That’s Life - Part 4

Enter (Stage-Right): The Guy Who Pulled The Trigger On Me. 1

Through an old door, painted to blend with the beat-up wood-panel walls, he drooped in, swinging from the handle, more hammered even than when last we met. 2

“Yous got yaself a lady-caller, Mister Cassini, sir,” he slurred.3

“An’ in what condition would my lady-caller be, exactly?” demanded Cassini in his barbwire-voice.4

“Come see. He’s entertainin’ her down the ’all.” A God-awful leer smeared over the pickled hitman’s chin. Cassini and Angelo jumped from their chairs and hurried through the inconspicuous door. Davida and I crossed the room in two steps. Distance clearly had less to do with ghost-travel than the desire to get from A to B. We passed through the door seconds after it closed and tacked ourselves on to the end of the mini conga line led by the weaving thug.5

“And I thought they couldn’t get any more pissed,” I muttered to Vida. “I’m surprised he could aim straight enough to hit me.”6

“A straight aim’d hardly help ’im in hittin’ you, Bobby,” she sniggered. “Besides. They ain’t drunk. That’s just what they’re like.” Her black-clad shoulders shrugged.7

“Oh? Met’em, have ya?” The following silence sent the puzzle-pieces of my thoughts scattering. A few skimmed dangerously close to answers that fit. But I didn’t want them to.8

“Just once,” came Vida’s answer, low and loaded. I chose not to probe further, for fear of mines. I turned my attention to the three walking ahead.9

Angelo’s step was anxious. His eyes were pinballing between the backs of the older men’s heads. Cassini strolled slowly in front of his son, purposely delaying Angelo’s discovery of what lay behind the last of the doors lining the hall. At the head of our queue, my killer’s saunter betrayed a private joke he was dying to share. Cassini spotted it too. Fed-up of waiting, he demanded, “What ya so pleased ’bout, ya lil’ shit? It’s still taken ya all day to track down this piece o’ trash.”10

“Right, like you’ve never killed anyone, misplaced the body and had to run around the city to find it.” Lil’ Shit probably thought he couldn’t be heard while bent double to navigate the labyrinth of door-key and keyhole. He could. The only thing that stopped Cassini bending him other ways was that Angelo had heard him, too.11

“Killed?” he yelled, shoving between the two old geezers. The door slammed open under his shoulder. 12

“Stupid boy. Still bettin’ on some miracle,” his father sneered. Lights clicked on. “Will somebody please tell me why there’s a dead hooker dancing on my kitchen table.” But there was a mean little laugh underlying Cassini’s words now. Moving into the room, we saw why.13

It was a dingy kitchen of dust dulled, stainless steel, no longer used for corporate lunches. Atop the central table, a slender, young vision in red flopped in the arms of an apparently drunk tango partner. He let me smash to the table-top when my boyfriend let out an eardrum splitting howl. Angelo moved forward, as if to lift my head from hanging over the table-edge. But he stumbled to his knees, his fingertips just managing to clutch the dangling end of my scarf as he fell. Cassini and minions stood back, disgust stretched over three fat faces, waiting for the theatrics to end. “Oh, God! Not another one!” groaned Vida behind me.14

Before I could ask, she clapped her hands. With my head in-between. My eyes stung and I saw Angelo as if through a kaleidoscope. But, every time his shining pattern changed, there was one less color and an ever more shadowed darkness. “W-w-what’s happ’nin’?” I asked Vida.15

“Doctor’ll say stroke, seizure, blah blah blah. But…basic’lly…he’s dyin’ of a broken heart.” Her tone suggested that this was only of mild interest. “Happens quite a lot.” Not to my Angelo, it didn’t. 16

His body lurched forward, peeling from his ghost like backing-paper from a transfer-tattoo. Suddenly I knew, without something to stick to, his transparent shape would fade in seconds. I’d had something to stay for. Him. He thought all was gone. Ignoring Vida’s bitching about “Unnecessary Complications”, I grabbed him. 17

I won’t go into our reunion. It was bad enough having Vida’s cartoon foot-tapping, throat-clearing antics. Parting to see her crossed arms and cross expression was almost as disturbing as what followed.18

“Hello, Jello,” she sighed, pecking “Jello” on his cheek.19

“Veedee! Whatcha doin’ here?”20

“I’m dead. So’re you. Not exactly an exclusive club. Unfortunately.”21

“W-w-w-w-wait up!” I interjected, hands raised. “You know her?”22

“’Course he does! He was at my funeral! Remember?”23

“I remember ’im sayin’ he wandered into the church ’cause it was rainin’!” We both glared at Angelo. 24

“Nice way to behave at a sibling’s funeral,” Vida commented archly. Angelo’s mouth ran through options like a poker-machine but, before it could find a winning line-up of excuses, I interrupted again.25

“She’s your sister!”26

“’ alf-sister!” they barked in unison.27

“I’m the epilogue to that well-known story Fling With A Chorus Girl,” Davida impatiently explained. “And that concludes today’s Daytime Soap Opera Drivel Timeslot. We gotta job to do! Remember?”28

“What job?’ I exclaimed. ‘Ya haven’t actually told us what’s goin’ on!’29

“Well boys, I thought ya might like a lil’ sweet’ner to help Death’s bitter pill go down.”30

“Sweetener?”31

“Sweet Charity, you Musical Theatre Morons. I’m talkin’ ’bout Sweet Revenge!”32

Angelo gazed ceilingwards and let out a groan. “Jeez, Veedee! This still ’bout what Stanly an’ Oliver did to ya five years back?”33

“And to you two today…”34

“Five years…?” I began.35

Vida’s eyes closed and she drew in a deep, exaggerated breath. As she slowly released that breath, a flood of words began to pour out with it. I was swept away, nearly drowned by the sorrow. And, gradually, as I surfaced, I found, swirling round me in the tide, the answers I had searched for. 36

“Five years back, I told our ol’ man I was sick o’ bein’ trapped in a cage o’ lies…just to please him. “The cage is not the bird,” I said. I said “These’re the color o’ my feathers. An’ I’m not changin’ ’em. Not for you. Not for no-one. I’m gonna use ‘em to fly.” So, he had Rosencrantz an’ Guildenstern there clip my wings…by chuckin’ me off of my own balcony.” 37

I stared, jaw agape. Behind my eyes, the chalk outline still glared white on the sidewalk. The cold, clipped jargon of uniformed cops blurred together in my memory. Only one word had stood out that morning. Suicide. And now I knew. They were wrong. I was wrong.38

Vida looked me in the eye. “Told ya. I was just tryin’ to fly.”39

All I could say was “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?”40

“Nobody knows their real names,” Angelo clarified.41

“Right.” Taking a deep breath of my own, I made a pathetic attempt at squaring my slender shoulders. “Well,” I decided. “Revenge sounds good to me.”42