– Solomon wasn’t stupid. Some junkie walked in here looking to clear out the register, he could handle that just by showing him the gun. Downstairs? Any infected stupid enough to try and knock out the only dependable dealer south of Houston would have to be stone strung out. Shotgun wouldn’t have been worth a shit. Hit a burner with both barrels, take his head off, his fucking body will walk across the room and rip you in half.
– Know that for a fact, Joe?
I’m half down the stairs. I stop and look back up at his silhouette at the top.
– I know it.
He starts down.
– Still and all.
– Yeah?
– Shame he didn’t have it down here today.
We hit the bottom and look at the corpse of the Candy Man.
– Shit, Christian, he wasn’t one of us. Fuck did he think he had to worry about from real people?
– Got a point.
There’s a box of garbage bags in the corner with the cleaning supplies.
I pick up a mop.
– Ready to get started?
– Sure.
He tears a bag out of the box.
– Why you think they done it?
I stick the mop bucket under the tap in a big slop sink.
– Could be the Van Helsing is only half smart. Killed him before he realized he wasn’t infected. More like, he knew Solomon was the Candy Man. Knew it would cause a shitload of trouble cutting off the supply down here. Did it Stoker style to make a point. Something like that. Fits with poisoning the blood in the fridge.
He squats and starts picking up the smaller pieces.
– Sounds about right.
He drops a hand in the bag.
– Sorry, Sol, you were a hell of a confectioner.
Evie won’t talk to me.
When I call, the night nurse says she’s fine, watching TV, but doesn’t want to talk to anyone.
That could mean anything from she really is watching TV to she’s bent over her plastic bowl with chemo- heaves. I know which is more likely, but I try to pretend it’s the other.
Not that she wants my sympathy. Not that she wants me lying in bed staring at the ceiling, chaining Luckys and thinking about the virus that’s eating her alive. Far as she’s concerned, I can fuck off whenever I want and just stop hovering around asking how she’s feeling.
Or I can do something to save her.
Not that I take it seriously, all that shit. That’s just the chemo talking. The misery and the pain and the acid they’re pouring into her. She doesn’t really think I can do anything. She’s just fucking desperate.
She’s just sick.
Girl was sick the night I met her. I knew the score then and I got in the game anyway. Nothing’s changed between us. She’s still sick. We still don’t sleep together. I still eat my heart out every time I look at her.
The pity party’s in the other room if you feel like joining it.
I won’t be in.
Only thing that’s changed is she’s dying faster. Faster than she was before. And faster than me. She’s dying really fucking fast.
’Course, she doesn’t know I’m dying. She doesn’t know shit about me. The nighttime schedule she chalks up to a sun allergy, solar urticaria. The guns and the rough and tumble and the padlocked fridge in my apartment and the donor blood I get deposited on her behalf so she always has enough for the transfusions she needs because of the anemia caused by the chemo? That’s all because of my job.
Organ courier.
Transporter of healthy tissues between those with perfect kidneys, healthy corneas, melanoma-free skin, pink lungs, unperforated intestines; and the miserable disease-wracked bastards with nothing but money. Nice work if you can get it.
Except that it’s a lie.
Yeah, I told my girl a lie. Just one on a long list. Once you skip over telling someone the part about needing to consume blood in order to feed the Vyrus that’s keeping you alive, there isn’t much room for truth in a relationship.
So it’s built on lies. So if she knew what I am, what I do, she’d slap her hands to her face, scream
And I’d have to tell her the truth for a change.
It would. The Vyrus will kill what’s in her. It will kill anything that invades and attacks its host.
It will save her.
No more puking. No more hair loss. No more oral ulcers. No more loose teeth. No more chemo. No more Kaposi. No more AIDS.
No more cold showers. No more hand jobs. No more dry humping like the high school kid I never was.
Just me and her and all the time you could want, as healthy as a human being can be. Healthier. As healthy as something not quite human and not quite alive can be. For just as long as we can keep it together. For just as long as we can score and lay low and live with the constant scrabble to find the next hit. For as long as we can stay out of the sun.
It’s a life.
And who am I to bitch. I may not have asked to be infected, but I haven’t hurried to get out of the deal. Been over thirty years now, and I can bow out anytime. A bullet is still a bullet, whether it goes through your brainpan or mine. And dead is still dead. Or so I’m told. I’ll know for sure soon enough. Just like everyone else.
We’re all going the same place.
I’m just taking a different road.
If the scenery sucks, I can drive into a ditch whenever I want.
And I can take Evie with me. All I got to do is one simple thing. I just got to do what she’s begging me for. I just got to save her.
I get off the bed, stub my smoke out in the tray on the nightstand and throw down the last swallow of Old Grand-Dad in the water glass there. I take Solomon’s hogleg from my dresser and put it and the shells in my gun safe with a couple other pieces I’ve acquired in the last year. Used to be I had a pair of handguns that suited me more or less to a tee. The work I’ve been doing lately, I’ve found I go through them in a hurry. It pays to collect an extra or two when you get the chance.
The phone rings and I answer it and talk to someone and hang up.
I head for the door, in a hurry to be somewhere else, to be doing something else. To be thinking about anything else. I go fast and I leave the guns behind.
I won’t need one where I’m headed.
Unless I plan on shooting my boss.
God knows I’ve had worse ideas.
Organ courier.
I wish.
Freelance. My own boss. The way I used to have it.
That was cherry.
It was a scrabble being a Rogue, not having a Clan to look out for you and keep you in the drink, but no one looks over your shoulder and tells you what to do. You fuck up, someone’s gonna put you down. Nothing but blood,
