“Caleb?” I burst out laughing. “What’d you do to name him? Press the button on a random generator?”
But grossly-overrated-his-ability-to-play-poker man isn’t following me. He’s staring around the empty room, imagining horrible things that he should have had the foresight to envision before he held his son back from class.
No, wait. Four he said.
So, make that before he held his son back from kindergarten.Kindergarten.Jesus wept.
The bat sinks into the wall beside the guy’s head before I realise I’m swinging it. A fog of red overtakes my vision and my muscles ache for release.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
The room disintegrates while it feels like I’m sitting back, watching it unfold on a screen.
Then I catch the side of the man’s shoulder.
He bellows and I’m on him, kicking out his knee until he sinks to the floor, his face screwing up as he tries to get away. My hand bunching his shirt in my fist.
“You kept your son home from kindergarten for this?”
I drop the bat to the floor, some part of my consciousness realising I’ve gone too far to trust myself with it. My fist smashes into his face, cutting on his teeth, a knuckle popping as it strikes his cheekbone.
I forgot how much it hurts.
I always forget.
Like I forget how it brings so much pleasure.
I roar into his face again, watching his pupils contract to pinpricks, then expand out with pure terror. I trap his head in the crook of my arm and punch him repeatedly with the other hand. Blood flies; from his broken nose, his broken mouth, my cut fist.
His eyes disappear into the swelling mulch of his face.
“When you’re asked to repay your debt,” I tell him, ever the gentleman. Never let a man take a beating without a proper explanation. “You make the effort. Even if you can’t pay it all back at once; even if you think you have nothing worth the trade, you make an effort.”
“I’ll get it,” he says, or something close to that. It’s hard to tell though, with the mushy hole that was once a mouth.
“How?”
That’s not actually my concern, but I’m not about to leave without a plan in place. Something better than, ‘I promise.’
“What d’you want?”
I gaze around his son’s destroyed bedroom. Think my way back through the rest of the house. There’s nothing much here. Anything worth money is gone or gone into hiding.
“What’s your job?”
“Accountant.”
Of course it is. A man used to dealing with other people’s money all day. I bet after a while, it feels like those funds are his own.
Perhaps it’s time they should be.
“How’re your laundry skills?”
The man’s eyes are no longer in a state to widen, but he’s obviously trying to signal something with the confused pulp of swollen skin. “I can do that.”
“Good.”
I drop him to the floor. It’s not good. It’s not any of my business, if I’m honest. My only purpose in being here is to impart a sense of urgency that had been severely lacking in his attempts to date.
