Unnamed

Light bounced off glassware in a dazzling array, reflected as a spray of bullets in his eyes; oh well, he thought, I can't get any blinder. That wasn’t true, but it also wasn’t the point—the point, if that’s what it was to be called, was the spindly man standing on the business side of the bar at which UNNAMED sat. Sweat pooled in the pits of UNNAMED’s shirt, in the worn recesses of his shoes, and in other places he oughtn’t think too hard about while his colleague handled a knife so deliberately across from him.

“Yeah, you don’t think much, do you?” The spindly one said. This was of course in response to UNNAMED’s avoidance of the real point; not the point that was the man, the man with the pointy knife, but the point that was really the center of the whole situation. The gooey hot center which, if prodded, would blow up in his face. Bullet spray, he thought. That’d be better, he thought. The spindly man was staring at him, apparently unbothered by all that bouncing, pointed light; nothing was obscured from his eyes.

“Nah, no—not like that at all. I think plenty,” UNNAMED said, “it’s just I don’t think it’s such a thing, you know?”

“You think the rules are no thing?”

“Just this one in particular, I’d say.”

“You talk too much, hotshot. I don’t like that.”

The room itself was agitated: the rafters seemed to shake, their old wood shedding sawdust in a silent threat; bottles of dry alcohol and bowls of expired olives alike stewed under the pressure in the air; and really, the biggest indicator of the sudden mood shift was the spindly man himself, whose thick-veined hands clenched the handle of that knife with the force of a guy who intends to do something about it.

UNNAMED stood.

“Nah, nah, let’s not be hasty,” the spindly man with the knife said. “Sit. It’s my turn to talk.”

The air itself was pointed. UNNAMED, claws splintering at the ends of his fingers from the way he clutched the edge of the bar, sat again slowly. Like the other guy was just a bear who might be fooled into docility by slow, gentle movements. Not so.

“Good. Listen, now. Our organization has rules for a reason, buddy, so as much as you like to work your pretty brain, don’t. For once, you should’ve just shut up and done the job. Now there’s a witness out there somewhere—the kid knows too much, UNNAMED—and your only shot of making it back into my crew is if you set that right. You understand me? I don’t wanna see you again til it’s done. You listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I hear you.” UNNAMED’s voice had taken on a gravely quality as though crushed beneath the boots of some bigger, tougher man. “I got it, already. I messed up—I’ll make it right. Just give me some time to figure out—“

“You got a month, big guy. After that, we’re coming for you.” A grin. “See you then.”

UNNAMED got up to leave, and he carried with him a sort of weightless quality that threatened to toss him away into the wind. One month, then. He could picture it taking lifetimes to carry out what was being asked of him, but he would do it in one month, then.