Royce Mullins and The Case of Virtue's Burn, A Novel: Chapter 11

by Jeff Hart

Disappointed children shuffled away from the entrance to The Rudy, their fuming tourist parents trying to cheer them with brochure read taglines of lesser Times Square attractions. Above, the dormant Rudy hung empty midway through its second loop, the ride closed for garbage related damage to the tracks. Childlike wonder derailed by the stinking detritus of the adult world, it was an image that suited my mood, and it sent waves of inappropriately sadistic cheer through me, as if I was the one responsible for the roller-coaster’s breakdown.

If I believed Paul Fennel’s theories on divine intervention, if the Chinese trash-bombing was in fact an answer to my desperate prayers then, in a way, I was responsible. Sorry kids.

I’d returned to Times Square and its epilepsy inducing lightshow for my date with Fennel’s soul mate. Wayne Maker himself had arranged the meeting for me. In exchange, he expected me to return Paul to his rightful place in the Unfettered Souls’ sideshow of spiritual curiosities. I had no intention of honoring my end of that bargain. As it happened, I planned to welch on every deal I’d made over the last two days, with one exception.

By the end of the night, I planned to be Unfettered.

Bo Harkins, the Chief Motivationalist’s enforcer, met me at the door to the Unfettered building. He looked me over with a smirk.

“Evening, Royce,” said Bo. “Thoughtful of you to get cleaned up for this.”

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right Bo?”

Harkins shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Hell if I know.”

I’d stopped by the Long Island City motel that Fennel had left me a key for. I’d half-expected to find him waiting there for me, ready with one last prophetic song-and-dance to play me into the final act. The room was slept-in but empty. I took a long shower under the low water pressure of frugal motels everywhere, then napped on the lumpy mattress that was unquestionably an upgrade from my recently abandoned futon. The Magic Fingers were broken, yet I still woke with my previously nagging back pain reduced to a whisper. I’d slept through the sunset. If Fennel had come and gone while I slept, there was no sign of it.

Harkins led me through an Unfettered Souls lobby significantly changed from my first visit. The watery eyed true believers hungry to suckle at Maker’s teat had been replaced with well-to-do men hiding behind sunglasses and newspapers. These were the afterhours parishioners, hungry for services Maker didn’t advertise.

Harkins didn’t speak to me until we’d entered the elevator and begun rising to the repurposed theater’s uppermost floor.

“Mr. Maker hoped you’d bring the Fennel kid along.”

“Not until after I meet with The Virtue. Darlene. Whatever.”

Harkins patted me stiffly on the back.

“I’m looking forward to you trying to screw my boss over, Royce,” said Harkins. “You embarrassed me earlier, in the car. I won’t forget about that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“I’m going to beat the shit right out of you.”

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe there’s another way to impress your Maker.”

The elevator opened on a hallway of closed doors. Harkins ushered me forward.

“Your boss wants Fennel back,” I continued. “I assume it’d be bad for business if something happened to him.”

“That a threat?”

“Not from me. But there are a couple of Fennel’s old buddies, they want to see him underground. I figure they’re what spooked him into hiding.”

“Mr. Maker could protect him.”

“I figured, so that’s why I told these two goons to meet me here tonight. They’re under the impression I’ll be delivering them Fennel, whereas I’m actually delivering them to you.”

Harkins stopped us in front of a doorway. He considered what I’d just told him, working it over hard enough that I could almost hear his synapses flogging themselves to life.

“They’re nothing you can’t handle,” I added. “And you’d get to be the hero.”

“Alright Royce,” said Harkins, grinning at me and patting my shoulder far more amicably than he had in the elevator. “I’ll come to your rescue.”

He opened the door. Over the threshold, total darkness.

“Your Joining awaits.”

I tried to take a step back, but Harkins’ hand was still on my shoulder.

“I just want to talk to her.”

Harkins shoved me into the room with a laugh.

“Don’t be nervous,” replied Harkins, closing the door behind me. “She’s nothing you can’t handle.”

Outside the room, Harkins slid something into place that blocked light from entering under the door. I was locked in. Living my entire life in the city, I’d never encountered darkness so all encompassing. I didn’t care for it. I felt my way along the walls, groping for a switch.

Behind me, feet attuned to the darkness padded a confident path toward me. I tensed. In the dark, with a stranger approaching from behind, a man in my profession tends to assume the worst. I waited for the muzzle flash to light the room, for the cool sting of a knife digging toward my kidneys, for the whine of the piano wire as it looped around my neck.

Instead, The Virtue slipped her arms under my own and began a workmanlike unbuckling of my belt.

“Darlene,” I said. I found myself whispering, out of some primitive instinct to respect the darkness and the predators it contained. “Stop it.”

I turned to face her and, as I did, she grabbed one side of my shirt and used my motion to strip it off me, like a magician working a tablecloth.

“I really hope you didn’t rip off any buttons.”

“Quiet,” she whispered back. “Our Joining is to be conducted in silence.”

Her rebuke was huskily delivered, but contained all the intimacy of a tired drive-thru cashier asking her customer to pull up to the window.

So this was Paul Fennel’s soul mate, the woman whose brief burning touch had shaken Fennel enough to make him seek my services. This was the woman he was so desperate to recover, to be reunited with. She who needed to be emancipated from Wayne Maker’s depraved self-help racket to pursue her gilded romantic destiny with Fennel. Her hair smelled like menthol cigarettes.

She certainly didn’t seem trapped, or unwilling, or for that matter remarkable in any way other than in being a particularly blasé prostitute.

I tried to speak again, but Darlene pressed a kiss on me, pornographic in its abundance of bored tongue. I grabbed her by the shoulders, intending to push her away. Honest. But then something stirred in me and perhaps, for a moment, I mistook it for my soul reaching out and intertwining with that of The Virtue, creating that perfect transbody union Fennel had described in our first conversation.

It was, in fact, a hard-on.

I thought back to earlier that afternoon, when I’d been lulled into reminiscing about Claudette and that stupid potted plant that I never watered. What I’m saying is, in my defense, it’d been a long time.

What the hell, I figured.

Jeff Hart lives in Brooklyn. His other writing can be found over at Culture Blues.

Photo by Fabio, from Flickr.