Read Online Internecine by David J. Schow - Free Book Online

of an eye. The sticking point is that nobody wants to actually risk anything. Not the paycheck, not the family, not life as we know it in these United States.
    However, a vast majority of
those
lives do not constitute “living.”
    Hence, the world of the walking dead.
    Guilty.
    You mate suitably, pay the bills, and wait around to die. The rest is just buying stuff. You buy the stuff you’ve always wanted, then you upgrade to more expensive stuff. Until you die.
    You consume movies and books and art, because those can dream for you, when you’ve lost the fashion of dreaming.
    And I haven’t dreamed of anything for a long time.
    What I do instead is target the next conquest—the next job, the next lover, the next mark. It’s an atavistic hunter-gatherer gene that still fires because it’s got nothing left to aspire to.
    Now, walking with Dandine is dreamlike, unreal. But I can taste the air, smell the city pulsating all around me, and see my reflection in the windows of the coffee shop. It’s me. My blood is alive. I literally have no idea what I might be doing five minutes from now.
    So, who am I?
    Try this question on yourself, sometime.
    Outside the coffee shop, he lit a cigarette from a burnished ebony case in his jacket pocket. It was whisper-thin, about the size of a business card case. Two cigarettes leaned against each other inside like sadsentries. Having nothing more intelligent to offer, I said, “You need more smokes?”
    “No. I allot myself five of these a day. They’re best right after a meal.”
    “Smoking less and enjoying it more?”
    He was taking his time strolling back to the car, practically sauntering. “Something like that.”
    We were about the same height, I noticed. Part of my mind was busily indulging a paranoid whim involving Dandine’s substitution of my own dead body for his, in some elaborate bait-and-switch scenario, which would explain why he was keeping me close. It was tough to think about this and force idle, personal chat—the kind I normally use to massage a client—while not barfing up the white-hot ball of worry that sizzled between my lungs.
    “Is Dandine really your name?”
    He chuckled, to himself. I wasn’t included. “No comment.”
    “Mr. Dandine . . . are you going to kill me?”
    He stopped, turned, and faced me, his smile clicking off as though on a motion sensor. “Don’t try to tell by looking in my eyes,” he said. “Get in the car.”
    This was a negotiation, a contract conference, and it was time for me to haggle. To strengthen my position via objection and contraindication. “The world’s nicest hit man,” I said. “Why is he so pleasant and forthcoming? In my business, people use honesty and familiarity to hide the bigger lie. So I’m thinking, what’s the lie, here? Could it be that you’re going to cancel my ticket? I’ve been beaten up, home-invaded, bound and gagged, shot at and practically kidnapped. But you say it’s all smooth, don’t worry. When people insist on telling me not to worry,
that’s
when I start to worry.”
    He pitched his smoke and spread his fingers across the roof of the car. “You give up and go home. Aim for a good night’s sleep. You won’t get it. You’ll have an ass-full of NORCO agents in your way. Try to walk back into your life with your head high. Just make sure you have your estate in order, because there won’t be a funeral, because they’ll never find your corpse. See ya.” He shook his head again and got into the Sebring.
    “Wait a minute!”
    He started the car.
    “Unlock the fucking door, goddammit!”
    He idled just long enough to rile me, then buzzed the passenger window down. “Can I help you?”
    “Just wait a minute, will you? God!” My heart was racing and I had broken a new sweat.
    “I don’t need you anymore, Conrad. The briefcase can’t do anything except lead back to you, and you’re a dead end. The rest, I can do myself. You can blab all about me, all you want—it’s