N O T R E A L L Y C H E E R F U L Her eyes lit upon the white shape with ungrown fascination; her untried fingers toyed with the folded bird of paper, pulling the tail, watching the head bob and twitch. The shopkeeper had given her the magic toy with a broad smile, and she had run to the evening curbside with her treasure, even as her mother laughed and said "Origami." White and crisp the bird dances amidst her grasp, wings poking at the air in futility, tail slipping through a child's grasp. Mother's loud voice, an adult looming shadow, then she is hustled from the gutter with a tear and a cry as the magic bird tumbles end over end into the water, slowly. Forget it, her mother sighs as the paper toy spins along the seeping muddy current, it's just a scrap of paper. The brackish, spent water lining the street in a thick trickle reaches a rusted iron storm drain; the swan, waterlogged and weak, catches the low-slung beam of the fading sun and hangs breathlessly in the air, spotlit, before plummeting down the brown crusted rock chasm. Forms watch it soak up the dirt and grime of the trundling water, tracing rodent paths in the slippery cement, tapping pipes with the scuttling dance of the many-legged. Splattered with the black-brown oily residue of the upper world, the tiny fold of paper leaves the last influence of the sun and disappears into the underground depths of the city. A pipe, rusted and pitted, gurgles a solitary song into the widening gutters that mark the forlorn, abandoned blocks of the city, where the ruined buildings pave the streets, and the weeds grow until drowned by spent oil. Where the people are heartless dumping grounds, the final, bottom layer of a vast society that buries its every problem. A tiny fold of ex-white swirls amidst the current of the relentless gutters, lost among the torn tickets and emptied bottles that roll slowly through the water. Through the unlit night can be heard a steady, unrelenting splash, the steps of a man who has been given more than he can carry. The boots of ruined leather and dented steel slog through the deepening waters with unfeeling drive, here crushing glass, there kicking a tattered liquor-store bag. The magical bird is swept forward in a lifeless whirlpool as one leg lifts, then spins in the stilling water to be trapped under the next stomping tread, crushed into the underlying gravel. The man continued his pace, head bowed, heedless. Arms outstretched, the body of his friend laid deadweight across his shoulders, he forces each step upon himself, the remaining half of the belt on his leather jacket jangling cheerlessly. He stared steadily downward, trying not to see, trying not to think, all senses deadened in anticipation of the wearying trek through his night. The linen-wrapped head that bobbed behind his left elbow was dried and crusted in blood, a metallic stench that clogged his nostrils and sapped his will. Images flashed persistently before his quailing mind, images that he tried to block by staring at each remaining streetlight, but that swarmed back upon him in their ravening hordes upon each return to darkness. And there were many. They had not even bothered to take things personally, the men who had lain this burden upon him. One minute they were pleasant, accomodating, business-like; next they had the pillowcase over Louie's head, had the thick Glock behind his shaking head, had the thundering noise and the spreading scarlet pool that ran along the cracks in the linoleum from the torn stringy fabric. Take him, they'd said next, solemn, business-like. He's yours. Slosh, slosh. The dank water had long since worn through his boots, soaked his feet, chilled his bones. Daniel continued his staggering gait, perpetually falling forward, crucified upon flesh. His arms ached, his shoulders ground bone-on-bone, his chest and back begged respite with every breath. If only, he though, if only. If only I could rest. He laughed, coughed in disrupted breath, spat quickly. Peace would not come. He tried to block out the thoughts. When he got to the morgue the sloppy man behind the metal table just looked at him over the stiffened form. "You do it?" he asked, fishing for an inventory tag. "No," Daniel replied breathlessly. "You kin?" He shook his head. The bare pause of thought hidden by a quick search for a pen. "You rolled him yet?" "Uh-uh." Daniel dug into his pocket with a numb, aching arm, as the man assigned a quick number to the corpse, to his friend, and rang for a plague cart. He found what he was looking for, handed the crumpled bills to the man seated across the meat from him. Must have totaled about fifty. "As he is, man," Daniel rasped. "Straight into a burner, got it? Then just dump the ash." The man looked at him steadily, as if he had no predilection for cold flesh. "Sure, bud," he promised, a trifle warily. "Any way you want." The bills vanished. Daniel spun on his heel and straight- armed the door before he could see any more, smell any more. At least now he could pretend that Louie would be lain to rest; to be at all certain he would have had to do the job himself. And now was not the time. He made it about a block, then stopped, hands clutching the denim on his knees, eyes on the curb across the street, watching scattered pieces of once-white paper drift down the flooding gutter in erractic patterns. His chest heaved, his lungs rasped, the world seemed brown and burnt at the edges as he fought for control, head swaying over unsteady knees. Dead. All that. Gone. Memories. No more. No peace. Yesterday. He launched upward with an unbalanced jerk, lurching into a loping stride that took him to the nearest broad surface for to bloody his fist on. It passed in a flash, leaving him standing on the sidewalk, sweating and breathless, staring down, the bones of his fist sharp beneath torn flesh. He started to walk once again, this time less determinate, less nerveless, less interested. Where to go? Kim, he thought sullenly, then thought not. Last time he'd been over he could almost smell the man on her, the man who was even then asleep in the next room, the man neither of them knew. She'd sat there, raw stained beauty in her loose robe, smoking a cigarette and speaking with him of things that had meaning and value, blinding his eyes with her sullen beauty and charming his heart with her kindred morbid ways. He could have forgiven her for anything then, as always, but as always it ended the same: she back to the tasteless flesh whose craving she lamented, he back to the lonely pacing of the deathly street. Nothing for him, nothing for her; the void had been palpable then, would be biting now. No use. What then? He wondered desperately, legs numb, feet pounding the concrete like the iron hammers of an ancient forge. When we bar ourselves from the company of those we love? What then? "Daniel!" He heard in his ear, and leaned back in saturated content. How had he got here, he asked himself briefly, before swirling sensation carried him away again. Then he was there fully, feeling, seeing, tasting. The thinned whiskey in his hand, the dim lights and leather, the sweat-slick hand down his pants. No money, he thought driftingly, then forgot it once again. The worn woman behind him laughed in his ear, and he realized there were others around, a roomful of the spent women, one or two leaving now and then to service passed-out men in the dark rooms beyond. He gulped the sour liquor in his glass, tasting of melted ice, and held it behind him with a drunken smile to the lips of the blonde whose legs spread around his. Life, he grinned leeringly. Liberty, he realized with a dry chuckle amidst the grimy half-decadence whose life he lived. And the pursuit of happiness. She nibbled his ear with nicotine-stained teeth, then bit, her right palm now sticky in his lap. No money. The morning hit quickly, a bone-deep pressure that bit into the delightful black and tore him from lifelike dreams of sex and high-tensile conversation. Coughing, staggering, Daniel stood, amazed that his leather hadn't been hocked to pay the tab in this unfamilar place of rotten wood and filthy sheets. Had he emptied all of those glasses? He lurched unhealthily through the front room and left quickly, hoping to God that taste in his mouth wasn't sperm, shakily unaware of the looked-away smiles and the need to not check his bill, the dark mood of foreboding settling over him like a black cloud drawing close to fog a sunny day. He had to get away. It was clear now. Daniel trotted blindly through the torn-up street, eyes tight against the sunlight, skull blazing with heat and glare, legs faltering. He could feel dried spittle and blood on his face as he ran, could almost smell the whiskey and urine that stained his clothes and his sweat. A brick wall smacked into his shoulder and he spun into it in a daze, leaning on his splayed forearms, choking on what could have been vomit. He could not feel anything below the pain in his eyes and sinuses, could not throw up, could not stand for the few moments it took him to choke up dry and pray for water. Finally he could stand, the ground swimming at the barest edges of his vision, and with tunnel-eyes he saw the descending stairs of a monorail ahead, his ancient target, the magic gate he sought for reasons long lost. Forward he moved, floating on legs that moved from habit, mind lost in the swirling haze of its drunken state. Past the stench and blankets that begged a quarter, past the empty 40s and the whores who licked their lips with fingers splayed between their shaven thighs, past the sleeping leathered punks and their green-haired girls, the shirtless boys who ran at each other with sticks, the grey-stubbled men who whispered "Beautiful" from the inset shadows. He sought the darkness, the shelter, and they were pressing in, the beggars and the whores and the mindless and the sick and the killers and the thieves, their arms reaching and grabbing, pulling, twisting, faces in his eye, lips screaming at his ear, the vile air of their bodies clogging his throat and nostrils. Daniel threw open his teeth and groaned, then growled and pushed, working through the limbs and bodies and voices and wares with a strength beyond the mad and the desperate: the limitless perseverance of the dead. Blackness shrouded him, clothed him, cloaked him, drawing him into its protective grasp even as he screamed to be left in peace, to be left alone, to be set free. The subway was clear and open, an imposing rack of yet-unguarded tollbooths and yellowed pillars of tile. "Peace," he rasped, staggering forward on spinning eyes, trying to focus more on what lay ahead of him than what lay beneath. "All I wanted." His boots clanked loudly on the shiny colorless tiles of the terminal. "Rest," he pleaded, straightening. The world about him was resolving itself into angular clarity, straight trustworthy line. "Alone." His shoulder caught on two men in black, armored in white-tied suits and sunglasses, and he felt himself caught in irresistable force, the thundering roar of the train whipping his face with wind as it passed unknowing through the station. "Wait," he began, unable to think, lost beyond comprehension, the sight of his drunken mecca dwindling into the distance. Neither of the two men said anything, and he passed out in the hot sun after they had tossed him onto the indigo vinyl interior of a large sedan. "Daniel." He looked up, surrounded by a bare room that reeked of unworldly luxury. Before him, in black shirt and white suit, a man of unbelievable power. His first thought might have been, the man who killed my friend. Had he been lucid enough. He tried not to sway too obviously. "My apologies on what happened, Daniel, regarding your friend. Over-zealous employees and all, looking to please the boss with a quick buck, but that's the way the world works and all." He paused, sucked on a cigar. "You hear me?" The expression on his face would have been interpreted by some as quizzical, others as concerned. Daniel nodded, a trifle uncertainly. Because he didn't, really. "I wanna make good by you, pal," and Daniel was looking for the guards, the suits in black that had taken his dawning hangover and manhandled it into a full-blown Bad Deal. "I want you to be done right. So I tell you what I'm gonna do," he drew himself up to his full height, the look in his eye ringing with the image of a long- haired beared demon leaning back in eternal gloating. "I'm gonna set you up, what with the mistake and all. A house, anywhere you like. A job too, if you want one, or maybe just a comfortable salary just to be there." He paused just long enough to be tactful. "New threads, too, maybe a barber and a salon, get the girls to bathe you. Pretty sweet deal all around, eh?" Daniel was silent, still listening. If there was one thing life teaches one to judge, it is an offer all too appealing on the surface. He waited, patient and wise. In control, in a way. "So, uh," the wealthy man continued, stooping to pick up the conversational ball at a point where he obviously had expected a rally, "What do you say, Daniel?" "What's the catch?" He had to ask. "What do you mean?" Sounding genial, surprised, but underneath volatile and slowly burning. "There's always a catch," Daniel explained tonelessly, sounding far more lucid than he felt. "A job to be done, a secret to be kept, some skin to be stroked. What's it gonna be, bottom line?" "I'm afraid," the man half-laughed, now dangerously mis-understanding, "That you've got me. There is no catch. I'm doing this of my own will, paying a debt. A reward, you see? An apology. Now," satisfied that the matter had been dealt with, "What do you say?" Daniel snorted, more to himself than out loud. Something for nothing. Right. "Well? Are you going to take it?" Asking, imploring, but not begging. Rather, almost threatening. Daniel spun on his heel, shaking his head behind him, pushing through the surprised black-suited guards outside the twin oak doors to get lost in the feral streets beyond; behind him, the wealthy man paused, silent and serious, and stroked his beardless chin. Finally he sighed, nodded significantly, and sat down heavily as one of the nervous guards left. By the time the cigar next left his lips he had forgotten completely about the slash of steel being driven into Daniel's kidney.