Collections

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

19.

“There’s a couple of ways to deal with cats like you, a Terminus,” Alt James said, encouraging me to shuffle forward with his gun pressed into my back. “This is one of them.”

We were in Hoboken fucking New Jersey, which I knew well enough because Frank did plenty of business with the remnants of the old Italians who still worked out of the town. It was right across the river from Manhattan, it was where Frank Sinatra had been born, and it still had three or four old Social Clubs fronting crews. They’d seen better days, and they didn’t run City Hall like they used to, but they were there, and there was enough old money in suitcases lying around to keep Frank and Phin and the newer boys interested.

We were, I thought, the only people in Hoboken New Jersey.

Walking down the middle of the main drag, Washington Street, I could hear our steps echoing back at us. Most of the store windows had been shattered at some point, but aside from that and the sad state of the cars everything looked normal enough, though details nagged at me. On Fifth street, Sullivans wasn’t there, replaced with a place called Maroon. The cars were all old, too, big iron slabs from old Detroit, tiny little rice burners from Japan, the kind you didn’t see much any more.

The air smelled weird, sweet and thick.

“I could put a bullet in your head,” Alt James continued after a moment. “But it wouldn’t kill you. I could probably put you in a coma, leave you that way, sure, that might work. Coma ain’t dead, the universe might allow that. Except, I could never be sure. You can’t die, man. So let’s say you’re laying there in a coma, and I think I solved this little problem.”

“Let’s say,” I said, earning myself a prod from the gun into my backbone.

“A large caliber bullet in the back still going to hurt, man, okay?”

I nodded, moving my eyes from deserted storefront to rusting car to deserted storefront. “Okay.”

He’d adjusted the knots to give me just enough slack to shuffle along, bent backwards slightly so I felt like I was going to fall over at any moment. It was slow going, and the sun was making me hot and sweaty.

“You might be that way for years, decades. But then, something happens—the power goes out, and the machines breathing for you quit. Or the hospital catches on fire. The universe decides the only way you can survive is to heal, so you wake up, good as new. You’re a Terminus. Any time you might die, you’ll find a way to keep on truckin’.”

I didn’t say anything. I was enjoying myself, a little; my back burned and my legs ached and my hands were numb. I was fucking miserable. I didn’t feel immortal in the least.

“So, the problem is the fucking solution, kid,” Alt James continued, strolling along behind me. “There are infinite universes. There are universes where everything’s fucking different, universes where everything is practically the same. They’re infinite, so good luck cataloging them, but as you come across them you can make notes. Like this one. Empty as a tin can. Completely fucking empty.”

I let that drift for a moment. “How come you’re so sure I’m a—” my tongue tripped over the word. “A Terminus?”

“I can smell ’em. It’s a talent I have.” He jabbed me in the back. “You’re one.”

“How do you know you can even shoot me?” I asked, a pulse of excitement pounding through my chest. “Rusch pointed a gun at me and it misfired.”

He laughed, and it was awesomely strange: It was Detective James’ laugh, the same deep, wet rumble I’d known for years. “Your Rusch is kind of a beginner, man. You get a feel for the odds. You got to know how far you can push the universe, you know? Sure, you put a gun to your forehead, you ain’t giving the universe much choice—coma or death or misfire. Push it too hard, the gun blows up in your hand. Push it even harder, a fucking safe falls out of the sky and crushes you before you can pull the trigger.”

He stopped talking and I huffed and puffed my way through ten feet of street. I squinted my eyes and looked around. It sure felt empty. Everything was covered in a thick layer of white-gray dust, like ash. It swirled around us as we walked. “What happened here?”

“Fuck if I know,” Alt James said, sounding friendly. If I closed my eyes and ignored the misery, it was like me and the Detective were just having a friendly stroll. “Found it this way. No bodies, no bones. No dogs. No cats. No fucking squirrels. It’s as dead as the world can get. It’s perfect: I can’t kill you, but I can leave you here. You can sit here forever, no way off, safe and sound.”

Rotting. The stillness and silence of the place was oppressive. Our voices echoed back at us and then fell dead and flat on the ground. As we disturbed it, the air was getting choked with dust, and I could feel it on my skin, coating me, scratching under my collar and getting into my ears, my nose—I knew if I blew my nose right then it would be dark and muddy, filled with the fine mist. The stores with their empty, smashed windows and dark, shadowed interiors creeped me out. Anything might be hiding in there, watching us move past.

I didn’t like begging, and had to swallow a few times before I could spit out more words. “Listen, this is … this is fucking unnecessary, chief. I’m just looking to collect a debt. A debt you bought from my boss, so I don’t even have to do that any more. I’m ready to walk away from this. Let Falken take his chances.”

There was something about being hogtied and marched through a deserted town that smelled like dust and dry kindling that took all the sass out of you.

“Sorry, hoss,” Alt James said, sounding the exact opposite of sorry. “First of all, I’m aiming to become a Terminus myself someday—a hobby of mine—and you might get in my hair if I do it. Second, I’m a killer. It’s what I do. I can’t kill you, but I can come close. Besides, I didn’t buy your fucking debt. I made a deal with your boss to get information, but he’s gonna be sorely disappointed when next week rolls around and he’s looking for all that money I promised him. Take this left.”

I hobbled in a wide arc to the left, turning down third street. The pavement had cracked and crumbled, weeds poking up atop huge cairns of blacktop, and I had to sweat it to stay upright, my balance all fucked up as I tried to scale each lump in the road. Hobby of mine. It sounded like he’d done this before with other … other assholes like me. I kept my eyes moving, looking for a chance.

I asked myself if I was ready to chance his gun, if I was starting to believe everyone’s sunny belief that I was the Ever Living. I ducked the question, and kept walking.

“What do you get paid?” I asked, instantly curious as I thought about it. “For killing people?”

“I don’t just kill people. I make people immortal. It’s tough work. Long hours. Research. Violence. They pay me whatever I ask. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s something else. It’s worth it, no matter what. I could ask them for their balls, they’d hand them over. Their kids. Their wives, husbands, daughters.” He laughed in a way that was completely different from Detective Stanley James—nasty and cold, no humor at all. “Sometimes I don’t even do it for money. It’s just revenge.”

I thought about that. Erasing someone from not just one universe, but every universe. Methodically hunting down every version of someone. “Jesus fucking Christ, how do you have time?”

“Most of us die young,” he said quietly. “Every other possibility is your fucking death, and then a second later you got another split chance at fucking death. By the time someone seeks me out, there ain’t but a handful of you left.”

As this was quickly becoming the most depressing day of my goddamn life, I thought about that. About me, dying. Me at six months, suffocating in my crib. Me at twelve, chasing a Spalding and getting hit by a car. Me at twenty-two, stabbed to death in the alley behind Rudy’s. Me at thirty, shot in the head by Chino over fifty fucking dollars lost in a card game. All these things could have happened, but hadn’t—except everyone had been telling me for the past few days that they had, just to some other version of me, a version that had been dead since that moment.

The quiet was smothering. Our steps were loud scrapes that rattled everything like earthquakes, and the wind was a constant mutter in the center of my ears. I could hear water, too, lapping, as we got closer and closer to the Hudson, crawling along Third Street. But there was no other noise. No sirens, no shouts. No dogs, no music leaking from fourth-floor windows. No car horns or tire screeches, no distant conversations bubbling out of the bars. It was just me and Alt James, and we weren’t making nearly enough noise.

I could see the river as we headed downhill over the broken pavement. It smelled crisp and clean, not the oily scent I remembered. I could see from a distance that the esplanade had partially collapsed into the river, pavers dripping in after the edges one by one every few weeks. I walked with my hands cuffed in behind me and could feel time running out; I hadn’t seen anything that looked at all useful, and the gun I got jabbed into my back every few steps still felt too fucking real for me to chance turning around and trying anything. The last two blocks floated by—a ruined building on my left, a jumble of bricks and iron that still held the ghostly outline of a building, like it remembered what it had been for so long, and a spectacular crush of bent-up, rusting cars completely blocking the street to me right.

“Head right on to the edge,” Alt James said as we got close to the water.

Across the river was Manhattan, looking more or less like I remembered it—something nagged at me, something missing or different, but I couldn’t place it, and as I shuffled forward I had an uneasy, unhappy feeling of disorientation, like everything had been reversed in a mirror.

I almost lost my footing as the pavers gave way under my feet, and had to shuffle backwards hastily to avoid sliding right down into the dark, steel-colored water. Most of the walkway was already in the river, but a thin line of it still clung to land, the old sidewalks next to it as broken up as the roads, the trees heavy and overgrown around us. The world turning back into one huge forest.

“Stop.”

I felt Alt James doing something behind me, tugging at the rope holding my handcuffs to my ankles, and then the gun was pushed into my back again.

“All right. Step off.”

I blinked. “What?”

The gun became more insistent. “Walk forward until you drop,” he said.

My heart raced, and my hands were shaking behind me. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t see what he was doing, and it got to me. I liked pain. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t like not being able to grab everything in my hands, no matter how deep it bit into my skin, and wrestle it down. I took a step forward, and the fucking pavers let go underneath me without warning, and I slid down over a crumbling edge into the air.

I stopped with a jerk a foot or so above the water, and swayed there, suspended. I hung, panting for a moment, listening to the lap of the waves, the plop of chunks of the pavers hitting the water, and the creak of the rope I was suspended from. My side felt like it had split open while my shirt was made of salt, and I imagined kidneys and liver and lungs oozing out, draining me.

Craning my throbbing neck, I could just make out Alt James’ dark silhouette leaning out over the edge above me.

“Got to be careful,” he said. “If I put you in any kind of mortal danger, fate will fucking intervene. I can fuck with you all I want, just got to toe that line, you know. You’ll work your way free of this soon enough, but by then I’ll be gone, and you’ll be … here.”

He waved. The motherfucker waved goodbye.

“So this is it—you’re just gonna leave me here alone forever?”

He’d disappeared from view, but I heard him laugh. “Shit, I never said you were alone. I done this before.”

I listened to his steps scraping away, greedily. After a while it was just lap lap, creak creak, and my own labored breathing.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

18.

For the third time in as many days, I came to, this time in darkness, jostled gently this way and that. Pain radiated nicely from the wound in my side and filled me, yellow and thick and wonderful. For a split-second I just stretched against it, enjoying the feel of a controlled burn, all my nerves like embers, red and angry and floating inside me.

I was in the trunk of a car, my cuffed wrists pulled down tight behind me, my ankles pulled up, hogtied like a fucking pig. I wasn’t gagged, but the hum of the car was loud, and a thick, bouncing bass line filled the air in-between the thud of tires hitting potholes. I figured screaming would just amuse the alternate Detective James, if he could even hear it.

Alternate. The word flamed red in my mind as I thought it.

The man I’d spied in the doorway, the man who’s stormed in, stepping over the detective’s body, pointing his monstrous gun at me, looked exactly like Stanley James. The face, the haircut, the suit—he could have sat down at a bar and forced me to buy him drinks all night on threat of arrest and I’d have bought it, completely.

I only had that panicked, amazed glimpse; Alt Detective James had stepped over himself, crossed over to me, and cold cocked me with his gun, my last image his white teeth, perfect and straight, the gums bloody red.

We hit a bump, and I leaped inside the trunk, landing on something hard and unyielding, lighting up my belly like a pitchfork three inches deep, making me shiver and salivate. The beat from Alt James’ speakers ate into me, making my pulse skip and my eyes bulge.

I figured, fuck, if I really am immortal, I was probably about to find out soon. In my experience waking up hogtied in the trunk of a car was the beginning of a very bad end.

My eyes adjusted to the gloom, lit by the faint red light bleeding in from the brakes, and I craned my head around, trying to see what I had to work with. I doubted my innate ability to escape from car trunks, but it felt like I was going to have a lot of time on my hands so why not make a study of it, see if I couldn’t do some groundbreaking research on the subject.

The trunk was barren, but roomy, and I found I could roll myself over onto my belly easily, freeing my fingers to at least stretch and strain, their tips brushing against the slick nylon rope he’d used to connect the handcuffs to my ankles. I tried to bend myself backwards, straining to find the knot and maybe, somehow work it open, at least get my legs free. I didn’t know what that was going to get me, but it was better than counting seams in the highway or pretending I could hear the difference between a bridge and a dirt road, map it all out in my head.

I rolled my eyes down and saw I was lying on top of the spare tire well, the piece of carpet that fitted over the space curled up and out of place. I stretched my head down and took the edge of the carpet between my teeth, grit and dust suddenly in my mouth, and rolled myself over, taking the carpet with me. With a jerk of my head I tossed it aside and rolled back onto my belly, peering down into the spare well. There was only an undersized solid rubber donut wheel, bolted down. Sitting next to it, embedded into the soft felt, was the lugnut wrench and the jack.

The thought of having the weight of that wrench in my hands, and sinking it into Alt James’ face, made me happy. My imagination served up the crunch of his delicate facial bones and cartilage, the grunt of pain, the sudden shock up my arm as I bit into real bone, hard and thick, the spray of blood from burst capillaries and torn surface skin.

A pleasant burn had settled into the muscles of my back and arms, the steady strain biting in and holding fast. I bent my attention back to straining my fingers towards the knots, even though I wasn’t at all convinced I’d be able to manipulate them in any way even if I managed to get the very tips of my fingers near them.

The ride suddenly got rough, the car banging over something and everything getting jumpy and filled with vibration, my belly spiking and burning and clearing my head pretty thoroughly. I was bleeding all over his trunk, I was pretty sure, the coppery smell of my own fluids thickening the air. The bouncing action made it even more difficult to make any progress, and sweat began to stream down the sides of my head and neck, tickling me excruciatingly.

At least Alt James hadn’t known Falken was nearby, I didn’t think. For all I knew he’d taken the time to hunt the poor fuck down and put a shell in his ear, but I suspected Falken had bolted the room just in time, and Alt James didn’t know he’d missed him—or maybe he shared his twin’s resistance to running and had just let him go. Either way, I was glad for it. I didn’t want Falken dead—I didn’t want anyone dead. I wanted his fucking money. Though I guessed if Frank had sold the debt, that wasn’t even my problem any more.

The tone of the ride changed again, going smooth and quiet, a low hum the only noise from the wheels, like we were gliding along. After a few seconds of this the car jerked to a stop, tumbling me up against the back seat and then rolling me forward again. Then quiet, the music gone, just the ticking of the engine and my pinched, tight breathing. I heard the car door open, and then nothing. I lay perfectly still, head pounding, side burning, and strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything at all.

And then I heard everything.

The noise was unbelievable—a droning, piercing blare that made the whole trunk—the whole car—vibrate around me. My teeth chattered involuntarily, and I felt like parts of my insides were boiling off, turning to steam and leaking from my pores. One of my shoes began working its way off my foot, vibrating off my heel in tiny little increments. I clenched my jaw shut as hard as I could to stop my teeth from shaking loose and shut my eyes to keep them in my skull, every muscle in my body taut. It was the same as the noise I’d heard in the limo with Alt Rusch, similar to the noise I’d heard just before Falken had disappeared on me in McHales.

And then it got louder.

I pushed my head down into the scratchy, thin carpet of the trunk, trying to block off at least one ear, but the lower pitch of the murderous whine around me bled up through the metal of the car, bouncing into my ear and tunneling into my brain. I couldn’t enjoy it, couldn’t pick out the nuances of the agony, the specific nerve endings being burned out and browned, sizzling away like candle wax. It was just more than my nerves could handle. I opened my mouth to make my own noise, but I couldn’t hear myself, or even feel the vibration in my chest. It was like I’d disappeared into the noise.

And then it stopped.

I lay there with my mouth open, my ears ringing, every muscle taut and painful. I kept myself tight and still for a moment, waiting, and then slowly let myself relax, my muscles twitching. There was a muffled bang I felt more than heard which took me a moment to identify as someone getting back into the car. A moment later we started moving again, and I felt the steady thump of the bass line jumping under me.

Shivering, I lay still for a while, eyes closed. Then I set about relaxing my muscles one by one as the car took on the old familiar rhythm of street driving. When I’d forced my body to unclench, I opened my eyes again, and spared a few seconds to revel in the burning in all my muscles, like an acid stain on my bones, etched in deep. I was back inside a normal trunk, the bloody glow of brake lights seeping in and offering me the only light, my hands still pulled cruelly down towards my ankles, the thumping beat mixing with the rhythm of the road seams into a complex song that seemed kind of familiar, probably entitled Fucked Three Ways from Sunday.

Breathing hard and blinking the sweat from my eyes, I started bending my hands back again, seeking the elusive knots in the rope. I had a goddamn cigarette jingle from the television commercial in my head, running on a doubletime loop, high and squeaky: feeling down need a lift Luckies’ll fix ya in a jiff. I didn’t even smoke Luckies.

My dad had smoked them, I suddenly remembered. I remembered he’d smelled like smoke all the time, a strangely earthy and acidic smell that had fascinated and repelled me at the same time. Nicotine, alcohol, and aftershave, the smell of adults. Dad had shown me once the circular burn marks on his forearms, starting just above the wrist and ending at the elbow, where he’d pressed his cigarette against his skin for as long as he could stand it. It was a standard bar bet he liked to trot out when he’d run out of cash. Sometimes he’d spend the whole night burning himself for shots, and wake up the next day stuck to the sheets, his arm leaking and inflamed. I remembered the feel of pushing the cigarette into his skin, the satisfying way he would suck in his breath and tense up. I remembered smuggling a pack into the hospital, risking our lives to light them up and burn him.

Alt James drove slower this time, the car inching along, and hit a lot of potholes, tumbling me around. I tried to redouble my efforts at the rope, trying anything that came to mind, my wrists burning nicely where the cuffs bit into them, bending myself backwards as far as I could manage. I tried to clear my head and get all zen on the fucking problem, but before I could take some deep breaths and center my thinking, the car stopped, the music cut, and I heard the front door opening and slamming.

Shoes on gravel, a key in the lock, and then the trunk lifting up. Framed against a burningly bright, cloudless blue sky—somehow we’d skipped some hours and arrived at noon—was Alt James, gun held slackly in one massive hand, disturbingly white teeth bared for me.

“All right,” he said cheerfully. “We’re here.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

17.

The Bumble kept a bottle of shoe leather gin in one of the kitchen cabinets along with his antique collection of mouse droppings. Detective James had stood quietly for about twenty seconds, taking it all in, and then he’d turned to The Bumble.

“Billy, man, do me a favor and take the professor and the girl home, okay? I’m gonna have to have a talk in private with these two gentlemen.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Rachel snapped.

James grinned at her. “Darling, I admire you. I do. Damn, I need more women like you in my own life. But, sweetheart, I’m asking you to step out for a while. I’m no killer. And I’m making this police business, okay? You want, I can have a couple of officers who don’t ask too many questions and haven’t read this year’s procedural handbook come by, book you on suspicion of something and hold you for our twenty-four, okay? And I wonder if your jacket comes up clean.” He winked. “I only ask once.”

When The Bumble had herded them out the door, James let out an explosive sigh and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, dropping into it recklessly, the old wood creaking under his weight. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, snapped it out, and mopped his face.

“Well, fuck,” he said. “Cut the poor man loose.”

I considered it, then shrugged. “Why not.” I got up and scavenged through the kitchen, finding an old steak knife in a drawer that sagged crazily in its tracks, knelt down, and began sawing at the tape around his ankles.

“Now that your audience is gone,” James said slowly. “You wanna give me the straight version of this? This motherfucker here owes money, right?”

I nodded, my belly burning with pain, sweat running into my eyes. I felt lightheaded, the dull knife taking forever to cut through the tape. “A fucking mint. To everyone.”

“And you got his file, huh, for Mr. Frank?”

I nodded.

“And the rest of this bullshit is what, trying to convince him to pay up? You too fancy to break a leg these days?”

Falken was free, so I sat back on my feet, wiping sweat out of my face and breathing hard, breathing like a man who’d been stabbed non-fatally not so long ago. I looked up at Falken. “Well, you want to answer that one?”

Falken scowled. “So if this isn’t The Executioner, what the fuck is he here?”

James shrugged. “I’m the man who can tell him to tie you the fuck back up, baby, so why not play along?”

Falken scowled, but settled himself and told him the whole ridiculous story in about four sentences. Detective James sat through it all with a stone face, then sat back and rubbed his chin, the scratch of his beard against the palm of his hand audible in the creepy silence that had filled the tiny room. He lifted his hand from his chin and pointed at Falken.

“You’re from an alternate universe,” he said, and a wave of weary amazement swept through me.

Falken shrugged. “One way of putting it, yes.”

James shifted his long finger to me. “And you’re fucking immortal.”

I shrugged. “I don’t feel it.”

The finger went back to Falken. “Because he’s the only him left in all the fucking world out there. And one of your other selves wants to kill you so he can be the only one, and be immortal too.”

Falken stared back at James like he’d expected to be dead ten minutes ago and wasn’t convinced it hadn’t come to pass. “Yes.”

The finger came back to me. “And he owes you shitloads of cash, because your boss is a fucking moron.”

I nodded. “That’s about the whole of it.”

James made a hissing noise between his teeth, raising an eyebrow. “Shit, kid. I’m beginning to wonder if you just wasted a couple hours of my time.” He leaned forward, rings glinting on his hands. “You ever wasted my time before?” he shook his head. “I don’t recommend it. I look all jolly and shit, I know, like a guy who could be pushed around, but I can unleash fucking hell on you and yours in the form of the uniformed police officer of this great city, pulling over your cars, searching your shit every place you go, fucking carding you at bars. You dig?” He planted his finger on the greasy table top. “I put your name on the list, motherfucker, they’re going to be pulling you out of line at the airport. Fucking security guards at the mall gonna be pulling your ass into little windowless rooms for strip searches. It ain’t official or anything, but I put your name on the list every cocksucker with a badge is gonna know your name and face, we understand each other?”

I nodded, lifting my hands up to spread them. “I needed to see if he recognized you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it kind of makes me think he isn’t crazy.”

James stared at me for a moment, nostrils flaring, and a second or so before he leaped to his feet I knew I’d taken a wrong turn and things were going to get sticky. Then he was up on his feet and his gun, a huge honker that looked like it would turn me into a fine mist if he pulled the trigger, was in one hand and his handcuffs in the other.

“Up,” he snapped. “On your feet. I’ve had about enough of this shit.”

I got my legs under me and pushed myself up. “Look, I know—”

“You know shit. Dragging my ass out here to listen to bullshit. Spin around, hands on the counter.”

I turned to face the sink and put my hands on the countertop. It felt oily under my hands. The Bumble never lived here, so I didn’t know what in the world could be coating it, and didn’t want to think about it. I felt dizzy and hot, and could tell my bandage was soaked in leaking blood. I shut my eyes. “Listen, Detective—”

“Shut up.” He was behind me, shoving his knee between my legs to spread them, yanking my arms behind me and slapping the cold cuffs on, too tight. “I got bodies and a tear-down, and I can clear a case for someone by bringing you in, and that’ll make this trip here worth it, so we’ll be even, and when you get out of jail in thirty years we can be friends again, okay?”

I winced as he put his weight into the small of my back, pressing me painfully against the sink base. I didn’t have time for foreplay. Someone owned Falken’s debt, and if I didn’t keep it current I was going to get knifed in jail, and if I was really immortal like everyone had been telling me for the last twenty-four hours it meant I was going to get knifed in jail a lot, which might be kind of fun but fucking exhausting.

He spun me around. He wasn’t smiling. He glanced over at Falken.

“Don’t worry, we’re taking you in too.”

Falken snorted. “I’m dead anyway. You put me in your system, he’ll find me, and I won’t be able to run.”

James considered him. “All right, let’s play You’re Not Fucking Crazy for one minute. If someone’s after you, let’s hear it. Whatever else you got hanging on your collar, I’m not in the business of letting people get killed. Just leave the bullshit out of it, okay?”

Fucking Detective James.

“Forget it,” Falken said, his voice hollow. “He’s fucking you. He’ll walk in and smile at everyone and shoot me in the fucking head.”

James was silent for a moment. “Kid, someone really—”

Someone pounded on the door, hard, and we all paused. “You forget something, Billy?” James shouted.

Someone pounded on the door again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” James hissed, spinning away from me.

I turned around, finding James heading for the door. I took a step after him and paused. “Don’t,” I said. “Look, I know we sound crazy, but—”

“You don’t want to take a fall on your way to the precinct,” he said, reaching for the doorknob, “you’re gonna want to shut up now.”

With a grunt, Falken was up out of the chair and sprinting, disappearing into the next room as James tried to wheel around and catch him by the collar. The detective stood there for a moment while someone pounded the door again, hard, making it jump on its hinges, then he shook his head.

“I haven’t broken a sweat in fucking fifteen years,” he muttered. “I’m not starting with that piece of shit.” He stepped over to the door and glanced back at me. “You get your running sneaks on and I’ll take out my frustrations on you, okay? You used to know better than to fuck with police.”

Detective James turned back and opened the door. Detective James stood in the doorway, face blank, eyes red. Detective James shot Detective James in the belly twice.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

16.

Wincing as a sharp needle sliced up my torso, I leaned forward towards the grating that separated the backseat from the front in James’ car. The low squawk of his police radio was constant background noise, and no one had spoken on the drive to Staten Island, where The Bumble had an apartment for no reason I’d ever been able to suss out of him. It was creepy out here, everything damp and dark and lush, the houses spaced so far apart you wouldn’t be able to hear your neighbors walking around. I couldn’t imagine sleeping without hearing my neighbors.

“Stay in the car five minutes,” I said to James.

He turned his head sharply and reached up to remove the gold toothpick he was sucking on. “What? Fuck that.”

I nodded. “Let me set it up for him, okay?”

“I think I just said fuck that.”

“Call it a favor,” I said, opening the door and pulling myself out with a grunt, a wonderful shudder of agony slicing through me. Everything ached, deliciously, and I’d spent the ride over prodding the spots that hurt the most, just for the sudden sharp thrills they offered.

“Call it fuck that,” he said as he emerged from the car after me, buttoning his jacket and smoothing his lapels.

“At least let me do the talking. Don’t say shit, we walk in there.”

Rusch popped out of the other side of the car as we circled around to the gleaming sidewalk. “I’ll let you run for a bit,” James said mildly, completely certain he was in charge of the situation. “You tell me this is gonna pay off for me, I know you’re a serious man, I’ll give you some slack.” He put his hand out in front of me, a gentle motion that stopped me in my tracks. “Some, follow? Think of me as the Judge and Jury here, and I just told you your line of questioning had better be going somewhere, follow?”

I nodded, and he pulled his hand back. Rachel climbed out of the front seat and shut the door behind her, tugging her sweater down over her belly. James grinned.

“That’s a fine girl you got hating your guts,” he said cheerfully. “A fine girl. Looks like she was a cheerleader back in school.” He turned and jabbed me in the ribs, making a red bolt of pain flash through me. “Limber, and shit.”

I swallowed irritation. “Come on.”

As we approached the dung-brown apartment building, a box with small windows and landscaping via overgrown weeds, I flipped open my phone and speed-dialed The Bumble. He never said anything on the phone, just pressed the button and listened; you had to pay attention to know he was even there.

“I’m outside. Don’t fucking shoot me,” I said, and snapped the phone shut.

“You and Billy got a special relationship, huh?” James said, pleased with himself.

The four of us took the cramped elevator to the fourth floor, the machinery wheezing and whining; the cab smelled like cabbage. Rachel stared at the doors with her arms crossed under her chest, a statue of a woman entitled Irritated. Rusch kept twisting around to smile at us as if we were all chums on some sort of grand adventure, which I supposed was true enough for her—up until a few months ago she’d been a tenured professor at a State University in fucking Jersey, the kind of cruft the school wished would just die to open up the budget slot. Now she was in goddamn Staten Island, running around with cops and legbreakers and hot chicks. I itched to make her hurt, to impress on her the way the world worked, but she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

There was nothing specifically wrong with the apartment building; the hallway was clean and neat, the place was quiet. The carpet was a hideous shade of mocha that made you feel like you were walking on a packed-down lane of shit, and the walls were a shade of green you normally didn’t see outside of a toilet. The flickering fluorescent lighting added a spice of headache to the whole scene, and the floors under your feet felt soft, like the joists were rotted, and you might fall through at any moment. Every time we made use of Billy’s secret place, I felt like I might not make it out alive.

The door opened when we were still a few steps away. The Bumble filled the doorway completely, a mountain of muscle and fat, his red nose almost as big as his face, everything being pulled down by gravity and making him look like a sad clown. He looked at me and shook his head slowly, looking up to the ceiling, and I knew he’d had a long night with Falken. For The Bumble, not being allowed to smack someone around was the hardest thing in the world. He didn’t have any other social skills.

I stepped in, James close behind me, and found Falken sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette burned almost down to the filter in his mouth. The ash was heroic, almost the entire smoke, trembling there like the memory of a cigarette.

“Jesus fucking hell,” he said immediately, the ash collapsing onto the table. “He’s got me duct-taped to the fucking—”

He froze as his eyes landed on James, his whole body going absolutely still. I stepped between him and the Detective and grabbed one of The Bumble’s greasy, rickety wooden chairs, spun it around and sat down. Falken was, in fact, attached to his own chair by an amazing amount of silver duct tape. If the apartment had caught fire, we would have to throw him out the window as a unit. If Phin’s boys had used duct tape, I thought suddenly, I’d be dead.

I thought of Rusch again, and wondered if that still held true.

I reached out and snapped my fingers in front of his face a few times.

“Falken,” I snapped. “Falken—on me, buddy.”

He looked at me suddenly. “Why is—”

“Hey,” I slapped him lightly, a tap on his chin. “On me. Don’t talk except to answer my questions, okay?”

“Hey!” Rachel hissed. I heard her move, and I heard The Bumble move, and then everyone was still again. I held one hand up behind my head.

Falken opened his mouth, and I gave him another gentle tap on the chin. “Okay?”

Most people I dealt with didn’t have to deal with violence in their lives. The world was a violent place, seemed like it was falling apart even if the news was always telling us it was only a matter of years before every country united under one government, but in the city, behind money and drywall and buzzers on your front door, people managed to go decades without taking a beating. It made them pretty easy to intimidate. A little violence went a long way; a lot of new kids in my line of work set about breaking thumbs and peeling back fingernails immediately. It got results, sure, but it was unnecessary effort. I was an old man now and if I could convince someone to give me what I wanted just by staring at them, then that’s what I would fucking do.

He swallowed, eyes flicking from me to James and back. “Okay.”

I kept my hand in his field of vision and curled it, pointing a finger at his nose. “I’ll tell you what I think, Mr. Falken. I think you’ve got money. I think you’ve been fucking with me for a few days now, and I am irritated.”

He shook his head, eyes wide. I remembered seeing him for the first time in the flesh, back at McHale’s. He looked exactly the same: A little chubby, his beard already getting thick on his jowly face, his hair thinning and his right hand weighed down by a huge gold ring, plain and thick. His suit had been woefully mistreated, and was wrinkled and disturbed, but it was of a fine brown cloth with a nice sheen to it, and cut well. He was still a shiny penny, but he’d been tarnished.

“I swear—”

I tapped him on the chin again. “You got one chance to say it,” I said, leaning back. “Don’t blow it.”

He licked his lips and stared over my shoulder at James for a moment. Then he looked back at me. “I guess it doesn’t fucking matter any more.” he shook his head. “I don’t have a dime. Not one dime left.”

I squinted at him. “You’re in deep with at least The Phin and Frank McKenna,” I said. “No doubt you barnstormed the block, hitting up as many loan shops as you could, probably in the same fucking day, right? Using someone’s name as a reference.”

He nodded, sagging in the chair. “Maury Levns, out of the Bronx.” He looked at me again. “I knew him. Back where I … come from.”

I nodded, pulling out cigarettes. “If you tell me you’re from an alternate universe, I’ll hit you for real and take my chances with her.” I fed a butt between my lips and held one out to him, close enough for him to lean forward and take it with his mouth. “Maury’s dead. A month ago.”

“In this world, yeah,” Falken suddenly struggled mightily with his bonds. “Goddammit! If he’s going to do it, just fucking do it! I don’t have any money left, you fucking bloodsucker. He probably paid you plenty to roll on me, though, didn’t he?” He suddenly stopped. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. “Can you believe it?” He looked at me, his eyes hollow. “I’m killing myself. Can you fucking believe it?”

I struck a match, let it burn a bit, then lit my cigarette and held it out for him to light his. He hesitated, and the flame burned down to the tips of my fingers, but I just held it there, waiting, the sizzling pain wonderful, head-clearing. It was a favorite trick. After a moment he leaned forward and puffed the cigarette into life, then leaned back and laughed.

“Last smoke for the condemned, huh?”

“Shut up,” I said, “and tell me how it is you’re broke after you borrowed every dime this city has.”

“For equipment,” he snapped back. “For fuel. This shithole of a universe hasn’t figured out passing from Alt to Alt, okay? I have to fucking buy components. Generators. Cable. CPUs. I can do the work, but I need to fucking reinvent everything everywhere I go, being chased down by my cocksucker self like a goddamn roach. I got it all in a warehouse in Hoboken, of all goddamn places. I finally got the fuel in, I’m finally ready to stay one step ahead of him, and I run into you.” He started pulling at his duct-tape bonds again. “All right? Okay? You got your information, you greedy piece of shit. Let him shoot me and get on with it.”

I frowned, leaning forward a little. “Calm down, Mr. Falken. What I want is money. Who exactly do you imagine is going to fucking kill you here?”

He looked at me, and then jerked his chin at Detective James. “Him.”

I winced my way into turning around to look at James. He loomed over me stroking the fuzz of mustache over his lip, his eyeballs reddened, the palms of his hands thick and pink. He glanced down at me and smiled, bringing his eyebrows up comically. “Don’t fucking look at me, man. I killed some motherfuckers this morning, so I’m good.”

I grimaced as my side bit at me, and looked back at Falken, thinking of a man who looked like James buying the debt from Frank. “I thought Rusch was trying to kill you.” I shut my eyes and took a breath. “The other Rusch, I mean.”

I opened my eyes and Falken was shaking his head, smoke all around him from his cigarette. “Rusch is just the bloodhound. Rusch just finds us poor shits and marks us out.”

I jerked a thumb at James. “For him?”

“For me?” James said, sounding amused. “What the fuck is this shit?”

“If it isn’t Rusch we should be worried about,” I said. “Then who is he supposed to be?”

Falken looked at me like I had horns growing out of my head. “He’s the guy they hire to hunt down their alternates and murder them, so they can become Terminus,” he said. “He’s The Executioner.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

15.

She opened the door and her face was a marvel: Curiosity, then irritation, then melting horror.

“Jesus—”

“I’m in the wind,” I said, my words thick and slurry. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”

I stumbled into the foyer, forcing Rachel to scamper out of my way. I grabbed onto the wall for balance and left a streak of blood on it, finally bumping into the little console table she had against the wall for keys and cell phones, making everything rattle but finding my feet again.

“Jesus,” she hissed, grabbing onto me and putting herself under one arm, pulling me up a little and walking me down the short hall. It was the first time she’d touched me in years, and my head went a little gray again as her perfume and shampoo enveloped me.

“I’m sorry, kid,” I slurred. She kicked open her guest bathroom door and pushed me in. “I didn’t have anywhere else close.”

“Shut up,” she said, getting me to the floor the easy way: By just letting go of me. I sank onto the cool tile and found it to be surprisingly comfortable, like the porcelain had been transformed into tiny cushions. She pushed me onto my back, lifted up my coat, and gasped, rocking back onto her heels. “Oh, fuck,” she said softly, then started to push herself up. “I’ll call Frank. Get him to—”

I flopped an arm out and grabbed her calf. It was the first time I’d touched her in years, and the jolt up my arm almost made me pass out.

“No,” I said heavily, letting my hand slide off her leg. “You call Frank and I’m dead. You call Frank and three guys with shotguns are here in fifteen minutes and we’re both dead.”

She sat down without ceremony or grace, legs folded under her, and stared at me. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, then look up. “Hospital. Emergency Room. You’re bleeding.”

I shook my head, feeling peaceful and languid, like I’d been drinking for hours, but drinking something that didn’t give you a hangover, something that just made you feel good. “Even worse.”

“I have to do something. You’re going to fucking die on my fucking bathroom floor, goddammit.” She stared at me, looking angry, and then she jumped up. “I’m calling Rusch. She’s with Billy and … your guy.”

She was out of the bathroom before I could say anything. I lay there and stared up at the donut-shaped fluorescent light fixture, and I drifted. Her bathroom smelled clean and fresh, like she’d just cleaned it, or never used it. I drifted. Nothing mattered, I was cool and comfortable and after the endless, terrible trip from the bar to Rachel’s place I was able to just lie there and breath, shallow, easy breaths. I imagined Rachel in here every day, in her pajamas, yellow dotted pajamas, her hair tied back. I imagined her brushing her teeth, taking a shower, toweling off, doing her makeup. It was peaceful. Sun shining in through the frosted window, a radio on, her dancing a little when a certain song came on.

Then I opened my eyes because someone was shaking me. It was Rusch, the creepy old hen, squinting down at me. She was wearing her usual wrinkled jacket, too light for the weather, and a white dress shirt that had never, as far as I could tell, been dry-cleaned, or even ironed. She waved a hand in my face until I grimaced and swatted it lazily away.

She stood up. “He’ll be fine.”

“Excuse me?” Rachel said from behind me, out of my field of vision. “He’s going to bleed to death.”

“No,” Rusch shook her head. “He’ll be fine.”

There was a stretch of silence. “Are you going to tell me he’ll be fine because he’s immortal? Because if you are, I’m going to be fucking upset.”

“He’ll be fine,” Rusch repeated, sounding amused. “The bleeding’s just about stopped. Look at him: He looks like he’s getting his color back, and his breathing isn’t labored any more.” She looked down at me and winked, like a favorite auntie being convinced to hand out candy. “I only had two years of med school, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“Doc,” I said, pushing myself up to a nearly sitting position, my arms stiff behind me for support, both of them shaking a little with the effort. “I’m starting to get the feeling you’re not as smart as you look.”

She cocked her head a little and gave me a strange little off-center smile. “How are you feeling? Take a moment and truly consider the question, now.”

I started to say something meanspirited, but realized I did feel better. The vibrating fuzziness was gone. I still felt weak, but I didn’t feel like I’d pass out at any moment. When I put a hand on my belly to feel the wound, fresh pain sweeping through me like an invisible laser cutting through me without breaking the skin, I kept myself upright with one arm, no trouble.

“All right,” I said slowly, feeling a strange foreboding fill me up, a dark sense of trouble. “I’m … better.” I cocked my head to mimic the old bat and smiled. “Maybe you healed me.”

She shook her head. “You’re a Terminus, my friend. Whether you realize it or not, I’m sure this has happened before. You can be hurt, yes—possibly even rendered comatose or otherwise non-functioning. You could be paralyzed, or blinded, or your existence could be made a hell—but you will never die, because every other version of you in the universes has already met that fate.”

I heard Rachel behind me and spun in time to hold out my hand. “Leave it,” I said. “She doesn’t mean any harm.”

She stared at me. “You’re not bleeding any more.”

I paused and felt myself out. I was an expert in pain, a specialist in my own. The wound was still there, and it ached and sizzled like the blade was still inside me, broken off and working its way towards my heart. But I didn’t have the fuzzy, buzzing feeling like I was floating an inch above my body any more, and I was able to take a deep breath without wincing. I turned and looked at Rusch again, studying her. The old woman had picked up a tube of something from Rachel’s sink and was peering down at it with a furrowed brow, as if he’d spotted an ingredient that wasn’t supposed to be there, like plutonium.

She didn’t look crazy. If I’d met her in a bar, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to her: A woman who made less than fifty thousand dollars a year, based on her clothes. A woman who didn’t value social interactions, based on the lack of care she put into those clothes, who was forgetful and easily distracted, based on her one black and one blue sock. A woman who lived in her own head, but not crazy.

After a moment, I got my legs under me and pulled myself up to a standing position. Rachel didn’t step over to give me any help, and I guessed without looking at her that we were back to normal, just like that. I pulled up my sticky, scabbing shirttail and examined my wound, then looked at Rusch again.

“So what you’re saying is, I might not die, but it could get infected, right?”

She looked up from the tube as if she’d forgotten I was there. Then she nodded, smiling. “Miss? You have a first aid kit of some kind, you said?”

I sat at Rachel’s neat kitchen table of blond wood, smoking a cigarette with my shirt off, watching Rusch as she hunched over my belly, packing on a thick bandage.

I felt almost normal. It still throbbed and burned, but no worse than a million other injuries I’d survived. I thought back on that, all the times I’d been bleeding and broken, which was plenty. I’d been stabbed before, and shot at, and beaten unconscious—that was my job. But I’d always come through it, and never come close to dying.

It didn’t prove anything.

I studied the scalp showing through Rusch’s thinning white-gray hair, then looked up as Rachel came back into the room, carrying her phone. “Everything kosher?”

She nodded as she dropped into the chair across from me. “Billy says Falken wants to leave and he’s had to knock him down a few times, but he’ll be okay.”

I smiled. “Billy’s an expert at knocking people down. He can calibrate it exactly.” I looked back down at Rusch’s head. “You about done, Doc?”

“You are in a rush?”

I put the cigarette in my mouth and reached down to gently push her away. “Time to go have a follow-up conversation with your boy, Doc,” I said, standing up and reaching for my shirt. I glanced at Rachel, who was staring at the bandage on my side, already blooming red with leaking blood. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him.”

I felt weak and jazzed. Immortal or not, I’d lost a lot of fucking blood. I threaded an arm through my shirt, and grunted as I twisted around to thread the other one. I started to say something to Rachel, see if I could make her smile, when there was a thunderous knocking on the door.

Rusch was up on her feet like someone had stuck a needle in her ass. “What do we do?”

I sucked in smoked and shrugged, snapping my shirt into place and working the buttons with my fat fingers. I looked at Rachel. “Ask who it is,” I suggested.

“It’s Mister Detective Stanley James,” he boomed, bouncing that big profundo voice off the hallway walls. “And he can hear every fucking word y’all say, so mind your words.”

My heart leaped, pumping air and dust through my sagging, empty veins. Rachel and Rusch both looked at me, head’s snapping around in sync. I ignored them for a moment, mind racing. If he’d come looking for his debt, things were going to get ugly, and I couldn’t bring that down on Rachel, not in her home. “I’ll come out, Detective.”

“Naw, I’ll come in, son,” he boomed back. “You and I need to have a conversation.”

I grimaced and looked at Rachel. “Take the doc and go inside,” I said. “This isn’t your problem.”

She smiled at me, sunny and wide and meanspirited. “Fuck you. You made it my problem by dragging your bleeding ass here.”

“I thought I was dying.”

“So you came to die here? Thanks.” She stood up and crossed to the door, twisting the knob and tearing it open, turning away without a word and resuming her seat.

Detective James stood framed in the doorway, shoulders butting up against the edges, dressed in a gorgeous blue pinstripe that had been sewn by an artist. His gold tie pin gleamed in the kitchen light as he struck a pose and smiled.

“You’re slippery,” he complained. “For a moment I thought you were running.”

I shrugged as he stepped into the room. “How’d you find me here?”

“Shee-yit,” he drawled, nodding at Rachel. “It doesn’t take a fucking genius. You and the lady here have a history, huh?” He frowned, looking me over. “Hell, man, what happened to you?”

“I took a meeting,” I said, tucking in my shirt, “that I ought to not have taken.”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “All right. None of my business. We’ll let it lay for now.”

“You’re here about your debt,” I said. “I was current with Frank. I’ve still got better part of a week on that.”

He frowned. “A fucking debt? What do I look like, a goddamn shylock?” He unfurled a long, dark finger at me. “That’s your business, friend.” He spread his hands and smiled. “I’m here doing what cops do: Keepin’ track of the scum and filth that rots my beloved city.” His smile faded. “I got a couple of dead bodies downtown, a three-alarm fire. I know you had a meeting with Phin Lanzmann the other day; this joint happens to be owned by Phin fucking Lanzmann. It occurred to me to wonder where in hell you’ve been this evening, and as a courtesy I chose to ask you, like a gentlemen, instead of putting your name on the wire. I don’t know anything about whatever debt you have with Frank McKenna.”

I stood for a moment, racing over my conversation with Phin. “You didn’t buy a debt from Frank. My debt. The Falken debt.”

He looked from me to Rachel and back again, ignoring Rusch completely. For a moment I thought he was going to get angry, but then he settled himself and just shook his head. “No.”

I looked over at Rusch, who had a twin running around. Then I picked up my coat, shook it out, and looked the blood-stained lining over critically. “All right, let’s go.”

James cocked his head and pushed his hands into his pockets. He looked like a millionaire. He was a cop who spent half his salary on clothes. “Go where, motherfucker?”

“To see Falken,” I said, pulling on my sticky coat. “To see if he recognizes you.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

14.

A splash of cold water brought me back online, shivering and drowning, trying to breathe through a thick wedge of snot in my nose, my mouth taped shut. The water stung my eyes, and I blinked rapidly, turning my head this way and that. I was still in the restaurant’s bar, and I still had five admirers. Mo and his brother were seated at the bar with bar napkins balled up in front of them soaked red, tending to their wounds. The three Puerto Ricans were standing in the cleared area of the bar, in a loose group, conferring with each other.

I was tied to a chair pulled from the dining room, and it was a much better job than Rusch’s folks had managed; a few experimental twists of my wrists told me I wasn’t going to be dancing my way off the chair without a struggle. I rocked the chair a little and figured I could hop around a little if they’d let me, and took in as much of the space as I could, quick blurry flashes. The bar, bottles and decorations, all the tools of the trade. Unstable old wooden tables and barstools. The dead neon signs and framed posters on the walls.

As my three new friends turned back to me, I took as deep a breath as my nose would allow, trying to clear my head. I only got a thin stream of clear air through my nose, and my head was pounding like mutant Mexican Jumping Beans were inside, trying to hatch. The bar, I told myself, was my only play.

“We were going to be friendly, mamabicho,” the leader said, stepping forward. My eyes trailed down his body and landed on the small blowtorch in his hands, the kind jewelry makers used. My eyes lingered on it for a moment, and then popped back up to his face. “Now we have to be serious with you.”

Adrenaline flooded through me. I could feel the icy touch of that flame, I could smell my own skin burning. My mouth flooded with saliva as I got a little lightheaded, and I told myself I didn’t have time, this was no fucking place to stop and smell the fucking roses.

I put my eyes past him. His two friends were just standing there a few feet away, talking to each other in Spanish.

The leader reached out and snapped his fingers rapidly in my face. “Hey—hey, mamabicho, you look at me, okay?” He stepped forward and with a flourish snapped the torch on, a tiny blue flame dancing on its end. He waved it close to my face, and then leaned in close. “We gonna start with somethin’ easy, somethin’ that’ll heal. Then we move on to more delicate shit. Eventually, we start doin’ damage that won’t ever heal, entienda?”

I winked at him. The hissing sound of the torch was like music, beatless and eternal. My heart pounded with anticipation. It had been a long time since someone had gotten me all hot and bothered, and I fucking missed it.

He nodded, once, and then leaped onto me, straddling my lap. With one hand he tore open my shirt, buttons popping, and then he pushed the torch in close and pressed the flame against my chest just over my heart, holding it there for one, two, three delirious seconds. The pain was clarifying and sharp, opiates dumping into my blood and making me shiver with sudden ecstasy. I loved him. As the smell of my own burning flesh filled my nose, I would have fucked him right there on the floor. When he pulled the torch away a few seconds later, I shut my eyes and savored the burning.

He slapped me lightly on the face. “Hey. Hey, mamabicho, where is Falken? Where you keeping him?”

He hadn’t taken the tape off my mouth, and it filled me with glee, this tough asshole who thought he was going to beat something out of me. I started to laugh, howling, and it took him a moment to get it, his face getting a little red. He reached up and tore the tape off me, taking most of my lips with it, the stinging pain delicious.

I kept laughing. “You … fucking … moron …”

He brought the torch in again, savagely, angry now, and pressed the flame against my nipple, a flood of agony pouring into me, sweating popping up on my skin as he just left it there, teeth bared as he pushed his face down towards mine.

“What’s that, motherfucker? Falken. Where … is … Falken?”

He pulled the torch back and pushed himself up off me. In the sudden relief I started to shiver, putting my head down to let thick yellow snot drip down onto my lap. I started to say something and choked on my own phlegm, spasming into coughs.

“What’s that?” The Leader said, leaning forward and cupping his ear theatrically. “You want to tell me something about our friend Mr. Falken?”

“I said,” I spat, looking up. “I said I’m gonna kill you for that, and I’m gonna enjoy it, and then I’m gonna burn this fucking bar down.”

At the other end of the bar, I saw Mo stand up, say something to his brother, then reach over and pull Mikey up from his seat. They both walked to the front door and out onto the street.

“Oh yeah?” My new friend said, leaning forward. “I don’t think so. I think you’re going to tell me where Falken is before I burn off something, okay? Like—”

I rocked forward onto my feet and threw myself at him, smacking into his torso and knocking him to the floor, the torch skittering across the floor to the bar, my bones shaking on impact. I leaned down and took hold of an ear between my teeth and bit down as hard as I could, my teeth clicking together as blood poured into my mouth. He screamed, sending a shiver through me, and I rolled to my side and then onto my back, fast, panting. Using every muscle I had, I rolled myself onto my knees and quick-jumped back onto my feet, wobbling backwards a little before catching my balance.

Squinting through sweat and adrenaline, I saw the other two shitheads just standing there, gawking. Their fearless leader had slapped his hands over his mangled ear and was just rolling there on the floor, screaming. I felt like I had all the time in the world, that I could go make a drink, wait for termites to eat away the stool I’d been trussed to, have a smoke. I could take my time and enjoy myself.

I looked down at the leader, fixed him in my mind. Then I took two hobbled steps forward and threw myself down at him, landing my knee on his chest with all my weight behind it, giving me the satisfying snare of cracking bones. I’d missed his throat, but there was no time to correct course. Staggering up and back just as his two friends arrived, I spun around and threw myself at the first one, smacking into him as hard as I could. He staggered, grabbed onto me, and we both went down, the stool shattering against the floor.

My hands were still twisted up in rope and the fragmented remains of the stool. I danced back as the third guy, shorter and broader than his friends, crouched down, digging a hand into his baggy pants and pulling up a butterfly knife. A ridiculous weapon, but he handled it expertly, flipping it open and lunging forward suddenly, forcing me to jump backwards. My feet landed on some piece of the shattered stool and went out from under me, sending me down onto my own hands like dead weight, pain splintering out through every finger, up my arms, stabbing into my chest. It brightened everything, made me clear, and I rolled away as he jumped at me, blade flashing.

I pushed myself back onto my feet and spun back to face him, and he was already there, a foot away. With a sudden dart he was right up against me, and his arm dove forward, plunging the knife into my belly.

At first, I didn’t feel anything. Then it was cold, like someone had pressed an ice cream against me. It was disappointing; I’d expected something searing, something incredible. A wave of tingly exhaustion swept through me, making me feel leaden and slow, and a fresh sweat popped up all over me. He yanked the blade out and then the pain came: A deep, orange throb that felt like it originated in my spine and leaked downward like rust, like rot. As he stepped back I staggered backwards again, working my hands free of the rope and bringing my arms up just in time to catch the bastard trying to sneak in and stick me again. Feeling the warm blood running down my leg, I let him slip a few inches past my arms and took hold of his wrist, angling his arm away from me as I pulled him close and put my knee into his balls.

The pain filled me up, inflating my arms and legs, making me light. I swept a leg under him and yanked with everything I had on his arm, spinning him off-balance and sending him to the floor with a crash that made everything in the place jump. I took half a step back, elated, like the blood leaking out of me was heavy, and every drop shed made me nimbler, faster. With a yelp of happiness I kicked him in the face, everything going gray and shaky as the blood drained from my head. I steadied myself with a hand on the bar and took a deep breath, and everything slowly steadied, the wonderful lancing pain in my side settling down to a dull ache, pleasant but unremarkable.

I looked around. The leader was still, just lying on the floor; I wasn’t sure if I’d killed him or just knocked him out, and didn’t care. The second guy was staggering towards the entrance, one hand over his face, blood running down his neck and soaking his shirt. I let him go. I was lightheaded and wobbly and probably would have fallen if I’d tried to go after him. I elected to stand for a moment and breathe; if I sat down I was pretty sure I’d never get up again.

I looked down at the floor. A small puddle of my blood had formed under me. I waited to catch my breath, and slowly realized I wasn’t going to.

On the floor near the first guy, the blowtorch lay by itself, gleaming new. I pushed off from the bar, half-fell backwards before righting myself, and walked slowly over to it. Getting on my knees to pluck it up was easy. Getting back on my feet took some unknown amount of time, but I came back to myself leaning over the bar, panting, the exquisite pain settled into my bones now, deep and abiding. I liked it there, and hoped it stayed.

Unsteady, I circled around to the other side of the bar and started pulling some of the bottles off the shelves, dropping them onto the floor. When I had a good, deep puddle of booze, I circled back outside and turned my attention to the torch, squinting at it. I couldn’t concentrate, my thoughts slipping away, and getting it lit took longer than expected, and no time at all, my vision swimming in and out. When I looked down and found it burning, the bright blue flame friendly, asking me to press it against the palm of my hand to wake myself up a little, it might have been hours later, or seconds.

My breast throbbed at the sight.

I turned and oriented myself on the front door, and tossed the torch over my shoulder. A warm breeze pushed past me as I shuffled for the door, the shadows of the room warping and dancing into new and disturbing shapes. I found my coat hanging neatly just inside the door, as if they were planning to stroke me into it, hand me cab money, and pat me on the head when they were done. I pushed myself into it with a twinge of guilt at getting my sticky, warm blood all over it, and fell out the front door, managing to fall without hitting the ground until I found an obliging car to lean against. I flipped myself around and stared back at the restaurant. Through the tiny window in the door, I could see the flames. With a dull rumble, something exploded and the flames laced higher.

I fumbled in my coat and smiled when I found my pack of cigarettes. I stuck one in my mouth but couldn’t find a lighter, so I just pushed off from the car and started walking.

“Told you,” I muttered, grinning. I felt fantastic.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

13.

The world is filled with small fry, if you look close enough. Snitches and junkies and people who just generally don’t have any character, willing to sell anything they had for a few bucks. If you walked around the city with a brick of money in one pocket, there wasn’t a secret in the universe you couldn’t have explained to you in painful detail.

Part of my job was detective work. People who owed Frank McKenna money generally didn’t want to be found, so you spent a lot of time wearing the soles off your shoes, slithering through grimy shitcan bars and after-hours clubs asking questions and applying lubrication, either in paper or torn ligaments. I enjoyed it. Not many did. I knew who needed a smack to get them talking and who was better to just pay off; I wanted to smack everybody but I was practical. If a fifty would get things rolling in five seconds, spending an hour tuning someone up was just wasted time, even if I really enjoyed it.

I held up a bill folded between my ring finger and thumb and kept it in the air until Cecilia noticed and nodded at me. Then I put it back into my pocket and waited as he served up drinks to the throng at the bar. I got some dirty looks from people trying to push past me to the bar, and I accidentally put two bridge and tunnel girls on their asses with a well-timed elbow, but I kept my real estate until Cecilia made his way down to my end, his wig kind of askew and his heavy eye makeup running down his face like twin rivers of sewage.

“Hey Big Man,” he sing-songed to me, loud over the din, leaning in to give me a kiss on the cheek. Cecilia was a man named Cecil who liked to wear skirts and wigs and be called Cecilia, and he’d found a place in the world where that was perfectly fine. He ran the bar at The Triage on Christopher Street four nights a week. He was built like a linebacker and refused to do mixed drinks at all. It was shots and beers and if you didn’t like it you could go fuck yourself. “You want a drink?”

Cecilia made eyes at me. Him flirting with me was an old game we played. I shook my head. “Business,” I shouted over the din of angry patrons waiting for Cecilia to serve them. “I’m tracking down a bad debt. Guy named Falken.”

He grinned, his red lips shining in the dull orange light. “Oh, darling, that boy’s been everywhere. Every damn shylock in the world is looking for his ass.”

I nodded. “The Phin?”

Cecilia nodded, ignoring his customers. He was making better money per hour talking to me, and he knew it. “Deep. The old Jew’s tearing his hair out.” His eyes suddenly shifted over my shoulder and then back to me. “Looks like he wants to chat you up about it too.”

I made a face and sighed, pulling the bill from my pocket and holding it out to him. “Let me buy a credit,” I shouted as he took it. “I’ll be back for the rest of the story.”

“Any time, sugar,” he smiled, blowing me a kiss. I smiled back, startled, and stood there for a moment, waiting for the tap on the shoulder, trying to decide if I wanted to throw some punches, make a scene, or just go see what the old man wanted. Cecilia spun away and planted his feet, shouting in a voice that was all marine drill sergeant for a moment.

“You fucking cunts’ll get served when I decide, and anyone doesn’t like it can go fuck themselves!”

By the time the tap on my shoulder came, I’d made up my mind, and just turned around, putting my back against the bar, hands in my pockets. I recognized the two men standing there in expensive suits that had obviously been plucked from the back of a truck and tailored by way of cutting the tags off the sleeves. They were two men in someone else’s clothes, the sleeves too long, the shoulders all wrong. At first glance you might take them for twins, each of them hairy and short and broad, with flat noses and single gold hoops in their left ears. The one on the left was Maurice, and he was an inch taller, a year older, and about ten IQ points smarter. The one on the right was his brother Michael, who hardly ever spoke; his one charming trait was an embarrassed knowledge of his own stupidity, and he chose to keep his mouth shut rather than humiliate himself.

“Mr. Lanzmann would like a word,” Maurice said, jerking his head to the side a little.

I nodded. “Hey, Mo. How’s Tricia?”

He blinked several times at me and a sheepish, small grin hit his flat face. “Mad at me. ‘Cause I play cards too much.”

I smiled. “Be careful, or someone in my line of work will come knocking at your door.” I pushed my hands into my pockets and crossed my ankles, leaning against the bar. “The old man in the car outside?”

Maurice shook his head. “Nah, we gotta drive ya.”

I considered this. I didn’t want to get into a car with The Phin’s guys, let them take me wherever they wanted, and I was pretty confident they could be handled. I’d known Mo and his brother for years, and their pressure points were pretty standard stuff. But if I did that, the Phin would likely send a dozen guys and would make a point of tagging me for disrespect, and it would get complicated.

“All right,” I said, stepping forward.

The old man was at one of his restaurants in Brooklyn; we had a scenic ride over the Williamsburg bridge, lights twinkling. The place had been shut down for code violations a few months ago and Phin didn’t seem to be in any rush to get it going again; he’d been using it as one of his meeting spots. Phin didn’t have an office or a regular place; he moved around all day, doing business over breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every cup of coffee and glass of wine in-between. You didn’t like it you could shut the fuck up.

The place was officially closed, but a bartender and waiter were on duty, just standing there in their white shirts and black trousers, patient with their only customer. Phin wasn’t eating, just lingering at the bar over a tiny glass of something dark and ominous-looking, five of his goons standing around burning cigarettes and giving the big man space. I was left in the doorway and waited politely to be noticed and gestured over, so as not to get everyone excited.

“You look positively exhausted, kid,” he said in his damp, flattering way as I bellied up to the bar. “What can I get you?”

“Coffee,” I said. “Hold the water. Just give me the grounds to suck on.”

Phin laughed, sticking his little pink tongue out between his teeth. “That bad, huh?”

I nodded. “I haven’t had to work for a living in a long time, Phin.” I watched him pick up a teacup and sip daintily, this old fat bastard wearing five thousand dollar shoes and a coat you could stake a mortgage on, surrounded by guys who would break both my legs if ordered to, no questions asked.

The bartender set a cup of black coffee in front of me, a second short glass of dark wine in front of Phin.

“Word is you’ve got Falken pickled up somewhere, and you ain’t sharing.”

I picked up my cup and pretended to take a sip, put it down, thinking. I hadn’t expected my possession of Falken to be secret for long, but this was setting fucking records. I realized I’d put myself in a windowless room surrounded by The Phin’s men, with nothing to negotiate with. I blamed lack of sleep.

Affecting calm, I shrugged. “Someone had to get to him.”

Phin nodded, not looking at me, hunched over the bar like the weight of the fucking world was piled on top of him. “Your boss,” he said gently, like he was afraid what the words might do in the air, “sold that debt today. Few hours ago.”

I blinked, cool, dry shock sprinkling down my back. Frank sold debts all the time, taking pennies on the dollar as a sure thing and handing a headache off to someone else. It wasn’t surprising. Except now that put me up against Frank McKenna—because I had Falken, and he’d sold the debt in good faith, and I’d be expected to turn the poor guy over to his new owner without complaint.

I didn’t think Rachel was gonna like that.

“Who bought it?” I asked. It was a stupid question, because it wasn’t any of my fucking business, but I was stalling, letting my thoughts catch up.

Phin hesitated, then tilted his head a little. “No official word from that Catholic dungeon you call a club, but eyes on the scene say it was the cop. The black one. Detective James.”

I blinked again. James sometimes dabbled in dirty shit; he’d bought a few small debts in the past. This wasn’t a small debt. This wasn’t something a police officer could hide in his back pocket, and it wasn’t something his fellow cops could just ignore with a grin—this was serious loansharking, and it didn’t feel right. It didn’t make sense.

“That cocksucker’s worth a lot of dublooms to me, kid,” The Phin said after a moment. “You turn him out, you turn him over, there won’t be any left for me.”

I forced a laugh. “I don’t think that son of a bitch has any—”

The Phin turned and looked at me, his face pulled down in a terrible mask of anger, and he reached up and slapped me across the face. It was like a soft spring breeze had slapped me, but a waterfall of icy cold shock went through me anyway. The fat old man pushed a finger into my face. “Shut the fuck up before you fucking insult me. You turn the screws better ‘n anybody. I been nice to you, kid. Made you a good offer. Brought you in like a friend when I coulda had Mo hogtie you and strip you, bring you in like a side of beef. And you stand there and grin at me because you’ve got my fucking fatted pig in a poke somewhere and you’re gonna turn the screws on him and get all the fucking grease for yerself and yer Mick boss.” He shook his head. “No.” Slowly, he collapsed back into himself, becoming the dizzy old man I knew. The whole place was silent. I could hear the hairs on my face sizzling. Phin was breathing hard. “No, what yer gonna do is share ‘im out. I guarantee you a piece of him. You got my word on that.”

I shifted my weight a little. No one had frisked me on the way in, but everyone knew I didn’t carry a gun. I could hear men moving around behind me, shifting positions, but I didn’t turn to look. I kept smiling at Phin, partly because I was trying to sell innocence and partly because it was a soft spot he’d shown me, something that irritated him, and I enjoyed irritating him.

“You must be in deep on him,” I said slowly. He’d come selling me a job offer, and I’d been stupid enough to bite the flattery and think he really thought well of me. He was just sniffing around after Falken. “Jesus, Phin, how deep?”

He pounded a fist on the bar. “Tune ‘im up,” he snapped at the room in general, snatching up his glass and draining it in one wet gulp. Spinning away, he picked his hat up off the bar and strode off without looking at me. “Don’t kill him, but make him tell you everything, starting with the first cunt he sniffed in school and ending with where our man is right now.”

I looked at the bartender, a big guy with a gut that stuck out from him like he had something basketball-sized growing inside him. He had thin white hair, a blood-red nose, and a whispery white beard and mustache that drooped off his face, yellow at the edges. He looked back at me with wide eyes, terrified. I leaned forward a little.

“I’m about to get my ass kicked,” I said. “Can I get a double Wild Turkey, neat?”

He nodded without blinking, turned, pulled a full bottle off the shelf, and handed it to me wordlessly. I took it, unscrewed the top, and toasted him with it. “Gracias, mi amigo,” I said, and took a deep pull.

“Sorry about this,” I heard Mo say behind me. “Ain’t personal.”

I nodded, coughing a little. “Christ,” I said, turning to face them. “I know that.”

There were five of them, Mo and Mike and three others, hispanics with long pony tails tied back from their faces, the Puerto Rican flag tatted on the sides of their necks. The Puerto Ricans didn’t apologize, but they didn’t look like it meant anything to them, either. I put the cork back in the bottle and gave it a tap with my fist. I held it up. “Not for nothin’, guys, but the first one into my airspace is getting this on the head.”

Michael came first, ducking down and trying to get his shoulder into my belly. I twitched my ass to the left and let him smack his head into the bar with some fucking prejudice as I swung the bottle up with a sweeping motion, smashing it against Mo’s head and knocking the poor stupid son of a bitch off his feet. The bottle disintegrated in my hand and sliced it all to hell all over again, deep hot pain lancing up my arm, blood welling up and making my grip slick. I felt a humming inside me, like I was a well-maintained engine of a classic car, all the moving parts oiled and perfectly cut, precise.

Two of the Puerto Ricans got my arms and pushed me back against the bar with the third one coming up the middle with a blackjack in one hand and bored, bland expression on his face. When he stepped into my sphere of fucking influence I used his two friends as anchors and lifted myself up a little, kicking him sharp in the nose and making him stagger back, bloodied and cursing. My shoulders and wrists ached and my hand throbbed and I couldn’t help but smile through it all. I was fucking alive.

With a sudden jerk, I tore my uninjured arm away from the guy on my left, spinning myself around and pulling his buddy down to the floor. The silence was shattered, now; there was yelling and moaning—some of that was me. I rolled my new friend until I was on top of him. He punched me in the face, opening up the cut over my eyes again, blood seeping down into my vision, but I hung onto him and slammed my head down onto his nose. I loved breaking noses. So fucking easy, and so rewarding—visceral, the cracking cartilage, the spurting blood. And most people howled when you did it, giving it some lung.

This guy didn’t howl. He punched me again, his fist like a wedge of granite, making my head ring, my vision swim. I brought my head up again, ready to smash it into his face until he quit punching me. Then someone hit me over the head with a barstool.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

12.

“I’m not speaking to you. Just so we’re clear.”

I nodded. “Duly noted.”

Rachel let us walk in peace for another few seconds.

“I promised him you wouldn’t hurt him,” she said fiercely.

I nodded again. “Actually, you promised him I would be reasonable, and fuck, I’m being so reasonable it hurts.” I glanced at her sideways. “The Bumble’s not going to hurt him. He’s just keeping a pin in him, make sure he doesn’t disappear again.”

“Billy Bumbles is not going to hurt him,” she spat. “Billy hurts people when he coughs.”

I tried a bright smile as we crossed the slick, empty street that ran perpendicular to mine, streetlights spilling dulled orange light. The Bumble wasn’t a complex, unpredictable tool: he could be trusted to do what I asked of him and no more or less. Falken was about as safe as any man who owed that much money to the wrong people could be.

“Trust me, Rache,” I said, leading her to the low stone wall separating the backyard garden of the corner building from the sidewalk. “You’re the one made deals in my name without consulting me. Don’t fucking complain about the manner in which I honor them.”

She didn’t comment on that. “Why the fuck are we going to your apartment?”

“I’m buying time. Go around front and wait outside. If anyone looks like they’re looking for me shows up, stall.”

“What?”

“I’ll meet you around front in a few minutes.”

“Why are you buying time?” She asked, putting her hand son her hips again. “Aren’t you immortal?”

I tolled my eyes. “You don’t believe that horseshit any more than I do. Now go on. I promise you, I’m trying to find a solution to all this. But I need time.”

She nodded, softer than I’d expected, and turned to go. I watched her walk for a moment, knowing that if she caught me ogling I’d be in dutch. Then I put my hands on the surprisingly warm, painted stone and pulled myself up and over the low wall, landing awkwardly in the dense, fragrant garden. The corner building’s basement apartment was inhabited by a cheery, crazy old woman and her sullen, crazy son, both fat as pears waddling around, doing half-assed superintendent work in return for reduced rent and drinking lite beer in surprising, disturbing quantities on the front steps just about any night it wasn’t cold or wet. She was a waste of time, generally, except for the magnificent garden she kept in the back, toiling over it every day. I was sad, sometimes, thinking that someday the old bat would die and her son would let the garden rot and wither.

I crossed the garden and scaled the sagging chain-link fence on the other side, hidden behind an aggressive and strangely sticky-feeling wall of ivy. The next yard over was a neat, clean concrete box with a drain in the exact center. No furniture, no plants, nothing. The wall between it and my building’s back yard was about ten feet high, but someone had embedded thick eyehooks into the blocks, creating a precarious ladder up to the top. The drop into my own backyard was a little frightening, all the dark, overgrown weeds and trees, but I managed to not twist an ankle. From there it was an easy climb up the rusting fire escape to my bedroom window, and then I was back inside my tossed apartment without anyone knowing.

Whoever had tossed my place had found the cutout in the closet floor, probably within seconds of entering the place, but all it revealed was an empty wooden pit. I leaned down and pushed down hard on the bottom of the pit and the wooden panel clicked and came loose, revealing a second box beneath it. I fished out one of the duffel bags hidden in the cool, damp darkness underneath, and pulled two plastic-wrapped cubes of cash from it. Then the bag went back down, I pounded the panel back into place carefully, and slipped the bricks of money into my coat pockets, twenty grand. Then it was back out the window and back the way I’d come, dusting myself off on the sidewalk and straightening my cuffs before swinging around the corner and waving to Rachel. She looked radiant, a tiny sexpot in tight jeans giving me her Pursed Lips of Doom.

“What the fuck—”

“Sorry I kept you waiting. Let’s go up. I need a shower and a change of clothes, and then I’ll take you to breakfast.”

She didn’t want breakfast. She wanted to stand in my ruined kitchen for twenty minutes telling me I was an asshole, and then she called a cab and left. It was a pretty typical date for me and Rachel: Abuse, no touching, me groggy and covered in silt.

I took a shower with my shoes on the bathroom floor, stepping into them to walk through the ruin of the place to my bedroom, where I spent a distressing twenty minutes trying to find a shirt that didn’t look like someone had used it as a towel recently. I’d fallen behind on my dry cleaning. And my housekeeping. And my dance lessons.

Dressed, I called and checked in with The Bumble, who reported that Falken didn’t seem to like him very much but wasn’t causing any trouble. Then, still damp from the shower, I caught a cab downtown to Rowdy’s to have breakfast, careful on the steep stairs down into the basement of 86 Barrow Street. Dumb Benny was working the door, and greeted me with his wet, toothless smile and an awkward, unwanted hug. But Dumb Benny was an avalanche of a man, sixteen tons of jovial weight, and in enclosed spaces you did whatever Dumb Benny wanted you to do.

Inside, I walked quickly through four small, empty rooms that appeared to be dust-filled and long-unused, emerging into the subdued din of Rowdy’s gaming room. It was a low-ceilinged affair with no windows and poor ventilation, six round poker tables, a bar, and about twenty men and women playing cards with the sort of grim, loveless determination usually reserved for hunger strikes.

Clarence was behind the bar, thin and Filipino and happy enough to see me. I ordered steak and eggs and a Belgian-style beer. Rowdy’s kitchen was a secret; it only existed for a select few. They made their eggs light and fluffy with a pinch of Adobo and Rowdy’s cousin was a butcher. The steaks were fucking gorgeous.

“My credit here still good?” I asked Clarence as I lit a fresh cigarette. I didn’t want to pay for breakfast by breaking open a brick of hundred dollar bills like some asshole kid trying to impress everyone. Not to mention advertising, in a room filled with criminals, that I was flush. I’d been awake forever and felt scratchy.

Clarence nodded, pouring beer from an amber bottle expertly. “Sure, sure,” he said, grinning. Clarence grinned a lot. It was almost a permanent expression.

That was good. Aside from breakfast, it meant Frank hadn’t queered me on the street, cutting me off. It wouldn’t make sense for him to do that, since I owed him money and to get money I needed to work, but Frank was a vindictive bastard, sometimes. Sometimes he just liked flexing his muscle on you.

As I ate, I puffed my cigarette and considered. Falken said he didn’t have the money, and I believed him; if he had resources he wouldn’t have been hiding with the roaches in a basement. No one who borrowed money from Frank had money, that was the point. But you could get money out of them. It was amazing how people found money, people who’d felt compelled a few weeks earlier to go to Frank McKenna and put up with his bad jokes and acrid cologne to beg for money. You pressed their pressure points hard enough and they found old friends to touch, valuables to sell, houses to mortgage. People didn’t borrow from Frank when they had no resources, they borrowed from Frank when they didn’t want to liquefy the resources they had. My job was to clarify that for them. So I considered Falken to still be an okay risk, and I was going to hang onto him until I figured out how to squeeze him without breaking my word to Rachel.

I considered Rusch and Doira and Falken and their crazy story: Multiple universes, our doubles running around—Dopplegangers, my old grandad would have called ’em in his thick accent. Graps, I’d called the skinny dried-up old drunk, and that was the only thing he’d ever taught me, that one word. Bullshit, had to be, but they sold it. When I’d been a kid, I’d joined the Boy Scouts for all of two weeks, on my Dad’s insistence, seeking to socialize me or something. I’d gone on a weekend camping trip, nothing major, just a bunch of shitbag kids in a state park getting dirty water diseases and mud in their underwear. The older kids had a hazing tradition, and all the new kids were given chores as we set up camp; mine was to go around to the other campsites and ask for a gallon of striped paint. I was a kid, I was an asshole, I spent an hour going from camp to camp asking for striped paint. When I finally figured it out I went after all of them at once, just kicking and punching, and I’d broken two noses, knocked five teeth loose, and cracked a half dozen ribs before two adults pulled me off them.

What I remembered, aside from the sweet happiness of beating on the motherfuckers, was the completely straight faces they’d had when sending me on my way. They sold it, and I’d believed it, and Rusch and Falken and Doira had the same game faces on when they started in about Quantum Terminals and shit.

I spent a pleasant few seconds imagining what I would do to each of them if it turned out they were lying to me. Then I snuffed my cigarette, swallowed the last of my beer, and thanked Clarence. With my bricks of cash weighing me down, I headed over to the Templar Social Club. Traffic was a snarl because the President was in town, speechifying at the United Nations on some atrocity that had occurred in Bogota the other day, so I walked.

Bob was working the door, dressed in the same flashy leather duster and smoking the same pack of cigarettes, it seemed. His round, bald head was turning an angry shade of red. I guessed he’d never heard of sunblock, or he didn’t think you could get skin cancer when it was cold out. As I approached he adjusted his stance to block the door, and I stopped in honest shock.

“Mornin’,” he said, looking at my neck. “Can I help you?”

I swallowed my urge to hook my fingers into his nostrils and pull. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. “We met already, a few nights ago,” I said.

He shrugged, in a worse mood. “Gotta frisk you, first.”

It was him not looking at my face that did it. Just being a little shit I could handle, but being a little shit and not even looking me in the face was fucking irritating. I shook my head. “You touch me, and I’ll break all ten fingers. Right here.”

That brought his fat, round face up. Big guy. Blubber, but big, sort of guy who filled doorways and crowded rooms. You could outrun him, dance away, but if he got you cornered he could smother you, and he was used to it. He rolled his shoulders and stepped forward. “Just—”

I stepped into him and kneed him in the balls, hard, the easiest move in the world. He tried to crumple up, protect himself, but I caught him under the left shoulder and took hold of his wrist, spinning behind him and bending his arm backwards, my knee in the back of his, sending him into a gasping kneeling position with me on his calves. I took hold of his pinky with my free hand.

“You remember me next time, yeah?” I said, and with a jerk snapped it back until it broke, the sharp sound making me giddy, a rush of pleasure sweeping through me. I could feel him struggling senselessly, could feel his howl through the clothes and our skin. Could sense his heart rate climbing, dangerous, the delicious quiver of his bones under all that thick, red flesh.

He was making an odd huffing noise, wet and vocal, and I realized after a moment’s concentration that he was trying to say yes.

“Good,” I said, and with a thrill I took hold of his ring finger.

“Well, Jesus fucking Christ, it’s the prodigal son,” Frank bellowed when he looked up from the desk. “Come on in. Have a drink.”

I sailed in, floating, feeling like I’d just come in from a body massage, or a fucking orgy. Alive and flushed. Chino was the only one in the office with Frank this time, and we nodded at each other quick and then ignored ourselves. Chino in his untucked dress shirt, even untucked not loose enough to obscure his gut.

Frank put a bottle of Bushmill’s on the desk with his fingers in two old glasses. I didn’t think he ever washed them, and hoped to hell the alcohol killed whatever might be trying to make a living on them. He poured sloppy fingers into each and handed it over to me; we clinked our glasses, spilling some onto the desk, and drank.

“I was worried you might never be seen again,” he said, putting the bottle up.

I frowned. “Over a fucking debt?” I blew air out through my lips. “Fuck that. Time comes, you can break my legs, I won’t holler.” I pulled a thick manilla envelope out of my pocket and dropped it on the desk. “Brings me current on Falken.”

Frank studied me, then leaned forward and picked up the envelope without looking at it, holding it up for Chino to take. The fat Puerto Rican tore the envelope open and began counting, fast, holding up random notes to the light.

“I’m surprised,” Frank said slowly, leaning back.

I put a smile in place. “What? That I’m keeping current or that I didn’t run?”

He shook his head. “That you couldn’t squeeze it out of him.” He grinned, pointing at me. “You’re goin’ soft.”

“We’re good,” Chino said flatly, dropping the restuffed envelope back onto the desk.

I nodded and stood up. I kept the grin in place and wished for another shot. “By the way,” I said, turning for the door. “You’re gonna need a new doorman. The one you have is broken.”

Time: It never came fucking cheap.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

11

Somehow I ended up with Doira, the redhead, sitting in the back seat with The Bumble pretending we didn’t exist, which he was good at. The Bumble, I was convinced, believed we all disappeared every time he closed his eyes, or that we at least relaxed, going out of character, smoking cigarettes and talking shop, waiting for him to come back to us. It wasn’t egotism, it was simplicity: The only thing The Bumble understood was himself. The rest of us were perplexing.

“Why is she so sure Falken’s here?” I asked, making conversation. The actual process behind the good doctor’s intuition didn’t matter to me.

“Why is she so sure you won’t kill him if he is?” she asked without looking at me. Her voice was sharp and nasal, but there was a grit to it that would be sexy if she took it down a pitch and breathed a little into her words. One of my first jobs for Frank had been security for whores, driving them around, busting noses when guys got too frisky or wouldn’t pay. The whores all talked that way to their customers. To me it was their real voices.

I studied the freckles on her neck. The woman was made of freckles, like she would explode into a million pieces if you hit her the right way. “Because I said I wouldn’t.” I looked out the window at the wet street. “Of course, my promise was based on Dr. Rusch’s word that Falken would have the nut, and be willing to pay it out to me.”

I felt her turning to look at me. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I pretended to brood over the shitty weather.

“You just found out you’re an amazingly rare event in the history of the universe,” she said steadily, biting her words off so fiercely I felt bad for her boyfriends, past, present, and future, “and all you care about is money?”

“You know what else is an amazingly rare event?” I said, turning to look back at her. “Me hitting a woman in the face. But, it happens.”

She snorted through her nose and looked at the back of The Bumble’s head.

She was my hostage, though I was pretty sure she didn’t know it. Rusch and Rachel had gone into the place—an old sagging brownstone in The Village, under renovation, everything roped off and boarded up, permits slapped everywhere like wallpaper—to go scare up Falken and talk him into coming out to have a word with me. Rusch assured me Falken had thought I was with the other Rusch, the one trying to kill everyone, that’s why he ran. If I’d been dealing with anyone with a brain and some balls, it would have been a hostage swap—Rachel for the Ginger, everyone behaves and no one gets hurt. But since I didn’t see Rusch as a threat to Rache, I was in charge, even if the only one who realized it was me.

“Ask you a science-y kind of question?” I said, leaning slightly towards her. She smelled nice. Not pretty, but not unattractive, really. Sturdy was the odd word that came to mind when I looked at her. I was starting to think I might ask to buy her a drink, if she ever got over hating my guts.

She sighed, but didn’t say anything.

“Falken—how’d he just disappear? I chased him into a room with no windows and just one door. I saw him go in. And then I get in there seconds later, and he’s gone.”

“You got the part where each alternate universe is different, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, right?”

“Sure,” I said, nodding, going along with it. “Like, in one universe the World Trade Center burns down, or the Red Sox win the world series, or something else incredible.”

She gave one curt nod. “Okay, sometimes it’s a single concrete thing like that, but every time something happens there are consequences. Like in one universe you get hit by a train when you’re fifteen, riding a motorcycle drunk, and because you’re dead, all the people you’ve hurt or killed in your life don’t get hurt or killed, and maybe one of them cures cancer.”

I kept my face straight. I’d almost been killed by a train when I was fifteen. I’d come within seconds. A cold feeling seeped into my bones.

“So, this Falken, this version of Falken, comes from a universe where knowledge of the alternates is common, and exploited. He can move between them. That’s why he ran, when they came for him. So when you came for him, he … went elsewhere. Another version of that room, a version where you weren’t on the other side of the door.”

My head was aching. “Uh-huh. Glad I cleared that up.” It made sense to me, in a Saturday-morning cartoon kind of way. Falken had come to our little pond in the multiverse trying to hide from Alt Rusch’s murderous intentions, and had come to our Rusch because he figured the professor might be able to help. It was fucking confusing. And she wondered why I chose to concentrate on my money. At least money made sense. I looked at the back of The Bumble’s head.

“What do you think, Billy?”

He grunted. “I think we’re workin’ fucking hard for this debt, boss.”

I grinned and looked at Doira. “He’s right.”

She gave me a snort.

People were emerging from the basement apartment of the brownstone: one, two, three. I recognized Rachel’s tiny frame and watched them approach the car. I kept my eyes on Rache; I was surprised she’d stuck around this long, stayed involved, but appreciated it, and if anything was wonky I knew I could trust her to give me a sign.

Rusch and Falken followed her. Falken looked a little worn-out; the dandy I’d found in McHales looked tired and wrinkled. He was wearing the same suit as before, and had a stunned, glazed look on his face. I looked from Rachel to him and back as they approached. I wondered if he’d run for it, and was prepared to let him; there was nothing more ridiculous that me chasing someone through downtown New York at two in the morning. I had my dignity to protect.

He didn’t run. Rachel stopped a few feet away and indicated the car, and I rolled down the window, staying in the car to reassure him. I didn’t care about intimidating him or being tough. I wanted my money, Frank’s money, and if Falken was going to hand it over I was prepared to be polite.

“Evening,” I said, giving him a smile. “No hard feelings, huh?”

He hesitated, looking first at Rusch, who gave him a motherly, encouraging nod, and then at Rachel, who smiled warmly at him in a way she never did at me, hardening my heart towards Mr. Falken, who, I reminded myself, was a deadbeat I had every right to tune up to my black heart’s content.

She looked at me, the traces of that smile misting away. “I promised him your hands would stay in your pockets.”

I smiled. “What if I have an itch?”

She shook her head. “Don’t fuck with me.”

I looked back at Falken. “All right,” I said. “My hands stay in my pockets. We can talk like fucking animals or you can switch places with Doira here and we’ll talk like civilized men. Or we can go somewhere, have a drink. You could have people around, make you feel safer.”

He stared at me. “People? Jesus. Safer?”

Rachel was shaking her head anyway. “He’s not getting in the car with you and Billy.”

I glanced at her again, getting a little irritated. She was presuming a lot on our friendship, on our deal. I got the feeling she thought the balance of power was permanently in her favor. I’d have to think on that and make sure she understood otherwise, my promise notwithstanding. Then I smiled at Falken again.

“Look, it’s up to you. I’ll do this any way you want. Tell me how you want to talk, and let’s talk. Hands in pockets, I promise.”

He looked around. A night or two spent living in an empty, gutted house breathing drywall dust and listening to the roaches scamper over the concrete would make anyone tired. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll get in the car.”

Rachel opened her mouth, then thought better of it and shrugged. She’d known the man for five minutes. If he was going to be, in her opinion at least, an idiot, she wasn’t going to stand in his way. It was a stupid thing to do, really, except that I’d given my word. But he didn’t know me. Stupid.

I looked at Doira. “Do you mind, honey?”

“Jesus,” she sneered, opening her door. “You’re a walking stereotype, you know that?”

I shrugged, examining her ass as she stepped out, and thought that at least my entire ensemble didn’t retail for twenty-seven dollars, total, at a local Rainbow Shop.

Falken slipped into the seat a moment later, pulling the door shut. I rolled up my window, and we were snug, the outside world nicely muted.

“You’re a hard bastard to track down,” I said. “You’ve caused me a lot of fucking trouble.”

He snorted. “You? Listen, man, those bastards are trying to erase me. Or I’m trying to erase me. You know what it’s like to have someone want you dead, to hunt you?”

I nodded. “Sure. Sure I do. I work with deranged, violent people, Mr. Falken.”

He shook his head. “Not like this. Not just me. Every version of me. Someone hunting me down in every universe, erasing me.”

I nodded again, trying to be friendly. “The whole quantum whatsit thing.”

“Yes,” he said, and got quiet. We sat in companionable silence for a moment. “Can you imagine, yourself—you—trying to kill yourself, to murder yourself, so you can be immortal?”

I thought about it, and shrugged. “Why not. It’s not you. It’s some mope who looked like you, maybe has your taste in clothes. It’s not you. Only you are you.”

“That sounds kind of philosophical.”

I sighed. “You want to hold my hand, take a long walk on the beach, get me drunk and fuck me at some dim motel, Mr. Falken? We going on a date here, spend a few hours discussing our inner turmoils and regrets while Billy Bumbles here plays the fiddle real slow and heartachy?” I rolled my shoulders, trying to work out a persistent, stabbing discomfort that had plagued me ever since my loading dock adventure with the Worst Kidnappers in History. “I’m here to collect the money you owe, Mr. Falken. I understand you thought I worked for Dr. Rusch’s evil twin and wanted to murder you. A misunderstanding. Now that you know I am merely a representative of Mr. Frank McKenna, from whom you borrowed a large amount of money, be kind enough to bring your fucking account fucking current and let me get on with my fucking life.” I turned to look at him. “Okay?”

He stared back at me, eyes wide, face slack and shadowed. “Jesus, I’m not here to pay you,” he said, sounding panicked. “I don’t have the goddamn money.”

I blinked. “Then why are you meeting me?” A small spark of joy sprang into life in my belly, and I imagined myself breaking his thumbs, justified and free from Rachel’s disapproval.

He looked straight ahead, and put a hand up to his face as he sank down in the leather seats. “I thought you were going to protect me.”

I looked at him, then turned my head and smiled through the window at Rachel, who stood on the sidewalk with her arms crossed under her boobs, scowling. “Well,” I said, giving her a little nod, cheerful, “you thought wrong.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

10.

I’d had guns pointed at me before, but the trigger never got pulled. Guns were everywhere in my line of work, and assholes produced them regularly. It was the Asshole Punctuation Mark, really; whenever they felt like you weren’t paying them the proper attention, they put a gun in their hands for emphasis. But throwing bullets around had consequences—I worked for Frank McKenna, and even if I hadn’t been one of his best earners he would retaliate against any bullets thrown my way pretty harshly, just as a matter of policy. If you didn’t get the sign-off from someone up the food chain, bullets had a way of coming back at you.

I stared at Rusch; she was eying me like I was on fire. “We’re gonna perform a scientific experiment, doc,” I said, struggling to cvontrol myself. The bitch had shot at me. I felt light and nimble, every chemical my brain had at its disposal dumped liberally into my bloodstream. I knew I’d be sore and stiff tomorrow—not from exertion, but from overdrive. “We’re going to see if you can convince me not to punish you for that. I don’t like your odds.”

Rusch straightened up and looked wide-awake, finally, her eyes wide, her face hot and red. “I can explain!” She said. “Let me explain!”

I realized someone was hitting me in the back. It was like a soft drizzle of rain. I turned my head and the redhead was there, tiny, beating her little fists against me. As I looked at her she hit me in the face a few times, like a gnat crashing into a window pane. I took one hand and put it on her head, and with a light shove sent her flying into the sink.

Then, suddenly, Rachel was there next to me, her arms akimbo, her face dark and red.

“Stop it!” She said steadily. “Stop it.”

A cold flash swept through me. I frowned down at her. “She shot at me,” I complained.

“Let her speak,” she commanded, actually stomping her foot. “Jesus fucking Christ, let her explain.”

I clenched my teeth. “She—”

Rachel stood up on her tip-toes and slapped me across the face, making my cheek sting and my eyes water. I whipped my head back and stared at her in amazement.

“You brought me into this,” she said. “I am not going to stand here and watch you beat another person to death right in front of me.”

I stared down at her, my throat working, my arms trembling. She was four-feet eleven inches tall in skintight jeans and shiny leather boots, but she stood there with her lip out and her chest pointed at me like she was certain of besting me in a fight. Which, considering I’d promised to never touch her, she probably would.

With a snarl, I spun away and punched a nice round hole in the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom. Turning back, I wiped my face with my hand, still trembling, and glanced at the front doorway. My neighbor, Mr. Mittra, was peering at me from his own door, his face, as usual, heavily lined and very brown and completely unreadable.

“Mind your business, Mr. Mittra,” I said between breaths. He jumped a little and shut his door. I figured the cops would be here in about three minutes.

I turned and looked at the girl, who lay on the floor with her back against the sinkbase, staring at me. I swallowed bile and stepped over to her, holding out a hand.

“All right,” I said thickly. “Sorry about that. But you were hitting me.”

She stared at my hand and then up at me. After a moment, I pulled my hand back and looked at Rusch and Rachel. The professor had recovered her posture and sleepy look. Rachel looked like a diamond was about to pop out of her ass.

“I’m pretty sure my neighbor just called the cops,” I said slowly, feeling slow and thick. “Let’s get out of here and … talk.”

Rachel nodded. “It’s okay,” she said to Rusch. “He won’t do anything else.” She paused, biting her lip. “Just don’t shoot at him any more.”

Pirelli’s Diner was an ancient box of greasy laminate and cracked vinyl. It had a thick, sticky menu showing faded pictures of all sorts of interesting food no one had ever ordered. I’d never actually eaten anything solid in the place, wanting to remain alive. I ordered surprisingly good coffees and used their ashtrays.

I sat on the inside corner of the booth, smoking, a cup of coffee going cold in front of me, my arm stretched out along the back of the booth, an inch away from Rachel’s neck. There was air between us, but I could feel her warm and soft there anyway. Rusch and her girl sat across from us. The doctor had ordered a slab of cherry pie with ice cream, and I stared at her in amazement as he devoured it happily, like he hadn’t been terrified half an hour before.

Snuffing my cigarette out, I leaned forward, carefully snaking my arm out from behind Rachel without touching even a strand of hair. “All right, Doc—let me apologize for losing my temper. But my temper’s short, and you did fire a gun at me.”

She nodded, suddenly jolly, and dropped her fork to pick up a napkin and wipe her lips carefully. “I do understand, I assure you. I apologize for the trick. I assumed if I asked you would not consent to the experiment.”

I kept my face still. “And if the experiment had gone badly?”

She shook her head, wincing a little. “No, no, no—impossible. I am almost certain of your quantum status. I’ve been working with this research for thirty years—ever since I received tenure.” Her face darkened peevishly for a moment. “The university hasn’t let me teach a class in years. They think I’m crazy. But I still have access to the facilities, and I have been working on my research, alone. Quite alone.” She sighed, then blinked and looked at me. “I had done my due diligence on you and was certain of my findings, but I required a definitive test. I knew the gun would not fire.”

I considered the odds of four or five misfires in a row, then a clean shot, then another two misfires. Certainly not impossible, but unlikely. “And if it fucking had?”

She stared at me for a few seconds, her face blank. “I—I admit I did not have a fallback scenario in mind.”

“We would have run,” the redhead said calmly. “You’re a criminal. The police would have assumed you were rubbed out by some other criminal. Can I have a cigarette?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Rubbed out? Did you really just say that without irony?” I tugged my pack out of my shirt pocket, took one out for myself, and tossed it onto the table along with the matchbook. “What’s your name, darling?” I said, leaning back and sticking the cigarette into my mouth.

She just gave me a sour look while she picked up the cigarettes, examining them with a frown, but Rusch gave me a wincing grin. “Forgive Doira. She has been my research assistant for many years, and she is protective. And she knows I dislike cigarette smoke.”

The redhead rolled her eyes.

I smiled and turned my head to look out the window. The BMW sat in a shadowed corner of the parking lot, The Bumble’s squat form a blur in the driver’s seat. I was kind of relieved to have him there.

I looked back and nodded at Rusch. “You were saying?”

She paused, a pie-laden fork halfway to her mouth. Slowly, she set the fork down and cleared her throat.

“In small words,” I said, taking the matches Doira had dropped back on the table. “See if you can get through it in about thirty seconds.” I jerked my thumb at Rachel. “She’s the only thing keeping me polite right now.”

She looked at Rachel and then back at me. “Very well. As we discussed, observ—alternate universes. Yes, let us use that term.” She placed her fork on the table between us and pointed at the top. “Let us say here is our timeline. You and I, moving forward through time.” She traced a finger up the stem of the fork slowly. “You understand, I am criminally misstating the actual science.”

“Better than getting a bone broken,” I suggested, and Rachel turned to glare at me, adorable.

Rusch continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Every second, every nanosecond, you and I, everyone, face decisions, yes? Coffee or tea, pie or cake, smoke or abstain, yes? At the moment of decision, every possible outcome exists, because you have not made the decision yet.” She glanced up at me. “Clear?”

I sent a gale of smoke into the world. “As … mud.”

She winced again, as if my words caused her physical harm. “An example: You could stop smoking that cigarette at any time. Any second, you could crush it into the ashtray. Every second, a world exists where you do crush out that cigarette. And this world, where you do not, also exists. Every second, universes split off, every conceivable possibility, infinite decisions and actions and non-actions from around the world, spinning off.” Her finger had reached the tines of the fork, crusted with pie and ice cream, and she spread the fingers of her hand. The skin on the back of her hand was thin and mottled by the blue veins beneath, ropy, sinuous. “In each of these universes, you exist. Or perhaps you do not—the actions of another person, or the inanimate chance of natural happenings, may have destroyed you, or caused you to not exist in the first place. Yes?”

I nodded, more for effect than anything else. “Okay, so every time I make a choice, there’s another me out there. Maybe. At any rate, a lot of mes running around breaking bones out there.”

She hesitated. “Well … let us leave it at that. Except that the other “yous” may not resemble you very much, depending. Certainly, at the moment of divergence, perhaps you are identical. But if you diverged thirty years ago, or in the womb, say, you may be very different people.” She picked up the fork again. “At any rate, I do not believe there are any other yous out there.”

I blinked. “Why is that?”

“You are what I term a Quantum Terminus.”

I smiled. “Oh, I am going to like this.”

She grinned back at me as if she believed me, as if I hadn’t terrorized her just a moment before. “Perhaps you will. As I said, every divergence can create an … alternate version of you. Again, the terms are not precise, but … However, there are not infinite versions of you. You may die. You may never be born at all in a divergent timeline. However, because of the splitting of timelines—consider: Every time you are in danger of dying, there exists one possible world where you die, and one where you live. As a result,” she hesitated suddenly, then leaned forward and spoke in a rush. “There exists, always, one version of a given person who does not die. Ever. Every time they face the possibility of death, they are the version that lives. Forever.”

I blinked. “What?”

“She’s saying you’re immortal,” Rachel said, in the same tone of voice as if she’d said I was fat, or smelled bad.

Rusch shrugged apologetically. I realized I kind of enjoyed her talking, and thought she was probably a good professor. “Yes.” She leaned forward again. “Imagine this: You sit in front of a gun fitted with an automatic trigger that randomly either fires or does not fire, every second. Each second, the possibility is that the gun fires and kills you, or does not. Thus in every second you split into two: One dies, one lives. Each split then also faces the next second, and splits in turn. Eventually you end up with one version that survives every second. This version is the Quantum Terminus, because it goes on. Forever.” She relaxed, picking up the fork again. “This is why the gun misfires when I point it at you. You are the last of, well, you. In every scenario where you choose between living and dying, you live.”

She plunged the fork into her pie and held it up between us for a moment, gesturing at me with a dollop of cherry filling and vanilla ice cream. “You’re immortal.”

I considered that for about five seconds, then leaned forward and held my cigarette up in front of my face, pretending to examine it closely. “Doc, I didn’t hear the name Falken once in that speech. And you know how that irritates me.”

Rusch actually seemed amused, still holding the pie in front of her face. “He’s not immortal, but there’s a version of him—an alternate him—that wants to be.”

I shifted my eyes from the coal to her face. “And how does he do that?”

Rusch pushed the fork into her mouth. “By killing all the other versions of himself, of course.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF