Xavier and Anton
“Thanks for the
ride,” Xavier said to the cabbie. “Keep the change.”
“Sure this is the
right place? Rather a lonely spot,” commented the cabbie.
“Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm probably just early is all.”
“If you say so.”
As the cab drove
away, Xavier looked around the street. At the end were the cab's
taillights fading around the corner. The stores on the street were
closed for the day and looking as if no one cared whether they opened
again or not. Along the street were a couple of vehicles as forlorn
looking as the buildings in front of which they were parked. A few
streets over, a siren sounded. Xavier peered into several of the
dusty, empty windows before confirming the suspicion that there was
no one else around. Hearing a crash and a scream nearby, he jumped
and looked towards the source of the noise. Two cats chased each
other out of an alley, across the street, and into another byway.
Xavier exhaled slowly and leaned up against the wall.
“You spook easy.
That's good to know.”
The young man
whirled around to see another person in the street with him.
Seemingly out of nowhere and making no more noise than a ghost, the
speaker had appeared leaning up against the same wall.
“Are … are you
Anton?”
“I go by that
name … sometimes,” answered Anton, taking a pull on a lighted
cigarette.
Xavier stuck his
hands in his pockets and shifted from foot to foot, waiting for Anton
to continue. The stranger let out his cigarette smoke slowly. An
awkward silence had fallen on the two people, one that Xavier did not
feel it was his place to break. He didn't want to scare the guy off
by acting too eager, by being overly hasty. But Anton continued to
lean there smoking his cigarette as if he had eternity ahead of him.
The young man began playing with the insides of his pockets to give
his fingers something to do.
“So … you
wanted something from me.” Anton finally spoke through an expulsion
of smoke.
“Yes, yes I did,”
Xavier confirmed with more eagerness than he had wanted to show.
“Franny said that you could do just about anything.”
“Well, you know
sisters. They'll say just about anything about their big brothers.”
“Then … was she
… was she wrong?”
“No, she wasn't,”
assured Anton, holding his cigarette between two fingers. He turned
to directly face Xavier and looked straight into his eyes. “But you
really shouldn't believe everything everyone tells you.”
Xavier took his
meaning and nodded.
“I know.”
Turning his back on
Xavier and returning his cigarette to his mouth, Anton started
walking down the street. Xavier remained where he was and then began
following Anton, at a distance. Anton stopped beside a '74 Plymouth
Roadrunner that Xavier had noticed but had assumed abandoned by the
state of disrepair. Rust lined the edges of the plate joints. The
bumpers were dull and looked as if they'd been covered by years of
dust. The rear window was so cracked it looked as if a spider had
made its home within the glass.
“Well,
introductions and preliminaries now aside, how about we step into my
office.” Anton waved his cigarette at the front passenger seat as
he disappeared inside the car.
Pausing with his
hand on the door handle, Xavier looked back around the street. At the
far end from which he himself had entered, another cab was passing on
its way to another destination. A call jumped to his throat but never
passed his lips and the cab continued on its way. He watched it
disappear from sight, even waiting till he could no longer hear the
tires on the asphalt. A tap on the window brought Xavier back to the
fact that he had still not entered the Roadrunner. Pulling the door
open and sitting down, Anton began driving away.
“Since you are
coming to me on recommendation from Franny, it can only mean that you
are in desperate need of something that is otherwise unattainable,”
Anton stated, breathing his cigarette smoke out the window.
“Y-yes,”
answered Xavier looking down at his hands, his fingers interlocking
and then separating repeatedly.
Anton took lazy
pulls on his cigarette waiting for his passenger to continue. Xavier
kept his gaze fixed on his hands, the color slowly draining from his
face. He licked his lips.
“I … I need to
find someone.”
“A lot of people
do.”
“Yeah … well …
I don't think a lot of people are looking for someone like I am.”
“Obviously. Most
people go to the police rather than come to me.”
“I tried the
police,” Xavier explained through gritted teeth. “They said that
I was crazy.”
“I knew that the
moment you came to me. Most people, well more like everyone who comes
to me is crazy in one way or another.”
Xavier gave Anton a
sideways glance. For his part, Anton flicked ash from the end of his
cigarette onto the swiftly passing street.
“So, why is it
that our city's public servants believe you bereft of your sanity?”
Xavier leaned back
in his seat and rested his head and arm against the window.
“They said … the person I'm looking for … is dead.”
