Short fiction: Carla Crowe
He took a hot step in the wrong direction: two left turns and a roofie for good luck. Carla was on his coat-tails, chasing his scent like a beagle hunting for gunmen in a crowded bazaar. She knew these alleys better than the resident homeless, knew the resident homeless better than they knew each other, and recognized each brick covered in aerosol from turf-wars long settled. The jungle stunk, cracked concrete browned by protein stains. Robert slept under the Kazakh’s fire escape last night, his stink was everywhere. Carla’s target, however, was slowing down. What had been a whiff of Bvlgari: Aquamarine, was now a vigorous fog that impregnated her nostrils. She found him in a gutter, half drowning in his vomit, convulsing from the sinful combination of drugs and alcohol that rolled around his stomach. She took him home and strapped him to a makeshift gurney she’d cemented to the foundations of her building, and shut his mouth for safety. It would be a few hours before the man awoke in a sweat, delirious and ready to talk; a pinot grigio seemed in order.
She melted on the second floor patio of the Imperial Pub amidst eclectic antagonisms of Ryerson graduates on the University’s recent decision to privatize two of its faculties. Her wine-glass hummed as she passed a finger over the lipstick stain, reminiscing on her time as a student when she entertained ideological fancy, before she left the tap and flowed so cruelly into the murky drain pipe of adulthood; sitting in the same bar, drinking shots of whisky, she once cared as much about issues so inconsequential in the grander scheme of her life. It seemed absurd, as it often does to those wrapped up in their own chaos, that these children should be going about their lives concerned with such macro-level issues when most of them would end up folding sweaters at The GAP. The real problems were ground level, and it seemed that those who belonged there fixed their eyes on the penthouse.
It was getting hot. Carla could feel the sweat spreading, an unflattering dampness around the seams of her blouse. The night’s air was a blanket, smothering every breath. She settled her bill and created a path through the sloppy junior-academic mosh that smelled like a mens’ locker room sloshed with cheap perfume despite the insistence of centralized cooling. “Carla!” she heard as the door caused a soft jingle from the wind-chime. “Carla, wait!” She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know who it was, and by the time she’d turned around Ishmael was nose to nose, breathing his foul breath.
“What the hell are you doing here? I thought you moved out of the city. Come have a drink, it’s been months!” Her will-power faltered. Despite her instinctive loathing for her former Israelite lover, the sand had much more room to fill and she had nowhere better to be. He led the way to the patio with no prompt. He knew her better than anyone. He knew her no better than anyone.
They sweat together as he droned on about the inconsequential happenings of his faculty: which professors were sharing beds, which professor had been arrested for marijuana possession but claimed to have it for medicinal purposes and was let off with a warning despite having two ounces and no license, which students he could see in parliament in the near future. He was an electric speaker, connecting dots of coincidence and stating them as fact. It was an overwhelming and initially attractive trait until one arrived home and realized that what he had purported as fact had been a satchel of crap sealed with a ribbon. Carla sat stoically, pulling deep toxic puffs and sipping slowly on a glass of sparkling white. It was warm by the time he asked about her life, and with a statement as passing as the waving of her hand, Carla excused herself from the table and made her way out of the pub.
The lights from Dundas Square flashed, strong against the midnight halogen glow of those old city streetlights. Ramses was on the stage, vacated since the weekend’s festivities, spouting an anthem popular amongst the homeless for four men with beards on their neck drinking Old Milwaukee and strumming along to his nearly incoherent song. As she walked past he nodded to her half mockingly, then commenced a vulgar refrain.
There she goes again,
The bitch, the heroine, my friend.
Only the silent can tell
what pact she’s made with hell.
When she arrived home, Simon was urinating on her steps. “Good evening, miss Crowe”, he gurgled painstakingly in her direction. “Who is the villain of the hour?”
“My dear Simon,” she spoke calmly, affectionately. “If you don’t stop pissing on my stairs, you may find that it’s you.”
“Of course, my dear. Allow me to shake the snake in the bushes.” He chuckled a bit before stumbling away, his belt buckle clicking undone halfway down his thigh.
“I’ll have breakfast for you at 9,” she called after him, then watched as he disappeared around the corner.
The basement was damp. Pollos lay groaning on the gurney, his voice muffled by the old shirt tied tight around his mouth. Carla approached him quietly. He must have woken hours before, for the skin beneath those leather straps were red, swollen from the futile thrashing of a captured beast. She stood above him for a moment, looking into his eyes. They were bloodshot, foggy, only vaguely aware of the figure standing before him. In her early days, Carla would have taken pity on this poor man, a pathetic excuse for a human; she had seen many like him in the past years, drug addicts and alcoholics turned mercenary for a dime, but what feeling she had for these poor souls lay lost in the river of time. She moved towards the fridge and removed two syringes, one blue and one red, then leaned over to the light switches. The blinding white left stars in her eyes, but had surely affected her subject much deeper. She lay the tray on the stool beside the gurney and pulled her own beside it.
“Mr. Pollos, I suppose you know why you’re here. My name is Carla Crow, and I want to ask you a few questions. Beside your bed I have two syringes, one blue, and one red. Depending on your cooperation, I will allow one to enter your bloodstream. Do not fear the truth, for that’s all that I want. Under your right hand I will place a bell. I want you to ring it if you understand what I just told you.” Carla brought a small, round bell under his hand, placing the curved bit on his palm and guiding his fingers to the button. “Now, do you understand why you’re here, Mr. Pollos?”
*ding*
“Good, and do you understand what I want from you?”
*ding*
“Splendid. Now, to get what I want, I’ll have to remove that choker from your mouth, and in doing so, I’ll have to ask that you remain quiet. I assure you that nobody will hear your screams, but I don’t want to have to make you stop. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
*ding*
“Do you swear to remain calm and silent?”
*ding*
“Then lift your head, and let’s be on with it.”
TL;DR 