My Adventures, Part 4

Casey Wodehouse peered into the chink of light visible through the shutter, then shifted to face the room, keeping her body over the gap.
The squad, what was left of it, turned to her.
“Six soldiers,” she said. “They’re in pairs, and they’re sticking to the perimeter. Not expecting us.”
A rasp came from the far side of the desk. “They’re not, maybe. What about the ones in the middle?”
Nolan. Her best friend, and a man who knew his place on a battlefield better than anyone. Everyone listened to him, and she wasn’t about to pull the wool over his eyes.
“It’s a problem,” she conceded. “I won’t kid you. They’re better fed, better armed, and some of them are mean tacticians too. All we’ve got going for us is our wits.” This was a private joke. Back in the days before they were friends, she and Nolan had shared one small joke that the English thought you could kill with a rapier wit. Quite feeble, but in those days you’d taken what you could get. And in these days, too. She hoped he would pick up the signal. Mentioning something like that was her way of privately appealing to his friendship, of telling him that she needed this.
“And the element of surprise.”
Casey smiled. If Nolan was talking like that, he was on side. Message understood.
“OK,” she said, spreading the papers out quickly to keep up the momentum. “Six of us, six of them, at least for now,” this last was said with a glance at Nolan, “so it’s even stephens.”
“Right.” Nolan spoke, and everyone settled down. Wodehouse had learned not to mind. They’d follow her, and they’d listen, but they trusted Nolan. So did she. “I think we send in Davies and Rees first, they’re nimblest, and then Richards and McMahon the other way. This is a tough order, and we need to play the numbers. We work together, but we let each other fly.
“No.” Wodehouse surprised herself. “This isn’t an escape mission. Not yet. We get Carter.”
“Wodehouse, this is crazy. You won’t get to him, and even if you do he’ll shoot you on sight. Find another place to fight him, not here, not now.”
Wodehouse felt her mouth open. Something like this, from Nolan, felt like betrayal. He understood the stakes. Everyone else thought they were just fighting a war.
“Don’t you see?” she said, quietly, “I can’t stop now. If I decide it’s not the right time, if I waver, then I’m lost. We got to find out who Carter works for.”
“What about us?” This was from O’don, a bullish man with no more co-ordination than courage. “We help you, it’s suicide.”
“You don’t help me, and you’re letting him go. Look, I can’t make you fight, I can’t force you in on this one, but I’m asking you. I’ll go anyway, and if he shoots me that’s how the story goes, but if I win, if I can take him down…I reckon it’s worth it.”
“So what’s your plan, Wodehouse?” Nolan again. The others were used to letting the two of them thrash out the plan between them. “You taking him down, or wheedling out where his pay check’s coming from?”
Wodehouse thought about how to answer him. She needed Nolan, but she couldn’t mislead him. She decided on straight truth.
“Both.”
He paused for a long moment, fingering the place where his hip flask used to be. “Come on,” she thought. “Give me this one and when we get out I’ll buy you the best Bourbon I can find.” She almost smiled at the number of times she’d silently offered him that deal. She owed him a cellar-full by now.
“OK, talk me though it.”
She really did smile then, though she doubted the others would have seen it. He rolled his eyes to the roof, and put his hands flat on the table.
“We need to get him somewhere we can reach him – not at his base, with the traps and whistles, somewhere he never bothered to defend properly.”
“Somewhere like here, you mean?”
“We’d never get him in here, not alone. And not unarmed.”
Just then, McMahon leapt up from his seat by the door, and bundled the papers under the floor. He looked up at us and grinned. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
By the time they could hear their captors’ footsteps, they were back to looking bored and innocent.
Carter chugged into the room, making a barely visible movement sideways to get through the door. He surveyed the room. A bunch of waifs – 3 months’ poverty and work will change any man’s face. Or any woman’s. He shifted his gaze with a grunt to Casey Wodehouse. Head shaved, muscular, but still undeniably feminine. He swaggered further into the room, heading straight for her, and watched her predictable goons close in behind him on the edge of his peripheral vision. It was obvious who the leader was. Nolan. Tall, ginger, would probably be an alcoholic by now if circumstances allowed. Nolan was moving in to lead the assault. 5 of them. Six including Wodehouse, but not much she could do from there. OK. Carter held his left hand flat, letting the steel embedded along the side of his glove control the shape of his hand. With his other hand, he shifted gently into the wrist to clasp a concealed blade. Wait for it.
Nolan moved forwards, softly. He didn’t dare glance at the others, but he knew Rees would be where he needed him, to the fat man’s left. They were as close as they could get now, stealing into position. If they’d any sense, the others would have stuck by the door. Nolan tensed himself, feeling all the muscles he hadn’t had six months ago form their new, perfect shape. He became his body, completely aware of every sinew, all poised and prepared to do what he needed them to.
And then he felt something he had not expected. A pain beyond sharp, beyond deep, a violating force inside him that kept him silent in its grip. He heard Rees cry out, to his left. “Crying on my behalf,” he thought, deliriously, and then he went down.
For a split second, Wodehouse was completely paralysed. Nolan was down. But then she moved. With no fuel in her body she was powered by rage and adrenaline as she leapt across the table, feet first, and kicked Carter hard in the mouth. The other three took up the assault, punching, kicking, tearing, until Wodehouse called them off.
“Keep him down,” she said, and moved to Nolan. She could see he was bleeding badly – the wound was deep. She just looked at him, willing her eye contact to hold him there in the hut with her. He looked back at her, hard, but he was using all his strength in the gaze. She let him go.
“Best friend always dies,” he muttered. “You’ve got five minutes before the guards come. Get your answers.”
He closed his eyes. Wodehouse didn’t know if he was dead, but she knew he wanted her to go, so she gently detached herself and rounded on the prostrate Carter.
“I’ve got one question,” she said. “Who do you work for? That’s it. Just a name, and we won’t kill you.”
Carter managed a smirk. “Ask for the sky next time.” Too late, Wodehouse saw the trinket in his hand. She watched him squeeze it, and then he was gone.
Wodehouse looked at her shocked comrades. She had to follow him, she knew. No time to say goodbye.
“Outside,” she said. “I’ll check.” And she followed him.

My Adventures, Part 3

Her pen, to the table. Fast, sudden, pinching at paper. Her thought, broken, hurled from track by piercing blackbird offensive out window.

Clock now. 2.30pm. But it always says that. An empty discourse in a dead room. Herself, moving around shifting pages, quiet, stifled, headlong into the ream. It’s like wading through treacle. She is hungry. She was promised ice cream. And he has brought her treacle and locked the door. How the pen aches! Herself, the paper. Herself, the nib. And how the pen ashes! Everyone else gets a computer. Not her.

She seeks in a new way. He is not in her books, so she seeks in a new way. She finds a fresh knowledge and she bites it. She writes him. Then goes to the window.

My Adventures, Part 2

I stuck to the shadows. In my line of work you get used to the dark. I guess we’re not much for ice cream parlours and picnics, you know? And I was tailing, which was a little tricky on account of my stiletto heels, but they come with the job. I had my shooter tucked into my garter, but on a night like tonight I was hoping I wouldn’t be using it.

The mark was coasting, so I could tell that I was unobserved. He dropped in through a little door which I happened to know led to the nearest speak easy so I thought ‘what the hell?’ I doubled back to his office and took a look.

It was a traditional kind of a place – nicotine walls, blinds down, and a hat stand that makes you think what a blunt instrument can do. And one fat cigar still smouldering in its tray on the table. I should have sussed then I was in trouble, but I noticed the filing cabinet and headed over. That schmuk had left his files where anyone with a skeleton key could find them. I found the one I wanted – the Portos file. I’d got it out and half way to my handbag when I felt the cold metal on my neck.

“OK, Casey, why don’t you just give that over?”

I hate when he uses my Christian name.

I turned around, real slow, and let him take in the scene. I’d worn the scarlet dress he always liked best as a precaution against this eventuality. I put the paper down on the desk, flat, and reached for my cigarettes.

“Mind if I smoke?”

He was just looking at me, so I took that as a yes and lit up. He picked up his fat cigar – it suited him so well I almost laughed – and went back to staring.

“So Casey”, that guy always talks like his mouth’s full, “how you been?”

“Oh, just fine,” I told him. “You been anywhere nice lately?”

“You should know.”

He kinda had me there, but I guessed he was bluffing. OK, it was midnight and I was in his office in a cocktail dress, but I figured he didn’t know I was onto him. I led him a dance.

“OK, Carter. You got me. I’m your shadow. But I’ll level with you. I got nothing. You think I’d be here alone if I did?”

He was buying it, so I kept up the tale. “All alone like this? You know me, Carter, I don’t go rifling through cabinets. It’s not my style.”

“You’re a classy lady, I’ll give you that. Beats me why you never worked as one of my girls.”

I swallowed my sneer and kept my mouth shut.

“But you don’t think I’m gonna let you walk?”

I knew he wouldn’t. But by now I’d opened the window lock behind my back. Two metres to the fire escape.

“You want a drink?”

“Sure.”

He turned away and bent down, totally eclipsing the filing cabinet with his sizeable derriere.

I picked up the paper, pulled off my shoes and jumped. I was half way down the fire escape before I heard him roaring. I didn’t get the time to feel too smug because I heard a voice I knew.

I walked round a corner to see the guy from yesterday. Now, you gotta understand that there is nothing strange in this. The same faces, the same people, they turn up everywhere, and the circumstances change around them. A bad egg in one place is no better if she’s a cocktail waitress or a chicken farmer. But this guy captured my attention because he knew me. It was just a flicker, and then he got back to what he was doing, which was trying to persuade a gang of heavies that they did not want to rough him up, although it seemed to me self-evident that they wanted to do exactly this.

“Now fellas,” he began. This is not a good way to begin. A bunch of guys armed with what the investigators will call “assorted weapons” do not like to be patronised.

“Now fellas, I am convinced that we can come to some kind of amicable understanding. You are all men of reason…”

At this point I thought it best to intervene because I did not want to see such a handsome face being scraped off the sidewalk.

“Hello, boys”, I said. For some reason when a chic says this, no-one is offended. “Looks like you’re causing some kind of a disturbance.”

“No ma’am”, says the nearest guy.

“Well, that is good.” I shifted a little so the holster of my gun was on show. Henchmen always fear a femme fatale, because they know only an ex-lover can kill her. They backed off.
“I guess you’ll be heading down to Joe’s place, boys.”

They scurried off.

The guy I knew looked at me hard.

“Thanks, doll. I was stumped. Now, I don’t wanna break the walls, but would you let me take you for ice cream?”

My Adventures

In the world of the musical, the morning song was a dirge sung by the commuters as they dragged their feet to work, the slap-slapping providing the drone, and the rhythm. At least, so it seemed from a distance. As I got closer, I came to perceive melodies in the drone. I realised that what I had heard as one long, endless tune was in fact made from each individual person’s separate song. And the songs were fast! That was the amazing thing! It was like one of those pictures made from thousands of tiny little pictures – all the images are busy but as part of the wider picture they mean only one thing. White, for example, or shade. The scale is very important. All these private little songs were so busy, so lively, that it was amazing to step back and hear again how they melded into the soulless commuters’ drone. Only their bodies were truly closed up and sad.

I asked a man for directions, and he left his private melody to join mine for a while. We rose above the drone, always harmonising with it, and provided, briefly, a tune. But I was aware that at the same time I was still part of the drone myself – still backing for other melodies that I was too distant to perceive.

In my line of work, I occasionally run into trouble. But it was incredible here. I had notice, of a sort. I walked around the corner, and just at the moment my body tensed because I sensed that something was wrong, a chord in the background made me sure that I was correct. It articulated my unease. I jumped behind a discarded crate and I found I had more agility than I had before I entered this world. When the threat itself appeared in the form of a drunken reprobate, there was an uncommon co-ordination to his falling about, a muscular power behind his wild lunges. I suppose if it hadn’t been real, his movements might have been beautiful. I dealt with him kindly – I did not want him to remember anything that would cause him to punish himself too heavily in the morning – and moved on.

By now, the endless tide of the commute had ceased, and the 11am crowd had appeared with the falling away of the morning fog. The song had become lively, but not exuberant – the kind of happiness that can be sustained all day because there is nothing wild in it. They sang about the weather, and how much they enjoyed coffee, and how they would deal with a difficult scene – most of the 11am crowd are writers and artists. They sang from the coffee shops and the parks, and they moved with the energy reserved for those who habitually rise at 10am. I knew it was him immediately. His was the only melody I could pick out from the chorus, so that to me they were all his accompaniment, and he darted and leapt between them down the centre of the road towards me, all life and youth. The tune slowed to a refrain when he saw me, and I caught my own monologue joining perfectly with his.

In the land of the musical, first meetings are brief, so I should not have been surprised when, moments later, everyone I had ever met approached and surged around me, carrying me away from him. I was part of a lively number now, mostly concerned with whether we could all skip work that afternoon and go to the open air movies instead, but as I glanced back I caught a snatch of his dumbstruck ballad as he stood motionless in the centre of the street.