As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

5. City Hall

Grissom looked up over his glasses. “You look good, Philly. Old. Shit, fucking old, but not as wetbrained as you were. Fit, kind of.”

Marks nodded. “I feel old. And I’ve been dry for a long time.” He paused, looked at his shoes, then forced himself to look back at Grissom. “Anything … anything I should apologize for, Gene?”

Grissom grinned. He was one of those men who came into his own when he’d grown old and gray. He was tall and thin, with a prominent nose and weak eyes that he’d compensated for with thick, black-rimmed glasses. As a kid he’d looked like a bird of some kind. As a man of sixty, he looked like a repository of wisdom. “No, Phil. Nothing personal. What can I do you for?”

Marks shifted uncomfortably. He hated missing so much of his life. He hated always groping in the dark, unsure, uncertain of the reception that awaited him.

“I have an address,” he said. “I’m just looking for anything you know about it. Anything unusual.”

Grissom smiled. “Nothing changes, huh, Phil?” He gestured around. “I’m in a cubical now, not an office. You remember my old office? I used to think it was so goddamn small. Now I’ve got half the space and no fucking ceiling, and I’m grateful for it. Local government ain’t what it used to be, huh? What’s the address?”

Marks slid a piece of notepaper over the desk. “It’s an apartment building. Low-rent, but not controlled. Seems like the landlord keeps the rents low on purpose, voluntarily, trying to attract the unemployed, the recently paroled, the desperate.”

Grissom glanced at the address. “The desperate, huh? Philly, you never change.”

“Compliment?”

Grissom laughed. “All right. I’ll dig up what I can. You sure got a way of convincing people to do what you want, huh, Philly? Always did. I’ll see what’s out there as far as tax records, all the usual stuff goes. I assume this is on the house as usual?”

Marks’ smile was faint. “I figured we’d look at it as payback for old times sake.”

Grissom’s return smile was stiff. “You look at it any way you like.”

.o0o.

“So what’s all this bullshit mean?”

Marks watched Dee stuff French fries into her mouth. He figured if her goal had been to grift him out of some free meals, mission accomplished. The diner was empty and silent except for the low music playing in the air, so low it was practically a hint of music, a homeopathic suggestion of music stemming from a single dissolved note.

He tapped the manila folder on the table between them. “Well, everything’s legal. The property’s owned and the taxes are paid by an LLC filed outside the country. Taxes get paid every three months. I haven’t been able to get much on the company, but that would likely take more time and money than we have. But—there isn’t supposed to be a building there.”

She cocked her head chewing. “What does that mean?”

“There’s no record of any permits being pulled on the lot. The taxes are for unimproved property. There’s every sign in the world that that address is just empty space. There can’t be a building there.”

“But there is.”

He nodded. “And that’s where I come in. Like I said, weird shit, it pulls me in, every time.”

She took a long swallow of soda. She was impressed. And something was swelling inside her, an emotion she couldn’t quite articulate. She’d assumed she was totally doomed; her mother was dead, her father had disappeared, she was hanging around a motel scrounging for scraps. She thought she knew how that story ended; she’d seen enough TV. And this strange man was saving her from it.

Marks thought she still looked skinny, like someone hadn’t been taking care of her. And she ate like someone who’d learned, like he had, that there was no guarantee of another meal coming in a few hours. “So what do we do?”

Marks smiled and nodded, glancing down. “I go there. See what’s what.”

“Why can’t I come?” she said, looking down into the shopping cart as she pushed. “What, I’m just gonna sit out in the parking lot, wait for you to come back?”

Marks sighed, scanning the shelves. “You can’t come because the things I do always go sideways. Always.” She thought he sounded happy. When she’d first seen him in the bar he’d been heavy, leaden, like a guy trapped under water but trying to run. Now he seemed lighter, more fluid, like he’d switched to swimming. “I once looked into a house someone was trying to sell because they couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and found a vampire trapped in the basement. I took a job following some guy’s wife once because he thought she was having an affair, and found out she was a clone, being used as … as something else.” He grimaced. “Point is, kid, things go sideways all the time, and if the floor’s gonna drop out from under this thing, I want you somewhere else.”

She turned to study him from the side, chewing her lips. After a moment she looked back at the shopping cart. “You sure you need all this stuff?”

“Did you hear the word vampire? I’d rather have a folding shovel and not need it than need one and not have it. Like I said: Sideways. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you can’t get into weird scrapes every single time like I do and then pretend it doesn’t happen.”

She nodded. The cart held the folding shovel, something she hadn’t imagined existed. It also held a roll of strong nylon rope, a battery-powered lantern and a flashlight, a multi-tool, a backpack, some matches, and two bottles of water and a handful of energy bars. It looked like he was going camping.

For Marks, the act of shopping felt subversive, insane. It had been a long time since he’d been able to just purchase the things he needed. Like the small, enclosed universe of his motel room, it felt luxurious and decadent even as he weighed each purchase in his mind, going over the pros and cons, the necessity of each one.

He pushed his hands into his pockets, contemplating largess, and smiling without realizing it.

“So, I just sit around the parking lot and wait?”

Marks dropped the bags on the table and took the backpack out, began filling it with his purchases. The walk from the bus stop with the bags had been longer than he remembered, and he was tired and grimy and sweaty. “Look, I might be back in a few hours. It might turn out to be a paperwork mistake. I might just find leads that send us somewhere else. I don’t know.”

She nodded. When he’d zipped up the backpack, he glanced up. She was standing in the kitchenette with her arms wrapped around herself, staring moodily at the floor. He sighed, and dug into his pocket, pulling out the remaining cash and counting it. He dropped it on the table.

“Hand me a knife.”

She didn’t move for a moment, then turned and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a butter knife and handing it to him. He sat down and worked the loose stitches of the lining with the knife until he was able to pull a slim pile of banknotes from within. He added it to the pile.

“That’s about a grand,” he said, standing up and peeling a few bills from the top. “I’m going to pre-pay a week’s rent. The rest you can use for food or whatever. Stay here and wait for me, you’ll be fine.”

He slung the backpack over his shoulder. He hesitated. She looked unhappy and alone, too-skinny and wearing the same clothes she’d had on when he met her. He didn’t know what else to do; he could either stay there and try to help her directly or he could look for her father. There wasn’t another choice. He didn’t have any experience of the sort of relationships that could be brought to bear on this. He didn’t have any relationships, just old grudges and debts he could occasionally parlay into assistance.

“If I’m not back in a week,” he said, slowly, pausing to actually contemplate the possibility. The strong possibility, he corrected himself. “Take whatever’s left and go back to your people. An aunt, an uncle. Anyone.”

She looked up suddenly, horrified. She scanned memories of heavyset women in floral dresses, heavyset men in loose-fitting suits, all of them at the hospital and the funeral, strangers. All of them somehow conveying the fact that she was somehow infected by her parents, a worrisome artifact of their shared genetic code. The idea of putting herself in their power was terrible. “My people?”

He shrugged. “Just a precaution.”

She seemed on the verge of tears. “You’re gonna leave me here alone.”

He swallowed. “You can’t come. Look, I’ll check things out. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, give you the full report. But you can’t come, even so. You see that, right? Look, I’m not sure what being the adult means. I don’t feel old, or wise. But I know on some instinctual level that part of it means you can’t come.” He shrugged the back over one shoulder and picked up his jacket. “So you stay here. Eat three meals a day. Don’t let anyone in. And I’ll be back to let you know what’s inside that house.”

She nodded, her eyes shining, her arms wrapped around herself. He hesitated, then turned and marched out the door. He felt like he was failing, somehow, like he was leaving her to certain doom. But he was the one heading into the unknown. She would spend a few hours eating pizza and watching TV, he told himself. Or he’d come back to a note that boiled down to thanks for the seven hundred bucks, asshole and that would be that.

.o0o.

Buses were running on late night schedules, so he waited a long time for one to arrive. He felt dirty as he rode, the backpack occupying the seat next to him, but city buses were the great camouflage of the world. No one noticed him, a middle-aged man with a scum of beard, wearing a suit that hadn’t been fresh in a very long time, his face pale and bloated and shadowed from poor nutritional choices and lack of sleep, carrying a bulging backpack. He was just one particle of desperation in a quantum system of desperation, indistinguishable.

It looked like a two-story, detached house that hadn’t been renovated in a long time. The old siding was dark green and looked mossy, moldy. The roof line was complex, with a lot of dormers and crazy angles. The yard was a jungle of tall, overgrown weeds, and it was surrounded by a low stone wall. It sat on the corner next to an empty lot, and seemed perfectly normal. A prominent FOR RENT sign had been affixed to the wall. It was dark and looked like no one was home, had been home for a long time, had ever been home.

Pushing through the wild growth that obscured the pavers leading from the sidewalk to the front door, Marks heard a scrape and turned to find Dee right behind him. He stared at her in surprise for a moment and then smiled. She smiled back.

“You ain’t the only one can ride a bus, Marks.”

“All right,” he said. Marks found his reaction impossible to describe, even to himself using his own peculiar inner language, but it landed positive. He was relieved, he thought, to have her there, because part of him had worried about her on her own, and even if she truly wasn’t safer with him, he’d grown used to having someone to talk to, a presence by his side. Selfish, he thought, but that’s how he felt. And there was no chance of getting rid of her now, anyway.

They walked up onto the sagging, rotten porch. It was peeling gray paint and a spongy give that seemed threatening, as if its bounce was a threat, subtle and grim. He looked at Dee and nodded.

“Remember: Sideways.”

She nodded back.

He examined the door. It was weathered and aged like the rest of the house, except for the fittings: The knob and knocker and hinges were bright, polished brass, as if they’d been installed the day before. He reached for the knocker, then frowned, leaning in. After a second’s delay, Dee stepped up and pushed the door inward. It slid silently on its hinges, darkness beckoning.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

4. The Starlight Motel

“So you never heard back from him?”

Dee shook her head, playing with her phone in the idle way kids did. He’d caught a glimpse of the screen earlier: A chess game, which was surprising to him for no good reason. Marks noticed that her fingernails were bitten down. That her hands were always in motion, fidgeting, wringing, tearing and folding and squeezing. That she looked at him with a surprising directness when she was sure of herself and looked at the floor when she wasn’t.

“Mom always told me he was no good, a junkie. Stole from everybody. Got in these rages, she said, would bust down doors.” Dee shrugged, tearing the cup into smaller and smaller slices. “I guess I was too young to remember. Then he went away, left town, and Mom always said we were better off without. Then, when Mom got sick, I got a letter from him.”

She didn’t say that sometimes she thought she did remember some of it. That sometimes she woke up terrified, and wanted to go hide in a very small, dark space she remembered and didn’t remember at the same time. She remembered how safe she felt in it, compressed and constricted, but she didn’t remember what the space had been, or where, or why she hid in it.

She glanced up. Marks sat relaxed against the soft booth, one arm outstretched along the back of the seat. If he still smoked he would have had a cigarette burning in his hand. For a fleeting second he missed it.

“An actual letter,” she said. “On paper. I was going to live with him. He’d gotten help, gotten straight, and he’d talked about it with Mom. It was all arranged. He didn’t come to the funeral because Mom’s people, my Aunts and Uncles, don’t like him. But he picked me up and drove us here and we took a room in the motel, and he went out the next day to check out this cheap apartment deal he’d heard about. And he never came back.”

She said this in a flat, matter-of-fact way that made Marks worry about her. “Was he sober? Your Dad?”

She nodded solemnly. “He showed me this little plastic disc he’d gotten. Six months.” She swallowed thickly. “I was proud of him.”

Marks nodded. “Sober’s the worst and most necessary thing a man can be,” he said.

“You sober?”

He nodded again. “I almost died. I had a thirst that wasn’t … entirely natural. And it almost killed me. Took years from me, years I still can’t remember. I lived for years and they’re just gone.” He startled and sat forward, focusing on Dee. “You play chess, huh?”

She blinked and looked at him, suddenly shy. She looked down at the table, setting the phone down as if ashamed. “Yeah,” she said. “My mother taught me. We used to play at night. She used to be really good. Chess club in school. She taught me the basics. I don’t remember too many openings, though. Queen’s Gambit, I always liked. Mom used to say she was a Queen, so all her openings were Queen openings.

Marks smiled. “I never played much. Could never think far enough ahead. Always fell into traps. Your Mom sounds like she was a thinker.”

Dee smiled and looked back at him. “I like that. Yeah, she was a thinker.”

There was a moment of odd silence. Marks cleared his throat. “You have the address your Dad went to?”

She nodded as their food arrived: Another hamburger for her, a triple-decker sandwich for him. The diner was a few hundred feet down the highway; walking there had been an adventure of cars zooming by, but Marks wanted to avoid the bar at the motel as much as possible. His dreams had been filled with images of people he didn’t remember and whiskey, oceans of it cascading over ice cubes, crisp and refreshing. He had a feeling he’d originally started drinking to forget, and it sure had worked.

“You taking my case?”

Marks blinked; the burger was already half gone. She was a skinny, long-legged thing who would be a heartbreaker in a few years, he thought. For the moment she was the hungriest living thing he’d ever seen.

“I’ll follow up,” he said, arranging his own plate how he liked, removing the toothpick, peeling back the toasted white bread on top and dumping the cole slaw on top of his sandwich. “I’ll ask a few questions. But you have to be prepared for bad news, for disappointment.” He didn’t say that it sounded like a normal missing persons case, without any sort of strange angle, making it outside his specialty. He also didn’t say that the odds were very good her Dad had taken the rent deposit money he’d saved and thought he could have just a nip of the hard stuff, to celebrate, and had disappeared down that hole again.

He looked up, and she was nodding gravely, and he felt like an asshole. She already was prepared for disappointment, wasn’t she? Had been for a long time, he thought.

They ate in silence for a while.

She felt the awkwardness but didn’t understand it. What had just happened? Old people were always like that, always grimacing and saying nothing when they could solve shit just by opening their damn mouths. “What happened to you?” she asked. “How’d Mr. Marks end up at the Starlight Motel off of Route One?”

Marks looked out the window, through the parking lot, out to the busy highway and the ugly, chipped and ruined concrete divider between the lanes. “I’m not totally sure,” he said. “I was always interested in … weird shit.” He caught himself and glanced at her, but the profanity didn’t bother her, and then he felt silly. “I was attuned to it. I stumbled across crazy things, things other people didn’t believe. So I started writing about what I found. There was an audience—not a big one—and I got a following. For a while I made a living. People would seek me out, ask me to look into things.” He looked back out the window. Dee studied him, chewing.

“At some point, I got into … something. I can’t remember. It’s like years of my life, stolen, gone. Since then, it’s like I can’t get any purchase. The world’s made of sand. Every time I try to grab onto something –” he made a vague gesture at the window, then looked back at the girl. “So, here I am at the Starlight Motel off of Route One. It’s like a sudden rock formation in the desert, and I’m clinging.”

She took a sip of her soda. “Shit, Marks, I should maybe be helping you.”

He snorted. “Address?”

She dug into her pockets and produced a scrap of newspaper, which she handed to Marks after a moment of hesitation. He unfolded it and read aloud, holding the paper out from himself.

“Apartments for rent. Very affordable. Special consideration given to those in need, those recovering from tragedy, those rebuilding their lives, and those who have nowhere else to turn. Rents commiserate with ability to pay. Please apply in person at 119 Mulland Street,” he glanced up at her, aware, suddenly, of his scruffy cheeks and stiff hair, the money sewn into his jacket lining making him feel heavy and graceless. “This was in the paper? You know which one?”

She pushed her empty plate away, and Marks glanced down and stared at it in amazement. “Didn’t even know there was papers,” she said. “But Dad was old, like you, so.”

Marks smiled, folding the scrap up and pushing it into his pocket. She stared at his sandwich until he grunted and slid it across to her. She picked up half and took an enormous bite and made a face.

“Nasty,” she said, and took another huge bite.

Marks counted his loose money in the bathroom, sweating, but left the rest of it in his jacket. He had four-hundred and fifteen dollars left not counting the bills in his jacket lining, which he was pretending didn’t exist. Thirty-five was due at the front office in the morning for rent. That left three-eighty, which he figured was plenty of walk-around money. He stuffed it back into his pocket.

“You can stay here,” he said, walking back into the room. Dee was on the bed, playing chess on her phone again. “Just don’t answer the door, and don’t burn the place down.”

She didn’t look away from the screen. She was contemplating her next move while a tiny hourglass counted down thirty seconds. “Where are you going?”

“Personal business,” Marks said. “I was going to lay low here, take a vacation. If I’m going to work for my newest client, I’ll need to lay some groundwork.”

She frowned at the chess game. Her mind raced through possibilities. He was ditching her, he’d never come back. He was somehow screwing her over, though she had nothing to steal. He’d have a heart attack or something and die out there, and she’d be in his fucking room and everyone would think … things.

She said, “When will you be back?”

“Couple of hours.”

She resigned her game but kept staring at the screen until he’d left the room.

The trip required two bus rides with a transfer and a bracing walk of about a mile. The storage facility was in a dessicated part of town, empty sidewalks with weeds cracking them open, dusty wind, old warehouse space that had been converted into artist’s lofts and rough retail spaces. The storage place was new and shiny, air-conditioned and camera-monitored, and staffed by one bored and disinterested young man who glanced up from his seat behind the desk just long enough to confirm that Marks knew where he was going and didn’t need assistance.

He’d rented the unit years before, long ago when everything had been different. His office had been crowded, he remembered, files everywhere. Pre-digital, he’d packed everything into cardboard boxes—photos, reports, notes, directions, letters, invoices, expense reports. He’d even paid for a service that picked up the boxes and took them to his storage unit for him.

He remembered these things the way he remembered a lot of useless trivia from his past life: Isolated facts, unconnected until he put in the mental effort of comparing them, rubbing them up against each other.

The unit was loosely filled with boxes, some of which had been overturned, their paper contents vomited onto the floor, or on top of other boxes. Some of the boxes were clearly marked and well-organized, others had vague, coded labels that made no sense to him. For a moment he stood, feeling cold and exposed in the harsh crank air of the place, defeated already. Then he stepped inside, stooped down, and scooped up a pile of paper, sitting down on top of a box to start paging through it all.

Although his life was a vague soup in his mind, he was certain of one thing: He’d always relied on the random connections of the universe. Everything was spiderwebbed together in complex, quantum ways that were hard if not impossible to comprehend. He’d often pursued problems and cases by sitting and smoking a cigarette, a shot of whiskey in front of him, just staring at the world outside, letting particles collide as they passed through his brain.

Three hours in, there was a collision. He stared down at a single scrap of paper, thin and cheap, the sort of recycled stuff they sold in pads, made from old newspapers and other trash. On it was written an address: 119 Mulland Street. A thrill went through him, and then quickly faded as he realized it was a scrap of paper that had escaped its connections and links, leaving him with the rest of the files to sort through, looking for the case it linked back to.

When he emerged from the storage facility, the sun was low in the sky and the day felt depleted, empty. His back ached as he walked back to the bus stop, uncertain when the next bus was due to arrive. He carried a thin manila folder, clutched tightly in one hand. On the ride home the bus became crowded; earlier he’d missed rush hour and it had been empty, sloshing through its route drunkenly. Now it had ballast, and Marks was pinned into the rear corner, over the engine, hot and fumey. He flipped through the pages but couldn’t concentrate. He was unsure of his stop and kept peering owlishly out the grimy window.

When he pressed the buzzer for a stop, it took him so long to fight his way to the door the bus had started moving, and only a chorus of helpful shouts from his fellow citizens saved him another four blocks of walking.

“What’s that?”

Dee was on the bed in the same pose; if not for the damp towels and the open food containers he would have believed that she hadn’t moved all day.

He tossed the file onto the table. He wanted to remove his jacket more than he wanted oxygen, but still hesitated. He doubted the girl knew about the money, but it still bothered him, letting four thousand-plus dollars out of his hands. He crossed his arms uncomfortably and leaned against the TV stand, affecting relaxation and comfort. “The address? That your Dad saw in that advertisement? I’ve come across it before.”

She sat up, muting the television. “What? Seriously?”

He nodded. “It’s not much. An old story someone contacted me about. A missing person, just like your Dad.”

She stared at him. “And?”

He shrugged. “I’m … I’m not sure, to be honest.” He gestured at his head. “I don’t remember things well. There’s a folder, which means I took the case and did something with it. But there’s not much in there. In fact, it looks like I tossed a lot of stuff out into the trash, because there’s cross-references to folders that I don’t have any more.” He sighed. “I know I looked into this, once. But it’s gone.”

She stared at the folder. “So, like, how does that help us, then?”

“It doesn’t, really. But it does mean it might be more up my alley then I thought.”

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

3. The Starlight Motel

The motel had a bar and restaurant, a small round space next to the office. The bar was also round, and the tables were arranged in a circle. Marks was dizzy for a moment, standing just inside the door, letting his old eyes adjust to the gloom. The smell was familiar: Sawdust, grease, stale beer. The sounds were familiar: Old radio rock, the murmur of conversation, the clink of glassware. There were six cars in the restaurant’s parking lot, so Marks guessed this was where the old-timers and welfare check folks went to do their drinking. He knew exactly what kind of place it was, even though he knew he’d been sober for at least two years now, maybe longer.

He sat down at the bar. The bartender was an old man with a preposterous belly. It preceded him by at least two feet, Marks thought, somehow entering the future a second before the rest of him. Marks thought this was the situation for which anything accurately described as a truss had been created, and could only imagine the lower back pain the poor man lived with.

A coaster was tossed at him. “Huh?”

“A Coke,” he said.

The bartender snorted through the white hairs exploding from his nose, expressing his disapproval. He placed a glass in front of Marks and filled it using the hose.

“Thanks.”

This elicited another snort.

The place had seven other patrons. Five of them sat alone; in one corner there was a middle-aged couple, fat and red-faced, cackling and sitting close, drinking shots and beers. Marks thought they looked happy in their delirium, wet-mouthed and insensible but together. He had a feeling the evening would end with them screaming at each other in the parking lot, because something told him he’d seen that couple many times in his life.

Four of the others were old men, slumped in their seats, staring and silent.

The final customer was a young girl. Marks thought she looked like a kid, a teenager. She was dark-skinned, her hair a tangled mass of curls that had been pulled back in a messy, half-hearted arrangement, lopsided and whimsical on her head. She was wearing jeans and a pink halter top, and she was skinny and athletic-looking. Sitting at a booth, she was playing with her phone, a cheap older model. She stood out in the dark, sticky bar, the sort of place that people came to wait for death. She stared back at Marks for a few seconds until he looked away.

“You want a menu?”

The bartender sounded unhappy, as if asking the question somehow broke unspoken rules and treaties dating back to long before Marks had dared to enter the place. He held a menu halfway between them, and Marks reached out to take it.

“And you!” the bartender suddenly shouted, looking at the girl. “Order something or get the fuck out, yeah?”

The girl looked down at the table and bunched her jaw muscles, pretending not to hear. Marks studied her, the menu in his hand. He thought, good fortune soured if you kept it to himself. And he knew better than most that those old superstitions were usually more real than people thought.

“Hey, you want a burger?”

She looked up at him, surprised. They held each other’s gaze for a second, and then she nodded and looked away.

Marks handed the menu back. “Two burgers,” he said, pointing at the girl. “One for her.” When the bartender stood there looking back at him, menu held in one hand, Marks pulled out his wallet and laid a hundred on the bar and tapped it with his finger until the bartender’s eyes were dragged downward. There was a still moment, tense with inaction, and then the bartender snorted again, his white hairs fluffing in the breeze.

“Comin’ the fuck up,” he said.

Marks smiled at his back. Then he turned and offered the girl a thumb’s up. She stared back at him, something almost nearly a smile on her face, and then Marks felt silly, so he shrugged and contemplated his Coke, which offered every sign that it was flat and past its sell-by date. He kept staring at it, though, because otherwise he would stare at the bottles behind the bar, from the dusty top shelf where a single bottle of Glenlivet sat, sad and dejected, to the crowded bottom shelf, where Early Times ruled the day. He didn’t see his old brand, and for that he was at least somewhat grateful.

“Hey, old man.”

Marks paused and turned. The girl leaned against one of the old cars in the parking lot, a station wagon that had seen six-digit miles, its old wood paneling missing, scars of glue and screws left instead.

“If I’m old, what’s the guy behind the bar?”

“Dead.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

“Why’d you do that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I had a lucky day. I wanted to spread it.”

She nodded, chewing her lip and staring at him. “I ain’t … I’m not gonna … I’m not –”

He held up his hand. “Never thought you were. Just looked hungry.”

“Thanks.”

The next morning Marks woke up sweating, on the floor, wearing his suit and jacket, the stacks of currency like rocks in the lining. He stared up at the water stains and wondered at the noise until it resolved in his mind as pounding on the door.

He struggled to his feet, feeling like a stiff and bloated turtle, his back aching, his legs numb. He staggered to the door and opened it to find the girl, wearing the same clothes. She had two paper cups of coffee in her hands.

“Here,” she said, thrusting one towards him. “It’s free in the office every morning. They usually get donuts too, but those go fast.”

He reached out and took one of the cups. It was painfully hot, and he turned and placed it on the table in the sitting area, cursing. When he turned back, the girl was in the room, looking around.

“By the way of thanks for dinner last night,” she said. “And for not requesting a blow job in return.”

He grimaced. “You get that a lot?”

“Jesus yes,” she said, moving towards the little kitchenette. “The shit old fat guys think deserves a blow job range from not raping me to being polite to me. I was afraid a fucking hamburger would take me to a whole new fucking level of rapey grief.”

He blinked. “Jesus.” Then he blinked again, looking down at himself. “Fat?”

She peeled the lid off her coffee. “You know what’s jesus, old man? This fucking room. How long you stuck here?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He eyed her warily. Homeless teenagers haunting cheap motels made him worry over his cash. He pushed his hands into his pockets, realized he was barefoot, and felt scratchy and foul-smelling.

She looked back at him, shifting her weight and smiling a little. “Divorce? She kick your ass out, cut up your cards? Lose your job?”

He smiled back, suddenly, without planning it. “I lost everything, a long time ago. This is a high-water mark for me. This is me on the way up.”

She nodded, her face a mask of delighted surprise. “Aw, man, that is some sad sad shit right there. This is your come up? Talk about jesus. You’re havin’ some kind of world-record jesus moment.”

“I suppose I am. What’s your name?”

She hesitated. For some reason giving out her name suddenly felt like a step, an advance into intimacy. Then she took a deep breath, deciding that her choices had narrowed down, and the bar had lowered to the point where a man who bought her a meal without creeping on her was the best thing she’d seen in days.

“Dee,” she said. “Deandra, but call me Dee. What are you, anyway?” She eyed him, sipping coffee, the sunlight from the open door lighting her up auburn and cocoa. “Salesman? You got a I-didn’t-make-my-quota-oh-shit-I’m-fired thing going on.”

Marks shook his head, crossing over to the table and pulling the lid off his own coffee. It was light with cream. “I’m a … an investigator.”

“No shit? Like on TV.”

He shrugged, sipping the coffee tentatively. It was terrible, watery and bitter, but it was free. Or, he reminded himself after months and months of that silent math, not free, but already paid for. “Kind of, I guess, but I sort of concentrate on … strange stuff.”

“Ghost hunters?” she said immediately, excited. “Are you a fucking ghost hunter?”

Marks smiled, leaning back against one of the chairs and holding the scalding hot coffee in one hand. “Sometimes. Usually it’s not that easy to explain.”

She eyed him again, sipping. “And I can see that business is a-boomin’, huh?”

He gestured at her with his coffee. “I got a room. You got a room?”

She nodded and compressed her lips, but didn’t say anything, returning her wandering attention to the room. She suppressed a surge of emotion that she knew would have her crying. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t a crier.

“I had a room,” she finally said. She looked back at him. “You really an investigator?”

Marks nodded, tensing.

She looked down into her cup of coffee. “I maybe got something to investigate.”

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

2. The Past

The voice on the phone had said, “Can you come out?”

The voice was distant and scratchy. Marks had gotten good at plucking sounds from the noise that might be words; the cell phone was an old one, and the plan was the cheapest he could find, one that still charged by the minute. The sound quality was always awful. The ambient sounds of Washington Square Park weren’t helping; it was a humid, sunny day and everyone in the universe had come outside, including an elderly man who’d somehow wheeled a concert piano into one of the open spaces.

Marks frowned at the pigeons waddling around his feet. “To New Jersey?” he asked.

“It’s not a foreign country, Mr. Marks.”

Marks did some math in his head, speculating on the cost of public transportation to the Garden State. He imagined it to be very expensive when compared to his finances. He also imagined it to be a very lengthy and involved trip, possibly requiring rations, a change of clothes due to crossing through different climates, and a passport.

“I will of course reimburse you for the expense.”

Marks still sat staring at the pigeons, thinking. He compared his poverty and need for money with his desire to not leave the city. There had been a time, he thought, when he’d left the city all the time. When he’d traveled. He couldn’t be sure, but his old apartment, when he’d had an apartment, had been filled with tiny objects, mementos, things that had the look and feel of souvenirs and keepsakes from various far-away locations. All of it gone, now.

Finally, money won out. “All right,” he said. “Give me the details.”

The voice spoke a name and address, which Marks wrote down on a small pad he’d purchased from the grocery a block away from his communal office space. Sixty-nine cents. He wrote on both sides of the paper in careful, tiny script that gave away his age. Then he closed the phone and stood up, feeling the cardboard inserts in his shoes sliding, sweaty, as he walked.

The office was populated at this time of day. He liked it when it was occupied: All younger people, busy, determined. None of them had money, but there was a difference in definition. For them, not having money meant they had roommates, it meant they went out to dive bars and ate dollar pizza and were impressed with their intestinal fortitude. For him, sloping down the other side of the divide, older, with a head full of gauze and a wobbliness in his balance he wasn’t sure was age-related, it was more literal: He was carrying around his net worth in a thick yellow envelope, one hundred and fourteen dollars and change. He paid his bills with prepaid cards bought at the pharmacy. He slept in the office when he could, when no one was working too late. When he couldn’t, he bought a coffee at the Luxe Diner and nodded off in a booth. The waitresses usually let him be for a few hours.

But in the afternoons, there was energy, all these partnerships and companies that couldn’t afford real offices. The communal space gave them the semblance of offices: A reception desk, a conference room. Everyone had magnetic badges that granted access. There were a few individuals, like Marks, but for the most part they were these well-dressed kids in tight groups, sitting in front of laptops and texting, texting, texting.

Marks hadn’t sprung for a private office, so he was in the bullpen. For his fifteen dollars a week he got Internet access, a beat up old desktop running an old version of everything, a hardline phone, and a chair.

His briefcase was where he’d left it. Inside the briefcase was a change of clothes: He owned two shirts, two pairs of pants, and two sets of underwear. His sports jacket was heavy. In the summer it weighed a ton and made him sweat. In the winter it was the only thing between him and the cold.

It had been like this for a while. He was beginning to think this was how he died: alone in this office, a vessel giving way, and the kids wouldn’t notice until he started to stink.

.

.o0o.

.

At the train station, he bought a coffee for one dollar and regretted the expense. The train cost two dollars and fifty cents, but he thought he would tell the client that he’d also needed a subway, ask for five dollars in expenses. In the chill air of the new car, he tried to think of another way he could earn a living since he wasn’t doing much living being Philip K. Marks.

It wasn’t a fruitful rumination. As often happened, his mind wandered. Fragmented memories: A newspaper office. A glowing computer screen, green text on a black background. Sitting in bars, drinking, compelled to by something outside of himself. T-shirts with messages on them. An empty house and singing.

When he snapped back to himself, he’d gone two stops too far and had to backtrack. At least it didn’t cost anything extra to transfer.

.

.o0o.

.

“Mrs. Wadell?”

“Mr. Marks,” the handsome woman said, smiling and offering her hand. Standing in the doorway, he had an immediate impression of warmth: She was past fifty, but not by much, and looked good. Toned, tanned, healthy. Her hair was salted and her face deeply lined, but she was strong and thin and had a good grip and strong, white teeth. Her eyes were a luscious brown, and her smile was very natural and well-worn, a woman who had smiled a lot in her life. “Please, come in. Thank you so much for coming all this way.”

Marks hesitated, suddenly feeling dirty and sweaty, and loathe to ruin what appeared to be an incredibly clean and tidy foyer. Finally, the danger of being perceived as rude came up behind him and pushed him forcefully through the door. Mrs. Wadell stepped aside to let him pass and then pulled the door shut.

“Come in!” she said cheerfully. “Follow me.”

He did, and she brought him into a cheerful, sunny living room. Wood paneling and a dark wall-to-wall carpet dated the space, but it was so clean and neat and obviously cared for he was frightened. Mrs. Wadell was, apparently, one of those incredibly competent women who took men like himself in hand and turned them out much improved, and he didn’t want to be improved. He was comfortable being broken.

He pushed a hand through his hair and resisted the urge to push his shirt tails more firmly inside his pants.

“A drink?” Mrs. Wadell asked brightly. “It’s early, of course, but I’m trying to train myself to enjoy life while I can.”

Marks shook his head. “No, thank you. I don’t drink. I don’t remember why.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Wadell said, momentarily nonplussed. She recovered very quickly. “Water, perhaps?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well,” she said, standing indecisively. Marks had the sense he’d forgotten the rules of polite society, had somehow given offense. Were you supposed to accept something when entering someone’s home? Was honor not satisfied?

Finally, she swept a hand at a comfortable-looking chair backed up to the large windows. “Please, sit. You found us okay?”

Marks nodded. “Yes, thank you.” The chair was as comfortable as it looked. Mrs. Wadell was, he thought, exactly as feared: A woman who knew how to do things like choose furniture and the precise width the curtains should be opened to allow in the optimal amount of sunlight. “You said you were concerned about your husband?”

Mrs. Wadell nodded and looked about to launch into an explanation. Marks rushed forward. “Do you mind telling me how you came across my name?”

If Mrs. Wadell was put off by his abrupt manner, she didn’t show it. She smiled. “One of my husband’s former business partners told me he had dealings with you, oh, years ago. When I … well, Mr. Marks, I’ve been asking anyone I can think of for help with Gerald. His old pal Wayne Hutton gave me your name, but all the information in his Rolodex was outdated.” She cocked her head, seeing an opportunity to finally complete the requirement of small talk. “Did you really once work for the Times?”

Marks shrugged. “I don’t remember, honestly.” He knew that coupled with his refusal of a drink, this comment would make up her mind about him, but he preferred that to continuing the conversation. He searched his fragmented memories for the name Hutton. For a moment he thought perhaps there was something, and then it was gone.

“Well,” Mrs. Wadell said after a moment, “I told him that Gerald had been to many doctors. He’d tried everything they suggested. I don’t know what’s worse: His health continuing to deteriorate without explanation, or his attitude.”

“His attitude?”

“Yes, well, Gerald doesn’t seem to believe he can get better. Oh, he does whatever’s suggested, by me or the doctor, but he doesn’t really seem to believe in any of it. It’s as if he knows something I don’t. And Mr. Marks, that isn’t how our marriage has been. We went through plenty of rough times. Not ten years ago we weren’t sure we would ever be able to retire. I used to joke I would be working at Wal Mart when I was ninety, and we would fight not because I meant it, but because he would get upset about the very idea.” She smiled. “But no matter how bad things got, we always talked it out. Always.”

Marks looked around. The room and the house were nice enough. “Money troubles?” he asked. The concept of having enough money to be in trouble about it suddenly seemed exotic and fascinating.

She leaned forward, eyes wide. “Oh! How rude. Mr. Marks, please do not worry over your fees and expenses! This was years ago. Gerald found work. Very good work, very well-paying, and we rebuilt our savings and more.”

Marks nodded absently. Words like savings and well-paying seemed like distant concepts, symbols for things he had no direct experience with. “Mrs. Wadell, perhaps you could walk me through why you asked me here? Your husband is ill, but you obviously have the resources to care for him. Did Mr.—” he searched for the name, already fading “—Hutton tell you what I … specialize in?”

Mrs. Wadell grew quiet, looking down at her lap and plucking at some invisible piece of fluff. “Gerald has been to every doctor we can think of. We have the money, now, thank goodness, and we’ve been everywhere. No one can figure it out. Tests come back inconclusive. The symptoms … shift.” She looked up, and her eyes were red. “Mr. Marks, my husband is dying and no one knows why. He himself seems to have given up.”

Marks swallowed. “This is not really my field, Mrs. Wadell. I’m sorry, but I focus on—”

“Yes, I know.” She held up a hand. “But my husband’s condition is strange. Please. Let me introduce you. Look into it. I will pay you for your time—in advance—even if it leads nowhere.”

Marks sighed. It would be nice to buy some new shoes, he thought. And he’d been honest with her. “Fine,” he said.

.

.o0o.

.

She led him down a hallway into a small bedroom, much too small for the immense bed that crowded it. No other furniture would fit. In contrast to the bright and cheerful rest of the house, the bedroom was gloomy and dark, and it took Marks a moment to realize that a human figure occupied the bed. He was an older man, dwarfed by the huge bed and sunk deeply into the soft mattress, as if the bed was swallowing him.

“Gerald, this is Mr. Marks. He’s here to ask a few questions, see if he can help us.”

Gerald turned his head slightly and peered at me with yellow eyes. He was a man greatly reduced; his hands and head were large, the rest of him wasted and drained. His skin looked thin and pale, and his hair, white as snow, had fallen out in patches.

When he spoke, Marks wished he hadn’t.

“Thank you, Beatrice,” he rumbled, the voice deep and impossible to ignore. It had once been a powerful boom, Marks suspected, but now it was a ruined bubbling wheeze.

“All right,” she said, hesitating just a moment. “Don’t strain yourself, dear.”

She stepped out of the room soundlessly, closing the door behind her. Marks stood awkwardly for a moment, looking around the dim space. It smelled like cleaning supplies and something sweet and sticky, like cough syrup. There was no place to sit because there was so little floorspace left.

“Your wife is concerned about you, Mr. Wadell.”

He snorted a laugh. “Mr. Marks, I don’t know exactly who you are or what you do, but please don’t be insulted. There is nothing for you here. You are—she is—wasting your time.”

Marks nodded. This was, more or less, what he thought as well, but he’d made it all the way out there, he felt he owed it to the very nice woman to at least ask a few questions. “Your wife said it’s been difficult to diagnose your affliction?”

Wadell laughed, and dissolved into harsh coughs that made the bed shake beneath him. Marks waited them out, standing still, watching.

“Get out, Mr. Marks. There’s no healing me. And you would ruin everything if you could. Go out there and tell Bea that I was congenial and answered all your questions. Tell her you’ll do some digging, ask around. Bill her what you want. We have the scratch.” He barked another laugh. “We’ve got the money, Mr. Marks! That’s for sure. More flooding in all the time. Go on now. Leave me to my dying.”

Marks took one last look around the room. Then he stepped closer to the bed, leaning down over the shriveled old man, studying him carefully as the oversize head glared up at him. “Well, Mr. Wadell, here’s the thing: You’re not my client, your wife is.”

He turned and walked out of the room, leaving behind an outraged sputtering that melted into another round of painful-sounding coughs.

Back in the tidy living room, Mrs. Wadell crossed from the windows where she’d been staring out at the street. “What do you think, Mr. Marks? Please don’t say anything comforting. I’ve had all the comfort I can suffer.”

Marks nodded. “Where does your husband keep his private records, papers and such?”

.

.o0o.

.

With a single email printout folded up and slid into his jacket pocket, Marks stepped out into the street and the heat settled down on his shoulders. The house had been cool and pleasant, not overly frigid, but pleasant. He’d gotten used to it. It was amazing, he thought, how it took years to get used to being hot and sweaty, to being always uncomfortable, but mere minutes to get used to luxury. A few hours in the air conditioning and now he was miserable to be without it.

The trip back to New York yawned in front of him like infinity, an infinity spent on trains and buses, crowded, hot, unhappy. In his pocket were two crisp hundred-dollar bills, a retainer from Mrs. Wadell, more than he should have accepted but when she’d opened her wallet and the green money had bristled like a flower opening he’d lost his mind, momentarily. He told himself she would get value for the money. And now he struggled: A cab back to the city would be forty, fifty dollars. A fortune. But he had so little luxury in his life, and sitting in an air-conditioned back seat for an hour instead of the horrors of the transit system was tempting.

In the end he walked the half mile to the train station. His two-hundred dollar days were few and far between, and as he paid his fare he felt virtuous.

.

.o0o.

.

Marks was always surprised how few spouses of either sex knew the complete financial story of their marriage. There were always blind spots. He supposed some of it was willful ignorance—no one wanted to know everything about their wife or husband, not really—and some of it was misplaced trust. He’d learned, somewhere along the way, that a huge proportion of mysteries involving marriages could be solved quite easily by acquiring some bank statements. The Wadell’s marriage proved to be one of them. Mrs. Wadell sent him bank statements going back to their more impoverished years, and he noted several dozen entries for a company called Passus, Inc. over the years.

He went to work researching the company, and found nothing more than a single address and the most basic paperwork filed with the city. Instinct told him he’d found something at least worth looking into, and that Mrs. Wadell had been wasting her time seeking medical advice.

The address on the printout led him to an office building on Fifth Avenue that was the embodiment of unfriendliness. The moment he walked into its ice-cold lobby, the security staff was in motion, and by the time he arrived at the desk, which seemed to be several miles from the entrance in this massive, open space, they had already done a quick background check and determined there was no possible way he might have any legitimate business.

As he was being politely but firmly walked back to the door, he tried to profit as much as he could. He noted the name of the security firm on their green jackets. He noted there was no corporate logo on the walls. He noted how delightfully cold it was. He noted they knew his name, based on a single use by one of them that was almost certainly a mistake.

Back out in the humid air of the street, he took a moment to compose himself. He had no records any more, no address book or Rolodex, and often found he couldn’t remember the name or contact information for someone, even though he could picture them and knew what they could provide to him. It was frustrating, but sometimes, randomly, his brain would serve up a memory that was useful and coherent. This time, it served up the face and name and phone number of Stuart MacKenzie. He couldn’t precisely recall who Stuart was, but he knew something about him immediately: MacKenzie was a rich man who owed him a favor.

.

.o0o.

.

MacKenzie met him at a corner deli that was humid and dirty inside. Marks entered hungry and wondering what, precisely, he’d done to be owed a favor from a man who worked on Madison Avenue; his memory was spotty. His appetite became spotty as well as he smelled the heavy vegetable scent of the place and felt the thick, spongy atmosphere, imagining all sorts of pathogens and egg pods floating in the air, hair growing on everything.

His dream of MacKenzie buying him lunch died, and he sat glumly, waiting.

MacKenzie himself was a big, broad red-haired man who seemed perpetually out of breath. He entered bustling and managed to bustle while sitting, fidgeting and blowing breath out of his nose to express various emotions. He sat down with a curt nod at Marks, ordered tea, and didn’t offer to get Marks anything, which under the circumstances Marks was happy about. He spent one more moment trying to remember why this man owed him a favor, and then gave up. He decided that the universe had been so hard on him for so long, it was okay to accept blind luck.

“What can I do for you, Phil?” MacKenzie said, looking at his watch. Marks noted it was a cheap model, and that MacKenzie was missing a button on his suit jacket, although it was an expensive piece of fabric. “I’m really busy.”

Marks hesitated. Then he decided he had no choice but to take some chances: He had no resources, and Mrs. Wadell’s two hundred dollars was weighing on him. “Mac, I need you to make an appointment at a place called Passus, Inc.”

MacKenzie leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, making his suit suddenly seem tight and ill-fitting. “Okay, why would I do that?”

Marks leaned forward, figuring it was his only psychological advantage. “Because they’ve been sending money to my client’s husband, and their building is an unmarked mystery box, and I can’t pass for money.”

MacKenzie blew air out his nose again. “So I make an appointment, and then what?”

“I go in as you. All I need is the credit check.”

MacKenzie accepted his iced tea with ill grace, then sat staring at Marks unhappily. Then he pointed at him. “And after this we’re square, right?”

Marks nodded. “After this we’re square.” He wondered if he’d made a good deal.

Whatever financial troubles MacKenzie was experiencing, he encountered no trouble making an appointment with Passus, Inc. The girl he spoke to on the phone was courteous and slotted him for the next day at three in the afternoon. MacKenzie reported they’d asked very basic biographical questions, and it hadn’t struck him as anything more ominous than making a doctor’s appointment.

Sitting in the empty shared office in the dark, craving a drink and afraid to move for fear that motion would simply result in him sitting at a bar somewhere, a hole he might never climb out of, Marks wondered if he’d miscalculated, if they were onto him. It was too easy. Then he worried that he’d never pass for MacKenzie who, even in apparent decline, had more money on his back and on his fingers than Marks himself typically saw in a year.

The next day he woke up with the searing sun as it invaded the conference room, hot and clear like boiled water, the building’s air conditioning fifteen minutes from kicking on. Sweaty and gritty, he washed up in the kitchenette, splashing water and scrubbing down. Then he inspected his suit and feebly tried to improve it, smoothing out the wrinkles and shaking it out, as if the stale humid air of the office would somehow revive it. He went into the restroom out in the hall and dressed, trying to take care and approximate success and a diet that wasn’t more or less 90% junk food. He was depressed surveying the results; the man in the mirror was thin and loose-skinned and looked very much like he cut his thinning hair himself. This was the end result no matter what: Dissolution and the Slow Fade. No blaze of glory, no heroics. Just a little less of you every day until there wasn’t enough left to get you out of bed in the morning.

After a moment, he reached into his pocket and extracted the cash left from his payday. Grabbing his briefcase he went and lived a normal life for three hours.

He bought himself breakfast at a diner: Eggs and toast and bacon and coffee and butter and ketchup. It was more food than he’d eaten at one time in years, and afterwards, forcing himself to finish his fourth cup of light, sweet coffee, he felt bloated and stupid.

He bought himself a haircut and a shave at an old-school barbers, a Belorussian man named Boris who kept up a professional stream of small talk and anecdotes as he hovered over Marks, snipping and shaving and measuring.

He bought himself a new dress shirt, hoping it would offset the shabbiness of his suit. The total cost of his splurges was sixty-three dollars, leaving him with a bit more than a hundred left. He felt better, and decided to continue by strolling through the park and having some lunch before heading back downtown to MacKenzie’s appointment. He hoped that by larding up on food and grooming he would pass, however briefly, as normal. All he wanted was more information to go on.

When he returned to the Fifth Avenue address, he found a different team of security professionals, and instead of being run off his name was checked against a list and he was issued a visitor badge and instructed to head up to the fifth floor, where he was greeted by an efficient young man dressed in what Marks imagined the phrase “business casual” meant. He was tall and thin and scrubbed, youthful and cheerful.

“Mr. MacKenzie!” he boomed. “I am the Interviewer—we deprecate names here—and I will be conducting our interview today. Please, follow me.”

Marks followed the kid through an unmanned reception desk and into a maze of cubicles beyond, ushering him into one of the identical spaces, where Marks sat just inches away from The Interviewer as he settled himself in front of a laptop. There was no decoration in the cube, and as far as Marks could tell, no one else in the office.

“Okay, Mr. MacKenzie, I reviewed your pertinent details earlier and I do believe your current financial difficulties, health, and age make you an ideal candidate!” The Interviewer twisted around awkwardly to grin at Marks. “I’m very glad you were put in touch. I just have a few questions, and then we’ll need to set up the lab appointments and get your banking details.”

Marks kept himself very still. He had not been on a job interview in a very long time, and he felt a creeping paralysis coming over him, a debilitating fear that his face wasn’t obeying his commands, that the words he heard himself saying weren’t the same that everyone else heard.

“Okay, everything looks right, Mr. MacKenzie. Don’t worry, your financial troubles will be going away presently. We’ll just need you to get through the physical exam, the labs, and you can start earning.” He looked at me, smiling. “The whole process takes about two weeks.” He studied Marks’ face and tilted his head, misinterpreting the expression he found. “Don’t worry, just hold out against those creditors a few more weeks and everything comes together!”

Marks nodded and managed a tight, off-kilter smile. He was confused; Mac was apparently not nearly as well-off as Marks had assumed, yet this was apparently exactly what Passus was looking for. He scrambled for a question that might get him more information without giving the game away.

“How—how does it work? Exactly.”

The Interviewer smiled. “Sure, there’ll be an orientation once you sign the NDA and the other contracts. But don’t worry: Once you sign and you’re processed, you don’t have to lift a finger, or do anything.” He shrugged. “Except suffer, of course.”

The Interviewer’s smile was bright and easygoing. Marks blinked at it like it was a sun lamp. He ran the word suffer through a few internal algorithms and decided that questioning it would be a tactical error, so he forced a smile on his face and nodded.

“Great! I’ll take you through to our medical team. You did clear your morning, didn’t you?”

.

.o0o.

.

Marks walked around, feeling depleted. They’d taken a lot of blood, all very professional. The tubes they’d filled had been marked with odd, esoteric words. Filament. Limnal. Rotundity. They wanted urine samples, and after he’d filled a cup they plied him with water until he felt loose and unmoored, eager for more. They insisted he stand inside a circle chalked on the floor, and what he took for humming he was convinced by the end to be chanting, a specific circular invocation each of the men and women were almost constantly reciting.

Somehow, he felt as if they’d taken much more than just a little blood, a little urine, a little saliva carried from his mouth via tasteless, neutral swabbings. He felt unsettled, unbalanced, and he walked despite a leaden sense of exhaustion, carrying his jacket and briefcase like weights around himself, pulling him down. He sat down on a park bench, feeling overheated, and listened to someone playing the sousaphone very, very badly as he tried to figure what he’d gotten himself into. MacKenzie was not as rich as Marks had assumed—he realized that in his current state of financial distress anyone who wasn’t living on hot dogs and borrowed air-conditioning would seem like a socialite—yet Passus had been overjoyed to sign him up. And had then exhibited zero interest in his financials, but a deep interest in his physical state and identity.

He couldn’t sleep. He wandered all night, missing the window when he could slip back into the office and bunk down for the night, after the cleaning people had left but before the security guards locked everything down. He walked until he was in a trance, and then he sat down on a bench in Washington Square Park, and fell asleep.

Marks was awakened by the insistent squawking of his cheap phone. Bleary, he startled up and almost fell off the bench. For one moment he stared around blindly, uncertain of his whereabouts. Fragments of a dream clung to him, a man dressed in black pursuing him, a bartender asking him if he was all right.

Dumb, he fumbled for the vibrating piece of plastic and put it to his ear.

“Phil?”

It was MacKenzie. His voice had an element of fear and desperation to it that pinged Marks’ own alarms, leaving him standing rigid, gripping the phone tightly.

“Phil, what did you do? What’s happening?”

Marks blinked around the twilit park. A little before sunrise, he thought. “What’s happening, Mac?”

“I’m rich, for one thing,” Mac said, panting. “There’s a deposit … from Passus. It’s … substantial.”

“Oh,” Marks said, his brain stiff. “Oh.”

“And I’m sick,” Mac said, his voice taking on a rough edge of panic. “I went to bed and I was fine, Phil. Fine. I woke up not feeling right, and I’m sick. Like, really sick.”

Marks shivered and began to pace back and forth. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, shit,” Mac said, his voice suddenly going molten and phlegmy. He dissolved into coughs. “Phil, I don’t know. I woke up hot and dry and bloated , and my skin is all … wrong. What happened? What’s happening?”

Marks worked his mouth but had no words.

“I gotta go, Phil. I’m heading for the hospital. Call me later, okay?”

Marks nodded, dumb. There was an awkward amount of silence, and then Mac clicked off. Marks stood for a moment, the phone still held to his ear, staring at the brightening park.

.

.o0o.

.

“Mr. Marks?”

Marks tried a smile, realized midway that it wasn’t working, and nodded, squinting. The result was mysterious to him: He had no idea what his facial expression might be conveying.

“Mrs. Wadell,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She was as neat and tidy and cool as Marks felt wrinkled and hot and unsettled. Her hair was pinned up perfectly, and she wore a simple skirt and blouse with effortless ease. The house behind her, however, smelled of medicine and sickness, uncirculated air that was becoming heavier with microbes and coughed-up mucous molecules, damp and sour.

“Of course not, Mr. Marks,” she said, stepping aside. “You have some news on my … well, what’s the word? Case? Issue?”

I pushed my way past her and didn’t answer. I didn’t wait for further invitation; I kept walking. The air got denser as I approached the bedroom in the read of the house. She didn’t start to murmur protests until I was through the door.

Mr. Wadell hadn’t moved or changed in any perceptible way. He was still just a lump on the bed that was slightly heavier than the sheets and blankets. His eyes, though, yellow and swollen, leaped to Marks the moment he entered the room, alive and clear.

Marks stopped, feeling sweaty and vague. He took a deep breath.

“I think I just killed a man.”

Wadell gave no overt reaction. “You stupid bastard,” he hissed, his overlarge hands gripping the top of the blanket. “What did you do?”

Marks shifted his weight. “I signed up under an assumed name.”

“Fucking hell, the name’s all that matters,” Wadell hissed. The moment of anger seemed to exhaust him, and he sank even more deeply into the bed that was slowly consuming him. “It’s all right,” he said, weak and soft, as Mrs. Wadell entered the room in a state of constrained, restrained alarm. “Mr. Marks and I just have something to discuss.”

She looked at Marks, indecisive, then smiled, patting her chest. “Very well.”

“Is this what you do, Mr. Marks? Wander the world making trouble for people? Barging into voluntary and private situations and make a mess of things?”

Marks shrugged. He felt like he had no way of answering the question. “What can I do? Will he die?”

Wadell didn’t answer right away. “No. But depending on what he’s taking away from the client, it’s going to be ugly. It’s a painful way to live, Mr. Marks. You’re sick. All the time. Worse some days. It takes a toll, I won’t pretend it doesn’t. Carrying someone else’s cancer, someone else’s cirrhosis, someone else’s Parkinson’s. It wears you down. They switch you out before you die, but … sometimes I wish they didn’t.”

Marks closed his eyes. “The ultimate health care plan.”

“Fuck you. The compensation’s fair.”

“Is it?”

“Fuck you again. I made my choices. Whoever you just fucked over didn’t.”

Marks turned to go, then hesitated. Without looking back, he said “And your wife? She’s okay with your choices?”

Wadell didn’t respond right away. When he did his voice was soft and weak. “She’s cashing the checks, ain’t she?”

.

.o0o.

.

Once again, Marks had washed up, brushed his jacket, and wore his new shirt, which hadn’t been laundered but was still in better condition than anything else he owned. He stepped into the office quickly, and ignored the extended hand of the bland, handsome man behind the desk.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr—” Marks said.

“You can simply call me The Broker—we do not like to use names here.” Bland Man said in a booming, hollow voice. “Of course. Our freelancers are our lifeblood. What can I do for you, Mr. MacKenzie?”

Marks looked around. The office was large but generic. The furniture wasn’t special or custom: Just a metal desk and a standard chair, a lamp and a mid-range computer. No phone, no credenza or wet bar or decoration. It smelled neutral. It was as if The Broker and the whole organization was making an effort to leave no mark. Although he assumed the young Interviewer and The Broker could not be the sole employees, the whole floor was quiet and felt still and unused.

“My name’s not MacKenzie. In fact, I went through your whole process under an assumed name, and now a man is suffering without knowing why.”

The Broker’s smile fell away. His face flushed, and for a second Marks felt his adrenaline dumping, as if he could sense or smell a fight in the air, somehow. “That is … disappointing. What is your name, then?”

Marks couldn’t resist a smile. “I don’t like to use names, either.”

The Broker sat very still and silent for a moment. Then he leaned back and propped his chin up on one finger. “We must set this right. Your Mr. MacKenzie must be in some distress.”

Marks nodded. “He seemed to be, yes.”

The Broker leaned forward. “Our clients pay us to remove from them pain and suffering. To deliver to them health and happiness. It is impossible—impossible—to reverse these actions. The solution is simple: You must take his contract. This deception is your responsibility.”

Marks stiffened. He’d known this. He’d told himself this as recently as moments ago, when he was riding the elevators up, accompanied by two security guards who remained suspicious that The Broker would wish to see him despite Marks’ insistence and the confirming phone call from the desk, the two of them eager to toss him back out on the street like their comrades had.

But he dreaded the idea. Cold and viscous, the dread filled him as the idea was verbalized. He swallowed. “What … what will I –”

“The term is twenty years,” The Broker said. “The afflictions will vary.”

Marks closed his eyes. Afflictions was a terrible word. It was generic, and when it came to endless suffering, generic was terrible. It was wide-open. He had no choice in the short-term: To allow MacKenzie to suffer was impossible. He had to start by having the contract transferred, and then he would be able to figure out what to do next.

He looked at The Broker. “How do we do this?”

The Broker brightened, opening a drawer. “I have the paperwork here.”

.

.o0o.

.

“Jesus.”

MacKenzie didn’t look at Marks. He was wrapped in a plush-looking terrycloth robe, but was sweaty and gaunt, unshaven and hollow-eyed.

“It’s faded a bit,” he said as Marks stepped into his apartment. “I’m feeling better.”

Marks didn’t say anything. He thought Mac looked awful.

The apartment wasn’t what he expected, until he remembered that Mac had passed the initial screening at Passus because he wasn’t nearly as rich as Marks remembered. The place was nice enough, and felt luxurious to Marks, but was another generic space: Builder’s beige, the smell of fresh paint, fluorescent lighting. They stood awkwardly in the tiny foyer, but Mac made no move to lead Marks further in. In the next room, Marks could see boxes piled up on a card table.

“Listen, Mac, I did something. I didn’t mean to, and I’m here to make it right.”

Mac nodded, then exploded into a coughing fit, hunching over, red-faced and swollen. He held up one hand to forestall intervention. Marks startled, then settled back on his heels, watching anxiously. When the fit passed, MacKenzie spent a few moments doubled over, gasping, then finally straightened up.

“All right, Phil,” he said, his voice wet and ragged. “Tell me.”

Marks told him. MacKenzie listened, stone-faced, occasionally biting back more coughing.

“So rich assholes pay me to take their diseases,” he finally said, wonderingly. “That’s fucking brilliant, in a way.”

Marks wrung his hands, shifting his weight. “I’m sorry, Mac. If I’d known—”

Mac laughed, a barking, harsh noise that cut Marks off.

Marks sobered. He reached into his jacket and extracted the papers the Broker had given him. He swallowed. “I’m prepared to make this right, Mac. These are transfer papers. I’ll take on your account. Your afflictions.” He wondered what it would be like. He appreciated the twist: He would finally have money, but he would suffer for it. But hadn’t he been suffering for nothing for a long time already?

Mac stared at the papers, then looked at Marks. “Jesus Christ, Phil, no.”

“No?”

Mac swallowed more coughs. “Did you see the zeros? The money? I ride this for a year or two, I’ll be set. All of it, set right.”

Marks thought of Mr. Wadell, faded and shrunken. “Mac, I don’t think—”

“You want it?” Mac said, peering owlishly at Marks. “Huh? You saw the zeros, you regret not taking the slot. Jesus, Phil I know you’re broke. I know you’re basically on the street. Get your own contract.”

Marks stared. “Mac, I don’t think you understand—”

Mac gestured at the door, weaving on his feet and looking faint. “I gotta lie down, Phil,” he said, sounding distant. “Get out. Take your fucking papers. Get your own contract.”

Marks hesitated, uncertain. Mac’s face took on a bloated red expression of meanness.

“Fine. A payoff, right? You fucking slug. You fucking grifter. You realize you fucked up, and here you are trying to stick your head under my skin. Fine, you want a payday.”

Mac stormed off, his breath loud and damp, leaving Marks standing awkwardly in his foyer. A moment later, he returned with a shoebox in his hand. He handed it to Marks.

“Take it,” he snarled. “My emergency fund, which I was just about to tap into. All I had left. Five grand. Take it and call it a fee or whatever, and go get your own contract, if that isn’t enough.”

Marks remembered weighing the box in his hands, then lifting the lid and peering inside, stunned at the bills. Real money. Actual money. He remembered looking at MacKenzie, who stood there flushed with fever, eyes reddened and weeping, breathing shallowly, mouth open. He looked awful, and after a moment Marks turned and slowly walked to the door. Opening it, he listened to Mac’s labored breathing and thought about how the apartment already smelled like disease, like something invisible burning, being depleted.

He turned in time for the door to slam in his face. He stood for a moment, listening to the low, subconscious buzz of ambient noise. Then he became aware of his own body: The lack of pain, the ease of his breathing, the steady beat of his heart. He took a deep breath and turned away from the door, smiling. Five thousand dollars. He remembered thinking he would go sleep indoors for a few days, see what happened.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

This novel features my recurring character Philip K. Marks, who has popped up in a bunch of short stories I’ve published (“Sift, Almost Invisible, Through” in Crimes by Moonlight edited by Charlaine Harris; “A Meek and Thankful Heart” in Buzzy Magazine; “Three Cups of Tea” in Hanzai Japan; “Howling on for More” in Black Denim Lit; “Supply and Demand” in No Bars and a Dead Battery; and tangentially in “Zilla, 2015” in The Lascaux Review). I thought he deserved a novel.

There’s an episode of The No Pants Cocktail Hour about this one, and a playable text adventure version of the book, if you’re so interested. Enjoy!

1. The Starlight Motel

Motel life was a step up. Thirty-five precious dollars a day, but he’d come into a windfall and it was wonderful to have hot water on demand and privacy again. If only for a little while. If only until the money ran out.

He was fascinated by the economy of the space. The little kitchenette was old and greasy, but in just four feet of space they’d packed everything one could need: A tiny fridge, a hot plate, a sink, some cabinets. The bathroom was enough space for one person at a time. The sitting area was by the window, a pair of old, stinking armchairs and a battered wooden table. The bed. He thought it best to not think about the bed, since he certainly wouldn’t be sleeping in it.

He thought about an entire life played out in the room. Breakfast, dinner, nights in front of the ancient cathode-ray television, the digital converter on top like even more ancient rabbit ears, the slowly shrinking choices of lives in an age when everything was increments and nothing was free. He thought about the question of how small things could get—how small could your whole world be and still support your life. The room was probably three hundred square feet, he thought. It still felt big to him; he’d been stealing time in his communal office, sleeping on the floor, scraping by. Now he had a room to himself. It felt like luxury, even if the sheet on the bed gave him the heroic heebie jeebies, imagining the germ civilizations they contained.

How much smaller could it be? He tried to imagine the smallest possible space that would be livable, workable. He mentally sectioned off the room and crammed everything into it, imagining a smaller bed, no sitting area. A hundred square feet? Fifty? He thought his life was something of an experiment to discover just how little space was needed to survive in. He saw himself in a box, hunched over, compressed, squeezed down to the essentials. And then the larger question of what the word essentials meant, really. What was essential? He’d found that things formerly thought of as essential could be jettisoned and done without. The longer he lived the more he came to believe that this process could be continued infinitely, in the same way you could cut something in half infinitely, down to the quantum state, and always have something left over, no matter how tiny.

He sat in one of the ancient chairs by the window, just to experience the novelty of having someplace to sit, a place dedicated to sitting. He had no use for a television; it had been so long he didn’t know what sort of shows were on the air these days. He thought about the little clock radio, finding some music, but didn’t want to stand up. Just sitting was entertainment, the stillness, the peace and quiet. A roof over his head.

He took the shoebox from his bag and opened it to look at the currency inside, more than five thousand dollars, a fortune. It had been easy money, really; a job that had left few scars and cost him few sleepless nights for a change. Good fortune felt odd and unreal to him. He kept opening the box and checking to see if the money had dissolved, turned to dust, the ink smeared off.

He sat and considered hiding places. The problem with a rented space was there were no secrets, or if there were they weren’t your secrets. He imagined cleaning crews unscrewing heating grates, flipping mattresses, moving pictures and mirrors from the walls as a matter of course every day.

In the end, the money stayed with him. He spent some studious time picking at the lining of his relatively new, if inexpensive, jacket, and slipped the money inside in discrete stacks, holding back just five hundred to keep on him at all times. Then he sewed the lining back using the tiny little kit he carried with him, doing a terrible job. But he felt better, because he would sleep in the jacket and not have to worry. He wasn’t used to good fortune, not that he could remember.

He put the five hundred-dollar bills into his wallet, then pulled out a wrinkled, oft-folded old business card. It had been cheaply printed to begin with on light stock, and much of it had faded and worn away, leaving just his name, PHILIP K. MARKS, and the word PRIVATE. Everything else was just a blur of old ink. Five thousand dollars, he thought. As usual, it wasn’t enough, would never be enough, not considering what he’d done to earn it.

He’d started a new ritual of remembering. Things slid so easily into the gray mass that was his past. He tried to pause once a day and remember. He paused now, and remembered how he’d gotten his five thousand dollars.

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