David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Wallis nodded at Mickey. “You think I’m jealous?”

Neri laughed and took the point. “Over this piece of shit? Nah. Who would be? But I know Mickey. He’s just a weak, stupid kid, same as he was then. And all this crap got me wondering. Got me trying to remember, which is hard after all this time. And you know one thing I remember?”

Wallis peered at his nails.

“Vergil, Vergil. This is important. This is the fate of your stepdaughter I’m talking about.”

“What do you remember, Emilio?” Wallis snapped.

“Two things now I come to think about it. Once Mickey started blubbing on about how he’d got the stupid kid pregnant I didn’t even ask why he’d cut her throat. And one other. She just didn’t get the game we were supposed to be playing. You said she’d get turned on by that jerk from the university. That we’d all be having fun. And we did, all except her. She didn’t want to fuck with anyone but Mickey. I asked, all nice and polite. Toni Martelli did too. And it was all just those flashing eyelashes, and lemme get you another drink, and then what do you know, she’s off with Mickey again. Maybe it wasn’t her kind of party. Maybe she was like that because—I got to be blunt here—it wasn’t the first time for her, like it was for the rest. And that, if you recall, was one of the rules that university guy you found for us laid down. He said bad things would happen otherwise. Maybe he was right. Where did you find him by the way? The cops seem to think he was something to do with me. As if—”

Wallis turned his head, listening, trying to work out if there was anyone else present in the pitch-black corridors. “I move in wider circles, Emilio.”

“Oh yeah. You’re educated . I forgot. Anyway, what does it matter? I promised you could have Mickey. I don’t break promises. You can do what you like. But the knife only.”

He slid the blade across the table. Wallis’s hand closed on it in an expert, practised grip. Mickey Neri, blind to the game, hung his head and sobbed behind the gag. “You can do him like he did the girl, Vergil, only—”

Neri hesitated. “Let’s give the kid a chance to talk first. Only fair—”

Watching the seated man opposite very carefully, he got up and tore the tape from Mickey Neri’s eyes in one rough sweep then did the same for his mouth. Mickey screamed from the pain, looked across the table at Vergil Wallis holding the knife and the noise died in his mouth.

“Jesus—” he whispered. “Dad, don’t do this to me.”

“Man’s got a right to know what happened to his girl,” Neri said severely. “Best get it off your chest, son. Best do that now before it’s too late.”

SHE’S YOU , he says in a still, dead voice.

Who?

You.

Miranda takes his pained head, stares at him with two eyes from the present, kisses him, crying, shaking from the release.

He looks at the young Miranda Julius cowering in his imagination. Time has worked such changes on her face, removed so much. No lines. No cares. No jaded acceptance of an imperfect world.

You’re beautiful , he says.

A thin, unconvincing laugh now, local, in his own piece of staggering space. Hers.

Only on the outside, Nic. The outside tells you nothing. The outside lies. The only truth lies in your imagination. Forgo that and there’s nothing but the dark .

Shouts echo through the caverns. Ripples of fear and anxiety—real, not imagined—disturb the wakeful dream inside his head.

He tries to walk and stumbles. The chemical fire is raging unchecked through his head. She holds him. He trembles. He sweats.

There’s more , she says.

“I JUST SCREWED HER,” Mickey bleated. “That’s all. She begged for it. All the time. I got bored, if you want to know. I wanted to mess around with the others like we were supposed to. She wouldn’t let me. It was just ”Mickey, Mickey, Mickey.“ I said that wasn’t the point. She was supposed to mix it. She didn’t want to know. She—”

His nervous eyes flickered between the two men.

“She said you was just a bunch of dirty old bastards. She wasn’t putting it out for any of you. She just went on about love and stuff. Like the whole world was something special. Even her being knocked up was special, but I just wanted her down the clinic, get the thing out. Love? All I did was bang her.”

Wallis watched him, toying with the knife, saying nothing.

“See,” Neri suggested. “Like I said. The girl just didn’t want to play the game. Her choice, I guess. But why come along in the first place?”

Mickey nodded at Wallis. “ ”Cos he made her. It wasn’t some birthday present. He thought it’d be good for business. That’s what she said.“

Neri cocked his head to one side, thinking about this. “I find that hard to believe, Mickey. Vergil here is an educated man. He came up with the idea for that party after all. He fixed all that stuff with the robes and the flowers. I just brung the dope and some guys who might be grateful for a chance at some young ass. The girl must have guessed what was coming.”

“ None of them guessed ,” Mickey yelled. “You were so far out of it you didn’t even get that, did you? Him and that professor guy of his just filled them up with so much stuff then put them in a room full of old guys with hard-ons and bolted the doors. They didn’t get any choices. They did what you wanted. Then when it turned bad you thought you could shut them all up with a few promises and that was it.”

Neri stared at Wallis. “Is that right, Vergil? My memory’s not so great after all these years.”

The American shot Mickey a hateful glance. “That fool was shot full of so much dope—”

Neri nodded. “I agree there, Mickey. You’re just trying to avoid the truth. You knocked up this poor girl when you first met her in Sicily. You fucked her rigid that night we came here. Then what? She told you she was coming to me and Vergil to announce a little shotgun wedding? Or did the dope and the festivities just go a little too far and you woke up one moment with a knife in your hand, and her stone dead?”

“No!”

Neri grimaced. “This is going nowhere. We don’t have time to piss around forever. Maybe I should just let Vergil do his thing now.”

Mickey Neri turned on his father, pleading. “Will you listen, for chrissake? I went outside for a smoke. It was driving me crazy in here. All these old guys screwing everywhere, taking junk like they were twenty years younger. And this place. It’s like being dead. In the grave. I was out there maybe an hour. I thought I’d go home but I knew you’d be mad with me. Then I came back, into that room you gave us, and she was there . Like you saw. It wasn’t me .”

Neri’s mouth hardened into a tight bloodless line. He looked at his watch and said nothing.

“But it’s always the same,” Mickey snapped. “There’s shit around and who do you turn to? Me. You never once asked what happened. You just looked at her, looked at me, then shook your head like you always do. You know how many times I’ve seen that over the years?”

“The girl was dead, Mickey,” Neri said quietly. “You were the only one who was with her. I was supposed to be doing business with her stepfather who was just a couple of rooms away, out of his head, playing god or something, fucking everything that moved. If I’d hesitated then, if I’d let him know what had really been going on—you screwing the girl, getting her in the family way like that—you’d have been dead anyway. Did you ever stop to think of that?”

Mickey was quiet for a moment, a tiny light of clarity sparking in his head.

“No,” he mumbled.