Wait, did I say there was only one thing I can do? Because that’s utter bullshit. In the face of danger, I can’t do anything but whimper like a kitten in a trash compactor. In my mad dash to look like a wimp, I trip over a crack in the sidewalk and land on my ass. All things considered, this is an improvement over my usual late-afternoon activity.
The act of stumbling knocks the photos loose from my pocket, and they land on the ground in an array of Vicious Horrendousness. The big scary man catches sight of a rutabaga in a compromising position, and stumbles back himself. I believe this is what the kids call “scarred for life.”
“Holy mother of… what in the hell is all that?” he cries, and something about the way he says it tells me he’s not from around these parts.
“Hey, Aussie!” I shout. “Deep breath! I don’t know how they do things in kangarooland, but up here, we don’t gut strangers on the street for nothing.”
He grabs me by the shirt and pulls me to my feet, breathes foul Australian fumes at me. He has a tattoo on the side of his face in the shape of a spiral like a teenage girl would doodle in the inside cover of her diary. Maybe Down Under, that looks tough. I don’t want to judge.
“You’re Gare Marx, right?” he croaks.
“On occasion.”
“Then you ain’t no stranger. You’re the fool who’s got up in my face.”
I search my memory for some hint of what this guy might be going on about. I barely have enough time to make enemies at home, let along on a foreign exchange basis. Though truthfully, when I do make enemies, I do it with stunning efficiency.
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I say.
“You took the job from Wilkes,” he scowls. “That’s my job, mate. Mine.”
“Oh,” I nod. “You’re the bounty hunter.” This makes a lot more sense now. Nobody but a bounty hunter would be able to get away with looking and smelling like this guy does. It’s something about being “above the law” that prevents constructive criticism, don’t you think?
“Damn right I’m the bounty hunter,” he says. “The name’s Bandyloo—” I try and fail to stifle a snicker. “— and you, mate, are treadin’ my turf.”
I ponder this for a moment.
“So you want me to back off?” I say. “Give you room to work?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
I consider my options. If I say no, he’ll get really huffy and maybe kill me in a fit of rage. If I valued my life at all, this would be a bad option. On the other hand, if I say yes, I’m sure he won’t believe me and do all the same things, but with a vindictive streak that will probably draw the pain and suffering out, which is really not my forté.
That leaves me no choice.
“Or else what?” I ask.
He seems a bit confused, luckily.
“Or… or else I’ll… I’ll cut you so many ways, you won’t know which way is up.”
Ah, the ineffectual argumentalist. It’s like me, only bigger.
“Fine,” I say. “You win. The case is yours.”
He lets me go, leaving a blotchy sweat stain on my shirt. It reeks of koala and marmite. He sheaths his knife, puts his hands in his pockets, and stares into the sky.
“You lived here long?” he asks.
“My whole damn life,” I say. “You?”
“Stoppin’ by,” he says, totally missing my drollness. “Not a place to stay, I reckon.”
“No,” I agree, thinking of Bermuda or someplace else where it’s warm and there may possibly be laws against Australians coming to visit.
He says nothing for a minute. Staring off into space.
“So,” I say, uncertain whether it’s bad form to run out on a philosophical Aussie. This kinda thing can’t happen very often, right? “What’s it like, being a bounty hunter?”
He cleans his teeth with a fingernail, mulling.
“It’s a hard life. And I’m good. Real good.”
“I can tell,” I lie, because he still has a knife.
“I’ve been doing this, what, six years now. It’s a hard life. You ever heard of Hefamodkeegm Gnubellor?”
There is so little to say about this that I can’t think of where to start.
“The hockey player?” I ask, in full bullshit mode.
“Yeah,” says the Aussie. “His brother.”
“Right,” I nod.
“Paid me ten mil to help him find his stick.”
If that’s euphemism, awesome. Otherwise, hockey players obviously deserve to get smacked in the head by high-velocity projectiles.
“This city,” he continues, “It’s cold. Cold and gray. I hate it here.”
“I think that’s actually our tourism slogan. ‘It’s cold and gray and we hate it here.’ There’s a song, though. It’s catchier than it sounds.”
“You know where the Docks are?” he asks me, eyes shifty and nervous. I still can’t play poker, but god damn it, if I did, I’d so kick his ass.
“Yeah,” I nod. “Why?”
“Oh nothing,” he says, looking away. “Just hunting for a guy named Seamus. Heard he’d be down by the docks.”
He gives me a serious stare, as if he’s trying a Jedi mind trick on me. Or passing a kidney stone. Or passing a Jedi. One of the little ones.
“He owes me money,” he lies.
“Right,” I nod. Seamus at the Docks. How hard can that be?
Two hours later, it’s obvious it’s actually pretty hard to pin down a guy named Seamus in the Docks. There’s a shitload of bars down there, and everyone inside is too drunk to remember their own names, let alone the guy next to them. I’m just about to give up the chase and go home when I happen upon a dive called The Facking Bordy, staffed by a barkeep with one glass eye and an expression like he is painfully self-aware.
“Hey,” I call, peeking in the door to avoid absorbing any Stupid. “You know Seamus?”
He nods, pouring a pint of Pival’s Pale Ale for a customer with a death wish. I slide over to the bar, pull up a stool, and narrowly avoid sitting on a pile of slime as thick as my thigh. This has got to be the cleanest pub in the Docks. And that’s saying a lot. About the Docks.
“Where’s Seamus now?” I ask, trying to look nonchalant. It’s hard, because I’m sure they can all feel the intelligence seeping off me.
“In an’ out,” says the barkeep.
“When’s he due back?” I ask.
“Not sure,” says the keep. “Maybe if you were drinkin’ somethin’, I’d be more incline t’help yeh.”
I check the list of beers available to me. Crap, crap, crap, shit, toxic shit, and intestinal cancer in a can. Great.
“Pival’s Brown Ale,” I say, wincing as it is scooped into a glass for me. Mmm, thick. Like a meal, but the kind that kills you and helps your body decompose in record time.
“So when’s he due back?” I ask, handing over a ten. He stares at the glass, then my mouth, then the glass, then my mouth. He’s drawing lines in his head, I can tell. I oughta pour the beer down my ear, just to fuck with him.
Sadly, I have a schedule here, so I take a sip. His eyes open wide, his glass eye wobbling as his eyelid raises, and the sight is to freakish it makes me swallow a great deal more of the sludge than I wanted to. I gag, slam the glass back on the bar, and gasp for breath as my lungs disintegrate inside me.
“Where… is… Seamus…” I wheeze.
“Any minute now,” says the barkeep.
“Great,” I say. “I’ll be back in a sec. I just have to vomit the contents of my carcass before I die.”
“Happy travels,” he says.
I rush to the washroom labelled “Dudes”, push on the first stall, but there’s no toilet. The second stall has already been vomited on, probably every day for the last twenty years, without any cleaning whatsoever. And in the third stall is a young woman reading a tablet computer, her glasses falling off her nose.
If this is a dude, he must have had his ass kicked in gym class way more than I did. And I was pretty brilliant at that kind of thing.
“Hey,” I say. “I need to puke, do you mind?”
She looks up, blinking, like she’s amazed the world isn’t made of pixels on a screen. I’d say she’s Jackson’s soul mate, except she’s about as big as his left forearm, and it’s really not polite to wish him on anything, even as a joke.
“Huh?” she asks, getting up. “I… oh, is this the… I’m sorry! I ddin’t realize…”
She stumbles out of the stall, bumping into the wall as she goes. One of the collisions knocks the tablet out of her hand, and it clatters on the ground. If I were a gentleman, I’d have picked it up for her. However, I am a nosy bugger, so I happen to see the screen, and my jaw drops.
“Holy shit,” I say. “The Scarlet Lemming.”
She looks up at me with wide eyes, her face betraying the kind of innocence I have dedicated my life to smothering in a harsh blanket of sarcasm.
“You’re him?” she gasps.
“I sure am,” I say, unsure what she’s getting at.
“Oh my god!” she squeals.
“I know!” I squeal back.
“Have you found Seamus yet?” she asks. “I got tired of the men out there staring at me all the time so I came in here for some privacy while I waited.”
“I know,” I nod. “The boors.”
“I’m Anzia, by the way. Anzia Inocuo.”
Must. Resist. Mockery.
“Gare Marx,” I say, shaking her hand.
“Good to meet you!” she says, oh so oblivious.
She starts back towards the door, and I find myself trailing after like a puppy, bouncing along on his way to be euthanized by the family that doesn’t love him anymore. It’s fucking irrational, but dammit, I need to do it.
Out in the bar, the barkeep is nodding to a man in a patchy red coat, with hair that looks like he got it stuck in a helicopter blade. The barkeep points back our way, says something inaudible, and then the redcoat man scowls at us.
“You ain’t gettin’ me money!” he screams. He looks to the barkeep, barks: “Rusty screwdriver!”
I’m about to go ask for one myself when I see that he’s not ordering a drink at all. It’s an actual rusty screwdriver. And a really damn big one.
Seamus charges at us, spittle flying everywhere.
