There was a sobbing.
It was just outside the door to her condo, like the scratching of a dog, which is what it sounded like at first. Easy to ignore, at first.
But then it got louder, followed by a skidding against the door, then a soft thud.
Boyd got up from not really watching C-Span on her forty-two-inch flat screen TV that dominated her living room, picked up her Sig-Sauer from its resting place on the arm of the sofa, and went toward the sound.
“Get the hell out of here!” she barked.
If it was anyone legitimate, they would have used the intercom, dialed her unit number. This sounded wrong out of the gate, and whoever it was wouldn't be getting in, that much was sure.
She slid the bolt back on the Sig-Sauer.
“I don't have to call the cops, sonny!” she shouted, her cheek flat up against the door. “I am the fucking cops!”
The voice on the other side of the door wailed, thin, high though decidedly male. “I feel death! I feel it!” There was panting.
Boyd shook a bit and put the Sig against the door. There was something in the voice that hit her, penetrated her bones like a chill. She let silent seconds tick, sweating.
“Shut up and get the hell out of here!”
The voice keened, “I can't! This is the last place I have to go. Death is everywhere and life is killing me. Life has me on fire—can't think!”
“I don't know you, so go away,” she replied absently, emptily.
“You know me,” countered the voice tremulously.
Boyd slid down too and crouched by the door, still clutching the Sig.
It was ear-spitting, the amalgam of a screech and a wail rattling off at the end: “I can feel—life!”
Boyd abruptly sprang to her feet, unbolted the door, yanked it open and stood in a defensive posture, the Sig raised.
There was no one there until she looked down and saw a dark, crumpled clump at her feet.
A small voice pleaded: “Help me.”
She knelt down and tugged aside some of the dilapidated topcoat. Breathing was rough and ragged. She nudged the clump on the floor and a limb flopped over.
Boyd said it on the inhalation, suffused with wonder as soon as the word escaped her mouth.
“Null,” she mouthed for a second time at the figure on the condo hallway floor.
And a debauched moment in time opened before her.
The door opened, and the gang walked through into a blistering light.
“The Fuck?” said the one at the front.
“What's with the fucking lights?” asked the one behind him.
There was a delayed, near unison cocking sound of semi-automatic weapons that came in answer.
What could be made out of the room spoke of a rumpus room in disrepair; matchstick furniture and wood veneer fixtures atop a filthy, discolored mauve carpet shadowed by groups of figures. In the quiet after the cocking sounds for a moment, there was only breathing. Gun barrels quavered.
Lumpy, in a white tank top stained by sweat under hot lights and baggy black cargo pants, spoke up. “Who are these motherfucking guys? I thought everybody who was going to be here, was here.”
“Everybody but the boss of the Gangsta Boyz,” chimed Benway.
“We don't got no, boss, fucking cracker,” spouted Do-Rag.
There were yet more weapons cocking.
“Listen up. This is a clusterfuck,” said a boy-man with tousled sandy hair in a leather jacket and khakis. “Any one of you motherfuckers fires off a round and we all get shot up to pieces. This is a goddamn powder keg situation, so chill already. No one's gonna get shit wounded or dead.”
“Why the fucking lights?” the first speaker spoke again.
Do-Rag answered. “We wired ‘em up to make sure you ofays couldn't hide no bullshit on us.”
“Too late for that,” huffed Lumpy.
He spoke again—the first thug. “We want your boss.”
“Listen up, you fucks. We're here for the Chaw. Got money all counted and waiting. We came from New York in good faith to do a little transaction. No blood, no bodies,” said the young New Yorker, standing pat.
“Who the fuck are you?” said the first speaker. “I'm fucking Ork muscle here to press the rights of Malek the Mallet. Know who he is?”
“I'm from New York—I don't know from no fucking Ork. Call me Ed.”
“I'll call you fucking corpse, you don't give us the money and the gum.”
“Try taking it, genius, and we all die in this little over lit room.”
“We just here to guide the transaction,” said Do-Rag breathing heavily. “Make sure it go smooth, take a fee for insurance and get you asses out the door.”
“They call this an Epic Fail on the Internet,” yawned Ed. “If we don't have a deal, then we leave.”
“You can go bright eyes, but leave the money.”
Ed chuckled and shook his head. “No can do, buddy. My guys are outside with it. They need a call from me on the cell to tell them to bring it in, which, under the circumstances, I'm not going to do.”
“We can make you make that call.”
“You can try wading through the corpses to do it, but you may not make it,” Ed sneered.
One of the men behind the first came up fast beside him and piped up in a nasal voice. “Parley, there ain't nothin' coming for us here. Everybody's out in the open, jacked up with guns. There ain't no advantage.”
Ed beamed at this. “Listen to your little friend, Parley. He's right.”
“Maybe,” said Parley. “But this little fuck over here ain't carryin' is he? No, little pissant!” And he strode over to where Benway stood sheepishly next to Lumpy and shoved his semi-automatic directly under his chin. “You're too chickenshit to carry a gun, ain't you, Benway?”
“I'm civilized,” Benway grunted softly.
“You're about dead as it sits,” replied Parley.
“Careful,” Ed intervened. “You're about to light the powder keg. Explosion imminent.”
“This fuck made the Chaw for Malek and the Ork, but he didn't deliver on it, did he? Now he and his boyfriend, a fucking renegade from our ranks who has yet to get dealt with, wanna sell their fucked up product to New York? It ain't gonna happen.”
Lumpy brought out his blade, let it glint in the light. “Take the gun off Benway.”
“I should put the gun on you instead, Chiefy.”
“Okay,” said Ed. “This deal is tainted. Nothing is coming from this. We're out!”
“But we got the gum,” Lumpy nearly whined. “All packed up and ready to go. You just give us the cash, we take you to it.”
Parley shoved a trembling Benway back at Lumpy. “That happens we'll take the gum and the cash for our trouble. Don't put up a fuss, leave and then we can do these two boys quick out back before we go.”
“Get the fuck out,” grumbled Do-Rag. “Our guy gets back, everybody die.”
“We want your fucking guy too while we're at it.”
“You only think you want him. You won't when you see him.” Do-Rag laughed.
“When I see him, I'll shoot the fucking eyes out of his head.”
Ed gestured for his men to move toward the door. “It's been fun, but this deal is a big fat no-go.”
The muscle of the Ork raised up their guns. “Nobody goes anywhere till we're done.”
“Look around you, Parley. Are you really going to say we're not done? Either we go with casualties or we go without casualties. Any way you slice it, we're going, and that applies to you and your guys too.”
“We don't need anyone else to show up, ofay fucks,” said Do-Rag coolly. “One o' you takes one shot, one gat triggers off, and everybody die pretty fucking fast.”
Benway's face exploded into a smile. “That's right,” he said, pushing his way toward the door. “Since nobody can do anything without hitting the morgue, everybody can leave. Bye-bye!”
Lumpy helped clear the way and pushed in behind him. When they got to the door, Lumpy kicked it open into the coldly sour Boston night air. Voices rose on the inside when they hit the street.
“Fucking run!” cried Lumpy.
“Fucking way ahead of you!” Benway panted, striding gawkily.
They were not much further down Dorchester Avenue when they heard the first squalid pattern of shots ring out.
The office was sparse but well appertained with leather chairs, imposing oak desk and apparent shelves of book veneer. Malek the Mallet smoked a thin cheroot, one of his eyes drifting off to the side. His lips were curled into a frown, his brow furrowed, and though he sat back in his chair, his body was tense.
“So, I got no fucking gum, and I got no fucking money.”
Parley stood before him, slouching disheveled. “We got out alive.”
Malek stood and exploded. “To what point? Spending more of my fucking money coming up empty? You fucking goons don't get nothing done. I'm down a hot million in meth, I got a renegade Indian enforcer what whacked out I don't know how many soldiers on the loose, a maniac chemist what ripped me off holding a stash of drugs I can't sell and a fucking zombie trying to whack us all out who now runs a rival crew. This is a shit storm of major proportions and you just stand there whining that you're goddamn alive—a situation I would like to remedy!”
“There's a way out,” sighed Parley. “We got the means to do it.”
“There are several ways out, fuckstick, and I can figure them all. Without you. In fact, I don't really know what the fuck to do with you.” He spat a fleck of tobacco from his tongue.
“Patch it up with the Indian and the geek,” Parley rumbled deep from his throat. “Buy them off. Their sale to the New York crowd fizzled—they're hungry for cash.”
“Genius!” He clapped. “Pay off the guy what whacked my crew and the chemist who ripped me off. Perfect.”
“Yes,” said Parley, running his fingers through thinning hair. “Give them the money, tell them all is forgiven, let ‘em relax, then blow their fucking brains out. Take ‘em down to Gary Lee Obidowski's garage and have a specialist rearrange their internal organs for all I care.”
“What about this Null fuck?”
“Make terms with him and do the same. Get him down to Gary Lee's. Fuck, I'll work on him and he'll tell us where the meth is stashed and anything else for that matter—we won't be able to shut him up but for the screaming.”
“I don't know, the fucker's tough.”
“Ain't we all.”
Malek smiled, his eye drifting back and forth. “We'll make him beg for death, then?”
“Sure. Any tune you want, we'll get him to sing. We can make him die real slow.”
Malek waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing I haven't thought of.”
“I'm sure,” said Parley. “But we're on the same page. I know what you need us to do, and I'll get it done.”
“You're saying I shouldn't whack you out for that fucking Gangsta Boyz screw-up, then?”
“It's what I'm saying.”
“You could take me out with the 38 you got holstered and make a pass at running the crew, you know.” Malek spoke this almost musically.
“I could, but I'd never leave this suite alive.”
“Just as long as you know that.”
“I know it.”
“But I can see the one hitch you didn't tell me about, right?”
“Of course you can. You're going to have to meet with them all before they die.”
“Yeah, the first is a handshake deal. A meet and greet, let ‘em know all is forgiven and everything is hunky dory.”
“Yeah. Necessary shit that. What about the second?”
“I thought you knew.”
“Well, I had an idea. But I'm not sure.”
“Simple.” Malek sat back behind his desk and crushed out his dying cheroot. He spoke nonchalantly: “I want to be the last thing that Null fuck sees when I stick a red-hot poker down the center of his chest.”
“I've got enough money, Filmore. I'm getting out,” said Benway, in his childhood bedroom, packing.
“You called me Filmore instead of Lumpy, Doctor—means no good.”
“Means I quit.”
“Quit nothing. You stay put or I will quit you of life.”
“Listen, Lumpy, I got enough cash for the both us from the box of gum I delivered to the Ork the last time. We got to admit this is a bust. We ain't got nothing coming.” He needed to get him interested in leaving. He had no intention of sharing his stash of money with Lumpy. He would dump him fast at the first opportunity—leave him flat without a nickel. He just had to keep him on his side somehow until then.
“We got money coming and lots more from New York,” Lumpy insisted.
“That's blown, Lumpy—done. They won't touch the gum. They don't want to ignite crew conflicts going up the eastern corridor. That was a one-time score, don't you get it?”
Lumpy grabbed him by the arms hard, reaching up to the shoulders. “Don't ever say a deal is done when I say it's not! They was gonna buy that gum, sell it out quick and take you and me on in the city. You'd be the chemist making them more product, and I'd be the manager. Simple.”
“Manager of what?”
“Of you, Benway. I know how to make you behave. We make it work in New York.”
Benway squirmed out of his harsh grasp. “You can't really believe that.”
“But I do.”
“You're right about one thing. We gotta get out outta here before they whack us out good and proper. We're a pride thing now—a street cred deal. We live and Malek is over and he knows it. He has to show us a messy exit to the next world or he'll wind up going first.”
“The Ork wants the gum, make money from the drug as originally planned. We can sell it back to them, then you be their chemist.”
“I'll be their trophy down at Gary Lee Obidowski's garage. You'll be several night's entertainment on a meat hook before they burn you down.”
“I know they'll make an offer—it'll be all over the street. They want the gum. They were gonna spill blood for it at the Gangsta Boyz.” He was almost pleading.
Benway sat down on the bed. “You know, you're right. They're gonna put it out on the street so we hear about it, make us an offer on all the gum we got, a generous one.”
“Now you thinking positive, just like Joel Osteen says—feelin' that holy spirit.” He slapped Benway on the shoulder and Benway flinched with pain.
“Lumpy, they're gonna lure us in with money and whack us out hard as soon as we meet them—no matter where we do it, no matter who we bring along for security. We're too important dead to Malek; our being alive makes his life worth less every second we breathe.”
Lumpy got it and gulped down. “Trap us and skin us alive.”
“So much for Joel Osteen.”
“No, no,” Lumpy said pacing, “through Jesus we overcome all adversity, let the strength flow through you. Jesus wants us to succeed.”
“And what does Jesus want us to do?”
“Jesus wants us to whack ‘em out before they get a chance to do it to us, take the fucking cash and hightail it to Montreal.”
“I never knew you were such a devout Christian,” Benway said with parody sarcasm.
“I don't know about devout,” Lumpy replied flatly. “I just watch the cable.”
There was a low moaning in the dark.
“I feel!” a voice keened.
“You're hot,” said Boyd, placing a cold blue washcloth on Null's scarred forehead. “Christ, it's a bad fever.”
“I feel!” Null cried again, louder.
“Quiet, Null. Of course you feel. You're alive. Everything that's alive feels.”
“Not me—except—for now!”
She sat at the edge of her bed where Null lay squirming, fully clothed although his topcoat had been removed. She had also removed a machete on a lanyard, a sawed-off Remington shot gun, also on a lanyard, and a Glock nine-millimeter. And at the end, an ounce of brown sugar-like crystal meth tumbled out of his pocket to the floor. She took a fanny pack chock full of sticks of Chaw off him too. He had acquiesced and didn't fight her. In fact, he could barely make it to the bed.
“I am alive,” he confirmed. “Of course.”
“Why did you come here?”
“No one else would take me in.” For an instant he thought about Missy, the nurse, and it was as if he could see her blinding hatred like a red explosion behind his eyes.
“How did you know I would?”
“I just knew.” Blue behind the eyes when he thought of Boyd, though. Blue, or was it just the washcloth?
“That was a guess,” Boyd murmured.
“Everything I do is a guess,” he replied, his tongue thick and agonized as if stuck full with shirt pins.
“What did they do to you?”
“It wasn't what they did to me. It's what I did to them. And it wasn't enough.”
“Why wasn't it enough?”
“Because,” and he gulped down hard on a clump of shirt pins and could not swallow, “they killed the kid.”
“Who's they?”
Null spasmed in obvious pain. “The muscle. ”His throat crackled. “The muscle of the Ork!”
“They did this to you.”
Wracked with pain, he nearly screamed, “No—the gum!”
“You're on Chaw? You idiot!”
“Chaw and meth,” he croaked. “Benway said I should try it—saw no reason not to. Scored a bunch at the murder scene down at the 1270.”
“You were there?”
“Only afterward.”
“Idiot!” she sighed.
“Meth kept me going—energy.”
Boyd replaced the washcloth on his forehead when it fell off. She tried to hold him still.
“And what has the Chaw done for you?”
“Made me live.” Then Null stretched out taut across the bed, his mouth gaping open as if to scream, but stayed silent.
Boyd got up and paced, as close to being desperate for a drink as she had ever been.
Null made death rattling sounds.
She came back and sat with him on the edge of the bed. She shook him at the shoulders and asked, futility clear in her voice, “What is this doing to you?”
Then Null shouted, “Making me feel!”
“And this is a crisis?”
“Everything hurts,” Null grunted, “everything. The pain is its own crisis.”
Boyd went up in the darkness to the bathroom medicine chest, came back with Vicodin and water. She force fed him four tablets. “That might make a dent.”
“How do you know?”
“Never underestimate the ability of human sensitivity to be numbed by drugs.”
“My problem is it went the other way.”
“I need to sleep. You do too, once the Vic kicks in.”
“Got meth for that!” His eyes scrunched down and his lips contorted.
“That'll kill you.”
“So far, like the Chaw, it's only made me live.”
“Null,” she said gravely, adjusting the cloth on his forehead and stroking his cheek. “What you don't understand is that none of that is living.”
As Boyd slept in the living room on the sofa, Null was up and showering, trembling as the water hit him—first too cold, then too hot and all of it like a violent explosion throughout his body. With tentative hands, he clumsily adjusted the temperature. He moaned when he got it right, his eyes closed and colors playing before his brain. He soaped up and scars writhed under his fingertips.
As the water cascaded across his face from the massage head, he came to the conclusion that he was not himself.
Fluctuations in temperature and water-forced vibrations goaded forth another thought that he was more himself than he had ever been.
His emotions had returned, and he was in greater inner pain than he had ever known; each jagged, fractured recollection was like a knife wound cutting deeper with each image and past sensual reflection into whatever it was that constituted his life. It was the life lived cutting hard and fast into the life that was actually living.
Null needed to scream but stifled it.
He stood directly under the stream and felt vibrating rays of water wash over him.
Every joint hurt.
Every muscle.
The entire area of his skin.
His groin ached.
His back throbbed thick and menacing beats.
His fingers clenched and cramped.
The backs of his knees were like wild animals gnawing at his legs.
Tears spilled in rivulets from his eyes, washed away by the shower spray, but continually refreshed.
He embraced himself and stood flush under the vibrating spray until the water began to cool.
And then there was another pair of hands.
He startled and jerked back at first, then allowed himself to experience the touching.
It was Boyd, naked next to him, her smooth skin sliding up against him beneath the diminishing heat of the stream. Null refused to turn at first, smashing his eyes shut.
“I don't know why I'm doing this,” she said, childlike.
“I know why,” answered Null, finally turning and facing her.
They kissed with steady abruptness.
The embrace was full—limbs entwined even as the shower grew cold.
They slid out, wet and tumescent; Null breathing husky and deep, Boyd's breaths fluttering.
It was, quite literally, a waltz to the bedroom.
They parted for a moment.
The light of the room was unkind. Ropy scars snaked up and behind Null's body, which had large bruises all over it, purple spider webs in some places, scabbed-over wounds in others. Boyd was pear shaped, heavy in the legs with a bit of a belly, stretch marks and a little cellulite. Her skin was pale and otherwise unmarked. Her wet brunette hair shone a reflection of the window. Her breasts were pert and pointed up.
She stroked Null's shoulder softly, tracing scars almost hesitantly. “How much pain can you take?” she asked with a hollow voice. “How can anybody take this?”
He drew her to him. “I can't take it. Not anymore.”
She rested her head against him. “No, you can't, and you shouldn't.
“But I did. Apparently, I wasn't very human.” Their breathing together was heavy.
“No, you were not.”
“But I am now.”
“How human are you?”
“Let me show you.”
The waltz resumed and continued several steps to the bed, whereupon it ended and they fell into it.
There was a struggle between the two to break through the barrier of flesh and somehow merge to become something splendid and transcendent, and if not to break through to end entirely, once and for all. It was a struggle against death and isolation, decay and loneliness.
Resistance in panting breaths and straining muscles: a wild energy blistering between them.
A clinging, wrenched in spasm.
He slid into her, marveling at the ease of it.
She sighed and grabbed the small of his back.
Mouths joined, lips pressed close, tongues entwined.
They got into a rhythm that was sustained despite sliding against each other, wet, sweaty, determined to force their way through the barrier—
To defeat isolation.
To end the terrible oneness.
To reach that unassailable point of communion that would reign over death and pain like light over shadow.
Boyd cried out something unintelligible, which made perfect sense.
Null simply grunted, low and guttural.
Like some cosmic nova, an urchin of light burst between them and they were sure that they were winning—that it could be done, that through the flesh they could breach the flesh.
It was a laugh, simple and easy.
Why had this not happened years ago? Why could this not have been?
It was the answer to the lonely questions for so long left abandoned.
It was the thing, the point of contention, the hope against fear.
They were lost in a fog of sweat, although they were sure that they had been found.
There was no doubt.
There was no question.
The surety had been made, the bond solidified more durable than any transitory flesh.
And it was all certain in the mists of bodily fluids and commingled breathing, the sweat and the castoff sheets of the bed.
It was all set.
Until they broke apart and it wasn't.
Success had crashed blindingly into a whole and perfect blackness of failure, an event horizon of loss and disappointment that came from nowhere but within the harshly defined boundaries of the flesh, each defining each.
What had been tried and been so promising had failed.
Death had overcome life again, even though life still lived.
The shadows returned without a word.
Without a sound they knew they had been defeated, without a word, their surrender was in the connection of their glances as they lay apart and facing each other.
Hope had declined with every breath, despite reaching, despite longing, despite the repeated effort as they clambered together in doomed defiance.
But they had broken apart with the greatest finality when Boyd gasped at the fact that Null had somehow at last fallen asleep.
She sat there watching him, her fingers tracing scar after scar. And what had the world done to him? she wondered to herself, knowing all the while.
And she mouthed the question to herself, knowing the answer to that as well.
Just what had the world done to her?
A silent screaming came through his brain. The soundless music boomed.
He was bolt upright in bed, sweating, holding his temples as the need within him rose.
He got up and got dressed with jerky desperation.
It was simple. He had to get out.
It was a miserable and low need to connect—with anyone at any moment, but the immediacy of it screamed in his brain, played on all senses with a hushed noise surging through his body.
As he hunted with jagged desperation for her spare keys, Boyd startled him.
She stood there naked, a pleading look on her face, not betrayed in her words. “Where are you going?”
“I don't know,” he said, pausing in thought, looking her over with appreciation and fondness. His eyes were fixed upon her.
“I don't know either,” she said.
“But I have to go,” he replied in a familiar, blank tone. “I have to.”
“Fine,” she said with some disappointment, then added before he could speak, “Can I go with you?”
Null experienced something close to shock for a moment, then cooled. “Sure,” he said. “You should come with me. You may be the reason I was going out to begin with.”
“To get away from me?”
“No, to be closer to you. I don't have any other way to say it, but the point was to be closer to you and to the rest of the world. To humanity.”
She shook her head, confused and somewhat moved, standing naked in the sunlight pouring into her condo living room through the cheap Levolor Venetian blinds. She tossed back her still damp hair. “Well, we can do that, I think. We'll start small.”
“Starting with you is not starting small,” he said, searching for his hat.
“No,” she answered, “but beginning where you ended might be a good start.”
“Our ends never know our beginnings,” Null quoted.
“But in this case, ours do, don't they?”
Null assented, shakily lighting a cigarette.
She dressed, and they left together, and as they left, she took his arm and wouldn't let go.