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Dante's Fire Chapter Nineteen: Jackie
JACKIENeil had gotten Jackie a place to stay in the city. It was in the upstairs apartment of a tall, ancient building made up of a patchwork of red bricks. There was a store on the first floor and a barbeque across the street. The pavement which bordered the stretch of road was pockmarked by hydrants. Every two steps and you met another one. Jackie could imagine them in late springtime or the summer, pumping a spray of water into the air like a fire hose, children dancing underneath, getting their summer clothes drenched. Now, mercifully, they were not functional. Jackie could not imagine being hit in the face by a torrent of ice cold water.Since her father's disappearance, there had been no news whatsoever. Neil would have told her if there was any, she liked to believe. And if something had happened to him, the news would have told it. Or so she hoped. Being in the dark was a thing of many frustrations. For someone who had become accustomed to texts and lectures and the ordinarin
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty: Jackie
JACKIE 'You are late today.' Neil said curtly when she arrived at the appointed place.Jackie slipped her bag off her shoulder and slid into the booth, thankful for the release taking off the weight of it had afforded her.'I am. I guess you are now free to call me my father's daughter.'The 'meeting place' was a restaurant too, like the first one, but this one was more secluded. At the corner of these street, a sign hanging on the glass of its door boasted of the finest mac-and-cheese in the city. An OPEN sign lay at the other side of the glass. Jackie pushed the door open and stepped in. There was no bell jangle. But she was immediately assailed by the strong aroma of food, of foreign spices and culinary miracles. A woman was emerging from the store with a baby on her hip, trying to squeeze past Jackie, but when she caught a glimpse of Jackie's face, she backpedaled and gave her a wide berth.What was that about? Jackie had wondered. The sheer brutality of what she had just witnesse
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty One: Big Jack
BIG JACKBig Jack had been watching the window for days without end. Just outside the dimly lit hotel, there was a tall dogwood tree, its leaves so white that you could barely contrast between foliage and snow, its branches reaching for something beyond them.He had noticed everything in the park beneath the hotel, from the strollers to the newcomers—who he could tell by the bewilderment on their faces at the busyness of New York—to the taxis and the delivery man. But he paid attention to the dogwood tree in particular, because a few dates before, a nondescript car had parked underneath it, and its occupants, what resembled a raven-haired woman and a short man wearing sun shades, spilled out of the car. They stayed there in the shade of the dogwood plant, silently staring up at the building.Big Jack had oiled his gun thrice now. Maybe more. He did not keep count. Dismantle, recouple. Dismantle, recouple. Dismantle, recouple. He did it until his fingers were sore. A better part of him
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty Two: Big Jack
BIG JACK Big Jack did not take his car.Cars rolling through the city were far more conspicuous than people, he had learnt. Especially when the vehicle in question was a blue Impala. People could not always remember what a person looked like. They would say, He was big. They would use adjectives like tall, short, skinny. They would say, I think he had brown hair. But they often did not remember the vitals needed to differentiate one person from the other. The case was not always the same with cars. You saw a blue Chevrolet or a green bentley with obfuscated windows parked at the side the street, and you knew what you saw. Nobody could tell you different.So Big Jack took the bus to the deeper parts of the city, what some liked to call the city's 'underbelly'. It was in these cramped alleys that the most crimes were committed; it was at these corners that the mafia's 'snow' sold best. He knew the rough terrain like the back of his hand.He alighted from the bus when he had gotten as f
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty Three: Big Jack
BIG JACK They were in bed, in the master bedroom when he came up on them. Natasha still had clothes on, underwear actually, a binder and tights; Palomar otherwise did not.There was a tray of what looked like strawberries and squares of brown cake in a intricately designed silver tray on the red-and-white sheets. There was a vase shaped bottle of wine on the hardwood floor. Two glasses sat beside the wine, another had rolled on its side across the room. Natasha had her back to the door which was cracked open just a small bit, while Palomar faced it, but her eyes were closed because Natasha had her face buried in her neck. She made purring noises, like a cat under the caresses of an agreeable hand. It struck Big Jack that, with her head tilted at that angle and her oblique eyes pressed shut so tightly, she had a remarkable resemblance to one too.He cleared his throat meaningfully.Palomar's eyes flew open and she let out a screech deserving of a banshee. Luckily, it was a big house, s
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty Four: Jackie
JACKIE The apartment always smelled of musk in the mornings. Musk and coffee, to be fair. Jackie consumed coffee like a chain smoker burnt through packs of cigar, seeking out caffeine the exact same way they sought out the sweet flavour of nicotine. For her it was not only a stimulant, it was the one thing that stayed the same wherever she went. Everything else changed, passed, fell apart, but the aroma of mocha in her apartment was something that had become familiar, old, steady like a rock in the middle of a stream. As a person who was unused to stability, it felt good to have this, something somewhat permanent. This was why she noticed the difference the instant she stepped into her living room.The atmosphere in the small space was awash with a new fragrance that was neither musk nor coffee. It smelled like the outdoors in winter, like snow freshly fallen from the sky. The windows were shut when she went around the house. There was a pot of pinkish wandering Jew plant at her kitc
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty Five: Jackie
JACKIE They sat at the counter in her kitchen, drinking coffee out of plastic cups. They had wandered into the kitchen after Joaquin said he would need a steaming cup of something. Even if the something was a cup of boiling water. The day was a particularly snowy one, the wind biting deep, without mercy. Christmas was about a week away, and as usual, the city was drowning in white and red, in wreaths of mistletoe, in vibrant green holly and merry bells. At the stores there were more things on discount, there were decorations and lights.For Jackie, Christmas was that time of the year that she had always spent alone, when she learnt to twist the insecurity of being abandoned into the peacefulness of solitude. The bells brought her no merriness, the hollies and mistletoes, no joy.Steam rose out of Joaquin's cup and he held it with both hands. It curled upwards, heavenward, like smoke from an immolation. He blew on it. 'You always do that,' Jackie said to him, watching him meticulousl
Dante's Fire Chapter Twenty Six: Andre
ANDREAndre dreamt that he was at the orphanage, that he was a boy again, starved, gaunt in face, still small. He dreamt that he was at the overseer's office, that he was standing as still as a statue, as most children were wont to do in the woman's presence. You stood before her and felt immediately like a criminal. It might have been her eyes, those hazel suns. They had an accusing way about them. It might have been the aura in the orphanage. A forbidding, gloomy aura that cast shadows over every thing and every child. It was a wonder that people were often surprised that adopted kids almost never turned out all right. It was just as he remembered it, that office. Even in his dreams, his memory of the place was hauntingly perfect. Poorly lit and cramped, it was filled up to bursting with shelves thick with files. These files were stuffed with papers browned at their edges. Identification passports littered the ground. Names, dates of birth, places of origin filled the pa
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