Moondogs - Alexander Yates [76]
He tries again, pushing up with his good leg and arms. He stands. The pain is intense, but subsides as he leans into the wall. He hops to the base of the window, reaches up and finds that he can pass his hand through—there’s no glass or screen at all. Bracing his swollen fingers on the base, he jumps and gets a brief glance outside. The news is good. The news is fucking excellent. He can see Makati out there. He can see the Shangri-La. The idiots must be keeping him in their house—the same place the taxi driver stopped at the night before.
Hoping to get a better look, Howard squats and jumps again, but this time he fouls the landing. His knee crumbles under him. An agonized, percussive cry springs out of his chest. There’s very shortly a commotion in the other room. Something large is pushed or pulled across the floor, and the door opens. The slim taxi driver steps inside, framed in fresh, expensive wood. He’s quiet for a moment, twitching, looking almost confused.
“Be careful,” he finally says with an air of vague threat. “You don’t want to hurt yourself.” He pauses, significantly.
Even with his brain still ringing with pain, Howard takes the chance to peer past the taxi driver, into the adjacent room. He sees the scuffed back of a loveseat and a patio table with plastic chairs. The far wall is virtually plastered over with movie posters—mostly for Tarantino and Ocampo Justice films, and the sight of his pal Charlie Fuentes staring at him heroically is a jarring one. A television sits against the wall, partially covering Ocampo’s Stick Up for the Unstuckup For motto. It’s tuned to the international news. Two young women, one of them in a lovely neckerchief, discuss bombings at police recruitment centers in Iraq.
“I have money,” Howard says, still not making eye contact with the taxi driver, hoping he looks submissive. “Plenty. Cash. A lot more than what you found in my shoes. More than you could spend in a year, even if you spent it stupidly. More than you need.”
The taxi driver squats down on his haunches and clasps his hands together. Behind him the news changes to international weather. “What do you know about what I need?”
“Nothing. I don’t know anything about what you need,” Howard says. He pauses. An expert at the weather desk discusses the minor earthquakes in Taiwan and Mexico. There have been disturbances all along the ring of fire and she expects more to come. Someone else at the weather desk points out that this isn’t really weather related, is it? They both laugh about this.
“So tell me then,” Howard says. “Tell me what you need.”
The taxi driver shifts on his haunches. “What’s wrong with your voice? You sick or something?”
Howard shakes his head. “Just thirsty.”
The taxi driver looks about the little room. Then he disappears, leaving the door open. This jars Howard. He contemplates breaking for it. But he doesn’t know where the front door is, and with this knee any mad dash will be short. New experts come on the news, listing precautions one should take against the bird flu. Everybody should have canned goods and bottled water on hand. You should be able, if necessary, to be indoors for a very long time. Duct tape is an incredible, versatile tool, they say. Buy some.
The taxi driver returns with a plastic bowl filled to the brim with water. “Thank you,” Howard says, and drinks. “Thanks.”
The taxi driver takes the bowl back from him.
“Let’s talk about this,” Howard says. “Let’s talk about what you need, and how I can give it to you. There’s no reason this has to be hard.”
The taxi driver slaps him across the face with the empty plastic bowl. It hardly hurts, but Howard cups his cheek and squints so that his eyes water. He looks at the floor like he’s cowering. It’s important that this turd feel powerful.
The taxi driver leaves the room and closes the door. The floor vibrates as he slides a makeshift barricade—it must be the loveseat—back into place. Outside the sky clears a little and the room brightens. Light comes through the square window and dances about on the walls