Noir

PART TWO

Fred, understanding that he seemed a bleak, sexless person to Harry, tried to prove that Harry had him wrong. He nudged Harry, man-to-man. “Like that, Harry?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“The girl there.”

“That’s not a girl. That’s a piece of paper.”

“Looks like a girl to me.” Fred Rosewater leered.

“Then you’re easily fooled,” said Harry. “It’s done with ink on a piece of paper. That girl isn’t lying there on the counter. She’s thousands of miles away, doesn’t even know we’re alive. If this was a real girl, all I’d have to do for a living would be to stay home and cut out pictures of big fish.”

– KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

(Delacorte Press, New York, 1965)

NINE

THE NUMBERS WRITTEN IN HER PALM

As she was settling in, starting another vigil, somebody came round to remind November that she had bills coming due.

“You’re always forgetting your friends,” said the big dark shape. The man’s face was hidden by shadow, but she knew what it looked like. “But your friends don’t forget you.”

Shit, thought November. Sonuvabitch. “Maybe you could just stop thinking about me for a while. Every now and then wouldn’t hurt.”

There was no way of getting past the guy, breaking out into the open street beyond; he filled up the alley’s mouth like a fourth expanse of bricks, the cork in the bottle’s neck. She’d stationed herself here with a pony bottle of Minnesota Evian and a pack of acetone-laced Gitanes, watching the doorway of the building her quarry, McNihil, was slated for. Her bruises from the train crash were slowly fading. In the meantime, she didn’t want to lose track of McNihil and the bill-paying score he represented. And now this, she thought. Thinking about the money she owed had summoned up their walking embodiment of debt-load, heavy and nasty.

“How can we?” This one had a sense of humor. “You’re so connectin’ cute.”

November took a last harsh drag off the cigarette she’d had going, reducing it to a stub. She bent down to throw it through the gap between the man’s hip and the alley wall, tensing at the same time to dive through that narrow space and hit the ground with a shoulder-first roll on the other side.

“But not cute enough.” The man’s beefy fist seized onto the collar of her jacket, lifting her up dangling in the air. “Let’s talk some more.”

She let herself be nailed by his one hand up against the damp bricks, her bootsoles inches from the needles and patches strewn across the alley’s floor. “Numbers are always interesting,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

“You know what the numbers are.” November tried to convey an irritated, tolerance-stretched disgust; it was hard in her present position. “You wouldn’t be talking to me otherwise.”

“Just want to make sure you know what they are.” Still holding her up with one hand, he grabbed her wrist with the other. “Palm-reading time. Let’s have the Gypsies tell your fortune, sweetheart.”

He twisted her arm around hard enough to get an involuntary squeak of pain out of her. I bet you enjoyed that-she kept herself from speaking the words aloud. She knew better than to try anything on him, the kind of stuff that worked so well on her postcoital marks on the trains; not that it wouldn’t work just as well on him, dropping him paralyzed on his back. But that the consequences, when he caught up with her again-and that was guaranteed-would be so much worse than letting him do what he wanted now. That was the problem with being in hock, she’d often reminded herself. It gave other people power over you, and not the enjoyable variety.

“So what do we have here?” He squeezed her trapped wrist, enough to make her fingers splay out trembling. “Your heart line… well, that’s pretty much as to be expected, isn’t it?” His small eyes glanced up to hers. “Kind of a narrow little scratch, that doesn’t lead to much. And your life line…” He pressed his thumb into the middle of her palm. “That one doesn’t look good at all.”

“I’ll do the worrying about that one.”

“Oh, no; we all have to worry. Don’t we?” The wide ball of his thumb rubbed sweat between her skin and his. “Because if something happened to you-then we’d be out quite a bit. We’ve invested a lot of money in you.”

“Right.” November managed to nod her head, scraping against the wall behind her. “And you’ve gotten it back. With interest.”

“Not all of it. And not enough interest-not what you’re down for at least, sweetheart.” The man raised his thumb from her palm. “Let’s add ’em up.”

She said nothing, but watched as he turned her hand toward the light slicing down the alley. The invisible numbers, written in the cup of her palm, were visible to him as well. He had a master filter cut into his eyes-when he’d looked up at her, she’d been able to spot the dull silver worm at the far depth of his pupils. So he could read not only what was there in her hand, but in the hands of all those who’d signed themselves over to his sharkoid employers.

“Honey, you’re way into us.” He sucked his breath in between his teeth. “You taken a look at this lately? I knew we loved your ass, but I didn’t think we loved it this much.”

“I know what it says.” The jacket’s leather, drawn up by the man’s hold, had gathered under her arms; November felt as if she were being softly crucified. “You don’t have to make a big production number out of this.”

He leaned his broad face close to hers. “Then you’re the one who should be tap-dancing.” His breath smelled like hydrogenated fat and Thai peppers. “Just as fast as you can.”

Taking a step backward, he let go of her collar. The back of her head skidded down the wall, the friction enough to snap a match into flame. Her butt hit the ground, jamming her spine upward; it felt as if the topmost vertebrae had crunched against the inside curve of her skull.

She had no time to react; the man jerked her arm up by the wrist he still held. He reached down with his other hand and grabbed a fistful of her hair, rocking her head back.

“Look up here, cunt.” The sweetheart rhetoric was over. “Up here where the numbers are.”

Her throat was stretched so taut that she could barely whisper. “I see them…”

“Oh, take a good look. Because I don’t think you know what they are at all. You must not have checked them very recently, that’s for sure.” He gave a quick rap with the back of her head against the wall. “Otherwise, you’d be a lot more scared than you are now.”

“All right. All right; just give me a moment…” November knew the guy wasn’t playing around now; it didn’t matter whether he might be enjoying this part more than the cute stuff that’d preceded it. She gazed up at her hand, focusing on the numbers written in her palm, just below the little black symbol, just above the knuckled cuff of the thug’s fist. The filter in her eyes rendered the numbers visible to her, the secret history of her accounts…

“Christ.” The single appalled word escaped from her lips. She saw what he’d meant. And just as he’d predicted, she was afraid. “What happened?”

The numbers had always been in red; that meant nothing, just the way the filters made them appear, like