Page 14
“Then why were you there? I thought your looking-for-trouble days were behind you.”
“That’s the problem. They are most of the time. I want them to be, but sometimes . . . it feels like if I don’t hit something my brain will go nuclear and run out my ears.”
Carlos gives the bar a quick wipe-down and pours himself a drink.
“I know your problem. Seen it a thousand times before. Before I bought this place, when I was a little niño, I barbacked at a cop bar over by Rampart. The ones still working, most of them had their heads wired on right enough, but the old-timers? The retired ones or the bad ones that were exiled to desk duty? They could chew their way through steel. You killers, you men of action, take you out of the game and you’re always a month from eating your gun.”
I swirl the Aqua Regia around in the glass.
“Thanks for your concern. It’s touching. Really.”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” says Carlos. “Those guys, they didn’t have your advantages.”
“Such as?”
“The things you can do. The places you can go.”
I finish my drink.
“That’s the problem. I can’t go places anymore. I can still do everything I used to, but I don’t have anywhere to do it.”
“And you being you, you go looking for trouble and you’re going to find it.”
“Finding it’s not the problem. Not looking like I found it is. Chihiro would hate it, and my boss, he wouldn’t be too happy either.”
Carlos opens the cooler under the bar, puts some ice in a clean rag, and hands it to me. I hold it to my bruised eye.
“Then it’s just me that’s amused watching you twist yourself in knots,” he says.
“I don’t like lying to people, but I’m not built to be, I don’t know, a regular person. I was born to break things. Even my father said so.”
“A natural-born killer.”
“That’s what the old man said.”
Carlos pours me more Aqua Regia.
“Your problem is you’re all Koyaanisqatsi. You remember that movie?”
I nod. “A hippie music video ninety minutes too long.”
“The whole thing is only ninety minutes.”
“Yep.”
Carlos uses a finger to draw a shape on the bar in the moisture left from the rag. A little yin yang sign.
“Aside from its virtues as a film, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘life out of balance.’ That’s you, my friend. You go from crazy hit man to a pencil pusher on some board of directors or something with no steps in between. Of course it’s going to make you a little crazy.”
“And I’ve lost the Room. It’s not just that I could travel through it. I used to think that was it, but it’s not. The Room was always my place. Somewhere I could hide from this world, Heaven, and Hell. No one could touch me there. It’s the only place I ever felt . . .”
“Safe,” says Carlos.
I look at him.
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you know. You lost your happy place and now you’ve given up the thing that kept you alive all these years. Your fists. That’s not the recipe for a happy life.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14 (Reading here)
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185