But my bookcase wasn’t like all those with big, priceless leather tomes.
“There you are,” a voice called from the kitchen. I recognized it instantly as the only adult permitted inside my house. The sizzle and smell of cooking bacon practically pulled my chair across the room like a fish on a lure. Laura Garrity knew me too well.
She stood by the stove with a spatula, looking every bit as beautiful as the day I’d saved her. Her form-fitting pantsuit didn’t fit the occasion, but she never looked out of sorts. The daughter of the city’s long-time mayor, a burgeoning lawyer after graduating top of her class, single mother—the kind of woman that made being a hero worth it.
“You’re letting yourself in now?” I said to her, then coughed. My throat burned from too much liquor and too little restful sleep.
“I knew you were downstairs,” she answered.
I pulled up right next to her, accidentally ramming the counter. “I told you to never go looking down there.”
“I didn’t. You left the front door open. Again.”
“I like the draft.”
Laura rolled her eyes, then leaned over to observe my face. I hadn’t passed by a mirror yet, but I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Did you get into another bar fight?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “Where’s Michelle? I got her something.”
“In the living room, watching TV so low it’s basically off. She didn’t want to wake you.”
“Now that’s the smartest idea I’ve heard in weeks.”
“And you wonder why she’s scared of you,” Laura remarked as she returned her attention to the pan. The bacon crackled, probably already burned. Considering how busy she was, learning how to cook well wasn’t in the cards, no matter how hard she'd tried. But at least it smelled good.
“I never wonder.”
I spun and rolled into my dreary living room, curtains drawn over the front windows to keep out prying eyes. Opium dens had better lighting. As expected, tiny Michelle sat on my couch, which probably wasn’t sanitary enough for a child. She didn’t make a peep, pulling a pillow close to her chest as I appeared. I joined her in silence.
I never was great with children. They reminded me too much of how I grew up. Even when Laura was in a pinch and she had me watch Michelle for a day here and there, we would just sit in silence. Like now. Judge me all you want, that’s better than not being there at all.
What could I say to her anyway? “Hey Michelle, I was there when you were conceived by a rapist in an alley having his way with your mother.” Though, I suppose I did understand growing up without a father.
I checked what was on TV. Good Morning, Iron City, covered in grain thanks to a bent antenna. The prettied-up host and hostess were talking local politics with Election Day coming up. Mayor Garrity had a narrow lead in the polls, chasing his fourth consecutive term under his usual campaign slogan: A SAFE CITY, STRONG AS IRON. His competition, Darrell Washington, a city councilman from the Stacks, the city’s poorest neighborhood, was actually putting up a decent fight this time. Especially now that the city wasn’t a crime-infested nest.
Mayor Garrity liked to take responsibility for that after the Garrity Act bolstered the ICPD and gave them the tools necessary to fight organized crime. Stop and frisk, CCTV cameras all over downtown, higher precinct budgets, denying parole, lenience on warrants—the works. But really, the worst groups, like the Bratva, fled Iron City because the city was dying like all those along America’s Rust Belt.
Too few jobs, too few industries… it wasn’t worth the hassle for larger operations. That, and I’d hammered most of them beyond recovery.
The talking heads showed clips of marches in support of Darrell Washington’s tax cuts on the lower-class causing traffic downtown, with the man himself making the rounds and supporting them. Was it that hard to figure out why he was losing? People are fickle. You mess with their routines, cause traffic, they’ll hate you for it. You don’t, they won’t even know you exist. So simple.
Regardless, it seemed no matter who won, nothing ever really changed. It was a fucked town, run by fucked politicians, fucking people.
And poor Michelle. I’m sure watching the news in my grubby townhouse was the last thing she wanted to do before pre-school, but my busted antenna only got one clear channel.
“I have something for you,” I said. I rustled through my pocket and found the SuperBall. Other than the dust from my lair, it was a fancy thing. Colorful, like a miniature version of the Earth with swirling green and blue.
Michelle stared at the toy. She looked up at me, then to her mom, who watched us from the kitchen. I saw Laura nod her daughter along in my peripherals.
“Thank you, Uncle Reese,” Michelle said meekly, plucking the ball carefully with two fingers so as not to graze my calloused hand. Who could blame her?
I grunted in response, then watched as the girl gave it a few exploratory bounces. The ball glanced off the foot of the couch and rolled away, and Michelle went after it like an explorer in the Amazon.
“You know, you really don’t have to keep dropping by,” I said to Laura as I rolled back into the kitchen.
“Then who would make sure you eat?” she replied.
I stopped by the low cabinet, where I kept my booze. Down to my last bottle. There wasn’t much of a pension for retired vigilantes. Mayor Garrity did what he could for me in the coverup of what really happened the night I met his daughter, but the payoff for an Iron City Sanitary Worker on an injury settlement was barely enough to scrape by.
I took a swig straight from the bottle. I didn’t bother screwing the top back on.
“This early, Reese?” Laura scolded.
I drew my wheelchair up to my corner table and clanked it down hard. “I’m nocturnal, remember? My whole body is out of whack.”
She set a plate down in front of me. Overcooked bacon, scrambled eggs, and liquor. The breakfast of champions.
“You haven’t been nocturnal for… what is it… five years now?” she said, wearing a cheeky grin.
“Rub it in, why don’t you.”
“I’m just saying, you’re going to kill yourself.”
If she only knew…
I chuckled at the private joke in my head as Laura carried breakfast to Michelle in the living room, who was busy trying to reach her new ball under my cluttered coffee table. We’d given up trying to get her to sit down for a meal without things getting uncomfortable. Children that age have a sixth sense, I think. Like she could see through my shriveling shell and into my rotting core.
“Are you going to eat anything, or just stare at it?” Laura asked, returning to sit across from me.
I lifted a piece of the blackened bacon and stuck out my tongue. “Now I really regret not going through with it.”
“Through with what?”
I took a bite and crunched. Nothing ruins bacon like overcooking it until it tastes like a mouthful of fresh ash. “I considered drowning myself last night,” I said casually, as if announcing my plans to go grocery shopping. Laura was midway through a sip of water and nearly choked.
“What?” she asked.
“Yep. I was down by Horton Point, right near the edge. It was perfect, Laura. Gentle breeze. Quiet. It was the first time in so long, I felt like I could breathe.”