Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Oh come the fuck on , Albedo says.

You’re gonna have to help me watch to my left, man. I can’t see there at all.

Albedo puts the pail with Argos’s pistol on the Merc’s cluttered floor. Curtis’s revolver is in his right hand. There ain’t nothing to your left, he says. There ain’t nothing nowhere. Now get this bitch in gear and drive.

Curtis puts the car in gear. It rolls gently from the curb. The downgrade carries it past the limestone QUICKSILVER sign to the narrow roadcut of the exit-ramp. Curtis brakes to a stop and sits there for a long time with the Merc’s left-turn indicator clicking and flashing. No traffic comes from either direction. Over the mutter of the big engine, Curtis hears a jet pass overhead.

You’re clear, Curtis, Albedo says. You are completely, totally clear, my man.

Once he’s made the left turn, Curtis eases toward the flashing red light, coasting in neutral as the incline grows steeper, stopping well before the white band painted on the blacktop. It’s easy, driving. He’s not sure why he expected it to be hard.

Okay, Curtis says. You gotta help me out here.

A long line of headlights is coming from the right: cars hung up behind some kind of heavy truck, maybe a dumptruck. Vehicles on the left, too, in the distance: the blurry lump of Curtis’s nose is edged by the glow of approaching halogen. On the other side of the road there’s a wide shoulder and a guardrail, then nothing: the ground plunges away into what must be a deep wash. Traffic on the through-street seems to be doing about fifty as it passes beneath the two flashing yellows. Tilted on the downgrade, the Merc’s weight strains against its brakes.

You can turn now, Albedo says.

This is not gonna work, man.

Quit acting like a little girl, Curtis. You just missed your shot. Ooch up a little so’s I can see, and put your signal on.

Curtis flips on the right-turn signal, eases up very slightly on the brake. The Merc jerks forward a few inches. To the right, the big truck labors on the upgrade; cars cluster impatiently behind it. More vehicles pass from the left, lit by the Merc’s headlamps: an SUV, two sedans. Soft underwater whooshes as they go by. Am I clear? Curtis says.

Not yet, Albedo says, leaning forward in his seat. Almost. Hang on.

The big truck — it’s a cement-mixer — is gathering speed, puffing black smoke from its exhaust. Behind the smoke, the stars and valley lights mute and flicker. Curtis can’t watch it anymore. He looks ahead, measuring his breaths. The rearview is still tilted wrong, angled so that he sees the stubbly dome of his own head whenever the red light flashes. He’s not sure what he should be thinking right now, what he wants to be thinking. About Danielle, probably. He tries to put his mind on her, but he can’t do it. Instead he just keeps staring at the shape of his skull in the tilted rearview mirror. There I am, he thinks. That’s me.

Two more cars speed by from the left, startling him. Okay, Albedo says. You’re good. Let’s go.

That truck’s over the line, Curtis says. It’s too tight to turn. I can’t see distances, man. I got no depth perception.

Albedo looks to the right. It ain’t over the line, he says. You got scads of room.

I’m gonna wait, Curtis says.

He moves his right hand to six o’clock on the steering wheel, closer to his seatbelt buckle. Then he takes a deep breath, relaxes, and pisses himself.

Look, dumbass, Albedo says, turning to face left again. Next time I tell you to go, you fucking go. See, now you got another bunch of cars—

Curtis releases the buckle, lifts his foot from the brakepedal, pulls the handle to open the door. The Merc lurches forward, rolling into the intersection, under the flashing lights; Curtis’s wet warm boxers scrape his thighs. As his left foot swings over the pavement he hears Albedo’s strangled scream, the squeal of brakes, the low blast of the cement-mixer’s airhorn, and then every sound is swallowed by the roar of the gun. Albedo’s first shot tugs Curtis’s jacket-sleeve and smacks into the door — Curtis hears it ping between layers of steel — and then Curtis slips from the seat onto the moving blacktop, showered by glass as Albedo fires again, bluegreen tesserae pricking his face and hands as he falls, mixing with bits of silver from the exploded side mirror, all lit up by oncoming headlamps and hanging in the dusty air. Curtis slams to the ground, rolls away from the Merc’s rear tire, and is scrambling to his feet — has raised himself to a half-crouch — when an oncoming Toyota truck hits him.

He folds over the hood and slides. Everything is silent. His arms and legs are heavy, stretching in opposite directions, wringing him in the middle like a wet towel. Albedo is still shooting; the air contracts as each bullet passes. The pickup’s windshield spiderwebs under Curtis and he’s in the air again, wobbling like a poorly tossed football. Three shots. Four. Curtis’s left hand closes on something hard and smooth. He comes down in the truck’s bed, slamming into the gate. He caught the last bullet. Everything spins, then settles. Curtis sprawls splaylegged on the polyurethane bedliner, looking at the road. Broken again. Still alive. The blob of lead cooling in his palm.

The screech of metal tearing metal wounds Curtis’s ears, and for an instant the cement truck eclipses his sight. Once it’s passed, the Mercury appears before him, spinning like a dreidel on its front bumper, its tail end bent where the mixer hit it: a dancing questionmark. It rotates slowly, drifting toward the edge of the road; then its deformed trunk falls open and Argos emerges, dead, his bloody plastic shroud unfurling like a scroll as he drops to the pavement. The Merc brushes the guardrail, tips, and now here comes Albedo, sliding turdlike through the shattered windshield, a befuddled expression on his pale torn-up face. The Merc is falling, he’s rolling down the hood like a gymnastic toddler, and as the car vanishes into the wash he slides over the silver V of the hood-ornament and plops onto the blacktop, slumped against the damaged barrier, his legs crossed almost casually atop the roadstripe. His right hand still curls around Curtis’s empty revolver; he’s breathing, but a lot of fluid issues from his ears and nose, and Curtis can tell he’s done.

Curtis doesn’t hear the crash when the car hits the ground, but after a minute black smoke rises from the wash, blotting out the valley, and it’s followed by a few tongues of flame. Curtis tries to shift his weight but can’t move; now he knows that he’s hurt badly, which is fine. He’s on home turf now, for the first time in years. Bones broken. Spine probably okay: he can feel pain coming in a hurry, getting decoded by his brain. It’s going to be bad, but he thinks he can pass out soon. Unconsciousness is teasing him; he tries to remember it like an old phone number.

He caught the last bullet: the one that would’ve been Stanley’s. This is what he wanted. It’s big and glassy in his hand, and he uncurls his fingers to look at it. It hurts to move them, but he does it, slowly, and then he smiles. His own unblinking gray eye stares from the bowl of his palm.

By the time the flames find the Merc’s tank and the orange rose blooms over the desert Curtis isn’t seeing anything anymore, but he feels the heat on his closed eyelids, and he imagines the flower rising, going black. The warmth is a comfort to him. He follows it into sleep.

Stanley would like to go back to the boardwalk, to see it one last time before he splits, but he thinks better of it. Cops will still be out in force — hunting for him, cleaning up the mess he made — and he has no special desire to shoot a cop tonight. Besides, in some ways he feels like he’ll know the waterfront better once it’s out of sight for good, once his memory has begun to take it apart.