Burning Bridges
A Grim Fandango story
A guy I used to work with once told me, "Manny, always burn your bridges behind you, cause you never know who might be trying to follow". That was when I'd still been alive. He was a transient I'd only known briefly, mainly because he defrauded the company we both worked for at the time before making a discreet exit, but we got along even if I hadn't exactly agreed with his life philosophy. I wondered what we has doing now, whether he was still alive somewhere or everything had finally caught up with him. Either way, the words rang through my skull. I was about to step into his shoes.
It was, comparatively, a quiet night in Rubacava. Day of the Dead. Glottis was right, it wasn't much good for business. There was still nobody back in the Land of the Living I wanted to see, and even if there was, I had bigger things to deal with right now than my club being slow. Salvador had been right to air his concerns about me buying the automat and converting into a hip casino nightclub. It wasnt like I was going to spend the rest of my life here; I needed a place to set up shop and wait for Meche. Finding her was still my mission. Now, a year later, I'd finally found her, only for her to be snatched away again in an instant by none other than that jerk, Domino. Except he wasnt just the office jock anymore. He was my arch nemesis.
That moment changed everything. I'd found myself slipping, doubting what Salvador had stressed was my number one priority. On bad nights, I'd be stewing in my office chain smoking and taking my frustrations out on a bottle of expensive booze, asking myself: what if I just stayed? What if Meche has slipped through my net already? What if she never arrives? There were a lot of those nights, and I paid for them the next day in empty bottles and phantom headaches that still hurt enough to feel real. I lit another cigarette, slowly dragging on it while staring out from the balcony at the base of the giant cactus you could spot my join by from half a mile away. Salvador was right about that too. In the list of greatest historical follies, "wanted man puts name in giant neon letters on his club" had to be up there with the best. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I took in the view. The cigarette smoke seemed to hang almost suspended in the brisk night air. Rubacava was a beautiful town; The way the black moonlit water lapped against the shore and buildings, the shadowy alleyways that lead to dive bars filled with beatniks, the lights, and the sounds of distant foghorns echoing across the bay. Even Max's offensively showy cat track, towering over the night sky, I had to admit was impressive in spite of my slight jealousy. In my darker moments I understood almost perfectly what Membrillo had meant when he said that many of the souls here had given up on getting out. Hell, sometimes I almost wanted to join then. There was a melancholy to the place, but you almost couldn't resist it. It was the reason Rubacava existed. A place that was supposed to be somewhere you paused on your journey to the Ninth Underworld, but where many instead chose to linger. Something I'd been all too quick to capitalise on with the club. After all, fleecing sad souls of their savings to funnel back to the growing LSA in El Marrow had been working out just great. But that had all changed in the blink of an eye. Well, in the blink of a champagne bottle to the head and a second involuntary swim in the ocean, at least.
I thought back to when Glottis and I had first rolled up here. I thought it would be as simple as just hanging around a day or two and waiting for Meche to show up. After all, that horrible trek through the forest had to lead to something, right? But, here I was. I'd been here a year and owned one of the town's most popular venues. I'd made connections, friends. I was Manny Calavera, man about town. Manny the swanky casino guy in a slick tux as white as my bones. But this wasn't like skipping out of El Marrow. Then I'd been on the run, a fugitive thanks to me accidentally stumbling on the DOD's secret Double N racket. For the majority of souls, leaving El Marrow was a given anyway eventually. Leaving Rubacava would be much more like saying goodbye to a place I'd come to almost call home, and in the past few hours I'd turned almost everything upside down.
It started with a ship, and if my luck held it would end with one. I'd drugged a sailor and pretended a sprouted body in the morgue was his. I'd radicalised a bunch of Sea Bees, gotten one of them arrested and bribed the best lawyer in town to bust him out. I'd alienated Carla for the sake of a metal detector, though I suppose having to fish it out of a giant kitty litter when she tossed it out the window in frustration was my penance for that. I had to chuckle at my own audacity. Then there was the counterfeit tickets. No way that suitcase belonged to Charlie. Indeed, the letters "H.L." marked on it gave that away. That only made things more complicated. I had gotten myself a Maritime Union card out of it, so it wasn't all bad. That would get me on the Limbo. Sal had told me about this Hector Lemans in one of his letters. All I knew was that he was the mastermind of this evil scam that I'd gotten in the way of.
That wasn't my main concern right now. I was content to leave Salvador, Eva and whoever else they'd roped in to join the cause to deal with that. For now anyway. El Marrow was behind me, and I had to get to Puerto Zapato fast to catch up with Domino and Meche. I'd scoffed at Sal when he'd suggested I was in love with her, but somewhere between the champagne bottle and Velasco fishing me out of the ocean again, I'd begun to question myself about that. It had been a pretty sobering experience. I believed in justice, whatever side faces up when the coin lands. But I had to find her. I just had to.
And then there was Lola. I felt cold and numb just thinking about her, punctuated with a razor sharp sting of remorse. I couldn't even look in the direction of the lighthouse. I'd given that slime Nick a solid right hook for what he did to her, but he deserved much worse, and his jibe about me not being able to save her had cut like a bone saw. She didn't deserve to go like that, and her words had left me with an unshakeable feeling that I was partly to blame for her death. Or rather, her death within death. I shuddered thinking about it, but things were moving fast now. It was another entry on my long list of failures. So, in my quest for redemption I was about to burn it all down and run. I flicked another cigarette butt over the balcony. There was just one thing left to do.
I'd already pissed Chief Bogen off once tonight already. He'd been asking for it, having been a thorn in my side almost since day one. Racketeering and protection was just how Rubacava worked, and for all my occasional thoughts to the contrary I'd grown sick of it. The slick betting control machine installed in my desk was really for his benefit, to keep him happy. I'd be turning it on him twice in one day. I knew this would certainly get the joint raided, but I was leaving town and it'd be the perfect distraction, not to mention erasing my presence here in the short term. If anything I felt bad for the croupier downstairs for having to deal with him, but in the bigger picture that was a small price to pay. For the second time that night, I flipped the panel over and waited for the right hand light to turn on. I hit the magic button and waited just long enough to catch the fireworks as they went off.
Time to leave.