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I WAS ONCE MORE TUMBLING over into the abyss of sleep when Keane returned from helping the weeping man back to his bedroom; the mournful squeal of door hinges crying behind him. The angry flush had vanished from his face, but the consequences of an ill-used night had begun to make an appearance. Dark shadows suddenly lingered beneath his eyes with a thin scruff long since settled over his jaw. I sat up, expecting Keane to immediately dive into every nook and cranny of James Harrison’s many vices, but instead he ambled off to the kitchen and returned with a bottle and two matching glasses.
“I believe now would be an ideal time for a stiff drink.” He announced, handing me the first glass poured with a moderate hand. I had half the mind to point out it was now only a little past six in the morning, but, as he filled his glass to the brim, I thought the better of it. Wasn’t there something Shaw said about not wrestling with angry sheep? Or was it pigs?
God, I needed sleep.
Keane threw his head back and dumped half the glass’ contents down his throat. It seemed to have done some good, for the stiffness in his shoulders began to ease away.
“I think,” He began carefully. “I think that I should stay here a while longer to make sure James comes out of it alright. These damn pills . . .” He pulled the little bottle out of his pocket and handed it to me. My tired eyes were none too eager to be put to proper use; however, after a few seconds, the brown smudge along the label became letters strung together into a single word.
Hydrocodone.
Keane tapped the bottle slowly with his forefinger.
“They used to prescribe these in the war. Then they became self-prescribed when the shell shock set in. In essence, it is a painkiller with a thousand other devilish purposes.” I noticed when he uttered the last sentence, his hand came up to brush his left shoulder, as if he was dusting away a shadow.
“Does it hurt? Your shoulder, I mean. Does it still bother you?” There was a dry, rough chuckle in my ear.
“Lawrence, that was over thirty years ago. Are you still sore where you injured yourself as a child? No, I thought not.” Of course it didn’t hurt. Ridiculous thought. Perhaps it would become sore—even uncomfortable—if he went several nights without sleep or overworked that particular muscle, but beyond that? No. Poppycock. He downed the rest of the whiskey and poured himself another, more conservative glass. “If you want to go back to the house for a while, you can take the car. I’ll get a cab later when James wakes up again.” I tried to pull my exhausted features together in what I thought to be an offended expression.
“Me? Take the car back? I’d crash into a tree with the lack of sleep. No, Keane, you can’t get rid of me that easily.” He nodded before we allowed the room to slip back into silence. Surprisingly, I did not drift easily into the realm of dreams as the minutes ticked passed on a clock shaped eerily like a black cat. Instead, I watched the curled tail swing back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and—
“Keane?”
“Lawrence?”
“Do you really think all this trouble—the incident when we arrived, the Smith girl’s death, the fire—is because of Harrison? Or rather, his ties to this Cohen man?” I felt my companion shift beside me, but his eyes stayed stolidly marked to the wall.
“Remember, Lawrence, Meyer Cohen is not the only leader of the Los Angeles underground. For all we know, it could be another dozen groups—or even a madman—who want to ruin James.”
“But, if he owes Cohen money—”
“That does turn the scale a bit, yes.” Keane ran his finger along the edge of his glass. “There was a part in the Bible—I cannot recall where—in which it was said those who provide temptation are related to the devil. Certainly the black market provided the drugs, but it is Miss Smith, James, and others like them who willingly enjoy their effects. They enjoy the chemicals, but financially?” He needn’t have finished. I knew all too well of the stories of the late Capone’s mafia out in Chicago and the hundreds of other groups who appeared across the country who made millions off of selling drugs to former soldiers; however, until that moment, I had only heard the stories. And that’s what it felt like. A blasted story. Everything about the entire adventure seemed incredibly surreal, from the little fat man with his damn cigars to Harrison’s stupefied entrance. It was no better than a blasted fairytale.
A damn story.
Keane stood from the seat and stretched leisurely with the heels of his palms planted firmly in the small of his back.
“I think it would be prudent if we watched ourselves for the next few days. Nothing paranoid, mind you, but the simple things. Staying away from excessively large windows, not eating or drinking anything you are not absolutely sure is safe, and—do you have your knife with you?” I pulled the folded silver object from my pocket and held it out palm up for Keane’s inspection. “Good. Carry that at all times.” It was a superfluous statement; suggesting a habit which had existed since he first bought me the piece. My curiosity, on the other hand, was not only justifiable, but necessary.
“And what will you be carrying? A sickle? A saber?” I thought my companion had gone mad, or, at the very least, was on the brink of doing so. One by one he unbuttoned his coat, his fingers moving slowly but with an exquisite sense of purpose. It was not until he threw it over the back of a nearby chair that I saw the full extent of his pajamaed torso.
Including a holster and pistol.
I couldn’t believe it. But then, as logic and reason washed upon me, I found I could. He had been in a war. Of course he owned a gun. I had seen a few scattering various drawers of his house in Devon. Yes, I had known about these, but to see him with the holster strapped over his shoulder, it shook me. Him, with his vivid, blue eyes and poetic expression, wearing a firearm over the warm cotton of his pajama shirt. It might have been comical, had it not been a matter of life and the lack of such.
“Has no one told you never fight fire with fire?” It was a joke; a poor, weak, futile joke muttered with a voice scarcely audible above the pounding in my head. Keane grimaced—the first step toward a smile—and gingerly pulled the weapon from its spot against his chest. He handed it to me.
The little pistol was only marginally longer than my palm; coming several inches short of my fingertips. I had held a hundred revolvers such as this, and fired them just as often. I had no qualms to their use just as I had no doubt of their intense power. There was power to survive, and power to die. Power to live, and power to shorten the lives of others. Power to love, and power to hate.
Power.
I cleared my throat.
“FP-45. Small, but effective.” I returned the weapon to Keane, who slipped it into the holster.
“It may not be the best in the world, but it will suffice until I find something more suitable. You have used them before, I believe.”
“More often than I would care to admit.” Keane nodded slowly.
“‘Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.’”
“Arthur Penrhyn Stanley; Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers. Published in 1894, wasn’t it?”
“1895, but the words still hold the same meaning.” My companion finished buttoning his coat and sat down beside me with the air of a defeated man. His shoulders slouched low toward his knees; his hands falling uncomfortably in his lap. “I really ought to apologise—”
“—Don’t you dare. You might injure your masculinity. And besides, ‘Qué será, será’.”
Whatever will be, will be.
“Even so, if I had not canceled your meetings—”
“—Then I would be bored to death in England. Really, Keane, this is much more fun.” He was silent then, as if I had just raised a flag of surrender for the sake of his pride. That was, of course, partially true, but not completely. Nothing is ever entirely truthful, no matter how hard one may believe it to be so. He knew as well as I that my publisher was a common goat of a man who was just as existing as an unsolvable algebraic equation. Lord knows I would have rather spent the summer months with one of my disgruntled relations than endure those tedious meetings. All Keane had done was to provide an excuse to save my sanity.
I began to sip at my long forgotten glass of whiskey.
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IT WAS KEANE WHO AWOKE me. Not the scruffy, furious Keane who talked of weapons, but one who had recently shaved (the brisk scent of his shaving lotion), combed back his hair (with that one little curl refusing to go behind his right ear), and dressed fully in a three piece suit (the lingering vinilla of cigarette smoke still clinging to the fabric). The dark blotches were still quite apparent under his eyes, but they were not quite so heavy as before. In fact, if I hadn’t been looking for them, I might not have noticed at all.
I was also equally aware of a steaming cup being shoved beneath my nose.
“Good morning, Lawrence. Or should I say afternoon? By God, if you had your way, you’d sleep the entire day into oblivion. Now drink this—no, it’s not coffee; though are you certain your distaste for the beverage is not psychological—you’re quite right. This is no time to discuss your many mysteries. Now get up.”
I accepted the tea, allowing it to liquid to scald my throat and jerk me into reality. My mutterings of thanks scarcely passed my lips before I realised the suit he was wearing was too loose at the midsection and short at the ankles. The necktie too, I thought, was not his color.
Yellow never was.
I took another long sip of the strong liquid.
“And how is the patient this morning?” Keane pulled at the ends of his suit cuffs (which weren’t nearly long enough to conceal his wrists) and cocked his head to one side as a doctor might when preparing to give a diagnosis.
“His breathing and heart rate are normal. Pupils seem alright. All and all, I think he hass come out of it right enough.”
“And what are you going to do about the Hydrocodone?”
“Do?”
“Of course. I can’t believe you would stand by and watch that man—your friend—slowly kill himself. It isn’t in your nature.” I would have said more, but I neither wanted to inflate his insufferable ego, nor puncture that great collection of hot air called masculinity. Instead, I sat with the mug of tea cradled in my hands and an expression wavering dangerously between curiosity and the expectancy my companion would suddenly announce some ingenious plot to forever rid Harrison’s system of the little, white pills. But he said nothing. No great exclamation of marvelous insight came. There was only the thick murk of silence between us as he pulled out his cigarette case and began smoking the treasured things one by one. A thin shroud of smoke encircled us in a scent slightly more bitter than vanilla, but just as pleasing to the senses. I observed every twist of the flitting clouds that rose about Keane’s head in a slow, mystic dance. The memory of those Irish pubs, heavy with the smells of smoke and stout, fell upon me in a wave of nostalgic impulses. I wanted to return again. I wanted to be free of this place. I wanted to be free of my past, just as Keane wished to be free of his. But I could not. A hundred stings, a thousand welts.
At last, as the final trails of smoke ceased to take breath from his cigarette, he slowly ground it into a nearby ashtray and glanced at me down the bridge of his nose.
“My dear Lawrence, I am hardly a role model for the ‘straight and narrow path’ as they say. I have my own problems—my own addictions.” He waved a thin, clean hand over the ashtray. “And until I am willing to give them up—and Lord help me if I ever did—how am I to say I am in the right and poor James is in the wrong? After all, everything is relative.”
“But there are some religions that even encourage smoking. The native tribes, for one.”
“You mean the same tribes that use hallucinogenic mushrooms for their various rituals and other ceremonies? No, Lawrence, we are back where we started. I absolutely will not—cannot invoke upon my friend a hell I do not wish to walk myself. It goes against my code as a gentleman.” Damn his blasted code.
“But Keane,” I paused to collect the words rushing about my brain. “What if—What if it was me. Would you be so unable to do anything then as well.”
It was a low blow. It was, dare I say, ungentlemanly. But I was not a gentleman. I was a woman, a skillful, conniving woman, who had dreams to great for realities, and realities too awful for nightmares.
It was also a risk. I was wagering the whole of the future on the thought that our relationship might have been so ingrained into him as it was to me that it would topple all fears he had at being an inadequate temperance worker. William Wilberforce, one of the great British politicians and author of Real Christianity, once said in a speech to the House of Commons in 1789;
‘You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know,’
Keane stared at me with his jaw stolid against the rest of his features and his eyes stone against stormy seas.
“Confound it, woman!” He growled, circling around the back of his chair until I festered some vain hopes he might sit down.
“But, Keane—” I had scarcely uttered his name when he was upon me completely, my coat lapels twisted in his clenched fists as he pulled me to my feet and then some until our noses were but a breath from one another. I stared into those pools of blue flecked heavily in grey; those two oceans rippling in color as the black centers darted back and forth between mine. His lips were pressed tightly into a stiff line. I knew that look well. I knew that look of intense thought, of measuring the consequences of a situation quickly with his mind reeling in a thousand directions at once. I knew most everything about that look; every line, every crease, every muscle, every movement of his eyes. I knew it. I knew it because I knew him. The years of our acquaintance, our companionship, our friendship, our—God, if our faces got any closer—
He suddenly released me and I fell back into my seat. We had been thrown back into our separate corners of the ring, but, by the soft, tentative nature of his voice, I did not doubt he remembered the bout in the middle.
“You are quite right, Lawrence. Quite right. It was . . . callus of me to say I could do nothing. Perhaps, with a little effort, I might be able to create some plan of action.” He said it with such conviction I was hard pressed not to believe him.
I watched him awhile then, miserably aware of my own failings in life while perfectly oblivious to his supposed sins. He bent down for his coat (accentuating the insufficient length of his trousers) and hung it over his arm. “I am going out for a while. An hour—two, at most. Will you be alright here? Of course you will. No, I am not about to leap over a bridge, and I would appreciate a change in your humor. It has been rather dismal lately, and certainly not complimentary to your intelligence. Tell James when he awakens he had best cancel any rehearsals for the next two weeks. He and I have work to do.”
And then Keane—Keane in a yellow tie and too-short trousers—was gone.