“Well, hedidkiss you."
"Why was Sophia so surprised? She didn't seem to believe that he'd kissed me."
"I could not answer that, as I do not know. He is very, very reclusive. If I had to guess, I would say that it's rather out of character for him. Which means you must be special to him, somehow. Perhaps in a way neither of you yet understands.”
“Oh."
Special to him?
God, I wish. I wish I were special. I wish that what we'd shared was the beginning.
I know I shouldn't think that way. He doesn't want that. He can’t give me that. He made that pretty clear.
Doesn't mean my heart doesn't want what it wants, anyway, though.
And my heart wants Jakob Kasparek. Or Caleb Indigo. I don't care what his name is. I just…
I want him.
It's stupid.
Dangerous.
Foolish.
And true.
15
CHECK THE FUCKING PERIMETER
JAKOB
Laughter feels particularly and personally insulting in this context.
Pugli's six goons sit around a tiny folding card table—gotten from who knows where—playing poker for bullets. They speak a rapid, overlapping mix of Bulgarian, Czech, Russian, and English, and it isn’t immediately clear whether they all understand each other. There's a lot of yelling and cursing, which isn't unusual for these mercenary types, but it seems to me like there's a hint of tension between some of these guys. Rounded, lifted shoulders, narrowed eyes watching every movement, snapped answers, a folded hand tossed down a little too angrily.
Makes me wonder if I can use the tension to my advantage.
Pugli is always on the phone; he has three of them—one in his right hip pocket, one in his back left pocket, and one in the inside right pocket of his suit coat; he speaks English into the first, French into the second, and a pidgin of French, English, and Bulgarian into the third; despite his name, I’ve never heard him speak Italian. I'm not sure what any of it is all about, though, as he tends to wander while talking on the phone, pacing, gesturingangrily, rarely listening for more than thirty seconds at a time before interrupting with commands or questions.
We are, in a rather humorously clichéd turn of events, camped out in an abandoned, dilapidated, dripping old manufacturing facility in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing but open fields in every direction as far as the eye can see, rolling hills, and the occasional stand of trees. We bounced along a rutted two-track for miles, approaching the facility from the rear; a cracking, crumbling asphalt road leads away from the facility, weeds growing up from the cracks, dislodging chunks of asphalt.
Let me tell you, that was the most painful car ride of my life.
Now, I'm tied to a metal folding chair, watching Pugli's goons suck at poker. When we first arrived, I was in remarkably bad shape. Losing blood, weak, and incoherent. Unfaked, also. A battered old F-150 arrived a few minutes after we did, the bed capped by a veterinarian's mobile clinic insert. A tiny, wiry old woman climbed down from the cab, her hair a chaotic silver bottle-brush exploding in every conceivable direction. She wore coke-bottle glasses that made her eyes look enormous.
When we pulled into the huge, drip-echoing building, I'd been unceremoniously dumped onto the dirty concrete floor and left there to soak in my own blood as it oozed through the makeshift bandage these hacks had slapped on. When she arrived, the old vet had tsked in disapproval, snapping something in Bulgarian—I recognize the language and know a few words, but I do not speak it or understand it. They'd found a tarp from somewhere and rolled me onto it, and she'd set about tending to my wounds, muttering to herself under her breath as she tilted me onto my side to examine the exit wound, then let me flop painfully back down…only to shove her blue rubber-gloved finger into the entrance hole and wiggling it around. Which felt personal. Like a violation of some sort.
"Very lucky," she'd grumbled, half to me, half to herself, almost but not quite under her cigarette-stinking breath. "Is what we call a soft tissue wound, no bone or organs hurt. Right through, no damage. Very painful, but okay."
"Lovely," I'd muttered. "Doesn't feel okay."
"Getting shot will never tickle, big man. I am only paid to make sure you do not die yet."
"Yet," I'd snorted.
She had only shrugged one thin shoulder. "He pay me very well for come see to you." Her accent was thick, but her English was excellent. "Is not a hard choice: make money or watch a video of your favorite cousin in Bulgaria get shot in the head. Is easy, hmm? I am sorry to you. But I do what I must do."
