Boeuf Bourguignon tonight. Over-salted, over-rich – again – the meat on the tough side. Philippe nowhere to be seen, maybe sleeping his dope off, maybe at something else that Sol would rather not think about, certainly not over dinner. Mark Connor across from him once more, plowing methodically through his food like a horse at the trough.
“Just a small one, though, right?” Connor murmurs through a full mouth. “These things have a way of spinning out of control.”
You don’t fucking say, Mark. Sol doesn’t like the sound of any of this. He’s in a mood, too, has been for a couple of weeks now. First that unpleasantness with Frank Little and then the thing with Billy. It wasn’t right, and the taste of it lingers in his mouth like this lousy food. He pushes his plate away, disgusted, the meal half-eaten; what appetite he’d stoically gathered earlier is long gone now. Always back to fire, aren’t we. Round and round we go, la la la la la. “Spinning out of control?” he says. “Jesus, Mark, that’s a goddamn understatement. You ever been down there?”
“Course I’ve been down there, Sol. Well, been a while, but yeah, I’ve been down there. I understand the difficulties.”
“Difficulties.”
“Yeah, difficulties, Sol. There a problem?”
“There are a lot of problems, here, Mark. Loads, hey? You should be able to see that.”
“Maybe I got the wrong man, then.”
Ah, fuck. It won’t do to alienate Connor; a lot of money flows from the Company through him, straight into Sol’s pockets. And besides, he wants to know that, if this thing is done, it’s done right. Spinning out of control is a fucking understatement. “Nah, I’ve got a good man for this. Steady. Powder boy, owes me some.”
“Who?”
“You really want to know that?” Eyebrow cocked.
“No, no, I guess I don’t.” Connor scrapes away the rest of his food, washing it down with a swallow of wine. He leans back. “Listen, Sol, we’ve got things in place for this. That’s kind of the point here. One of them.”
“You’ll excuse me if I’m not brimming with confidence about that. A lot can go wrong.”
“You’re an engineer now, are you?”
“No, I’m not a fucking engineer, Mark. What I am is not an idiot. You get a fire going way down there, who knows what’s going to happen? Even best case, it’s fucking risky.”
“It’s a safety system, Sol. State of the fucking art, all that. Jesus, you think the Company is going to risk their own mine if the engineers aren’t sure with this? Been tested, the lot of it. New technology.”
The restaurant is entirely empty. Connor’s booked the whole place out. Still, they’re at the farthest table, talking in hissed whispers.
“Whose idea was this? Yours?” Connor leans back with a wry expression that asks if Sol thinks he’d ever actually answer that. “Fine, OK, fine. At least not on 25. How about 3? 5 even. 25-level is too goddamn deep.”
“That the whole point, Sol. Show everyone the system works, calm down the Union. Get them back to work. Besides, there’s that other part of things.”
“Move them, then. Easy enough to do. No one will think twice.”
Connor shakes his head. “25-level. Those crews stay where they are.”
That’s the second act of this farce, pinning the fire on supposed Bolsheviks, a couple of the union organizers that have been doing the most harm lately, with their slowdowns and speech-making and the rest of it. Ten thousand men had turned up for Frank Little’s funeral and the mood since has gone from bad to worse. They’re on war production and the Company says they can’t be having these slowdowns or, God forbid, the strike that they can all feel coming. So some ACM genius, Connor or someone higher, has decided that a fire a half-mile underground, started by anarchist saboteurs, is the order of the day. Show off that shiny new fire safety system while they’re at it, show the Union that the Company is concerned about their wellbeing. And get those men back to work, full speed, sharpish. Make those numbers.
Sol shakes his head again. “Jesus, Mark.”
“I’ll ask you again, Sol: we have a problem here?”
All it will take is one word and he’s out of this. Out. It will hit him in the pocketbook for a while and Sol has his eyes on some expansion that will require capital, investors, those Company men who have come to respect and rely on him, little that they know of the actual details of just what he does, most of them. Maybe Sol is finally in a position to peel back away from some of these dark things he’s doing, like that shameful thing with Frank. Because that’s what that was: shameful. He admits it now, is willing to. Regardless of whether it matters or not. Regardless of the things Frank said.
Divest some of his seedier holdings and responsibilities, then. Move further into property and the like, that’s what Sol wants. He has money, plenty of it, but just not enough to do what he wants on his own. Not to mention the more important part of it: those men, his fancy friends, who will cut through the red tape, get his permitting sorted, contracts, labor, distribution, the lot of it. Won’t never happen without those boys. If he cuts Connor loose, like he wants to, now, might be he’ll never get back into this position, leastways not for quite some time, and he’s not getting any younger.
Fuck.
“Course there’s no problem, Mark. None at all.”
In the deep hours of night, later, Sol’s sat up in his bed, the four-poster with the canopy, whole damn thing the size of a tennis court, almost, drinking a whiskey to calm the roiling in his gut. Whether from Philippe’s shitty rich beef or nerves, it’s tough to say. He really needs to get rid of this bed, though, find something more cozy, he tells himself for the hundredth time. Something smaller. After so many years sleeping on a narrow cot, this lumpy mattressed monstrosity of a thing has just never been comfortable. Plus it’s so big that one uneasy part of his mind is always expecting to wake up and find someone squatting there in the dark with him. He shudders at the thought, pushing it back down wherever it came from. He gives another glance down to the far end of the bed, miles away.
Near as he can tell, though, tonight it’s just him and Kitt, his latest paramour. That’s how she refers to herself: a paramour. Which, near as Sol can tell, is simply a five-dollar French word for working girl, because that’s what she is, even if she costs a damn sight more than five dollars. Never mind that nothing as crass as cash ever changes hands; Kitt is recompensed with jewels and furs and all the other trappings of a kept woman. A paramour. Jesus. At least she’s beautiful and, thankfully, easy company. She keeps her mercenary nature well hidden. Sol doesn’t begrudge her that nature, of course. Most everyone has to have a trade in this world. Hers just happens to be charm and beauty and lips that are big and soft as pillows, not to mention her unbridled enthusiasm, feigned or not, for some of the more nuanced acts of carnal sin.
Her back is turned to him now; he rests the base of his whiskey glass on the swell of her warm, generous hip, scratching idly at his cheek with his other hand. Sol doesn’t know if it was his gut or another nightmare that woke him, this time. He has that sweaty, jittery feeling that comes with the dreams but they don’t always wake him. He’s used to them, if one can ever really get used to such things. It’s automatic, any more, waking, reaching over in the dark for the whiskey decanter, pouring without spilling a drop. A learned skill. Sitting up, waiting to calm again, hoping sleep will return. Sometimes it does, but not often enough for his liking.
He thought it had been squashed down, but memories of the past have been popping up, more and more, since seeing Billy, since what happened after. Since Elizabeth, too, maybe, before then. He thinks about her more than he’d like. Thinks about Owen, too, that other life he’s tried to forget. Look at him now, though, he tells himself, yet again: this big old house, all his money, the fine whiskey and the finer girls. A beauty like Kitt curled up against him? Warm and sweet-smelling and soft, his come in her belly and the knowledge that all it would take is a nudge and those lips will be around him once more. The Sol from before, that busted-down old fart, would never have had a girl like that, not in a million years. And never mind the particulars of the transaction because, when he’s with her, she’s good enough at what she does for him to have no trouble suspending disbelief, at least until he finishes maybe. After that, no matter, she’s good company and he enjoys being around her. She looks good on his arm.
And, really, how long had he been happy with Elizabeth? A few good years, that was about it. Never mind that those years are the ones his mind constantly tracks back to, if he lets it. Rosy glow of memory, all that was; every time he calls it up it just gets another polish until now it’s almost too bright to look at. No way it was like that before, he knows it. They were just two people together with fights and accidental gas and everything else that goes with being a couple. Nothing is ever perfect.
Would he go back, though? Wake up again in that shitty old shack, like Billy had asked?
That time he spent before, running his mucker crew, drinking with those boys, fighting and whoring and gambling, those memories have some of that same false polish on them, he knows it. Easy to remember the bad times, too, though, all that went before with the job and being broke and all that shit with Sean. Maybe that’s his problem: those other lives are so sharp around the edges, the good and the bad both standing out in high relief. This one, it’s just flat, really. There’s good and there’s bad but even the standouts feel squashed and hunched. This right here, lying in a warm bed with a beautiful woman, that should be a high; that shameful fucking thing with Frank, a low. And they are, they are, but somehow it’s just not the same. It’s attenuated, weak, like it’s happened to someone else and he just happens to have acquaintance with it.
So now, even knowing what he does, that he couldn’t ever be the same man as he was before, would he go back, given the chance? Try again, one more time?
It’s childish, but he closes his eyes and makes a wish. He tries to pull it to him by force of will. Just one more chance. That’s all I’m asking. At least let me decide, with the choice right in front of me. Make the bet or not. Easy to speculate on the answer, but let me decide. He listens for the rattle of Indian bones.
But, of course, when he opens his eyes again, there’s not a goddamn thing.
Eventually, Sol dozes back off, startling himself to wakefulness by the whiskey spilled onto his belly. He jerks up and catches sight of the old Indian, Marked Face, crouching there in the dark at the end of the huge bed, like a cat come to steal his breath. Leering, the bones in his hair rattling softly. Sol yells, an unmanly squeal, and tries to scrabble away. The old man opens his mouth, too wide. Croaks like a raven, crawling forward towards him.
The spill of whiskey, or maybe his hollering, wakes him, for real this time. There’s no one at the end of the bed, there never was; it’s just another fucking nightmare. His belly is wet with malt and sweat and he’s shaking.
Kitt reaches out a hand, comforting him, still sound asleep. It’s one of the girl’s most attractive features, her ability to sleep through just about anything but also so easy to rouse when Sol gets to needing her during the long, shuddery nights awake. He closes his eyes, concentrating on the warmth of her hand, the soft press of her ass against his hip. He rolls over, sidles up behind her, buries his nose in the nape of her neck. He matches his breathing to hers until he finally drops back off, a long time later.
***
Marked Face watches from the darkness at the foot of the bed while the old man sleeps.
It is almost done, now.
The boy is ready. Finally, after all these long years, he is ready. All that Marked Face has done, the pain and sorrow he has caused, has been to bring this time to pass, to prepare his nephew for the trials that come. Poor Sagiistoo is the point of the spear and now we shall see if he breaks.
Marked Face can feel the excitement of the Above Ones.
His brother, his own part played, waits in the place where it will end, once again.
Past the end of things is a beginning.
“I have one last favor to ask of you, white man,” Marked Face whispers, with words that lack sound. “You, who the Above Ones have bound to my nephew. There is a thing you will do for me.”
Slithering like Lenaahi, Snake, he comes forward and pours the dream into the white man’s ear.
Listen, Solomon Parker –