I collapse from the inside out, tumbling forward as my brain cuts off motor commands. I fall to the floor cursing the men responsible for this brutality. I curse the banker at the off-ramp. Mike Madden, Zeb, Freckles. All those guys. A pox on their heads and a plague on their families.
All bullshit of course. I’m the one who brought this on poor deluded Sofia. I kissed her on the lips and lit her up for the bogeymen.
So I curse myself and my bloodstained hands. I curse my tangent-driven mind that cannot seem to focus in even the most urgent circumstances. I cry for everything that has ever happened. The line of bodies that dog me from the past all the way back to the tangled pile of limbs inside a crushed car in Dublin.
I am a rotten fruit with barely a scrap of untainted meat left. One more bite and I am lost.
I lie there on the floor, head half under the settee watching the sunlight draw laser lines in the blood pattern, when Sofia’s hand twitches and I notice the nails bitten to the quick.
Sofia doesn’t bite her nails anymore. She is proud of her painted talons. She likes to purr like a cat and scratch the air.
Not Sofia? Not dead?
This is too much for me. I feel dull and stupid, and left out of the joke.
I roll to my knees.
“Sofia?” I croak.
And she comes out of the kitchen, all in black, plenty of pockets, military style.
Janet Jackson. Rhythm Nation.
“Hey, baby,” she says, a hammer dangling from her fingers, a ribbon of bloody scalp in its claw. “You were right. Someone came a-looking for you, but I did what I had to do. No gun necessary.”
Who is on the floor? Who is nearly dead?
I need answers to fill this awful vacuum.
Crawling seems achievable. I crawl across the floor, dragging my knees through the darkening blood and with infinite care, turn the woman’s head and gaze upon her face.
I have finally gone mad.
It was only a matter of time. I should pay attention now, because Simon is going to want details when we go over this in therapy.
The woman is my mother.
Dead these twenty-five years.
My sweet mom. Looking not a day older.
“Mom?”
I hear the word and I know it came from my mouth but I am a little out of body right now. Shell shocked on seashells by the seashore on Blackrock beach, where we used to walk.
The woman’s eyes flutter open and she coughs a lungful of booze fumes in my eyes, scalding them.
“Danny,” she says like we talked yesterday. “Something happened to my head. I forgot again.”
My long-term memory fizzles into life and I get it in a jumbled rush of memories: ice picks, chaste good-night kisses, boob lectures.
Not my mother. Her baby sister, with enough of a resemblance to fool my frazzled brain.
Clearly not your mother, idiot.
Evelyn Costello reaches up a hand; her nail stubs are painted blood red. No, not painted. It’s real blood, her own.
“Danny. I found you. You treating girls with respect, Danny?”
Her eyes flicker and she is gone again, borne off by head trauma.
Just as well. I need to think.
I feel Sofia behind me. “Who is this, Carmine? You got some whore stashed away? Is that it?”
So I am Carmine again. Figures.
There’s a lot of blood on the floor.
“No, Sofia. This is not some whore, this is my aunt.”
Sofia sniffs like this is such a crock. Who can blame her? Evelyn is only a few years older than me.
“Aunt? Really, baby?”
It’s not her fault. Sofia was only doing what I told her to do, but suddenly I’m angry.
I jump to my feet and snatch the hammer. “Yeah, really. You brained my aunt.”
Sofia knows crazy when she sees it and backs off.
“Sorry,” And she cocks a hip and salutes. “Just following orders, Carmine.”
Dan-Carmine. Carmine-Dan.
Maybe I am Carmine. How hard could it be?
This is all too labyrinthine. There are too many strands for me to follow. Soldiering was simple:
You have one enemy.
His face will be darker than yours and he will be wearing desert shit. Not camo gear, genuine desert shit. Goatskin, rough scarves, vintage Levis.
Find your enemy.
Kill your enemy.
But here and now, my enemies are multitude and look all the bloody same. Mike, Freckles, Shea, KFC, Krieger and Fortz.
I need a friend. Someone who can out-sneaky the sneakers. A person with paranoia in his veins who owes me his life.
This apa
rtment is too bright. Everything seems bleached. How does that happen with small windows?
Evelyn moans at my feet.
I need a doctor.
I pull out my phone to call Zeb.
He better not give me the runaround. I am not in the mood.
I punch Zeb’s number and while the phone chirps in my ear, I pray that my friend is not stoned already.
CHAPTER 6
SO HERE’S EVELYN COSTELLO, THE AWOL HEIRESS WHO schooled me in the ways of mammipulation which is not a word but should be, back in my life again after twenty years within four hours of me meeting her stepmother, who is about a decade younger than her stepdaughter.
This is starting to sound like yee-haw heaven; It gits so darn lonesome in the trailer park that there ain’t nuthin’ for it but to hump yore own sister.
I know plenty of people that don’t believe in coincidence, but I do. They happen all the time. It’s usually petty stuff like meeting two guys called Ken inside an hour or buying a DVD on the very night a movie shows up on cable. Generally coincidences do not have immediate and obvious life-altering consequences. I suppose it’s possible that Edit and Evelyn would plonk themselves in the middle of my stressful day by total coincidence, but it would be one hell of a twist of fate.
Now that I’m close to her, examining the head wound that Sofia inflicted, I notice that Evelyn smells just like I remember. Still using the same shampoo. Women do that; stay loyal to a product. Men always think there might be something better out there. Men like Carmine.
I swab the wound with a little antiseptic, but that’s all I do because anything more and Zeb will have one of his doctor-ial shit fits like I’m not a professional and did I think he spent six years in medical school just so some grunt could go around getting all surgical? It’s not often Zeb gets to play real doctor and so he gets pissed if anyone steals so much as a peal of his thunder.
My Twitter icon chirps and spits out a nugget from Simon:
To Klingon22- Sure it’s okay for you to be attracted to a Romulon. We are all the same under the latex.
I don’t know who Klingon22 is but I would swap places with him in a heartbeat.
I lay Evelyn out on the sofa and am still watching over her when Zeb shows up. As usual, Sofia is less than happy to see his face, and as usual Zeb tries it on with her.