Jonathan Ames - You Were Never Really Here

Joe felt something behind him. It was the presence of life and the coming of violence, and that anticipation, that sensitivity, enabled him to turn in time and catch the blackjack on his shoulder, which was better than taking it on the back of his head.

Also, it was his left shoulder and Joe was right-handed, and, turning around completely, he was able to grab the mans wrist before the blackjack came down again, and they were face to face, the same height, and Joe immediately drove his forehead, like a brick, into the bridge of the mans nose, shattering the bone, and the man, his eyes blinded by red pain, began to fall, and Joe brought up his knee, brought it up hard, without mercy, into the mans jaw, breaking it.

The man went down completely, strings cut, lifeless but breathing.

Joe quickly swung his head to the left and the right. He was in an alley wide enough for a car. Hed come out of his flop hotels service entrance in the middle of the passageway, and no one was walking by or had stopped at either end. No one had seen. There was street light coming from the avenue, but the alley was mostly in shadow.

Joe wiggled his left arm, trying to get life into it, the blackjack had numbed the whole limb, and he dragged the body behind a dumpster and quickly went through the pockets of the light coat, a blue windbreaker. The fallen was a pro. No wallet. No ID. Just keys and a money clip with about two hundred dollars. But there was a cell phone. So he wasnt a total professional. He didnt anticipate losing, and he didnt anticipate being hunted, like Joe did. Joe never carried a cell phone.

Joe looked at the blackjack. Police issue. Probably a bent cop from the Cincinnati suburbs doing a little moonlighting in the big town, where his face wasnt known. Whoever had sent him didnt want Joe dead. Not yet, anyway. They wanted to bring him in, talk to him. There was probably a partner waiting in a car, waiting for a call. Joe would have been spooked by a car in the alley, so this one had hidden in a cove of a doorway. Hed sap Joe and call his partner. Theyd throw his body in the car and bring him to the boss. That had been the plan. It didnt work.

Joe looked at the last text message sent: Keep engine running. Well want to move quick. Copy was the reply. Probably two bent cops.

The alley went one way. That meant the partner would be to the left, idling, so he could pull right in, not circle the block. Joe hesitated. He was ready to leave Cincinnati. He had done his job. Extracted the girl. He didnt need to take out the one in the car. His informant had given him up, gave them his hotel, even his use of the service entrance, but thats all they could have gotten, because thats all the informant had.

Joe thought about what was in his room: a toothbrush, a new hammer, a bag, and a change of clothes. But nothing important, nothing identifiable. He had been heading out to get something to eat and was going to leave tomorrow, but he should have left as soon as the job was done. Sloppy, he thought. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Soon the one in the car would come looking. Joe didnt want any more fights, because you didnt win every fight. Joe figured they just wanted to know how he had gotten to them and if others would follow, and then they would have killed him. But he didnt need to take them all out because they wanted information. He was just one man. Not the complete arm of justice. I did enough, he thought. The girl is damaged but free.

So he ran the opposite way down the alley, darted his head out fast, looking to his left and rightthere wasnt a third man guarding that end. Nobody sitting in a car, nobody planted in a doorway trying not to look like a plant. He stepped out into the street, started to walk. It was late October and there was a sweet smell in the air, like a flower that had just died. He thought about a time when hed been happy. It had been more than two decades.

Then Joe spotted a green cab. He liked the cabs in Cincy. The cars were old and the drivers were old. It felt like the past. He got in.

Airport, he said, and he fingered the money clip. Hed give the driver a nice tip.

Joe lay in bed in his mothers house. He thought about committing suicide. Such thinking was like a metronome for him. Always present, always ticking. All day long, every few minutes, hed think, I have to kill myself.

But in the mornings and before going to bed, the thinking was more elaborate. He knew it was a waste of timeit was going to have to wait till his mother passedbut he couldnt stop. It was his favorite story. The only one he knew the ending of for sure.

The past few weeks it always involved water. His plan of late was to slip into the Hudson at night, during high tide, by the Verrazano. The currents were strong, and he would be taken out to sea. He didnt want anyone to be bothered with the body.

Once, when he first got out of the Marines, long before he had gone back to live with his mother, he had nearly done it. He had been processed out of Marine Corps Base Quantico and ended up in a motel near Baltimore, drinking by himself for a few days and going to a movie theater, seeing the same three pictures over and over. Then one night in the motel, he had taken a lot of sleeping pills and wrapped his head in a few layers of black plastic bags, duct-taping them around his neck. He felt himself diminishing, a shadow around the edges of his mind, and he heard a voice say, Its all right, you can go, you were never really here.

But then he clawed off the bags and pumped his own stomach. After that, the story never involved leaving a body behind, leaving a mess behind. That was shameful. When it was time to be removed, thats what it would bea complete erasure. So the sea would have him. It wouldnt mind one more piece of waste. He had nowhere else to turn.

He heard his mother downstairs and got out of bed. He did one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups. His morning ritual. That, walking a great deal, and squeezing a handball as often as possible was all he did for exercise. He especially liked his hands to be strong. It was good in a fight. You break your adversarys fingers, you have an immediate advantage. It frightened even the hardest men to have their fingers snapped, and in a fight, like a dance, you often held hands.