The Heart Goes Last

STUMPED

Stan tries Conor's last known address, a boarded‐up bungalow on a street that's only semi‐inhabited.There might be faces looking out of some of the windows, there might not. Possibly they're only tricks of the light.

There's what might once have been a communal garden, with what might be some withered pea vines. A few wooden stakes poking up from the spiky knee‐high weeds. On the broken sidewalk leading up to the porch there's a skull painted in red, like the one he and Con had decorated their tool shack clubhouse with when he was ten. What had they intended? Pirates, no doubt.Weird how the symbols persist.

This house was where Con was squatting when Stan last saw him, two or was it three years ago. He'd had a message from Con, which had sounded urgent, but when he'd got here it was only the usual: Con needed a loan.

He'd found Con in a tank top and Speedo shorts, a line of spiders tat‐ tooed up his arm, throwing a knife at an inside wall - to be precise, throw‐ ing it at the outline of a naked woman drawn in purple marker - while a few of his witless buddies passed spliffs and cheered him on. Stan still had a job then and was feeling self‐righteous, so he'd done the big brother thing and chewed Con out over his shiftless ways, and Con had told him to sod‐ omize himself. One of the buddies had offered to rip Stan's head off, but Con had only laughed and said that if there were any heads to be ripped off he could do it himself, then adding,"He's my bro, he always doles out this uptight shit before the high finance." After some glaring, they'd done the double back pat and Stan had lent Con a couple of hundred, which he hasn't seen since but would sure like to have now.Then Stan had made a mistake and asked about that long‐ago Swiss Army knife, and Con had laughed at him for getting so bent out of shape about a stupid knife, and they'd ended up trading angry insults just as if they were nine.

Stan knocks on the blistered green door. No answer, so he pushes at the door, which is unlocked. Some arsonist must have set fire to the place from within because it's semi‐carbonized; hot sunlight glints off the shards of window scattered across the floor. He has the queasy idea that Conor might still be somewhere inside the house in blackened skeletal form, but there's nobody in any of the charred and roofless rooms.The smell of smoke oozes from the singed, mouse‐riddled furniture.

When he comes back out there's a man peering into his car, with larceny in mind no doubt. The guy looks scrawny enough and doesn't appear to be holding a weapon, so Stan could tackle him if need be. Still, best to stand well back.

"Hey," he says to the dingy grey shirt and balding skull.The guy whips round.

"Just looking," he says. "Nice car." Ingratiating smile, but Stan isn't fooled: there's a cunning flicker in the sunken eyes. Maybe a knife?

"I'm Conor's brother," he says."He used to live here." Something shifts: whatever the guy was planning, he won't try it now. That means Con must still be alive, with even more of an evil reputation than he had two years ago.

"He's not here," says the guy.

"Yeah, I can see that," says Stan.There's a silence. Either the guy knows where Conor is, or he doesn't. He's trying to assess what it's worth to Stan. Then he will either lie and try to lead Stan astray, or not. A few years ago Stan would have found this situation more frightening than he does now.

Finally the man says,"But I know where."
"So, you can take me there," says Stan.
"Three bucks," says the guy, holding out his hand.
"Two. Once I see him," says Stan, keeping his left hand in his pocket.

He has no intention of paying for a blank space with no Conor in it. He has no intention of paying anyway, since he doesn't have two bucks on him. But Con will have two bucks. Con can pay.That, or mash the guy's teeth in, what's left of them.