FSF Magazine, June 2007 Read online

  But she says, “No—Naples, Florida. There's a scene there—it's too many drugs for me, all supposedly painkillers ‘for the surgery.'” She makes the little quote-marks gesture with her fingers, and I wait for a jab of her nail to signal the period but it's not coming.

  "Help me out a little more, paint a picture for me,” I say, licking my lips, and leaning forward on my elbows just as the waitthing arrives with our plates. There's a bit of a delay while the three of us talk about the food and the waitperson grates a dusting of parmesan over Patrina's dry greens.

  "Cas liked to have an extra"—she lifts her eyebrows, glances around, and mimes a penis with her hands: modesty incarnate, that's this girl—"attached to his chin."

  I try not to spit out my mouthful of tofu. I suddenly have a whole different memory of that patchy spot on his chin and him rubbing it. And I'm automatically thinking about the little bump on her upper lip too.

  "It was kind of fun,” she says. “You can imagine what he did with it. You know, not all the stuff the mod addicts do is wrong. It can be okay if you're not obsessed with it. So, yeah, I wanted to experiment with that kind of thing, but then I got sucked into the scene for a while. Cas is a total addict though! He blew through his whole fortune for weekend after weekend of it. I saw pictures,” she says, and then she describes graphically some of the modifications he had and I lose most of my appetite. Meanwhile I'm wondering what kinds of oddmod she had done at the spas. I must be staring at her too intently because she stops talking suddenly and starts rubbing that little bump above her lip until she relaxes again.

  "We all make mistakes,” I say, trying not to make one here myself. “So let's assume Beckett has your eggs now. Why not go after them with cops and lawyers?"

  "It'll take too long,” she says. “He was totally in love with me, obsessed. He always said one of me would never be enough. I think he has a plan to clone a whole bunch of me to be like his sex slaves. He kept talking about having a harem of love, a harem of Solove, crap like that.” She shudders, her wide mouth pressed into a tight green line. “He wanted to have, like, massive oddbod done and then have a harem of me please all of him at once. It creeps me out just thinking about it."

  I mumble something sympathetic. I think about telling her that she can't be cloned with just her eggs, but if she doesn't know that, why should I correct her?

  She's still talking. “Plus the whole thing's too embarrassing. You can imagine the effect on my grandmother if this got out in public. She'd have another heart attack. Diane told me you'd solved a problem for her once, not the same, but close enough. She said you'd take care of it quietly."

  That's my cue to give her the sales pitch, with the price list, which I do. To her credit, she doesn't flinch at all, and she opens her wallet right there at the table and does a transfer to my account for the deposit. Normally, I prefer cash because it can't be traced to clients, but after my recent experience, I'm happy to take the transfer and let's face it, I need any cash I can get. And, money aside, the best part of this job will be getting back at Beckett for ripping me off.

  "I'll need some help,” I say, and I describe what I need—addresses, keycards, passcodes—the sort of work that makes my job easy. She says no problem and then gets distracted and sends off a text message on her phone, and we talk to the waitthing about the dessert menu and she can't possibly have a dessert but do I get to Eleni's often, and I don't, so she insists I try the raspberry custard, which is not really my thing at all, but I let her talk me into it.

  Eventually she gets back on topic. “Cas called me to gloat, so I know he has the eggs, and I know where he has them. But we need to act fast before he flies out of town to one of the spas. There's dozens of them, and since I dropped out of the scene, I don't know them all anymore and I have no idea which one he's going to now.” While I'm trying to find out more details about the spas, she stands and, smoothing her dress over her impossibly tight tummy, says, “Can you excuse me for a moment?"

  Before I can give her an answer, she walks off toward the restrooms in back, pausing a moment to chat with one of the head servers, and I'm watching her, daydreaming about my good luck, about all the stuff I'm going to take from his apartment besides the eggs, when I feel a hand on my shoulder.

  I look up and it's JoJo the dogfaced houseboy. He's a bit flushed, has got a faint smell of fight-sweat on him, like he's just been in one, or more like he's ready to start one.

  "Hey, I recognize you,” he says.

  I admit my heart stops for a moment. The last guy I wanted to run into here is JoJo.

  But then JoJo says, “So you're not doing the meter thing anymore? Good. That seems like a hell of a job."

  I'm thinking can he be that stupid? But then I look at his face, and with the evidence of how stupid he really is staring back at me, I decide to play it straight. “Yeah, I do this other stuff on the side, for an old friend, happens to be a friend of Patrina too. Weird how that works out, huh?"

  He says, “No kidding."

  I notice his sweat again, and figure maybe it's heavy exercise for him to put two thoughts together, and he must be just about worn out by now. “So is there something—?"

  "Patrina asked me to bring you these,” he says, and he starts shoving things into my jacket pocket. “Here's the address for her ex-fiancé's place, a keycard to his building that she didn't give back when they broke up, and here's the passcode to his place."

  I'm jumpy because I didn't expect to see JoJo here and also because I don't like doing certain kinds of business in public. But JoJo knows his stuff, because he's using his body to block the view from nearby tables, and I tell myself the rules are different when you move up to the big leagues. When I don't get this kind of stuff from my clients, the jobs are so much harder. This one is going to be easy and I can concentrate on ripping off Beckett for everything he's worth.

  I make some small talk with JoJo, but it ends with me telling him thanks, and he says no problem. While I'm looking around, wondering where Patrina's gone, he excuses himself and leaves. About that same moment, our androgynous waitperson brings the bill and asks how I'd like to pay it.

  Pisses me off. Typical Have attitude, probably how they get to be Haves. But since I've got Patrina's money in my account and I've got Beckett's counterfeit cash at home and I've got Diane waiting to see me when all this is done, I'm in a good mood overall, so I pay it. Although I leave a shitty tip.

  * * * *

  Beckett lives in an older apartment complex downtown, with minimal security. I've got nowhere else to go after lunch, so I sit outside for a while watching people come and go from the building until I decide to do a quick reconnoiter. His cardkey gets me in, and I go up to his landing and knock on his door, saying “Pizza! Hey, your pizza's here!” I stand away from the peephole and figure I can duck down the stairwell before he gets out the door if I hear it open.

  When there's no answer, I try his passcode, just to see if it works. I slip on some latex gloves first, because I'm working, and it's just in case.

  The door swings open and I see his dead body face down on the floor. He's naked like he just got out of the shower, and there's blood all around his head, and the back of his skull is smashed in like JoJo was hiding there waiting for him. The main thing I notice, and it freezes me in fascination for a moment, are all the faint scars on his body, odd shapes in odd places, for who knows what.

  There's more to it though. I'm looking at the abuse his body has taken, self-inflicted and otherwise, and I realize that the rich aren't like the rest of us at all. They do whatever they want and get away with it.

  The chime of the elevator out in the hallway scares me and I shut the door. While I hear the voices out in the hall, I do a quick look-around for the eggs, just out of habit. They're not here. Neither is anything else of value. He's got a third-rate home theater and fourth-rate furniture. It looks like anything he could pawn has already been pawned. Stepping over to his desk, I don't even see a laptop, ju
st a stack of unopened bills, none more than a couple months old.

  I know Patrina's played me too, but most lies contain a peppering of truth. I find myself standing next to Beckett's dead body, thinking that since there were two eggs, maybe the one with the dancing boys was his testicles and the one with the nymphs was her ovaries. Like it matters.

  I'm shaking like I've had nothing but coffee for three days. Then a door shuts somewhere out in the hall, and the voices are gone, and I'm in a hurry to leave. Might be the first job I don't take anything with me on the way out. I'd wanted to get even with Beckett, but that seems kind of pointless now.

  * * * *

  I should be getting rid of his counterfeit money first thing when I get home, but I find the funds that Patrina transferred to my account have been frozen. I haven't made any real cash in over a month and I've got bills of my own to pay so I hold onto the bad cash because I'm going to need to pass it.

  Then I take a drink to calm my shakes, and a second drink when that doesn't work, and pretty soon I'm getting blind drunk so I can forget the sight of Beckett's body. I try to pack, because I know I need to go away for a while. There comes a point where I can barely stand up and I go hunting for the globe, the one that looks like Beckett's eggs. There's a thought in my head, that maybe it's the same kind of thing after all. I can't find it, but then I'm so gone I can't find my ass with both hands either and I pass out drunk soon after.

  The cops come to pick me up around ten the next day.

  I'm still sleeping when they start banging on the door and knock it open ‘cause I'm too slow to answer. One of them has a nose like a Collie, makes me think of JoJo, and he starts sniffing around while I try to shake off the hangover fog and get them the hell out of my place.

  They're polite about everything, but it's clear they've got warrants and probable cause and somebody who paid them enough money to make searching my place a priority. I'm hoping it's about some simple burglary, but when they start asking questions about Beckett and how long I've known him and what my business with him was, I know I'm screwed.

  They turn up the counterfeit money. And blood on my shoe.

  About that time they put the handcuffs on me and read me my rights. We all know it's a joke. The truth is we only have a right to the justice we can afford. And I'm bust.

  * * * *

  I call Diane from jail, ask her for her help, and, thinking it will give her a reason to get involved, blurt out that I still have the world pendant she gave Joe.

  She says, “It's too late for that."

  That's when I realize, for the first time, what she kept in that necklace. I mean, no wonder she was angry, right. But I didn't know, and before I can say anything to her, tell her I'm sorry, I didn't know what it was, she hangs up.

  Like I said, cold-hearted.

  * * * *

  That's how I ended up here in this cell on death row. You know the story the prosecutor told in court. They said I'm a petty thief who went into partnership with Casto Beckett, who got himself in financial trouble and wanted to move some counterfeit money to get out. I killed him and took the money. Then I used his stolen credit card to make a huge transfer to my own account from the restaurant, where I was trying to blackmail Patrina Solove before her bodyguard rescued her.

  I'm telling you the real story, the whole thing, even the stuff I did wrong, because you're here to help me. Right? They talk about taking an eye for an eye, that's justice. Well, I know I did some wrong things, and I'm sorry for them. But I didn't do the murder they're going to kill me for.

  Listen, talk to Diane for me—she's got to be behind all this. There was just no way to know her ovaries were in that globe. Tell her how sorry I am, tell her I didn't mean to ruin them. She can't blame me for that, you have to tell her.

  Dude! Don't laugh—I could end up dying!

  Yeah, what do you mean I didn't need an eyeball in my ass to see that coming?

  Elegy by Mélanie Fazi

  Mélanie Fazi is a French writer and translator who lives in Paris, near the Bastille. Her books include Serpentine and Trois pépins du fruit des morts. We published her story of Venice, “The Masked City,” in our May 2004 issue and we're pleased to bring you another translated story now.

  Translated by Christopher Priest

  I plead with you, return them to me—please return them. Or let me in, let me join them. I will not resist. I will come to you in silence to recover them. It will be my own decision, even if it is the only one you leave me.

  They would have been seven years old now. They were only five at the time. Have you allowed them to grow? Would I recognize them if they were returned to me this evening? Of course! Even changed, even spoiled by the passage of time, I would recognize them. Only Benjamin would hide his face, deny the loss—he thinks they are gone for good. Two years in which he gave up hope of ever seeing them again. Resigning yourself to the worst is much easier than my way, than going on with the struggle. Hope saps the will more surely than a lapse of memory. He has wasted two years playing at being deaf and blind, making me look like the village idiot. I tried to explain to Benjamin, but he did not want to know anything. It's always the same for him—they were taken away, whoever has them will not return them even if they are still alive. “They're dead, Deborah. Get used to the idea. You'll never see them again."

  Why is it always men who go to pieces? It is not Benjamin who night after night comes to this hill to plead for your leniency. He does nothing but wait, drunk more often than he is sober—counting the seconds, the hours, the years which have passed since that day.

  That day, that morning, just after we had woken up, he yelled my name from the doorway to the twins’ room. I rushed in, to find it empty. The beds were unmade, the covers were thrown into heaps. The wind was roaring in through the open window. And there was no trace of the children.

  Flown away, Adam! Disappeared, Anna!

  Rubbed out of our lives, just like that, in one moment, that single second it had taken me to cross to their door. All was lost. There was no going back after that, now that the door had opened on to emptiness. I wanted to think I hadn't seen what happened, so that I could pretend they were still there, on the other side, playing under the covers like two noisy imps. But that morning, for the first time in their five years, they were not waiting for us.

  Benjamin opened the door and regarded the empty bedroom. By then it was too late to close his eyes again. He had been drained in a single heartbeat, as suddenly as a bathtub is emptied when the plug is snatched away. He was still gripping the handle of the door when I rushed up behind him and saw with my own eyes. He uttered my first name, but after that he said no more. Something had died behind his eyes, deep down. He said nothing more. From that first day he gave up. He abandoned everything with a single shrug of his shoulders. His twins, his wife, his family. It's so easy to become a human wreck. When sorrow stands as an alibi, anything is possible.

  What good is it to hope, Deborah? They have gone.

  Benjamin closed the window and locked the twins’ door. He was never to reopen it. Closed with a double turn of the lock, creating a sanctum. Spent the first days searching, interrogating neighbors, scouring the fields, more with hope than belief. Finally he settled, comfortably, into quiet despair and wallowed in his loneliness. Now he could let it take over: other people's looks allowed him to. Perhaps the seed had already been in him for a long time. But he had been under self-control for six years. Not a drop of alcohol in front of Adam and Anna, not that, never. Benjamin adored his twins. Now for him there was nothing better to fill the vacuum than draining one bottle after the other. Nothing about him changed, at first appearance. He was like a smooth and succulent fruit, but already rotting inside.

  There surely were some who joined him in the bar, ready to sow more discontent with their well-meaning looks and annoyed expressions. You ought to know, Benjamin, we have seen your wife acting weirdly out there at the top of the hill. You should keep your eye on
her. And Benjamin gestured to them to get lost and leave him alone.

  I tried to explain to him, though. How could he not see the signs? Pajamas rolled up in a ball, left on the hill, Anna's teddy bear which lay in the middle of the lawn? The window opened from inside? What kind of prowler could have broken into the house without causing damage? They opened the window themselves. They knew what they were doing. It is like those vampire stories where the monster may only enter when it has been invited. They opened the window and they left in the night. They came to you because you called them. They came naked as they were on their first day of life. Laughing, surely? Scarcely five years of life, ten years of experience between them, and they could already hear your voice. Me, I never knew to learn. I never wished it either. Until the day when you took them.

  I showed Benjamin the marks and the clues. I even brought him to you so that he could see what I can see, but he averted his eyes with an expression of weariness beyond irritation. As if it was I who had become the wreck, the drunkard. As if I had pointed to mirages born of a sick brain. Two years that he has been closed like an oyster, hermetic, because if he opened up, even for a moment, all the whys and hows would flood in, and he would have to acknowledge there is no answer.

  So, I was the one who came to you when at last I understood. I think I had done so from the very first. Unable to fight you, I learned how to know you. Over those two years, I have spent more nights with you on this hill than in the marital bed. That is where Benjamin turned his back on me, while breathing the restless sleep of cowards. I came to plead with you, to beg you, to threaten you, and you stayed there with me to scoff. You kept them where I could see them, but they were always beyond my reach. I waited, and I learned. You let me explore, one evening after another, while my gestures became more assured. I returned home reeking of your smell. Benjamin slept. He thought I was mad.