Charlie Huston - My Dead Body

I shrug.

– Beats me.

Chubby is still looking at those photos on the wall, a little girl.

– She’ll come back.

He looks at the floor.

– Of course she will. Once she sees. How hard it is. She’ll come back.

I push myself out of the corner of his couch.

– Don’t count on it.

He scuffs his foot against the lay of his shag carpet.

– No. I won’t. I won’t.

I start to gut myself up for standing.

– Anyway, all I need is for you to tell Evie I did my bit. I got the kids here safe. They didn’t want to stay. Too late for me to do more.

He scuffs again, drawing a cross in the carpet.

– Yes.

I lean and grab the side of his desk and pull and my bowels don’t fall out of my ass so I’m not dead yet.

– And I could use a ride over to Enclave.

He rubs the cross out.

– About that.

I’m lurching to the door.

– Don’t give me grief at this stage, Chubs. You don’t have to linger, just drive me over, push me out, and drive away.

– Joe.

I look at him.

He’s holding one hand to his cheek.

– I’m sorry, Joe.

I put my back against the wall, trying not to slide down it.

– Chubby?

– Very sorry.

– What did you?

He pulls his hand down his face, dragging the cheek, giving himself a cant.

– I never spoke with Evie.

I start to slide.

He pulls his cheek lower.

– She doesn’t know anything about Delilah and the baby. She never.

I’m on the floor.

Chubby looks like the side of his face that he’s touching has melted under his hand.

– She never said you should go looking for them.

He lets go of his face and it pulls itself back up.

– As far as I know, she doesn’t know that you’re alive.

I stay on the floor.

I could pull the piece I took from the Cure house armory and shoot Chubby, but I don’t much see the point of it. Said from the beginning that I owed him one. Just because I thought I had extra reason to go looking for his daughter, that doesn’t mean the debt wasn’t reason enough. Figure I may have thrown in the towel a few times if I hadn’t had that extra motivation, but that just doubles his smart for making the play he made.

I lift a hand.

– Doesn’t matter, Chubby.

I feel for a smoke, can’t find any, remember I never got my tobacco back from Ben.

Oh well.

Chubby comes over, takes my hand, pulls me up.

– If there’s something I can do, Joe. Money. I. Anything is what I mean.

He puts a finger alongside his neck.

– Joe, anything to make it right.

I push him off, stand on my own two.

– Hell, Chubby, when the night started I was living underground. I was feeding on dregs. I was hiding from the world and acting like I had an idea of what to do next. But all I really was was in the dark. Look at me now.

I brush at some filth on my tattered jacket.

– A night on the town. Visits with old pals. Rousing adventure.

I fit the zip and pull it up until it snags and stops at my sternum.

– I’m a changed man.

I drag my fingers through my hair.

– You want to do something for me. You can make a couple phone calls, bring some people up to date on the new state of things. And in the meantime.

I sweep a hand at the door.

– You can take me over to see my girl.

Last hour. Dark before the dawn. Empty city. A quiet waiting for the next big thing in the new day.

We drive through it.

– I didn’t think you would help.

I put my head out the open window to feel the cold air.

– When you’re right, Chubby, you’re right.

He leans from the backseat of the Riviera and taps Dallas’s shoulder.

– Up here.

Dallas changes lanes, takes the car around the corner onto Greenwich.

Chubby settles back into the seat.

– I don’t want to shirk my responsibility for the deception, but it was in fact Percy’s idea.

– Percy.

He takes out his humidor, looks at it, removes the cap and pulls one of the cigars half from the humidor.

– As you must have gathered, I embellished a bit when I told Delilah those stories. From a very early age she’s had such macabre taste. Her mother had read to her the original Grimm’s tales. Heels chopped from feet, eyes pecked out, children sacrificed. I am myself no stranger to lurid material. Some of the most baroque scenarios my films have been based on were those I penned myself.

He pushes the cigar back into place.

– I even wrote one that was Vampyre-themed. But thought it better to leave it unproduced. There was no telling whose ire it might have raised.

He recaps the humidor.

– But I allowed my whimsy full freedom when I had occasion to tuck Delilah into bed. Thanks to the estrangement between her mother and myself, those were rare occurrences, and I hoped to leave an indelible impression. One that would outlast the charm of whichever of my ex’s current infatuations might be lurking about.

He waves the humidor.

– I told stories that were appropriately grotesque, but tended toward full and happy resolutions. Percy was a kind wizard who drifted in and out of my narratives, guiding a pair of star-crossed naifs. One of them Vampyre, one not.

He shoves the humidor into his jacket.

– A common-enough trope. Am I entirely responsible for putting the idea in her head? Please. Popular vampire fiction is rife with such relationships. It is a rampant cliché of the genre. What is Dracula if not the story of an undead’s hopeless love for a mortal?

He cuts the air with the edge of his hand.

– Can I be solely to blame that she took it quite so to heart?

The storefronts along Greenwich flick past the window. I stick a finger under my eyepatch and scratch the scar.

– You’re her dad.

He looks at me.

– What has that to do with it?

I bare my teeth as a cramp ripples through my belly, exhale as it passes.

– I don’t really know, Chub, but it seems daddies have a bit of an impact on their daughters. Or so I’ve heard. Could just be a rumor.

He rubs his forehead.

– Yes, yes, of course, yes. These things start early and run deep. Of course.

He wipes his mouth.

– But the past is prologue. And I was saying?

I cough on something in my throat. Maybe a loose piece of my throat, I can’t say.

– Percy. Why the hell did you get me involved?

He looks at the roof of the car.

– Percy said I should.

I groan.

Chubby shakes his head.

– When I first called, the children were actually with him. I was prepared to go uptown and attempt to speak some form of reason to them. Ferry them to an underground location somewhere away from Manhattan while the troubles here sorted out. I am not without resources. I could have found means to keep Ben supplied. And the baby, whatever its needs may turn out to be. I was to go and fetch them myself.

He lifts his hands from his knees, drops them.

– At the last moment Percy called and told me it had become more complicated. The children had run off. Delilah had been disillusioned by what she found in both Percy and the Hood. She was talking about shelter in the dragon’s very den. Well, that was clear enough. Still, I said I could go myself. But Percy said he’d heard troublesome rumors about the Cure house. Unsafe.

He scrunches the material of his slacks.

– He told me to send you.

He looks over at me.

– Honestly, Joe, I had no idea where to find you. I doubt it would have occurred to me to look for you at all. But Percy said it needed a tough hand. Said you were the fit for the job. And I could hardly argue.

– How’d he know where to find me?