Blog Sweet Blog Part 2 - A James To Kill For

It’s one of those nights. I can taste it at the back of my throat. One of those slick, dark, sharp nights. The day’s rain has left a gleam on every sidewalk that could put a new razorblade to shame. The shallow end puddles are reflecting the unsullied stars; tempting the broken and the lonely to come on down before the sun rises and drown themselves in the illusions waiting for them in the gutter.

Nights like this, you can close your eyes and smell the hangover waiting to seize the city when all the alarm clocks sing. The men and women who chose a uniform for a calling are out there now. Probably keeping their heads down. Probably biding their time. Their cars locked up tight. Their cells waiting to hold for whoever survives the shadows.

They know the volcano’s going to erupt on a night just like this. So, out they go, earning their wage. Stalking to the streets, night after night; hoping they’re protected by a badge someone once decided to shape like a shield. They watch the skyline watching them back. They step through the shadows of the skyscrapers, eyes peeled for smoke signals.

Over their heads, the bright, deeply cratered face of the moon slides behind the clouds, averting its gaze, as they hear the call of their brothers and sisters. The wail of a siren, out there in the deep end of maze – proof that angry trouble is already rampaging through at least one person’s life tonight. Sit and wait. You’ll feel it, just like I do. The tremors of the volcano beneath our feet.

For the record, that’s rarely how trouble ever finds me. Most nights I only have to sit here and wait, and I never have to wait for long. After all, trouble doesn’t have to look all that hard when it wants me for dinner. You see, I put my name up on the door.

There used to be two names up there once. My name, and my partner’s name. Only they threw my partner down into the belly of that midnight volcano a long time ago, if you catch my drift. He went out on a job, when trouble came asking for him and offering a wage, and the boy never came back. I try not to think about the last words we exchanged. We were never sentimental about each other. So, in a grand gesture of human sympathy, I paid to take the boy’s name off my door. It saves all the awkward questions when people come to me with work.

When it’s ready for me, trouble doesn’t need to worry about two addresses either. I find it’s easier to live here. I defecate where I eat, but who doesn’t these days? Sure, we involve doors, but those floorplans aren’t fooling anyone. I just also happen to work where I eat and drink my meals where I eat. I type where I eat. I use the phone where I eat. Not that I eat so much. My body’s getting so skinny that you’d think I was turning into clothes hangers.

And what do I do for a living, you ask?

It’s a fair question. Maybe, one day, you’ll need to hire an idiot like me. We’re willing to do the things you know are a bad idea. We’ll keep asking questions until the city throws out of a fist or a pointed finger. We know the right people to offer a little money to, in order to see who’s sleeping with who and in which hotel room. We know all the right people. Or we try to know them. We keep an index of them in our heads. We know a lot of the wrong ones, too.

Some of them, if we’re unlucky, remember our names.

Maybe the best way I can show you what I do is to let you watch me work. It won’t be pretty, but that’s okay. I don’t really go in for the shiny side of the rainbow. I keep low, close to darker shades, watching the cracked pots they keep stashed at the bottom of bow. The smashed crockery were someone came to collect the last dregs of gold. There’s normally a trail of loose change leading off, into the long grass, if you want to know their names.

Here someone comes, knocking at my door, a question on their lips. Poking their head past the glass with only one name on it now. One name and too much blank space. We can watch them as they peer in through the gloom, to the little four walled cell I call home. Smoke hanging in the air. The fan on slow, making it into my own, personal fogbank.

Their curious eyes soon find my desk, find me. It’s not that big an office. This is how I meet so many clients. This is where they come to ask me if I’ll ask some questions of their behalf. If I’ll play the part of their low rent priest of the hungry volcano.

“Dan?” the client asks.

“That’s what the name on the door says, my friend.”

“I thought you were looking for the kettle.”

He looks for all the world like a guppy. Surprise can do that to a man. The dead ones can look like hollowed coral on a bad night.

“Well, sure. I look for a lot of things. She got a name, this kettle of yours? Don’t tell me she’s been falling out with the pot again. A lot of people in my neck of the woods have trouble when it comes to the pot these days.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“A lifetime of experience, pal of mine.”

He steps in, looking like he’s gone ten rounds with someone just outside my door. He checks my office like it might just decide to digest him where he stands.

“So, is this your room then?”

“Everyone who’s lucky has a place to call their own with a lock on the door.”

“Sure, okay, but was the desk and everything already here? I thought they said it was unfurnished.”

“Everything’s where it needs to be, my friend. Trust me. It’s all in reach, apart from the fresh air. This is a room poised, ready to solve your problem. Me, I’m just the first cog in the well-oiled machine, waiting for you to tell me about this kettle of yours.”

“Of ours, Dan. It came with the blog. Also, you do realise I can you hear you narrating, right? I didn’t go ‘ten rounds’ with anyone. I’ve been carrying your boxes in. I didn’t that there were that many books on the Beatles.”

“So, that’s it, is it? You want me to take the case on like it’s my own. I wouldn’t worry about that, friend. Most cases, it ends up being my problem before it’s done with me. Just call me your human shield.”

“You keep talking like you’re chewing a matchstick.”

“Now, where’d you see this little damsel last?”

“Damsel?

“This kettle of yours, buddy, before she started on the pot.”

I get up from my desk. Open a filing cabinet and take out my old friend – a half drunk bottle of scotch.

“Your old friend?” the guppy asks.

He rolls his eyes.

“Stop calling me that,” he complains.

Feeling generous, I get out two glasses.

“Is that whiskey? Dan, you can’t drink whiskey.”

“Only the first mouthful, my friend. The first mouthful always goes for the throat.”

My new client shakes his head.

“I just wanted a cup of tea.”

With a steady hand, I pour two glasses.

“If you’d like to feel more civilised, we can call this tea.”

“Knock that off! And put that shot glass down. It looks like it needs a good wash.”

“Sometimes I set it out on the windowsill, when the rain comes to stay, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t even know what you’re wearing. You hate un-ironed shirts. I was only gone five minutes. I’ve brought a few more boxes in. I walked in the door, after I’d found a way past some new review they’d put in the way, and then I could smell smoke.”

“You want a job in my line of work, you send out smoke signals.”

My new client takes the glass I offer him and sniffs it. He sets it on the desk.

“Go on then ” he says, sitting down. “Drink it. Let’s see what happens.”

The chair creaks under him. Unless the skinny joe needs a thorough oiling himself.

“Wish they’d told me about the furniture, though,” he says. “It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.”

I nod, smile, and ease up the glass to my lips. I drink it as simple as inhaling and–

and….

…and I start to choke.

“Jesus!” I cry out.

I can’t stop choking. I feel the glass slip out of my hands. Tears stream down my face. I stumble back and collide with the desk.

“That.”

The room stops being black and white.

“Is.”

The city stops being outside the room.

“Disgusting.”

The smooth jazz that’s been hanging, unspoken, in the air stops with a record scratch. James nods as he watches reality ripple back around them.

“I knew you didn’t like whiskey,” he says.

“Urgh.” Dan gasps for air, looks at the grubby glass clutched in his hand. “I’d forgot about the aftertaste. How do people drink that stuff? I’d rather have a swig of furniture polish.”

“I did try to warn you.”

“And why am I dressed like this, anyway? I feel like I haven’t shaved in weeks.”

Outside the window, the sirens stop. Then the window heads off to join them. James calmly stands up as the chair fades out from under him. He watches Dan land badly on the floor after the desk vanishes. The glass in his hand pops out of existence as, sitting on the floor, he sees the floor tiles slowly erase themselves around him. The smoke slips out of the air. The fan. The creaking doors and furniture. The filing cabinet, however, stays where it is, in the corner of the room.

“That’s something,” James says, leaving Dan gagging past the taste of the whiskey.

He opens one of the drawers and finds Dan’s phone.

“You must’ve been looking in here,” he tells him, flicking through the files.

“Right,” Dan says, nodding. “I couldn’t find a kitchen, so I thought I’d have a look for a user’s guide or something. I had a dig through that thing, only I found the genre settings.”

“Genre settings?”

“It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a go. I tried fantasy fiction to start with, but the magical school I started attending expelled me after I kept forgetting all the spells.”

“Magical school? I only went out to Martha’s van.”

“I mean, you think you could just wave a wand or something but, no, it’s mainly all a memory test. And, trust me, after you turn one too many teachers into a shower curtain, it’s curtains for you.”

“I was genuiely only gone five minutes.”

“And all those beards. It was like being taught by hippy ZZ Top. After that, I thought I fancied something a little grittier, so I went for private detective.”

“But you hate detective shows on TV.”

“I just thought maybe I’d be able to find a kettle in a detective story. It’s all cauldrons when you’re a wizard.”

“Shame you didn’t keep the wand, though. It could’ve helped us move in quicker.”

“How about I just give you a hand with the boxes? It might be safer.”

“You know, Daniel, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Will our heroes ever manage to make themselves that cup of tea?

Is even the slightest mention of a magical school likely to get us in some sort of expensive legal trouble?

If that fan on Dan’s desk completely disappeared what happened to the manufacturer’s ten year guarantee?

Find the answers to all this and less in the next thirst quenching instalment of Blog Sweet Blog.