The Janitor's Closet

3: Conversations

I have to wonder, what did this guy think about for half of his life once he'd pushed me into the car. You would've too, you can trust.

I mean there's nothing really significant in that there were three staring people in the car. What really got me wondering was that there was even a car, and a time for it to disrupt our walk. That's what really got me, because it meant plans. This guy probably had an agenda and calendar with my name on it straight down to the seconds.

"Danny Boy, meet your new best friends." Angelo slides smoothly in next to me closing the door behind him. There's one less pair of eyes own me, victory! I train my eyes to the back of the driver's head, "I've had enough of new best friends. You're enough."

"Awe, dontcha miss me Danny Boy?" The inhuman specie reclines to my right, shorts and shirt hidden under layers of fat. Skin stretched so far that it had become thin, I could literally see the globs of fat attached to her bones, the blood trickling throughout her body.

"No, I don't recall ever doing that." Angelo's laughter strikes my left ear and I snap at him, "Shut. Up."

"Remember what I said about my niceness?" His gray eyes glint, like the sweat on the hand of a gunman as he's forced to shoot.

"I do, but I want you to know from the bottom of the earth that I don't care." The car slows to a stop and the driver twists all the way around in his seat. Looking at me with his wild brown hair flopping in his face, he beams "Been trying to tell that to the man for years."

"Shut up Charles!" shouts Angelo and the fat woman in unison, Charles rolls his eyes and resumes driving.

"Someone needs to tell me what's going on," I growl, putting my eyes on the back of the guy in the passenger seat, "Now."

"Wow, you're just changing right before my eyes Danny Boy!" says Angelo. He doesn't shrink away from my glare, "Tell me. I'm tired of waiting."

Angelo's gray eyes scrutinize me, then he shouts "Charles!"

"Yeah dude?" Charles twists back around, green eyes on Angelo, the Cadillac stationary. Angelo exits the car saying through the window, "Take him to Seattle, fill him in."

"Take him to Evelyn too?" Charles asks, bobbing his head to some pop music that just reaches my ears.

"No, not yet." He walks from the car, the wind slapping his jacket and his suede shoes tapping out a rhythm on the sidewalk. The fat woman besides me sighs, eyes glued to his disappearing frame. I'll kill him.

So they don't say anything to me for two hours, and my threats got me two trained hitmen into the car. The fat woman had taken to staring at the highways that flew past in the window and Charles, between singing pop songs and telling me jokes I wouldn't laugh at, drove on like a maniac. The guy in the passenger seat still hadn't moved.

One last try, "Why am I here?"

"I don't know, why do you think?" snaps the red-faced, gray-whiskered face of the man in the passenger seat. His purple lips frown at me, aged wrinkles in his elderly face making him seem truly despicable. It's the first time he's turned around.

I reel back in my seat, and the hitmen and fat woman eye me attentively. My eyes don't waver from the man in front of me, but my jaw slackens and my eyebrows fly away into my hairline. This had to be some kind of joke.

"Well then? Answer me boy!" his spittle splats on the edge of his seat. A real cruel joke. I lean forward by inches, squinting my eyes at the thinning, gray bird's nest of hair, at the stout stature of the man, at the silver band across his finger. Squinting closer at the ring I found it, the engraving of a dove.