Two Minutes 42 Seconds

Previously: Batya escapes with the magical music box, dodging numerous palookas and one sniper, then makes her way to a movie theater that serves as the HQ of her most recent boss. This is still a flashback, by the way. We’ll saunter back to the present next week, I swear.

— 30 —

Batya strides into the dark projection booth where the second reel of The Spark of Desire is unspooling. She tries to exude a kind of tough insouciance but she’s not fooling anyone. She’s now feeling the full weight of this overlong night in her eye sockets and her molars. She’s so tired she can no longer smell how terrible she smells.

There, perched on a bistro table by the clacking projector, is Son Hillers. A mid-tier boss who made his name through usury, counterfeiting, mail fraud, that sort of thing, but has recently shifted gears into narcotics, especially the amnesia-inducing pastille called oblivio.

He is known as The Hand. This is not a cute nickname or metaphor. This is a literal description of what he is.

Bat sits down next to what looks like a terrarium crafted out of a ticker tape machine. Curved glass dome, fine oak base. Inside is a human hand, propped upright like it’s waving hello. (Except for the pinkie, which is curled down.) A thick mass of cables flows from its wrist-stump down into a decorative diorama at the bottom of the terrarium. There’s a little model-train landscape with plastic trees and a cow and a one-room schoolhouse.

Hillers twitches, then taps his index fingernail against the glass in a rhythmic pattern—a bespoke form of Morse code, if Bat understands correctly—and then a mechanical voice emerges from a little speaker in the base.

— ROUGH NIGHT QUESTION MARK, the voice says.

“Yeah,” Bat says. “Kuniko’s dead.”

Tap-tap-tap goes the finger.

— UNFORTUNATE / THAT HER BLOOD ON YOUR DISGUSTING SHIRT

“Hers and Vinnie Vinegar’s and mine. Got pulled into a whole rumpus that was none of my business.”

— CLASSIC BATYA

“Yeah well the thing is Vinnie totaled my truck.”

— OOF / TECHNICALLY MY TRUCK THO

Bat’s never sure where to look when talking to him. “Your truck. My business. My house. Gone.”

— RECKON THAT PUTS A DENT IN YOUR INCOME

“I was hoping maybe we could talk alternate payment plans for the loan.”

— GOT PLENTY OF JOBS FOR GOOD EARNERS LIKE YOURSELF

“I mean, the idea was to not do that kind of work anymore.”

— SHRUG

There’s a frantic knock at the door and then the kid from the ticket booth flings himself into the room. “Boss! Lotta unpleasant scofflaws out front!”

— WHAT GENRE

“There’s Flu guys, there’s Valentina guys, Butterfly guys, all pitching fits and doing, like, roundhouse kicks.”

— CAN’T THEY GO KICK EACH OTHER AT A DIFFERENT MOVIE HOUSE MAY I RECOMMEND THE BENVOLA SIX

“They’re hollering about some item Battery’s got.”

— HUH / VERY WELL / UNLEASH STEVE

“Right, yeah, good thinking, boss.” The kid goes back out and shoves Steve toward the stairs. The burly oily giant lets out an ecstatic yawp.

— SO TELL ME / WHAT’S GOT THE SYNDICATES SO RANDY

Bat takes out the ring box. “Whole town’s after this. They say it’s a music box.”

— VALENTINA’S MUSIC BOX QUESTION MARK EXCLAMATION POINT

“You know it too?"

— DIDN’T THINK IT WAS REAL

“Alls I know is interest on the street tonight is very real. So I was thinking maybe I give it to you because I’m nice, and then we’re square.”

— HA HA YOU CRACK ME UP

“Come on, Hillers, be a pal.”

— OK PAL WHY DON’T YOU OPEN THAT UP WE’LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS

Bat hesitates. Don’t, Kuniko had told her. You’ll wish you hadn’t. She buries that memory with all the others and snaps open the box. Embedded there in the faux velvet is what appears to be a doorbell made of mother-of-pearl.

— PRESS IT

“Now hang on, man. Valentina said this thing killed her husband.”

— PSHAW / PRETTY SURE ALL HER HUSBANDS SUICIDED

Bat looks at the button like it’s a scorpion. From down in the street she can just make out the all-too-familiar sound of men shrieking.

— IF THAT’S LEGIT THEN I’LL WAIVE THE JUICE

She gets that excited queasy lurch in her gut, the one she gets every time a gloriously bad deal comes along. “What about the principal?” 

— WHAT ABOUT IT / I’M TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS HERE

Bat again wishes Mina was here to negotiate. Her thoughts are currently a grainy beige paste. She’s having trouble envisioning anything past tonight, and the sick dread of sleeping on the street again.

She presses the button. There’s a tiny shallow click.

A song starts playing.

I can’t describe it, not because it’s indescribable but because I can’t hear it. Nobody can hear it except Batya Hull, the person for whom it was composed. It plays in her head like a memory. I imagine it’s loud and heavy, just based on the bands she likes, but who knows. What I do know is that two minutes after the song begins, tears start rolling down her cheeks. And 42 seconds after that, it’s over.

— LOOKS LEGIT, the Hand taps.

Bat seems to be staring at the spinning reel of the projector but is actually gazing into the blackened depths of her own heart. She’s shivery hot, slanted, pulsating. She’s vast and icy and deathless. Her belly is swollen, kicking. She runs her ancient fingers along the skein that stretches from the gloaming to the bone sea.

The Hand snaps his fingers a few times.

She comes back. She wipes her eyes, embarrassed. She clacks the ring box shut. She says, “Vig’s clear?”

— POOF, Hillers says with a flourish.

“Let’s shake on it.” 

— NEVER HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE

She slaps the box down on his table. “What are you gonna do with it?”

— SELL HITS / FIRST LISTEN IS FREE

Bat feels nauseated, poisoned. She says, “How much is left on my tab?”

Hillers counts on his fingers for a bit, then holds up three. Bat shrivels up in her chair.

— FRET NOT / GOT OBLIVIO JOBS THAT NEED MUSCLE / GOT SOAPLAND WORK / MONEY WILL COME IN QUICK UNLIKE THE TACO TRUCK

“Mulitas,” Bat mutters. “Can I crash here? It’s real unfriendly outside.”

— JUST TONIGHT KID THEN KICK ROCKS

She stumbles back down to the lobby and into the theater where a half-dozen yokels are watching the romance movie. She collapses into a seat in the back row.

Her folks are gone, her sister is gone, her truck is gone. And now her song is already starting to disintegrate into the kaimu, like a dream.

She has a good five-second cry about how she’s the loneliest person in the history of the planet, then passes out.

+++

This has been Chapter 30 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.

Next up: Sad + Nuts