Dead. There’s a saying that you sleep when you die. Well, I’ve been dead for 72 hours and I haven’t gotten a wink of sleep.
Dead. My death isn’t much what I thought would be like.
Answers require questions. That was the last thing that I said to Steven 2 hours ago. Without the right ones how will you know what you’re asking for? It’s been too long for a simple solution to an already complicated situation.
“There’s nothing to tell you right now.” He says.
“There’s more than that.” I press him a little further in hopes of getting an explanation.
“You were paid. It was me.”
“Ethan?”
“I needed him. He needed me. You needed…”
“I didn’t need this.”
“They were going to kill you.”
“That’s supposed to make this easier.”
“After they… they were going to kill you.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“These are the answers that I can tell you.”
“Answers. These aren’t answers. Answers require questions.”
“I can’t help what they are or aren’t.”
He’s simply stalling. I didn’t need his side of nothing. Knowing something from another perspective wasn’t important. Ethan wasn’t so shy about a few details. I learned that in the last day while Steven was making things happen with another predicament.
On the road between no where and somewhere Ethan spills a little but more than he should in less than five minutes. It was before 10 am and after Steven decided to stop because “there’s no better time than the present” to fill up the Seville and make a few calls.
After Steven walks away, Ethan gets out of the car and lights a cigarette. While standing next to a sign that says “No Smoking” with a picture of a tiny cigarette with smoke, he has the stage presence of Gloria Swanson and Cary Grant’s swagger beneath a pair of Gucci aviator sunglasses. Once Steven is standing next to the office making calls without using the pay phone, Ethan leans against the open window of the Seville and starts talking.
“Want to know what’s happening, don’t you honey?” he half whispers.
“You might say that. What’s there to know?”
“Ha! You’re still bad at playing games.”
“Tell me a little something.”
“I hired you. That much is the truth. Steven asked me to.”
“Steven?”
“He’s protecting you. They would have killed you after him. If they think you’re dead… it’s safer.”
“He’s running. Why?”
“Sometimes there’s a consequence for doing the right thing.”
“I was never supposed to kill him. You…”
“I didn’t drug him. He called me after to help. Even I can’t explain that to you. I don’t know what happened. It seems he was…”
“Meeting someone… That man? The gentlemen from…”
“Honey, that was no gentlemen. And Steven isn’t sharing everything. I’ve been on hiatus since hiring you. There’s a price on my head as well.”
“But you’re alive. What’s he doing now?”
“He’s trying to stay one step ahead of them.”
Taking one step after another towards the car Steven edges closer. It’s as he slowly maneuvers nearer when I come to realize that there’s no going back from being dead. I’m not going to get a chance at resurrection this time. This cat only had two lives. The third is no more than a shadow of familiar.
“Consolidation.” This is what Steven tells the man we met two days before Ethan tells me about nothing. A disposable man that has been with us for more than a day, getting things done and moving plans and money for Steven. But there’s this word that means very little to me or Ethan. It’s the one word that Steven repeatedly yells at this man before putting three bullets into his belly and standing over his body with a gun pointed into his mouth. The man shakes his head and whines like a little girl until breaking. Steven finds three things on his body after his gun releases a hole into the man’s skull and blows a chunk of carpet out of the floor in this room at a Motel 6 in a town that no one will remember between no where and somewhere. I’m listening to the words that have no meaning and Ethan is smoking a cigarette. Steven takes these three things, the broken words and makes a call after dragging the body into the tiny bathroom.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and watch the man not stop dying. Watching this dead man sleeping in a red coated white porcelain bed and there I wonder what it means to be dead. Does it mean something different for him? All the things he thought would be everything in life… are they much like he thought they would be in death? I pull a pair of scissors out of the open drawer and start to cut away my loose ends of dry hair matted with blood. The door isn’t locked and I decide to keep working anyway. I continue watching the sleeping dead man and trim back the longer pieces of the old life. How simple it would be to cut away all the pieces in this fashion.
Two hours ago I thought I knew all the things I wanted to do before I died and I wonder if this man bleeding out in the bathtub ever contemplated those things before he ended up here. I keep wondering what will come next as I stand up and flush the toilet. While I wash my hands and rub the dried blood off my face, I think of all the things that Steven keeps hiding from me and how much more Ethan will share when the door slams open. Steven looks at me and I know it’s time to leave again. The fellow in the bathtub won’t be joining us. Good night stranger. Sleep well.
No comments:
Post a Comment