The Fate Merchant

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

     The mattress creaked as Jasper flopped onto his bed, careful, as always, to avoid the rogue spring that had burst through the mattress near his pillow.  He’d solved the problem by duct taping a tennis ball onto the spring.  To throw out the mattress would’ve been an insult to the remaining two hundred and ninety-nine coils still showing up for work every night.

     He rolled onto his side, propped himself onto an elbow, and stared at the image of a gun-toting Frank Sullivan on the camera’s display screen.

     “Tell me something,” he’d asked Frank as the truck pulled up to the curb outside his apartment building. “What exactly were you thinking about when you took Roy’s picture?”

     “I was thinking that if this is really happening, then he’s going to die in his sleep while I get an axe to the face, so I’d better get him before he gets me.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy a gun.”

     “I think that’s a really bad idea.”

     “So I should just let him split my head in two?”

     “Maybe you should talk to him.”

     “And what would I say, exactly?”

    “Good point.  Any idea why he’s going to try to kill you?”

     “Don’t know.  He keeps pretty much to himself.  But I’m going to get a gun and a shitload of bullets, and when he tries, I’m going to wipe that birthmark right off his face.”  He grabbed a pen and a pad of paper from a compartment between the seats.  “Give me your address.  I’ll mail you a check.”

     “You know what?  Keep it.”

    “Hey, cheer up.  There’s a good chance you just saved my life.”

     “Great.  There’s also a chance I just caused Roy Harper’s murder.”

     Frank clapped him on the shoulder.  “Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you started messing with people’s lives.”  He reached across Jasper and opened the passenger side door.  “Thanks for the heads up.”

     Jasper suddenly raised the camera and took Frank’s picture.  He spun the camera around and didn’t know if he should be encouraged by what he saw or troubled.  He opted for confused.  The image hadn’t changed.  Roy Harper still glared at the lens, the axe still promised sharp, bloody death.

     “We’ll see about that,” Frank muttered, and shoved Jasper out the door.

     The mattress creaked again as Jasper rolled onto his back.  He rested the camera on his chest and switched between the two pictures.  Roy.  Frank.  Roy.  Frank.  Gun.  Axe.  He finally put the camera on the nightstand, threw an arm over his eyes, and as he absently-mindedly scratched the fuzz on the tennis ball next to his head, he reviewed his options.  There were only two.  He could ignore the situation all together, engage in some high-quality snacking, and float away on the collected works of Steven Spielberg.  Or he could find a way to prevent two men from killing each other.

     The first guaranteed salt, fat, sugar, and class A entertainment.  The second hinted at failure, ridicule, and the excellent chance of getting caught between a bullet and an axe.

     Well, whispered one half of his brain, you did start this whole thing.

     Shut up, hissed the other half.  Corn chips.  Corn chips.  Corn chips.