Botched

It is often this way in a city so large. One encounters people never seen before while walking down the street. The bus is crowded with strangers. And yet, the air was filled with chatter. Small talk. People who knew nothing of each other, except perhaps what they might guess about the other judging by their appearance. Young? Old? Married? Single? Happy? Sad? Nervous? Poker-faced and blank? Asleep? "And how must I appear?", he wondered. In a suit and tie, with a folded Wall Street Journal under his arm. A business man, perhaps? A banker? A lawyer? Today he took a seat next to a young woman who held several books on her lap, looking out the window. She had on a dark but faded looking dress that came to about mid-calf. Over that she wore a bulky knit boat-neck sweater of a dreary gray. It was tattered and had several unravelled places revealing the dress beneath. But, most intriguing were her shoes. They were boots, actually. And he recognized these as a kind of boot he had worn in the air force some years back. They were brown and scuffed, having lost the high polished appearance they would have had on an officer of that time. She wore thick olive green socks folded and pushed down in bulky folds around her ankles and covering the top of her boots.

All of this he took in, in discrete glances, as she gazed out the window. Her appearance was quite different and alluring, in some strange way. She, perhaps lived in a world quite different from his own. More strange and interesting, perhaps. He felt so staid and stuffy in his suit. As though, she was one who lived as some new-age bohemian sprout on the fringe of the culture, and he was more like a tick sucking what blood he could get out of the establishment. As though she was clean and pure in her shabbiness, and he was soiled and dirty in his crisp new suit. His shiny shoes.

He was momentarily taken aback when she turned to look at him. "Do you have the time?" she asked. "Of course." he smiled, glancing down at his watch. "It's 11:32." Of course, he, of all people, would know precisely what time it was. He calibrated his watch daily to the tick of coordinated universal time. Time, for him, was of the essence. Time for him, was, indeed, money. He glanced back at her, absorbing the features of her face quite quickly. This, too, was important in his profession. To perceive quickly and accurately the subtle unspoken nuances, body language, facial expression and gestures of people. Understanding such characteristics, whether of the client or their competitors, often made the difference in making or breaking a deal. "Thanks" she said, turning back to stare out the window again. So, what was he to make of her? She was quite pale looking, as though she rarely sat out in the sun. Her hair was short and straight. Black, but with a kind of metallic quality about it. Like the sheen of a Purple Martin's feathers. Her ears were pierced, but not like the fashion of the day. Instead, the holes in her lobes had been stretched open enough to accommodate two spent 38 caliber shells. Bright and silvery. There was a certain edginess about her, a toughness of appearance that was feigned perhaps, to keep people at a distance. Yet, beneath all that there seemed to be some uncertainty, some vulnerablity. She seemed so different from the simple packaged personas he usually dealt with. More complex and paradoxical. He glanced down at her her crossed legs. Her arm draped lazily across them. Her limp and dangling hand. Her slender pale wrist. The thin silver chain wrapped around it. The tiny silver dagger that dangled from it, swinging hypnotically like a small pendulum. He looked up toward the front of the bus as it slowed down. The approaching street sign. This would be her stop. And his, as well.

"Excuse me." she said in standing, "This is my stop." "Mine, too," he replied, standing to let her go ahead. He walked slowly behind her down the block. She turned into a juice bar that offered smoothies, and bubble tea as well. He followed her in. She placed her order at the counter, and turned to look at him. "Are you following me?" "No," He said shaking his head, "I come here all the time. They make the best orange-banana smoothies. I am addicted to them." "To each his own." she said with a shrug, picking up her bubble tea and retreating to a booth. He ordered his drink and turned to look over at her. She had opened a book and was sipping her tea through a lime green straw. He looked at his watch. It was getting late.

She looked up as he approached. "You're following me." she said. "No, really, I'm not some kind of 'weirdo axe-murderer', or anything. But, you seem like an interesting person, and I'd just like to talk to you. May I?", he said, pointing to the seat opposite her. She looked around the empty room, and then back at him. "Sit down, if you want. It's a free country. But, I am reading an assignment right now, and don't care to talk to you, or anyone." He sat, and placed the newspaper on his lap. He watched her flipping through the pages of her book. "Interesting read, I suppose?" he said, as she reached beneath the table to scratch her leg. He reached slowly for the gun in the fold of the paper. He had been sent to kill her. She looked up and straight into his eyes. "You are following me, aren't you.?" He smiled, about to speak. And that is when she shot him, from under the table. His whole body jerked violently and his gun fell noisily to the floor as he clutched his leg. The shot had missed its intended target, his groin, but it had shattered his kneecap. He fell over in excruciating pain, clutching at his bloody pant leg, feeling pieces of bone beneath it. She bolted for the door, glancing back at him as she threw it open. "Bastard!", she shouted. And then she was gone. That moment of ambivalence had been his undoing. His intentions had been clouded over somehow by the look in her eyes. It had only momentarily disabled him, freezing his finger on the trigger. But that was all it took. It had been just another in a long list of lucrative jobs to do. But, that brief moment of vague desire had left him bloody and moaning on the cafe floor.

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Audra sat on the side of the bed and bent to unroll the thick woolen sock that was draped down over her boot. She pulled it up over her lean calf enjoying the way it warmly hugged her leg. She wearily retrieved the .38 snub nose from its holster around her ankle, and tossed it onto the bed. She was tired. She had sensed from the moment of waking up that morning that this would be the day some shit was going to go down. But it wasn't what she had expected. Jack had hired a stranger to do his dirty work. What an idiot, to think she wouldn't see through that. She slumped back on the bed, staring up at the dark stains on the ceiling as she untied her boots and let them drop to the floor. She raised herself up on one elbow and grabbed a small box from her bag, and plugged a fresh shell into the empty chamber of her gun, and spun the chamber as she looked around the room. What a dump. But there was no way to return to her apartment now. Not with Jack and his stooges looking for her. She fell back on the bed and fell asleep without undressing.

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Jack paced angrily around the hospital room. "What the hell happened?" Johnny looked past the trapeze-like affair that held his leg suspended. His words were slurred from the pain meds they had given him. "I was just about to nail her....I didn't know she even had a gun....." he said, wiping some drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "It's my gun, damn it! She took it when she took the money." Jack muttered. "She's one cold bitch, Jack." Johnny replied. "Yeh," said Jack, putting on his leather jacket. "She's gonna be one really cold bitch down at the morgue when I find her. What did you tell the police?" "I didn't tell them nothing. I just said some psycho chick tried to whack me for making a pass at her." Johnny replied. "They think I'm the victim."
"So, where's the gun?" Jack asked, stepping up to the bedside. "The cops took it into evidence. But, what the hell, I've got a license to carry. I told them it musta fallen out of my holster after the bitch shot me." Jack turned to leave. "Hey, Jackie", Johnny called out. Jack stopped at the door and looked back. "When you kill the bitch, shoot her in the knee first." Jack nodded. "Just for you, Johnny. both knees."

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Audra stood in front of the mirror adjusting the blond wig on her head. It had been cut and shaped into a retro page-boy look. It fell nicely around her face and concealed her dead give-away piercings. "Hi, my name is Dinah. Dinah Shore.", she said looking at herself in the mirror, and turning this way and that to examine her figure in the floral print shirt-waist dress she had found at the thrift store. "See the USA, in your Chevrolet...", she sang to herself as she strolled over to the tattered stuffed chair by the window. She glanced out the window, at the street below, as she slipped her feet into a rather cheap looking pair of white mules. She threw the gun into her bag first. Then her cosmetics. She paused to check her lipstick in the mirror of her compact. "Kiss it all goodbye, Jack," she said, smoothing out the blush on her cheeks. She stood, tossing her compact into her bag. There was business to attend to. A car to rent. A plane ticket to purchase. But first and foremost, a trip to the bank.

At the bank, she was known as April Hofmeister. And they knew her only as a blond. Her only account was a safety deposit box. This had taken months of planning. Months of putting up with Jack's cheating and lying. He had ripped her off on the last three jobs they had done together. That's three times too many. But it took awhile to put together another identity. To stumble onto the combination of his safe. To catch him in a drunken sleep, and take the money that was rightfully hers, and the rest of it as well. She drove slowly past her apartment building. It was not worth the risk to gather some things and pack a bag. As for the cat, surely someone will adopt her. She's probably on the roof of the building right now, stalking sleepy pigeons. There were just two more things to attend to. She pulled up to the drive-in window of her mother's bank. She made a substantial deposit. Enough to buy off her nagging guilt about leaving her mother to fend for herself, and a bit of a bonus too, for all the times she had put her mother through hell with her reckless ways. And now, there was but one more matter of business between her and the airport.

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Jack sat behind his desk in the office at the Drunken Sailor Lounge. He was on the phone and on the fax sending Audra's photo out, cashing in favors owed, and making promises he couldn't keep. Five grand for a photo of her with a bullet in her head. Ten grand, if you can deliver her to me alive. He put his hand to his neck and felt his pulse as he strolled out into the dim blue lights of the lounge, and motioned to Jason behind the bar. "Gimme a double shot of bourbon...the good stuff", he said. He looked over at the attractive red-head at the bar. "Get her whatever she's drinking." he added. Jason nodded. He strolled over to the woman. "Welcome to 'The Drunken Sailor', he said, easing onto a stool near her. He was desperately in need of the kind of relief a woman could offer. His eyes traced the long loose curls of her hair as it draped her naked shoulder. He watched her as Jason pushed the fresh drink to her. It was tequila, straight up. She threw her head back and tossed it, then slammed the glass down on the bar. She shook her head in the sting of the drink going down. "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" she asked, turning to him. "My kinda woman!" were Jack's last words. He never heard the shot that dropped him. The last thing he saw was Audra's eyes. Audra, motioned with her finger to Jason who seemed in a state of shock. She slapped two crisp one hundred dollar bills onto the bar. She picked up Jack's double shot of bourbon and handed it to him. "Pour it on his face, Jason, and find another job." "Whatever you say, ma'am"' Jason stammered. Audra walked toward the door, looking back to watch the splash of bourbon on Jack's blue face trickle to the floor and mingle with the growing pool of blood. She had 30 minutes to get to the airport. Plenty of time.