The Clarity of Cold Steel

“I CAN’T KEEP doing this,” she mutters, but I’m off somewhere far, somewhere dark, dangling in a slow metrical circle, and her voice is the shadow of an echo caroming down a deep hole. Mech whirrs and clicks softly, precisely.

I try to move. It’s an effort. Too much of one.

“You’re a real special kind of stupid, you know that?” she asks. Casually. There are cracks there, though, in her voice, and they’re growing as pressure builds. “Trying to get your damned-self killed?”

Indeed. I was.

“Idiot.”

I can’t argue with her.

“Lucky they didn’t lynch you.”

Good lucky? Or bad lucky? I’m still on the fence.

“They were fixing to.”

And why, pray tell, did they not?

She prods me and dull sparks of muffled pain sizzle warm up my arm. “Can you feel that?”

No. Well, yes, but barely.

“No. You’re still drunk. Jesus.”

Jesus had nothing to do with it.

“Or did they break something inside and you’re done for?” She peers close, this curious shade that I know I should know. I can smell booze on her breath, or on my own, ricocheting off her.

She wipes my brow with a coarse, wet cloth, its burlap texture snagging and picking at the ragged edges of the cut reopened across my face. From a soft void, her face comes into stippled existence, a shimmering image, a desert mirage solidifying from the naked void, and for a moment it’s Aashirya — my heart leaps — her dark eyes staring down at me, straining, yearning, concern brimming, compassion personified. She’s so beautiful it hurts, with her dark hair spilling like a sable cascade over her shoulders, her brown skin so smooth, so soft, so perfectly perfect. But it’s not my eyes seeing, it’s my wants, my needs, my regrets, my fancies, and she comes morphing into true focus. It’s Sweet Sally. And well, hell, she ain’t looking so bad, either.

“Well, hello,” Sweet Sally says as my eyes creak open. “Head hurt?”

“What’s left of it, darlin’,” I murmur, struggling to sit up. My arm slips a few times on smooth cool satin sheets, but I persevere, triumph. I’m lying in a bed. It’s saggy. Lumpy. From the waist up, I’m naked. The waist down, too, as it turns out. Some fleabag hovel-hole comes swirling into focus around me. Broken plaster walls. Corrugated floor. Ain’t even the Parador. But I ain’t dead. “Shit.”

“Good, you asshole.” She threads a needle and takes a grip on it with her mech hand, the maniples clicking softly like insects. She adjusts her grip. “Damned glove,” she mutters. “You trying to get killed?”

“Can’t even do that right.” I collapse back. Maybe next time. Fingers crossed. “How’d you get me out?”

Sweet Sally glances toward a bare table, her pepperbox revolver lying on it. “I worked out a little something with the establishment’s clientele and ownership.”

“How’d you even know I was there?”

“Didn’t,” she harrumphs. “Just heard some stupid wog was hocking pills at a quarter cut. Walked in just as you got decked. You got any left?”

“Why’d you get me out?”

She purses her lips, sets the needle down, yanks her long black velvet glove off her hideous mech arm, takes the needle back up and sets it delicately between her precise iron fingers.

“You are one self-destructive asshole, you know that?”

“I do indeed.” I stare at her arm, all burnished in the half light, the clockmech innards whirring disparate but all aiming toward the same purpose.

“Quit it.” She frowns, reddens, fixates on the needle, working it through again, pulling it snug.

“Ouch.” My head’s starting to pound, a dull whopper rising just over the horizon. “Booze…?” My throat’s parched. Might pay to get ahead of this one.

“Water,” Sweet Sally says firmly, holding out a ceramic mug.

I wave a hand. “Never touch the stuff.”

“Water,” she repeats firmly, and there’s something in her eye I don’t fix on challenging.

“Water,” I sigh, acquiesce, taking it in hand and knocking it back. Vile stuff.

“More.”

“I’ll drown.”

“Wasn’t that the end game of your little jaunt, anyway?”

“Fisticuffs or shivs, bullets or bludgeons,” I shake my head, stifle a shudder, “but not drowning. Never drowning.”

“What the hell’s the difference?”

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand on colt legs. Wobbling hard. The bedpost’s there, and I latch onto it, steady myself, sit back down. My stomach growls. “Your floor seems to be a mite…”

“Just what the hell you think you’re doing?” She crosses her arms, slides a bucket my way with her foot.

“I have to go.” I nearly vomit.

“Where?” She’s standing now, arms akimbo, looking like she might kill me, looking disgusted, looking like maybe she will let me walk out of here, divest herself of my existence and all will be the merrier. She’s not wrong in this.

“They’re coming for me.” I wipe drool from my lips.

“The cops?” She eyes the door.

“No — yeah,” I pause, chuff a laugh, “them, too.”

“Them, too?” She squints. “Who else then?”

“And they probably know about you.” I stand again, firmer this time, head pounding, but the floor ain’t moving like it was. It finally settled. Huzzah. “You’re in danger.”

“No one knows we’re here.”

“Where is here?”

“See?” she says. “Even you don’t know. Now get back in bed.”

“No.” I reach for my pants. They’re suddenly very far away. My hand’s shaking, too. “You should leave here, too, Sal. They’ll come for you.” I finally grab them. “They’re coming for everyone.”

“Who?”

“The man in the iron mask.” I get my legs in.

“The who in the what?” She’s on me then, trying to guide me back as I sling a suspender over my bare shoulder.

“No.” I hold out a hand. “I’m serious. You got to lay low somewhere. A bolt hole, something, you savvy?” I near collapse as the words tumble like marbles from my mouth. “They burned my house, Sal. They burned my wife, my kids, my…” I’m kneeling on the cold floor now, wailing like a babe, sucking my thumb and blubbering. “It ain’t real.”

“I assure you it is.” She’s kneeling now beside me, her two hands pressed to my face, one hand soft and warm, the other one cold and hard. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be over.” She holds me as I implode slowly, deliberately, concaving inward into something so small and inconsequential I just might disappear. Hope. I never had it. A false prophet. I never dreamed of being reunited with them. Her. Aashirya. Never dared to. Or … I never admitted to the hope. It was a cancer in remission, out of sight but not mind, and now it’s annihilation incarnate. She takes my chin in her hand and raises it until my gaze meets hers. “You’re just gonna give up?”

“What have I got to live for?”

“It’s not all about you.” She fixes me a glare. “That kid that’s gone missing, you’re his only hope.”

“He’s dead by now,” I spit.

“And what if he’s not?” she asks, those cool blue eyes calculating.

“He wishes he was.”

“And isn’t that worse?”

“I…” I pause, rub my throat, look down. Can’t take those blue eyes. Not now. “Sure it’s worse,” I say to the floor. “Hell, it’s the worst. Brahma only knows…” I still can’t look at her. I just want to be done. Gone. I tried. Failed even at that. “I’m done.”

“And, Jesus, what about your family?” She glances over at the pepperbox on her table. “You said this man in the mask killed them, right? Your wife. Your kids. Your friends. If this missing kid ain’t enough to man you up, then what about plain old blood-simple revenge?”

I look up. Finally. She may have a point.