Traffic (Complete two-hundred pages) (Moving to Kindle Vella in 30 Days! )

33

GIANT

A MAN WAS SLEEPING SOUNDLY on the king sized bed. He wore a full Armani suit, and his shoes were on. They were giant. And untied. The woman chuckled and came around to his feet, to tie his laces. This seemed to wake him.

He mumbled something upon awakening. His voice was deep. Like Sean Connery from the first James Bond films. However he had the Spanish accent of actor Javier Bardem. Just of deeper pitch. His voice demanded authority from everyone in the room. He made this pack of wolves around him look like domestic dogs.

"What did you say, my love?" said the woman.

He cleared his throat. The sound boomed with an echo that made Jack, Juan and Raúl stand straight like soldiers. "I said I thought I told you I don't like to be woken up that way."

The woman froze, dropping his laces mid-bow. "What way?"

Jack could have sworn he saw the woman's ears twitch.

"Tying my shoes," the giant man answered. A voice for radio this man had. So much so Jack could've sworn he was listening to a radio.

The woman stepped back. "I'm sorry. I'll stop tying your shoes while you sleep." She looked down at his shoes uncomfortably at the sight of how only one was tied now. To mend her obsessive compulsion she looked over at a Frida Khalo painting on the wall. She tried to adjust the painting. It had been perfectly aligned to begin with but was now eternally slanted thanks to her. It gave her something to fix while the man on the bed lifted himself with a lioness grown to his feet. He might have been the tallest man Jack had ever seen. And when he approached Jack, Jack thought his neck would crack from looking up.

"Are you the man we've been waiting for?" he said directly upon Jack.

Jack felt instantly weak in the knees. He felt like a child again. And he remembered his father.

"Yes," said the woman. "He came to the Las Alcobas Hotel and asked the front desk attendant about the 8th floor presidential suite just like you said he would--"

"I'm sorry," the giant man cut in, "I thought I asked him. Not you."

The woman recoiled like a scolded pet. She diverted her eyes and returned to scratching at the Frida Khalo painting.

"So?" the giant asked Jack.

Jack didn't know what to say.

"Are you the man we've been waiting for?"

Jack thought for a second. He decided the whole point of him being here was to pretend to be the man they'd been waiting for. He hoped he'd be able to find out who these people were. How they knew Pat. What they wanted Pat to do. And how Penelope and the car crash Mr. Golem's suspected Jack of causing all tied back to this group of people.

So Jack thought maybe he'd just ask this Giant the same question. "Are you the man I've been waiting for?"

He could feel Juan, Raúl and the woman glance at him with unsteady anticipation. Those were not the words to say by the looks of the Giant man.

"Was that supposed to answer my question?" asked the Giant.

Jack could not produce an answer.

The Giant continued, lowering his head condescendingly at Jack like a schoolteacher to a kindergartener at a high-strung Catholic boarding school. "You don't answer my questions with questions. That's an order. Understand?"

Jack nodded.

The Giant smiled suddenly and peered out the window. The past was in his eyes. "You know, that reminds me," he said, as though to himself, "of what my father would do to me when I would give him smart-ass responses to his questions."

No one asked him what his father would do to him in fear that he would show them just what it was his father would do. No one wanted a presentation.

But alas, he strode across the carpet. To the woman. Her eyes grew huge in fear.

"Turn around, Margarita," he said as the woman sought to both brace herself and keep her dignity. Stand her ground. But suddenly the giant ran at her and threw her around. The woman yelped and the giant raised her dress behind her. "Carlos!" she shrieked-- but she covered her mouth to suppress her reaction. Worse would come to her if she yelled.

The giant then violently began slamming his hand against her exposed buttocks and Juan, Raúl, and Jack watched in odd shock as they witnessed her skin turn red fast. Lash after lash, by the tenth time Jack thought he saw the woman Margarita bleed on both cheeks and only once there was blood on the giant's hand did he drop her dress and relinquish the woman's arm, he'd been holding. She cried aloud before she covered her mouth with her hand, and she fell towards the bed and wrapped herself in a fetal position with both hands behind her ass, shaking like a wounded child by her father.

The giant was breathing heavily. He seemed to be alone in his mind. And only the past was still occupying him. He looked at his hand. It was stained. And he stepped over to the woman on the bed and wiped the blood on her clean summer sundress, leaving a horrible stain. His hands clean again, he approached Jack. But this time, Raúl and Juan had stepped back. Jack and the giant might as well be alone, face-to-face. The giant looked at Jack as if he was not there. This lasted until finally his eyes turned clear again and the giant saw Jack for the present fleshy water bag he was.

"Do you know," he started, "what I find to be the most important component to man's gratitude?"

Jack did not plan to answer anything this man said without a definite answer. And to this question, he had no definite answer.

The giant granted him an answer.

"Suffering."

Jack looked over to the woman on the bed. Margarita had not stopped shaking. Although her sobs had quieted ever so slightly so as she only had the volume of a little mouse.

"Every story has an ending," said the giant. "And it's only though our pity and fear that we earn our catharsis." The giant smiled. And he lifted one colossal hand onto Jack's shoulder. And Jack didn't even mean to, but he shook with violent expectation.

"You're a hero," said the giant to Jack.

Quaking, Jack's eyes did all the talking. Why do you say that?

The giant leaned in and said, "Because I can see your suffering." The giant laughed. "And it hasn't even started."

Jack flinched at the cruelty of the giant's breath. He stepped backward.

"It was a pleasure meeting you Patrick Smith," said the giant holding out his hand. The same hand he had abused Margarita with a moment ago. "I'm sure your story will be more original than your last name." He laughed and awaited Jack to shake his hand. Jack shook it. With force. No going back. He made his decision and he would stick to it until the end. Even if it was the wrong decision. He was Patrick Smith tonight. Tonight, and until this man with the giant hands was dead.

"Call me Pat," said the spy.

"Call me Carlos," said the booming giant. "I'll let you sleep here tonight. I warmed the bed for you." He let go of Jack's hand and left for the exit. Juan and Raúl followed like little henchmen. Loyal but afraid.

"Where will you sleep?" said the spy to the Giant.

Carlos the Giant turned with his head ducked underneath the archway. He shook his head. "I already have." And with that, Carlos the giant, Raúl and Juan left the room. And Jack and Jill were left alone.