‘All right.’
‘Mazzie doing right by you?’
‘She hasn’t cut me up and made me into a stew, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Yet,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t cut you up and made you into a stew, yet.’
He didn’t laugh. The welt on his face was faded but noticeable. I didn’t like looking at it, but wouldn’t let myself look away.
‘You learn to do anything beside spin colors?’
‘Learning to move things without touching them.’
‘I imagine that might be useful.’
The mud pulled at my boots – I had to tug them loose with every step. Despite the break in the weather, we were the only ones on the streets, hobbling down boulevards a dozen stout men could pass abreast. As we edged toward Offbend we started to pass the first signs of the riot, burned-out shells of houses, charred staircases ascending into nothingness, stone cellar skeletons of quaint A-frames. It had taken fifteen years, but the war had come to Rigus. I hoped this was its parting shot, and not the introductory rampage of a successor.
‘I needed you gone,’ I said finally. ‘Things were set to get bad – there wasn’t any time to do it soft. You stuck around any longer, you wouldn’t be here now.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘As for the rest . . . It could have been handled better.’
We stopped in front of a bar. I walked in, then I walked out. My bag was light a few things that had been in it, my purse correspondingly heavier. We started back towards the docks.
‘Adolphus says Pretories was a traitor, says he was working for Black House,’ Wren began.
‘Yeah?’
‘Says he had Roland killed so he could take over the veterans.’
‘He went along with it, at least.’
‘Why’d he do it?’
I’d been mulling that question over for a while now, ever since I’d watched him die, in fact. I wish we’d had the chance to talk it over, foolish as that sounded. The usual lust for power and money? Was he tired of running the master’s water? Or had he an inkling that Roland was cracked, that someone needed to step in? No sin in refusing to follow a man off a cliff, though there is one in tripping him. ‘We don’t always know why we do things,’ I said.
‘What happens to the Association now?’
‘Same as always. Things don’t really change.’ Though I wasn’t quite sure I believed that. The riots had been a rare black eye for the Old Man. Blame the violence on some renegade offshoot of the Association all you want – at the end of the day, a fair portion of the city was in ashes, and that’s not something that the head of national security is supposed to let happen. I doubted he’d intended it to go quite as it had. Maybe he was losing his touch. It was a disturbing thought, the Old Man growing old. Like the weakening of the tides, the stilling of the wind.
‘How about you and Adolphus?’
We’d yet to speak more than pleasantries, muttered greetings when we passed in the stairwell. I was having trouble meeting his eyes, or he was mine. ‘I don’t have an answer to everything.’
The sun took advantage of its short window to glare off every bit of scrap metal and glass, but it did nothing to ease our passage through six inches of sludge. Outside the front door of a one-room shack a child played naked in a puddle, burbling happily, youth and grime obscuring the sex. Its mother appeared from the egress and shrieked incomprehensibly, dragged her seed out of the muck and started on a beating. I averted my eyes – I’d learned my lesson on family quarrels.
‘How much of it did you set up?’ Wren asked.
‘Less than I thought at the time.’
‘Was it worth it?’
I considered that for a while before answering. ‘Probably not.’
We hooked a right off Light Street and down a narrow alley, cobblestone, thank the Firstborn. It curved its way through a row of tenements, taking us away from the main streets.
‘This isn’t the way back to the Earl,’ Wren said.
‘You got something to do?’
After a hundred yards the road narrowed till we had to walk in file, Wren sprinting on ahead, me pulling myself after as best I could. The defile ended at a little plateau that hovered above a corner of the harbor, a few dozen square feet of dirt and sand cropped into a low hill that rose out of the bay. The water was dark and choppy, blurring at the horizon with the clouds above it. In the jetty below the remains of a handful of skiffs lay dashed against the rocks, casualties of the storm.
‘Did they at least get what was coming to them?’ Wren asked.
‘Who?’
‘The guilty.’
He looked so small at that moment, so damn young. There was a scrub tree growing up out of the rocks, and I leaned against it and rolled up a cigarette. It was burnt down to a nub before I answered. ‘Not all of them.’
That didn’t seem to satisfy him. It didn’t satisfy me either, but it was all I had to offer. Another few minutes watching the roiling ocean, and I led us back home.
For the first book I had a lot of time to muck about with compliments and in-jokes, but the hour is growing very late, so no one gets anything more than a shout out. Sorry, I’m pushing a deadline as it is.
Business-wise: Chris and Oliver.
As for family: Mom and Dad. Teddy and Jeanette, Ben, Rachel and Jason. My Grandmother. The Mottolas, with particular attention to Uncle John and his set. All of them, really, and apologies I keep missing Thanksgiving. Next one for sure!
And the friends: Bobby, Mike, Pete, Elliot, Sam. Rusty for military advice. Lisa. Will and John. Alex, with apologies that he didn’t get repped better the first time around. You’re twelve foot tall and piss like a fire hose, all right? Tommy/Bosley. The Eleftherious, and the Roots. The strangers, now friends, that let me sleep on their couches/floors/beds.
I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody, and my apologies to that person/people.
Daniel Polansky was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He can be found in Brooklyn, when he isn’t somewhere else. His debut novel,
You can follow Daniel on Twitter @DanielPolansky, or visit his website to find out more: www.danielpolansky.com.
The Straight Razor Cure
Discover Daniel Polansky’s masterful debut
THE
STRAIGHT
