The apartment was empty.
Not just empty as in “Lisa wasn’t home,” but more like “Lisa had cleared out and taken all their shit with her” empty.
He stood in the doorway, staring across the living room, now stripped of its furniture, and into the kitchen where only the built-in appliances still remained. She’d taken everything that wasn’t bolted down, including the refrigerator.
He walked into the apartment and over to the tiny bedroom they’d shared as a couple. What little clothing he owned was still on the shelves in the closet, along with the box containing a few mementos from his time in the service, but that was about it.
She hadn’t even left a note saying goodbye.
First his job. Then his girl. Could it get any worse?
A vision of the Waste flashed before his eyes, stretches of desert sand broken every few yards by the burning hulks of assault vehicles and the broken bodies of the dead.
Yes, he supposed it could, indeed, get worse. The thought helped prompt his decision to get out of there before things actually did. He had better things to do than to wait around for bad luck to find him.
Like getting drunk and forgetting it all.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the apartment, pulling the door shut behind as he went. He didn’t bother locking it, as there wasn’t anything to steal. If anybody was desperate enough to swipe his dirty laundry, they were welcome to it.
Nate took the lift down to street level, crossed the cracked plasticrete floor of the lobby, and stepped out into the night. Turning left, he headed down the block and slipped into the first bar he could find.
Two hours later Nate was just knocking back his fifth — or was it sixth? — synthetic whiskey of the night when someone slid into the booth across from him uninvited. He looked up, angry at the intrusion, and was just a hairsbreadth shy of telling the newcomer to fuck off and leave him alone when he realized he knew the squat, dark-haired man now seated across from him.
Charlie “Two-Fingers” Vantolini.
They’d served together in A Company shortly after the fall of Syria, when Charlie had been transferred into Nate’s platoon after a rocket attack had blown their communications sergeant into a thousand little pieces. Charlie’s nickname had been well-established by then, a result of the body parts he’d lost when an enemy bullet tore through his hand during the Battle of Al-Gahad, and he’d been received by the rest of the team with, if not enthusiasm, then at least acceptance. He wasn’t fresh meat and for that they were thankful; at least someone else wouldn’t go home in a quick-grown casket because Two Fingers had fucked up without knowing any better, as typically happened when the squad got a newbie.
Nate hadn’t seen Charlie in close to two years and blinked up at him now, his alcohol-fuzzed mind trying to reconcile the sudden intersection of his old life with this one but failing miserably. Two Fingers Vantolini was probably the last person Nate would have expected to run into in a place like this. Not because he didn’t like to drink; no, ole Two Fingers could knock it back with the best of them just fine. It was simply because Nate thought Charlie was dead. That was, in fact, the thought that tumbled out of his mouth thirty seconds later when his lips finally decided to follow the commands his mind was shouting down to them.
“Thought you were dead.”
Charlie cocked his head to one side and stared at him unblinkingly. A sudden memory flashed across Nate’s mind; a view of Charlie looking down at a wounded enemy soldier with exactly the same expression just before he causally lifted his gun and shot the man through the head. “Do I look dead to you?”
No, not dead, Nate thought. Scared. You look scared. Charlie was putting on his usual tough-talking wise guy exterior, but with a flash of clarity Nate saw beneath it all, saw the truth of the matter staring him right in the face. A thin sheen of sweat covered Charlie’s forehead and the hand resting on the table before him trembled just enough to be noticeable if you were looking for it. For all his bravado, in that moment Charlie looked like nothing more than a little kid who was stuck staring at his half-opened closet door in the middle of the night, convinced that he’d just seen it move of its own accord.
For an instant Nate wanted to get up and run away, just get the hell out of there as fast as he could, before Charlie had a chance to say anything.
Then his old squad mate smiled his old devil-may-care grin and whatever crazy thoughts Nate had been having vanished as quickly as they had come.
He grinned back at his one-time squad mate. “Two-Fingers Vantolini, live and in living color. What the hell are you doing in this shithole?”
Charlie’s gaze lost some of its intensity and he signaled the waitress for another round of drinks. He looked back at Nate.
“I hear you’re looking for work.”
Nate frowned as the warning bells in the back of his head went off, telling him something wasn’t right here. Something was off. How the hell had word that he was out of a job gotten out so fast? He’d only been unemployed since yesterday. Or was that the day before? Given the number of drinks he’d had he couldn’t be sure…
“I could be,” he answered, the question making him uncomfortable for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “You got something?”
Charlie glanced around, as if making sure they weren’t being observed, and then slid something small and white across the table to Nate.
It was a business card, white with black lettering.
Limbus, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?
Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606
Jobs for your specific talents!
Nate stared at it. Limbus? What the hell kind of name was that?
He looked up to ask Charlie that very same question, only to discover the seat opposite him was now empty.
Where the hell did he go?
Looking around he caught a glimpse of his old squad mate pushing his way through the crowd near the door, clearly in a hurry to leave. For a moment Nate considered going after him, even got so far as pushing himself up and out of his booth, but when the room started spinning with just that little bit of physical effort, he decided the best course of action was to put his ass back in his seat and finish his drink.
He shoved the card in the pocket of his pants and raised his hand to signal the waitress for another round.
Nate was lying in a puddle of his own vomit when he awoke after his four-day bender. The stench drove him up off the living room floor and sent him stumbling to the bathroom where he fell to his knees just in time to retch miserably into the toilet bowl. The bile burned his throat; his stomach had already emptied itself hours before. Now there was nothing left to come up but his own sense of shame and that seemed to have firmly wrapped itself around his spine with no intention of letting go.