Laird Hunt - Ray of the Star

“Well then, fuck you, friend,” the connoisseur said and lifted out one of the chocolates and handed it to the one of the other connoisseurs who popped it into his mouth and said as he chewed,

“What my colleague means is, welcome Knight of the Woeful Countenance, welcome to our fucking abode,”

“Thank you, I was following Solange and Ireneo,” Harry said,

“Who aren’t here,” said one of the connoisseurs,

“Then perhaps they’re in another apartment,”

“They’re not in another apartment,”

“There are no other apartments, it’s all offices, this isn’t even an apartment,”

“This is our office,”

“Our orifice,”

“Nice, huh?”

“Connoisseur central,”

“Where we do our business, direct traffic, etc.,”

“Sorry about the mess,”

“It is messy,” Harry said,

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long week,”

“A long century,”

“I should go find Solange and Ireneo, I’m sorry to have troubled you,”

“They aren’t here, not in this building, you won’t find them,”

“Believe us,”

“Although if you want to step over to the window here in about five seconds, you’ll see one of them,”

“Yeah?” Harry said,

“Come on over, stand between us,”

Harry went to the window and, with connoisseurs on either side of him, watched a rather red-faced Solange burst through the street door, hurl herself halfway across the courtyard, then vanish,

“What are you thinking she’s good for?”

“Once more, twice?”

“Twice, at least, this guy’s got real charm,”

“And she knows he’s here,”

“She does indeed,”

“You sure you don’t want a chocolate?”

“I should be going,” Harry said,

“What’s the rush?”

“Yeah, what’s the hurry?”

“Alfonso’s here too, in the other room,”

“Care to see him?”

“I bet he’d like to see you, he’s not feeling too well,”

“Got something at the market, didn’t sit right,”

“Alfonso’s here?”

“That traitorous son of a bitch,”

Harry looked first at one connoisseur, then at the others, and then at his pale reflection in the window,

“What’s he doing here?”

“Alfonso? we were talking,”

“Deliberating on the subject of loyalty, or the evils of being a blabbermouth,”

“Now he’s resting,”

“I think I understand,” Harry said,

“Understand what?”

“This, you three, I mean not exactly, but sort of, this is bad, right?”

“What’s exactly? Who cares?”

“Not I, said the fat, fucking fly,”

“He’s getting it,”

“You think so?”

“It’s finally coming back to him,”

Harry looked at their reflections, took a deep breath then another then took a step backwards, and saw that the three of them formed a kind of tripod upon which, Harry thought, a terrible, almost invisible camera could sit and snap photographs of his misery,

“You didn’t change the tires, right, wasn’t that the story?”

“You had to take a little trip and you were a little busy and you didn’t get the tires changed and, well, you know, wintertime, fuck,”

“I think I’d like to sit down, I think that would be very nice,” Harry said,

“Well pull yourself up some fucking floor, make yourself at home, after all it was us you really wanted to see, wasn’t it, and now here you fucking are,”

Here I fucking am, Harry thought then went and leaned against a vaguely slimy wall and crossed his arms over his chest, but instead of sinking he held his position and it was as if he had entered into one of those more or less desirable moments when the powers of hindsight offer themselves in advance and nothing is surprising, nothing is ever surprising again, not at all,

“Drippings,” he said,

“Fuck yes,” one of the connoisseurs said,

“Waiting for you,”

“Say the word and we’ll get their drippings back on them, in fact, bammo, it’s already done,”

“The word?” Harry said,

“The words is what he means, and technically you already said them, back there,”

“At the motel,” Harry said,

“Cold night if I remember it correctly,”

“Which of course he does,”

“I remember everything, so do they,”

“You said ‘Take me instead,’ Do you remember saying that, Woeful Knight?”

“Yes,” Harry said,

“Well, say it again and now we’ll take you instead,”

“I meant to change the tires,” Harry said, and as he said it he thought he heard an invisible shutter click above them,

“Who gives a fuck, that was twenty years ago,”

“I even had an appointment to get it done,” Harry said,

“Of course you did, now say it again, and we’ll get them for you and you can have a nice little visit and then we’ll take you,”

“Why?” Harry said,

“You think walking up and down the boulevard is enough to float our boat, we want you, you’re a classic case, you appeal to us, we said so in that postcard we sent you,”

“That postcard?”

“The one with the picture of the city on it,”

“That came years ago,”

“You took your time getting here,”

“We’d practically forgotten the whole thing, the whole sorry business,”

“I thought you said you remember everything,” said Harry.

“Figure of speech,”

“Whatever,”

“Who cares?”

“The point is we had to walk by you in your Woeful Knight gear two or three times to get it, and then we thought, good, finally, let’s do it now,”

“Why now?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“Is there something pleasant happening in your life that you wouldn’t like to leave? Something agreeable? Something nifty? Something neato?”

Harry didn’t answer and the connoisseurs, all of whom had been looking at Harry with satisfied grins on their faces, suddenly turned and looked back out the window,

“Here she comes again,”

“She’s slowing down,”

“Looks like she’s going to have a fucking heart attack,”

“Too much jam,”

“Not enough candy,”

“She should have accepted that gift,”

“Like the old lady did,”

“That old lady liked her chocolates,”

“Nice old lady,”

“Maybe that young guy of hers would have been spanking enough, for not accepting our largesse,”

“There’s never enough spanking,”

“Amen to that,”

Harry, standing on his tiptoes, could just see the street door opening,

“Well, now that’s interesting,” said one of the connoisseurs,

“Yes, it fucking is,”

Harry took a step forward and saw that both Raimon and Ireneo were now with the indubitably persuasive Solange as she charged across the courtyard, and not for the first time since his interview with Señor Rubinski he remembered the old story of the monkey’s paw and the story of the poor Black Dahlia and the word “DRIPPINGS” appeared in all caps in his mind, then he thought about Raimon and his hands and Doña Eulalia and her lemon crème cookies and the old women in black dresses and the bell that was still in his pocket and something came to him,

“He changed his mind, and now Raimon’s running with them,”

“How the fuck do you like that?”

“I’m not sure I do,”

“Listen,” Harry said, taking the bell out of his pocket, bending over, setting it on the floor beside him and giving it a whack, “I think I would like to see Alfonso, after all,”

The connoisseurs looked back at him,

“In a minute, back to business, say the words first,” one of them said,

“Yeah, excuse us, you have our full attention, especially since you brought that fucking bell, now say the words first, that’s how it works, we have to follow procedure,”