William Lashner - Past Due

“Colfax,” I said. “You’ve been a bad boy.”

“What did you do, Colfax?” said Tommy.

“The legal term is kidnapping,” I said.

“Colfax, dammit. How could you do that without-”

“Don’t start balking at my tactics now. If I left it to you, we would have been sleeping fast when the coppers stormed the house.

‘Don’t worry, Colfax, ’e doesn’t know for certain.’ ’Ell ’e don’t, and ’e got your fingerprints on that book and next morning they come streaming in. I was promised another payment. Them was the terms. So don’t go all surprised I had to take matters in my own hands. I got your suitcase here, didn’t I? I got them journals. And even the bloke you wanted for that little sword fight of yours, he showed up. Everything you told me you wanted you’ve got. So, don’t ‘Colfax dammit’ me.

“Sword fight?” said Straczynski.

I shook my head and it hurt, but I couldn’t help but shake it, even with the pain in my jaw. “A sword fight,” I said. “Of course there would be a sword fight. Now this is truly pathetic.”

“Poetic, I thought,” said Tommy Greeley as he walked over to the black covering at the end of the bar. He whisked it off, revealing two fencing swords.

“What are you doing?” said Straczynski.

“Take hold,” said Tommy as he tossed a sword into the air toward the justice, who ducked and let it rattle at his feet. “Come come, man, you can do better than that?”

“You’re not serious,” said the justice.

“Of course he is,” I said. “He wants to duel. He wants to stage some magnificent scene of derring-do, gaining his revenge at the end of some thrilling sword fight. He fancies himself another Edmund Dantes.”

“You’re insane,” said the justice.

“Come on, sir.”

“Says Hamlet to Laertes,” I said.

Straczynski looked down at the blade at his feet. It was thin, about three feet long, with a shiny guard at the hilt and, at the point, a small round loop. The sword in Tommy’s hand had the same loop.

“Pick up your saber,” said Tommy. “That’s what you preferred, right, Jackson? Sabers? The cutting blow. Twenty years I’ve been living with this. Twenty years.”

“And what have you learned in twenty years?” I said. “What great new insights in the human condition did you discover? Twenty years and the best you can come up with for transcending your miserable failed past is a stinking sword fight?”

“At least I’m being proactive.”

“I’m not going to fight you, Tommy,” said the justice.

Tommy took up a fencing position as best he could with his stiff left hand at his back hip, his right knee bent, his right foot facing forward, the sword held straight in front of him. He lunged and a loud SWAK rose as he slapped Straczynski on the biceps with the sword.

“They beat my face in with a baseball bat, did you know that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? That makes it all better.”

Another lunge. Another SWAK. This time against the left side of the justice’s face. The justice cringed in pain and when he stood up straight again, a red line had appeared on his cheek. Blood dripped from the edge of the wound.

“They beat me senseless and bloody and when they were done they rolled me off the pier, so my corpse would float out to sea.”

“I didn’t want that to happen,” said Straczynski.

Another lunge. SWAK. This time a backhanded blow against the justice’s right shoulder.

“A barge dragged me out of the water.”

“Stop this.”

“I was unconscious,” said Tommy. “Near death.”

“Get hold of yourself,” said Straczynski.

Another lunge, SWAK, this time a sharp downward flick of the wrist that slapped the sword against the justice’s chest.

“All I had on me was my new ID. My old friend Eddie Dean had died of leukemia while still in his teens. I was planning to use his name, his Social Security number in my new life. I had already obtained a Delaware driver’s license in his name. So it was that when I woke up, Tommy Greeley was dead and Eddie Dean was on life support.”

Tommy lunged again, trying to slap at the justice’s right cheek, but this time the justice ducked low as the blade passed over him. When he stood again, the other sword was in his right hand, held off slightly to the side, the blade pointing up toward Tommy Greeley’s eyes.

“Passata soto,” said Tommy with a nod. “Nice tierce position.”

“It’s coming back to me,” said Straczynski.

“Let’s see.”

Tommy lunged, trying to slap down upon the justice’s chest, but this time the justice, with a flick of his wrist, raised the blade into the air horizontally and parried the blow.

“Quinte,” said Tommy. “Very good.”

“You’re not as fast as you used to be,” said Straczynski.

“I never fully recovered from what you did to me. But I’m still fast enough.”

Tommy Greeley lunged, Jackson Straczynski parried, and they went at it for a moment, two middle-aged men with swords in their hands, the ringing grate of steel on steel, the slap of their feet on the black linoleum, the clash of metal sabers one on the other. It would have been stirring, almost, if after their moment they both hadn’t been leaning forward, hands on their thighs, gasping desperately for air.

“What,” said Tommy Greeley between his fitful breaths, “no riposte?”

“I’m not,” gasped the justice, “going to – fight you – Tommy.”

“Of course – you are. That’s why – you’re here.”

“No, it’s not. I’m here – to take my wife – home.”

“She’s not going home.

“Yes, I am, Tommy,” said Alura Straczynski, holding her notebooks tight to her chest.

“But you said – you loved me. You said you always would.”

“I did, yes. And I suppose I do. But Jackson is a part of me. I can no sooner leave him as leave my heart, my lungs, my journals. I couldn’t leave my life then, I can’t do it now.”

“And you would take her back, Jackson? Again?”

“Again and always,” said the justice. “Without hesitation. Her life is my adventure.”

“What does that mean?” said Tommy.

“She knows.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Let’s go home, Jackson.”

Tommy Greeley stared at her for a long moment, his waxy face betrayed by the emotions flitting through his eyes. He turned his face to his old friend Jackson Straczynski. He raised his sword high, prepared to give a brutal blow, when he stopped at the sound.

We all stopped at the sound. From out in the hallway. From down the stairwell. The sound of metal sheeting clanking loudly, the fishing lines strung across the stairs being tripped, first one, then the other.

Colfax raised his hand to quiet us, pulled back the slide on his Beretta, walked over to the door. With two hands on the gun, he leaned on the door frame and carefully aimed his gun at the edge of the stairway where I was certain, positive, that Phil Skink, who had obviously missed my signals, who had clumsily set off the alarms, where Phil Skink was about to appear. And I feared at that moment that Skink’s life depended on me having to do something courageous, something athletic, which only meant that Phil Skink was in serious trouble because courageous and athletic was not me, really, honestly, not me at all.

“HELLOO?” CAME Afamiliar voice from the hallway and with it I let out a breath of relief. “Helloo? Is, like, anyone home? For some reason I’m tripping all over these wires, like what is that all about? Wires? Helloo?”

“Bloody Kimberly,” said Colfax. “Get in ’ere.”

“ ’Sup with the gun, Colfax? Put that away before you hurt someone. What are you, shooting the rats? This place is a major creepazoid. Why can’t you just stay in a hotel or something? I know, I know, the boss wanted to get the feel of the old ship, but really now. Puhleeze. Just know I’m not staying. Sooner I get off this old bucket the happier I’ll be.”