Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [52]
Tufan spotted the vehicle parking along the coastal road, about fifty meters away. Its lights were off. You could only tell it was an ambulance because the orange light on top shone beneath the streetlamp. They weren’t in a hurry, of course. That’s why they’d taken their time, cruising to a halt, no siren. Tufan watched as two people waltzed out of the ambulance, opened the back doors, and took out the stretcher.
“You mean … I …”
“I mean you, boy,” said Cheese, placing his hand on Tufan’s shoulder. “You took a bullet in the back at the end of that chase a little while ago, as you jumped onto the breakwater. And the guys who shot you have been waiting by your body over there.”
At a loss for words, Tufan turned to Ekber Amca.
“Ekber Bey had a heart attack ten minutes before that, and collapsed into the sea. Someone’ll find his body in the morning, I suppose.”
“Cheese, son,” said Ekber Bey, as he stood up, using his hands to push himself off the ground, “I want to ask you something.”
Cheese smiled. They’ve always got questions. Sooo many questions. He folded his arms. He looked at the old man approaching him, and then at the dealer. “Yes, Ekber Bey,” he said … No, I’m not the one who’s going to do your account. Yes, you can rub the heads of people walking in the streets, they’ll let you do that … Sure, why not? … Nah, it’s not that bad. Of course, it depends on how things add up for you … No, I have no idea when Yeliz is coming; they only give us the lists of the people we have to pick up … Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. Work, you know. Ha ha ha! I’m lying, of course. Why would I want to stay and chat with you guys? Well, you know, I can’t always act as formal as they want us to, but then, who can, right? He looked up again. Besides, even He knows this job’s unbearable if you play by the Book all the time … What’s that? … Yeah, right, of course, of course, it’s around here somewhere. Whatever.
THE SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL VITRIOL
BY LYDIA LUNCH
Tepebaı
Some days you just want to fuck shit up. Spread the misery around. Louse up somebody’s life. Even the score. Find an unsuspecting, but not undeserving mark and dump a truckload of shit on his head. Because you can. Because some perverse mean streak needs exorcizing before it contaminates the whole of your being and you in turn do something horribly ruthless to a public building, a strip mall, a shopping center, a city block, an entire neighborhood, the necropolis you’re stuck in and all the mindless zombie breeders and their greedy offspring who roam this parasitic planet as it spirals toward its imminent extinction, when the bomb in your head wants to explode in your hands and take a couple hundred thousand people with it. I get ugly like that sometimes.
I was burned out, bitchy, and bored. Again. Had a couple of hours to kill before the train to Athens would signal the close of a month-long low-rent aimless ramble instigated in a spastic fit of dementia. I started the journey suffering under the delusion that my rotten moods were the by-product of stagnation and lethargy exasperated by routine and monotony. Doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do to earn a living, to pay the rent, to keep the lights on and the wind out, the same job done over and over again for any period of time becomes a mind-dulling prison sentence which sends sensitive nerve endings into a St. Vitus dance of agitation. Brain dead but spastic. Numbed of all but the most negative emotions. A harvest of superhuman willpower and extreme focus the only defense against a scorching desire to flail arms and legs blindly like a punch-drunk boxer shadowboxing in the dark, hellbent on murdering the invisible enemy which has become an all-encompassing surround. As if allergic to the air itself. Day in, day out will do that. Truth was, I was just as much of a miserable cunt when there were no responsibilities, deadlines, headlines, nosy friends, or dying relatives to ruin my day. Bitter. I was praying that a break in my routine would break me of my bullshit.
Keep dreaming.