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A Mother's Love - Part Six
Oct. 1st, 2011 09:50 amSorry for the huge delay in posting....
_______________________________
Adele Armando stood at the window of her fifth floor hotel room, looking out into the street below. She had no idea what was down there, however, Santa and his elves could have come skipping along the sidewalk and she would never have noticed, her eyes were unfocussed, the brandy in her hand untouched as she just stared, her mind a jumble of thoughts.
Her mobile’s shrill ring interrupted her, however, and she jumped so badly that she almost threw brandy over the white linen jacket she wore. She put the glass forcefully down on the windowsill, frowning at it as she did so, and snatched up the phone, determined that changing the ring tone would be the next job on her list as soon as she had taken care of the little problem who was calling her.
Answering the phone with a testy, “What?” Adele, perched on the end of the bed, determined not to wrinkle her pants. For a moment she just listened, her brow further creasing with every word, a manicured finger tapping irritatedly on her knee.
“Have you quite finished?” she snapped when the voice on the other end of the line finally stopped, “Because I really don’t know where you get the idea you can talk to me like that!”
The voice started up again, in its own version of Adele’s outrage, but she cut it off instantly. “No. You listen to me. I didn’t specify any time scale with you, not at all. The arrangement was that you are to wait there and not contact me and I will be in touch when we are in a position to move forward! You understand? I don’t appreciate you calling me, and I don’t appreciate you telling me how I should handle this whole operation!”
Yet more objections came over the phone and Adele shook her head in annoyance. “I can’t do that you fool!” she hissed. “I need him to trust me, to want to do this voluntarily! You don't seem to appreciate just how dangerous these men will be if we cross them!”
The voice on the line spoke again, and yet again Adele shook her head. “No, I absolutely refuse. We do this my way or not at all, is that clear? I have spoken to Smith and he will set up a meeting with Danny, I am absolutely convinced of it, but even then, things are going to progress slowly.” More words. “No I haven’t seen him yet. No, not at all - it’s not even been a week, how fast did you think this was going to go?”
For a few minutes more she listened in silence before letting out a bitter laugh. “Oh, that is just the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! You have coped with your paltry wage for all these years; you can damn well just cope a few weeks longer while I do this right! And don’t call me again, you hear me?”
With a flash of temper, Adele disconnected the call and instantly switched the phone off. She had been intending on going down to the hotel bar, waiting for someone to pick her up and buy her dinner, but that phone call had just erased any longing she might have been harbouring for food, wine and sex. She pulled a padded hanger out of her wardrobe and started getting undressed; instead, she and her bottle of brandy were going to have a bath and an early night.
___________________________
Face lay on the bed and cried into the pillow until he had nothing left to get out, then he turned over into his back, arm across his eyes and tried to work out what the hell he’d been crying for in the first place.
He didn’t want to see this woman, not at all, not even to answer the question of why she left him. He was a grown man; he had good friends and a love so intense he often couldn’t believe it. He had more than enough money to live on and was good at what he did; the last thing he needed now was a long lost mother rolling in and mixing it all up for him.
And that’s when it struck him, the source of all these tears, all this upset, was that she had chosen to make this reunion thirty years too late in his eyes. Even twenty years too late. Who knows how different his life might have been back then if she’d been around for him. He wouldn’t have had a childhood of feeling second best, unloved, unwanted, unworthy that’s for sure. It doesn’t matter how much the nuns and the priests cared for him, maybe even loved him in their own way, he was just one of many. Too many mouths to feed, too many clothes to buy, too many toys to get at Christmas, too many school trips to fund. It wasn’t their fault that he’d had to go without, that he’d never had anything of his own, that he’d needed to wear patched and worn third or fourth hand clothes, he’d always understood that; it was his, his alone for being so damn unlovable that even his mother didn’t want him.
He felt a fresh set of tears prick at his eyes and knew then that he wasn’t crying for himself, no, he was crying for the four year old on the orphanage steps, the eight year old rifling through the filing cabinets, the ten year old who was the only one left behind when the whole class went on the Grand Canyon field trip, the twelve year old who couldn’t play on the school football team as he didn’t have the right equipment, the fourteen year old dumped at the school dance by his date as his clothes were so far from the latest style, the fifteen year old who conned his way into the army in an attempt to kick-start his life. It was all those children who had suffered, who had made him the man he was today; independent and determined, someone who cared about looking good and owning quality things, a soldier, who could bury his emotions deeply after years of practise, and equally a man plagued with self doubts, low self worth and an almost pathological inability to trust and attach to people.
It was crazy, she’d never been around to nurture, support and guide him as a mother should, but she’d still ended up making him exactly what he was today, and he could never forgive her for that, no matter what her reasons.
He turned on his side and stared at the wall, thinking over all the facts that Hannibal had landed on him. His name for one, Danny she’d called him then, well, that was a little kid’s name, if he’d known his name all along, he’d have called himself Dan by now. He quickly shook himself, getting that thought straight from his head, he wasn’t Dan, or Danny or even Daniel, he was Face a name given to him by someone he loved, someone who loved him back, and someone who had never, ever walked out on him.
But Daniel Arthur? How weird was that? That when Father Magill finally allowed him to change his name from the one he’d been allocated on arrival at the orphanage, he’d chosen the same damn middle name as his mother had for him? So weird. He wondered if it were some deep suppressed memory that had fought to the surface, but quickly discounted that thought. He remembered his process for choosing a new name, flicking through a copy of The Baseball Encyclopaedia, looking for names that sounded rich, classy even, that no one would expect to belong to a penniless, possesionless orphan. He’d had to thank Garry Templeton, Arthur Rhodes and Hal Peck for his eventual choice. Maybe that’s what his mother had done as well? After all there was Danny Carter, Danny Frisella, loads more he guessed; they must have been playing around the time he was born, maybe that’s what she did?
But then he thought back to the impeccably dressed woman who wore too much make-up and had waited in ambush for him outside the house earlier today, no, he couldn’t for one minute imagine her picking names for her unwanted baby out of a Baseball Encyclopaedia.
And that was another thing. What the fuck was all that about? All that cloak and dagger, ‘Ooh, I’m a poor lost tourist, help me!’ routine? Face shook his head, why the hell couldn’t she have just come up to him and said who she was instead of lying to him like that, making his friends lie to him as well...? The first contact he’d had with her in thirty three years and she lied to him. Well, didn’t that just sum it all up nicely?
It was as these thoughts spun round and round in his head, Face, eventually drifted off to sleep.
______________________
It was dark when he woke up. Proper, thick, right-in-the-middle-of-the-night dark and Face sat up, for a second, totally disorientated. And then he heard it, the sound that had kept him anchored every night of his life for the last twenty years, Hannibal’s soft breathing next to him. He looked over, and could just make out the boss’ outline in the dark next to him, laid on his side under the covers, obviously sound asleep.
Face had been expecting him to come up all afternoon. Despite his promise that they would leave him alone if that’s what he wanted, he hadn’t really believed it, had expected that the boss would come up, want to thrash through it all again, drag him over the coals a third time over that damn woman, and maybe this time Face would have fallen to pieces completely. But the boss hadn’t come up, none of them had, they’d kept their word and left him to it, even though all he’d really wanted was for Hannibal to come and hold him, not talk to him or try and persuade him or even sympathise with him, just hold him.
Feeling strangely empty, he tossed the blanket he’d been covered with off his legs and headed for the bathroom.
______________________
He hadn’t expected sleep to come back to him once he’d finally crawled under the covers next to Hannibal, had thought the hours he’d had before would keep him up for the rest of the night, but it didn’t, his lack of sleep the previous night finally catching up with him, he was asleep within minutes of creeping across the bed as far as he dared without actually touching the boss.
And then the dream came.
It was hot, hot even though he was in the shade of a tree, the thin strips of eucalyptus leaves providing some protection from the power of the sun, and he could feel the heat on his head and the back of his neck. But he was busy, so he didn’t mind, he was making rivers and lakes and creeks and sailing his little leaf boats down on them, watching as they raced along the tracks he scored in the dirt with a stick. It was a game he played often, the hose they used for their water dripped all the time, so, if he set it up just right it would run through the dirt and he could direct it into all these wonderfully twisting rivers and lakes, setting up dams in just the right places to make the little leaf boats sail into the big puddle that was always there at the base of the tree stump.
His stomach rumbled and reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since he’d woken up that morning and he shifted slightly where he was crouched in the dirt; as soon as he had sailed all these boats down to the sea he would head back inside the trailer and find something to eat.
Then he heard it, the distant shouting and the ticking of bicycle wheels in the dirt. He paused for just a moment, wanting to wait until his current fleet were safe in the sea before he left, but then the shouts came closer and he knew he had to move. He was up like a shot, realising too late that he wouldn’t make it round the other side of the trailer to the door and so scrambled underneath instead, flattening himself against the side of tyre so they wouldn’t see him.
He was just in time, the second he had pulled his legs in out of sight, the first of the bikes skidded around the corner and came to a halt about ten yards from the trailer, closely followed by six or seven others.
“Hey!” the shout, expected as it was, still made him jump and he curled into a tighter ball, determined that they wouldn’t see him. “You in there hoe?”
He cringed, hating that word even though he had no idea what it meant.
“She’ll be busy,” another voice answered, scorn dripping from every word, “probably with Randy’s dad again.”
“Fuck off,” a third voice grumbled, “she aint never touched my dad.”
“Maybe she aint in,” another voice added, “she’s usually yellin’ at us by now.”
The small boy behind the wheel hoped they believed that, hoped that meant they would go away.
“Nah,” the first voice replied, “she’s always in. Bet she’s in bed. Come on, let’s wake her up.”
And then it started, the barrage of stones thrown from close range, hitting the trailer from all sides, the noise and the clanging deafening in the space underneath. He curled in even further on himself, hands clapped over his ears, counting frantically as far as he could go, just trying to drown it all out.
Eventually it stopped. There had been no sound from inside the trailer, no reaction at all and that worried him, but the boys had got bored and their discontented mutterings slowly faded away as they got on their bikes and went off in search of another victim. He left it a little longer, partly to make sure they had gone, and partly hoping that he would hear something above him. When everything around was silent and all he could hear was the birds and insects, he decided he was safe to come out.
Slowly, slowly, he crawled through the rubble strewn under the trailer, until he got to the far side, the one nearest the door, where he pulled himself out into the sunlight again. With a heavy heart he scrambled up the steps and edged the door open, letting light spill into the gloomy interior of the trailer. “Mommy?” his voice was so sudden in the silence, it almost made him jump but there was no answer. “Mommy?” he tried again, this time a little louder, and this time there was an answer.
“Danny? Danny, is that you?”
He ran to the sound of the voice, down at the far end, the one they used as a sitting room of sorts and found her lying on the padded bench, pale and sweating and struggling to sit up. He stopped, just far enough away that she couldn’t touch him.
“Danny! Oh thank god, there you are! I’ve been calling you for ages!”
He took a step in, although not too close, you never quite knew what to expect when she was like this, “It’s okay,” he told her quietly, “I hid under the trailer.”
For a moment she looked confused, as if she had no idea what he was on about, but then she noticed the state of his clothes. “Well, you shouldn’t have,” she snapped, “look at the state you are in! You shouldn’t go under there I’ve told you that!”
Looking down at his clothes he suddenly realised that he was filthy, dirt and dust and cobwebs clinging to him; automatically he started wiping it off.
“No!” she yelled, “Not in here! Outside, outside,” he turned, quick as a flash to run out but she called him back before he’d got to the door. “Wait!” he stopped. “Danny,” her voice was all sweetness now, “don’t go just yet, Mommy needs you to get something for me, will you honey? Get something for me?” His heart sank, he knew what she wanted and he knew that would mean he would be finding his own supper and going to bed alone again.
He nodded glumly and climbed up onto the counter in the kitchenette, edging along until he got to the cupboard over the sink. He knew this is where she kept her stuff, told him she kept it up high to keep it out of his way, but then kept sending up here to get it, didn’t make any sense to him. He opened the cupboard and reached in, last one; he didn’t fancy being here when she realised she had none left at all...
He jumped down, staggering a bit as he landed, “Careful!” she hissed at him, “Don’t break it!” He wouldn’t break it, not ever. He’d done that once before and not enjoyed the consequences. He hurried down the trailer and handed it to her, watching with a kind of morbid fascination as she scrabbled to unscrew the top and then tipped it straight into her mouth, eyes closed as she gulped the clear liquid noisily down her throat.
Watching for a minute, he suddenly felt like he needed to go, and, knowing he wouldn’t be missed turned and walked slowly back outside. He wandered disconsolately back towards his rivers and fleets and stopped short, tears suddenly blurring his eyes as he saw all the bicycle tracks running through his little world crushing his delicate leaf boats and ruining all of his carefully tended rivers.
Back in the present day, Face was on his feet even before he was fully awake and staggering down the hallway to the bathroom. By the time Hannibal heard him and followed him down to see what was the matter, he was kneeling in front of the toilet bowl, pulling the flush to get rid of the remains of Murdock’s carefully prepared brunch.
Next
_______________________________
Adele Armando stood at the window of her fifth floor hotel room, looking out into the street below. She had no idea what was down there, however, Santa and his elves could have come skipping along the sidewalk and she would never have noticed, her eyes were unfocussed, the brandy in her hand untouched as she just stared, her mind a jumble of thoughts.
Her mobile’s shrill ring interrupted her, however, and she jumped so badly that she almost threw brandy over the white linen jacket she wore. She put the glass forcefully down on the windowsill, frowning at it as she did so, and snatched up the phone, determined that changing the ring tone would be the next job on her list as soon as she had taken care of the little problem who was calling her.
Answering the phone with a testy, “What?” Adele, perched on the end of the bed, determined not to wrinkle her pants. For a moment she just listened, her brow further creasing with every word, a manicured finger tapping irritatedly on her knee.
“Have you quite finished?” she snapped when the voice on the other end of the line finally stopped, “Because I really don’t know where you get the idea you can talk to me like that!”
The voice started up again, in its own version of Adele’s outrage, but she cut it off instantly. “No. You listen to me. I didn’t specify any time scale with you, not at all. The arrangement was that you are to wait there and not contact me and I will be in touch when we are in a position to move forward! You understand? I don’t appreciate you calling me, and I don’t appreciate you telling me how I should handle this whole operation!”
Yet more objections came over the phone and Adele shook her head in annoyance. “I can’t do that you fool!” she hissed. “I need him to trust me, to want to do this voluntarily! You don't seem to appreciate just how dangerous these men will be if we cross them!”
The voice on the line spoke again, and yet again Adele shook her head. “No, I absolutely refuse. We do this my way or not at all, is that clear? I have spoken to Smith and he will set up a meeting with Danny, I am absolutely convinced of it, but even then, things are going to progress slowly.” More words. “No I haven’t seen him yet. No, not at all - it’s not even been a week, how fast did you think this was going to go?”
For a few minutes more she listened in silence before letting out a bitter laugh. “Oh, that is just the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! You have coped with your paltry wage for all these years; you can damn well just cope a few weeks longer while I do this right! And don’t call me again, you hear me?”
With a flash of temper, Adele disconnected the call and instantly switched the phone off. She had been intending on going down to the hotel bar, waiting for someone to pick her up and buy her dinner, but that phone call had just erased any longing she might have been harbouring for food, wine and sex. She pulled a padded hanger out of her wardrobe and started getting undressed; instead, she and her bottle of brandy were going to have a bath and an early night.
___________________________
Face lay on the bed and cried into the pillow until he had nothing left to get out, then he turned over into his back, arm across his eyes and tried to work out what the hell he’d been crying for in the first place.
He didn’t want to see this woman, not at all, not even to answer the question of why she left him. He was a grown man; he had good friends and a love so intense he often couldn’t believe it. He had more than enough money to live on and was good at what he did; the last thing he needed now was a long lost mother rolling in and mixing it all up for him.
And that’s when it struck him, the source of all these tears, all this upset, was that she had chosen to make this reunion thirty years too late in his eyes. Even twenty years too late. Who knows how different his life might have been back then if she’d been around for him. He wouldn’t have had a childhood of feeling second best, unloved, unwanted, unworthy that’s for sure. It doesn’t matter how much the nuns and the priests cared for him, maybe even loved him in their own way, he was just one of many. Too many mouths to feed, too many clothes to buy, too many toys to get at Christmas, too many school trips to fund. It wasn’t their fault that he’d had to go without, that he’d never had anything of his own, that he’d needed to wear patched and worn third or fourth hand clothes, he’d always understood that; it was his, his alone for being so damn unlovable that even his mother didn’t want him.
He felt a fresh set of tears prick at his eyes and knew then that he wasn’t crying for himself, no, he was crying for the four year old on the orphanage steps, the eight year old rifling through the filing cabinets, the ten year old who was the only one left behind when the whole class went on the Grand Canyon field trip, the twelve year old who couldn’t play on the school football team as he didn’t have the right equipment, the fourteen year old dumped at the school dance by his date as his clothes were so far from the latest style, the fifteen year old who conned his way into the army in an attempt to kick-start his life. It was all those children who had suffered, who had made him the man he was today; independent and determined, someone who cared about looking good and owning quality things, a soldier, who could bury his emotions deeply after years of practise, and equally a man plagued with self doubts, low self worth and an almost pathological inability to trust and attach to people.
It was crazy, she’d never been around to nurture, support and guide him as a mother should, but she’d still ended up making him exactly what he was today, and he could never forgive her for that, no matter what her reasons.
He turned on his side and stared at the wall, thinking over all the facts that Hannibal had landed on him. His name for one, Danny she’d called him then, well, that was a little kid’s name, if he’d known his name all along, he’d have called himself Dan by now. He quickly shook himself, getting that thought straight from his head, he wasn’t Dan, or Danny or even Daniel, he was Face a name given to him by someone he loved, someone who loved him back, and someone who had never, ever walked out on him.
But Daniel Arthur? How weird was that? That when Father Magill finally allowed him to change his name from the one he’d been allocated on arrival at the orphanage, he’d chosen the same damn middle name as his mother had for him? So weird. He wondered if it were some deep suppressed memory that had fought to the surface, but quickly discounted that thought. He remembered his process for choosing a new name, flicking through a copy of The Baseball Encyclopaedia, looking for names that sounded rich, classy even, that no one would expect to belong to a penniless, possesionless orphan. He’d had to thank Garry Templeton, Arthur Rhodes and Hal Peck for his eventual choice. Maybe that’s what his mother had done as well? After all there was Danny Carter, Danny Frisella, loads more he guessed; they must have been playing around the time he was born, maybe that’s what she did?
But then he thought back to the impeccably dressed woman who wore too much make-up and had waited in ambush for him outside the house earlier today, no, he couldn’t for one minute imagine her picking names for her unwanted baby out of a Baseball Encyclopaedia.
And that was another thing. What the fuck was all that about? All that cloak and dagger, ‘Ooh, I’m a poor lost tourist, help me!’ routine? Face shook his head, why the hell couldn’t she have just come up to him and said who she was instead of lying to him like that, making his friends lie to him as well...? The first contact he’d had with her in thirty three years and she lied to him. Well, didn’t that just sum it all up nicely?
It was as these thoughts spun round and round in his head, Face, eventually drifted off to sleep.
______________________
It was dark when he woke up. Proper, thick, right-in-the-middle-of-the-night dark and Face sat up, for a second, totally disorientated. And then he heard it, the sound that had kept him anchored every night of his life for the last twenty years, Hannibal’s soft breathing next to him. He looked over, and could just make out the boss’ outline in the dark next to him, laid on his side under the covers, obviously sound asleep.
Face had been expecting him to come up all afternoon. Despite his promise that they would leave him alone if that’s what he wanted, he hadn’t really believed it, had expected that the boss would come up, want to thrash through it all again, drag him over the coals a third time over that damn woman, and maybe this time Face would have fallen to pieces completely. But the boss hadn’t come up, none of them had, they’d kept their word and left him to it, even though all he’d really wanted was for Hannibal to come and hold him, not talk to him or try and persuade him or even sympathise with him, just hold him.
Feeling strangely empty, he tossed the blanket he’d been covered with off his legs and headed for the bathroom.
______________________
He hadn’t expected sleep to come back to him once he’d finally crawled under the covers next to Hannibal, had thought the hours he’d had before would keep him up for the rest of the night, but it didn’t, his lack of sleep the previous night finally catching up with him, he was asleep within minutes of creeping across the bed as far as he dared without actually touching the boss.
And then the dream came.
It was hot, hot even though he was in the shade of a tree, the thin strips of eucalyptus leaves providing some protection from the power of the sun, and he could feel the heat on his head and the back of his neck. But he was busy, so he didn’t mind, he was making rivers and lakes and creeks and sailing his little leaf boats down on them, watching as they raced along the tracks he scored in the dirt with a stick. It was a game he played often, the hose they used for their water dripped all the time, so, if he set it up just right it would run through the dirt and he could direct it into all these wonderfully twisting rivers and lakes, setting up dams in just the right places to make the little leaf boats sail into the big puddle that was always there at the base of the tree stump.
His stomach rumbled and reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since he’d woken up that morning and he shifted slightly where he was crouched in the dirt; as soon as he had sailed all these boats down to the sea he would head back inside the trailer and find something to eat.
Then he heard it, the distant shouting and the ticking of bicycle wheels in the dirt. He paused for just a moment, wanting to wait until his current fleet were safe in the sea before he left, but then the shouts came closer and he knew he had to move. He was up like a shot, realising too late that he wouldn’t make it round the other side of the trailer to the door and so scrambled underneath instead, flattening himself against the side of tyre so they wouldn’t see him.
He was just in time, the second he had pulled his legs in out of sight, the first of the bikes skidded around the corner and came to a halt about ten yards from the trailer, closely followed by six or seven others.
“Hey!” the shout, expected as it was, still made him jump and he curled into a tighter ball, determined that they wouldn’t see him. “You in there hoe?”
He cringed, hating that word even though he had no idea what it meant.
“She’ll be busy,” another voice answered, scorn dripping from every word, “probably with Randy’s dad again.”
“Fuck off,” a third voice grumbled, “she aint never touched my dad.”
“Maybe she aint in,” another voice added, “she’s usually yellin’ at us by now.”
The small boy behind the wheel hoped they believed that, hoped that meant they would go away.
“Nah,” the first voice replied, “she’s always in. Bet she’s in bed. Come on, let’s wake her up.”
And then it started, the barrage of stones thrown from close range, hitting the trailer from all sides, the noise and the clanging deafening in the space underneath. He curled in even further on himself, hands clapped over his ears, counting frantically as far as he could go, just trying to drown it all out.
Eventually it stopped. There had been no sound from inside the trailer, no reaction at all and that worried him, but the boys had got bored and their discontented mutterings slowly faded away as they got on their bikes and went off in search of another victim. He left it a little longer, partly to make sure they had gone, and partly hoping that he would hear something above him. When everything around was silent and all he could hear was the birds and insects, he decided he was safe to come out.
Slowly, slowly, he crawled through the rubble strewn under the trailer, until he got to the far side, the one nearest the door, where he pulled himself out into the sunlight again. With a heavy heart he scrambled up the steps and edged the door open, letting light spill into the gloomy interior of the trailer. “Mommy?” his voice was so sudden in the silence, it almost made him jump but there was no answer. “Mommy?” he tried again, this time a little louder, and this time there was an answer.
“Danny? Danny, is that you?”
He ran to the sound of the voice, down at the far end, the one they used as a sitting room of sorts and found her lying on the padded bench, pale and sweating and struggling to sit up. He stopped, just far enough away that she couldn’t touch him.
“Danny! Oh thank god, there you are! I’ve been calling you for ages!”
He took a step in, although not too close, you never quite knew what to expect when she was like this, “It’s okay,” he told her quietly, “I hid under the trailer.”
For a moment she looked confused, as if she had no idea what he was on about, but then she noticed the state of his clothes. “Well, you shouldn’t have,” she snapped, “look at the state you are in! You shouldn’t go under there I’ve told you that!”
Looking down at his clothes he suddenly realised that he was filthy, dirt and dust and cobwebs clinging to him; automatically he started wiping it off.
“No!” she yelled, “Not in here! Outside, outside,” he turned, quick as a flash to run out but she called him back before he’d got to the door. “Wait!” he stopped. “Danny,” her voice was all sweetness now, “don’t go just yet, Mommy needs you to get something for me, will you honey? Get something for me?” His heart sank, he knew what she wanted and he knew that would mean he would be finding his own supper and going to bed alone again.
He nodded glumly and climbed up onto the counter in the kitchenette, edging along until he got to the cupboard over the sink. He knew this is where she kept her stuff, told him she kept it up high to keep it out of his way, but then kept sending up here to get it, didn’t make any sense to him. He opened the cupboard and reached in, last one; he didn’t fancy being here when she realised she had none left at all...
He jumped down, staggering a bit as he landed, “Careful!” she hissed at him, “Don’t break it!” He wouldn’t break it, not ever. He’d done that once before and not enjoyed the consequences. He hurried down the trailer and handed it to her, watching with a kind of morbid fascination as she scrabbled to unscrew the top and then tipped it straight into her mouth, eyes closed as she gulped the clear liquid noisily down her throat.
Watching for a minute, he suddenly felt like he needed to go, and, knowing he wouldn’t be missed turned and walked slowly back outside. He wandered disconsolately back towards his rivers and fleets and stopped short, tears suddenly blurring his eyes as he saw all the bicycle tracks running through his little world crushing his delicate leaf boats and ruining all of his carefully tended rivers.
Back in the present day, Face was on his feet even before he was fully awake and staggering down the hallway to the bathroom. By the time Hannibal heard him and followed him down to see what was the matter, he was kneeling in front of the toilet bowl, pulling the flush to get rid of the remains of Murdock’s carefully prepared brunch.
Next
