Part Two

October tenth, 15h47 | Tommy’s Bar & Grill

Alessandra (as Narrator): It started in October of seventy-seven. I was walking down to Tommy’s, you know, the one that burned down about five or so years ago on River Street, when I saw someone walking out of Tommy’s with a group of boys. They all looked the fuckin’ same, y’know? Like, same haircut, black, slicked back, grins on their mugs, leather jackets, hands in pockets, jeans on, same pair of shoes. What’s they called… boy bands? They looked like a fuckin’ boy band, doc. Ridiculous. Anyways, there’s this fuck, with a white feather instead of a black one in hangin’ from his ear, and I can’t stop seein’ that pretentious fuckin’ white-wing in the crowd. So, I goes up to him, y’know, and I have to ask him, what’s up with that, y’know? Why the white-wing?

Maury: The what?

Quickshot: The feather, numbskull. What’s that fuckin’ about?

Alessandra (as Narrator): Now, I didn’t knows it at the time, but Maury’s friends were real serious about the uniform shit they’s was pulling, and that Maury’s feather was white was a huge fuckin’ deal they had just been talkin’ about. They starts gettin’ upset, y’know, angry about their image being ruined by something so small, pissed off, in fact. They’s was discussing ditching Maury forever. But this guy… this fuck walks up to me real smooth-like and goes,

Maury: Oh, this? You noticed me because I stood out, right?

Quickshot: Yeah, because you all look dumb, but you look special dumb cuz you don’t fit in with the dumb general public.

Maury, smiling proudly: It’s because owls are better hunters than crows.

Quickshot: What?

Maury: Owls fly silent, right, but crows are cawing and playing around all the time. A group of crows is called a murder ‘cause they appear at the scenes of one. They want the easy score. Owls, though… they hunt their food. They fly in, silent as death, and they pick up the unsuspecting mouse alive.

Alessandra (as Narrator): Usually that informational shit drives me crazy angry, seein’ as I don’t have time for that shit. But the way Maury was talkin’ right there, that shit drove me crazy in the other direction, ya feel?

Quickshot: That… alive?

Maury: Alive.

Quickshot, visibly awed: Shit…

Other Boys: Shit…

Maury: Wanna fly with me, bella?

Alessandra: He extended his arm to me, like a fuckin’ old-ass gentleman, but I was young, and he’d wooed me with that metaphysical shit, so I took his arm and we flew on together. We went everywhere together. Bars. Meetings. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Movies. All that shit. We were inseparable. Even when lazy-eyed Donna blinked her false lashes at him, he didn’t even fuckin’ flinch when I decked her jaw off. He let me be me, angry and rash and wild. He let me sleep with other boys sometimes. Yeah, Maury; I knew you knew. I fuckin’ made sure. I should’ve left a condom on your pillow and let you sleep on it.

Dr Carter: But you kept going back to Maury?

Alessandra: Yeah, I fuckin’ did. Fuckin’ white owl kept me comin’ back. I’d find him whenever I went on dates with other guys, lurkin’ in the background, sittin’ at the bar, smokin’ by the band, always lookin’ at me. He was a quiet flyer, and I was his fuckin’ mouse. He kept huntin’ me, pullin’ me back into his hooks.

Maury: Because you loved me.

Alessandra, snapping back to the current: Because you drew me in like a moth to a fuckin’ flame, Maury, and because you burnt so damn hot I couldn’t resist flyin’ back again! I’ll let that interruption pass, seein’ as I’ve answered the doc’s question and all, but do it again and see if ya can bear a cap in your shin with that smug face o’ yours!

Dr Carter, adjusting his papers: So… you were interested in Maury – Maury? – because he intrigued you, not being like those other guys?

Quickshot: Yeah, I ‘spose so. He stood out like a sore thumb. I always wondered how he landed in the Life. See, me, I can understand, and his friends. We were loud, rowdy, didn’t take no for an answer, ya feel me? We looted, lifted, cracked heads, snorted coke, the whole nine, but Maury, fuckin’ Maury, was always in the background. Lurkin’. Drove his friends up a fuckin’ wall.

Dr Carter: But not you?

Alessandra, narrating: Almost. But his friends tried to do away with him in March of eighty-four, and that made me understand how he got here, with me and his friends. They came after him one night in a movie theatre. We was watching Repo Manwhen two of his buddies comes in and says they need to talk to him, private. Maury doesn’t wanna interrupt me watchin’ the movie, but I’m diggin’ his scene more than the screen ones, so I follow them out there a minute later, and they’ve got him on the wall, punchin’ him in the gut till he spits blood and sinks to the floor. They think he’s out for the count, but he starts laughin’ on them, which drives them even crazier. One boy, Tobias, he starts screamin’ on Maury, but Maury keeps laughin, pointing at somethin’ behind Tobias and the boys. There’s nothin’ there from what I see, so I assume that Maury’s got a concussion or somethin’, but Maury, that fox, uses the distraction to pull the knife from his pocket and slit the first two’s throats in one wide arc. Tobias hears the gurgling and turns to get shoved onto the wall himself, with Maury’s forearm on his windpipe. Tobias’ a little bitch, now, squirmin’, tryin’ to overpower my boy. Maury’s always been thin, like a wire, y’know, but he’s dense, see; he’s got firepower no one can stop. He crushes Tobias’ neck beneath his forearm, letting the boy fall to the ground. Tobias was a singer in school until that day; he was gonna go for opera or something. Music school. Now he washes dishes at the fake-talian place on South and Broad, don’t talk to nobody. Serves him fuckin’ right.

Dr Carter: And what does that memory mean to you?

Alessandra: Ain’t that for you to figure out, doc? I guess it means that that’s when I saw Maury for who he was. Y’know, some people can’t deal with blood; it’s not in their nature. Somethin’ bout it grosses ‘em out, makes ‘em puke and shit themselves. Literally. I figured up to that point that Maury wasn’t that type of person. He was cool, too cool. Methodical. He was in the Life because he wanted to be. Tobias and his friends and me, we were in it because we happened to be brought up in it, but Maury… he could’ve gotten out. No bosses would’ve stopped him. I’ve asked around, y’know, to see where Maury came from, where his blood’s from, who’s his grandmother and that shit. You ask anyone, they’ll throw up their hands and go, “No clue,” not like they’re hiding where they hid your donuts, but sincere. They don’t know. He showed up one day and everyone just kinda accepted him. Ain’t that some shit? But watching him accept that his friends wanted ta whack him, and that he just needed to whack them off, but not all of them… see, me, I woulda killed Tobias first, the others after. One by one. Maury’s about efficiency. That’s what makes him dangerous. That’s what made him likeable. If it wasn’t necessary, if it didn’t fit his image, if it didn’t matter, he didn’t give a fuck. But how he took out Tobias and the gang, leaving Tobias to be the only one to tell what happened, but making it so he couldn’t… that was some shit on another level. That’s my Maury. Not this sappy sonuvabitch he’s become.

Dr Carter: So, you feel that Maury’s become soft in his age?

Quickshot, rolling her eyes at Maury’s tender, questioning expression: Yeah. And I hate it.