Rocco had a key to the back door and they scaled the iron stairs on rubber soles to an office on the top floor, assisted by the torches they held in front of them like stiletto knives. It all went smoothly as they moved silently within the building. The safe was set in the wall behind a painting of a man fishing in a lake, which Joe helped Rocco remove and set down on the floor. Rocco fumbled with the combination as Joe checked the hallway. All quiet except for the satisfying click inside the office. Rocco removed the cash and Joe helped him bundle it into two holdalls. Then they made their way downstairs.
“Easy, see?” Rocco said.
“We got away with it.”
“Nothing could go wrong with this job, it was all planned out.”
“We got money and that means a future.”
As they were passing the second floor a door opened and a large security guard came out. He said nothing as he reached for his gun. Joe froze as Rocco pulled a Glock from his coat and shot the guard. He dropped to the floor like a wounded bull and Joe watched the blood pool by his head. Rocco headed outside, Joe following.
Back at his apartment Rocco handed out the cash.
“What did you mean about Mandy, Rocco?” Joe said.
“She’s a good-looking woman, and you ain’t gonna keep her if you don’t develop some style.”
“Is that what you got, style, shooting the guard?”
“Screw him.”
“You can’t help killing, can you? You just got out, you’ll be first on their list.”
“What you gonna do, Joe, tell ’em?”
“Have you screwed Mandy?”
A smirk began to crawl across Rocco’s mouth as he looked away.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“No?”
Rocco lit a cigarette and stared out at the black backdrop of night as Joe grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round.
“You have.”
He hit Rocco in the face, knocking him over a chair. The cigarette singed Rocco’s lip and his nose opened up.
“That was a dumb thing to do, Joe, real dumb.”
Joe grabbed his money, his hand burning, as Rocco stood and pulled a knife. He was by the door when Rocco slashed at his shirt. He looked down and saw the ripped cotton and the gash in his stomach. He held the bag in front of him to ward off the knife as Rocco came at him again, and he headed out the door and down the stairs, dripping blood on the ruined steps.
Mandy stirred in her sleep as Joe entered the apartment. He inspected the wound in the bathroom. It didn’t look too deep and he bandaged it.
The next morning over coffee he said to Mandy: “Let’s get out of here, you, me and the baby.”
“Where we gonna go, Joe?”
“Anywhere. I got money.”
“How?”
“It’s a loan.”
“There’s blood on your shirt, Joe, I saw it in the trash. You’re wounded.”
“I’ll see a doctor when we get out of here. Come with me, Mandy.”
“Loan… You got involved with Rocco, didn’t you?”
“Why do you think it’s Rocco?” She looked away. “Is it mine, Mandy?” Joe said.
“It’s yours.”
They waited until night, avoiding each other in the wounded silence of the dripping apartment. They packed their few clothes into their tattered bags. And they got the last train out of Desprit, walking with the conviction of the hunted up to the platform on the creaking iron bridge that scowled down on Railyard Street.
As they waited, Joe clutched the holdall with the cash in it, as if he were clenching the slender promise of a future in his hand. He jumped every time someone walked up, but no cops came, and finally the last night train limped and wheezed down the line and they got on. They sat side by side watching the long line of misery that were the final houses of Desprit shrink and fade on the grey horizon. And the empty train rocked its way into the black unknown landscape outside.
“Where we going, Joe?” Mandy said.
“Anywhere. Away from here.”
“Away from us, Joe? We’re going nowhere, we ain’t got nowhere to go. Look at this, it’s like a ghost train, and we’re the only two riders.”
“I got cash. We got a future.”
“Stolen cash, they’ll find you.”
“No, they won’t.”
“Joe, I been keeping us afloat by letting other men screw me. What does that make us?”
“It don’t make us nothing. You’re mine, all mine.”
“Joe, you don’t know yourself. You’ve separated who you are into bits, and the pieces you don’t like are buried in a drawer.”
Joe was clutching the arm of the faded seat with white knuckles as the train sped into the silent night.
“All I used to want was for you to embrace me, to hold me for ever, lay down and never go away. How come you don’t hold me no more? It takes a piece away, Joe, it steals your hope. I tried to be your girl, I tried to belong to you, but what I had to do to support us made belonging impossible.”
“It’s in the past.”
“We are the past.”
“Leave it back in Desprit. There’s a future growing inside you, Mandy.”
“It got spread around, Joe. You’re the great pretender, it’s like you went deaf with despair.”
“What did?”
“My hooking. You never heard them talking? I got used, everyone knew. All those men. It’s killed something in me.”
“Men like Rocco? Tell me, Mandy, are you carrying his baby?”
They passed through a tunnel and in the altered light Mandy’s face changed. She looked older, harder, like someone else. As they came out of the tunnel she turned to Joe with cold clear eyes.
“Does it matter? It could be anyone’s. What are you, Joe? A piece of Rocco’s charity?”
“You fuckin’ bitch! Nothing is ever good enough for you.”
A stranger entered the carriage then and Joe looked at him in the bleak window of the moving train as he hit Mandy. He had no control over this other man who punched his soiled lover in the gut, doubling her over, as Joe tasted all the poisoned impotent years gathering like a black tide inside him. Then Mandy was screaming and Joe was trying to say her name, but his voice was torn in his throat, and no words came, only a gasp of despair like a howl erupted into the last train from Desprit.
Joe looked down at the littered floor. He noticed Mandy was bleeding and he reached for her, his hand falling through the air, as the train jostled on the broken track, knocking him against the side of the carriage. He put his hand to his side and it felt wet. As the train thundered on, Joe’s wound opened up and all he and Mandy had left was the endless embrace of the black night around them.
THE MESSAGE by Margaret Murphy
RULES OF THE game:
One, find your spot.
Two, stake your claim.
Three, warn off all comers.
Four, wait.
Vincent Connolly is keeping dixie on the corner of Roscoe Street and Mount Pleasant. Roscoe Street isn’t much more than an alley; you’d have a job squeezing a car down – which means he can watch without fear of being disturbed. He’s halfway between the Antrim and Aachen Hotels, keeping an eye on both at once. They’re busy because of the official opening of the second Mersey tunnel tomorrow; the Queen’s going to make a speech, thousands are expected to turn out – and the city-centre hotels are filling up fast. It’s the biggest thing the city has seen since the Beatles’ concert at the Empire on their triumphal return from America in 1964. That was seven years ago, when Vincent was only four years old – too young to remember much, except it was November and freezing, and he was wearing short trousers, so his knees felt like two hard lumps of stone. They stood at the traffic lights in Rodney Street, him holding his dad’s hand, waiting for the four most famous Liverpudlians to drive past. As the limo slowed to turn the corner, Paul McCartney noticed him and waved. Vincent had got a lot of mileage out of that one little wave. He decided then that he would be rich and famous, like Paul McCartney, and ride in a big limo with his own chauffeur.