Page 91 of Saxon

Saxon glances at me, looks around, and then nods. "Good point."

He circles to the rear passenger door, grabs the bag of hardware, and sets it on the hood. Makes a big, obvious production of pulling out a machine gun, ejecting the magazine, glancing at it, racking the slide and catching the ejected round, glancing down the barrel.

He hangs the gun over a shoulder and saunters over to the two young men. Produces a roll of cash. "I'll be inside a while. I come out and there ain't so much as a smudge on my car, you boys will make out like fuckin' kings. I come out, and someone's fucked with my ride?" He crouches, takes the joint, and takes a long pull on it. "I'll fuck up your world."

The two young men nod, eyes wide. One of them accepts the joint back from Saxon. "What you gonna give us?"

"A lot of fuckin' money."

"Can I get one'a them?" He juts his chin at the gun Saxon's holding. "Fuck no. This thing's a piece of shit. Can't hit shit with it. Also, it would be pretty damn stupid of me to give a couple young guys like you fully automatic firearms."

The kid rolls his eyes. "You gonna shoot us anyway?"

"Nah. Just keep my ride from getting fucked with."

With that, Saxon swaggers back to me, grabs the bag, and slings an arm around my waist. I lead him down the steps because my place is a sublevel shithole. Seeing as I have expensive sewing supplies inside, I sprung for a digital lock and extra-long screws for the frame. Once inside, I flip on a light—and yes, there's a flurry of scurrying things fleeing from the light. The only thing that doesn't scurry away is Al, who perches on the counter beside the sink, beady eyes staring at me.

"Al, goddammit, we talked about this,” I grumble. “Off the counter."

Al hops down and vanishes behind the fridge, poking just his nose and eyes out.

"Holy shit. You weren't joking."

"He's a wild rat, not a tamed one like Luka. But he seems to understand my boundaries, and in return, I don't poison him, and I leave out my scraps for him."

"What are your boundaries with your quasi-tamed rat?"

"Stay out of my bedroom and bathroom, and don't fuck with my food. As long as I pay him, he keeps to his areas. I'm sure he has friends, but I don't see them, so I pretend they're not there. It's kinda like having a mafia enforcer as a roommate."

"And the roaches?"

"I poison the fuck outta them. Doesn't seem to do much, but I try. And I keep the place clean."

And it is clean, too. Tiny, cramped, old, falling apart. But clean. It's a shithole, but it's my shithole, and it's a clean shithole. He looks around, and I try to see it from his eyes.

A kitchen I can barely turn around in, a stove and fridge from the 70s, laminate counters and floors, warped builder's grade cabinets that were cheap fifty years ago. There's no couch or TV, just my sewing and design station—a drafting table with various pencils and sketchbooks and half-finished designs, and my industrial sewing machine on a large butcher block table littered with rolls of thread, bolts of fabric, swatches, samples, and Tupperware containers full of feathers and beads and sequins and buttons and toggles and hook-and-eyelets and zippers. Several mannequins parade around the room, wearing pieces in various stages of completion, with several more pieces draped across the table where they wait for me to attend to them. Stacks of bolts of fabric run along the walls, and finished pieces hang on a brass rolling clothing rack, waiting for delivery.

I point at the two doors opposite the entry. "Bathroom on the right, bedroom on the left. And that's the tour."

He laughs. "Trying to find something nice to say." He looks around. "You've made good use of the space."

I laugh. "A noble effort, sir." I grab my tape measure from the table and point at him. "Stand still. I'll get yours out of the way first since tuxes are easy."

"You're seriously going to make me a tux from scratch?"

I get to work taking his measurements. "What part of 'I make clothes' do you not understand?"

"I dunno. It's just a foreign concept to me. Never really thought much about how clothes get made."

"Well, watch and learn, big guy."

Magic