Sixteen Small Deaths (10 page)

#

Dawn greets me with a thick flash the color of wet pansy leaves, scattered tube of crinkling light and dust. Eyes open and close to the tune of The Noise awakening from its calm fit of slumber. My shower is quick and it’s only a matter of minutes before wet hair scrunches with the dewy frost of mid-autumn. Gun is tucked into the back of my jeans and Humbart’s address is planted firmly behind the center of my forehead. It’s only a little after six in the morning and I’m not ready for this day to begin. I walk past Park Street station and beyond the Commons, along
Tremont Street until I hit the edge of the North End. The ocean breeze unleashes its cold grip onto the city and hits me when I reach the tip of Boston Harbor. Soft, dark dirt crumples under my boots and I’m walking over the bocce courts and a baseball field.

The skyline pierces the dark violet sky, blood red clouds looking downward as if they were a marching army. A row of wooden benches are empty along the harbor line, a pack of geese flopping about and sailing back into the ocean blue. I ease into the bench, gun gently poking the tip of my spine. I close my eyes and The Noise is calm, drifting shivers of dissolving static seeping from my conscious thoughts and lost somewhere between my heart and my skull. Blood platelets slow to a crawl, millimeters of anger and regret hovering between the rusted blue of quivering veins. The reverberation of a thousand nightmares tugs at the base of my brain and pulls out every sopping memory of Lynne. I can’t remember her face, her voice. Vision blurs into a hazy cloud of fog and orange smoke. My lips shudder and crack, thin flame of saliva and blood spilling from its corners like a broken bottle. The Noise penetrates my bones and shakes them until I’m on the concrete ground, fingernails scraping bits of dirt and lost sand. Cherry waves slap and bite the edge of the harbor and within seconds my mind is crashing.

A thermal lullaby coats my thoughts, a million whirling flakes of black snow amongst a field of broken stars.

#

Fade into gray. I sit up and spit out a long trail of sticky viscera, the remnants of lost time. Blink once, twice, feel the sun’s warm morning rays soothe the shutter snaps of my joints. Purple sky and viscous clouds above, signals of a brand new day burst from a hazy morning. Crick of the barrel of my gun digging into my back, I pull it out and remember why I’m next to the harbor. Ramon Humbart lives only a few blocks away.

I shake the bits of sand from my jacket and hair and stroll along the sidewalk connected to the ports on either side of the harbor. The Noise cycles on a repeated loop now, same shimmering wave of static burning into every little thought. I inch across the baseball diamond and park until I’m back into the city. Commercial Street snakes into Hanover Street and soon enough I’ll reach Humbart’s apartment building. I’ll calmly buzz his room number and have him invite me upstairs. When I reach his apartment and he opens the door, I’ll make him remember my wife and everything she meant to me.

#

Lynne had a dream soon before she was killed. She called Delilah, who at this point was already livid with her visions and premonitions. She told her about the car accident, the smashing of two vehicles in downtown Boston that would result in three deaths. She said his last name was Humbart and he drove a Nissan, lived not too far from Doc and Delilah. It didn’t take long for the three of them to connect, and once they did, it was Humbart, a man whose face I’ve only seen in black-and-white, to recommend that Lynne’s demise was the only way to stop the future from playing out as it should.

Delilah asked Lynne to meet her at the apartment for dinner, a chance to put the past couple months of tragedy behind them and start the friendship anew. Somehow I knew that Humbart was the one who put the bullet in my wife’s skull and watched her writhe in a gallon of blood and pain. When I got to the hospital, she had ten breaths left in her body. Ten seconds of life dissipating from her eyes like a lightning burst before the final shock of a storm. She gripped my fingers, chipped black nail-polish twinkling in the dreary hospital light. One heave of her chest, fluffed like an aged pillow, and she was gone. Lynne passed with her eyes open and I’ll forever imagine if the colorful
vision of me screaming will be forever engrained into hollowed mind of her ghost.

The front of Humbart’s apartment building is unremarkable, looks nearly vacant. I scan the lineup of apartment numbers and find his: 125. I push the button and an eruption of tones filters from the intercom.

“Yes?”

I clear my throat. “Ramon, I’m a friend of Doc and Delilah’s. Something has happened to them and I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, Jesus…come right up.” The intercom buzzes and I can hear the clicking of the front door unlocking. I pull it open and pause for a moment in the lobby, listen to The Noise hum and drone before I start my journey up the staircase next to the wall of mailboxes. Humbart’s apartment is on the third floor. I find his door and rap two times, one for each of the souls I’ve sent to the afterlife.

Jingling of locks and shoes against carpet. The door slides to an open inch and two eyes as brown as a dead horse greet me. “Who are you? What’s happened to them?”

“Calm down for a second. Let me in and we can talk.”

The door swings open and Ramon stands before me. The man who shot my wife, the man who took down two lives with a single bullet. He sees the gun in my right hand and before he can fully react I’ve pumped a bullet in his chest. He falls to the ground in slow motion. One more in his forehead and he stops breathing. I catch a glimpse of his kitchen before I leave and I swear Lynne’s ghost walks past the open window. Before I can think too much I’m down the stairs and out into the open street, past the coffee shop on the corner and well into the void of The Noise.

#

I avoid the scramble of faces and sunlight. Morning turns to
afternoon and soon enough I’m outside of The December Club, sweat pouring out of every crevasse in my face. I bow before the entrance, take one last moment to inhale the sweet ocean air that has glided downtown. Two minutes and I’m in the elevator, push the button for the third floor. I find my room and slip the key into the lock.

Waft of lavender and vanilla, Lynne’s dormant fragrance tripping into my aura one last time. I empty my pockets, slide the gun onto the desk and find my crumpled pack of cigarettes. There’s one left and I laugh out loud, chuckle scaring the voices living inside the hotel room walls. I light it up, take a long drag before I dial Max’s number on the phone next to the bed.

I hear a grunting “Hello?” and I smile. “Thanks for everything, Max,” I say, and gently let the receiver fall back into place. I flip the wire out of the socket and close my eyes. The Noise finds its way back into my head, ample ginger waves buzzing with fuzzy delight. I pull open the curtains and let the afternoon sky bathe me in its peaceful glow, indigo blush of autumn just beyond the window. I grab the gun off the desk and keep it in my left hand. The edge of the bed is comfortable and I sit back for a moment, kick my boots off to the corner of the room. I pull the letter out of my pocket, read it one last time. Lynne knew it would come to this and never wanted me to know. Even her warm glow is beyond the reach of The Noise and I can hear her voice again, supple tinge of sweet whispers bouncing against the soft insides of my skull.

Tip of the gun in my mouth, tastes like rust and cold cinnamon. Velvet lullaby of pale static and the supernova burst of a single gunshot.

I pinch the fleshy part of the skin between the fingers on my right hand and convince myself that I’m not dead. The absence of echoes in my chest, my heart could have stopped beating but the blood sloshes through tired veins. My breaths are panicked, air wavering through my nose and mouth like a broken vacuum. There’s a touch of pink in the sky, a small wound in the few clouds above my head.

Traffic hums in the busy street and each passing car makes me flinch. I look down at my wrist to see what time it is but it’s bare and absent of a watch. It seems like I’ve been waiting for Chloe for years, but the dying sun tells me it’s probably only been twenty minutes. The door to the sushi dive behind me jingles on each opening and closing and I resist the urge to walk in before Chloe gets here.

Three elderly women walk past me on the sidewalk, each carrying bright orange shopping bags. Their chatter is silent, I see only their lips move. I turn and lean against the comfort of the restaurant’s brown and red brick wall, pull a cigarette out of the few left in the pack. I light it with a quick motion and its rosy tip is my personal burning star.

The early evening breeze is cool and undaunted, grazing my backside with gentle force. I steal a glance of an older woman’s cleavage as she walks into the restaurant, the hint of a rose tattoo amidst orange-tanned skin. The word “sushi” is illuminated in capital letters in the neon green sign in the upper left-hand side of the front window. Small bright spots dance in front of my eyes like firecrackers.

Cold flesh hits underneath my jacket and above my waist, startling me. I turn around and see Chloe. She smiles and runs her hands along my jacket zipper, white-painted fingernails bumping along each jagged edge of metal. Her hands are tiny,
like a schoolgirl’s. She’s wearing tight faded jeans, a black t-shirt and an olive green jacket.

You haven’t been waiting too long, I hope, she says. You know how things are.

I smile and cross my arms.

She rubs the edge of my elbow and it’s too hard to stop thinking about her body for more than two or three minutes in a row. She has eyes that could frost the surface of a highway. Chloe nods in the direction of the restaurant and I follow her in. She walks in confident steps, as if already knowing that every guy in the place is going to stare at her upon her entrance. There’s a young couple presumably on a date in the front booth, a group of hipsters sitting at three connected tables to the side. A Japanese new-wave tune plays in the background, a girl with a squeaky voice repeating the same line over and over.

Chloe points in the direction of an empty booth and sits down. I sit across from her and close my eyes for a moment, hands at my sides and stuck to the fake red leather below me. The waitress, a short Japanese girl with golden streaks in her black hair, places two menus on the table and smiles, then walks away.

I already know what I want, Chloe says.

You always do, I say.

She taps her fingers on the table and stares at me, as if bored with this restaurant and bored of my company. You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to, she says. I’ve told you that a hundred times.

And I’ve given you the same fucking answer a hundred times, I say. I’m ready, and I’m going to help you.

Chloe bites her lip and looks at the couple in the front of the restaurant. She flips a bit of hair out of her face. Fine, she says. I told Hank that we’d be there by ten.

I nod and look at my menu. The waitress walks over and Chloe orders the spicy tuna roll and a beer. I order the same and
the little Japanese girl bows and heads to the kitchen to get our drinks. I take a deep breath and gaze at Chloe, her narrow cheekbones and the small bits of blush parallel to her nose. The things I’ll do for love are the things I’ll always regret.

#

Chloe’s car holds the remains of old styrofoam coffee cups and empty cigarette boxes but smells like a mix of blueberry and autumn. She keeps her hands at ten and two on the wheel, eyes focused and staring straight ahead. The road is a mirror of green and purple light, my mind lost somewhere in the haze of the night. The radio is turned off but Chloe hums her own tune, taking small breaths in between verses.

She stops at a red light and looks at me, smiles. I think she can feel my fear, feel the way that my eyes dart back and forth between the street and my hands. Chloe is a beacon of solitude and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen her afraid of anything.

We’re almost there, she says.

I stay silent and watch the buildings pass by on my right, somewhat aware that we’re entering a seedy part of town. Chloe turns the car into the parking lot to the side of a rundown apartment building with beige balconies on every floor. From the outside, it looks like a welfare crack den from the late ’70s. I never question Chloe and tonight will be no different.

We get out of the car and she embraces me in a hug, kisses the t-shirt below my jacket. Her lips send a shockwave of warmth throughout my chest, my arms, and for only now I can feel my heart beating again, each thump loud enough to split my eardrums. We look at each other for a full minute before she lets her arms fall to the side.

Can you get my bag out of the trunk, she says.

She presses a button on her keys and the trunk opens. I push away the piles of clothes and a briefcase to get to the small blue
duffel bag in the corner. It looks light but probably weighs ten pounds. Chloe takes my hand and we walk slowly past the other cars in the lot. She pauses at a red Thunderbird with black stripes and says that it’s Hank’s car. When she says his name she winces, like something popped in her stomach. We keep walking and head up the two flights of concrete stairs, each step echoing in the night.

Chloe stops at the double doors of the entrance and turns to me, holding my hands in hers. Her brunette hair hangs in front of her eyes like dead tree limbs. Her eyes are now serene, the calm before our night begins.

Remember, she says. If there’s too much blood, you can always close your eyes.

#

We’re on the seventh floor of the apartment building, just outside of room 717. The tangy odor of foreign foods is prevalent in the hallway, which looks like an endless array of chipped brown doors and dirty green carpet. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling trap various dead insects, a dull shine that does nothing for the mood of this building, does nothing for the mood of this evening.

Chloe takes a deep breath before knocking. Three loud raps and Hank shouts something from the other side. He answers the door wearing navy blue khakis, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and aged cowboy boots. He could be in his early fifties, a swarm of gray and black hair on his head like that of a spider monkey.