I woke up in a place I used to post up and lay low when I was a bit younger. A fleabag joint in Pigalle. Back in the day I was a stick-up kid, and this was where I used to break bread, ribs, and hundred dollar bills, among all of the other devious things I did. It was me and a couple other cheeky lil’ fucks from around the way.
Over the past few years it fell apart a bit, and now it was just a run down flat I shared with a couple other people. One of ‘em I knew from an armpit town in Northern Italy; we spoke on the horn once I think, and the other was a chick from Cambodia who had an estranged, dope-dealing dad over in Colorado or Nebraska, or some other equally stimulating place. She only stayed in the flat like two or three times a year when shit got too heavy back home and she needed to escape a bit. Besides that I didn’t really know shit about either one of ‘em. They both seemed mellow enough I guess. I wasn’t much of a people person though, so who the fuck knows. The Cambodian chick always left the place clean and tidy, except for all the Edith Piaf lyrics she’d scribble on the bathroom mirror with her Cabernet lipstick.
Blurry vision and a foggy mind made it hard to stumble and crawl across the room. It was only lit by the light from my ringing telephone that was reflecting off of the ceiling. I tripped over the lamp cord, and got tangled up in dirty clothes that were scattered across the floor, gagging on the fumes of stale red wine and cigarettes on my breath. When I finally got to the phone and answered it, my ears were assaulted by heavy panting, uncontrollable crying and excessive static on the other end of the line, making it extremely difficult to understand what was going on. Something wasn’t right. The sound of trains and muffled, flickering voices in what sounded like French, over a barely functioning intercom in the background, made it even harder.
Disheveled and disoriented, I stuffed my arms in the sleeves of my ragged jacket, grabbed my tobacco, and dribbled myself down along the handrail that was lining the staircase to find my way to the street. Hiding my face, wincing at the sun. Clammy and sweaty. I was nibbling on my nails, wiping the sweat from my forehead on my sleeves and the blood from my fingers on the insides of my jean pockets so nobody could see them, then getting too self conscious about it all, thinking people were watching, knowing what I was thinking and why I was so nervous, making me dramatically over-correct my actions, causing me to fumble even more clumsily and recklessly than I normally would.
When I opened the door, stepped outside and started to hit the bricks, I was waved down by an old guy leaning against some fancy-schmancy old car, smoking and fidgeting with his hands. He was missing a few teeth, so when he spoke he whistled, and anyone within a few feet of his mouth got showered in spit and whatever it was he last ate that was still wedged between his few remaining teeth and dislodged by his violent, French pronunciation.
I didn’t speak much French, but knew a few words, so when he mumbled, “Montez dans la voiture. Ils nous attendent.” I snipped back, “Who…?” He stuttered and stammered, trying to tell me about a dinner appointment I had. A dinner that I was apparently late for. He mentioned the name of the place and the man I’d be meeting. My knees got weak and buckled beneath me.
He was a man that went only by “Cagnes”. We went way back, Cagnes and me. He was kind of a father figure to me a long time ago, offering me advice and guidance through a not so rose colored lens. He tweaked my thoughts and ideas about the world at a very young age, so I knew how to achieve a level of successful corruption while simultaneously ridding my conscious of any burden, guilt, or remorse.
As we zig-zagged our way through the city, I found myself remembering things about this place. Somewhere between the 1st and the 3rd, it all started coming back. I hadn’t seen Cagnes in years and the guy always looked like he was about to die, so I was having an amusingly difficult time imagining him now, fifteen, maybe eighteen years later. Even back then his skin looked like a third-degree burn, barely clinging to his bones.
A bald head with skin that looked like a fucking road map. Tight, dry lips, and hands like a plumber. He spoke in a snippy tone with a weird accent, and if taken the wrong way, he’d come across as condescending. His conversations often consisted of making judgments, comments, suggestions, accusations, and inquiries about everyone around him. He very rarely spoke of himself, which people took as a lack of ego, but I knew otherwise. He was an observer, constantly gathering information about the people around him in case he needed it some day. Despite his repulsive exterior, he always knew how to get people to do what he wanted by giving them the things he knew they wanted. But man, birthdays was the worst days. He always had a way of making people feel like they owed him somethin’.
Stomping out my cigarette, and immediately lighting another as I walked up to this all too familiar place where I’d eaten several meals with him in the past, I knew he didn’t want to talk about the weather.
Ever since I was in my early teens, I developed a stress management technique that consisted of walking into an uncomfortable situation with a lit cigarette as a way to calm my nerves and ease the tension of an awkward meeting. I dunno. Something about moving my hands around instead of just stuffin’ ‘em in my pockets and standing there looking stupid. This was especially effective when I was intoxicated by the effects of a recurring Borderline Personality Disorder thingy. I was never really diagnosed by anyone except an old girlfriend that was always trying to find an excuse or reason to justify my poor decisions and reckless behavior. So, after she mentioned it, I filled out one of those diagnosis tests, took it all to heart, and I’m now convinced I created my own reality by watering the seeds that the bitch sowed in my mind.
I couldn’t help but wonder what his motive was. Cagnes. What was the old fucker buttering me up for? After all these years, what the fuck did he want from me now? Cagnes always wanted something. As we continued to eat and reminisce, he casually poked and prodded, asking if I spoke to his daughter any time recently. I knew it was something. It’s never nothing with him. I suppose this was the something.
When I was younger, we got mixed up together. His daughter and me. We had a ten year thing that eventually ended on good, yet sad terms. Realizing that we were a toxic couple, although madly in love, it was best we went our separate ways before one of us killed the other. Although I thought of her everyday since, I resisted contact with her for the last however many years, and as far as I could tell, so did she. I thought that if there was contact, her being poisonous and everything, her venom would run through my veins again, so I rationalized that nothing was better than something. Until the phone call. We successfully resisted each other for so long… until she called.
After dinner, we exchanged handshakes and some obligatory good-byes and nice-to-see-yous with the tag-alongs, and Cagnes and I quietly and sneakily separated ourselves from the rest of the pack, walked around the corner, and stumbled into a rundown storefront. His cold hands dropped the keys a few times before he finally threaded the needle with no help from me, the dark, or the cigarette he insisted on lighting.
A few squeaky, old, rusty doors, a crumbling stairwell, and a hanging light bulb was all there was. A bit tipsy, and full of foie gras, entrecôte, and bone marrow, we stumbled into an empty, dimly lit, concrete room. Dodging exposed wires, and broken beams, halfway in the dark the whole time, he pawed at the shadows and dust-covered everything to find whatever it was he was looking for.
It was musty and damp, and the mold and mildew instantly burned my sinuses, making me cough and sneeze. Cagnes shushing me the whole time, explaining to me that the neighbour lady was notorious for not minding her own business. The place reminded me of a weird little cellar my parents had when I was a kid. It was an unfinished, patchy brick hole, with an uneven dirt floor, and some make-shift shelves that were randomly stuck to the walls with a mismatched collection of nails, screws, rivets, tape, and string.
It was a dark, stagnant hole where we kept the Mason jars of homemade preserves and chutneys and relishes and such that we made from the peaches and plums that grew in the backyard. Littered with bottles of wine my brother and I stomped the grapes for. It made me sad, thinking of where I was, where I came from, and what I was about to do. Not speaking to my brother in years and now about to spend the next couple of days knowing that I may never speak to him again, only left with the memories of our childhood.
Once Cagnes explained my trip and my visit, I didn’t know what to do. I either take care of his problem, or he takes care of me… And he was very good at plucking wings from butterflies. I once saw him kill a man after giving him a warning shot in a drug deal gone bad. The guy was tryin’ to lowball him, and Cagnes wanted to send him a message, so he shot him in the knee. The guy started bleeding all over the dope, Cagnes got pissed, and couldn’t resist finishing him off. I learned that if he ever shot me and I wanted to live, I better not bleed on the drugs. He always said that if they actually sent an embassy, they would also expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the bribes, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty. He had a reputation.
An awkward, one-armed hug at an old cab stand, and we were off in separate directions. I hopped back in the first cab I saw and barked a few street names to the Moroccan cabbie that actually spoke a bit of English. He apparently had a brother back in Montana, working room service in a Best Western or some shit and thought I might know him. You know. We all look the same, so we must all know each other.
I had a lot of thinking to do and some serious decisions to make. Decisions of life and death. When a close friend like Cagnes asks me to kill his daughter, there aren’t many options. She goes. Or I go. I chose her. That was the crying I heard the day before. She was trying to get to me before he did. That obviously didn’t happen. She knew what was going to happen. She knew I was going to have to make a choice. All I could think was that the eloquent silence is that of two mouths meeting in a kiss. And how much I wanted to kiss her.
To avoid questions, and slip into the crowd unnoticed, Cagnes insisted I blend in and ride the Metro with the rest of the miserables…
I stepped through the arch, hugging the wall. Quietly peering to my left and right to see if there were any sneakies out there waiting to snare me, I soaked up my surroundings, noticing another door on my right. Following the light and shadows cast by the chandeliers, I spit on my hand to lube it up a bit, put my index and middle finger in the hole where the handle should have been, and placed my thumb above the hole, pressing with a moderate amount of force, twisting and turning, jiggling my fingers around, pressing the weight of what was left of my body against the wood to open the heavy door.
Hundreds and hundreds of salami hanging from the ceiling covered in mold and cobwebs. The rest of the room didn’t seem to have much order. Aside from the meticulous hanging of the curing meat, it was chaos. Pure chaos. Disorganized junk. Detritus. Skin.
Several objects that resembled human bodies, but made from random odds and ends. A patchwork of warped wood, rusty metal, and faded leather. They looked like mannequins. All female. None finished. Like they were trying to remake someone… and then stopped.
Coils of rope as tall as me, wound like cobras. Lampshades and shackles and chains.
A few headless wonders, chained together. They looked like waxxies. How long had they been here like this? Why were they here to begin with?
I made an attempt to crawl my way through all the salami and look out the window, only to realize there was nothing on the other side of it. A roof to a barn maybe. Or a stable. I couldn’t see through the window very well, but the way the sun was deafened by a large dark space near the ground covered in tiles, it was my only guess.
There was a crate of dried-up grape skins, covered in fruit flies and starting to get moldy and fuzzy around the edges. They were still a bit damp though…
An old fashioned grape smoosher thing was in the corner covered in stains and collecting dust. Filthy. It looked like it hadn’t been used for a while.
A few machines were the only things that seemed to be clean. Machines for bottling wine. What was happening here and what were they doing with the machines…?
…but returning soon.
At least I might be able to have a sweet little dream of milk and honey flowing all over her little titties and on the insides of her thighs, lapping it up and sucking up the sweat that gathered in the dimples on her lower back and in her belly button like the naughty little hummingbird I fancied myself to be. 
Either that or nightmares about vultures picking my eyes out of my skull with their beaks and those squawky noises they always make when they hang out together in the desert.
