Chapter five: Strolling through a warzone

Trigger warnings for those who need them

substance abuse, mentions of war, mentions of surgey

The next morning I drag myself back to Theresa’s bar on only four hours of sleep.
I find the titular character reclining on a gilded bed, eyes closed and tended to by two menservants.
One rubs her feet while the other holds a bowl that smells like summer.
The one giving the massage dips his hands into the bowl before continuing on to her calves.
Am I supposed to call out to her?
Get her attention?
Or will she get angry if I intervene?
As if able to read my thoughts, she opens a single eye at me. “Did you do the job?” She asks.
“Yes.” You mean you didn’t check?
“Good.” She signals something to the man holding the bowl. He sets it down to bring her a golden box.
“Thank you darling.” She tells him with a golden grin. Then opens it up and pulls out a small bag. “Catch.” She orders, flinging the bag at my face.
I jump aside with a start, then pick it up from the floor.
As it lays in my hand I notice my name is written on the front.
The drawstring is tugged tight but after fumbling it loose for a minute it comes away and I see the cold glitter of money. These are not your basic coppers that we use to barter in the bars and pubs but shimmering silvies, glorious goldies.
I try my best not to sound giddy as I look back up to her. “Thank you.”
“I take it you’ll be here next Friday again.”
“Absolutely”
She nods sternly “Regular couriers take their fee from their handlers when picking up their new packages. I take it that’s not a problem?”
With this much money to tide me over? “Not at all.”
“Good.” She then closes her eyes again.
I gently close the door behind me as I exit the bar again.
Then pick a cig from my pocket and smoke it on my way to Raoul.

“Hey friend, how many cigs do you have on you right now?” I ask.
My dealer jumps at my sudden appearance. Then checks his coat. “Uhhh, got nine full boxes and a couple so 110 individual cigs.”
“I’ll have them all.”
“Nice, job went well I assume?” He asks as he starts pulling out the packets.
“Job went perfect. I can’t thank you enough.” I beam as I regard the stack of drugs hungrily.
“Well you can start of by paying me for the cigs.” Raoul snickers.
“Of course.” I count out the money and put in an extra silver for the trouble. “To show my gratitude.”
“Thanks man, you’re all right.” He dumps the boxes and loose cigs into a paper bag and hands it over.
This is incredible!
More drugs than I’ve ever seen together before.
And they’re mine.
For a single job!

I head back home and pay Benji for the ‘forseeable future’ with a single goldie.
He looks at the money with a suspicious frown. “What did you do to get this?” he asks.
I shrug. “Why do you care? It’s money isn’t it?”
He huffs. “I guess. Just don’t bring any trouble here okay?” He warns me with a wagging finger, before pocketing the money and walking to his ledger.
With a big, dumb grin of my face I go to my room and throw myself a little party.

The days after that I spend my time more high than lucid.
That is until I remember what day it is.
And I need to sober up for my next job.

The wiry man gives me a box with that same address and that same assignment. Go to number 18 in under the hour and deliver the package.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“That’s all.”
It turns out I have one job, and one job only then?
Well, if I get this kind of cash for a single job a week, I wonder why I wasted my prime years in the theatre.
But it’s also…suspicious.
Just what’s in this package that is worth so much? And how much of a risk am I truly in getting it to this guy?
I expected the box to contain chemicals because Theresa’s in the business of drugs but what if it’s a bomb and the money paid is this high to offset the cost of my funeral?
The man tips his hat and walks off in the middle of my train of thought.
He didn’t even say goodbye, the prickly twig.
I leave my suspicions for what they are and head for that strange, desolate centre.

I ring the silver bell again.
The door opens nearly instantly this time.
“Ah, there you are, come in.” That same eccentric man tells me cheerfully.
“Your delivery-“ I start.
“Yes, thank you, I have a bottle of sefai for us this time.” He tells me, pulling the box from my hands and setting it down on a side table just beyond the door.
“Uhm, right, thank you.” I step over the doorstep and follow him again to that curious sitting room.
The bottle is set plain on the table with two glasses. He’s not even pretending to be subtle about it.
He pours the drinks, then hands me the one that’s slightly fuller.
This feels off.
There’s a storm in the pit of my stomach. I keep imagining horrible things happening to me inside this gaudy room.
Maybe I should just run, forget about all of this.
And slowly but surely go back to being poor?
I accept the glass and sit down. The man sitting across me doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort as he just starts rambling off a story about our booze.
He claims the bottle was the gift of a woman he saved in Jaobai at the height of the war;
“I was just admiring those beautiful peach-blossom trees when she ran into me. She must have thought I was a Cygnian soldier because she recoiled the moment she saw my face. I was about to ask her what’s wrong when I noticed the blood staining her robe. She was about to dart off again but I picked her up and took her to an illegal gambling den I chanced on a week before. The owner owed me a favour so I was allowed to use the backroom.
There, I took off her robes and dug the bullet from her shoulder. I disinfected it, wrapped it up with clean cotton and told her to get rest.
She was crying as she pulled the fabric back over herself, but in between her tears she asked me why I had helped her. I simply told her I’m a doctor and left it at that.” He leaves one of his pauses again.
He’s not done right? He didn’t even get to the bottle yet. “And the bottle?”
He waves away the question with acted nonchalance. “Oh, that was days later. I was at the market looking for lychees when a small boy darted from the underground and handed me the bottle before vanishing again. I must admit at first I expected a bomb or poison but then I saw message painted on the label over the usual sales pitch. It was a message from the woman I saved. She made it to the underground after I helped her and was on the road to recovery. She probably would not have made it without my help and the bottle was just a humble thank you.”
I take another sip of the sefai. Somehow that story made it taste different, a tad sweeter.
The man waits for my commentary again I tell him “Wow. Were you sent there as a field doctor then?”
He cocks his head at me in confusion. “No, I just told you. I was there to watch the trees.”
“But there was a war happening?”
“Trees don’t mind wars that much. They just do their own thing. Besides I left shortly after that. I was quite safe.”
‘Quite safe’ is not what I’d describe taking a stroll through a battlefield. Honestly that just makes it sound horribly unlikely if anything.
Maybe he embellished the story for drama? Or made it up beginning to end to make a cheap bottle of rice-wine taste better.
Yet he doesn’t look like the type to buy cheap things.
He pours more wine in my cup then says “In Jaobai, it’s bad luck to keep an empty cup on the table. It invites evil spirits to take up residence inside the cup.”
What? I pull up an eyebrow. “How?”
“I think through possession but I’m not entirely sure. In all fairness, I think it’s just a superstition people made up because they do not want to drink alone.” And with that he picks up his cup again and takes a swig. “It’s a shame really. Jaobai will never look the way it used to look when I was young. Back when the factories were paddy fields and the only weapon a man could carry was a sword or dagger. Guns are an atrocity really. They kill too quickly, too easily.” He sighs, drains his cup and fills it up again “But times are changing. For better and for worse which means every time I visit Jaobai it’s like stepping into a different country entirely.”
I wonder how old this guy is. I thought he was middle aged. He looks middle aged. Yet he talks like an old man reminiscing about ‘the good old days’.
It’s odd.
But the drinks are good and despite the odd tastes and blatant lies. My host seems harmless enough.
The man pours out the last of the bottle in my glass.
He doesn’t fetch another one.
Just as well, it’s almost five am.
“Thank you.” I tell him, then drink it while he looks at me. It makes me feel odd.
Or maybe it’s because of the booze.
I put the emptied cup down and get up. “I should leave.”
He nods. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Uhm”
“Yes?”
“Since this…” I gesture at the table and the room and everything, “seems to be a weekly occurrence now…I don’t have your name… and that’s odd right?” I should at least know who’s liquor cabinet I’m emptying. Just seems like good form.
He laughs loudly, as if I just made the funniest joke he’s heard in years. “Yes, you’re right.” He says then clears the room and sticks his hand out to me. “Call me Adrian, Adrian Kariakov.” He says.
I shake his hand “Valentine Garcia.”
“Like the patron saint of love?”
“My mother was a romantic.” I admit.
“How delightful.” He smiles.
He looks more like a human when he smiles.
I shake my head, not sure where that thought came from.
Then wish Adrian a good night and head back home.