-30-

Bonnie sat across the room, separated from the rest of the celebrating team by several yards. She knew there were a few unresolved issues nobody was talking about, and she didn't want to be in the middle of the group when they came up. Catherine kept close to the laughing, victorious group of celebrants. Bonnie guessed that she sensed the same issues about to surface, but she couldn't wait for the party to go sour. That is one mean lady, Bonnie thought.

Alvin slumped so far down into the Dark's cracked leather sectional couch, that his position could barely be called sitting. The swelling had receded slightly, and he didn't look like he'd been beaten that badly, but he had the mother of all headaches. His ribs were bruised purple, and it hurt to breathe. It hurt everywhere, but it hurt most when he breathed. He wasn't about to let that stop him from getting high.

Alvin was surrounded by the Dark, and the lovely Shelby had chosen to sit next to him. He could smell the perfume she'd applied two days ago. He also smelled something he could only define as 'girl'. He liked to think it was estrogen.

Casper stood next to the couch, and Alvin thought Casper was standing over him like a trophy. It seemed like they were all hovering over him like a trophy and it pissed him off. Alvin had a private theory that he'd never confided in another. He postulated that, because of his size, because it was so easy to see all of him at once, people found it very easy to objectify him. He imagined that if he were too big to see all at once, then people would assume he was mysterious or at least they might imagine there was more to him than they thought they saw.

He was growing increasingly annoyed by the way they stood around him and over him, passing a conical Hi-5 joint. Ash fell on him from above, and Alvin really wasn't sure if his role was honored guest or trophy decoration. What he really wanted was the numbing anesthesia of liquor. The tone of his voice was mean when he asked, “Don't you freaks got any booze around here?”

That made Catherine grin. She enjoyed seeing Alvin snap at the kiddies. The White Sunday insurgent, was sitting only a few feet away in a hard chair at a worktable sipping from a coffee mug. Catherine hated coffee, so the mug held two fingers of Serbian plum brandy poured from its canteen shaped bottle. She liked drinking alone, but she decided to share, and she held out her mug full of nearly extinct twentieth-century liquor.

Alvin summoned the strength to lean forward and take what she offered him. They toasted in the air, and she took a pull from the bottle while Alvin downed the coffee mug's solvent contents in a single mouthful. Suddenly he felt like an asshole for calling them freaks. They had, after all, just pulled his fat from the fire.

“Sorry,” Alvin said, “I didn't mean to be such an ingrate. Thanks for coming and saving me from Padre Psycho and his rubber dildo torture.” That drew a chuckle from Shelby, and Alvin enjoyed hearing it. Leaning forward to pour Alvin another shot, Catherine didn't miss the opportunity to clarify things a bit.

“Don't get too mushy about it, Alvin. There was lots and lots of money involved.” The crowd around Alvin still held the smiles on their faces, but they were silent, and perhaps, a tiny bit less proud. Catherine enjoyed the effect that little reminder had on the victory celebration.

Casper felt a wee bit ashamed because he'd been genuinely enjoying Alvin's gratitude, and now he realized it had been under false pretenses. Casper hadn't yet mentioned the money or the client, and it burned a little, the way Catherine was doing it for him. She really enjoyed peeing on the parade, Casper thought. Big surprise there, he noted. Terrorists aren't the nicest people.

“I'll admit, I was kinda surprised to see you there, man,” Alvin said, while he looked up at Casper, who was suddenly sobered by the memory of how he'd found Alvin in a yellow cloud of Shelby's Wacky Gas, laughing his gourd off, while staring down the barrel of a pistol. Casper hadn't mentioned that detail to anyone, and he didn't plan to. “Happy,” Alvin said, “just real surprised. Who paid to spring me anyway?”

Casper could only say, “the client”, like everybody else did.

Alvin asked, “And who's that, exactly?”

Catherine declared plainly, “He doesn't know.” Alvin stared at her, expecting her to reveal the client's identity.

“Oh, I don't know either,” she admitted. “Nobody does except Carlos.”

“So...” Alvin inquired with raised eyebrows, “what would you guys have done if the mysterious, unnamed client that paid for my rescue had, say, asked you to kill me?”

Good question, Bonnie thought.

Catherine laughed because she knew the answer to that one, and she was pretty sure the little, four-foot-tall Buddha did, too.

Bonnie shook her head. Fucking Mercs...no goddamn loyalty at all. Bonnie had some plans for Alvin that he wouldn't be too happy about, but she thought that somehow doing what she planned because she was ordered to was better than doing it for money. She tried not to think about how Alvin might see it.

Casper made a thinly veiled attempt to change the subject. “Hey where the fuck is Carlos, anyway?”