Ragnarök

Twenty-Five: The Judgment

"Maybe he ought to dirty his hands some. That way there'll be less incentive to go to the police." Lefty's own hand rests on his knife handle as a casual reminder of who is the despot and who is the slave. It's within his power to amend any contract, however he sees fit.

Mason, the blood rising in his face, knows there's nothing for him to rely on, no kernel of objective truth. The situation keeps flipping, the stories keep changing, and he can't even trust that he'll walk out of this freakshow alive. The couple feeds off each other's fumes. Lefty, with his fetish for confusion, and Aubrey, with her steady stream of contempt, a pressurized vat of chemicals ready to combust.

"Mason," she says in a thoughtful voice. "So that's your real name."

"You didn't know?"

"I didn't care enough to find out. How long have you been here?"

"Four years."

"How long's she been ill?"

"I don't know. It started getting bad around . . . eighteen months ago, I guess."

Patiently, like a woman at a bus stop, she lights a cigarette, then extends the pack to him. He's taken aback. "You must've had it pretty fucking rotten before this to want to keep up the charade for so long."

He accepts her invitation, aware of Lefty glaring at him, though Mason is almost too exhausted to feel intimidated anymore. Almost. "It's comfortable here," he says.

Aubrey nods, casting her eyes about the room. "I know what you mean."

He can't help but get his hopes up. Time is winding down. Rourke will be climbing into his car now. Mason's attention is half-fixed on the door, waiting to see headlights. "I'm ready to leave though," he says. "I've been ready for a while."

"Where would you go?"

"I have someplace. Somewhere temporary at least." Ocean surf, pebble beach, white gulls, Bernadette. Nothing, not even the saw-toothed metal of Lefty's blade, will prevent him from taking this chance at a new life. If it looks like the deal is going bunk, like they have no intention of letting him leave, he'll make a mad dash for the basement, retrieve the thirty-ought from its cabinet. He's seen how it can turn an evergreen stump into pure mulch. He'll walk out of here pointing the barrel at their heads. Granted, it won't be loaded, but only he knows that for sure. Will they dare call his bluff?

"I could tell you meant it," Aubrey says, "what you told him on the phone. About it being too much for you. It's too much for most grown-ass adults. Why do you think all the nursing homes are so crowded? Lefty and me, we plan on dying before we get old, like that Who song goes."

"Speak for yourself," Lefty snorts, scuffing the floor with one shoe and then the other, hands thrust in his pockets. "I'll live forever. I'm actually fifty billion years old. That whole Big Bang thing, that was just something I stuck in God's mailbox. The asteroid belt, that's every dump I took since the formation of the universe. The stars are my ejaculate. The moon is my wife. I rocket up there and plow her every chance I get."

Aubrey, seemingly desensitized to these messianic ramblings, slides her chair back from the table. "I need to get something from the van for when our guest arrives. You'll be alright here alone?"

"Sure. Edgar and me? We'll just be in here talkin football and gash."

Aubrey stalks out, turning left past the corridor, leaving through the back door. Mason watches her go. Frigid as she might seem, she was empathic enough to sense the great rupture of catharsis that occurred when he came clean to Rourke. Saying those words aloud to someone other than Liza, someone who's sure to take responsible action and assume Mason's burden, it was the same euphoria he's heard about certain killers experiencing after they confess their crimes, even when they know they're facing down a life sentence or worse.