“Cut out that racket!”
Dickerson clutches his temples with the heels of his hands. He’s all but naked but for powder-blue boxer shorts and black knit socks.
The top leaf of the kitchen window hangs open. Early winter is setting in. Sleet slips past the framed glass at odd angles into the flat. The outside air is dull, heavy, and wet.
A stout and serious rook stands several stories below in the court yard, cawing and cawing to no one in sight. It seems to Dickerson that it’s talking about him.
‘For crying out loud, I can’t hear myself think,’ he thinks. “I’d like to run down there and ring that bird’s neck… or maybe I’ll take the short cut… Like a bird,” he grimaces.
But to the rook Dickerson looks like a caveman, a ridiculous ape, a gawking lump of flesh and hair, clumsy legs and an awkward spine, so lacking in posture and grace – he might as well shuffle sideways on his knuckles. The mouth’s too big and those ears protrude like a pig’s. ‘I could just fly up there and defecate on his sill, or hang in the air flapping my wings in his face. If he were on the ground, where he belongs, I’d buzz over his head and make him wince like a child.’
“Shut up!”
“You shut up.”
Dickerson turns his head, his stone-white torso still gleaming in the half-light, to face John Smith, who’s let himself in unnoticed and now holds a cup of steaming coffee in one hand, and a cold blue revolver in the other. His eyes, having thoroughly surveyed the premises, now rest on a lump of lab coat and checkered trousers slumped on the floor in the next room.
…
“Now there, Welsh, can we get back to those sausages, those pink little links and the charming corner store where they’re sold?”
Losser, PR executive and Kyiv-based writer, has found himself body-locked inches from the automatic doors in a Metro train. The Ukrainian people hem him in from all sides. Feet, shoulders, and underarms assault his personage, squash his identity, defile the dignity of the made-up man.
He’s trapped, and so are his thoughts… on an interview gone wrong.
“Go on Welsh, strike up a discussion with that sales lady, store woman, or whatever you want to call her.
“Kyiv’s just one big sausage, isn’t it? No one sees the messy bits – butchered carcasses or the ugly meat press – just those cute little skins full of flesh on a string. You don’t know what they’re called, in Russian, Ukrainian, or your own horse-whipped tongue. But they sure make for good small talk… on TV, YouTube, the local lecture circuit… but certainly not in that fabled corner shop of Kyiv past,” the interviewer continues.
Losser can barely get his back up, his elbows are pinned to his ribs. Worse yet, the faces of his oppressors confront him front to back through the black glass of the automatic doors: A lanky teen in headsets looms above and behind his head, a beefy babushka is digging into his ribs with something hard and angular in her bag, while a sour-faced tribute to Soviet civility, his gray cropped head glistening in grease, has cut off any view above Losser’s eyebrows in a crude attempt to hold onto the hand rail.
‘Go on Welsh, tell us how you like our sausages,’ they now seem to be saying.
“I like McDonald’s, Welsh, and so do all of my friends,” says the teen. “We must have been too young to enjoy that golden sausage age you spoke of…”
“The store near my home continues to be over-frequented by alcoholics, Welsh. So, I’m afraid that no, not much has changed from that time you recall in your TV interview… er, what year was that again?” says the babushka.
“I like sausages, Welsh, but, see, I don’t have the money to buy them,” says Soviet Man. “Why don’t we get off at the next stop and you could treat me to some… would that be ok?”
…
“Go on, I’m listening.”
Dickerson is now sitting but still only in a pair of powder-blue boxer shorts.
“It was all a mistake… I understand. You hadn’t expected Wu to drop by, and were unusually anxious for some reason. You get like that. We all know you. The job is tense, and this case has been particularly tough. Sick? No, not you. Edgy? Of course, it comes with the territory. And then there’s the wife and kids – she never understood your work. Let some cockeyed shrink call it what he wants – always looking to put a label on a guy, they are. Wu was one of the better ones, you say. But the man did have bad timing. He wouldn’t let dead dogs lie. Mac knew better… surely Mac had your back. No, it was just Wu… and an unfortunate confluence of circumstances…”
Dickerson takes the cigarette on offer from Smith and sparks a sturdy wooden match from the floor.
“There’s just one thing,” continues Smith, looking earnest with a healthy dose of irony intentionally added for effect.
And that one thing turned out to be the chair Dickerson had used to smash up Wu’s office before fleeing such a frantic scene through a window, of all things. And then there was another thing – namely that ruckus at the AA meeting that brought great discredit to the agency after word got out who was involved.
“And how about you’re trying to fry Losser,” Smith squints in disgust, turning to barely concealed contempt, “in a pair of rubber briefs…”
…
Dickerson comes to at the flick of the light switch, the light hurts his eyes. It’s dark outside, and the top of his head hurts even more.
“Someone call about a stiff,” asks Step, still standing in the doorway.
Filed January 4, 2015