Warren Ellis - Crooked Little Vein

“You don’t enjoy your work, Mike. It is very sad. The girl, Mike, is a crazed omnisexual vaginalist with a string of lovers from genders they don’t even have names for yet. She’ll break your heart, Mike. Take my advice. Get your own room, put your pants on backward, and wear boxing gloves. It’s good for you. Trust me. I’m the White House chief of staff.”

He drifted out the door like a handful of black feathers cast on a winter’s breeze.

Trix came in. “I got the concierge to call the police. But the police beat Bob up, too.”

I was drinking. I have two drinking faces, I’ve been told. The Social Drinking face, and the I Need to Drink Until the Front of My Brain Dies face.

“What’s wrong?”

“We have an appointment with the Roanokes tomorrow at eleven.”

“How did that happen?”

“My client was here. He told me things.”

“He arranged it? Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

I summoned a smile from somewhere. “Sure.”

“You want to come to bed?”

No. I wanted to get really fucking drunk and then stab myself repeatedly.

“Nah. We’re out of condoms. Forgot to buy any.”

She sat on the arm of my chair. “What makes you think we need any?”

“Not without condoms, Trix.”

“True. I don’t know where you’ve been. But not what I meant.” She rubbed her palm over the back of my hand. “I have hands. You have hands. You and me: it doesn’t always have to be about vanilla humping, Mike.”

“I like vanilla humping.”

“Come here. I’m going to rewire your vanilla little brain with my bare hands.”

In the middle of the night, I said, “You said you were my girl. To Bob. You said he shouldn’t talk like that to his buddies’ girls.”

“I did.”

“Are you my girl?”

“Do you want me to be?”

“Do you want to be?”

“Why would you want me to be your girl?”

“Because you’re smarter than I am. Because you see things I don’t. Because you make me feel good just by looking at me. Because you fit right in my arms.”

“Are you going to start singing?”

“And because sometimes I want to strangle you.”

“That can be hot.”

“I’m going to strangle you right now.”

“You can’t lift your arms.”

“…shit.”

“I’ve never been monogamous in my life, Mike.”

“I know.”

“I can’t do it.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“But you want me to be your girl.”

“If you want to be.”

“I like girls, too.”

“I don’t want to watch or anything.”

“I thought two girls was every man’s dream.”

“You’re my dream.”

“I don’t believe you said that.”

“I’m never going to admit I did, so get over it.”

She laughed, low in her throat.

“How’s this going to work, Mike?”

“There’s only one thing I want. For as long as we last. Because I’m a depressing realist.”

She tensed against me a little. “And what’s that?”

“Other guys, I’m always going to have a problem with.”

“That could be a problem.”

“Yeah. And I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. But the only thing I really want?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter what you do? Come home with me at the end of the night.”

And then she kissed me.

If they don’t give us the book they’re going to blow up the ranch?”

“Still want to come?”

Okay, so maybe telling her that was a mistake. I’d arranged for a chauffeured car to take me to and from the Roanoke ranch outside town, and had suggested to Trix that maybe she wanted to stay at the hotel while I worked.

“Yes I do! I’m not letting you go into that on your own!”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! Jesus! They want to blow the place up if the Roanokes don’t hand over the book? Wouldn’t that blow up the book, too?”

“I’m figuring they worked that out and that they know something we don’t. Maybe it’s in a vault or something. Anyway, I don’t think this counts as adventure.”

She grabbed me by the back of the hair as I tried to put my pants on.

“I’m coming.”

“Yes yes okay fuck ow okay yes.”

“Good.” She went off to find her boots, muttering.

Came back. “Mike. They wouldn’t really…”

“The guy sat in that chair and injected monkey shit into his arm, Trix.”

“Yeah. Getting boots now.”

I counted off five seconds.

“He did what?”

“Don’t be judgmental, Trix.”

It was a long drive out under an unforgiving sun. Even with the A/C cranked up in the rear of the car, I was regretting putting on the jacket and tie.

Trix was in boots, a short skirt, and a vest-top, showing off both sleeves of tattoos. “You think I’m covering up for the fucking Roanokes? I’m going to take a dump in their oven.”

“Hell, I don’t care. I need to look professional, you can look any way you like.”

“I like you in suits. You should get a new one, though. That one’s a bit frayed.”

“Oh, that’s not wear and tear. That’s where the rat would eat at it.”

“The rat.”

“The super-rat in my office. One time I put tinfoil on the floor outside his rat hole and hooked it up to a car battery. When he walked out on it, he should’ve lit up like a murderer on Old Sparky. But he stood up on his hind legs like Tony Montana in Scarface, you know? ‘I can take your fucking bullets.’ Soaked up every volt in the battery, jumped up on my desk and had sex with my sandwich until it dissolved. I hate that rat.”

“Sometimes I wonder how close to hospitalization or suicide you really were before I met you.”

“Three…maybe four hours.”

The Roanoke ranch came into view. It gleamed under the sun. The whole complex was painted a brilliant bone white. As we pulled into the driveway, I noticed half of a cow’s skeleton poking out of the lawn, jutting the way you see them sticking out of desert sand in Westerns.

A little farther down, there was a human skeleton sticking out of the ground in the same way. With a buzzard perched on it.

As we drove past, I craned to get a better look. The skeleton had been painted white. It could well have been fake. The buzzard, however, was real, and had had its feet wired onto one of the ribs. It had long since given up on escape, and just sat there with its head hanging like a depressed child’s.

“You see what kind of people they are?” Trix said. “I’m going to flay this guy. You do your job, I’m not going to get in the way of that. But I’m going to just demolish this guy. It’s like being driven into Hell knowing you can totally beat Satan’s ass.”

It took ten minutes to traverse the driveway into the ranch’s courtyard. It was weirdly silent. As we got out of the car, a tall guy who reeked of bodyguard came out of the main house, looked around very professionally, and walked quickly toward us.

He put out his hand. “I’m John Menlove, head of security for the Roanoke family. You’re Michael McGill and assistant, correct?” He put just enough force into the wide, careful handshake to measure my strength. I gave him about half a pound less pressure than I had, on reflex. I don’t care if you’re shaking over a contract, shaking with a bar drunk or shaking hands with your grandpa—you never, ever let someone know how strong you are.

“Please come inside. We have a security procedure to complete before I can introduce you to Mr. Roanoke. He’s extremely protective of his family’s safety, as I’m sure you can understand.”

We were taken out of the sun into the main residence’s cavernous, galleried hallway. A female security agent was produced, and she and Menlove patted Trix and me down, ran fingers through our hair, and requested to see our teeth. Trix was looking around the place as best she could, rolling her eyes from side to side—and then coughed out, “Holy shit!”

“What?”

“Please regulate your language in here, ma’am,” the female security agent said.

“Eat me. Mike, look at the goddamn galleries!”

Running alongside the staircase, and across the landing gallery, was a long row of mounted, stuffed animal heads. Nothing special, you see that a lot—I don’t want to sound jaded, but Old Rich Guys all went to the same fucking interior decorator or something—and my eyes just skipped over them. “What about them?”

Trix grabbed my head and turned it in the direction of that which was vexing her most. “There. Look.”

“…well, that can’t be real.”

“Mike, the guy has a dolphin head stuffed and mounted on his wall.”

“There’s no way that’s real.”

“Mike, this bastard cut Flipper’s head off and put it on the wall.”

“Maybe Flipper had it coming.”

“Mike.”

“How the hell do you remember Flipper, anyway? Flipper was caught in a tuna net before you were born.”

“I saw reruns as a kid. And you take that back about the tuna net. Look up there. My God, I think that’s a kitten head next to it.”

Menlove was looking uncomfortable. “Perhaps we can go through to the living room.”

“No, no, give us a minute here. I know that’s a moose, but, next to it there…would you know if that’s a white tiger?”

“It might be. Mr. Roanoke will be free to speak to you in just a few moments.”

“And that there. That’s a seal, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God, Mike. Roanoke has a seal head on his wall.”

In fact, the longer we looked, the more animals we identified, and none of them really belonged on a polished wooden base and hanging on a wall. Even the moose. Because it turned out it was a reindeer. And someone had applied rouge to its nose.

“Yes. That was me. My daughter was naughty. I told her that I had killed Rudolph and mounted him in my gallery, and so there would be no Christmas.”

Old Man Roanoke, tall and lean and lined and surprisingly easy to recognize with all his clothes on. Flanked on one side by a security agent, and on the other by a male nurse. He was in blue jeans and a work shirt, which is another weird quirk of Rich Old Men. Just one of the guys here. Blue jeans and a work shirt, salt of the earth, working man like yourself. Like they’re somehow uncomfortable about being rich enough to sleep in a bed made of vaginas being pulled around the town at night by a fleet of gold-covered midgets.

I don’t go into situations like this in the best of moods in any case. But I found myself becoming unusually irritated. Trix, God help her, was practically vibrating with rage just simply by being there.

The male nurse cleared his throat. “I’m uncomfortable with this interview at this time of the day. So, please, let’s get on with it. Mr. Roanoke is in something of a delicate medical balance.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re ill?”

He grinned the way lizards should grin; slow and lazy, like a lizard early on a cold morning. “I have Roanoke’s Disease.”

“You’d think you would have seen that coming,” Trix said.

Roanoke scanned Trix quickly and then shot Menlove a filthy look. “There’s a girl in here, Mr. Menlove.”

“We’ve checked her out, sir. She actually has a very small penis. Like a baby boy’s. Undescended testes.”

“Okay. Good. Like your agent there. Seems to be an awful lot of that about. Must be the water the poor people have to drink. They do drink water, don’t they?”

Menlove straightened, moved behind me. “I hear they can’t afford water, sir, and drink something called Mountain Dew.” Leaned in and hissed in my ear, “Just roll with it, please. This is my life. This is how I have to live. Help me out.”

I stepped to Trix, gave her hand a quick sharp squeeze. She flicked her eyes to mine, read me, and shrugged.

“Ah,” Roanoke said. “You would be McGill. Would you like to see my garrote, McGill?”

I decided not to mention that I’d already seen it in action. “I’m really just here to discuss a rare book that your family purchased a few years ago from a police officer in Ohio.”

He pulled the garrote out of his pants pocket. “This garrote,” he said, dangling it in front of his eyes like a stage hypnotist’s watch, “was fashioned from the guts of Sand Gooks.”

“Sand Gooks.”

“Oh yes. They hunt me. I have fought the Sand Gook for thirty years or more. They know my name. Their men are impotent with hate and their women smell like a baby’s graveyard.”

“Mr. Roanoke really should be in bed,” the male nurse said.

“I need that book.”

“Yes,” Roanoke croaked. “I know who you work for. Menlove! Did you check under their car?”

“I ran the broom under it and everything.”

“Good. The Sand Gook can cling to the chassis of a car and draw sustenance from the tailpipe. I know who you work for. They give succor to the Sand Gook.”

Trix couldn’t let that one slide. “You know, not only is that term totally offensive, but the current government is prosecuting a war in the Middle East that uses torture in the pursuit of securing oil interests just like yours.”

“You, sir, are a fool,” he told her. “Which is perhaps only to be expected from a man in a skirt. Their ‘war’ is a girl’s war. It has nothing to do with oil. It has everything to do with the awful preterhuman aspect of the Sand Gook. We cannot allow people who can become invisible to share a planet with us.”

Trix turned wide eyes to me. “Okay. I officially give up. Go to it.”

“Mr. Roanoke. You know who I work for. You understand that there will be repercussions if this interview is unsatisfactory. I’m empowered to offer you a significant sum in exchange for the book. Please. Let us get to business now.”

“That damn book. We could have had control, if we’d used that book. The Middle East would be glass and I wouldn’t be negotiating with damn Russians to buy missiles to protect my property. But the boy wouldn’t use it. Promise me something, Mr. McGill. If you ever meet a real woman, instead of cavorting with tattooed hermaphrodites, keep a stone in your pocket.”

I just had to. “A stone?”

“Yes. For killing a retarded child when your woman squats it out into the world. The skulls are soft. It’s like punching calf’s liver. I lost my stone. And so I have my children. I should have found a less defective wife. My sperm festered in her womb. I may as well have masturbated into a garbage can. Can you smell that?”