CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - ALEC
The yellow windbreaker she has on feels in contrast to the darkness in her eyes. She and Eliza continue talking and I step closer to hear them. But no matter how close I get, I can discern nothing. Their mouths are moving, but no sound is coming out.
Christine is growing increasingly animated and Eliza, as is her natural state, remains inscrutable and unmoving. Then, finally, Eliza reaches out and places her hands onto Christine’s shoulders. I brace myself, waiting for the punch to the jaw Eliza is surely about to receive. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, Christine’s shoulders drop, and her expression softens. She looks over to me. Then Eliza turns her head toward me as well and they are both staring. I wish I could hear them.
Eliza turns, stands next to Christine, and they look at me for a very long time indeed. The sun goes down, the sun comes up, the sun goes down, the sun comes up. Over and over and over again. It’s like one of those sped-up nature documentaries where they show the deterioration of a rose petal over days or weeks.
But nothing here deteriorates. In fact, everything stays the same. We are captured in amber, it seems. I try not to blink. I have this suspicion that if I do, when I open my eyes, it will all be gone. But eventually, I can no longer keep my lids lifted and I do. I blink. And when I do, and my eyes open again, I find Eliza walking away, holding the hand of a tiny person carrying a battered teddy bear. And where Eliza stood, Danny now waits.
It all happened in the blink of an eye.
And I fall to my knees and cry.
I have never cried in front of anyone other than my father. I cried in front of him once, when I was a boy, and the slap he delivered on that day warned me off crying in front of anyone ever again. But here, in front of these two people, I kneel and weep.
They rush over now, and as they approach, the sound of the world suddenly warps back into my ears. Like a tornado in reverse.
“Hey, hey. Hey, dude, why so sad?” Danny asks.
“What?” I respond, looking up at him through a veil of tears.
“He asked what you’re crying about,” Christine says. “Is it Eliza? Is it Andra? Do you want us to go after them for you?”
There’s no heat in her voice. No anger or jealousy. Nothing but kindness, compassion, and love. Danny’s face is the same. Pure love. Pure care. Unquestioning devotion. I shake my head at them.
“No, no, it’s not that,” I say.
“Then what?” Danny asks. “What’s wrong?”
I pause to consider the answer. I realize I have none. “Nothing, I don’t think. Nothing’s wrong. I… I just… I think I felt like crying.”
And then Danny laughs. And Christine laughs. And I laugh, even though sobs still emanate from within. And Danny smothers me in a hug. And I hug him back. And Christine wraps herself around both of us, opening her windbreaker wide, and enveloping us in the bright warmth of the sun that is she.
And the yellow sun around us grows bigger and bigger, and it glows ever more intensely, filling the room, and then bleeding free from inside the house and covering the walls and the grounds beyond. And rising and rising and rising up to touch the sky itself and compete with the rays coming down to earth from the vastness of space.
And like some type of nuclear reaction that blinds the world, we explode as one into that cloud of love and light, and we shower down on everything we touch.
And as I’m falling through the air, drifting throughout the universe, now transported and turned into pure energy, I see in front of me a face. A face growing larger and larger, careening into view.
It’s Lars.
Lars is there. Waiting. He opens his mouth as if he means to consume me, and I try to stop my trajectory. I try to slow my collision course with him. But I can’t. I can’t slow and I can’t stop. And all the light and beauty that I feel and that I am is in danger of being swallowed up whole.
And, with my heart racing and my breaths ragged and frantic…
I sit up in bed.
It’s just starting to become light outside. The curtains are of the blackout variety, but there is a crack in one of them and I can see sunshine just peeking through. To my left is Christine. Still asleep. The covers of the bed have been all but kicked off and her naked body is visible in the dim light of the room. Her hand is resting on my thigh. She moans slightly as I wake.
Danny is to her left. Also still asleep. His arm is draped across her stomach, the fingers of his hand also just grazing along my thigh. He doesn’t move. He is as still as a mountain. Strong, powerful, eternal.
My breathing slows as I look around and realize that we are alone. I roll my neck back and cast my eyes at the ceiling. I laugh—almost—at my dream. At the completion of a dream I’ve been having for weeks. At least. I laugh because I’m not a terribly deep thinker. I’m truly not. People mistake me for someone who possesses some sort of philosophical acumen simply because I attended some lekker schools in my day and I have a fair facility with language. But I’m not actually all that bright. I just know how to present for the situation in front of me.
When all is said and done though, deductive logic ain’t really my strong suit. I follow my impulses and operate from instinct. However, even I, as shallow and petty as I know myself to be, don’t have to work terribly hard to figure out what the fok the dream is all about.
Lars was working all this time to take from me, and I never even saw it. Never even thought to consider it. Never took steps to mitigate the damage until it was too late.
As I say, deductive logic ain’t really my strong suit.
But fokken taking control back when control needs to be taken is.
I work to extract myself quietly from their shared touch without waking them. My ribs, they argue with me, owing to the workout they got last night. But I ask them, politely, to kindly fokof as I slide free and stand at the edge of the bed.
I look at them. I look at us.
Alec, Christine, and Danny.
This is how you say our names.
It has been ever thus, and if I have anything to say about it, it is how it ever shall be.
This will not be the last time the three of us hold each other throughout the night. And the next time, the dreams I have will not be violated by uninvited guests.
I need answers. I need to know how Lars and I survived. I need to know why he brought me to that place and why he kept me in the dark. I am supposing it was to draw Christine and Danny out. To me. Or perhaps it was to draw Eliza and her brothers out and to me. But that presumes that he somehow knew Christine and Danny would seek them. And, to be quite honest, I don’t even know if Lars ever knew about the Watsons. He wasn’t around during that time. I don’t know if we ever talked about them in front of him. I…
Ach. Again… deductive logic is not where I excel.
All I do know is that he is alive and if he tried to kill me once, he will try again. That requires no deduction on my part. I know it’s what he’ll do, because it is what I would do. I don’t know my baby bru well, but I do know his heart. If there’s any part of it left that isn’t blackened beyond repair, maybe there’s a chance we can work through whatever it is between us that maddens him so and avoid more bloodshed.
And maybe Eliza and Christine will become best friends and we’ll all go on trips to fokken Disneyland together, and perhaps someone will anoint me father of the year.
Onosel fokken etter you are, van den Berg. Face reality.
I make my way quietly to the valet closet and open it. In the night, little elves have procured some new finery for me. The garment bag with my new suit hangs next to a clear plastic drapery, underneath which is a pair of brand-new sweatpants. I cannot help but smile. I take the garment bag out, unzip it, and feel the fabric. While not made explicitly for me, it has come from Savile Row, and there is still magic woven into its form. If one has never had the good fortune to adorn oneself in a handmade, fully canvassed suit jacket, one cannot understand why it matters. But once one has worn such a piece, one will never be content to wear anything less than.
Unless one’s name is Danny Fortnight. In which case one could give a flying fok.
And, as if summoned by the thought… “What’re you doing?” comes from behind.
I turn to find Danny standing there in the semi-illuminated entryway to the suite. Still naked. I’m also still naked, of course, so I don’t feel in any way self-conscious about staring at his cock. Because he’s doing the same thing to me. It’s a lovely way to wake up, frankly.
“Go back to sleep, bru.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m just—”
“Or, actually, where do you think you’re going?”
“Daniel Fortnight, are you getting all alpha on me, man?”
“Dude,” he says, with a hushed intensity, taking a step in, “things are super fucking chill right now. We’re all good. Everybody’s good. So maybe it would be best if you don’t tip the fucking apple cart right the fuck now by doing whatever you think you’re about to do.”
“The apples have already tipped, man. I’m just—”
“I don’t care. It’s fucking selfish. Read me? You’re here. You’re with us. It’s us now. So it’s not just about you anymore. You feel me? This shit is not negotiable.”
He’s so close to me now, our cocks are almost touching. I have to be honest, I find it terribly distracting.
“Listen, man,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder. He looks at it. “There’s an incredibly good chance that he’s gone. I certainly would be. But Lars is still alive, Lars brought me here for a reason, and only Lars can answer what that reason is. I have to go talk with him.”
“No fucking way.”
“It’s not a request, Danny.”
“Good, Alec,” he says my name with a sneer, “because if it was, you still wouldn’t have permission.”
My mind rifles through the various responses I can give. Some of them involve words, some involve striking, and a couple involve me wrestling him to the floor and having someone’s dick wind up in someone’s mouth. But before I can implement any of these responses, a whirring sound and a sudden explosion of light into the room—an all-encompassing light that seems to swallow us whole—breaks my concentration.
I squint in the direction of daybreak streaming through the windows. The rich, tufted burgundy fabric in which much of the furnishings are covered springs into vivid color, also waking from its muted slumber. The light shines off the Thames, bounces across St. James’ Park, and lands right in my pupils. Danny turns to look in the direction of the sudden sunburst as well.
Standing, facing us, is the inconceivably sexy silhouette of a naked Christine Keene. She is backlit and shows herself as a seductive and deadly shadow. She has one knee bent and her hip thrust out, further emphasizing the effect. I must say, if Danny doesn’t want me to leave for whatever reason, he and Christine are offering nakedly seductive reasons to stay. Quite literally.
“What’s up?” she asks, raising her fist to her mouth to stifle a yawn.
“Alec,” Danny replies. “Alec is up. And he’s trying to sneak the fuck out.”
“What? Why?” she asks. “Where?”
I feel I must state the obvious. “Bru. Nunu. I love you both. That has been made abundantly clear, yes?” Neither one responds, so I continue speaking. “And it is precisely because I love you that I feel a responsibility to pay a visit to my little brother, see if he’s still about, and make at least an attempt at containing the situation.”
“What situation?” Christine asks.
“Precisely,” I say. “That is exactly what I aim to find out. Why did he conspire with you to try to kill me only to save me and keep me hostage when it didn’t play through as he expected?” Again, no one responds. Again, I continue. “Nunu. Love,” I say, passing by Danny and taking Christine close to me, my hands on her ass. I can feel blood pumping to my cock, but I want to be close to her, even if it proves a distraction. “What was the plan? Do you remember? Do you have any recollection of what was supposed to happen after you and he did me in?”
She looks down, shame radiating from her.
“Hey,” I say, lifting her chin, “it’s fine. We’re past that. And who amongst us hasn’t tried to murder someone they love and plan to spend their lives growing old with?” I fake a yawn. “I mean, if I had a nickel…”
She laughs. It makes my heart smile and my dick jump. I glance over my shoulder. To my great relief, Danny is smiling too. Good. Normalcy. Or our version of it.
She shakes her head. “It’s still… honestly, I never had a complete picture of what was what. I was kept in the dark about a lot of things. I do know he was working with someone else.”
Well, that certainly gets my attention. “Someone else? What do you mean? Who?”
She shrugs. “I don’t really know. It’s all so…”
I stroke her cheek. Run my hand down her hair. “It’s all right. Just tell me anything you think you can recall.”
She sighs a bit. “The whole thing was supposed to be made to look like you and Brasil Lynch”—she looks at Danny, sheepishly—“were in some kind of war with each other.”
“Why?” Danny asks.
She shakes her head. “Because… I dunno. I think Lars was trying to find a way to take over Alec’s business…” She pauses. Corrects herself. “Our business, and Brasil’s. I guess—and I don’t have the details, but I guess—Brasil has something going on that Lars wants part of? Or something?”
Now Danny says, slightly louder than is required, “Fucker.”
“What?” Christine asks.
Danny shakes his head. Blows out through his lips as he steps to the valet closet, rips the plastic off the sweatpants and puts them on, saying, “Brasil told me that some of our shipments were being stolen and our trucks were being used to smuggle diamonds. I thought it was you,” he says to me. “But it was Lars.”
Christine shrugs. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Are you fokken kidding me, man?”
“Why?” Danny asks. “What?”
“Remember when I told you that I had sent Christine to take care of an oke called Jimmy Sotoro?”
“No.” He shakes his head.
“When we was escaping from your warehouse? I told you that she was on a job to take care of an oke called Jimmy Sotoro. You don’t remember that at all?”
“No,” he says more decisively.
“Eish. Fokken looi n plooi, man. Well, I did. And I truly thought that it was Jimmy what had stolen some diamond shipments from me. I did. That’s why Christine was sent to handle him.”
“Why did you think it was this Jimmy fucker?” Danny asks.
I hang my head. “Lars told me.” Deductive logic. Not at all my forte. Fokken kak, man. Well... Jimmy Sotoro’s the lucky one in all this, I reckon...
“But…” Danny says. “But Christine killed David. Brasil’s guy. And then… fuck. And then your guys… or, I guess, Lars’ guys… came in and took the shipment.” Then a look that I don’t know comes over Danny and he says, “Goddamn it,” slamming his fist into the wall.
“What?” I ask. “Fokken what, man?”
“Brasil told me, just after all this went down, that for the past couple of years he’d been trafficking in people.”
A silence falls on the space that Christine finally breaks with, “Say that again.”
“Yeah. Women. I found out that he’d been trafficking women. Which Lars clearly knew about. So, when Lars was talking about trying to take over Brasil’s business too, that’s the business he was trying to take over.”
I close my eyes. Because what I’m hearing right now is difficult to process. I am a violent, unrepentant, horrible cunt of a human being, as was my father, and probably his father before him. But never, in my most unrepentant cunty-ness, would I ever have imagined doing something as morally bankrupt as trading human life. I know that things I’ve done have cost people their lives. I’m under no illusions about that. But it was always flesh as the cost for something else. Never flesh as the something else itself.
Jesus. Lars.
What the fok happened to you, my bru?
For the first time since I can remember—maybe the first time ever—I don’t have money to tip a delivery boy. The laaitie who brings us our breakfast regards me in my suit, Danny in his sweats, and Christine back in her sneak assassin regalia with a completely understandable amount of curiosity as he wheels the cart into the suite. And as he’s placing the food on the dining room table and taking the cart away, I reach into my pocket only to realize… I have no money. Not a single note. Nothing.
Danny is the one who says, “Hold up,” runs to retrieve his backpack, and pulls out a crumpled wad of twenties. He hands them to the laaitie, who actually says, “Oh! Much obliged, guv’nor.” There’s something about the insulting way that I think the kid must be taking the piss with what he perceives to be stupid Americans that makes me decide I like the lad. Regardless, now that the food is here, perhaps we can get down to discussing what happens next. Danny has refused to talk plans of action until he has his coffee.
I’ve said it before. He is the only one like himself in the world.
“Okay,” he says, pouring a cup of black, steaming brew and biting into a piece of toast. “So here’s what’s going to happen…”
I don’t know how my plan has somehow turned into Danny’s, but I don’t argue. Just pour some juice from a carafe and listen to him talk.
“If we’re actually going to get back to that place to find out if he’s still there, we need a better fucking plan of action than the one we had before.”
Christine butters a scone and says, “Well, I mean, first things first, we should probably just get close enough to see if all those guards are still there.”
“Yep, yep,” Danny says, biting down on a slice of well-cooked bacon.
I find this entire enterprise irrepressibly quaint. Alec, Christine, and Danny waking up and chatting about the day’s affairs over a hearty breakfast. It’s so remarkably conventional as to be almost domestic.
“Maybe we should try to get hands on a sniper rifle and position you at a safe distance, just in case.”
Almost.
“Safe distance?” Christine asks. “Why?”
“Well,” Danny says, downing his coffee and pouring another cup, “you and Lars… you did also try to kill him. I don’t know if he’s going to be happy to see you.”
She shrugs as she bites her scone. “Yeah. I guess.”
“I have a thought,” I volunteer. They both look at me, mouths full. “Why don’t I just walk up to the front gate and ask to speak with him?”
They chew more slowly. Danny says, “Fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m suggesting that for whatever reason I was being held, I was being held. Not tortured or killed. Just not allowed to leave. And when they spotted us—or, I presume, me—they stopped firing. Clearly, whatever the intention is in keeping me alive, it’s to… you know… keep me alive. Perhaps he’s not finished with this Brasil Lynch business yet. Perhaps he still needs me alive to pin it on. I don’t know. I’m not particularly good at knowing why people do things, just that there’s always a reason.”
They both consider this. Then Danny turns to Christine and says, “I hate to say it, but I think we may need the Watsons again.”
Not only was I ignored, but the casual suggestion, by Danny, that we employ the Watson clan again suggests that I have entered some parallel dimension where the laws that govern the known universe no longer exist.
What follows is a spirited debate between the two of them about the merits and demerits of this idea and whether or not we should just try to get out of the country altogether and forget about everything. At some point, Danny emphasizes Andra, my daughter, and wonders if we don’t at least owe it to the child to ensure that she’s safe.
Christine just bites into her scone and stares at me.
I decide to offer my expert assessment. “Forget the Watsons. They’ll be fine. I might think we will never hear from them again.”
And because in parallel universes things like this happen… the room phone suddenly rings.
We all stare at each other before I finally wrench myself from where I stand and answer it, cautiously, as if it was dipped in poison
“Hello?”
“Mr. Night?” comes a cheery voice from the other end.
“Uh, no. No, this is Mr. Berger.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Berger. I have a Ms. Stetson for you, sir.”
And now, as is also the case in parallel universes, time stops. I turn and look to Danny and Christine, who wait, expectantly, for me to speak. Finally, Danny whispers (for some reason), “Who is it?”
“It’s Eliza,” I say.