Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

“Nothing. Let’s get moving. I can’t miss this flight, man. You know that.”

The kid didn’t stand. He still had his foot resting on his knee, his posture relaxed, in total contrast to his pale blue eyes. They danced around until they locked on you, and once they did that, you wished they hadn’t. It was an empty stare. Vacant. It reminded Carlos of men he’d fought in dingy gyms in Miami. They were always the guys who didn’t seem to mind being hit.

The kid adjusted the bill of his baseball cap, bending it slightly with both hands. He always had that damn hat, which was jet-black with no logo and a line of metallic thread tracing the front seam. That was no doubt supposed to add flair, but instead it seemed to provide a target for anyone who wanted to stitch a line of bullets through his skull. Carlos would have happily volunteered for that task.

“I hate unfinished sentences,” the kid said. “People do that all the time. Leave a thought floating in the air, and then you’ve got to guess at what it was going to be.” He lowered his hands and his eyes flicked to Carlos and held on him in that creepy way he had, like he was deciphering something written in a foreign language. “That can cause misunderstandings.”

Carlos beckoned to him with his right hand, because his right hand had risen despite himself, and now he needed to do something with it that didn’t involve smacking the shit out of the kid.

“Come on. Get up. This is serious.”

The kid didn’t move. “Finish your thought.”

“Excuse me?”

“Otherwise I’ll keep guessing at what it was going to be. Then I’ll be distracted on the drive. That’s not safe. You, of all people, should be familiar with the risks of distracted drivers.”

“You’re a piece of work, man.”

“Is that what you were going to say? ‘Let’s get moving, you piece of work’?”

“Sure.”

The kid made a show of pondering this with a thoughtful frown, and then he mouthed the sentence without giving voice to the words and shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“How about ‘you little asshole’?” Carlos said, finally losing his temper. “Does that sound better?”

The kid went back to the thoughtful frown, and then he mouthed this one too: Let’s get moving, you little asshole. He snapped his fingers and pointed at Carlos.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “That’s it. I can buy that one.”

Carlos took a breath, ready to tell him to stand up or to make him stand up — this thing was going one way or the other — but the kid finally moved. Still with that practiced laziness, every motion slow, uncrossing his foot from his knee, standing, brushing off his pants, stretching, adjusting the ball cap. But at least he was moving.

“Let’s get you out of here, sir,” he said, formal as any suit-and-cap chauffeur.

“Yeah. Let’s.” Carlos went inside, grabbed the duffel bag that held the only belongings he was leaving the country with, and slammed the door for the last time. He was ready to be out of this shithole. Say what you wanted about Venezuela; he’d take any corner of that country over the Boston winters.

They walked down the porch steps and across the street to the kid’s car. It was a rust-colored Camaro with dark-tinted windows that looked like an unmarked cop car. Or an asshole kid’s car. Carlos opened the back door, threw the duffel bag in, then went around to the passenger side. The kid had the big engine growling by the time Carlos was in the passenger seat. The car was immaculate inside, absolutely devoid of personal effects except for an energy drink sitting in the cup holder, something called Bang, the word written in red on a black can. Music was playing, a high, tinkling keyboard riff over a thumping bass line that rattled the energy drink can against the cup holder. It sounded like the opening of a shitty rap song, dance-floor hip-hop, but nobody ever came on with a verse.

The kid drove them out of the neighborhood while the song played. He sipped the energy drink and set it down and it resumed rattling against the cup holder in tempo with the bass line from the song.

Bang.

When Carlos picked up the can, it was more to stop the rattling than anything else. The metallic jangle was getting in his head, bouncing around like a troublesome pinball determined to jostle every rage nerve it could find. “I bet this tastes like shit.”

The kid didn’t answer. He was smiling and bobbing his head to the music with a little right-to-left shimmy in his shoulders, and Carlos wanted to smash the aluminum can into his teeth. He forced himself to look down at it instead, fighting for calm.

“‘Bang,’” he read from the label. “‘Potent brain and body fuel.’ What did you pay for this, six bucks? Potent brain and body fuel, my ass.”

“Try it.”

“I’d rather drink my own piss.”

“Not in my car, please.”

Carlos set the can down and watched it vibrate with each thumping shake of the speakers, the same riff still playing on loop.

“What is this bullshit music? Anybody ever gonna throw a verse?”

“You can if you want. I won’t laugh.”

“Oh, it’s just the beat, eh? So you’re a rapper? Cool, little man! Let me hear something. I bet you’re good. Like Eminem... nah, more like Macklemore, right?”

Carlos was obviously screwing with him, but the kid didn’t react, didn’t lose his smile. There was a strange quality to him that didn’t just unsettle Carlos; it reminded him of someone. He couldn’t place it.

“What’s your name, anyhow?” he said. It had honestly never occurred to him to ask. Their transactions hadn’t been of the let’s-get-to-know-each-other type.

“Dax.”

“Dax. The hell kind of name is that?”

“Serbian. It means ‘little asshole.’” He said it calmly and quietly and never looked at Carlos.

“Hilarious,” Carlos said, worrying that he’d pissed the kid off and hating himself for worrying. The kid couldn’t be more than nineteen, and Carlos had been in the game for twenty years and had killed fourteen men and two women and he was not about to be intimidated by some child with a weird smile.

But you are. He bothers you. He scares you.

“I don’t like saying Dax, ” Carlos said, because talking made him feel better than just riding. “ Dax. Makes me feel like I’m gagging.”

“I’m sorry it doesn’t roll off your tongue like Carlos .”

“Sure doesn’t. What’s your last name? I’ll call you that.”

For the first time in their limited relationship, the kid seemed to hesitate. It was quick, just a little hitch, but it was there. It was exactly what you looked for in the ring, and when you saw it, you threw the knockout punch.

“Blackwell,” the kid said then, and Carlos’s knockout punch was forgotten, all his confidence sapped by this unanticipated jab.

That’s it. Holy shit, that is it, he’s just like them.

“Which one?” Carlos asked. He felt a cold tension along his spine.

“Pardon?”

“Which one of them are you related to?”

“Which one of who?”

“Don’t be a dick. Which one of those brothers that got killed in Montana are you related to, Jack or Patrick?”

The kid glanced at him, amused. “That’s a strange question.”

“Why?”

“If they were brothers, and I was related to one, I’d have to be related to both. Do you follow that, Carlos? We’d all be part of the same family then. That’s the way it works.”

Again the urge to smack him rose, but this time it was easier to grip the armrest. The body count that Carlos had amassed would not have meant anything to Jack and Patrick Blackwell.