Elise Blackwell - The Lower Quarter

Eli

He opened his room door without asking who it was because he was so sure it would be Johanna, who had not answered the ten times he had called. “Johanna,” he said as he opened the door, and Detective Mouton laughed and pushed by him.

“Don’t worry,” the detective said, sitting on the unmade bed and motioning to the only chair for Eli to sit across from him. “She’s fine. I can’t promise she’ll stay that way, but she’s just fine right now.”

The earnest, slightly beleaguered demeanor the man had displayed over gin fizzes had been taken over by something cockier and more reckless. Eli couldn’t guess which facade, if either, was the real Mouton.

“I take it you were the man for that job,” Eli tested.

“I guess we’re a lot alike, the both of us on the dole as repo men.”

Still in his boxers and a sleeveless undershirt — his prison pajamas — Eli glanced around for his jeans and remembered they were on the side of the bed, out of his current line of sight. “For some it’s a higher calling than for others,” he said.

The detective laughed, still cocky. “Nope, men like us, we just take orders and cash our paychecks. Whatever you once were, that’s not what you are now. I’ve seen your record, anyway, and I guarantee you that you’re out of your league here. You’re a boutique thief, and I’m a hack, but that’s not the distinction at stake here.”

“You win either way,” Eli said, “so why are you here?”

“Because I hear you’re more about stealing back than stealing. Boutique thief, like I said. So this is a courtesy visit to save you time. Time among other things.”

Another prison tactic: Let the other person speak again before you do.

“I think you understand. I’m here to let you know that whatever it is you’re planning to do next is something you should plan not to do after all.”

“I’m guessing you got a big or else for me.”

“I got two of them. One is or else you go back to prison. The other is or else one badly hurt blond lady . Put them together and you get one badly hurt blond lady with no shoulder to cry on.”

The cop stood up, and Eli stood to take the man’s relative measure. His same height, thirty pounds heavier, maybe equal strength, but you never can tell. Nothing on the right hip, but, yes, a southpaw: holster bulge on the left.

“Speaking of women,” Eli said, finding his own version of reckless, “how’s your wife’s vow of chastity going?”

“Vow of silence,” the detective said as his fist found Eli’s nose.

Eli reeled back, regained his balance, sat down in the chair, and watched the spread of blood drops — not many but a few — on the chest of his undershirt. “You held back,” he said in a husky whisper.

“You probably think I hit you because you insulted my manhood, but if you do, you’re wrong. I’m glad my wife is finding herself or whatever the fuck she’s doing. I love my wife, and what she wants, I want. If it’s to not talk, well, between you and me, so much the better. The reason I punched you is just so you’ll remember our conversation next time you look at yourself in the mirror and try to decide what to do next. You look yourself in the nose, and you think of all the hits you’ll take when you’re back in prison, and you think about what Ms. Kosar’s face would look like dripping blood. Then you cash your paycheck and go home, and I’ll be doing the same.”

Marion

When she heard the knock at the door, just after Henry had gone out to apply for jobs, she figured he had forgotten his key and returned for it. It took several seconds to register whose face she saw instead of her brother’s, so out of context it was.

“How do you know where I live?” she asked, though of course Clay could find out whatever he wanted to, and the city was now even smaller than it used to be if you counted by people and not square miles.

He asked if he could come in, and she stepped aside so that he could fit through the door with the large messenger bag he was carrying.

“Every time I see you these days, you’re with a different guy.” He sat down on her sofa, which was still covered in the sheet and blanket that made it Henry’s bed.

“Are you stalking me?” she asked, preferring pugilism to any other strategy at the moment.

He shook his head. “Just coincidence, mostly, though I did want to catch you alone. Today I’m here to ask you a favor.”

Marion sat across from him on the beanbag chair but didn’t say anything.

“I can pay you for your effort, too.”

She waited, deciding to hear what he was asking her before agreeing.

He patted the bag. “I know that you know Johanna, the art restorer on Decatur. Can you hold on to this for two weeks and then give it to her? Bring it to her workshop?”

Clay looked thinner than ever and hospital-pale against the green couch.

Marion shrugged, a noncommittal gesture. “Why don’t you give it to her since you know where to find her?”

“I’ve got to go on a trip, and I don’t want her to have it just yet.”

“If I say okay, is this something that’s going to get me in trouble?” Marion asked.

He rubbed his hands on the knees of his cords. “No, I don’t think so.”

“‘No’ or ‘I don’t think so’? They aren’t the same thing.”

“I’m pretty sure not. For one thing, no one will have any idea that you have it, which is why I chose you in the first place. No one can connect us unless you told someone about us, which would surprise me. Plus, by the time you tell Johanna, it won’t matter. Thus the two-weeks part. Just so you know, it’s something that belongs to her.”

Marion contemplated his request as well as the idea that Clay would not be returning from whatever trip he was going on. She couldn’t have said why she thought this was the case, but there was a sense of finality clinging to him. She also had the distinct, peculiar sense that she was a loose end he was tying up. Two birds with one stone —another of her father’s small stock of unoriginal phrases.

“Please,” he said, and in his voice she heard the desperation that she’d heard in it that day she’d hidden in the closet while he talked to his father, the day he had lost the attraction of power.

Marion squinted at him, as though that would allow her to see something else in him. “You could just mail it or something.”

“But I trust you,” Clay said very quietly. “Which isn’t something I say to very many people.”

“Okay,” she answered.

He moved into her, his mouth close to her ear. “Can I make love to you before I go?”

To her surprise, she wanted to, if only for completion, a way to ravel her own loose end. Also to her surprise, what they did in her bedroom was more like lovemaking than anything they had done before. Clay was gentle, almost in the extreme. His sweat dripped on her face and chest, and his hips trembled when he was close to coming. When he finally did come, it was with a great shudder. After, they lay side by side, close but not touching, for a long time. The deep breath he took before sitting up to dress sounded like a gasp.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’ve got to go to work anyway.”

He shook his head. “No, sorry in a bigger way.”

“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s really okay.”

At the door, he kissed her on the mouth. She pointed to the bag. “I like her, by the way. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“But not for two weeks.”

“But not for two weeks,” she repeated, smiling.

Johanna

For the first time since she had found her vocation, she could not work. Instead she walked, fast and for hours at a time, when it was not raining and when it rained hard. She couldn’t place her problem in a single location: the absence of the painting, the intrusion into her space itself, or the confusion represented by the short word Eli. Perhaps she was just sick from having the possibility of revenge presented and then yanked away after so many years of wanting. If she had the painting and the name — or perhaps even just one or the other — then a plan might still be made. But she had neither, and anyone who might help her would not. Whether their motives were to protect her or thwart her mattered little, if at all; it was what they did that mattered. The person most likely to be able to help her was also the least likely to want to, and if there was any element of protection in the motives of Gerard Fontenot, it was self-protection.