The question had only one right answer.
TWO
Jake
The next phase of my life has only one word to describe it. Saul. Before that afternoon when he made me watch his men slaughter my father like a farm animal, I had only seen him twice and spoken briefly only once. I had made a mental note: mean, dead eyes disguised by superficial charm. I was a big lad even then and I knew he always wanted me to work for him. It was only my father that had stood in the way.
What can I tell you about Saul Schitt?
Pay your fucking debts.
He hated unpaid debts. And I hated him.
I hated working for Crocodile Saul. I hated the ugly, unconscionable, inhumane things I was forced to do. And I hated the coldness that was slowly seeping into my heart. I cannot describe how it destroyed my soul to be his enforcer dog. For four fucking years I paid off my father’s supposed debt on an interest rate that was calculated daily. Do you get the picture of my hatred?
I was nineteen when the debt was finally deemed paid. I went to his house.
‘The debt’s paid and I want out,’ I said.
‘You’ve been good to me. I want to do something for you in return,’ he rasped.
When Saul wanted to do something for you, you didn’t refuse. Warily, I accepted his invitation to go to Vegas with him. I had never been anywhere outside England. To me Vegas was not a destination, it was a glittering, glamorous fantasy playground that rose from the heat of the desert like a mirage. I loved it. I loved the burning heat, I loved the American accent and I fucking loved the Strip.
He checked us into the Venetian. It was amazing, I had never seen anything like it, with lofty, beautifully painted ceilings. It was my Sistine Chapel. And, shit, you should have seen the way they treated Mr. Schitt. Like he was royalty. The king of Schittland. He got the works. Nothing was too much trouble. They even had his favorite, a fucking key lime pie, waiting in the penthouse suite’s fridge. King Schitt opened a line of credit for me. Fifty thousand dollars.
‘My gift,’ he said with the smiling generosity of a godfather.
In that rarefied air of unmatched opulence I became royalty too. I was so young, so naïve, it all went to my head. That Irish saying knocked on my door—what would a cat’s son do but kill a mouse? I sat at the baccarat table. My father with his throat cut and blood gushing out invited, ‘Have a seat, my son. There are only two kinds of people, my boy, the Irish and those who wish they were.’ In a daze I sat. It turned out I was my father’s son, after all.
God! How fast I lost that fifty thousand.
As if by magic Saul was by my side, smiling his benign crocodile grin. ‘No problems. Extend his credit to two hundred thousand.’
I looked at my father’s murderer, and you know what? At that moment, I just wanted the credit. With unutterable desperation I wanted the dirty money of that disgusting man so I could continue gambling. Like my father.
Then the strangest thing happened. I heard my mother’s voice say clearly in my head, ‘Even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.’
Luke 8: 16–18, The lesson of the lamp.
And it was like someone had flicked a switch in my head. I stood up and walked away from that table. I could feel Saul’s eyes on my back, one of his men calling me back, but I was in a rage. With my father, with myself and with Saul. He had taken me and molded me into a man with vices. A man he could control.
I walked for more than an hour, without knowing where I was going, just walking in a straight line, passing dangerous, low rent areas, hardly seeing anyone, and looking for buildings in the distance.
At some point I burst open the double doors of a bar that advertised cold beers and cocktails. It was dark and seedy inside. So grimy you didn’t want to touch anything. The locals turned to look at me. Whoa! Unfriendly. This was not the Strip. Tourists unwelcome.
But I was already in and I wanted a drink. And no one was stopping me. As Saul would say, What’s wrong with my fucking money? One drink and I’m out of here, I thought. I walked up to the bar and ordered me a whiskey.
The bartender, a surly guy with spiky hair, hesitated and then looked at the breadth of my shoulders and that foul light in my eyes and thought better of it. He went in search of a bottle while I looked around the bar. The exits were close enough. I let my eyes wander restlessly into the darkness. I had found out something ugly about myself.
From the shadows a woman of mixed descent got up from a chair. Ordinary looking. Black hair, brown eyes, skin like chocolate, and the kind of plump lips you know are going to be so soft when your teeth nip into them. I felt nothing. Not even curiosity about what she could be like in bed. The whiskey hit the bar surface. The measures are larger in America, but I swallowed it in one gulp, threw a note on the table, and turned to go. It was the wrong place, wrong time. The exit was ten steps away.
I must have taken five when she started singing, that ordinary brown girl. And fuck me, I froze in my tracks. I could not move.
She had the voice of a siren, you know, those mythical creatures from the Greek fables who lured sailors to their death. As if in slow motion I turned back and looked again at her.
She was looking right at me. She was singing to me. There was nothing I could do. I was like a rat mesmerized by a cobra. From the roots of my hair to the tips of my nails I tingled with her magic. I thought—I was only nineteen, don’t forget—that I was going to spontaneously combust. The chemistry was that strong. How could someone with her talent be singing in a joint like this? She should have been up there with Beyoncé and Madonna.
Afterwards, she came over to me. She almost had a smile on her face.
‘Buy me drink?’ she said.
The prosaic request shocked me. I had to beat down a hysterical desire to laugh. That’s it? That’s what you want from a man you have stunned to a slow faint?
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘Champagne,’ she said daringly, but her underbelly was soft.
Did a place like this even carry champagne? ‘Sure,’ I said.
It came then. Her first real smile. ‘I knew you were good for it.’
Her name was Indigo and I felt for her. Singing in that dive, for men who wouldn’t know talent if it hit them with a wet fish. I got her their best bottle, piss water as it turned out, and watched her get drunk on it. I was dizzy for her and I had a packet of condoms burning a hole in my pocket.
She lived within walking distance, so we went back to her place. The building was dark. Her apartment was at the far side. Somewhere in the gloom I could hear people talking in low voices. I gripped the Beretta in my waistband, but it didn’t cross my mind to turn around and walk away. I was that wired on lust.
Her skin was smooth. She was generous. I was generous. Things got hot. Real hot. We fucked to the sound of spilling dustbins in the alley under her window. I don’t know how many times. Maybe nine, maybe ten. I couldn’t get enough of her. Inside her body I forgot about Saul. And his poison.
During the night it started to rain. Droplets drummed on the window.
‘I haven’t felt rain since I got to Vegas,’ she said.
She got out of bed and went to look at the rain. You could see the drops shine silver where the streetlight illuminated them. She placed her palms and then her forehead on the cool glass. At that moment she seemed lost and sad, as if life had cheated her. Then she opened the window and allowed the rain to come into the room. She laughed as the drops hit her naked skin. She came back to me wetter and wilder. I was wrong. Life could never cheat this woman.
In the morning I lit two cigarettes and passed one to her. She was actually younger and far more beautiful without all that gunk on her face.
‘I love your accent,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Where you from?’
‘England.’
‘Where Princess Diana came from?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what were you doing
in that bar?’
I shrugged. ‘I just wandered into it by accident.’
She giggled. ‘I figured you for a guy who gets on all the best guest lists and stays in one of those fancy casino hotels with white leather sofas and purple and blue lighting.’