gentlemen. Vi. Gi. Lance. He hoped sleep was taking the same train: there was tired, and then there was him.

He hoisted the bag and saw, underneath it, the other hardware store purchase. “What are you still doing here?” It wasn’t illegal to carry, but combined with ten pounds of paper currency—

A whirring noise like a dental drill and the lock tinkled on the tile. The door thrown open, a man there, now here, and a length of cold heat penetrated the arbiter and removed itself, as smooth as bone, and the man’s arm pumped backward and he saw, wet with his stolen blood, the knife plunging forward. Feral, he clubbed the wrist sideways, pinning the blade against the wall while he clawed—eyes, throat, whatever was soft—finding an ear, he wrenched it, ripping with the force of all the life left in him, and the man shrieked, hearing himself differently. Beaujolais surged forward, driving them into the door. His momentum reversed and he somersaulted, the ear warm in his hand.

The man looked down at him, touching the side of his angular face: dark blood throbbed from the wound in a mutton chop. “Il mio orecchio.”

The knife was not in his hand and he and Beaujolais recognized this in unison, the arbiter reaching his feet only to have his nose crushed. Momentarily his awareness was replaced by a landscape of blaring white. The man chased the knife across the room and Beaujolais moved to prevent his acquisition, but the pain was unfeasible. He’d never been stabbed before. He lunged for the toilet, climbing the bowl. On top of the tank there was a can of aerosol deodorizer and he used it to contaminate the room, spraying it blindly while shielding his eyes, shaking his cross at this vampire, poisoning the world.

He heard retching and dropped the can and navigating with his fingertips he choked on lilac, finding the wall and slapping around for the trash can and then inside of it, searching, finding—he nearly sliced his palm open. He opened his eyes, braving. Armed with the second item he’d bought at the hardware store, he sidestepped the wildly nosediving knife. As the hitman sailed forward, the arbiter thunked his purchase into him: the hatchet severed his spine.

What followed was terrible.

Afterward, frantically, he did his best not to look like an axe murderer, turning the sink pink—the blood really stained. He opened his jacket and tore at his shirts. In the mirror a new mouth grinned grimly on his side and he hastily fed it paper towels. He lacked the time to do this or anything right: the door was unlocked and that was the only thing going on.

Straining, vigorous, he collected the effects of the hacked-apart man and stuffed them in the tennis bag with the hatchet. Before he left the bathroom he stopped for lack of any idea as to where he could go in this world.

He went back to the trash and excavated the chode shotgun—something told him to do it, likely his oozing hole—and rebuilt it and added it to his arsenal. He wore the bag across the front of him, covering the wetness, and gripped the straps to prevent his hands from shaking. There was blood on the ceiling and he’d put it there, slaughterhouse supreme. If there was a way to appear less guilty, he’d pay for it. Most bothersome: he’d missed his train.

He found himself crossing the station but aborted the ticket booth when he saw transit cops down that way. The night air jarred his lungs. All he had to do was walk and breathe and that’s what he did. It occurred to him that of all the people alive at this moment not many would want to switch places with him. This troubled him, that he ranked low as far as humanity was concerned, and in the center of his heart he whispered, I must increase my standing in the order of souls.

After a few blocks he figured out how to move without further tearing his abdomen. A cigarette sounded both heinous and excellent: he was right.

He smoked leaning against a brick wall, an assemblage of foreign materials. A man shoved racks of clothes into a shop across the street. In the window, hung above a faceless mannequin posed in a black tracksuit, a sign declared C’Est l’homme moderne!

He opened the tennis bag and unbanded one thousand euros and was standing in front of the shop when the man returned.

“That.” He pointed to the headless body. “Large, please.”

The man spun a rack of women’s jackets and began steering them inside. On his left hand two of his fingers were absent. “Nous sommes fermés.”

Beaujolais held out the notes like he was giving him a steal. “Please, sir.”

The man looked at the money, his eyes following the hand up the arm to the body to the face of the man. “Grande,” Beaujolais attempted. “Noir.”

The shopman’s exhausted black face curled in the low light, the universal countenance of Can’t you give me a break? He peered over Beaujolais’s shoulder, as if looking for a camera. “Vous plaisantez?”

Beaujolais strained against the reins of his impatience. “Pour two.” He shoved the bills into the man’s sternum. “Pour mwah grande noir.”

Pinching the bills with his non-mutilated hand by the smallest shred of their corners, the man carried the notes out in front of him in a type of Frankenstein walk that reminded Beaujolais of how cartoon characters toted rotten fish. Inside his shop the man placed the money beneath the counter then drummed his fingers on the glass countertop and stared out the window at this new consumer man, trying to figure out who he looked like. (Later, when he told the story to his wife, not the whole story, not yet, he described him as looking a lot like the new Batman, and when she asked him which new Batman, he said the newest one, the one with the kid from the vampire movie, and she asked him which vampire movie, and he said the one their daughter liked, and later, lying awake in the bed where they’d conceived her, he remembered sitting next to her in the theater that day, watching her watch the movie, her knees pulled up to her chin and peeking out just like her mother used to do, that little girl whose existence redefined not only him as a man but also his past and future, sipping her soda—“It’s so cold, Papà! It stings my teeth!”—how proud he was she had ice and how proud that she would never see it as a luxury, that she had never known a life without ice because she could have ice whenever she wanted because she was a born citizen of this country. Where only the beverages hurt you. The miracle of that, how it all seemed like a miracle now, the inconceivable perfection, being there—being anywhere with her—their hands touching in the popcorn bucket, the way she smiled like it was her face’s sole purpose, back when she still called him Papà, back when she still called him anything at all—and he shook his wife awake, telling her make some tea, because he had to tell her what really happened today.)

He went to where the tracksuits were folded and selected a top and a bottom and from a row of bins he collected a pair of gym socks and a black T-shirt and a pack of white briefs and presented the lot to Beaujolais who said “Thank thank thank” in French.

He started to leave but the shopkeeper said something and he turned around.

“Qu’allez-vous faire de vos vêtements?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

The man held up one of his eight fingers. He was holding a cellphone, and the sight of it caused the arbiter to reapproach, but the man spoke, and in a voice devoid of inflection the phone translated: What was he going to do with his vestments?

“Vestments?”

The man pulled at the collar of his own threadbare chore coat. “Clues, your clues.”

“My clothes?”

“Oui, the clues.” He spoke into the phone and the phone said his clothes were very nice and asked if he would sell them.

“You want my clothes?” The man pointed at the phone and Beaujolais repeated himself.

The phone spoke. The man nodded.

“This is blood.” He touched his shoulder, his elbow. “There’s blood on me.” The phone rose. Beaujolais stared at it. “But they’re—” He stopped himself. The man, calm, looked at the phone screen and Beaujolais saw it for what it was: “Yes, you may have them, but you will have to clean them.”

The man ushered him into the store and pulled in the last of the racks and locked the door and led him to a curtained cubicle. The disrobement process was prolonged and unpleasant. The stuck fabric dizzied him; excruciating as it peeled from the edges of the wound, his T-shirt fell wet and heavy to the floor.

He sat on the little footstool assessing the wound in the mirror. Living flesh wasn’t supposed to look like him.

A steaming mug penetrated the curtain break at eye-level: “Thé, monsieur.”

He took the mug, chastising himself for how easily it could have been a gun. This was, he realized, The Time. Look up After in the book—this is where it starts. The next thing you do is the only thing that happens. Why can’t you get that through your fucking head? (he screamed, the gun off the table and in his hand now, and he ducked into the laundry room and locked the door and shoved the crate of detergent they got at Sam’s Club, way too much, he’d told him, but you never know).

“He’s dead.” He touched the mug to where the knife had defiled him: pain, the excoriated truth of existence. And barking through numbed teeth: “You’re alive.” He pressed the mug firmer to the slit: “They’re. All. Dead. You’re not. And this. Is how. It feels.”

Appearing through the curtain like the emcee of a robo puppet show and nudging Beaujolais’s teetering sanity a click closer to resolute madness, the bottom half of the phone popped in to say, “If you would like to talk to me we can communicate this way.” The man’s long finger touched the screen and the phone beeped with expectation.

“I don’t…No.”

The phone translated, then after the man spoke it said: “You were a soldier.”

Beaujolais said yes automatically.

“I was a soldier also.” The phone retracted and Beaujolais listened through the curtain as the man spoke in a language that rolled like hand drums and was not French in the least. The phone explained: “This is better. I have switched from French to my first language because it is easier for me to speak. I do not speak English well. I can see you are bleeding. I have a first-aid kit. I am going to retrieve it. I will return.”

For some reason he thought of the phrase mondo bizarro. There had to be a decent chance he was dead: limbo was supposed to be weird. He heard footsteps recede and return and the curtain birthed a red plastic box. He slid another four hundred out in gratitude.

The translator stripped the man’s language of its bounciness: “The money is generous and appreciated but unnecessary. Attend to yourself. I am going to continue closing up.”

Beaujolais doused his hands with rubbing alcohol, then, tipping the bottle above the wound in the mirror: Three. Two. One.

He could have died right there if It let him.

There was floss in the kit and he threaded it through the eye of the big single-use needle. He’d done it once before, on someone else, but in the mirror you had to do it in reverse, and he watched a man who looked exactly like himself sew themselves together. If death was, as promised, painless, the procedure proved his heart definitively beating.

He was dressed and sipping tea and damning the unreasonable distance between himself and his shoes when the phone popped in to ask if he was hungry.

Now that he thought about it.

“I will make you a plate. You can eat when you are ready. Do not expedite yourself.”

Beaujolais drained the mug and held his body around it until the ceramic was cold in his hands or vice versa. He’d never truly considered the meaning of the word surreal, but the talking phone really hammered it home, like having his own absurd mascot. It was all a bit much.

Maybe it wasn’t that complex.

The tennis bag hung on the wall and he claimed it painfully and unzipped the front pocket and removed his trophies: one money clip, two phones. The clip held banknotes and he unclasped them. A card fell out of the fold denoting the man from the train station as a member of a bocce club in Palermo.

He made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth.

The phones were of identical clamshell design. Neither had made a call but the bocce player had received one and he typed the number into his own phone: it matched one of the two saved in his contacts.

“Well,” he said. “There you go.”

He flipped the phones open and closed. A crease ran the length of the curtain. He traced it with his eyes. Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and—

Killing Uncle was incorrect, not only wrong but sloppy, and thinking about it made him nauseous because it was nauseating. What a big shit show.

He tried to look at the whole picture, that’s what the therapist said to do in the one session he’d attended at the VA. Make your mind a canvas and your memories into photographs and take your pair of scissors and cut up those photos, removing the unimportant bits—the background, the people in the crowd—and when you’ve cut away, starting from the center, arrange all the pieces of your life on that canvas and when you have them all laid out where you want them to be, imagine picking it up, feel how light it is, and once you’re familiar with the weight of it, once you’re ready, put a frame on your life, any frame, and hang it on the wall and now—she stressed this was the important part—step back and look at it, see it, really see it, see what it is and see what it isn’t and ask yourself: If something is small enough to be hung on a wall, then why does it feel so dang big?

“Because it is big,” he’d sniped.

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. What’s bigger than your life?”

“I think that’s what we’re here to find out.”

I am, he thought, not actually doing the best I can.

He found it difficult to imagine a time before the way his life was now.

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” he said.

He pressed the green button on the bocce player’s phone. Three rings, then a voice he knew.

“Freddy. È fatta? Per favore di’ che è fatto.”

He closed the phone and dropped it on top of his ruined clothes; to the man out there they were valuable. He looked at his shoes with disdain. Before he could attempt them, the gray egg vibrated in its nest.

“Cosa è successo? Ci sei? Devi parlarmi subito, Freddy.”

He sealed her voice shut and found his phone and opened the browser and typed TRANSLATE and entered “i cannot talk” in the box and selected ITALIAN from the languages and transcribed the letters and spaces—T9, how quickly it came back—building a text reading “non posso parlare” and sent it from the dead man’s phone. He repeated this process with the phrase “i am being followed” and reversed it for her replies.

(who)

(two men)

(are they ours)

(i do not know)

(is it finished)

( : o)

(thank god)

(what do i do now)

(i do not know)

(how should i know)

(what a silly question)

(should i come back)

(i do not care)

(where are you)

(we are going to the house)

(is everyone going)

(not everyone)

(some)

(do not fret. we do not have to talk)

(okay)

(see you there)

While very few of the living would trade him for his station, every single person who had ever died would gladly take his life off his hands. This is what he thought about as he put on his shoes.

When he broke the curtain the shopman was standing at the counter scooping food from a Tupperware with a piece of thin gray bread. At the sight of his guest, the proprietor dropped the tortilla-esque utensil and blotted his mouth with a napkin. “J’espère que vous aimez la viande de chèvre.”

Beaujolais cocked his head: he still didn’t speak French.

“Ah. Oui oui.” The man talked to his phone and it told Beaujolais to come eat.

They stood across the counter from each other. There were no utensils. He did as the man did, ripping a chunk from the least-stained corner of the flatbread, a purple, spongy, vaguely vinegar-scented pancake that denied his qualification, and dipped a chunk of meat from the plastic bowl. The flesh was new to him but, unctuous with fat, it fell apart in his mouth with the least amount of pressure, activating unique flavor receptors—capsaicin, dark maple, grass, salt—as it dissipated languidly across his tongue. He had no name for what he was eating.

“Est-ce que je t’ai menti?” The man was smiling, his nostrils blown open like shotgun bores. “Je t’avais prévenu! C’est délicieux, non?”

Beaujolais touched his forefingers to his thumbs and shook the rings with enthusiasm. “This is really good, man.”

The shopkeeper offered him a bottle of ibuprofen with codeine and the arbiter swallowed five. The men ate.

“America, ouais?”

“America, yeah.”

“Here long?”

“No.”

The man spoke into the phone and laid it on the counter between them. “You are leaving.” The phone said it like a command.

“Yes.”

“The country.”

He didn’t answer.

The man tilted his chin toward the tennis bag on his front. Through the phone: “Is that your weapon?”

Beaujolais touched the wooden handle. He thought of Casey Jones and the Ninja Turtles and Friday the 13th. Beaujolais said something and the man gestured to the phone and they communicated this way forward.

“Why are you asking?”

“It looks cheap.”

“Thirty euros.”

The man’s eyes appeared to jut in their housing. “Quelle blague,” then via the phone: “Thirty euros is a lot of money. It looks flimsy.”

“It will have to do.”

“It will have to do what.”

“Suffice. It is all I have.”

The arbiter judged the man’s face—he looked like he understood.

“Try the okra.”

“I was wondering what that was.”

“This is my wife’s favorite recipe. Or my favorite recipe of hers I should say.”

“I could eat this every day.”

“When I was a boy, my grandmother made this with cow skin. The hooves sometimes.” He touched the screen. “Do you have this word? Hooves?” He pointed the phone at his shoes.

“You ate hooves?”

“Yes. They are very nutritious but they need to be cooked for a long time.”

“I will have to take your word for it.”

“Take my word. What does this mean.”

“Trust you. I will have to trust you. I never ate hooves.”

“You did not have to eat hooves.”

“We ate sheep”—he debated the word—“testicles when I was a kid.”

“Testicles. Testicles.”

“We sliced them thin and fried them.”

“This is another joke. Or phrase.”

“No joke. My grandfather used to ask for them on his birthday.”

“I am now the one taking your word.”

Beaujolais acknowledged the banter.

The shopman rubbed his hands on his chore coat and swept his meal aside, clearing table space. He reached under the counter with both hands and brought out a case like the kind pool sharks carry. The case was made of a single swath of folded animal hide, blond, prototypical, some ancestor of leather softened by generations of hand-me-downs. Strips of rawhide served as fasteners, his gimp hand working crablike at the knots. The sheath butterflied open, forming a double of itself, revealing a corn knife at least two and a half feet long.

“Panga.” The hilt was wrapped in rubber tape and the man took it and lifted it and held the blade flat parallel to the counter. Thin veins of orange rust cobwebbed the haggard steel. “Vous appelez ça une machette.” His forearm bulged as he raised the blade and tapped the flat side against his head. “Pour la coco.”

He offered Beaujolais the scabbard. The weight surprised him. “This would ruin your day.” He turned from the counter and gave the air a couple whacks. Pure frightful power. “Yeah, I think that would do it.” He set the billhook on the leather and touched his side, the wound throbbing from his swordsmanship.

Again, via phone: “You have suffered an injury.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“I suffered an injury.” He exhibited his left hand.

“I saw that.”

The man outlined the sword’s edge with his finger. He spoke to the phone but paused the translation. He reflected, and seemed to add an addendum. “The man who injured me gave me this—I killed him with it.”

For a blistering moment their eyes spoke, reflecting themselves in each other.

“They said we were warriors, but we were only children.”

“Me too.”

“Where are you going when you leave here.”

It felt nice just to talk. “To meet some people.”

“Do these people know you are coming.”

“Maybe. I hope not.”

“I hope this for you as well.”

The shopman’s posture changed. Beaujolais bounced on his heels, like Alright then. He felt like he should give the man some money, but to pay for these kindnesses cheapened their sanctity. Maybe he could earn it. He touched the phone: “Do you know anyone with a car?”

“My cousin.”

“Would he let you borrow it.”

“Why.”

“I am hoping you will give me a ride.”

51

They sat on beaded seat covers. The man’s cousin’s car smelled of bark and what he imagined frankincense to be. Between them on the cracked vinyl, the machete nude its sheath.

The car had a cassette player and the tape inside of it projected a music comprised of jangling and thumping and whooping and hollering, pure life rattling from a single rear speaker. Neither man talked besides the arbiter’s navigation. He had a vague idea of where they were going, he thought it was called Versailles. Foggier than the destination was his understanding of what was to be done when they arrived.

In the darkness, the driver was incredibly black. Oncoming traffic displayed him, the shopkeeper, and in these flashes he appeared consternated. A bridge cable buckled in his temple, weathering something, as if his thoughts were razor blades he projected through the windshield, flying out past the headlamps, racing further than the light:

I am not from here, I am from a place that is gone. It was in Africa but it doesn’t exist anymore. I left thirty years ago—out, we had to get out, my wife and I. We were your age, younger. I am assuming of course you appear older than your actual age. This is how it is for people like us.

My childhood was one of hunger, the sincerest hunger, the hunger of bones unable to grow. Food amounted to our total concern. We measured it in handfuls, mouthfuls. We ate whatever we could, and when there was no food, we ate bark, leaves, mud sometimes. Gorged ourselves on water from the pump, our bellies swaying like we were pregnant with something beyond fantasy, empty but still full.

I was given a gun and I took that gun because I knew that with it I could get food. This is no excuse. This is just how it was.

I do not know how old I was when I took my first life but I remember as I stood there, afterwards…

—afterwards, when I stood there over the body, I remember thinking there was no possibility of me ever being able to do what I had just done. It seemed like some birth, a transferring. Like I was there and then not there and then back there, gone for the instant of the killing. Despite my disbelief, I declared I would never kill anyone ever again. Less than an hour later I broke this promise three times and then again the next day and the day after that for many days.

Many years.

I remember in the river when we bathed, I was one of only a few without hair. And when it was my turn to humiliate the women, I performed what was expected, an actor playing a role. My first time, they shot her during. This is how I became a man, the blood turning the dirt to clay.

I thought I was a man, doing what men did, but I know now, or I hope I know, that these were not the actions of men. Men are children of God. He is a mirror and we are reflected in Him because His form is too perfect for our vision.

By defiling His bodies, I refuted Him. What I did, what we did—our actions were in service of the Beast. We took Its form, a pestilence, marauding crusaders without a cross. We thought what we were doing was the only thing to be done, but that was an illusion, trickery, a riddle from a forked tongue.

We were bedeviled, I do think that to be true. Men do not act like us. We are brutes and we will burn. We must—you and I. I know your face because it is my face. I know who you are because we are the same. No one will ever know you again, just as no one knows me.

I have fed my wife grains, building up her tolerance, lest she become poisoned by me. My daughter, who I raised in this place, this astounding, reliable place, I told her less yet she thinks she knows more. You cannot keep secrets from a computer. If it says I am a monster, I cannot argue. There are parts of my life to which I no longer speak. If I could learn to forget their language completely, I would gladly cut out my tongue, but these memories do not live in just one part of me. They are me. I am a house and I live inside of me. The mortar and the bricks. I only see myself in the scars.

They took my fingers for stealing a soda, this was a blessing. True penance is rare in this life. Paying flesh absolved me. Blood as the wine.

I should fear you, but I know that you are only a killer, and if I am to be killed by you, then this is justice. I am due for culling, to be severed from this vine. The fruit of my life has been sweeter than a beast like me deserves. My actions stand in confidence with any definition of atrocity. I am not useful to the human race. I am a ghoul, the ghoul. But you…

This is my only wisdom—I cannot say a prayer for you. God made us perfect. There’s nothing else He can do.

The arbiter said they were almost there.

The man hummed along to the music.

As they approached the stop sign, he slowly closed his hand in a fist. “Okay.”

The driver killed the headlights. “Ici?”

“Wee. Thank you.” He went to shake. “Gem apple Robert.”

The man gave him what was left of his hand. “Je m’appelle Thomas.”

“Me Papà. Me papà gem apple Thomas.”

“Le nom de ton père était Thomas.”

“I will have to take your word for it.”

He stepped out of the car and leaned on the roof with his arm. Thomas held out the machete.

Beaujolais unzipped the tennis bag and removed three of the banded cash bricks and placed them on the dashboard and inserted the big knife into the space they’d occupied.

“Mercy boo coo, mon ami.”

The man eyed the money. Beaujolais looked at him and then looked at where he was going. “You know what?” He set the bag on the roof and took out the machete and the hatchet and the truncated shotgun and rezipped the satchel and put it back in the car. The driver staring: he’d never seen a man who looked like that. He laughed and for a second it was all worth it.

He arranged the hatchet in a tracksuit pocket and stuck the shotgun down the crotch and carried the machete like he was entering the jungle. He waited for the car to U-turn, the taillights coming on and receding down the night like twin cigarettes. He hoped there remained enough justice for a man to still buy himself a life.

The arbiter stood in the center of the lane facing the house seeing shades of black. He was not convinced this was the proper decision. Following the street down, he saw how it connected to every other street on earth. The world was big enough to make himself small inside of it. Pride wasn’t the word. The phrase the totality of the circumstance repeated itself in his head: buckle down, nut up, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do—not very much of his life amounted to anything other than bullshit.

His footsteps were the only noise besides the meek whispering of the nightwind half-heartedly pushing the smell of lilac between the estates. Where the road ended and the driveway began he wedged himself into the darkness between two immense shrubs. He lit a cigarette and enjoyed it.

Up the lawn every light in the house appeared on. Lumens spilled out of all windows, giving the château the aglow appearance of a spaceship or a vault protecting a resource more precious than gold. He heard the deepest rumblings of music, shouting, laughter, the echoes of the day’s mourning. He doubted anything resembling patrols. This was the kind of thing where he got spotted by someone sneaking a piss or turned his ankle on a drunk passed out on the lawn.

The totality of the circumstance.

Vehicles, less parked than discarded or abandoned, crowded the head of the driveway. Among them he saw shadows move: the drivers, uninvited, orphaned, innocent, labels which once applied to himself. As he inhaled the final centimeter of tobacco burning to ash at the end of his life, it occurred to him that what he wanted was to kill some more people and he didn’t really care if he died in the process. He looked up at the sky, the hard stars like bullet holes in heaven, and to the void he said, “Check this out.”

Ripping off the gold necklace, he pried the scarlet gem from its housing, popped the ruby in his mouth, and swallowed it. “Ta-dah.”

He shifted the machete, feeling the weight, prodding, mincing the grass between his feet. Planting the machete, he bent and scooped up a chunk of the sod, the cold green blades dangling with dirt clods, clinging to life despite being already dead. He rubbed the sample between his palms, feeling it disintegrate. He smelled his hand, licked his finger. To die here, fertilizing the womb of all beauty. This place was as good as any to leave his body. There was still the matter of addressing his soul.

Clawing up handfuls of dirt, he shut his eyes and applied the loam like face paint. Despite the cold he was sweating, crying perhaps—it was hard to tell what was happening to him. Someone had unplugged the radio he thought of as his consciousness. Directives replaced thought. Reason, causation, preservation, every facade incinerated by the inviolate truth of his form—The Totality of the Circumstance—a mantra, a curse, and by its repetition he was reduced to only what was necessary: eyes, ears, hands, feet, muscle, bone, teeth.

No heart remained to yearn with, no lips to say goodbye.

It felt like All aboard!

Stalking in silence behind the tree line he was nothing less than the scourge of this and every Earth. Wielding a reaper blade gifted by a child of the devil, he represented every iteration of nightmare, the culler of progress and enemy of hope, possibility’s end, a man in motion, the detriment, the voidoid, the arbiter, havoc in every way.

And when the man leaning against the trunk of a red Maserati peeled his eyes up off his phone, it was not Robert Beaujolais who plunged a sword made of pure moonlight into his abdomen, it was this blood sower, this wound in creation—the victim howling as his blood rained, calling more tributes for the wickedest one, stooped, of crooked spine and resolution, slithering behind his prey, feeling nothing but the air parting as he abandoned the hatchet in the next man’s neck. The last man, witnessing savagery, buckled and puked. Repulsed—I am exhausted by the embarrassment I feel for my fellow man—the arbiter cranked his hips and drove the machete like a baseball bat through the meat of the weak man’s thigh, chopping him down to a kneeling position. With his next swing the arbiter scalped him alive. Steam rising off the exposed brain became the air, and for a clutch of seconds he breathed his thoughts. Everything was blacker now, blood painting the driveway the darkest shade. In the expanding offal he found an old pistol, some pea-shooting antique from the trenchfoot times. He slid and clicked and opened and peered through the weapon. Everything seemed in order. Seven bullets if he was lucky and in many ways he was—he’d dodged boredom, been admired, known what it was to love.

The gray impression of a figure projected on the curtain of a window in the mansion’s top floor. The silhouette boomed and deflated in relation to the light, twirling, dancing, this shape of a woman. A pair of hands pierced the curtains and the window opened, belching smoke. Framed momentarily in the rippling fabric, he saw her, the bereaved. She really was beautiful when she smiled.

It would be nice to have her face.

Something hard crushed him lengthwise across his kidneys. As he lurched forward, the cold length connected savage with his tricep, spinning him and his attacker face-to-face. He slashed the machete in wild broad arcs. Carving space, he stepped left and his opponent mirrored, two samurai circling in the moonlight. The attacker feinted high but swung low and the arbiter parried the blow into the driveway, sending both the pipe and sword skittering. Immediately he caught a left in his collarbone and was doubled by the subsequent uppercut. When the knee came he grabbed ahold of it and fell forward, taking it to the ground, and he fought for the man’s back, sank his elbows under the chin, and wrenched backward, bucking with his hips until he felt the neck disengage from the spine.

With the body between his legs he lay on the concrete transforming the air into energy. He looked at the window. Faces amassed in the glass.

“Did you see me, Gianna?”

Standing, he raised the pistol to her window.

“Did you see what I can do?”

The glass exploded, cascading crystal rain. The faces fled the frame. He could only hope she was terrified. Anything more was a dream.

He plugged the smoking pistol in the pocket of his jacket. The machete handle was warm and tacky. He saw his reflection in a side mirror. The pistol drooped the tracksuit down on one side as if the garment had had a stroke.

“That’s you,” he said. “That’s what you look like.”

He ascended the entryway and opened the front door.

In the cavernous foyer a man yelled into a cellphone, struggling over the music, and the arbiter raised the shotgun and blew the man out of the room. There was another man and he turned in the direction of the cold to find what appeared to be a blood-soaked corsair hoisting a broadsword. The man’s eyes doubled because he was seeing a ghost.

“Benny.”

The man spun and the arbiter fileted his tricep and shoulder before the man fell. The arbiter hacked the length of his leg—calf, thigh, buttock—climbing him with the machete. The sound of the man dying disgusted him and he remembered another man in the heart of America and he planted the sword like a flag in the center of the man’s spine.

On the ground in the corner a quivering spasmatic appeared in the throes of some fit. A tremor shook him badly, sniveling, like zipping and unzipping a zipper. “Hell, I’d be scared, too.” It was impossible for his eyes to become more open until the shotgun disproved him.

There was a gunshot and it wasn’t his and he dived and was crawling. Another pop, small caliber. The shape of a man crossed the open doorway and he roared the shotgun but his firing position was awkward and he rolled into the corner and stood and pressed against the wall beside the doorframe. Footsteps approached and stopped and he deemed it likely the owner of the feet occupied a similar position on the other side of the wall. Somewhere in the house the music turned off. They stood in the next-comes-death silence mirroring each other through the plaster. In the center of the foyer a noise emanated from the chopped-to-pieces man. The sword, embedded, remained upright, growing from the corpse like some abominable metal sapling.

“King Arthur,” he said.

He extended his arm to its limit and knocked on the wall away from the doorway then sprang through the threshold, landing on his back with the antique pistol extended. He fired twice, center-mass, and the man fell. Something bit his ankle and he heard gunfire and the momentum of the bite caused him to spin on the ground like a Three Stooges. On his lamed limb he scrambled behind a couch, an animal escaping gunfire. Firing from cover he reciprocated blindly. All was pandemonium. He crawled down the couch but whatever bit his ankle jumped up to his shoulder and sent him flat to his back.

The heavy glass coffee table was his window to the world—a head appeared over the top of it and the arbiter emptied his gun and when it clicked he pounced over the sofa, landing on the body, and into the man’s face he repeatedly jabbed the narrow gun barrel in the manner of churning butter I am killing you because you are killing me because I am killing you because you are killing me until the face turned into clay.

He rolled off the dead man, braced to stand and collapsed in the pulped mess. He managed to sit up, a victory in his condition: his arm hung dead, ornamental below the bullet hole; he only knew his foot was attached because he saw it there.

Men approached, multiple, their whispers increasing in volume.

“…Benny.”

It astonished him to find his life still housed in his body.

Dragging himself grubwise, he achieved the gun he’d been shot with. He collected himself, mustering his remainder, a revenant, a thing undying and never old. Pink foam rimmed his mouth like a goatee. All he needed was a cigarette and a machine gun. He heard them coming.

Feeling among the wreckage, he found a glass ashtray and lobbed it like a grenade over the couch. When he heard it shatter, he stood and let loose the pistol, powered by hope’s combustion, this progenitor of sorrow, truly null to the bone.

He made for the patio door, spitting with the agony. Wretched locomotion, dreadful: he moved like his existence ashamed him. Coming around the corner into the dining room, he saw himself reflected in the French doors. Shambling forward, they reached for each other. He nearly attained himself when the shotgun bellowed. His reflection burst, ripping in two. He could fly now, a last request—airborne, sailing, falling—

He crashed through the glass like cannonballing a frozen lake. You couldn’t feel it—it was too quiet below the surface, the oxygen so incredibly precious. He swallowed his gift in short, sharp blasts, breathing in Morse code. He felt like he was saying something.

—a light came on in the room or in the universe or in him: What’s really going on here?

In his scalp, in his skin, shards glistened like gems of his own provenance. He lay in his jewels staring up at the shepherds gathered. It was kind for them to be here. Above the men he saw Him, bedecked in black infinity, wearing time for His robe.

I sure hope He’s smiling.

—even now was an opportunity to say a prayer for his fellow man.

His mobility was confined to his fingertips. They probed his stomach. I had a bellybutton my whole life until now. He’d been unzipped, insides outside, torn blasted open.

—and it shocks him in the middle of his heart because it is the fear of not having a soul, or worse, that he did and he ruined it.

The miracle is you ever existed.

He’d laugh if there were any air. It was all red feathers now.

—and seeing It up close, finally, at this distance, he saw It had never been that far. It was always right over there, just ahead, and now It was here, plain and simple. Definitely, baby.

Our Father, you motherfucker, don’t you recognize the son of your affliction?

—your eyes couldn’t let you see It until the end, otherwise you’d tear them out.

—It was the easiest thing to understand when you think about It, and that’s why you can’t think about It. Because you were never really

HERE

THIS

all of

THIS

everything there was and everything there is, gone.

Like poof.

—reallocating, returning, resorbing, redo, please, for the love of You, redo.

—and in the black outside the window the last remaining scum of his life dripped down the flattened face of the moon, buoyed by the light, rising ultimately, not bewildered for once, no longer afraid. Total vision.

—and he saw It rip apart into shrapnel

—and he saw It tear Itself into swords

—and the grenade in his heart exploded

—and time itself destroyed him or the other way around

Oh, shit.

Dawning on him.

It was really just my soul all along.

A face appeared briefly before It and him and everything was consumed by a black fire. This is what he thought as he actually died: If there was anything ever good in this world it was you and you were terrible.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express his sincerest gratitude…

…to Emmy, Duddy, Fi, Mel, Hannah, Susu and Suz for reminding me what’s important.

…to Dan, Ben and Lee for ensuring the fat was not only cut but rendered and made into luscious lipstick.

…to Becker, Pat and Lund for letting me happen to them.

…to Travis Garner, my arms expert, for opening his heart with both barrels.

…to Zach Mama for being not only French but specifically Parisian.

…to Gabriele Merlino for being a kind Italian stranger.

…to Lili Michelle for the Toronto slang.

…to Moe Levin for underlining how little I understand about blockchain.

…to Luke Lochfeld for introducing me to San Francisco and for still being around.

…to Matthew “Uncle Chaps” Cothron for your expertise in mayhem and the miracle of your empathy.

…to my mother for fostering my creativity even when it scared her.

About the Author

Sam Tallent is a comedian, novelist, and host of the Chubby Behemoth podcast. For the last decade, he has performed more than forty-five weekends per year in North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Tallent has two comedy specials: Waiting for Death to Claim Us and The Toad’s Morale. He also has a travel show, Sam Tallent’s Wide World, on YouTube. He lives in Detroit, where his interests include relief printing, the Denver Broncos, playing the drums, and, most supreme, loving his wife very much. He wants his next novel to be about deathmatch wrestling in Japan.

Instagram: @SamTallent

YouTube: youtube.com/​@samtallent

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