Succor

Succour

The fourth day after the fight, Mink wakes in the Dane’s bed alone and hungry, the kind of hungry he hasn’t been since forever. What with one thing and another over the years the most he usually felt in that department was a jabbing need for fuel, and the terror of the last three days has pushed even that into the background. This morning, though, he’s thinking in terms of tastes, of all the different things he could have. He’s ravenous. Going by Eddie’s standard leftovers of a full ashtray and an empty mug, eating in won’t be an option, but everything beyond the front stoop looks like the mouth of hell.

Things had gone like they’d gone before, to start with. Caspar had placed his bet against the favourite, Marty Knutsen, this blonde barn door of a kid, farm boy or acted like it. That was sort of the problem, he was wholesome, straight as a die, he didn’t seem the type diving’d sit with, but everyone has their price and Johnny Caspar wouldn’t’ve laid his money down on a liability, so Mink told Bernie and Bernie sold the information on. Still it gnawed at him, noticeably, so much so even Bernie had paused once midsentence and turned Mink’s face to his like a clock, like something or other at which a cursory glance was needed and said “What’s eating you? Bearing in mind I got about fifteen minutes.”

“Whaddayou care, if we got about fifteen minutes?” he’d replied, and Bernie'd chuckled disdainfully and shoved him into the edge of the desk.

Then, Saturday night, edge of the crowd, picking up last-minute bets, the chumps seemed all happy about laying them on the kid, which shouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, he was wonder boy, that was the point, but there was a smug knowing manner to some of them which he should’ve spotted for what it was then and there, it should’ve struck a spark with that nagging worry, but it hadn’t.

Knutsen. He’d won, his mousy-marcelled girl all cow-eyed in the front row as he proved to her and their unborn child that his integrity could not be bought. Gone the high road. Gone a damn sight further than that right after, somewhere between the ring and her loving arms, but Mink hadn’t seen that done. He’d been looking to Bernie who was standing in the hollering crush over the other side of the ring, silent and sick pale, running speedy calculations behind his eyes on how many people he’d told about what had just not happened, how much they’d parked on it, how much they’d paid him for it. He took off then and hadn’t been seen since.

So since that night Mink has been maddeningly uncertain of which kind of danger he's in, if Bernie'd been bumped he might've bequeathed him the next place in line, maybe dead men don't talk but dying ones don’t like to shut up. And the thought of the man still alive somewhere, sore as hell and wanting an explanation, fills him with a different fear, not the heavy sickening one of waiting to get hit – which he hasn’t felt in ages, not once since he met the Dane, but it’s like riding a bike – him showing up bruised would raise some awkward questions, and Bernie’s not that much bigger than him, and you don’t sling your best years such as they were on a string of one-man wrecking crews without learning a trick or two, whether you want to or not. And after a while, violence stops surprising you. You go limp and wait. This is different, it’s uncharted territory. He doesn’t know how much Bernie blames him, he doesn’t know the limits of his anger. Or his invention.

Make matters worse for most of the past three days Mink’s been alone in a room with a man who can tell when there’s something bothering him, who’s always invited his thoughts and calmed his nerves and who, despite there being a fair cut of pragmatism in with all the lust and other things that drew him to Eddie in the first place, he'd never been able to be really cold-blooded and clear-headed with. Course, up till lately he hadn't had to be.

He’d been standing in the middle of the floor on the balls of his feet, arching like a cat, his back on the Dane’s chest, stretching to press his neck to his mouth, pushing pulse against lips against teeth, insistently, Eddie never having been much of a one for biting but maybe if he could get him to do it a couple times he wouldn’t notice which mark he hadn’t made. Couldn’t hear him complaining. Not about that anyway.

“Hell of a thing,” he had said.

Mink “mm”ed flat as he could muster, reaching back to start peeling Eddie’s coat off, doing it by feel alone, fingers gliding blind down those huge knotted shoulders but still he wasn't finished on Knutsen.

“You get me, right?” Always some question like that, always taking an interest. So Mink offered some brightly brainless reply about how suicidal it was and what was the kid thinking, throwing over that offer, the kind of money Caspar puts up to useful fighters-

“Not that.” You could get a finger between Eddie’s mouth and Mink’s neck then. Two maybe. “When he didn’t dive. It surprised the wrong people.”

“What? Nah, Eddie, trust me” – Christ would that one ache in a couple hours – “I’da known if anything like that was going on-”

Then, with the long palpitating silence after he’d said it, it dawned that Eddie hadn’t straight-out said he thought anything like that was going on, but the man’s next words gave him an in like the gates of heaven.

"Sure, but you were working, I got to spectate. Bomb like that drops, you see what everyone’s thinking, like-”

“Ya mean like Jesus look at that mug, has a thing just” – executing a long, teasing stretch – “thrown in his lap and he ain’t taking advantage, tell ya some guys don’t know what’s good for `em-”

It worked. Eddie clamped a hand down on his thigh and yanked him up and inwards, onto balletic tiptoe and even closer. Mink exhaled ragged laughing gratification for the beating back of fear and guilt, for now, for the steel strength thrumming in the body he was cleaved to and the arm pinning him like a butterfly. Eddie about took a chunk out of his neck then nuzzled his way up to his ear and filled it full of some loving growl -

“Yeah, keep it up bright boy…”

“I’m shaking…”

***

It’s no good, he’s too hungry. He goes out, hair unslicked, coat collar up to his eyes, hat down to his collar, and finds his way to a hash house he’s been to before, but always between dusk and dawn when it draws a different clientele. Right now it’s quarter-full of strangers and the friendly smell of grease. He slides into a booth away from the window and feels himself start to unwind. For half an hour or so it’s bliss, being in a room without sizing or being sized up, shovelling down ham and eggs and five-sugar black coffee like there’s no tomorrow. Like.

Then, it doesn’t go quiet, or loud, no warning, no dramatics. He just looks up and there’s Bernie standing over him. He smiles mirthlessly at Mink’s gawp and says “I walked into a door.” A revolving door, Mink adds silently, and aloud murmurs “how’d you find me?” like they’re some grand romance. Bernie directs the eye he can open at the spotty, stringy kid behind the counter who’s giving a piece of liver his very undivided attention.

“It’s a gift I have,” he replies. “You gonna finish that?”

***

There’s an unfriendly face on the desk at the Royale so Bernie goes up the stairs and Mink goes up the fire escape. He gets there first and hates it, hates that he’s waiting meekly above the alley on Bernie’s displeasure. But then, he reasons grimly, why delay the inevitable? But then why not? Seemed to have been working ok. Bernie opens the window and lets him in. The room’s a sty, more than usual. It reads like a list, where they threw things around, where they threw Bernie around. He puts an arm either side of Mink to shut the window.

Mink hesitates. Apologising might make it all right. It might look like an admission of guilt. He sort of starts to say something but Bernie speaks first. His voice comes quiet and muffled from his bruised mouth but there’s a brittle edge back of it.

“They had some guys in town, they usually do. I didn’t get halfway down the street.”

The Combine then. Mink doesn’t know much about them, the outta-town money, that being how Bernie likes it. Apart from that they could elevate friendly bookies out of the gutter if they chose, if those bookies stayed in good with them. If they didn’t, unintentionally or otherwise, cost them thousands of dollars. Bernie’s face is suddenly closer, his eye searching, the expression in it weirdly scarily vulnerable, like a wounded thing about to attack.

“I told `em. Told `em I got a bum tip, I wasn’t tryna-” jew `em sits in the air unsaid. There’s nervous energy, rage vibrating off his body, shaking them both. His fists are clenched resting at the window ledge, left white-knuckle tight, right curled loose. Mink’s glimpsed damage through those fingers, a fat pink charred-edged flower in the palm. Nothing coming from that side then, he feels the need to tell himself. It’s still better than even money he’s not about to get worked on but he’s thinking the same as he used to, reacting like he used to, drawing himself in, speaking low and toneless, making himself inoffensive, or trying to – he can hear the whine rising in his voice and knows he’s about to run out of useful things to say but goes on “I wasn’t pulling anything I swear I didn’t know I swear, mean what’m I psychic, come on-”

“Yeah,” the other cuts in emphatically but it sounds like no. No excuses, no wriggling out of it. “I said something like that, like how the hell was I supposed to know he wasn’t gonna tank? They didn't buy it, they said I was insulting ‘em, said what is this you a convent girl now schmatte, that’s careless.”

Mink presses his shoulder blades to the glass.

“So they took their dough back. What was left. `Course they’re still out everything they woulda won, but-” Bernie turns to look at his wrecked room and raises a whatcha-gonna-do hand, then his breath comes out hard as sob, laugh, sigh of relief “-they said no hard feelings.”

Mink’s a little surprised at this. That’s as benevolent as they get, as anyone ever gets. Or maybe just the smart play, leaving Bernie able to sell them the next fix, and the next, long as he doesn’t screw up again. He whirls back suddenly with that hand still up and now almost a closed fist, but he looks lost, not angry or righteous. Mink raises a defensive arm, they collide and grapple and whatever it started as, it ends in a clumsy, shuddering embrace. They stumble around the fallen desk going at each other’s belts.

Everything’s different.

Before this, they’ve had to be quick, now they have to take their time. Bernie splays on his back on the bed, Mink straddling him, peeling him out of his shirt, making him yelp when it brushes that cigarette stigmata, making him grit out some impatient imploring whine while he spitslicks his own palm, making him gasp and clutch convulsively at his hip when at last he lifts himself and slides forwards on his knees, thrusting against Bernie, taking him in sharp and deep.

Bernie hardly talks, the sweet-sour litany that usually flows out of his mouth reduced to the odd word, then not even words as Mink rocks, slow as he can stand it, his eyes drawn unavoidably down the black-and-blue continents on the other man’s body. It occurs to him, position he’s in, he could take a little payback of his own, for all the sly brutality and casual contempt, for knowing that even if Bernie didn’t have him sewn over what they’re doing to Caspar and each other he’d probably still be running back for more, but God help him he really doesn’t want to.

So he waits till neither of them can wait any more before starting to move harder and faster, places his hands everywhere unbruised, traces those lips’ coppery split under the kind of soft fluttering kisses that any other day would’ve made Bernie sneery and him sick. It’s like they’re two different people. Why he’s not sure, nor about to find out as his thighs tauten and his mind floods with sensation and need. He’s sick of thinking anyway, second-guessing and chiselling every waking hour. He can’t untangle what he wants.

He remembers, weeks back, after some long lucrative rounds of cards and craps with Verna, rolling back to hers in the early hours of the afternoon. He was half-dozing on her couch when the front door opened, awake enough to see her take two cigarettes into her mouth in greeting and hear Bernie say to her Christ, I feel like you look, some crack anyone could’ve come out with, but thinking of it now, here, it sounded like a gospel truth. Comforting was what it was, seeing his own battered and shaky image past future and present in the man under him and relieving it, giving it pleasure and peace.

Me and him, he thinks swoonily, against the ropes, maybe it took all this happening to see it, but in a final analysis, in the bones of us, we’re more alike than we could’ve ever stood to admit...He bucks finally two three times, then folds slowly over, covering the other man’s body with his own.

“It’ll be alright,” he whispers into Bernie’s neck.

Bernie looks at the ceiling and says “I know.”

Afterwards is different too. There’s none of the usual bitter silence, the sniping at each other. They share a bottle of gin out of the desk drawer that somehow escaped the fury and Mink’s last cigarette. By the time dusk’s falling he’s plastered and if not happy, it’ll do till happy shows up. He’s not holding his breath.

“Whatcha doing tomorrow night, ‘bout 8?” Bernie asks, opening the window like a gentleman.

“Lemme guess,” Mink husks. Bernie walks warm fingers up his spine. Thinking about it this is the only time Mink can remember a touch of Bernie’s not being all business, function or threat or his own gratification. It’s nice.

“Attaboy.”

***


The following night Mink’s back at the Royale, going through the door this time. The old front-desk bastard – sour but safe – cracks a knowing sneer which he won’t lose any sleep over, 302’s probably the League of Decency compared to what’s going on elsewhere in the dump. And there’s other things on his mind.

He takes the stairs fast, aching with the anticipation he’ll hate himself for later but hell, sheep as a lamb, does their knock and the door's tugged open real quick, eagerly. He takes two steps in and stops dead. The room’s tidier. The bed’s made. Behind him Bernie heels the door shut. “What’s the rumpus,” he says, such warmth in the rum dark of his unblackened eye, smiling so wide it’s a wonder his lip doesn’t re-split.

The other man, the one sitting on the only chair, just nods, acknowledgement and appraisal at once. As far as the latter’s concerned Mink reciprocates instinctively. Brick shithouse running to flab in a nice suit. One of the Combine maybe, or one of their apes. His knuckles are swollen and shiny but that could be a coincidence. There are introductions of some sort but Mink doesn’t hear them. He’s recalling everything he thought yesterday afternoon with cruel clarity, me and him, in the bones of us yeah, oh sure…

“What the hell is this?” he stammers, though the answer to that’s up in lights long before Bernie starts his slow dance around it, about how he’s out a lot of scratch not to mention a lot of faith where a lot of people are concerned, and this'd be a step towards fixing things…

Bernie manoeuvres him into the bathroom before he gets the chance to dive at the door. He catches a glimpse of an apologetic grin thrown at the visitor and right then is throttled and gutted by complete understanding, of course he understands, it's about as complicated as a kidney punch, but there won’t be violence he can tell, not that kind at least, Bernie doesn't have to lay a finger on him, smart. And probably not even the limits of his invention. Mink sags against the mouldy wall. He tries to gather his thoughts and words but all that comes out are the questions he already has answers to, querulous whats and whys-

“Did I stutter? I need money.”

“But, but Christ -” I don't I'm not I can't. He's pretty sure he can gauge what the man's reaction'll be to any of these, he knows him that well. If not as well as he thought he did. He finishes lamely "he's a total stranger…"

“So chat.”

“Bernie-”

“Things to do, Mink.” He already has his coat on. He picks up a hairclip from the sink – there’s always the odd thing of Verna’s here – straightens and pockets it.

“Please,” Mink says, then stops. He won’t beg, not because he’s above it but because he knows it’s useless. Like he knows he’s not Bernie’s sole option for whatever slim roll of ready money this’ll bring in, like Bernie knows the Combine wouldn’t have starved for want of Saturday’s take. That’s never the point. It’s the screw-up side of things they don't like and can’t afford. So they give you one warning shot. No hard feelings.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” he manages.

For what, outraging ya virtue?” Bernie laughs, he’s got his laugh back. “Ohh sugar, you slay me…”

So Mink goes back in the room. Bernie’s got a point, about the virtue. Besides which it’s not that different from getting beat up. You just wait.