Catastrophe Jones

The pouring rain wasn’t the issue. God knows he’d gotten soaked by worse while on jobs before. The lack of notice wasn’t the issue. How many times had he been bullied into an assignment without a scrap of consideration for the other things he had going on? It wasn’t even the target, though he wasn’t all that thrilled with having to look down the scope at a new mother and contemplate whether he should take the shot before or after she left the nursery. It wasn’t even the fact that he’d been asking for non-terminal assignments for about six months now, and they haven’t even bothered to pretend that they lost the paperwork. They were just ignoring it.

It wasn’t any of these things, so he couldn’t really understand why his hands were shaking as he rearranged the short-legged tripod and tried to keep rain from messing with the lens, couldn’t really understand why the back of his throat felt like fire as he crouched on the roof, couldn’t understand why his heart was pounding in a way that suggested his last cup of coffee might’ve been spiked.

“Fucking Starbucks,” he muttered, and wipes cool drops from his brow before they drip into his eyes.

Through the scope he could see her singing a lullabye; her lips moved as she gently rocked and swayed the tiny cooing thing who’d be an orphan in about sixteen seconds or less, and he sang along, without realizing.

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”

“…what happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

“I don’t.”

Silence met that last bit, silence only punctuated by the raising of one eyebrow, as if to ask ‘Well where the hell else do you need to be right now?’

“Fine,” he sighed, heavy and weary and hateful of everything in the world, including and especially the amusement found in dark eyes.

“Fine?”

“Should’ve been an easy mark— ”

“Are they ever?”

“—but the timing got fucked.” He kept going, as though he wasn’t interrupted, when in fact that was the question he’d had on his mind for some time now. Were they ever easy? “He was in his office alone, and I’d already had the keys made; after hours, the guards go for coffee, watch the cable, read their skin mags, sneak a fag in the washroom when no one’s looking, after they’ve turned off the smoke detectors. Probably could’ve walked in the goddamned front door, really, but the back one was set, and then I took the stairs.”

“Aren’t those doors alarmed?”

“Normally, yeah, but they’d been cut earlier, the switch for my floor rerouted to the one above it. So I get in, I get up, to his hall, and the cleaning crew’s already down to the floor below—they’ve got the main stairs and all the freight elevators blocked off for servicing; even if an alarm goes off, it’ll take them a fucking hour to get all the way up to where I’m gonna be.” He pauses to light a cigarette, then rubs at his face gingerly, wincing as his fingers probe the swollen flesh around his right eye. “I’m outside the door to his office, and all it’s supposed to be is a shot to the head and I’m out. The silencer’s on, the gloves’re on, the safety’s off. I’m listening, and I can hear him in there, muffled, talking to someone. He’s on the phone, I’m thinking. Then I actually listen, and realize that if he’s on the phone it’s with fucking 976-BABE or some fucking thing like that. Bastard’s clocking overtime while he’s wanking into the company trashcan, or something. I figure now’s as good a time as any, ‘cause it’s not like he’ll try to run away when he’s got his pants around his ankles, and I open the door.”

“One of these days, someone’s going to say, “Don’t you ever knock?” and you’ll be too surprised to shoot them.”

“Do you want to hear this, or not?”

“Sorry, sorry!”

“And wipe that goddamned grin off your face. S’bad enough what went down. So I open the door, level the gun, but can’t take the fucking shot ‘cause it’s not the phone—he’s got someone in there with him—”

“Ohshit.”

“—and I’m in plainclothes and wasn’t expecting this shit—the logs didn’t show that anyone else had come up. Either security’s worse’n’I thought, or he’s been doin shit like this long enough he knows his way around.” A pause, for a long drag off the smoke. “Ain’t the worst fuckin part, though.”

“Why?”

“You ever seen The Shining? The old one, with Jack Nicholson?”

“Brightman, you fuck, if you tell me the elevator doors down the hall open and flood the whole fucking office with blood I will shoot you with your own gun.”

“Shut up,” he snaps. “No, the one flick of a snap they’ve got where an open door reveals a guy on a bed with a fucking man in a teddy suit going down on him—”

“You’re completely shitting me. You are completely and totally and utterly shitting m—”

“—M’not shittin you; the mark’s got a man in a catsuit on, ears’n’tail’n’all. Almost dropped the fucking gun. Shot once, but it hit the leash on the furry fucker, ‘n the end the mark was holding got jerked back, snapped me right in the fucking face.”

For a moment, there was complete silence, again, and then it was broken by the sound of her hysterical laughter, filling the hotel room.

“Got ‘em both after that, though. One-two, dropped ‘em and left ‘em for the morning coffee girl to find. Wife might get the blame, like she found out her hubby’s taste for Tender Vittles ‘n’couldn’t quite hack it, or maybe the furry’s pimp had something to settle. Or frankly, I don’t fucking well care what the papers say; they’ll be too caught up in the fact that the senior programmer was found dick-deep in a cat-man to wonder why they had their brains on the blotter.”

The laughter was beginning to recede now, but it gave him no relief; he knew what she’d ask next.

“Okay, so that explains the black eye. But what about the whipped cream?”

“If I give you another fifth of Chivas, will you be drunk enough to shut up?”

“Well, well, well,” Angie crooned. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you here again.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Simon said, shrugging, and pulled out a chair. Once he’d already sat down he wondered, “This seat taken?”

“Meeting a friend,” she told him, wearing the kind of smile that said ‘I know something you don’t know.’

“I won’t stay long,” he gave back, and lit up a cigarette, happily ignoring the No Smoking signs that were plastered around. Just as happily ignoring the glare of the bartender.

“I’ve missed you, you know,” Angie says, watching him exhale.

“Funny,” he says, calm and collected, “I don’t think about you at all. When I first came in, I don’t think I even recognized you. You blend in, is all.”

“Ah, forgettable me,” she sighed, laughing. “Nothing like yourself, in your flashy clothes and your expensive cars. What was your name again?” She winked.

“Let’s save the introductions for morning,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette. “You can tell me your name again while you’re making me coffee.”

“You always were a charmer,” Angie quipped, sliding out of the chair and tugging at her skirt, smoothing her hair.

“Comes naturally,” he found himself answering, even as he was already headed for the door, her in tow.

Somewhere along the way, they stopped saying “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Somewhere along the way, they stopped having to listen to the comforting words of friends, acquaintances, strangers. Somewhere along the way, she stopped leaving, and took to sleeping in the extra room, a silent presence that would be there and gone again, somehow knowing when he preferred to be alone, and knowing when he preferred company, if not necessarily conversation. At the funeral, she let her bare hand trail over a peaceful face, beckoning to the fore the soul that had to be there. Had to. Begging, really, and it was only the look of steel-grey eyes that finally let her step back and go to sit along with the few mourners that came along to share their own grief.

It wasn’t until about three weeks later, after the coffin had been put in the ground, that he woke to find her standing near the bed, her large eyes wide in the dark, one bare hand touching the empty pillow next to his head, a look of grief on her pretty face.

There were no words, none at all; neither had them, never really had them, and when she lifted her eyes to let them rest on his, they both realized they didn’t need them.

The hum-click-whir-beep of the place wasn’t what stung.

The sterile, antiseptic smell of every single kind of antibacterial wash laid against specled floor, white wall and grey table wasn’t what stung.

The kind, vacant, urgent aces of the nurses wasn’t what stung.

Bullet holes weren’t what stung.

Hands that shook too much to hold the paper cup of bitter coffee weren’t what stung.

The tap squeak tap squeak tap squeak of an idle intern next to an unused gurney wasn’t what stung.

Red on the white sheets isn’t what stung.

Needle and thread, no.

Someone’s sharp voice barking “Clear!”, no.

Betadine on his lips, no.

Cracked ribs, no.

Not the screaming infant with an ear infection.

Not the woman with the fresh hot bruises of love gone wrong written all over her face.

Not the middle aged man who — somehow, only god knows why — has a grapefruit spoon lodged in his left nostril.

Not the young man kicking at the Coke machine.

Not the way everyone else was wrapped up in the tight, suffocating cocoon of their own pain.

Not any of that.

It was the way he could see through the curtain that her hand hung off the side of the table, grey green pale to match the inside of the place.

Grey green pale the way fluorescent lights washed everything into bleak nothing.

Grey green pale wasn’t the color of life.

And it stung.