All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 23: Winter in Los Angeles Part 1 ~ Scott Albert

- PART ONE -

- David’s POV -

Everything. Nothing. Everywhere. Nowhere. Like I’m upside down and floating and falling and Emma and then…

Something.

BLAM! A punch to my ears. Like someone slammed the end of my arm with a sledgehammer. The metal grip of the gun cold and hard in my ringing, trembling hand.

Blue smoke drifted in the narrow hallway. On the cold, concrete floor, beside the mop buckets and the disinfectants, is the dead body. Well, I guess, almost dead. His shocked eyes stare at mine through his tiny, circular eyeglasses, his thick woolen coat getting darker around a small hole in the chest.

Okay, now he’s dead.

And I killed him.

Dizzy, disorientated, I dimly realized that someone’s going to come running. I pictured the scene, me standing over a corpse brandishing the gun that killed him, unable to answer the simplest question about what I was doing there.

I step hopped over the body and mostly fell through the door at the end of the back hallway marked ‘exit.’ A frigid wind with pinpricks of sharp snow cut right through my sweater. Left? Right? With no idea of where I was – both literally and in a more essential sense – I might as well have been asking up or down. But I kept moving. Left. Out to the busy night time street. Onto the bustling sidewalk. And then, I knew where I was. At least, literally.

I had come out from the alley beside a 1920’s building shoehorned in between dull mid-century boxes on a downtown, busy street. Dusted with snow, three woman, carved in watchful stone, leaned out over the crowded street from the top of the building. The building where I had met Emma the first time I had crossed over. So I was still in Los Angeles.

And it was snowing.

Emma.

The building was now a hotel. Pedestrians crowded the sidewalk, some leaning around me, others just shoving past. I took a step towards the hotel, so familiar – maybe she was here? Maybe she was a guest or standing in the lobby. The lobby. A commotion started in the lobby. They’d found the dead guy. But there… A girl with her back turned. Was it--?

A body hit me like a punching bag that decided it needed a stroll. Hidden by the deep parka and the warm pocket of a hood I couldn’t make out anything about the guy. “Whata doin’?” He hissed at me. “Where’s your peace damned jacket?” I glanced down, my sweater was getting iced over pretty quick. I went to step around the guy – Emma… but he shoved me back. “They’re gonna see you. You’re no good to anyone dead. Get back to the diner.” And he shoved me away from the hotel, and turned and vanished inside – I could hear the shouting starting. Oh yeah. They’d found the dead guy.

I joined the huddle masses shuffling cheek to jowl along the sidewalks, shoulders getting sore from shrugging against the cold. A few run down trucks rumbled through the street, but most people were on foot. I’m not sure what made my brain hurt more – the snow in L.A. or the people walking in L.A. Either way, I wasn’t dressed for it, so I walked along a long block, past some old growth, dying evergreens crowding a corner, and ducked into the first diner I saw. I needed to get warm and let my head catch up with what’s happened.

I moved from the winter evening twilight into the light, a too-bright, too-white light for a place that has such an arm’s length relationship with hygiene. I slumped into a booth and when the waitress arrived I summoned the kind of smile that a normal person, someone who didn’t just slip between realities and then kill a total stranger, smiles at a waitress. She handed me a menu and said, “May the peace of the lion be in your heart. What can I get for you?” I must have said coffee, because – after the briefest of awkward breaths and narrowed eyes – she whirled off and busied herself behind the counter.

I found myself on the hard end of disapproving glances from most people in the dinner. Two guys in particular, in matching Aspen ski sweaters, lingered in their stare. They saw me looking back at them and, coming to a silent agreement, abruptly left their half-eaten burgers and pulled on their heavy, down filled coats as they went out the door.

Something in their eyes made me wonder what I did with the gun. But then I could feel its weight, safe in my pocket. I must have shoved it in there on auto-pilot. I guess I’ve seen enough of The Wire to know not to drop the murder weapon with my prints on it at the scene. My coffee arrived. And then two weird things happened.

Weird thing one. As I reached out for it and brought it to my lips, I realized the waitress was still there. She had her head bowed. Her eyes closed. Her lips were moving silently. She was praying, but not like a good prayer. Like the prayer of the wronged righteous. I looked around. I was getting some disapproving glances again – one or two of the looks clearly displayed their owners’ disgust in me. But then, with a stare that could stop the heart of a goat, the waitress left me alone.

Weird thing two. Except all of a sudden I wasn’t alone. With a heavy thud that rattled my coffee spoon, a heavy man dropped heavily into the booth across from me, and worked his heavy bulk along the long seat to the center of the table. He was fat. He tossed his parka on the bench beside him – it was the guy from the street. He looked around and said, with his voice pitched low, “Did it go that wrong?”

I choked on my coffee. I tried hard to think of what I was supposed to say here. Was this guy on my side? Did he know? Was he a cop? So I said, “Uh… what?”

“I saw the guys from the B.O.D. leaving. What’d you do? Spook them? Did they see you?” When I didn’t answer, he nodded. “You spooked them” He leaned forward, his long hair hid his face, and he made a big production of pushing it over from one side of his head to lie down the other side. “And that means I’m spooked. You still got the piece?” I was nodding before I realized he was asking about the gun.

He dropped some dollar bills on the diner counter. Gabriel’s picture stared up at me from each one. The waitress dropped a metal can on the counter, and took the money without asking for change. The fat guy muttered something religious, she muttered something back. Then, speaking so I could hear her, she said, “You gotta watch who you pal around with, Glen. You never know who’s guarding the faith around you.” Glen laughed it off, and handed me the metal can while he climbed into his mountain of a winter jacket. It smelt like gas sloshing around in the can. Felt like it too. I was almost outside before I realized a framed picture of Gabriel, looking transcendent, had a place of honour near the door. Glen called over his shoulder, “Peace of the lion be upon you, Carrie.”

Outside. The cold. The snow. Without a word, Glen led me around the corner to where he had a rusty, broken down, pick up waiting. He pulled out an empty metal can from the side of the truck and slammed the full one from the diner in its place. “What’s wrong with a gas station?” I asked. “You know, a place where you can fill up and go?” Glen chuckled as we climbed into the deep freeze of the pick up’s cab. He leaned down and hand cranked the engine over to start it. “You’d never get approval for something like that past the Bishop of Imports.” The engine groaned to life and we’re off. There was no heater. And I still didn’t have a jacket.

Forty cold minutes later Glen was looking right and left down a hallway that started out bleak and just kept getting bleaker over the faded years. He knocked on the door. Silence. Then an answering knock. Glen said, “It’s us. Glen and David.” Enough locks for a whole prison slid and rasped aside and the door opened.

Peace of the fucking lion, I thought, it’s her.

Emma. 

// A/N

Publishing early cause it's XMAS! Will add Scott's bio shortly.

C