AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jason opened the door at 4:40 AM, bleary-eyed and bruised. I sat rigid on the couch, awake as a year of coffee, my veins screaming tension, and the second I saw his fingers around the doorjamb, I blurted out:
“Reaganomics saved this country!”
I burst into tears.
Jason knocked over the coffee table trying to get to me faster than a person can actually move. He kissed me, stroked my hair, and peered into my eyes like an ophthalmologist.
“Oh shit, oh shit, Sam, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he even knew about you. When did you see him? How long ago? Did he give you a business card? Where did he find you? What else did he say?”
I explained in sobs and gulps, fishing the card out of my pocket. Jason yanked it out of my hand, threw it in the sink, and lit the corner with a match, watching it stonily until it burned totally to ash.
“What the fuck? Jason, what the shit? I need that! He’s going to give me a grant . . .”
Jason’s jaw clenched. His face went hard and cold. “You know, the weird thing is he probably would. He’s a man of his word.” Jason sat down next to me. He fussed over me, touching my face, frantic, turbo-powered mothering and smothering. “That man you met today . . . he’s like me. He has powers. He’s after the Avant Garde and we’re after him. He’s a dealmaker. He offers you something, and when you shake on it, he tells you what he wants in return, which would be fine except you have to do it within twenty-four hours or the despair will make you pitch yourself out a window. He calls himself Six Figure.”
I couldn’t get my sweating under control. Jason brought me a new shirt. As I pulled it over my head, I whispered, “He looked like a lot more figures than that.”
“I think he was just a middle-class guy when he started out. Now he runs the city, and he wants more. He’s the real deal. Way beyond that freshman ethics essay you keep revising. Evil. Like Satan-in-the-Monsanto-building-in-whaleskin-boots evil. Did you tell him where we live?”
I shook my head. “I’m supposed to meet him, after my birthday. At his office. Jason, what about the card? You didn’t have to burn it.”
Jason grimaced. “Yeah, I did. It gives you cancer. If you hold on to it long enough. He’s been handing them out all over town. I told you. Evil.”
It was a long time till we slept. MacArthur kneaded the bedcovers and snored softly between us. Just as I was finally drifting off, Jason whispered:
“After your birthday, you should go visit my parents. I know they suck, but they live in Kentucky. Six Figure wouldn’t be caught dead.”
“Sure, darling,” I sighed, and then I was eating white cheese and white wine in a gallery full of white hippos in Jacobean collars and I was asleep.
• • •
Hello, maraschino cherries.
Hello, farmer’s-market tomatoes.
Hello, red and lovely things.
This is the last good thing I remember. I’m so cold. I can’t feel my fingers or my toes. I want to remember this and nothing else.
I woke up to an envelope on Jason’s pillow. Inside was a note:
All good Samanthas deserve birthday gifts
To find yours, my love, just get in the lift.
I pulled on pajama pants and a Blowhole T-shirt. I couldn’t wait. I ran out to the elevator. The doors opened—inside was a French impressionist paradise. Jason had painted A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte all around the walls of the elevator car. It was perfect. My favorite since I was a kid. The spray paint re-created the pointillism of the original better than I’d ever have thought.
And it was alive.
I stepped inside, shut the door, pulled the emergency stop. The alarm broke years earlier. Seurat’s picnickers swirled around me, smiling, shaking my hand, bowing. The black dog and the little tan pug jumped up, leaving black and brown acrylic paw prints on my pajamas. The soldiers saluted and kissed both my cheeks. I couldn’t stop crying and smiling and giggling. The sportsman flexed his arm for me and I clapped my hands. The ladies in their beautiful dresses gave curtseys. One held her black umbrella over my head, in case of rain. The monkey hooted noiselessly and ran up my leg onto my shoulder. And the handsome man in the top hat and suit bowed and held out his hand. I hesitated. I saw Six Figure’s face in my mind, holding out his dry, warm hand.
No. It was my birthday. Fuck him.
The nobleman swept me into a waltz around the elevator, very cramped but very elegant. I swore I could hear the Seine lapping at the island shore. The man in the top hat kissed me, a real kiss, full of good wishes. His lips felt as smooth as a canvas.
They faded after an hour. I pulled the emergency stop out and rose back up toward my floor. My heart felt like a hot-air balloon. I couldn’t stop smiling. I stepped out and practically skipped back to the apartment.
Simon stood in my kitchen, sobbing in black and white. He was holding MacArthur the Genius Cat. MacArthur was very dead. Simon had twisted his pretty, silky striped neck horribly until it broke. I screamed. Simon screamed.
