want to take any chances. If you manage not to overdose, you should be back on your feet by tomorrow. Might have one hell of a hangover, but you’ll be fine.”
I drink and I smoke from time to time, but I do not fuck with drugs. I couldn’t give a shit what anyone else wants to do, but I made a decision a long time ago not to touch anything that alters my mental state. In my line of work, it pays to have your wits about you at all times. It’s fucking vital, in fact. So this? This is not fucking good. In all of my years working for Charlie, I’ve never made this monumental a blunder. When Charlie finds out…
My knees begin to buckle of their own accord. I stagger forward just in time to slump down onto the couch, fury zipping through my veins. This bitch had better pray I do overdose. That bullet between the eyes isn’t going to work for me anymore. This is fucking personal now. I’m going to make her feel it when I kill her. She’s going to…I want to…oh…oh, fuckkkkkkkkk…
My thoughts turn to warm taffy, stretching and melting, my muscles loosening one by one until I can’t even hold my damn head up. The fabric that forms the roof of the tent pulsates and billows on a wind that isn’t there.
Shelta leans over me, frowning as she peers into my face. “This will be last we see of each other, Mr. Mayfair. I have to say, I’m a little sad about that. You’re such an interesting individual. Your energy is so…vivid. Remember. Be watchful of those two towers. You don’t know it now, but in time you’ll realize they’re the foundations upon which your very soul rests.”
I can’t move.
The world ceases to make sense.
I wait for someone to take my weapons from me, to murder me dead while I’m sprawled out and incapacitated on the floral print sofa, but no one comes. At some point, laughing voices fill my ears, and slowly the tent is dismantled around my very ears. The roof vanishes first, exposing the bare, bone-bleached sky, and then the temporary walls are taken down. I sit on the sofa, unable to twitch the smallest of muscles as cheerful, excited voices swim around me, picking up and carting off Shelta’s furniture.
Hours pass. At some point, a young guy comes and sits on the sofa beside me, blowing out a serious of very frustrated breaths.
“Every year, it’s the same. We come here. We pay tribute. We freeze our asses off in the water, and then we leave. What’s the fucking point to any of it?”
The ocean rushes and pounds in my ears.
I’d turn and look at him, but…yeah. I can’t.
The kid seems to anticipate my thoughts, and he grabs my head, repositioning it. He grumbles bitterly as he jams a scratchy pillow behind my head so that it stays in place. I can see now. Not him, but straight ahead, out toward the sea, which is much closer now.
The Roma city that was here this morning when I first showed up at the reservation is nowhere to be seen. The tents are all gone. All that remains are the people. They gather in groups, clutching wreaths of flowers in their hands, whooping and cheering as one by one they race into the white, raging foam of the water and hurl themselves beneath the waves. When they emerge from the wash, they leave their wreath of flowers behind, abandoning the elaborate arrangements to float on the surface of the water or else obliterated by the relentless waves.
“None of this makes any sense to you, does it?” the kid asks. He pauses, leaving an appropriate gap in our one-sided conversation, giving me a chance to reply. I’m still drowning in glue, though. No matter how hard I tug and pull at my senses and my limbs, neither will respond properly. “This is a Rivin tradition,” the kid goes on. “No other Roma clan does this. Only us. We come here on the same day every year and toss ourselves into the water to pay tribute to Saint Adjutor.” The kid laughs. “What? Haven’t heard of him? He’s the patron saint of drowning victims. My mother’s terrified of drowning. She believes that if we all dunk ourselves into the ocean and give Adjutor some flowers, he’ll watch over us and none of us will drown. Why this beach? Why today?” The kid falls