Day 163 - Upside Down- Chapter 11 - (2305 words)

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UPSIDE DOWN, BACK TO FRONT

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 11

After

“I don’t fucking care. You will give me the fucking money or I will fucking kill both of you. Don’t you fucking try and steal from me. I have a fucking baby on the way. You have a fucking pregnant sister you bastard and you try and steal from your family? Not on my fucking watch sunshine!”
James tries to placate him, but he can see it’s a losing battle.
Sam is resolute.
“No one is cheating anyone.”
“No one is getting any fucking money is that it?”
“No, we have to wait. You know that.”
“No I fucking don’t. The plan was good, the play perfect. Where’s my fucking money?”
“There’s too much attention now, when the cop goes away, and he will, then we’ll split it as we planned.” Sam stands up, projects his full weight and height. He’s a match for Ivan in size if not temperament and he has James as back up. James is already moving to the side, getting ready to come in from the flank if need be.
Ivan sees this, he knows.
No one wants a fight, but no man backs away from one.
“Don’t fuck with me.” He jabs a finger at his brother in law. Sam catches it in his fist, faster than he or Ivan thought he could.
Neither man shows surprise, and the air winds up around them.
Like a pin in the balloon Ivan’s phone jingles and buzzes. The ringtone is old school, like the bells from a bakelite phone, like the black dead lump in the house he grew up in.
Sam releases his grip and stands back, his palms raised and facing outwards.
James relaxes, not caring too much about the risk so much as wanting to feel relief, even if it’s not real.
Ivan ignores the phone and eyeballs his brother in law. A new threat, Sam is faster than expected and can react. Not the unemotional lump his sister descibed so many times. A man with passion can be admirable and unpredictable.
He drops this staring contest on the third ring and answers the phone with the lightest and happiest of voices, the act so convincing that the two other men in the room question how angry and how upset he ever was. Good actors are convincing right? They never look like they’re acting.
How can you trust your eyes and ears?
“Hi babe, I’m just here with Sam and….”
Ivan’s face has fallen and his frame shrinks slightly, if this is an act it’s taken over his autonomic responses.
It’s not an act, it’s madness not method.
“What? What happened?” He fell to a chair next to the dining table, the resultant thump jolting the floorboards under James’ feet a few metres away.
“Okay. I’ll… I’ll be there soon.”
The hate is gone. The fear, the act, the purpose all disappeared.
Sam has not moved, but he knows this is something new, something different.
Wait it out, see what happens and then act.
James recognises the look in Ivan’s eyes and wonders who it is.
Ivan looks at James and Sam, tears welling but not breaking over his eyelids.
“My dad just got taken to hospital. It's not ... good."
“Jesus.” He had that ready when he read the look.
“Do you need to go?” Sam has not moved from the defensive, but has moved sideways regardless.
“That was your sister, they just called her.”
Ivan stands and steadies himself.
“This isn’t over.” But it is half hearted at best.
“We’ll take you.” They both offer from the heart, it doesn’t matter who speaks first.
“No, I.”
“Oh shut the fuck up.” That’s as tough as James could ever be with Ivan. “Get out and get in the car. You shouldn’t be doing anything except dealing with this.”
No one mentioned the money.

After

The cold calm of the hospital corridor did little to ease his mind. The lack of life and vibrancy combined with the clinically clean efficiency of ward traffic was unsettling.
This is a place near death.
The prevailing opinion had always been about the smell, but it wasn't really.
The light was more of an effect. Reflected soft and cold, fluorescent without flicker.
He was dead, he knew it. He could feel it and was sure of it.
While he argued about money, the man who had brought him into the world had checked out alone. The crashing weight of it all came down on him. How petty had he been? How many people had he hurt? Did it really matter when this looms so large over us all?
In the back of his mind, and at the edge of his hearing he can register the approaching staccato on the clean hardened floor. The steps do not diminish speed as they approach, how many times have they delivered this news that they do not fear it's approach.
How cold is that?
"He's asking for you."
And just like that his world view changed, unable to leap to his feet like he wanted, the blood moving clouding his judgement and ability to react.
"Come with me."
Ivan staggers to his feet and follows dutifully, past Sam and James, unmoved and unseen eyes following his bowed frame.
"You have to be careful, he's very fragile." Now she slows down, slowing to accommodate the reaction and grief at the news.
The sight of him.
Translucent.
"Dad?" A five year old plaintiveness.

After

Light piano music floated up through the atrium to where James was sitting, waiting. The air was broad and vast here, the expansive insides of the hotel lobby strecthing far above to the multi level floors of rooms and suites. He had used his credit card to regsiter the room, but he felt safe enough here, after it all it wasn’t the police he was worried about any more.
Looking out across the lounge space to the glass front of the hotel, he could see in full view the approach to where he was staying. There were people here, and even if he could be found he had safety in numbers.
Safety in plain sight.
How real had the threat been? He didn’t know for sure and this was at least out of the way. He could afford it for a night or two but then he had to find something cheaper and maybe even go out of town.
Which would leave Sam on his own.
Would Ivan kill his own brother in law? He hoped not.
Was that who he was now? The man who hoped that his best friend was not in any danger?
“Sir?” The waiter handed him his glass, a 10 year old Macallan, neat. He wasn’t really a whiskey drinker, but hiding here he felt the urge to be in and stay in character. The silver tray, the white napkin and the lace paper under the stocky glass all fit with him.
The shaking hand though?
James steadies himself sniffs delicately the odour of the whiskey. It’s still cold, nowhere near enough fumes have disappated and they kick at his nostrils at once welcomingly.
Left alone again the music slides from one part of the Schuman Opus to the next. He sees no obvious source of the music, piped in from someone or something elsewhere on a floor or area unseen below him. The notes sprialling up through the atrium like leaves on the wind. None of the chaos of flotsam and jetsam inside of him can be mirrored in the orderly perfection of the music.
Effortless. Whoever was playing, is playing this, is effortless.
The thought is not comforting. The world so full of competent, effective people and in the middle of all this effortlessness is James, at once straining and failing at everything around him. The music only reinforces in it’s control, his lack of it.
How did things get like this? How did things slide so far, so fast?
They killed someone, and someone wants to kill him now too.
The rage in his eyes. The fucking unstoppable rage. If Sam had not been there he’d be dead now. Who’s to say he’d not be dead again at the earliest opportunity. The leaking sentiment of his life drained in him and the despair of not knowing what to do raised the glass in his hand.
The other arm went up as the glass upended and poured the fire into him, blinking back the effect and the warming punch to his chest he eyeballed waiter and without even needing the gesture the waiter nodded and took the glass from him.
Another was already on it’s way before James realised he was alone in the room.
An expensive Auckland hotel on a mid-week night. Business men and affairs, rich tourists with to much time and money. Whatever the clientele might have been there was none of it to be had in the piano bar on a Tuesday night.
Food, get some food into you. Fill yourself, close the gaps in you. Do something to fill in the holes before everything leaks out again, like a glass on it’s side, gravity taking hold and liquid moving in it’s own way.
Put your fingers out and try and cacth it all, it slips through even the ost generous of cupped palms can’t contain it all to overflowing.
His hands massaged his temples and he leaned forward into it, taking the weight on the sides of his head, his knuckles kneading and supporting at once.
A pair of shined, clean and reflective black leather shoes came into view and he held his hand up to have a glass pressed into it.
Sitting back he looked at the waiter, he had brought a menu.
“Would sir care for something to eat?” Solicitous, proud in his ability to read his guests.
“How did you know?”
“It’s my job to know, sir.” The conversation had played as perfectly as the waiter had rehearsed in his own mind, ready to be the best.
“Thank you, yes.” James took the menu, a selection of entrees and appertifs from the room service menu, tarted up with accoutrements for the Piano Bar, probably the best customer they will have all night. 100% of their attention and work that evening would be centred on him.
A condemned mans last meal? Bend over backwards and give a man on his way out a night to remember?
He stared at the food and blindly chose a couple of items.
When the total came to him, he didn’t really look at it. He had given up on trying to be someone else and look impressive. He didn’t check because he didn’t care. He added a fifty dollar note to the total so he would be remembered.
Maybe not forever. For this week at least.
Later
The door clicked behind him with that thud and latching of a heavy smoke proof hotel room door. That thudding latch reminded him of why he was here.
Locked in, locked in and unable to escape.
There was a balcony of course, and it was a long way up. Could he get down there if he needed to? Could he jump? Could he court death, take the risk if it was a choice between the devil and the deeper blue below?
The whiskies had gotten to him. He can’t remember how many he had but that it cost him over a hundred dollars, and he had tipped heavily too. The cash he had taken out of his savings a few weeks ago to cover costs of the robbery would take care of the bill and more. The food, the alcohol and the room would be absorbed easily. His body was already doing a good job with that process.
He couldn’t keep this up though, unless he broke into the cash from the van.
He could party hard on that cash.
Fuck Ivan. Fuck him and his theats. He could drink and fuck all his way through the money and then where would anyone be? He’s going to kill me anyway right? Why not take some collateral reward on the way through?
His blood stirred at the thought of sex and he reached for the phone book, an escort service on his mind.
He opened the book, found the section staring up at him and the starkness of the situation slapped him hard in the face. His stomach turned and roiled against him and he pointed his head towards the bathroom. His body had become a lurching plane falling out of the sky, despearately fighting gravity and trying to keep his nose up and in the wind. Dipping and rising again, getting lift from momentum in bursts as his altitude fails and his body coasts to the tiles of the bathroom floor.
His chin bursts on the ground and blood, small amounts from the broken skin and the bone deep impact drips on the white porcelain edge of the toilet bowl and he, arrived at his destination, vomits and smells nothing but alcohol and aoli in an unholy mix as his fear drives the contents of his guts outwards.
What was he thinking, what is he thinking, what can he think?
The glass on it’s side, his life feels like the dregs of wine, caught in the sideways curve of the glass, not enough to be dead, empty. Enough to cling on, the cold light of tomorrow a distant memory he hopes to forget.
He wakes the next day in bed.
He recalls nothing except the feeling that he wants to die.

Time to go and see to his death then.