12
KAYE
Trees turn to telephone poles and street lights as I speed toward downtown. The purr of the engine tickles my palms where they rest against the steering wheel, all sleek black and red piping. A press of a button unleashes the wind, ruffling the tangled of my hair and carrying on it the scents of my home: food frying in homes and on well-lit corners, spices from beloved mom-and-pop bake shops, the bitter tang of coffee. But underneath it all, there’s unpleasantness too. Sweat on cold, fevered bodies. Garbage overflowing from the can. And the sweetness of rot.
I finally ease my foot off the accelerator as the first tall buildings at the city’s edge come into view.
I pass The Public Library of New Malcolm’s main branch seeking the cool comfort of its marble steps, but its windows are dim, lit only by the security light within. Its tall arches are shadowed and menacing where once they reminded me of fairy tales. The iron gate around the library’s garden is closed and locked with a chain; the only way in is over its imposing black spikes.
The rose and lilac are bare now, but they’ll be flush with life in the full bloom of spring. The stone benches and oak treewith its canopied leaves provide the perfect place to spend the afternoon reading.
I won’t be able to go there again.
I navigate the path I would take home from work.
My pulse stutters in my veins as I spy the familiar brown brick of my building. The car slows to a crawl. Fresh drywall fills the openings made when the heat of the fire shattered the glass in my three small windows. Shadow flames of soot lick at the wall around them, reaching upward toward the apartments above.
I’m brought back to that night. The calm of the moments before. Sulfur burning the hairs in my nasal passages. The howl of fire brilliant with life and hungry to claim it. Its glow burned into my retinas.
And my father.
Then it’s gone, the building swallowed up by asphalt and concrete as I descend into the lower parts of the city, the memories lingering like a taint. I hate that he still has such a hold on me. Even when I was in that stinking cesspool of cells, it lingered. Was he ok? Was he locked up somewhere, or did they leave him in the fire, like so many before him?
Deep in my gut, I know the answer. More like a cockroach than a cat, my father has always claimed more than the normal share of lives. He scuttles. He scrapes.
It’s not long before I pass from the series of apartments and business metroplexes into the outer shell of the city. New Malcolm was once one of the great fabrication hubs of America. Textiles. Automobiles. Steel. Factories encircle the metropolitan area, as numerous and varied as the people who built them. Times changed and the country shifted its materials away from manufacturing.
Strips of neon signs announcing the entrances to interesting clubs filled with generally flavorless people light up my windowand fade just as quickly. Men and women dressed in glittering garments and uncomfortable shoes line filthy sidewalks. Perfumes and clueless heads tossed back, they bay like hyenas, fake and hungry for something they don’t really understand.
Which of their number was present at the CCP’s little gala? Would I recognize their faces? Would they still recognize mine?
A brown blur fills the windshield and I jerk the wheel to the left as hard as I can. My eyes squeeze shut as my head collides with the glass window, the tires bucking. Crest the sidewalk. A smell akin to burning rubber with a sharp metallic undertone permeates the cabin as the car jerks to a halt.
The seat belt is digging into my chest, crushing my ribs, but thank fuck it’s there. My fingers shake as they probe my skull. A lump the size of an egg rises up just above my left ear. I find another across my forehead where it must have hit the top of the steering wheel.
The melodies of the city surround me as I stagger from the car. Horns and sirens, barking in the distance, the rhythmic drumming and crooning of a band at some dive bar not far away.
And laughter.
A streetlight waits about an arm width from the shiny black bumper of Charade’s front fender. The halo it provides is the only light source in a four-building radius. Whatever ran in front of the car is long gone.
“Now, isn’t that a pretty surprise?”
Ice races down my spine and into my gut.
“Not who I was hoping for, but a nice prize all the same.”
A group of five men saunter out of the shadows. Their leader is familiar. Something about him reminds me that sharks can be pack hunters too. Different clothes—cleaner at least than the last I had seen him wear—but I recognize the sharp expression in those dead eyes, lank locks hanging in his face.
Charade’s not around to stop him this time, but there’s nothing stopping me either. Even with his friends, Stanley is no threat. Still, my confidence plummets as they cross into my halo of brightness and I get a good look at the emblems embroidered onto their jackets.
The CCP.
Fuck.
The phone Charade gave me is probably somewhere in the passenger side wheel well, thrown in the chaos of the crash.
“You’ve found some friends who are just as disgusting as you,” I say. “And I thought the CCP couldn’t get any lower.”
