Hot Wet Opera -- fiction

This is the third Vincent the bartender story. Reading the first and second stories isn't absolutely necessary, but it couldn't hurt.

Hot Wet Opera
by Nikolaus Maack

Now and then Vincent gets into an opera kind of mood. So he spins the radio dial away from oldies rock to the classical station. Somehow they're always playing opera, right when he needs it. Vincent tries to limit opera to the early afternoon, when his bar is quiet. He doesn’t want to upset the patrons too much. Some people find opera painful.

Not that Vincent gives a shit what a bunch of no good drunks think, but those no good drunks are steady customers. You've got to cut them some slack. That's how bars like his stay open.

"Rain does it," Vincent said philosophically, talking to one of his anonymous waiters. "Always the rain. Something about rain and opera just fits together. Like sex organs -- a cock into a cunt. You know? Opera and hot, steamy rain. Like today. The kind of rain that makes you wish for a large breasted woman in a white t-shirt to come walking down the street. The rain feels good, and you just know she'd be smiling, letting her clothes get soaked with wet. She'd be so happy and hot and wet, she wouldn't care who’s staring at her tits. She might even encourage looky-loos. Am I fucking right?"

The anonymous waiter nodded, although he wasn't really listening. He was reading a spy novel at the far end of the bar, waiting for his shift to start in an hour or so.

Vincent liked to talk. And he paid his waiters well. They were meant to be wallpaper, until they were needed for something important. (“Like fucking ninjas,” Vincent once said.) Vincent often spoke just to hear what words would come out of his mouth next, improvising with his voice. The anonymous waiters all learned when to grunt agreement, when to shake their heads. And when to really pay attention.

"Not that I need tits in my life right now," Vincent said. "Christ. That's the last thing I need. All you need is love? Bullshit. You want love, it helps to have some scratch. What, are you and your love going to sit in the park and that's it? You have to take love out for dinner. Maybe to a bar. Not a shit-hole like my bar - some place fancy. And it's not because love is a greedy bitch. Not at all. You want to show love you care. And how do you do that? Throw some money around. Make an effort. Okay, I’ve got the money for love. But the will? The effort? Forget it. I’m happy in my laziness."

Half-way through his love speech, the door to the outside world opened up, and a man in a trench coat stepped in. Vincent pretended to pay him no mind, and kept talking. The man had a closed umbrella in his hand, but it hadn't helped him much. The warm, misting rain had soaked him through. The guy was tall and skinny, and being soaked made him taller and skinnier. His jacket had been open, and his blue dress shirt clung to him. The guy's hair was gray and stubble short, and water beaded on his head. He wiped his brow and wet sprayed on the floor.

There were a few drunks in the bar, actively ignoring the opera. They sat in one of the front tables, muttering to each other. Besides that, the place was empty.

The tall, skinny, wet man drifted over to the bar and sat down. His face was accountant like. Someone who sees things and counts them, without understanding their true value. Tight, without any generosity to the face -- just the absolute bare essentials required to have a physical appearance.

"Vincent," the man said, in way of greeting.

"Has it been a month already?" Vincent asked. "Time. You watch it, and it crawls. You turn your back on it, and it sprints. I think my calendar is broken. It’s supposed to tell me what day it is. Instead it tells me approximately what month we’re on."

The man put his hands on the counter and spread them out flat. His fingers were long and thin, stretching out as if to take hold of the entire bar. He titled his head to one side, listening to the radio.

"Opera?" the man mumbled.

"People shrieking nonsense in foreign languages, set to music," Vincent said. "Incomprehensible to the mind, but the heart and the guts get it. The bones get it. That's the weird thing about opera. It sneaks past the brain and into the meat. Kind of like you, Charles, in a way."

"Yes," Charles said, tilting his head slightly the other way. "Suppose so."

There was a long silence. Vincent's eyes twinkled as he looked upon the man, upon Charles. Vincent let the silence play out. Charles just stared at the bar top and waited. How long could he stretch out this moment, Vincent wondered? Hours? Days? Charles rarely spoke. Vincent could barely shut up when he tried. He liked to give Charles some silence and see if the man was tempted to fill it. Charles rarely did.

"I have the package for you," Vincent finally said. "That's why you're here, right? For the package? Your monthly program of self improvement?"

"Yep," Charles said. "That's right."

Vincent reached under the counter and pulled out a large, brown, unmarked envelope. He put it in front of Charles, between the two outstretched hands. The hands crept on to the folder like two spiders, and then sat atop of it, as if testing the surface for stability. Then the spiders collapsed flat, resting on the envelope, pinning it to the bar.

There was another long silence. Vincent savored it a little, biting his lip. The opera on the radio soared and fell and soared again.

"Were you talking about love, when I came in?" Charles asked.

"I think so," Vincent said.

Charles titled his head again. His brow furrowed slightly, in remembrance. "I was in love. Once. Before."

Vincent knew what Charles meant, but he couldn't help himself. "Before?" he asked innocently.

Charles had dark, empty eyes. A shimmer of red flashed through them now, and the flat features of his minimalist face curled into something demonic. Charles pulled the words out of his throat like bloody coughs. "Before I started killing people for a living."

And then his face went flat and blank and empty once more.

"Takes all kinds," Vincent said airily, feigning indifference. He didn’t like delivering these kinds of packages. It had nothing to do with him. He didn’t even open them. All the same, it was never pleasant, somehow, handing them over. That they passed through his hands caused him some grief. Still, there were certain sacrifices he had to make in order to stay in business.

There was another long silence and they both just sat there. Vincent got an order from the barflies. He poured a pitcher of beer and gave it to the two drunks at the front table. They paid cash. When he came back to the bar again, Charles was exactly as he left him, staring blankly at the bar top. The silence stretched some more. Charles wasn't leaving. So Vincent let out a long low sigh.

Did he want to go down this road, he wondered to himself? Oh, what the hell. Give it a go. See what happens.

"You were in love?" Vincent asked politely.

"Her name was Christine. She was a poet. Studied at the university. Published. I tried to read her stuff but I never got it. Never could figure out poetry. Her parents were wealthy. She didn't need to work. Could pursue poetry full time. Christine had red hair. Kept it short. Eyes were green and caught the light so they shone like cat's eyes. Never seen anyone else with eyes like that. Except for her."

The speech suddenly stopping was almost as startling as the fact that it started at all. Vincent had never heard Charles say so much one go. He'd expected playing midwife to the story would be an all day experience. But Charles seemed chatty, which was entirely out of character.

"Where'd you meet her?" Vincent asked quickly.

Charles leaned his head forward and closed his eyes. "Coffee shop. I was working the cash. Just a kid. Nineteen maybe. They were doing a poetry night. First time ever. Set up a microphone in the corner. Christine and her friends came in, read some poetry. Can't remember what her poem was, exactly. But it gutted me. Everyone else read these awful political poems. Stuff about consumerism. Eating meat is bad. Christine was a silly, social girl. Butterfly. But when she read her poetry, she was a hawk. Her eyes. Green eyes, locked on me. Her poem was for me. And it was filthy. Almost porn. She talked about her cunt. Her need. Her hunger. For me. Christine wanted me, and she let me know it with her words."

Charles opened his eyes and inhaled deeply, as if smelling perfume off the small of a woman's neck. Or maybe the musky scent of a woman's privates.

"I went up to her after the performance. It was strange. She was shy. Surprised me. After what she'd done. That she would be shy. Made me want her more. Maybe it was a game. Not shy. Pretending. But no. She was shy. Not shy when she recited a poem. Shy in regular life. Complicated girl. I wanted to fuck her. That she was so complicated - I wanted her more. Everything. Marriage. Kids. Settling down. I just met her. Hadn't touched her yet. And I was already thinking about forever.”

Charles rubbed his eyes with his fists and muttered, “Fuck." Then he sat up and stared at the bar top again.

Vincent poured a glass of water and put it down in front of the killer. Charles took a long skinny hand off the brown envelope. There was a sweaty hand print there. Charles looked at the print for a moment, and then wrapped his fingers around the glass and brought it to his mouth. He put the glass back down, and then put his hand back over the sweaty palm print on the envelope, hiding it.

"Went home with her that night," he continued. "Back to her place. No idea what she saw in me. Said I was intense. Said she could see fire in me. Danger. Guess she was right. I never saw that stuff in me until she told me it was there. Made me crazy for her. Somehow she could see me. No one can see me. Mister Invisible. Mister Blank Piece of Paper. Mister Nobody."

The rage simmered in Charles' eyes again. But it was different. Almost tender.

"I fucked her like a bull attacking a matador. She fucked back, step for step. Kept up. I don't understand how she knew me. How she saw me. How she could step into my life right away and suddenly be the centre of it. My whole life. Her. Right away.”

Charles wrapped his hands around the envelope, holding on to it tenderly. “I strangled her. That very night. She scared the hell out of me. My feelings for her. So strong. She could have made me do anything. Anything at all. I wanted to live with her forever. Never out of my sight. By my side. I could tell she wanted the same. But I couldn’t do it. What she did to me. What she did to my heart. I loved her. It made me weak. It made me strong. I strangled her. I think, even as I did it - fucking her and strangling her at the same time - I think she knew why I was doing it. I think she wanted me to do it. To kill her.”

He picked up the envelope and slipped it into an inside coat pocket, then took another sip of water from the glass. All the passion disappeared again. Charles was blank once more.

“Killing someone,” he said, “means never having to say you’re sorry. Murder is the greatest gift you can give someone. Every killing, a mercy killing.”

Vincent whispered, “You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t,” Charles admitted. “I don’t believe in anything. I used to believe in something. Before. When I found out what I believed in, it scared me. I killed it. Couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t accept it. Too much. Too powerful. Like coming face to face with God.”

“You can’t kill God,” Vincent said.

Charles snorted a laugh. He looked up from the bar top and stared Vincent in the eyes. “I kill God. I do it all the time. Going to do it this weekend,” and with two fingers he tapped his coat pocket where he’d stashed the envelope. “God can’t hide from me. I’ll shoot the fucker like a dog in the street.”

“You could stop,” Vincent suggested.

“Can’t stop. Not an option. Then I killed Christine for no reason. The moment defined me. It is who I am.”

“You could be someone else.”

“No. Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I stop, it will hurt too much.”

Tears were leaking from Charles’ eyes. They ran down his face. But he wasn’t crying. His face remained expressionless, cold, blank. The tears just flowed. He raised a hand to his face in wonder, touching the stream of tears with his finger tips, then staring at the wetness. He showed the wet tips of his fingers to Vincent.

“Nothing good can come of this,” he said, and he stood up to leave.

“I’m sorry,” Vincent said gently. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Not your fault,” Charles said. “The rain. The opera.”

And he turned and walked out the door.

“Assassins,” Vincent muttered sadly to himself. “They’re all hopeless romantics. It would be touching if it weren’t all so goddamn pointless. I’ve never met a killer who wouldn’t make a good romance novelist.”

Then louder, in his usual tone, Vincent said to the anonymous waiter, “Can’t separate some men from their pain any more than you can take away a leopard’s fucking spots, am I right?”

The waiter still had his face buried in his book. “Absolutely,” he said, not looking up.

Vincent listened to the music for a second and then sneered. “Who put this fucking opera on? Jesus Christ. It’s music for dead people. No one listens to this shit.” He turned around and spun the dial to an oldies rock station. “That’s better. Fucking Christ man, don’t do that.”

“Sorry boss,” the anonymous waiter said. “Won’t happen again.”

“Damn straight,” Vincent said, snorting in contempt. He took the half-full glass of water off the bar, and dumped the contents in the bar sink. “Fucking opera.”