Chapter 2
As soon as I step outside of the bar my phone begins to vibrate in my pocket. I answer it.
"What's crackin'?"
"Ezra," The voice over the phone says. I recognize the voice immediately. It is Gwen.
"Hey," I say. Gwen owns a bar down the street from the one I'm outside of. A much nicer one in fact. She inherited it from her father when he died. Gwen and I had a rocky(at best) romantic relationship at one time, but any of those kind of feelings have long since passed now. Gwen is only my friend now. Gwen is my only friend now.
"I saw you on the news," she says. "did you really make all that money?"
I light up another cigarette. "Yeah,"
"I thought you weren't bounty hunting anymore."
"I wasn't bounty hunting."
"What do you call it then?."
"An accident."
"How does that happen on accident?"
"That's something I've been thinking about," I say before laughing nervously. The genuine concern in her voice is disconcerting; She rarely takes serious tones with me anymore. "Fate?" I suggest.
"You don't believe in fate."
"Maybe, maybe not. How about I come by and waste some of my cash down at your place?"
"You'd better mean the bar."
"Why of course." I say just before we say our good byes and hang up our phones.
I start walking down the dark empty street. The setting sun turns sky above me a yellowy-orange. The sidewalk and street were turned a brown color in this fading light. This isn't necessarily a bad part of town but it is by no means a good area. Grime crunches under my shoes with each step. Under a flickering streetlight an old man in a long coat approaches me from the shadows and I raise an eyebrow to him, halfway expecting him to be some veteran hitman sent to spread my entrails out across the street like confetti. That is not the case, however, he recognizes me from the news and stopped to congratulate me and tell me how lucky I was, blah, blah. I nod until he shut ups and I continue on to Gwen's bar.
This is not boding well for me at all, I was at the height of my fifteen minutes of fame and it'd be a week or two before people started to forget about me and the rest of the story. I'm already being recognized on the street. Anybody who sees me is a liability. I flick my spent cigarette out into the street as a taxi cab speeds past. My eyes follow it, the muscles tense up in my body, ready to launch me into a dive for cover when a maelstrom of lead being delivered express to my face via machine gun fire. No such luck. It just speeds off and my body loosens up again. Christ, I need a drink.
I turn a corner and there it is. Gwen's bar: Liz's Lounge. I don't know who Liz is and I doubt Gwen does either. Across the street a group children are tying bags on the feet of a cat. I'd yell at them and tell them to buzz off but I don't like cats more than I don't like children. I shrug it off and swing open the heavy wood door and walk into the bar.
The place is a graveyard usually. Inhabited by a buncha old geezers, drinking in the dim-lit dive bar to hide their age wearing face. A smell that resembles that of an old couple's house wafts through the air regularly. Tonight isn't any different. Filled with old men drowning themselves in liquor too hard for their own good, speeding up their already racing atrophy. It's a sad sight but part of me knows I'll be sitting in this very room when my skin starts to sag and my hair starts to gray. Well, if I can make it that far.
The old men usually stay in groups. Elderly cliques. Around tables and in booths, talking about the good ol' days, back when the Earth was inhabitable. Music from their era or maybe even older play on the jukebox. The Doors' song: Alabama. I know that song, it's a good tune. They play dominoes and bid euchre and gin rummy while ripping on each other and sharing war stories.
Drawing not a single stare from the apathetic old men(much to my relief) I walk across the floor and to the door behind the bar. It reads Employees Only in small brass letters. I chuckle sardonically at my life's habit of making references to itself. Walking through the door I find Gwen. To say I'm stunned would be an understatement. There sits Gwen, my childhood friend and ex-lover.
Her hair was always a silky jet black, but the way it is cut now is in a style reminiscent of the Bettie Page posters I'd seen hanging up in my grandfather's antique shop. Short bangs up front and long in the back. She wears a black zip-up jacket much like mine but instead of the army green cargo pants I usually wear, she has on a black skirt with black and green horizontal striped stockings that cover her long legs down and under the half-laced combat boots. This is my first time seeing her in this particular style. I like it. Smoking a black cigarette she stares off blankly into space, sitting up on a stool with her legs crossed. The room is as dimly lit and the has same wood paneled style as the rest of the bar. The smoke from her cigarette twirls delicately with the dust in the air under the orangish light emitted from the lamp hanging from the ceiling.
"Hey," I say. She looks up to me and brightens up.
"Ezzie!" she yells excitedly. She hops off the stool and shuffles over to me. Wrapping her arms around me tightly she kisses me on the cheek and shakes me around. It reminds me of my grandmother when I'd come to visit when I was little.
"Don't call me that." I say. I put up with her manhandling a little longer for old times' sake. The stench of strong alcohol was rising up off of her and into my nostrils. On the table she was sitting at I notice a half empty bottle of whiskey next to a short glass and an ashtray filled up over the brim with a mountain of black cigarette butts.
"Oh, Ezzie," she says. "It's been too long."
I am able to break free from her vice grip without hurting her feelings. "About a year."
"Sit down."
We sit down and she pours me a glass of the whiskey. I take a few sips but take it slow. I'm still buzzed from the last bar. "So, what's new, Gwen?"
"You tell me."
"Your hair?"
"Why are you bounty hunting? It's dangerous."
"I already told you it was an accident."
"Bullshit."
I light up a smoke. "I'm serving you no shit."
"Tell me what happened then."
I sigh and take another swig from my drink. I tell her the story I told the older guy before, but I neglected to mention the seedy strip club this time.
"That's hard to believe." Gwen says. She takes a large gulp from her glass.
"Slow down, you're tipsy enough."
"I just get worried."
"About?"
"You, Ezra."
I rub my eyes, slightly annoyed. "You shouldn't. We haven't been together in-"
"It's not about that. You're like my big brother, but-"
"But I'm not."
We sit quietly for about five minutes. Gwen returns to her distant stare and I finish off my cigarette and my whiskey.
"Aren't you worried?" Gwen broke the silence.
"Do you have another coffin nail? That was my last one." I lie to change the subject.
"Don't avoid the question. You're worried."
"Obviously," I say. I'm starting to get uncomfortable with her interrogation.
"Why would you go after such dangerous people, Ezra?"
"It was a fluke. Nobody in their right mind would go after them. They wouldn't stick around to give their name and details at least."
Tears start rolling down Gwen's cheeks and she hangs her head to hide it.
"What're you doing?" I ask her.
"What will we do?" she says. Her face is scrunched up fighting back a full-on, drunken sobbing spell.
"We're not doing anything. I'm going to walk you home. You need to sober up before we talk."
Gwen frowns at me and I extend my arm to her. Reluctantly she accepts and leans up against me, placing her head on my shoulder. I guide her towards the door with my arm around her shoulder to make sure she doesn't fall over. I nod to the tender as we slowly make our way out. I don't know him real well but he recognized me from times before when I frequented the old place. He gave me a nod as I carried my drunken friend outside.
The moment we step outside the ashen gray sky broke open into a moderate rainfall.
"Damn it." I say as I unzip my jacket to throw over mine and Gwen's head to shield us from the shower in lieu of an umbrella.
Eventually we make it to the steps up to Gwen's apartment building, taking a lot longer to make the trip than it should have taken, due mostly to the slow stride necessary to keep her balance so she wouldn't fall on her ass. We step up the stairs and take shelter from the now pouring rain in the archway above the doors. I pull my now soaked jacket off and shake some of the excess rainwater off.Gwen reaches in her jacket pocket and pulls her brass cigarette case out and flicks it open. Her motor skills evidently are impaired heavily by the consumption of the hard liquor. The black cigarettes flip through the air and splash down into a puddle a step below, some keep rolling down the stairs further and out into the soggy street. Gwen starts after her cancer sticks, feeling the throws of a nicotine craving. I stop her by putting my hand on her shoulder.
"I have some." I say. I pull my pack of Marlboro No. 27's out, flicking my wrist to masterfully send a solitary cigarette jutting out a little from the rest. I'm surprised that worked so well. Gwen pulls it out and slides it between her lips.
"I thought you said you were out..." she says. She feels her pockets in search of a lighter but I interrupt with the flame from my zippo.
Gwen leans over to light up on it, taking a long and heavy drag. "You going to have any trouble getting up to your place?" I ask her.
"You're coming too." she says, putting her hand on my arm.
"Gwen- no."
She pauses for a moment and lets loose an inebriated snicker. "That's not what I meant, Ezzie." she says.
"Oh, what did you mean then?"
"It's not safe for you to go back to your apartment."
"It'll be alright."
"No, Ezra, some very powerful and scary people were sent to jail today because of you. And you know how the ISSP is with these syndicates, they'll be out in no time!"
"I'm not too worried." I say. Thunder cracks through the dark sky. I'd think this was nature's way of calling me a liar were the weather over Mars City not automated in some facility.
"Stay here tonight, we'll figure something out for you. You've got to get far away from Mars."
I agree with a submissive sigh. "Fine." I put my arm around her again and we make our way up the dusty old stairwell.
Over time the walls inside the apartment building faded from a bright yellow to beige. Exposed brick could be seen in a few spots where the plaster fell off. The walls were also littered with carvings of people's names and random profanity. "Fucksauce." I read aloud from one of the scratched in messages.
We got to her door and she fumbled with her keys. The thick door to her apartment has small gold number plating on it. It reads 14 and next to that is a cleaner patch of wood that formed the shape of the letter C where one of the plates fell off. Eventually she finds the key and lets us in.
Gwen's apartment matches the rest of the worn building but she somehow managed to decorate it as if that was how she intentionally made it look. I'd say 'shabby-chic' were I a pretentious interior decorator. Gwen breaks free from my grip and takes her jacket off. She throws it on the couch as she goes over to her antique compact disk player, staggering only a little.
"Still listening to those old songs, eh?" I ask, hanging my wet coat up on the rack above the radiator. She turns and smiles at me, pushing a few buttons and turning the volume dial up. I recognized the player from grandfather's antique shop back in the day. A familiar song starts playing over the speakers. Doin' Time by the band Sublime... sounds like a remix.
"I love this CD." Gwen says.
"Which is it again?"
"Second-hand Smoke."
"Ah, that's it."
"Your grandpa loved these guys." she says, walking over to the bathroom door. "I'm going to take a shower, pour yourself a drink or get something to eat if you want, Ezzie."
"Don't call me that."
She giggles. "Sorry."
Gwen closes the bathroom door behind her and leaves me alone in her small but cozy living room. I sit down next to her jacket on the green corduroy couch. I try to relax and begin clearing my mind of my big bank account and the even bigger trouble rolling my way because of it. I start another cigarette and sink into the couch flowing with the bass driven rhythm of the Sublime song. With an angsty groan escapes all of my worries and insecurities for a little while. They're exhaled with my smoke jetting into the air to defy gravity and dance elegantly along with the plume of tobacco smoke.
I thought of my grandfather, the mental image in my brain detailed down to every last wrinkle in his face. He used to tell me about how great Earth was before The Gate Incident, before it got turned into a crash pad for large pieces of the moon. It is hard for me to imagine the Earth as a place that didn't include a falling sky. It was once nicer than any of these terraformed planets or moons and a far better place to live than any city colony or space station. With six-billion people all packed into the same planet I found it hard to believe. It must have been insanity.
Grandpa's antique shop had a lot of relics from the 20th century and a few rare pieces from even before. I'd stroll through there from time to time and mess with some of the junk. The analog technology was good for a laugh. Interesting though, to see the evolution from silent film cameras, film projectors, record players to camcorders, VHS tape players and cassette players, then eventually onto CD and DVD. I even remember of him talking about owning an old car somewhere on Venus but I can't help but feel like that was a tall tale. With a yawn I begin to drift off.
I woke up with burning hot ash falling onto my face. I sit up quickly and brush it off, find the burning cherry and grind it in the ashtray while looking from side to side to make sure I didn't set the couch ablaze. The TV turns on and starts flipping channels. I lean my head over the back of the couch again and find myself looking up at Gwen, fresh out of the shower. Wearing only a towel, her dark wet hair hanging down, clinging gently to her soft pale white skin. I quickly hush any uncouth thoughts before they have a chance to develop. "What are you doing?" I ask.
"I want to watch that piece they're doing on you on Big Shots." she says, holding the remote up at me.
"I'd really rather not."
"Why not? Don't you want to hear-"
Before she can finish I interrupt. "Hear the same thing we've already heard? About how I ruthlessly hunted the Stukov Gang leaders down across the solar system using nothing but my killer instinct and expert experience?" I say sarcastically. "I marched in headstrong and hardboiled dead set on bringing each one of the filthy bastards down. White doves, guns blazing, they had the numbers, but I had the heart and righteousness. I'm a John Woo superhero."
Gwen grimaces, looking almost hurt by my snarky outburst. Eventually she manages to ask me, "Who's John Woo?"
"He made action flicks way back when."
"Oh,"
"Look, I'm sorry."
"It's OK, I know you're stressed."
I sit forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. My index and middle fingers massaging the temple indents just above and behind my eyes. Gwen walks around the couch and plops down next to me and puts her soggy head on my shoulder, putting her feet up on the coffee table next to mine. She no longer smelled of expensive whiskey but of some sort of fruit scented shower products. Once again, looking down at her toned, moist body, covered only by a small towel wrapped tightly around it I started to get aroused again. She looks into my eyes with her big wintergreen eyes. The color accented by her black eye makeup. They gave me a familiar look. A look I knew from when we had tried our hand at a romantic relationship with undesirable results. The look she gave me was one inviting me to make the first move.
I considered taking advantage, going all the way with her one more time. If not only for the purpose of catharsis. But in the end my conscience beat me into submission and I looked away from her, once again quelling my primal urges. Once the blood stopped flowing to one head it began flowing to the other. I knew that if I went through with it I would end up feeling bad about it after the fact, even if she didn't. Gwen sighed and started flipping through TV channels again. She reached into my pocket and took my cigarettes out and pulled one from the pack with her teeth. She lights it up.
"Nothing's on." she says. She turns off the TV. "Let's talk."
"About what?" I ask, knowing full well what about.
"What're you going to do?"
"Haven't much thought about it. But I've gotta go back to my place in the morning."
"What? No way."
"I have things there I need."
"What if they're there waiting?"
Dead silence falls over her apartment as we sit in the dark together. We both know the answer to that question. "I'm a superhero, remember?"
That didn't make Gwen feel any better but as the night wears on she begins to grow tired. We reminisce about a simpler time in, wrapped in each others arms in the now completely unlit apartment. She finally slips off to sleep, but I lie awake, staring off into the blackness for the rest of the night.
Sun rays rise triumphant over the horizon. The sunlight invades her apartment through the window, the venetian blinds doing little to stop its complete overthrowing of the darkness. I slide out from the nearly naked Gwen and leave her alone, lost in the depths of her subconscious. Yawning, I make my way over into the kitchenette where I filled the coffee maker with grounds and water and flipped the on switch. Sitting at the counter I light up one of the few coffin nails I have left. The kitchenette counter overlooks the living room and gives a clear view of the window and the outside world that peaked in through the blind slats.
I grab a pad of those tiny, yellow sticky notes and the pen lying next to it. I write 4 PM/Sammy's Diner – Ezra. I stick the note on the coffee maker while I pour myself a cup of the freshly brewed, molten hot caffeinated beverage. I know Gwen will see it because she's a caffeine junkie. She always has been that way. I've seen days where she has gone without coffee. It's not pretty. Three cups of the strong, black stuff and I am ready to go retrieve my stuff or meet my untimely demise.
Before I go I set Gwen's alarm clock to go off, full volume at 1 PM. It was 6 AM now which gave her more than enough time to get up on her own but I wanted to be sure she wasn't late for our diner date. I drop two of my remaining five cigs on the counter on the way out, remembering she dropped the rest of hers in a rain puddle. I opened the door and looked back at Gwen sleeping soundly on the couch. I stood in the doorway for a minute then left.