The Cormorant (18 page)

Miriam shuts her eyes like that matters. She opens them and spies a bar through spears of light rising through the mist but then the crowd closes in on her again–

–
the truck hits her car doing 120mph–

Holds her breath, starts moving through the jostling bodies–

–
POP POP POP gunshots in the night, hands grab the purse, footsteps recede, dead before she hits the ground–

She wants to throw up. The sound of rustling wings. A glimpse of a big black bird flying overhead through the strobing lights–

–
the fireworks go off in her hand one after the other and she burns alive in fires that go from red to green, the whistling shrieking in her ears as everyone screams, oh what an Independence Day this is–

–
he touches the wire coming out of the drywall and BZZT full-tilt boogie–

–
the house fire cooks him like a microwaved hot dog–

–
she drowns in her own lung fluids–

–
he chokes on his own puke–

–
the little plane hits the ground and practically evaporates–

–heart attack–

–dog attack–

–blood–

–no–

She extracts herself from the dance floor like a splinter. She feels drunk, and not in the good way. Her guts queasy and greasy like they’re slipping around on a blood-slick floor.

The bar. Behind spires of red light. Hovering in the mist. It would be an oasis but it’s pressed with throngs of people, another wall of flesh. Each touches a doorway into yet another demise: another gateway to Hell. She can’t do that again. She feels like a raw nerve in a cracked tooth.

Instead, she circumnavigates all the way to the far end of the bar. Where nobody stands. It’s the bartender’s blind spot, but whatever. Right now she doesn’t even want a drink so much as she just wants a place to stop, to think, to breathe.
To live
, a little voice says.

This is worthless. A place cram-packed with cock-rockers and clam-jammers lost to the reverie of sex, sound, booze, skin. It’s then she smells herself: she stinks of beer. Someone must have spilled it on her out there. Awesome. She entertains a moment when she sets the place on fire and quietly locks the doors behind her.
Firestarter
-style. Or maybe she could go all Carrie on them. Two books she remembers her mother burning way back then and it’s only now she grasps the irony there.

Whatever. Nothing to be learned here tonight. She’ll come back tomorrow. When she can actually ask a question or three.

She’s about to turn and flatten herself against the far wall and skulk out of here like a darting skink, but then the bartender – a mocha-skinned square-jaw in a too-tight deep-vee – says, “Oye, whatchoo drinking, girl?”

She hates when people call her girl.

But she likes when people give her drinks.

What to do, what to do.

She holds up a finger. “Shot of vodka. Tito’s.”

He spins, pivots, she sees the glint of light on the vodka bottle. He turns back around and next thing she knows there’s a highball glass sitting there with a lime on the edge and bubbles, and he says, “Vodka tonic,” before hurrying down to the other end of the bar.

She didn’t order a vodka tonic – you add tonic, you might as well add water, and if you add water you might as well throw the drink on the ground. Still, she sees the bubbles tickling the side of the glass and she thinks it might be good to settle her stomach.

So she grabs it. Toasts the air.

Slams it back.

The bubbles burn the back of her throat.

She drops the glass back onto the bar,
kathunk
.

Then she gets the fuck out of there.

Outside, the air is still hot but there’s a breeze and it presses her soaking wet shirt to her chest and she suddenly feels woefully out of place. Everything here is glitzy, glammy, neon-smeared. She sees women with fake, round kickball-tits shoved into short-short dresses that show off the bottoms of their bottoms. Muscle-head dudes who could snap her in half like a candy cane. Then the gay guys – guys who radiate fabulosity, stomping around on big tall heels, swishing around in mesh shirts and sunglasses shaped like hearts, coochie-cooing the air with werewolf fingernails. Miriam doesn’t belong here. (
Doesn’t belong anywhere.
) She’s a black buzzard in the land of pretty, pretty peacocks. A dirty fingerprint on a colorful dress.

She thinks,
I’ll need a hotel for the night
, and she figures she’ll cut back to the car through the alley behind the club. Already she’s feeling the vodka tonic, which surprises her – but maybe it shouldn’t. She’s tired as hell. Hasn’t eaten a damn thing all day. Her body is a romper room for whatever booze she sticks in it.

She staggers into the alley. Fishes in her pocket for a cigarette but her fingers don’t seem to want to pull out the pack. They finally manage and the pack drops into a puddle,
sploosh
, and she tries to curse but it just comes out a mushy utterance – the emphasis of vulgarity but without the specificity.

Miriam looks up.

And it hits her.

She’s been here before.

Which is entirely impossible. Because she’s never been to Miami.

And yet–

The alley is awash in long shadows and the fringe glow of neon from the mouth of the alley, metal steps leading to the door to the back, the dull thump of music behind it, mirrored shades, curved blade
–

Oh, God.

She has been here.

In a vision.

Ingersoll–

She tries to turn, but her knee gives out. Her head feels like cotton soaked in paint, goopy and thick, all the colors starting to run together.

I’ve been drugged
.

Suddenly, a gloved hand closes over her mouth. She tries to scream but her cry is muffled. A boot kicks her leg out from under her and she falls–

Another gloved hand over her eyes.

Someone’s got her ankles.

Her body, lifted up.

The sound of duct tape ripping off the roll.

Someone laughs.

Then they begin to move her.

TWENTY-NINE

MISTER MIDNIGHT AND THE GHOST OF HAIRLESS FUCKER

Words reach her like murmurs through water:

“…this is the bitch? I don’t believe it…”

“…cut her now? I could get the saw…”

“…want her to
see
, want her to be
awake
…”

The kick-thump of booming bass somewhere beneath her.

“…how’d this little squirrel steal our drugs?”

“…she looks like a drowned rat…”

“…hey-hey, hand me that pipe…”

Click, hiss. Fire. Smoke. Acrid.

“Do it.”

Tape is ripped off her eyes.

Then her mouth.

It takes a little skin with it. Blood trickles over her raw flesh.

Light bleeds in at the edges, washes over everything.

She’s on her back. Hands belted together. One leg is tucked in and under her. The other leg’s extended out, her boot held in the grip of a man she doesn’t recognize: a pouty Ecuadorian with gold teeth and a pale tongue sliding over the metal.

She’s flanked by two other men.

And she recognizes them both.

Both look familiar, she knows that much. It takes her a second. Her brain’s a heap of meat mush and thinking takes effort, like trying to blow a raisin through a drinking straw. The one is a scabby, crater-cheeked tweaker with a tangle of unwashed hair. The other is a big motherfucker. Black like motor oil. Got a little red vest with gold buttons hanging over his ox-yoke shoulders. Bare, sweat-slicked chest sticking out. Shiny chains nesting in afro-puffs of chest hair.

That’s when it hits her.

They’re from the vision. Ingersoll’s death. Hairless fucker. The one who came after her with his killers, Harriet and Frankie. The drug lord who cut off Ashley’s foot. The one who took Louis’ eye.

The first man she killed.

When she first met Ingersoll she got the measure of him, saw a vision of his demise. Ingersoll came walking out of a club, down a set of metal steps, and then two men emerged and attacked him. Mister Midnight – the big black sonofabitch – at the front with a curved head-lopper blade. And behind Ingersoll, the tweaker – Daddy Long-Legs – with a little pistol.

Ingersoll took them both out. Bit into Mister Midnight like he was an apple. Cleaved the tweaker’s head in half just as the addict shot Ingersoll right between the eyes, bang.

That’s what
would have
happened.

But then Miriam intervened – the rock that breaks the river, the road nobody was supposed to travel. Fate-breaker. Resurrectionist.

She starts laughing at the same time she’s almost crying because what a
fantastic fucking irony
this is. She took out Ingersoll and saved the lives of these two men and now the same two men have her strapped to a table, ready to do whatever it is they want to her.

Fate has swung back around and hit her right in the face.

The ghost of Hairless Fucker must be pleased as a fuzzless peach.

“I don’t know who you are–” Miriam starts to say, her voice fast and throaty, but Mister Midnight presses a tree-trunk finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” he says. “You are Miriam Black, yes?”

She hears that Haitian patois in his voice.

She winces and nods. “And you are?”

“They call me Tap-Tap.”

“That’s a dumb name.”

He raises a hand and brings it down toward her face – and just before the palm connects he slows it down and gives her two little pats. “Tap, tap. Hah. See what I did there? That’s not why they call me that, though. No. Back in Haiti I drive a
camionnette
, a bus, a taxi-bus, big colorful one. Blue skull on the front. Flowers painted on the side. Lots of people hanging off it. Good way to make a little money as I deliver drugs to those who can afford them.”

“That’s a very nice story,” she says, trying to hide her fear behind the bluster. “I look forward to the Lifetime movie.”

“You think you so funny. Can I tell you another story?”

Christ, is everybody a storyteller?

He begins before she offers permission. “My mother, back in Haiti, used to come out every morning onto a very small balcony. Small enough just for her. Too small for me, even now. She would stand there with a cup of coffee and
pain haïtien
and she would dunk the bread into the black coffee. It was a small moment of pleasure, you see? My mother, she was a… how you say it? Consort. Consort for a rich man. A drug lord. Haitian-American man name of Dumont Detant. Man I work for when I become a teenager, driving – ah! You guess it. The tap-tap.

“So, she would go there every morning, eat bread, drink coffee. She would do this before he woke up and wanted whatever it was he wanted from her – her pussy, her mouth, to hit her, to make her clean the floors or make the bed. This moment, very important to her, very
precious
. But one day a gull show up. A gull – a bird. Big, gray thing. Patchy feathers, almost like it’s got a sickness.” He pronounces it
seek-knees
. “The gull show up and swoop down and steal her bread.”

He puts his massive hands on Miriam’s shoulders. Gently presses down – a casual reminder that he doesn’t have to expend much effort to hold her to this spot.

“This go on again and again. Gull show up. Steal her bread. She try to hide. Try to shield the bread. The bird waits till she brings it out to dip it – still gets the bread! Few times bird doesn’t get the bread, bird
shits in her coffee
. Worst of all, the gull now has friends. Other gulls come, think my mother is weak. Think the sight of her means a free meal.

“Now, you say the same thing I say, I say,
Maman
, go inside! Eat the bread inside and
then
go to the balcony. But my mother, she say no. She has this one thing, and she wants to keep it. So what does she do?

“One day she set the coffee on the ground and take the warm bread and break it. Fan the smell upward with her hand. She keep the bread held low. Down by her waist. The bird show up to steal his bread with his ugly rat-bird friends and she
snatch
him out of the air!” He makes a fast swoop of his hand and a fist. “And now she got him. And in front of the other gulls, she break the bird like she break the bread. She snap its wings one after the next. Then she take its feet in her fist and she gives a twist – they pop right off the bird, her hand wet with its blood. Last thing she do? As the bird is squirming, going
flop flop flop
, she take its head to the balcony edge. She place the beak on the iron railing. Then she slam her hand down on it like she trying to open a bottle of Prestige beer. The beak? Shattered.”