I never understood why they called it blood splatter.”I never understood why they called it blood splatter.”
This wasn’t the first time Fearless had thought about this. To be honest, he’d probably thought about it more than any normal person should. Spray, maybe. Or mist, even. Because when you spent your days disposing of dead bodies, and with that, a myriad of body fluids (but mostly blood, given the human body’s propensity to carry quite a bit of it at a given time) you began to crave a word for the whole experience that was a bit more dignified.
One that didn’t sound like a toddler got into a box of crayons and later upchucked them onto the wall. Splatter.
“What about blood squirt?” offered Vicious. He was crouched opposite Fearless, his snow-white hair glistening with sweat. They were positioned on either side of a man freshly deceased from a single bullet to the dead-center of his forehead. It was eerily precise. The work of a professional. But not just anyone.
This was the work of the Red Dragon. And when it came to the business of murder, they were the best.
The aforementioned splatter decorated the living room wall of a four-bedroom, high-rise condo with vaulted ceilings, imported marble floors and other high-end finishes including, coincidentally, a Pollock that the owner had stolen from Earth during the chaos of the Gate Disaster. And now, ironically, the splatter seemed to hang next to it, like some kind of morbid, abstract piece of modern art.
“Of all the words you want to go with squirt?” Fearless’s lips curled to a grin. Disarming, irresistible. He knew the effect it had on people. And later in life, women. As a young boy he had learned to weaponize it. When you grew up on the streets, facial expressions were more than emotions. They were a physical currency. A way to lure in the unsuspecting and pluck their wallet from their back pocket when they were most vulnerable. It wasn’t just a grin. It was a survival tactic.
Vicious sighed and shook his head. “Get your mind out of the gutter and keep rolling. I wanna get out of here at a decent hour. Unlike last night. When you forgot to duct tape your end of the rug. And the body slipped out right onto 12th Avenue in front of a bunch of cops. Or did you forget about that?”
Fearless scoffed. As if to say, Who, me? Then grinned. “You’re an asshole.”
The thing was, Fearless was right. Vicious was an asshole. But not in the derogatory sense. He was an asshole in the hereditary sense, a rich asshole descended from a long line of rich assholes from various parts of the rich asshole tree. So, yes, he was an asshole. But he was not an asshole. There was a difference.
“3… 2… 1… !”
They team-lifted the body into position atop a nearby burgundy and gold flecked oriental rug that the poor bastard would be rolled into, duct-taped and disposed of. In the Red Dragon, they were known as “janitors” for a reason. The cleanup crew a veteran assassin called in after a hit so they didn’t have to get their hands dirty. It was part of the organization’s hierarchy.
And Fearless and Vicious were planted firmly at the bottom.
“Let’s get this over with,” Fearless replied with about as much enthusiasm as you’d expect from a guy who spent the better part of his day disposing of dead bodies.
They rolled the dead man, careful to do it slowly, until they ran out of rug and the poor sap was snug in its center, like the soft, fleshy, ooey-gooey filling of a Swiss cake roll.
And as they secured both ends with the duct tape, Fearless’s eyes ticked to the still-smoldering bullet hole in the drywall. He studied it closely with an educated glare, like an archaeologist carefully examining the contents of a dig, careful not to disturb what priceless treasure lies underneath.
“A thousand woos says it was a .32.”
This was another game they played. Albeit a higher stakes one. Vicious raised an eyebrow to the wager and turned his attention to the bullet hole. He studied it closely. Not convinced. And proclaimed, with the utmost certainty: “It’s a .380. Fired from a Sig Sauer. Double or nothing.”
Fearless took in the bullet hole again. As close as his eye allowed. He turned back to Vicious. Incredulous.
“Bull-fucking-shit. Do you even see the condo we’re in? A .380 is going to wake up half the building. Before you know it, you’ll have a housewife wearing a silk robe with a Bichon tucked under her arm banging down the door and half the ISSP in the lobby. You’d need a suppressor.” Fearless smirked. Then delivered the punch line, “And what kind of dumb fuck mounts a suppressor on a Sig-fucking-Sauer?”
When, as if on cue from the other side of a nearby bathroom door, a toilet flushed. The color drained from Fearless’s face. Shit. He was still here. The door opened. And a voice boomed: “This kind of dumb fuck.”
The voice belonged to Spider, a veteran Red Dragon assassin. He was also an asshole. Not the rich kind of asshole. The other kind. An asshole-asshole. The kind that wore a tie with a matching pocket square and sunglasses indoors. At his side was his partner, Karma. He too, was dressed like an asshole. But he wasn’t much for words. He preferred that Spider did the shit-talking. And so did Spider.
They were made men. Red Dragon royalty. The kind of guys that had a table at Ana’s Bar where the upper echelon of the organization wined and dined with a monthly tab that would rival most people’s mortgages. The extracurricular activities that they enjoyed as part of the Red Dragon was the reason that Vicious and Fearless signed up to be a part of the organization in the first place. Their personalities? Not so much.
“Every assassin worth his paycheck knows that you can mount 9mm suppressor onto a .380, if you know what you’re doing. Which I do. Which also explains why after two years you two career underachievers are still janitors.”
Spider pulled a pack of cigarettes from the inside of his jacket and plucked one out. It dangled from his mouth as he lit it with a gold-plated lighter. It was one of those vintage ones with a flip lid that made a metallic grinding sound when lit. Flick. Flick. Flick. After a few tries, the cigarette finally took. Spider took a long drag and looked over their handiwork with a skeptical eye—
“Hurry up and get rid of that rug. I don’t want to have to come back and put a bullet in the building’s super because you two took too long debating the word splatter and he walked in on you two rolling up his tenant.”
Fearless turned to Spider, facetious. “The term is blood squirt.”
Spider headed for the door to leave, but not before he turned back to them. A grin on his face. Far different than the one Fearless wore. This was your regular old douchebag shit-eater.
“Oh, and Vicious. A penthouse, huh?”
Vicious clamped his jaw down. If you listened closely, you could hear his teeth slowly grinding away. It was all he could do to keep it bottled up. The darkness. The part of him, if Vicious allowed it, that would shatter the vintage Bordeaux that sat mere feet away on the floor-to-ceiling, temperature-controlled wine rack and use the tinted French glass to dig Spider’s eyes out from their sockets.
“Pretty nice digs for a fucking janitor.”
Fearless locked eyes with Vicious and slowly shook his head with an almost imperceptible subtlety. He knew this part of Vicious well. He’d had a violent streak inside him since they were teenagers. Fearless called it the darkness. It was the only thing about Vicious that scared him. It wasn’t the fact that he’d murder someone without warning that frightened him—it was how far he took it. It was never enough for him to just kill a man. He had to render them unrecognizable. Destroyed. It was more than a temper. It was something else entirely. It was vicious. And it had gotten them in enough trouble over the years that Fearless had learned to see the darkness lurking below the surface—like a shark’s fin that ever so poked above the water—even before Vicious did. Most of the time.
Fearless faced down the assassin. “Don’t worry, Spider. One day you’ll make enough cash so you can stop jerking off in your mom’s basement and get a place of your own.”
Spider took a drag on the cigarette. He shook his head with a chuckle, then exhaled a plume of smoke. “That’s the difference between you and I, Fearless. One day, the Red Dragon is going to place a bloodstone ring on my finger and make me an elder—and you’ll still be rolling bodies in rugs and making jokes.”
Fearless considered this for a moment. He scrunched his face in thought, then turned back to Spider. “But if the Elders give you a bloodstone ring… then how will you fit your finger up your asshole?”
“Fuck you, Fearless,” Spider snapped back. He flipped a middle finger in Fearless’s direction as he stomped off toward the door. Karma followed close behind, as Karma did.
Fearless exhaled. His eyes ticked to Vicious. The blood drained from his cheeks. The darkness had retreated back to its quiet little cave.
For now.
* * *
The Tharsis skyline shined down on the Tharsis City crush yard, the place where old cars and the bodies of the Red Dragon’s handiwork went to disappear. The lights of the city’s many unoccupied luxury apartments and fluorescent floating billboards advertising the latest advancements in genetically engineered bio-meat illuminated the discarded bits of automotive chrome and glass scattered about.
Mars’s biggest city was to be the first step towards colonizing the entire solar system. It was the brainchild of the most accomplished architects and builders from across Earth with grand buildings of glass and steel that were reminiscent of Dubai and with the footprint of two Manhattans. Those who visited it in the early days hailed it as the next great metropolis. But to live there felt like living inside a decorative snow globe, the kind you bought for your grandmothers at a Christmas shop. The city was filled with the constant hum of street sweepers buffing and polishing the asphalt. The skyscrapers were architectural marvels, but on the inside they remained unfinished and likely to stay that way. The rain was scheduled. All that was missing was a steam engine with a delightful conductor that circled the city every few minutes. It felt about as real as a movie set.
“How the hell do they know where I live?”
Fearless and Vicious slowly swayed back and forth, each clutching one end of the now 180-pound oriental rug. It was quiet at this time of night, albeit for the sound of the industrial compactor grinding away just inches from their feet. The one that by day could devour an entire car in mere seconds, and by night destroy any trace of a dead body. They built up enough momentum and each let go of their end of the rug, watching in morbid fascination as it hit the compactor’s rotating, interlocking steel teeth with a tremendous thud.
And within seconds, it was gone. The rug—and, with it, the body—was ground into an unrecognizable paste. Some bits of skin and hairy flesh would remain, but it was enough to conceal what had taken place in the vaulted-ceiling condo with the stolen Pollock. Not that anybody would care enough to go looking for the poor bastard.
Fearless dusted his hands off, then shrugged. “Of course, they know where we live. They know our blood type, how much cash we have in our bank account—hell, they probably know what color our piss is in the morning. But it just so happens that my shithole apartment with the roaches as big as rats and the toilet you have to sit side saddle on if you want to take a freaking dump with the door closed isn’t as of much interest to assholes like Spider as your penthouse.”
Vicious quickly corrected him. “It’s not my penthouse.”
Fearless sighed. Goddamnit. Vicious always did this. Every couple months, he needed an it’s-OK-to-be-born-into-generational-wealth pep talk. After all, it was Fearless who was the one who was born on the streets of East Tharsis. The one who was left alone as an infant, in a second-hand bassinet, in front of a nightclub. The one that no one wanted. The one who was made to scrap for a bowl of cold noodle broth and an awning to sleep under that would protect him from the artificial rain that coated the city once a week.
But sure, Vicious wanted to talk about his problems.
“Look. You were born a rich kid. And that’s OK. It’s not your fault that you grew up eating lobster at Francona’s on Saturday nights and spent your summers gravity sailing in Europa with an instructor named Claude. But it is your fault that you let mediocre dicks like Spider get under your skin. And the sooner you accept what you came from, the sooner you’ll grow into the man you were always destined to become.”
Vicious chewed on his semi-inspirational words for a moment. Yes, Fearless had given him this exact speech—many times—before. The truth was, as Spider had reminded them, they had been stuck at the bottom rung of the Red Dragon ladder for almost two years now. They had never been promoted, but a few weeks before, their role had been “adjusted.” Meaning, in addition to spending their nights cleaning up after career-dicks like Spider, during the day they now had to drive around a sweaty, swollen-fingered capo named Dodd.
Fearless sighed. Again. Hoping his friend would pick up on it. He could only play to Vicious’s insecurities for so long.
“Look, we can either stand here and you can continue to contemplate hanging yourself in a motel bathroom where you have to swipe a credit card to flush the toilet or whatever it is you fantasize about when you stare into the abyss like this or we can go get drunk and try to convince women we’re much more important than we actually are so they’ll sleep with us. It’s your call.”
Vicious continued to stare. Into the abyss. Then said, “It was Monroe.”
Fearless scrunched his brows Vicious turned to him. With a slight grin.
“My gravity sailing instructor. His name was Monroe.”
Fearless laughed. Maybe he’d got him wrong. Maybe he really was the other kind of asshole.
* * *
Three tumblers were lined up on the bar as a shimmering gold liquid splashed into the bottom of each. A tattooed hand poured a few fingers in each. A more than generous pour, given who it was for.
Fearless grinned as he took all three glasses. “I’ll get you next time, Felix.”
The bartender, the one with the aforementioned tattooed hands, rolled his eyes. “I won’t count on it.”
He held the bottle high. The bright yellow label was emblazoned with a red, fire-breathing dragon. Above it was the word KUDO. One part tequila, one part absinthe and three parts bad idea. He gave the golden liquid a careful swirl. “Lucky for me you’re the only one that drinks this pirate piss.”
Fearless winked. Given his paltry entry-level Red Dragon salary, it was lucky for them both indeed.
He returned to the high-top next to the street-side window where Vicious stood with a raven-haired, take-no-shit Red Dragon sophomore by the name of Goldie. A former jewel thief, the organization recruited Goldie to join their ranks after she knocked off a string of diamond dealers with ties to the organization. They were impressed by her work.
Vicious and Goldie winced at the sight of the glasses. Kudo. Great.
The three of them tapped the table with the bottom of their glasses and then gulped the liquor down their gullets in unison. Goldie recoiled from the aftertaste. Kudo tended to linger on the palette like burnt gasoline, even to the previously initiated. It wasn’t the kind of thing you got used to.
She shook her head. “Last time I drank Kudo I woke up naked in the bathroom of an orbital casino outside of Io.”
Fearless raised an eyebrow. Goldie put that to bed. Quickly. “You even think about me naked and I’ll slit your throat and dump your body in the acid reservoir outside of East Tharsis.”
“Fair enough,” Fearless replied with a chuckle. Goldie was their best friend within the organization. Fearless had secretly pined for her for some time, but he kept that secret buried deep inside him. There was an unspoken rule among them that they wouldn’t dip their pen in the company ink, so to speak, in order to maintain the status quo and not let things get messy. Well, at least that’s what Fearless told himself. The truth was, he’d never had a meaningful relationship with a woman and the idea of baring his soul to Goldie—or any woman, for that matter—scared the shit out of him. In Fearless’s mind, it was better to have lost than to have never loved at all.
Across the street, a white-hot sign flickered to life. The sight of it through the bar window immediately caught Fearless’s attention. The lettering was styled in simple cursive neon reminiscent of the one that hung above Rick’s Café Américain. The exterior of the joint didn’t need to be particularly eye-catching. Every pirate, scoundrel, and outlaw worth their salt knew what was inside. It was called ANA’S BAR. Named after the prickly owner who oversaw the joint—and the exclusive list of its members. And then, as if drawn up by the universe just to torture Fearless, at that exact moment Spider and Karma strolled by and glad-handed the doorman as they disappeared inside.
Fearless gritted his teeth. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Goldie laughed. Clearly she enjoyed watching Fearless wallow in his misery. “I never understood your fascination with that place. It’s just another bar.”
Fearless scoffed. He turned to the bartender, “Felix, what’s the name of this place?”
Felix stared back, quizzically. It felt like a trick question. “This place? The Bar.”
Fearless turned back to the two of them. His point already made for him. Because they were literally standing in just another bar. But, as they explained to Goldie, Ana’s wasn’t just a bar. To drink at Ana’s meant that you had made it. That in the Red Dragon’s eyes, not only were you somebody—but you were damn good at it, too.
Goldie rolled her eyes. “Only men would care about what bar they’re supposed to be drinking at. That your worth is somehow determined by whether or not you are allowed to pay two thousand woos for the same hooch you’d drink in a bar called The Bar. I, of course, being a woman, don’t have that kind of insecurity.”
Then, suddenly Vicious perked up. Something had caught his eye. He motioned across the bar with a less-than-subtle glance.
“Maybe being relegated to The Bar isn’t so bad after all…”
Seated at the far end of the counter were two women, both in their early-twenties. One, a close-cropped, punk rock blonde. The other had auburn hair with a matching shade of gloss on her lip. They ordered two soda waters with lime, and when Felix wasn’t looking, had reached into their bras to procure their own pre-purchased airplane bottles of cheap, Russian-sounding vodka and emptied them into their glasses.
And now, Fearless and Vicious were looking to Goldie to help broker the deal. Sure, they were nobodies. But in their experience, at the very least Goldie was able to convince girls like them to let the pair buy them a drink. She was what they lovingly referred to her as their wing-woman. Goldie preferred one-night-stand liaison.
“Oh, come on,” Goldie demurred. “When was the last time you offered to help me get laid?”
Fearless motioned to himself and Vicious. “The two of us are single, you know.”
“I’m not that desperate and I never will be,” Goldie snapped back. Fearless and Vicious grinned as she turned and reluctantly made her way from their table through the crowd of sweaty, half-drunken patrons and towards the two women idling at the bar. It wasn’t lost on them what kind of friend she was. The best kind.
“You girls always bring your own liquor when you go out on the town? Or did Felix not tell me they started selling those little airplane bottles you two have stuffed in your bras?”
The two women grew stiff. Their eyes searched feverishly for the nearest exit; they could only assume that Goldie was an undercover employee of sorts and that the jig was up. She was quick to reassure them that she was anything but.
“Relax. I’m not here to bust you. I actually thought that the airplane bottle move was pretty ingenious.”
The women loosened up. The blonde was named Fiona, her auburn-haired friend Penny. They were fresh out of Tharsis University and were broke like people tended to be at that age.
Goldie motioned to the other side of the room, where Fearless and Vicious stood by the high-top and were now engaging in an overly enthusiastic conversation in a piss-poor attempt to hide the fact that they had been watching the entire time as Goldie talked to the two women.
“See those two guys?” The women nodded. Intrigued, but not entirely impressed.
Goldie clocked their lack of enthusiasm. And grinned. Now this was going to be fun.
“They’re rich. Like, stupid rich. They both own huge houses. And ships. Big ships. The one with the white hair actually uses his ship as a floating storage unit in orbit. He doesn’t even fly it. That’s how rich they are. And they’d like to buy you a drink. And honestly? I’d let them buy you a lot more than that. Hell, buy the most expensive thing on the menu. Money is no object. Trust me.”
The women exchanged a glance. Why not.
Goldie smirked. She turned back towards the boys—and held a resounding thumbs up in the air.
A champagne cork popped. The intoxicating bubbles turned white as they flowed from the open mouth, down the bottle’s curvature and past the decadent French label, before spilling onto the faux-wood table and coming to rest right at Fearless’s fingertips. He stared at the bubbles, wide-eyed, as if calculating in his head how much each bubble was worth.
“Woo!” Fiona laughed as she poured the champagne into four flutes, the liquid gold spilling and overflowing about.
Fearless looked to Vicious with a subtle glance, as if to say, you were born rich and for that reason, you’re paying for this. Vicious matched his glance with the slight raise of an eyebrow as if to reply, I’m always the one who pays.
“So—” Fiona smirked as she sat back on her stool. “What kind of business did you two luck into in order to be able to drink champagne that’s older than all of us?”
Fearless carefully considered his response. This question had gotten them in trouble before. In the past he had told women that they were Red Dragon capos, promising to stake them at the orbital casino the organization controlled that spun outside of Saturn or a VIP table at the hottest new club opening in Tharsis that weekend.
This, as one could imagine, almost always backfired. Especially when they stopped telling women they were in the Red Dragon and pivoted to more lucrative fake professions. For instance, there was the time at a Tharsis steakhouse when Fearless had told a pair of women they were doctors, which went surprisingly well until at the next table over a guy went into anaphylactic shock and the waitress did the old, Is there a doctor in the house? routine, to which Fearless answered yes, because he was a) in too deep at that point and b) still trying to get laid. It didn’t go well. Especially for the guy who had unknowingly consumed a pine-nut pesto. And so Vicious took the lead this time:
“We’re in the import-export business.”
It was important-sounding enough to justify the price of the champagne, but vague enough that they could make up the details as they went along. They regaled the women with their trips to Venus and Europa, recounting the fabulous hotels in which they stayed and the many exotic delicacies that were consumed, all without ever touching on what the day-to-day of that business would actually entail.
Fiona looked to Penny. They traded a coded glance of their own. And then a smirk, as if both of them coming to the same conclusion without saying a word. Penny, the more soft-spoken of the two, spoke up:
“What if we took this party somewhere a little more… private?”
Fearless was quick to jump in before Vicious could change his mind. “Unfortunately, my place is actually being renovated.” He motioned to Vicious. “But my friend here has a penthouse that is just divine.”
Vicious gritted his teeth. The darkness wasn’t there yet, but by the look on his face Fearless could tell that part of him felt like waking it up.
“If you’ll excuse us, for a moment, ladies—”
Vicious grabbed Fearless by the arm and forcefully ushered him towards the men’s room where he quickly locked the door behind them. With a single toilet in the corner, it was a bathroom that was clearly meant for one. He turned to Fearless. Seething.
Fearless shrugged. And began to take a leak. “What’s the big deal?”
“I told you. It’s my father’s penthouse. Not mine.”
“So?”
“So, we’re not taking those women back to my father’s penthouse.”
Fearless shook. Then flushed. “Yes. We are.”
He zipped up and opened the door, but Vicious quickly slammed it shut again.
“No. We are not.”
“Well Mr. Imports and Exports, we can’t take them back to my place where you have to sit sideways on the toilet, now can we? That was your cover, not mine.”
Vicious fired back, “My father loves that penthouse. And if so much as a carpet fiber is out of place, he’ll have my ass.”
Fearless smirked. “Then we’ll make sure the girls take off their shoes, won’t we?”
He mulled this for a moment as Fearless continued: “Come on. What’s the point of having all this stuff if you can’t get a little joy from it every once in a while?”
Vicious sighed. He’s right. “Fine. Tonight. One night. That’s it. You’re my best friend, Fearless—but sometimes I cannot fucking stand you.”
Fearless grinned. That grin. “I know.”
* * *
The private elevator door opened with a delightful digital melody. The sound was perfect. It was as if it had been developed in a lab by scientists who had figured out what digital notes would be most pleasing to the human ear—mostly because it had been.
Fiona and Penny stepped into the penthouse apprehensively. The beauty of it—the white oak floors, the custom marble countertops, the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered 360-degree views of Tharsis City—was unbelievable, if not incomprehensible.
Vicious smiled, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Fiona choked back her wonder. But managed: “I thought you guys were full of shit.”
615 Park was the most exclusive address in all of Tharsis City. The majority of the rich folks who owned the sprawling, 3,000-square foot apartments didn’t even live there. It became the ultimate status symbol purchase. Like owning a racehorse. Or a baseball team. There was never going to be a return on investment because no one else could afford to live there. You owned an apartment in the building just so you could tell your fellow rich assholes that you did.
Vicious and the two women stepped into the living room as Fearless appeared with four glasses of scotch and handed them out to each of them. Whatever brand and vintage it was, it smelled expensive.
Vicious quietly turned to Fearless. He angry-whispered, “Where did you get that?”
Fearless shrugged. “Where do you think? Just shut up and drink it.”
A silence fell between the four of them. They all knew where this was heading and now they were at the will-they or won’t-they portion of the evening. They were just waiting for someone to make the first move. And that person, as was his custom, was Fearless.
“Say, Fiona… how would you like a… private tour of the penthouse?”
She smiled. And played along. “That sounds… great. Let’s do… that.” Together, Fearless and Fiona disappeared into the seemingly endless penthouse.
Vicious and Penny remained in the living room. There was an awkward silence. And then an awkward chuckle. He motioned for her to sit on a nearby white leather U-shaped couch with him. Penny did a happy little bounce on the cushion.
“This feels like no one has ever sat in it before.”
Vicious smirked. “To be honest, we may be the first.”
She took this in, confused. “What do you mean? How is it possible that you never sat on your own couch?”
“Well, to be honest, my father never let anyone sit on it. To him, it was a piece of art. And over time, sitting in it would cause the leather to crease and crack, thus diminishing its value.”
Penny chuckled as she sipped her scotch. “But… it’s just a couch.”
Vicious explained. “To you, yes. But to him, this penthouse and the things inside of it are part of his collection. A collection of things. Many of these things are very, very expensive. And you’re right, they just sit in this beautiful penthouse, without anyone to appreciate them. To see them. Touch them. Enjoy them. But that’s just the way it’s always been.”
Vicious took a long sip of the expensive scotch. It was a 45-year. From Earth. He instantly recognized the slightly smokey yet sweet taste on his tongue. It was the same bottle that he had stolen a pour from as a teenager when his father was away on business. He remembered it clearly. It was a small, subtle act of revenge. His father had called home to say goodnight and ended up chastising him for receiving a 99/100 on his math exam that day. But Vicious knew that even if he scored a perfect 100, his father would have asked why he didn’t receive a 101. The best was never good enough. Not for the king.
Penny mulled this over for a moment. “But what kind of life is that? What kind of person amasses a collection of expensive things that they don’t even see?”
Vicious admired the scotch in his hand for a moment before he answered, all of the evening’s swirling liquors inside him, enticing him, begging him to reveal more than he should to this stranger. “The life of someone who values things more than people. Possessions more than feelings. Like that couch you’re sitting on. You see, that couch is a perfect design. Every stitch. Every seam. But people, people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They don’t live up to expectations. Quite often, they let you down.”
Penny interjected, “But that’s human nature.”
Vicious took another sip. Weathered the bite. “The thing is, you can fix furniture. But you can’t fix people. No matter how hard you try. Or where you send them…”
Penny realized this conversation, and the evening was taking a turn. A dark one. But she was transfixed by him. This intoxicated, sad stranger.
“Send them where?”
Vicious looked to his glass. It was empty. But his eyes, they began to fill. He looked to her. Glassy.