Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [128]
“I’ve had a long run of bad tenants, the kind who spill stuff over the walls and put cigarette burns in the carpet and leave the windows open for the wolves to come in. Sometimes they go, without paying their rent or cleaning the kitchen; leaving the mess for the next bunch of barbarians to build upon. Sometimes they stay, glowering in corners, refusing to forward people’s mail and fighting spring-cleaning to the death.
“I’d like to believe there’s some good tenants in there too, but they’ve been forced up into the attic, hiding in crawl spaces and never coming out. I never get to see them because there’s too many thugs at the front door who won’t let me in.
“I’ve never been a very strong landlord, and I felt it was finally time to collect some rent. I needed to evict some of these guys, to have my life returned to me. Finally closing the book on Arlond Maxen seemed like the only way of getting the house keys back.”
I stopped talking then. There didn’t seem to be any more I wanted to say. Nearly stared at me, her eyes wide open.
“Uh-huh,” she said, eventually, slowly nodding her head. “I suppose that was kind of interesting. Verging on the content-free, but interesting. I guess you had some slow evenings back there on the Farm.”
I shook my head at her. I didn’t know what I was trying to say, and didn’t want to have to try to explain any further. I was just marking time until tomorrow, when I could go and do what I had to do. I wanted to spend the intervening time just staring into space and cleaning my gun, doing a final inventory; maybe some Annual General Meeting for Jack Randall, Inc., where all the unfinished business was neatly wrapped up just in case the proceedings were adjourned forever.
Nearly cocked her head to one side and peered at me intently. “It ever occur to you that maybe you’re not the only one whose life is a bit fucked up, Jack?”
“It’s all in place,” I said.
“No, it isn’t There’s nothing in place. You have to listen to the past just as much as you fucking want to, no more. Things can change. Okay, so the spares died, Suej died—I’m going to miss her, too. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t. Forget them, and forget Maxen, and forget everyone else. There’s new stuff out there to have.”
“Like what?” I said. I wasn’t asking in the hope of an answer, just putting words out into the air. Nearly paused for a moment, then abruptly refilled her glass.
“Well, like me,” she said, as she put the bottle back down. I stared at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, I’m beginning to think I must kind of like you or something, notwithstanding the fact you’re a fuckwit. Otherwise why would I be sitting here listening to you talking psychobullshit, when, as you charmingly point out, I could be out there earning money?”
She looked up at me, chin thrust out belligerently, and for a moment I really saw her; saw the intelligence in her face, the clearness of her eyes, the perfect, animal way in which she sat in a chair. I didn’t see her as a friend, or a woman, as Howie’s employee or someone’s daughter. I saw her as Nearly, as an inexplicable, inimitable, irreplaceable person.
And then, just as clearly, I remembered sitting with my back to the wall of a room on 72, five years ago. I made a promise to Henna’s body. I have broken so many other promises, so very many. To keep that one was the least I could do.
I shook my head, and Nearly lunged forward and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her eyes on fire and her face livid. She’d known exactly what I was thinking.
“She’s dead, Jack, and by the sound of it, that was your fault. It was your fault because you wouldn’t leave something alone, and now you’re going to do exactly the same thing and this time it’ll be you who gets killed.