Behind a curved executive desk is a black leather swivel chair, and Niko has a moment as the chair turns toward him to discern with fevered distinction the desktop cluttered with papers, opened envelopes, Post-Its, a pencil cup holding scissors and a letter opener, stacked in and out trays, an Apple laptop, an intercom phone, a cherrywood display rack holding antique fountain pens, a placard reading THE LUCK STOPS HERE. A moment as the chair turns toward him to note the room is strident with the ticking of an unseen clock. An awful moment before the chair turns around in which he knows who he’ll see sitting in it.
Niko stares at retro shades above a perfect grin. “Niko-mancer. What took you so long?”
NIKO PICKS UP his guitar case and leaves the stinking elevator. It closes silently behind him. He firms his grip and heads slowly toward the son of a bitch behind the desk. He wonders how he feels.
“Sit down, sit down.” Phil waves at one of the chairs facing his desk and presses a button on his intercom and says, “Salome.” A door opens and a sad abomination enters the room. Long and tan and lean and lovely, a naked pair of woman’s legs strides across the plush gray carpet with a jingle of bells. The pubis is sparse haired, the wide hips end bluntly at the waistline. A silver edged glass tray rests on top. A woman sawn in half and made into furniture. The tray bears a Waterford ship’s decanter filled with gently sloshing brown liquor, a matching oldfashioned glass, a matching ashtray holding a book of matches and a pack of Swisher Sweets, a baggie of white powder, a floral patterned silver teaspoon, and an antique glass hypodermic syringe with fingerloops on the barrel and plunger.
Niko stares as the human serving tray stops beside him. Several toes have silver rings. An anklet of little silver bells jingles and the liquor in the clear decanter sloshes gently with the legs’ faint tremble.
“Go on,” says Phil. “The whiskey was distilled at Old Oscar Pepper; the china white’s uncut. The Swishers, well.” He shrugs. “I’ve got some killer Dunhill Cabinetta Robustos over here, but to each his own. Go on, help yourself.”
Niko finds he is not too exhausted or indifferent to hate. He knows Phil expects him to refuse out of pride or defiance or unwillingness to feel obligation. Instead he sets down his guitar case and pulls out a chair and sits down heavily and pours himself a stiff one and then opens the pack of Swishers. Phil watches like a man watching a woman undress for him as Niko knocks back the whiskey and lights a cigarillo and reads the matchbook cover as he smokes. Enjoy Travel Luxury on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
“People who collect those, you know what they’re called?”
“Yeah, I know.” The happy burning in his gut. That’s the best god damned rotgut he’s ever tasted and he’s tasted a lot. The cigarillo, well. It still feels good. He puts the pack in his jacket pocket and is startled to feel something already there. Oh right, the magnetic keyholder.
Phil just can’t take his eyes off him. “I gotta tell you, Niko-pedia, you just keep on surprising me.”
Niko blows smoke Phil’s way. “Makes two of us.”
Phil glances at the baggie on the tray. An eyebrow raises above the rim of his shades.
Niko shakes his head. “I know when to stop.”
“Do you.”
Niko says nothing. He polishes off the doubleshot of whiskey and finishes his smoke. The unseen clock counts down the time. The whiskey goes to work and by the time he finishes the cigarillo he’s buzzing like a bumbly bee and who the hell cares. Maybe that’s the way it ought to be right here and now.
When the cigarillo is down to its final inch he stubs it out in the ashtray and looks at Phil.
The human serving tray turns and jingles from the room.
Phil watches Niko watch the legs stride off. “Perfect isn’t she? You can set your drink on her and fuck her at the same time.” He slaps the desk again and laughs. Sees Niko isn’t going to play along and nods. “You want to get down to business I suppose.”
“My business is with your boss. You’re a glorified mailman.”
“Well that’s a little problematic, Niko-lonic.”
“I don’t care. You know how this all goes down.”
“Oh I do indeed. It’s an old song and we’ve all heard it a hundred times before. And after all this time and all these tries you never learn.”
Niko stands to leave and Phil stands too. The air turns ugly. Niko senses that the walls and the desk and the view are all props for his benefit. That just beyond them decimating chaos lies waiting to tear through. But the game they’re playing has been played enough to have become a ritual and the players myths. He is certain Phil will abide. Perhaps is even constrained to somehow.
“I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to play for your boss.”
Phil’s grin is perfectly insincere. “Then let’s take you to him.” He steps away from his desk but then remembers something and presses the intercom. “Mr. Alighieri, push my appointments back—” he looks Niko up and down and then glances at his huge Rolex “—an hour. Got that?”
Terrible raw screams come tinny and distorted from the intercom. Phil grins at Niko as he comes around the desk. “We’ve got him translating Dan Brown into terza rima.” He gestures at the elevator standing open for them. Niko hesitates and Phil touches his elbow. “You’ve got to trust me, Niko-mander. You got nowhere else to go.”
Niko glances sidelong at Phil’s inscrutable shades. He doesn’t trust the son of a bitch as far as he could throw a fit. But Phil’s right. He has nowhere else to go. He has almost literally hit bottom. In his experience what you likely find there is a shovel.
He pulls his arm from Phil’s grasp and picks up his guitar and steps into the elevator. Maybe this has all been willed. Maybe as the prisoner of myth there is only one outcome and my choices matter not one bit. But I’m damned if I’ll be led.
THE URINE STINK is gone. The button no longer has a down arrow but a large B. Phil presses it and the mirrored door closes and the car starts down. Niko and his nemesis in this small plunging room.
“Mind if I ask you something?”
Niko shrugs.
“Why do you do this to yourself? I mean it’s clear to me that even you don’t believe in this anymore. You’re just going through the motions.”
Niko stares at empty space beside his bedraggled reflection. What is there to say. What difference could it make.
Phil shrugs and looks up at the ceiling and nods. “Just curious.”
The elevator slows and stops and opens onto a bright white corridor. Phil gestures after-you and Niko steps into a long white hallway set with black doors.
Phil searches his coat pockets as he walks ahead of Niko. “It’s funny. These deals, these contracts. They’re all sucker bets, you know that?” They stop before a featureless black door and Phil pulls out a ring of long oldfashioned iron keys. “The people who sign have the talent not to need them.” Phil selects a key and inserts it into the door. “I mean, you think we give you that?” He smirks and glances at Niko. “A guy either hears the music or he doesn’t. All we do—” he twists the key “—is open doors.” He pushes the door and it seems to disappear as it opens in on blackness. “And you all sell out so cheap.” He turns toward the room. “Hey Lou. Brought you a visitor.”
Niko hears scrambling and heavy puffing and a certain rustle he has come to recognize as leather wings.