He sat and listened intently to the slightly tipsy man talk about moving boxes in a warehouse. Curtis said that he was old school - a label sticker and a box kicker. A burp of Jack Daniels and he explained that his current team was almost all millennials, Even so, they had still set records. He went on to explain that it had always been about giving away credit. But with millennials? You had to give each one of them a bit of the credit. And specific credit. Something peculiar to them. If you could do that, if you were willing to do that, then a generation vilified for participation trophies would actually do great things.
He listened. He took it in. But his situation never left his thoughts. They still didn't know what he looked like - exactly. But they knew enough. A particularly dark skinned Latino just over six feet. Slim, athletic, and carrying at least one bullet. But alone. He was supposed to be alone.
Curtis was explaining how structure, accountability was almost always welcomed by those who could excel. "If you don't define bad, you can never have good. And if you don't know what good is, how the hell will you ever be able to recognize greatness? You just gotta have a plan. What IS success? What does winning look like? How do you know when you've won?"
He paid for the man's bill and then for dessert and then for a cup of coffee and then another. Curtis even thought it had been his idea when he asked his new best friend and patron if he wanted to head over to Bierhaus to continue their conversation over German hops and barley. Curtis was a good man. A good talker without running out of words or eager listeners at the popular bar.
They had left the bar and moved on to a strip club. They eventually sat with Edgar. Edgar explained that he had his disability check sent straight to the club. The club cashed it for him and sat up a tab. They gave him the little bit of money he gave his mother for rent and he sat in his regular booth every day and every night until they closed the place down. He was like a mascot for the club.
Curtis greeted Edgar with a joke about the blond that was on Edgar's lap. The three of them laughed almost loud enough to be heard above the music. Curtis called him over and introduced him to Cindy - Sindy he found out when he went to the pisser and saw her little poster above the urinal. Back to Edgar. Edgar offered him his right hand. Even as he saw it, he was careful to not hesitate to shake it. And he smiled and over the music loudly said, "Nice to meetcha. Can I buy you a beer?"
Edgar had smiled back and said, "Naw. I get beers at cost. How about I buy you a beer and you by me a dance?"
And so they sat in the booth and Sindy and her friends Asshley with two s's of course (yet another poster) and Honey came over after their sets to snuggle comfortably between the three men. Edgar finally noticed him staring at his hands. He held them both up. On his right hand he waggled the only two fingers there. There were only two and they were exceptionally long. It almost looked like they were extensions of two bones in the forearm. And the thumb far down below from the two fingers. An afterthought. The left had three fingers plus another useless thumb. "It wouldn't be so bad if my name wasn't Edgar frigging Thomas. And no, I don't love Reese's Pieces either."
Curtis burst out laughing and despite himself and the stitches and the staples, he laughed too. He called for another round even though his wasn't missing an ounce. He looked over at Honey and couldn't tell if it had been a tough life or if she was just older than most strippers in the club. "Honey?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"I need you for a little something."
"Bet its not too little," she smiled back at him.
He saw them come through the door. The bouncers at the door had tried to frisk them and now one of the bouncers had a nose shattered and the other found a boot in his groin and his lunch moving up past his throat.
Before Honey saw, he whispered,"Take me for a private dance."
The noise was obvious after that but Honey couldn't care less. She had a fish on the hook. All that mattered was getting him in the boat. That changed when he had her by the throat. "How do I get out of here?" She looked back to the way they came. "NO! When the cops come. When vice decides they need a headline! Where do you go! Now!"
She never shouted out or shed tear but he did have to grab her hand when it came up with a razor. He had a full 3 seconds to realize where the folded blade must have been. It took him another 2 to appreciate the... control that had kept it there for the night. And yet another second to rule out bringing her with him.
As soon as the razor was on the floor she turned to look at the wall to the far left. He threw her towards it. She rolled with the momentum and had popped the hidden door open and was through it and just about to close it on him when he leaped through it. That was when the first shots fire-crackered back down the hall. He saw the next door vaguely in the darkness and dove for her ankles. She spilled in front of him and he drug her back to him.
"Don't move. I can get us out of this alive but you have to do exactly what I say." She stopped struggling and sat still. Her eyes were wide. But she didn't make a sound. Light flooded down the narrow hall way. Voices were in the hallway. Her breathing got quicker and louder.
Two shots. Two dead. And he looked back at her and smiled. "Get us out of here."
The days ran past them. It took him 9 days to get back to Wetta. It had turned out that his caution was well founded. The two men had had colleagues who had proven too smart to be led down a dark and cramped hallway like their fellows. He had kept the girl with him the whole time and used her again as a decoy when he had found a way to gain the upper hand. Two days later he felt confident to make his way back to Wetta.
He still had the girl with him in the elevator leading up to the penthouse. She had been quiet since they walked into the building. The elevator opened and they turned left and walked down the hall to the wide open living space with the floor to ceiling windows looking out upon Manhattan. And there sat Wetta. And she smiled with Curtis standing behind her. "How did he do?"
"He's almost as calculating as you said. Used me to ferret them out. Killed them without hesitation. But he did sleep with me on day four. Until the door to that elevator opened, I was beginning to think he might not bring me to you. And by the way, it is such a relief to be out of that strip club. But it was nice to be ogled again at my age." Honey - not her real name.
Wetta smiled at her. And reached to the glass coffee table and held up a small card - a post card. The picture on the front showed blue bonnets with a caption she could not read but apparently about Texas. "He mailed this to me. By the postmark it looks like he mailed it on day three of your little journey."
Honey - not her real name - no longer smiled but looked at him with a little bit of bewilderment and a little bit of respect. Wetta continued, "Only one line, 'Honey is sweet.'"
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