Bogart & Sons

People rarely say what they mean.
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“Your Mother and I care about you.”
~I have invested a lot of money in you. You better not embarrass me before my business partners.
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“Don’t worry about him now, dear. Concentrate on getting better yourself.”
~Your lover is dead.
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“Hey, babe. Lemme getcha a drink.”
~I want to fuck you; I’m lazy; I don’t mind if you’re mostly unconscious for it.
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“Duck.”
~I am saving your life because it seems worth saving.
-
Usually, people are a lot more loquacious in spirit than in words.
I listen to both words and spirit.
I hear.

I got my ass handed to me.
It happens. Not often, but sometimes I limp back, shut myself away from the world and lick my wounds alone in the darkness. Still shaking, I sink onto the sofa and start an inventory.
Lip split, but nose isn’t broken. Good. Cheek cut on teeth on the inside, but teeth themselves intact. A humongous bruise, but-
The door opens. Mithra hands me a bag of frozen carrots. “Press that to your face before it swells.”
I obey. The cold burns – but at least she can't see me cry.
Relief is such a bitch.

I used to think that life was full of variables.
A public school or a private one? Hobbies? Art and books and the unending fascination with taking things apart; everything is puzzles. Everything is math! Even love, there for the taking when you’re young and rich and reasonably good-looking.
Only math doesn’t stop at high school level. It gets more complicated; you stumble over convergences (Yorick, that’s you) and limits (that morning, the Sun pulling giddy us out of the house) and you fall face-first into derivations.
In the end, there is a constant. And the only constant is death.

Despite being tied up and threatened with third-degree burns, the villainous gutter scum keeps his composure.
Mithra grows frustrated. Kids’ lives are at stake, and Mithra has a soul. She needs to know the destination of that cargo box.
“I can get it out of him,” I suggest mildly.
“Then what are you waiting for?!” She glows with anger. It’s quite intimidating.
I point at the door.
She understands. After a moment of indecision, she looks at the bastard’s smirk and remembers the children. She leaves. The door slams shut behind her.
I pull out my favourite switchblade and grin.

“What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the worst that could happen?! You could be killed! Captured! Raped! They could decide to have a little fun and torture you-”
“Point,” I admit. “I don’t like pain.”
Mithra’s hand jerks like she wants to smack me for being too stupid to live.
I stare at her. I’ve been told that I’ve got a dead eye. Wish I could say I practiced in front of a mirror; the truth is that it comes naturally.
“If you get killed, don’t come crying to me,” she snaps.
I solemnly nod. “I promise I won’t.”

A story should end in a wedding or in a funeral. Granted, a wedding feels more like a beginning.
I stand hidden in the shadow of the confessional, in a different church than the one where I’ve once worked. Hundreds of people are packed inside.
My father struts down the aisle as though this day was all about him. Peacock.
Ah, there she is.
I smile.
My little sister, head to toe in white, nervous but grinning at the man who takes her hand as they both face their future together.
I stay until the kiss. I’ll toast them privately.

“Your mother left something for you here. Just in case… you ever came by…”
I know that my mother is aware of my visits to Croatia. I changed my name, refused contact and won’t ever return to her, but I wouldn’t deny her the little my grandparents know about me.
Granddad comes back with a book. He shoves it into my hands and walks away, angry at being used as a mailman.
It’s my old copy of Sherlock Holmes.
I turn it over and look under the dust cover.
They are there: all five existing photos of Yorick and me.

“This is the right address,” I confirm.
Past ten o’clock the Boulevard gets crowded. Mithra and I stand in front of a business that could, politely, be called a nightclub. The neon sign above the entrance reads GREAT MEAT, with the first and last two letters coloured pink.
A pretty good marketing scheme for a brothel.
“I know that guy,” Mithra says, staring at a man with his collar turned up and hat pulled low. “He was at the charity event.”
That means he’s rich, in trouble, and here to try and pay out of it.
It’s all coming together.

“Why did the petrol station have to be there?” the boy asks hazily, blinking from the driver’s seat of the car he had just spectacularly crashed through the glass window into the soft drink fridge.
He’s drunk as skunk and, judging by the smell, high as well.
I’m amazed he knows where he is.
Maybe if he hadn’t done it about ten inches away from me, I would not want to maim him.
“Baby,” he pokes the girl giggling in the shotgun, “that’s a real flamingo. In a petrol station.” And then he starts giggling, too.
I’m gonna kill him.

Usually we’re hired to find living people. They sometimes turn up dead. This is the first time we were going after the effects of a dead man, only to discover their owner – a fairly angry guy but definitely alive.
His widow (or not, as the case may be) starts hysterically screeching: “You’ve been presumed dead for years!”
He jumps up, red in the face. “Dying has made my life worth living again!”
“Too bad we can’t citizen-arrest someone for being an utter arsehole,” I mutter to Mithra.
She slugs my shoulder. “Chin up. We’ll help get him for tax evasion.”