I recall the last and first time I met Yourg pretty well, and I guess it mighta been the tommy gun what he had pointed at me that might stuck the meeting in my brain banks.
Yeah, that hunk of metal in his hands looked pretty mean in the February night – all final and shining under the sodium street lamps. The gun’s mouth, an empty looking O, wasn’t saying nothing, but you could tell it wanted to talk to me. You could tell that by the way Yourg held it.
‘Get in the car, Hoskins.’ It was Yourg what said that, his voice a low growl. ‘People is waiting on you,' he went on. 'Important people,’ he went on.
‘Say I don’t wanna go?’ I said.
‘Say it all you like. You’re going.’
I figured I was. Yourg’s eyes looked just like the mouth of that tommy gun and I was too tired to argue. I guess my Colt mighta had something to say about things, but my Colt was back in the Hotel room with Thelma.
Fucking Thelma.
Fucking go get me a cuppa joe with a shot in it Thelma. Fucking what you need your piece for to get me a dime’s worth of sparky Joe Thelma.
Fucking beautiful blonde, never let me fuck her with the lights on, Thelma.
Fucking Thelma.
‘Alright,’ I said to Yourg and his tommy gun and the sodium streetlamps with their worn out orange buzz. ‘Let’s get it done.’
#
Yourg’s car bucked over the rough cobble that fronted the warehouse. The building, a big old wooden structure that used to work cotton, didn’t have a single light burning in it that I could see. It wasn’t empty though, the five black sedans out front told me that.
‘Always thought that was cute,’ said Yourg. It was the first time he’d talked since I got in the car. I figured it wouldn’t be anything interesting, but I asked anyway.
‘What’s that, Y?’
‘The way all the top boys have the same car. You know. Like a union or something. Shows solidarity, don’t it. Cute.’
‘I suppose.’
Yourg pulled the car to a stop. He got out, I heard his shoes scuff on the cobbles – he always was a clumsy bastard. I let him open the door for me. His big face with its empty eyes peered in and I saw a long blonde hair on his overcoat what seemed out of place.
He said, ‘What you drive nowadays, Hoskins?’
Yourg always was a funny bastard.
#
The room was darker than dark. Total black. I could feel Yourg behind me; knew he had that Tommy pointed in my back.
‘Walk,’ he said.
I walked. I supposed I shoulda been nervous, but I wasn’t right then. I just kept on going into that thick blackness. My footsteps echoed.
The room was big, probably where they kept all those looms before the factory closed. Cleared now, of course. Just an empty warehouse: place to bring people; out of the way; end of the line.
‘Stop.’ Yourg’s voice sounded distant. Like he’d not moved from the doorway to the room. I got a little fear then being alone in that big dark place. I’d figured I knew what was gonna happen. I guess we all do, really. It’s just the waiting. That kinda stuff sets you on edge.
They made me wait a little longer.
Then they said something.
Or rather she said something.
‘You screwed it, lover boy.’
#
Fucking Thelma.
I’d nothing to say to her: lie? No point. She knew everything from the start. She’d fucked me for the past year and was fucking me now. That woman had done delivered me to herself.
Still, I had a little scrap of pride left and managed, ‘woulda been better just to stick me while I was sticking it to you, honey.’ I can tell you, the ‘honey’ stuck in my throat.
‘You shouldn’t a done it, Hoskins,’ Thelma’s voice sounded all cut up and different – deep somehow, like I was hearing it for the first time. ‘You had a good thing,’ she went on - Christ, she always went on, ‘you hadda good thing in everything, really.’
I coulda said something about her. I knew the boys from the five black sedans would be out there somewhere in the dark. I could say something about her making the moves on them, I could say something about how we’d planned it all with glowing post-fuck cheeks and après-fuck smokes in our mouths, but I didn’t. What would be the point.
I said, ‘just do it.’
‘That what you want, lover boy?’
‘I’m tired of it anyway,' I said, 'Hell, I’m so tired a thousand coffees with a million shots in them couldn’t raise me.’
I heard some mumbling and the snap-click of a tommy being loaded. Wherever Yourg was he was getting ready to punch my clock – I couldn’t say I blamed him.
‘You got anything to say?’ It was Thelma again, her voice seemed so different now, like it was all brand new. Damn, I guess everything sounds different and the truth of things come upon you when you’re right at the death of things.
‘I said you got anything to say, lover boy?’ It was Yourg talking, I thought that pretty mean and reckoned I had plenty to say. I reckoned I had plenty to say to Yourg and that long blonde hair on his jacket and his voice what sounded just like Thelma’s.
In the end I just said, ‘Well, Goddamn.’
Yourg talked back at me through his tommy gun – SPIT SPIT SPIT. Them bullets felt alright, I could stand them even as I fell.
I heard the footsteps. Echoing stiletto heels clumsily scuffing the floor of that big black room. I smelt Thelma’s scent – some perfume what she always wore – I remembered the bottle what it came in and I saw her shoes. It was weird, them stilettos covered by the bottom cuff of Yourg’s perma-creased slacks.
‘You never knew, huh?’ Someone said. Things had gotten cold by then, I felt the wetness seeping from me. The voice came again.
‘You really are the dumbest son-bitch I ever took to my bed, Hoskins.’
I just kinda moaned a bit. Sometimes that’s all you can do.
At the end of it, when Yourg put the tommy to the side of my head and told me a thing or two, I guessed I recalled the last time I met Yourg and the first time I met him too.
After that, I didn’t remember nothing.
