Meditations
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul.
Pyat.
He stands naked. A rejected sculpture of scars and chiseled muscle
Goddamn lactic acid.
It's not lactic acid old man. Stop making excuses and finish.
Malick squats down. Kicks his legs out into a plank position. Down into a push-up. Chest hits the floor and back up. Legs in, then jumps to complete the burpee. Ninety one. Down. Kick. Up. Ninety two. Down. Kick. Up. Ninety three.
The maintenance room is a washed out gray tomb save the green flicker of the transistor radio spitting static in the corner. A disembodied voice cuts in.
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul.
Pyat.
Static.
Ninety eight. Ninety nine. One hundred.
Ready for that cold shower Malick?
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Atta boy.
Malick steps into the empty corner. Rusty pipe jutting from the ceiling looms overhead. He grabs the Jolly Roger helm sized valve on the wall with both hands, spins clockwise and the pipe wails.
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul.
Pyat.
The freezing point of water is not 33 degrees Fahrenheit but fuck if it isn't close.
Clearwater washes over him. Running over sweat. Over grime. Over filth. Over the blood that is his and the blood that is not. Over sins, memories, dreams.
Black water congeals at his feet. The area around the drain is curdled dumpster juice.
Across the room the maintenance phone is bitching.
Fucking Pinch.
Malick waits for the liquid at his feet to resemble water again before closing the valve.
The phone is a banshee that will never stop but Pinch can suck it up a bit longer.
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul —
Malick cuts the radio. Naked dripping wet lets the phone howl for a heartbeat longer before jerking the receiver free. Holds it up to his ear. Doesn’t say shit.
“Hello? Malick? Malick, can you hear me?”. Arthur Pinch’s voice has the qualia of someone in the throes of a gerbilling misadventure.
“Malick?”
“Yeh”.
“We don't pay you to sulk down there. I require your services on the mezzanine. Now!”
Malick scratches his balls.
“Hello? Did you hear me?”. The tone’s a touch more frantic. Almost desperate.
“Reckon I’m off the clock.”
“Well get back on the fucking clock”.
The clock. Pinch’s concept of time has always been skin-deep. He sees time as something finite. A thing to be savored or wasted. But time is a river of passing events. No sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too shall pass.
“What's the problem?”.
***
Despite being a World Class son of a bitch, the hotel concierge has a talent for efficiency and organization, or at least for keeping the people who do in his orbit. Probably why he still has the job.
Consider the average adult human weighs between 60 and 80 kilograms. Under ideal conditions the decomposition time for dead tissue is ten days, however, bone can persist up to 30 years. This creates heartburn for the hotel staff and Arthur in particular.
Rotting corpses and happy guests make for strange bedfellows. The old system was essentially disposal ad hoc. A body in the broiler, a corpse down a laundry chute. The occasional severed head buried in the gardens out back. But broilers break down, chutes get clogged, and Fido always digs up more than a bone.
So a new system was developed. To accelerate decomposition and disposal, human remains are now placed into a 55 gallon polyethylene drum and filled with sodium hydroxide. After approximately thirty days, the remaining acid, lipids, and bone fragments blend into slurry the color of coffee cake.
137 of such containers litter the basement warehouse floor atop pallets like marooned castaways. Number 138 is slung over Malick’s shoulder. Human pudding sloshes around the barrel in rhythm with his footsteps. Combat boots reverberate off oil stained concrete under the low green tint of mercury vapor bulbs.
Malick cuts between two pallets over to the center of the room. Sets his quarry down next to the coffin size drain on the floor.
Hands glove veiled, he arms himself with the hammer and flathead. Wedges the tip of the screwdriver onto the lip of the drum and rears back with the hammer.
The lights above hiss their anticipation.
One dignified strike. Then another, and another. Around the horn until the lid is off, slow, graceful, gentle.
Malick gazes into the vat. A solemn moment passes between him and the fluid. Once a person with thoughts and feelings, now the gentle ripple of purée.
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”
Yes it does.
Malick presses a boot against the side of the drum.
“I’m sorry”
***
The Mezzanine is a maze carved from the bones of the bygone. Art Deco sconces with crumbling alabaster bowls line walls bleeding light, soft and yellow. Turn the corner and suddenly you're in the death throes of Vaudeville. Red and pink carpets, once plush and vibrant, lie eviscerated over the exposed corpses of sea foam linoleum tiles. Yes, those are original Gilded Age armchairs along that corridor. No, we haven't been able to replace the stuffing that's pouring out. So sorry.
The Mezzanine isn't really a maze, not like the 8th. Mostly the floor is just a place to book private events. The occasional NRA thing or even a Mandela Effect convention. But people still manage to get lost up there. They’re never quite prepared for the trek. The sheer size and number of rooms. It’s easy to lose your sense of direction. You pop on up for that 20th reunion and ten minutes later you’ve been wandering around for hours. And really there aren't a lot of ways to exit the Mezzanine. Less if you don't work at the hotel. None if Valentine is having a bad day. Malick gets sent here at least once or twice a month.
The service elevator opens and he steps out, toolbox at his side and a dolly with strapped empty drum in tow.
Turn the corner. First opening on the left leads to a section of several adjourning conference rooms. The sign post out front has been knocked over.
Private viewing in progress. For inquiries dial concierge.
Fucking Pinch. There aren't any working phones on the Mezzanine.
The gallery is massive. The foyer alone contains a half dozen priceless paintings set against a backdrop of chic merigold and French provincial blue. Malick waits in the center of it all wearing muted gray coveralls covered in lye stains and machine oil. The eyesore of the storm.
“Who the fuck are you?”, says the man walking in from the side.
Hey old man why does he always pretend he doesn’t know you?
Bosch is a crisp jet black Vera Wang tux filled by the meek and slender frame of a man. Elegant wire framed glasses and a knife goatee shift as the rest of his face contorts, cunt like, around the stub of a cigar.
Malick turns away to look at the painting directly in front of him. The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. He knows it.
The Rembrandt depicts a reserved Christ surrounded by twelve frantic disciples on a boat. The storm rages around them. A mysterious fourteenth passenger, believed to be Rembrandt himself, stares down the viewer. It's beautiful. A worthy masterpiece. It’s also one of the 13 most valuable artworks officially declared missing by the FBI. At least five of the others are in this room.
“I said who the fuck are you?”
Malick whips out a card from his right breast pocket. Floats it to Bosch without taking eyes off the painting.
Rembrandt really managed to conjure a visceral interpretation symbolizing both the power of evil and the awesome will of The Almighty. Stunning.
Bosch plucks at the card, pinched between fingers, a kid's dead pet bird about to be flushed down the toilet.
“Malick the Plumber”, he reads outloud. “I don't need a goddamn plumber. Does Pinch think I’m an idiot?”
Probably
“Fine fuck whatever follow me. Don’t touch anything”.
Bosch leads. They drift from room to room, through a maze of mahogany, marble, gold, and ivory before emerging into one of the smaller conference areas, redecorated to look like a bedroom. Sweet aroma of the red light district.
A young woman sits at the foot of a bed. Black satin robe clings half open below her skull white shoulders. Her face is red and swollen from crying. At her feet is a charcuterie board of viscera. Human but otherwise unrecognizable.
Arms and legs, while mostly intact, dangle by thin webs of veins from a ruined torso. The entire chest cavity is exposed, the rib cage a book with covers open. The major organs, heart, lungs, etcetera are vagrants on a cherry wood floor. Stomach and gallbladder both punctured, their contents floating on top of a sea of blood. Wait where’s the fucking head? The only evidence it ever existed are the bits of skull and brain matter.
And was this a man or woman? Another dead half second of contemplation. There is always a path to the truth. Sometimes it's the line of blood running from the corpse to the far wall. The one that ends in a severed and bloodied cock.
The woman looks from Malick to the empty container and bursts into tears.
Bosch smacks her across the face. “Shut your mouth.” Another smack, harder.
Malick’s hand goes to the hammer on his belt. The woman manages to cut the crying down to a series of whimpers.
Bosch’s gaze, mindful of where Malick’s hand is, softens, turns to the woman.
“Oh Clementine I’m sorry that was uncivilized of me”. He lays a reassuring hand on her head. Runs his fingers through her sandy blonde hair. “I really must work on my…equanimity”. His words are peach velvet.
“There there now, there’s no need for tears”. Bosch’s hand is under Clementine’s chin, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Is there?”
She trembles but manages a nod.
“That's my girl”, he says with arms open. “Now come”.
Clementine stands and the robe falls away. Blood runs the length of her arms and legs. Up her hips and belly. Partially covers her small breasts. She lets Bosch sweep her into his embrace, buries her face in his shoulder. Consider that tux ruined. On the bed, where Clementine was sitting, lays an ornate curved knife, gold and caked in blood.
Malick squats over the mess on the floor.
You should have brought the mop.
Pinch didn’t mention the job would require one.
Blaming Pinch now are we? That might be an all time low for you.
Hardly.
Whatever can happen at any moment can happen today.
No, you're right.
Of course I’m right old man.
Against Bosch’s chest Clementine could be an angel sleeping.
Malick uses the exacto from his belt to cut the veins from one of the victims legs and drops the entire limb into the drum.
Bosch snaps his head over to Malick. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Cleaning up the lady’s mess”
“You ignorant Philistine”, says Bosch. He thrusts Clementine away. “I have people who can take care of that”.
“Eh?”
Bosch’s hand is on the knife. Clementine starts to make a sound. A gasp or maybe a scream. Impossible to be sure, but it ends up coming out more of a gurgle. A line of blood crosses her throat and she falls back onto the bed.
Death from a severed carotid artery is not instantaneous. It can take 20 to 30 seconds for a person to bleed out.
Clementine writhes on the bed, clawing at her own throat. Bosch is singing, pianissimo.
“Oh my darling, oh my darling
Oh my darling, Clementine
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine”
She is still. Asleep forever. Dreadful sorry Clementine.
Bosch turns to Malick, waves his arm in the direction of the once darling Clementine. “Now get this out of here farlo velocemente”.
Clementine, the knife, someone's entrails on a cherry wood floor. What happened here Malick?
This motherfucker.
“You had me come for her'', Malick says. It's not a question.
“Astonishingly perceptive for a plebeian. Did they teach you that at janitor school? Oh my apologies you matriculated from plumbers college. Truly the pinnacle of higher education.”
There’s more to it Malick. Look closer. Why was Clementine crying?
Malick gestures to the collage of human anatomy on the floor. “Reckon you made her do all this”.
Bosch brings his hands together. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. A lifetime passes between each. “There just might be an artist in that vapid skull of yours after all, plumber.
This is all a game to him.
“Art?”.
“Of course it's art ignoramus, what else would be in a fucking art exhibition?”.
I’m going to kill this man.
If you do, you'll be dead by morning.
“And now this exhibit is closed. Which is to say in the most pleasant manner I will afford you, fuck off.”
This too shall pass
“This too shall pass”. The words barely make it to the air.
“What was that?”. Bosch’s hand is cupped to his ear. It's overacted with intention.
“Nothing.”
“Very good. Have Pinch send someone up with a fresh tux. Oh and don't forget this”. Bosch flicks Malick’s business card back at him. It lands square in the chest and trembles to the ground. Somehow comes to rest on the only clean spot on the floor.
Malick removes his glove, picks the card up. Knuckle roll across the fingers. Fling. The card whistles past Bosch’s ear and sticks corner deep sunk a half inch into the wall behind.
“Reckon you should keep it”
***
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul.
Pyat.
Static.
Down. Kick. Up. One hundred seventy-four. Down. Kick. Up. One hundred seventy-five.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
We do.
One hundred seventy-six
Ignorance is the cause of fear.
It is.
One hundred seventy-seven
While we wait for life, life passes.
It does.
One hundred seventy-eight
Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.
I will.
Vosem.
Chetyre.
Nul.
Pyat.
Static.