(Sneak Peek) Constant: Book 5, Chapter 4

Though the writing's not quite back to my usual pace, it's still ticking along, just slower than I'd like. Unexpected RL workplace demands, now dealt with. Also, minor revisions and improvements to previous chapters continue.

I wouldn't quite say this is fully settled yet and ready to go out, but it's been far too long since I've posted anything actually new related to Constant. I thought I should put something out there before people started to wonder if I'd disappeared again.

Returning to Book 5, I was really disatisfied with how I'd written Darius and that encounter. So, I ditched the whole thing and started over. I think the scene works much better now. The actual encounter itself - well, that's still in progress, but the whole chapter should be ready by next week. So here's a sneak peek. Enjoy!

***

Four: Unnamed

Last time I last saw Darius? Five years ago.

            It’s not like we had, you know, regular family reunions or anything. Sakura’s children, we went our separate ways and got on with our lives. Those of us who made it out, that is. So, meeting the guy was fucking unusual. The request came out of nowhere, an e-mail one morning from an account I didn’t recognize. That was wrong in itself; he wasn’t using the correct channels. I was sat at my office desk. A crisp afternoon in March, wisps of clouds racing across a clear blue sky and I can still picture that day clearly despite the passage of four normal years and one batshit crazy, messed up one.

            Tailored, grey pinstriped suit, short hair spiked with product—I’d had a haircut that morning, my usual place in town—and a chunky, ridiculously expensive watch at my wrist, also bought on impulse that morning. This memory of myself is all the sharper for its simplicity: no makeup, no accessories, no attempt at matching nails to lips to shoes to belt. I read the email, then stared out the window for some time, and then returned to Darius’s message and read it again and felt a curious mix of elation and dread.

            Voices from the past were a complicated thing. Over the years, it only happened—three? no, four—times, meeting old acquaintances, always calling in favours owed; one of those, and under very unusual circumstances, transferring a debt into my care. The fact Darius contacted me through an open channel was puzzling. His request wasn’t something I could easily refuse. First, because there remained an unresolved debt between us: he still owed me, after all. Maybe he wanted settle? But ultimately, because we had a shared history. The guy was a premium asshat. But I’d known him for over thirty years, and that meant something.

            So, I couldn’t just ignore him. Truth is, I didn’t really want to meet him. We’ve all been there, meeting someone from the past. Every now and then, I’ll have a colleague at work, they come in late some morning all fucked up looking like something the cat dragged in. Caught up with this guy I knew back in college, they’d say, great guy but fuck, what a drinker—or something like that—you wouldn’t believe the shit we got up to—and they’d follow with some predictable night out replete with booze, a strip club or bondage thing, drugs, maybe some lurid details involving a girl and the stuff they did to her, the usual crap, just another late night leaving them absolutely wrecked for the rest of the week.

            We met a few days later. It was hot and bright and instead of grabbing a cab, I decided to enjoy the walk. The warmth of the sun on my face as I walked the sidewalk felt good. Towers of concrete, glass and steel and the sounds of the city, and all those pretty little things in their miniskirts, the short dresses and stockings, heels and bared arms that came with the warm weather. I was in a good mood, that day. I’d just been told I was up for promotion. Tom was up for the job, too, but it was mine to lose, not his to win. I’d get an office, my own P.A.—secretary, really, even then there’d been talk of reviving some of the old job title.

            Nearly a decade with Neopharm and I was doing great, just fucking swell.

            Also, there’d been a girl the night before. What was her name? Ngozi. Very tall, rail thin, muscular, like a whip, an investment banker in town for a conference or something.  Shaved head, dark skin, red pantsuit, bright orange lips and dangling earrings; she nursed a martini and that’s what drew me in, the indelible image of her sitting cross-legged at the bar, sullenly swirling her drink, clothes like a flame in the dusky light. I’d stopped for a drink on my own on the way home, mulling over Darius’ request. I’d all but decided I was going to cancel on him. Life was good, right now; why risk fucking it up? The past was a desert, dry and dead: nothing good ever came from it.

            But sitting with Ngozi, I instead thought, fuck it, let’s do this. And ‘this’ might’ve been ‘get laid,’ but also, ‘deal with the past,’ even if that only occurred to me afterwards.

            This chick, this sexy bitch, she was angry: with men in general, with the world. She called me on my bullshit, on the half-assed line I tried on her. I liked that, dropped the crap and she bought me a drink. We talked. She wasn’t just angry. She was lonely, too. No, it was more than that: she was touched with a desperate melancholy, despairing of the world and how it was changing, and of her place within it. She yearned for an escape without any idea of where she could go. And so, we went to her hotel room.

            Ngozi’s skin gleamed with sweat, and her shaved pussy glistened as I ate her out, knees over my shoulders. She hissed as I went down on her, her moans long and low. Then I pulled her onto my lap, so that she faced away from me. She leaned into my chest as I held her small, firm breasts. At first, I fucked her slowly. Then she took charge, riding me hard, thighs firm and strong under my hand. Eventually, she slowed and Ngozi gasped on the rise, and whimpered on the fall, and squirmed around my cock. I kissed her neck, bit her ear and felt her body tense. When she came, her mouth opened and closed in intense silence and then finally she released a single, long exhalation of breath; her body shuddered, and she finished with a bitter laugh, and: “fuck.”

            Afterwards, we lay together, limbs entangled, and she traced my scars with long fingernails, each painted a different shade of purple. The woman nibbled my ear and with unexpected shyness invited me to spend the night. I laughed and left her resplendent on the hotel bed. She didn’t really want me to stay. We’d gotten what we both wanted from the night, the best we could hope for, really. Instead, I went back down to that hotel bar and sat alone. I ordered my final drink for the night and decided, yeah, I had better meet up with Darius.

            The next day, another record-breaker, bright, beautiful and hot, we met at a bar a couple blocks away from my office. Pricey, atmospheric place, back-lit counter and claustrophobic nooks, slabs of dull pitted metal for tables suspended from the ceiling under isolating spotlights in a dark, empty space. In other words, pretentious as fuck. Women weren’t even allowed entry, this time of day—except for the waitresses, obviously, all young and sexy as hell. It was the kind of place men in hideously expensive suits met for discrete conversation over lunch-time booze.

            The place was quiet when I arrived, and I picked Darius out immediately.

            His suit was cheap and ill-fitting, as though he’d bought it off the rack that morning. The boots, military; his watch, too. His hair was buzzed short, but aside from that he looked like he’d escaped from a serialised cop drama from a few decades ago, the kind where intense men crouch pensively over horrific murders, twitch off their mirrored glasses and quip a terrible pun. For a moment, I thought he was messing with me. Then, I remembered Darius wasn’t that guy. Not much of a sense of humour, Darius; he always took himself way too seriously, like he’d never realised the whole thing’s a fucking joke, and we’re the punchline.

            I joined him. He nodded, signalled the bartender. Two Caol Ila appeared in short order. He raised his tumbler, and I did the same. Ice jangled as we touched glasses. He hadn’t spoken yet. Frankly, he looked pissed off I was there. But I was fine with that. Better than being in the fucking office, right? I stretched out my legs, sipped my whiskey, allowed peat and caramel to curl around my tongue and bring me back to Ngozi, the taste of her pussy, that wet waiting warmth. Smiling, I watched the muscle in his jaw clench and jump.

            “You’re a fucking asshole, L—,” he said, calling me by my old name.

            “David,” I said.

            “It wasn’t the same after you left.”

            “I didn’t leave,” I said. “She threw me out.”

            He sneered, ordered another round of drinks.

            “You fucked it up for all of us,” he said. “Couldn’t keep it your pants. Couldn’t—”

            “What do you want, Darius?”

            “That girl. Fuck. What was her name? Persephone. Why’d you do it, L—”

            “David,” I interrupted.

            “Sure. Whatever.”

            “I loved her.”

            He shook his head. “Strange fucking kind of love,” he said.

            We finished the first drink as the second arrived. He stared into the depths of his glass. Whatever he was working up to, I was happy to wait. I wasn’t in any hurry. Quite the opposite. It struck me then how little we’d both changed. Nearly twenty years—twenty, Jesus Christ, when did that happen?—but he was the same angry, wiry bastard I remembered, just… older. But then, so was I. Bit of silver at the temple, thinning on top, wrinkles, but his eyes were still sharp as hell, vigilant.

            He leaned forward. “Hey, do you remember Shangri La?”

            Yeah, I remembered.

            Vestige. Or rather, Vestige Eleusis, to give its full, ostentatious name. And yeah, I damn well remembered it, even if I hadn’t visited it outside of dreams for the past few decades. That old, decaying palace was our own private Elysium, our refuge from the world. Prestigious and opulent, the old department store was shuttered and shutdown during the lockdown of ’20. This was a few years before Sakura took me in. Pandemic notwithstanding, nobody really knew why the place shut down quite so suddenly and never reopened. When the owners left, the store was left behind almost entirely intact, stock included.

            As I remember it, Sophya was the one who found the way in, a trap door in the ceiling of a disused room in our shared home. It led to a crawl space beneath the rafters of the roof. The roof extended the length of the two terraced buildings, Sakura’s and the store next to it. We crawled along century-old timbers supporting the eaves, breathing in dust, shivering excitedly as delicate cobwebbed tendrils brushed our cheeks. Then we dropped into another dusty room, this one at the top of the disused store.

            It was nighttime. The room was piled high with moldering carboard boxes and bolts of cloth. The light from Sophiya’s phone picked out a tall, stiff figure, ghostly white, looming over us—we shrieked; Darius lashed out, knocked it over—and then we laughed, uneasily, at the sight of the mannequin laying broken on the floor, its billowing ivory wedding dress stained with the dark print of his boot, square in the middle of its chest.

            We giggled and tried the door. It was locked. Dmytro forced it open with his shoulder.

            At the time I was all of eleven or twelve? The others only a few years older. The whole time, I was fucking terrified but filled with the terrible anxiety of a newcomer desperate to impress the older kids. Darius didn’t even want me there, he’d maybe that clear, but Emma insisted and led me gently but firmly by the hand when I hesitated. With hushed voices and tentative steps, we descended from the top floor, down richly carpeted stairs into the wide, silent space below. A few beams from streetlights outside cut sharp lines across the floor, slipping through gaps in the shutters and plywood hammered over the windows.

            What we had discovered was—magnificent.

            At least in memory. I’d probably find it tacky, now, or maybe just a little sad, a relic of a forgotten era. But to eleven-year-old eyes, the racks of sumptuous clothes, the red velvet sofas—I remember those so vividly, the deep richness of those cushions, the splendid crimson colour—gilt wallpaper, scintillating chandelier, vaulting ceilings, glass display cases and engraved wooden paneling: walking down those wide carpeted steps, embarrassingly wide-eyed, it was like descending into the great hall of some fairy tale castle. We all felt it. Dmytro muttered under his breath in his native tongue, looking angry at the lavish displays of casual wealth. Sophya, oldest of us, squealed for joy and ran to the nearest rack, snatching bright dresses that sparkled like gemstones from their hangers. I don’t remember what Darius did, or Emma: I trailed after Sophya and only remember a strange dread overtaking the initial joy as I began to explore this new space.

            Sophya named in Shangri-la; she found it, so it was hers to name. Shangri-La became our playground. We never told Sakura, but looking back, she must have known. I can’t help but wonder why she allowed it. We escaped there often. Not as a full group, though the five of us—Darius, Dmytro, Sophya, Emma, and me—did occasional find ourselves there, together. More often, we went there in pairs. Or alone.

            And remembering this place, sitting opposite Darius, a memory surfaced, one forgotten until Darius dredged it up, and in my head its now all confused with the lies I told Julia. I told her the story of the wedding dress, how my mom dragged me into a bridal store, and I wandered and wondered at all the marvelous dresses, walking through hanging folds of silk, satin, taffeta and tulle, lost in the kaleidoscope of colors, mostly ivory but bright flashes of yellow or pink, pale eggshell blues and bursts of orange; and the sweep of fabrics over my young face, gentle, soft, cool, sometimes a little rough, always exciting. And that story’s bullshit, obviously, as fabricated as the memory of the little girl I knew who once dressed me like her doll in dresses and took pictures, showed them at school, got me beaten so badly I ended up in the hospital.

            But in thinking back to Vestige for the first time in—Christ, ages—suddenly, I doubted my doubt, which is to say I suddenly remembered a night in that empty boutique, alone, a night when I needed to be on my own. A lonely night, when I inexplicably ached for home and the mother I’d left behind, even though she meant nothing to me, never wanted me; a night of weakness, when I fled to this space to hide the tears I couldn’t share. I remember moonlight, slipping through a crack in the boarding, and motes of dust, dancing in that light.

            In that heavy silence, I crossed over to the racks of clothes and dove headfirst into them, dust puffing out, a mild smell of mildew as I walked through what was left of the sparkling and colourful dresses, and onwards to blouses and tops, skirts, dangling scraps I hardly knew as lingerie at that age, but which nevertheless left me feeling funny inside; and I staggered and danced through all these clothes until I fell back onto one of the red velvet sofas, and lay there, staring up at the high, curved ceiling and its inlaid constellation of stars and planets.

            Darius and I talked about our Shangri-La for a little bit. I was surprised at how sentimental he seemed, genuinely nostalgic. Then Darius sank back into silence. By this time, we’d finished off our third drink. At this point, I started to wonder whether I’d be heading back to the office today. Then, Darius signalled the barkeep, and another pair of tumblers arrived. That’s when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Where was he going with this?

            He stared into his drink. “You ever think about—my debt?” He doesn’t look up, doesn’t make eye contact. “You know, the Winthrop estate job? What a fuck up that was.”

            I swirled my drink and nodded. Yeah, I remembered that night. I carried that scar for nearly twenty years, into that meeting with Darius. The scar stayed with me until Scooter erased it from my flesh, along with all the other physical memories of my past.

            “That security guard had you dead to rights,” I said.

            “Pow,” he said. “Dead.”

            I nodded again.

            “You took that bullet for me.”

            I shrugged. I rubbed at my shoulder, at the phantom impact, shredded muscle, shattered bone, spray of blood. “You would’ve done the same.”

            “No,” Darius said. “I wouldn’t have.”

            I laughed.

            He leaned forward, halfway across the table, and stared directly at me. I stared back. “I thought you were a goner,” he said. “I was thinking about how pissed Sakura would be. It was my fault, I’d been sloppy. But after taking that hit, you got yourself under cover—but the guard—then he got too close—and you—”

            I knocked back my drink and hissed around the burn. “Darius—”

            “You fucking destroyed that guy.” He shook his head. “Hardcore brutal. It was scary, watching you work—I hadn’t appreciated until then why she favored so much, but I saw it then. Like an attack dog, and she held the leash,”

            “What do you want, Darius?” I said, and banged my tumbler down on the table, hard. “Fuck this nostalgia bullshit. Why are we here?”

            “A job,” he said. “Just like the old days.”

            “Like the old days?”

            “Yeah. Real super-spy shit, funded, top-secret.”

            “We weren’t spies, Darius. We were fucking kids.”

            “Sure. But when Sakura told us to go somewhere, we went there. Watch, we told her what we saw. Steal something, we stole it. Hurt someone, we hurt them. You spent six months pretending you were a fucking high school kid, just so you get close to that girl.”

            “Not the girl,” I said. “Her dad, his computer, his research.”

            “What was her name? Doesn’t matter. You did it.”

            “Muna,” I said “Muna Khalid.”

            He shrugged. “That’s not important. What matters is this: there’s a job, and I want you on it.”

            Again, the prickle of hairs at the back of my neck.

            “What job?” I asked.

            “Blackwater Phoenix,” he said, and his eyes glittered darkly like slivers of obsidian.

            I turned him down.

            Five years later, and fuck me, but I’m questioning the fucking wisdom of that decision. I’m standing there dressed in bodystocking and the tiniest of skirts, bound and gagged, jiggling tits pushing out and I’m perched in a pair of stripper heels, wondering whether Darius is still the kind of guy to hold a grudge.

            Then again, he still owes me, and a debt’s a debt. And God, I sure as hell hope he remembers that.

            Dmytro tugged the leash and with mincing steps, I followed him into an expansive and dimly lit room.