Dating : What You Wish For

[this is fiction that several well-known markets have rejected. It’s short, morbid, but not horror.]

Stop begging! You need to hide, yes. When you killed your victim, you relieved me of a nasty job. You come well recommended. So, very well. I will take you there, but I warn you, there are risks. You have your knives? I know you can handle a knife. Yes, I see you do. And the cash? Good. The sun slides below the horizon. Overhead the blue gloaming thickens. This is the moment when we can enter the night city. Let us go then, you and I.

The street, an old street, lined with buildings, some stone, some wood, store fronts below, cheap flats above, a perfectly respectable street in the day world city, shabby but clean, thanks to the immigrants from Asia, who scrub the doorsteps and sweep the sidewalks. They even sweep the little alleys in the middle of the blocks and wash their garbage bins. Consider this alley between a Vietnamese restaurant, so brightly lit against the gathering night, and the sullen gray side of a stone building that advertises rooms for rent.

The alley runs half way into the block and ends, does it not, against a narrow stone building. Lighted windows, kitchens, most likely, give enough of a yellow glow that we can see the wooden stairs zigzagging up the back between them. We pause, look behind us. No one follows. I will lead the way. Follow me. Do not look from side to side. Merely look at my back, the painted wings on the black leather jacket.

Our feet make little noise on the clean swept asphalt until they crunch on fine shards of glass. Keep walking. We should have reached the back of the building by now, should stand at the foot of the wooden stairs, but we keep walking until we come free into another street, this one narrow, dimly lit by the fluted globes of street lamps set far apart. People cross the street, walk in the street, hurry from curb to curb. They keep their heads down or keep their gaze fixed straight ahead even when they pass so close to us that we can smell the perfumes or the sweat or the mingle of both. Why? They cannot see us. Yet.

Across the street stands the pagan temple, huge pillars of pale gold stone, streaked with soot and rain water. Shadows move and dance between the pillars or linger on the stairs that lead up between them to a dark porch. Some resolve themselves into human beings. Others are . . . others. We will not be entering the temple, not this trip, at least, assuming there will be other trips. I can hear how your breath has quickened. You are looking this way and that, excited, eager to take in every detail. Try to calm yourself. You do not want anyone to know that this is your first time here. You smile. A thin wondering touches my mind. Is this truly your first time?

“Is this hell?” you say.

“No. It can’t be. You’re not dead.”

“Right. Sorry.”

You have the decency to look embarassed, you in your flowered shirt and baggy jeans, an innocent, one would think. But the drops of dried blood on your left sleeve dripped from another person’s throat.

We step out onto the sidewalk. A woman yelps in sudden surprise and runs to get past us. We are now visible. We turn uphill — this street runs on a slight slope — and stroll past small shops, dark and shuttered, until we reach a squat brick building. Up a few steps to a pair of doors on a shallow porch. I knock on the one to our left. A curtain twitches behind a small window. An old woman’s face peers out. She nods, lets the curtain fall. In a moment we hear metal latches clanking back. The door opens, and we follow Em inside.

She looks like a bundle of rags, Em, fat, dressed in a variety of clothes staggered over her squat body in no apparent order: red pantaloons outside of torn blue jeans, a man’s undershirt over a red tee, both under a long gray sweater. She leads us down a narrow hall, stinking of boiled cabbage and bacon and some indeterminate garbage, to a lighted room with a sagging brown sofa and two newish paisley brown armchairs. A gas heater hisses under the mantle of what was once an elegant fireplace of green flowered tile.

“Is Gloria working?” I say.

“Yeah.” She jerks her thumb in the direction of the back of the flat. “I don’t trust this john. I’m glad you dropped by.”

She flops onto the sofa. You and I take the chairs.

“We want to make a buy,” I say. “Meth if you have it.”

“I do. Okay. Wait till he’s done.”

We don’t wait long. Voices in the hallway — a man laughing, a woman’s angry snarl.

“Shit.” Em heaves herself off the sofa. “What — ”

As we get up to join her, your hand flicks toward your right leg. A knife appears — very nice move. I never saw where you’d stashed it. We follow Em to the door of the room. Out in the hall a young woman, rib skinny and naked, stands barring the door out. A burly man is reaching for her with both dirty hands. His blue workshirt sticks to his belly and back with sweat. When he sees us, he lets his hands fall to his sides and steps back.

“Em,” she says, “he won’t pay.”

“Never said that! Said it was too much. You was too fast.”

“You be the one who came too fast. Not my fault.”

I can feel a slight taste of vomit rising in my mouth. The smell! Garbage and sex and it’s all more than I can bear. Your kind stinks. I’m sorry, but my kind cannot bear it. I slink back into the waiting room, but you take one step into the hall. The knife catches the light and glitters.

“Pay her,” you say.

The man stares. He licks his fat lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Reaching for my wallet,” he says. “That’s all. Just the wallet.”

You smile, a tight smile, narrow eyes. I realize that I misjudged you when you came to me. How you begged, you poor innocent on the run, for a place to hide! And because you’d done me a favor with that supposedly inadvertent death, I agreed. Now you watch, smiling, as he counts out three tens and a five.

“Enough?” you say.

“Yeah,” she says. “You want a commish?”

“No. It’s all yours.”

She steps away from the door and lets the john edge past her, but he keeps his gaze on you. He opens the door and slips out, slams it behind him. We hear his footsteps hurrying away. Gloria returns your smile, and just like yours, hers seems to be counting up something, judging you as you judge her for the pros, the cons, the possibility. So. This is what you’d hoped for, exactly the sort of hiding place you wanted in the night city.

“She needs a better pimp than me,” Em says.

“I figured,” you say.

“But I gets my commish.”

“It pays the rent,” Gloria says.

“Okay. Ten per cent for Grandma here.”

“Ten for you?”

“Fifteen.”

She glances at the knife, smiles again, and shrugs. “Okay. Worth it.”

Now and then I do believe a lie. Now and then, someone cheats me. It’s even become a cliché, cheating me. Innocent? I doubt it. Very much do I doubt it. I clear my throat. “It appears you’ll do well here during your stay.”

“I’ll try. I don’t want to let you down.”

You move your hand and twitch one leg, just slightly. The knife disappears. I consider the day world. Everyone there hates me, but I do my work because I must. Life requires me. I feel concern for them, whether or not they believe I do. This one, this liar — should I turn a cheater loose among those I serve?

“About that buy,” I say. “You’ve got the cash. Listen to Em and learn how to stay in business.”

“Sure. And thanks, Ray.”

“Someday I’ll return for you.”

“Sure. To take me back home, you mean?”

“No. Take you onward. Forget home. The word doesn’t apply.”

You stare, your mouth slack. It’s my turn to smile with all the power of my kind, your turn to take one step back in fear.

“One more thing,” I say. “From now on, call me by my rightful name.”

You straighten your shoulders, toss your head, all defiance, but your voice shakes. “Which is?”

“Azrael.”

And the women laugh in a cadenza of little shrieks and cackles as your face turns pale.