Pillow Read online

  He was just beginning what would have probably been a lengthy internal debate about which kind of assholes centaurs have when one of those dangerous details skidded, as if from nowhere, into the parking lot. The car stopped a few feet away from Pillow, and he dropped instinctively into an athletic stance, but forgot to pull his gun or make any move to alert Louise, which were the things he was supposed to do.

  A man fell out of the driver-side door and kicked up desperately from the ground, finally closing the door as a very skinny, sick-looking man in the back seat reached forward to scratch at the window. Pillow jogged over and helped the old man to his feet.

  Georges Bataille gave off the same general impression as a scrap of paper that had been loose in someone’s pocket for a very long time. He had a full head of razor-thin white hair swooping out to the side. He was holding one of his hands tightly with the other, his suit tenting at the back like the world’s cheapest parachute.

  ‘Thank you, Pillow.’

  Before Pillow could respond, the man locked in the car flailed his arms ineffectually at the back windows, making a hollow scratching sound. Pillow finally recognized him as Antonin Artaud, a clinically insane morphine addict who hung out around the periphery of Breton’s world. Mostly he just talked crazy, occasionally made a scene and hit people up for money. Every time Artaud moved his arms, Pillow thought about skeletons and hand puppets, and hand puppets who were also skeletons.

  ‘Don’t you thank shit, Georges. You’re late, Louise is pissed and you need to tell me what this back-seat situation is. Homeboy is not an invited guest.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry.’ Bataille took a breath and then spoke quickly, probably eager to get the details out before his suit jacket caught too much wind and carried him all the way out to sea. ‘I was late. I miscalculated badly. You see, I’d left this young girl locked in an antique bureau, and just an hour before I was to –’

  Pillow reached over and palmed Bataille’s face. ‘Georges, Georges, Georges, no. That is not the level of detail I’m looking for here, my man. Dude in the back seat, coins, go.’ He released the older man’s face and patted him on the head.

  ‘That’s Artaud in the back seat. I let him stay with me for a few days, I showed him the coins and he’s stolen them. He was passed out when I left, so I don’t know where he took them, but he’s the only one who knew where they were. So I brought him to you, and now he’s reacting as a threatened and deeply wild beast.’

  Pillow clicked his mouth evenly. ‘That was super-concise actually, thanks. Okey-dokey, so let’s get your man into the bar and, uh, see what Louise thinks.’ Pillow bent over to make a visual appraisal of the inside of the car. Artaud flung a limp, loose arm at the car window. Pillow waved at him.

  ‘Why’s he wearing a priest outfit, Georges?’

  ‘He says he has the spirit of a god and the body of a priest.’

  ‘Fair enough, I guess. So, here’s the plan. I mean, we want to get him out of the car before he remembers that cars are locked from the inside, y’know? I already got my miles in today, so I’m not in the mood to chase him. He’s a little agitated, you’re kind of, like, an old, weak librarian, no disrespect, so I’m just going open the door and grab him. I mean, he looks like he wants a fight, but there’s no way he’s got more than fifteen seconds of gas in him.’ Pillow threw a short flurry of punches into the air, then bounced on the balls of his feet a few times. ‘Stand back, big boy.’

  As soon as Pillow opened the door, Artaud crawled halfway out, supported himself against the door frame and tried to stab him with a incredibly shiny and sharp dinner fork. Pillow swayed back, pivoted around the door and push-kicked Artaud in the chest, so he flew back into the car, his arms and legs collapsing toward his sternum like it was a tiny, sudden black hole. Pillow slammed the door and turned toward Bataille, wagging his finger loosely.

  ‘Okay. To sum it up, you’re at home, you’re doing some kind of horrible sex thing and you realize that you’re late for a stolen-centaur-coin sale, and your lunatic friend in a morphine coma has stolen your centaur coins, so you decide to pack him up and bring him to the buy of the coins he’s stolen. I get all that, ish, y’know? But why do you give him a dinner fork? That’s … that’s where I’m lost on this one.’

  ‘He must have had it in his sock.’

  ‘How is that the first thing you say? Just right to the sock? “Hey, sorry I almost got your eye stabbed, Pillow.” Nope? Just out with the sock idea.’

  ‘The foot is the most human part of the body. Think of apes.’

  ‘Okay, I’m about done with you. You know I love apes, you know that about me, Georges, but now is not the time. So, since this is a majillion percent your fault, you’re going to help me with this situation here. I need both hands, so you open the door, I’ll handle Artaud, and you stay out of the way, sound good?’

  Bataille’s hair flapped like a tarp being used as a tent in a very gentle wind. He moved beside the car, and Pillow positioned himself on the other side, took two deep breaths, then nodded for Bataille to open the door.

  Artaud did most of the work himself, launching himself out of the car face-first, making a flailing backhand jab at Pillow with the fork as he fell to the ground. Pillow dropped onto the lunatic’s frail chest with both knees, grabbed Artaud’s wrist and bounced it against the pavement until he finally let go of the weapon.

  Pillow got off, and Artaud didn’t stand but rather rolled on his side and coughed pneumonically into the pavement. Pillow reached down and scooped the guy up, throwing him over his shoulder like a strangely proportioned bag of potatoes. Bataille followed them inside. Halfway across the parking lot Artaud got some energy back and started kicking and flailing a bit, but there wasn’t much horsepower behind it, and Pillow just kept walking. It felt like carrying an animate easel.

  Seeing him tell the story from a third-party vantage, Pillow thought Bataille looked and sounded a lot more like a TV-movie actor than a person explaining real things that had happened to him. His hands were moving all stiffly, jutting out when he wanted to make a point, raising awkwardly to poke at his temple to show he was upset. He occasionally glanced involuntarily over at Pillow, like he was the camera you’re absolutely not supposed to look at. Pillow was kind of intrigued by it, imagining what it would be like to go through life so awkward you looked like someone inexpertly pretending to do all the things you were really doing.

  There hadn’t been any rope or anything at the bar, so they had just held Artaud still in his chair until he finally quieted down a little and realized that Pillow could keep subduing him pretty much indefinitely. Now Artaud was sitting quietly at a table, staring intensely at the beer taps, occasionally poking without looking at a bloody spot on his priest collar and tasting the blood. His teeth were starting to stain red.

  Louise finally finished up with Bataille, and she turned around to look at Artaud. She moved over to Pillow, stood on her toes and helped herself up on his shoulder as she spoke quietly into his ear. ‘We’re going to talk to him a few minutes, and when he tells us where the coins are, you go get them and I bring the cash home. Yes?’

  ‘You going to pay Artaud?’

  ‘Not more than we have to, ten grand maybe.’

  ‘Sure, you want me to do it?’

  ‘Would you? He is quite creepy.’

  Pillow patted her on the back, moved over behind Artaud and clamped down hard on his shoulders. ‘Hey there. Here’s the deal: we’re going to give you ten grand, you’re going to tell us where the coins are, I’m going to forget that you tried to stick me with a fork that time, and everybody’s going to go home with most of the blood they have in them right now.’

  Artaud nodded and didn’t turn around. ‘I’m reminded of the first rule of improvised comedy – it’s a good rule, in that it works best when you break it: yes, and?’

  Pillow spun the chair with Artaud in it, shoved it onto its back two legs and held Artaud suspended like that for a second. ‘You
are going to focus, you are going to pay attention and you are going to talk deal with us, or I will hurt you badly enough to change your life. Not the way you need it to change either, that other way.’

  Pillow let go of the chair and Artaud lurched forward, then straightened himself. He reached his arm back and laid it on the top of the chair, where it rested like a long, deflated balloon. He looked up at Pillow, his eyes swimming like a seven-year-old dropped off a fishing boat. ‘A deal. How about this, I’ll make you a deal, shit lips, I’ll make you a really good deal. You give me a quick five minutes to myself, as you stand there in your dreary, life’s-just-one-long-graveyard-shift-and-then-you-die circus tent of a white T-shirt, you give me a couple minutes and a little bit of privacy maybe, and I work myself up a feverish, Priapus-the-protector-of-livestock hard-on, and then you bring yourself over, jump on it, lift your ankles to the sky and spin yourself in a circle a good six or seven times, and then you get up, thank me, leave the room and shoot yourself in the mouth. That’s my offer. You’re welcome.’

  The shit-talker in Pillow found the whole thing pretty funny. He made eye contact with Louise, who was less amused. Bataille looked like a movie extra who is really just a person on the street they filmed by accident – his face almost looked blurred out for legal reasons. Louise finally spoke. ‘Pillow, time is a thing here. Let’s turn it up a little.’

  Pillow earnestly did not enjoy hurting people who weren’t fighting back. Artaud had tried to stab him, but it hadn’t come close enough to feel like a real attempt. ‘I’m kind of curious where he’s going with this one.’

  ‘Oh, for …’

  Artaud sprang to his feet and pointed a bony, quaking finger at Bataille. ‘You don’t understand the favour I’m doing. Cruelty is sometimes ugly but it has energy, does it not? Isn’t that the best we can ask?’ Artaud closed his eyes and turned his face to the roof, raising his hands evenly along his sides. ‘I’m a cursed man, because the only place I feel truth is in my veins. I’m cruel because I love all animals.’ He opened his eyes and looked down. ‘I’m saying these things to you because cruelty is the only language a squealing sow truly understands.’ Artaud lunged in Bataille’s general direction, and Pillow wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled the lunatic roughly behind him as he put his arm out toward Louise, looking to parry whatever reach she made for Artaud.

  ‘Easy there, sugar bear, he’s fragile. I got this.’

  Louise reached up to point at Pillow. ‘He’s going to get his balls cut off if he doesn’t tell me where those coins are.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy, man. No harm, no foul. Let’s keep everyone’s sex bits out of this thing.’

  Louise was a few inches away from them, still mad-dogging Artaud, and before Pillow could even drop his hand, Louise fell, spouting blood from her neck and teeth, and the air smelled like smoke.

  Pillow released Artaud and moved for the bar, tripping over a chair. He knew he was hearing gunshots, but it sounded like steel pipes hitting each other. He got to his knees and threw himself behind the bar. Still sprawled out, he saw the briefcase with the money in it and pulled it toward him with his foot.

  Artaud moved through the room, waving his arms around like a car-lot inflatable stick person with a leak in it, screaming, ‘I am tired of always butchering meat and never getting a bite!’

  Pillow took a deep breath and looked over the bar. He reached for the gun tucked in the back of his pants, gripped the handle and changed his mind. Pillow had never fired a gun at someone, and this seemed like a hopeless time to try it out. A man with a ski mask was using an arm the size of a rhino’s leg to pin Bataille to the bar. The other ski mask was taller and skinnier, and was moving in toward Louise’s body with a gun still trained on her, looking a bit like a cop on a realistic television show. There was blood on the floor. Artaud was still loose, running toward the skinny ski mask now.

  Almost casually the ski mask threw out an arm and caught Artaud with the butt of the gun. Artaud fell oddly slowly, like a tree blown out of its roots. Pillow rubbed his eyes, took a breath, fumbled with the briefcase’s latches and finally got them open. He gripped the open briefcase and threw it as hard and as high in the air as he could. It hit the ceiling hard, and the bills spread out and drifted down slowly, the way leaves fall off a tree that’s just been hit by a car. Pillow vaulted the bar and hit the fire escape at a run, losing his legs as he met the pavement in the alley. He scrambled to his feet and took off sprinting. He reached the street, crossing it diagonally and without looking.

  He was a beautiful runner.

  Eventually Pillow stopped in a diner he’d never seen before. He ordered a coffee and stared into it for a long time. He watched the ripples move slowly inward from all around, showing the shaking of his hands. A pigeon flew into the window and Pillow started, almost knocking his coffee over. He hadn’t realized how hot the cup was making his hands until he took them away.

  The street outside was empty except for a flock of pigeons pecking away at a spilled pile of rice. Pillow made a habit of believing urban legends, so he knew he should stop them in case the rice bloated in their bellies later. The street was dark and empty, and the coffee shop was reflected in the window. Pillow saw tiles floating in the hollow road, he saw his face superimposed on pigeons who hadn’t exploded yet, a dirty counter hovering dimly upside down over all of them. He watched the pigeons pick away at the pile, knowing he should move, that it was right to move.

  A pigeon saved is a life saved.

  The street began filling with people, and the window lights came on and the lamps thunked dark one by one. The pigeons had picked the pile loose, a couple hanging around the gutter poking their beaks around. Pillow’s coffee was still full. He drank it in one gulp, took several deep breaths.

  He was in big trouble. Watching the door on deals like that was usually easy money for Pillow – just sitting around looking tall, shaking some hands. But in Breton’s organization, watching the door made you responsible for the door, for whatever came through the door. Pillow flattened himself across the table to look at the street signs – it was a long walk to the Bureau, but he’d need it to clear his head. It felt good to be flat on the table like that, the cold of the linoleum kissing his cheek. Pillow stayed there for a while longer, then he sat up and raised a hand over his head in one motion. He ordered one more coffee with his index finger and stayed still waiting for it. A hand with a pot came over and filled his cup and Pillow tried to thank the hand, but his mouth pulled up short and just sputtered. There was only one pigeon left now, and Pillow reached over to the window, obscuring the bird’s head with his thumb.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Pillow asked the bird, which at that second was just his thumb with wings and legs. ‘Y’know, about how big things get when you soak them.’

  The bird twitched away toward another grain of rice. Pillow pulled his hand back from the window and used the hand to slap himself in the face seven times.

  The centre of Breton’s operation was a strange, small office in the east end of town called the Bureau. Breton didn’t use the Bureau as a place to directly do business out of; it was more of a clubhouse for people to gather so he’d have them at his disposal when he needed.

  Pillow entered the office, and Don Costes was the only person there, standing on a desk looking out the window. Don had been a hotshot amateur around the time Pillow was making his first title run. As Don was turning pro, his promoter got him featured in a documentary. Don had missed the weigh-in for his fight, and when the film crew went over to his apartment they’d found three transvestites playing 9–5–2 using a passed-out Don as a kitchen table. That was pretty much it for Don’s boxing career, and now he was Breton’s right-hand guy. He’d brought Pillow in while Gwynn Apollinaire had still been running things.

  Don Costes looked like the real-life version of Captain America if you’d accidentally left Captain America under a sun lamp in a wind tunnel for sixteen years and then put him in a suit
and a bow tie that didn’t quite fit.

  ‘Need to see the big man? He’s expecting Louise, but you’ll do.’

  Pillow threw out a lazy two-finger salute and walked through the long, claustrophobic hallway that led to Breton’s office.

  Breton was a strange and aggressive collector. There was more stuff in his office than there was in the whole rest of the place. There was a big display behind his desk with some old jewellery boxes, preserved body parts and sculptures in it.

  Paintings on the walls: an iron with seven nails in the bottom; the New York skyline with a circumcised penis in place of the Empire State Building; a black metal staircase twisting into a solid concrete ceiling; a velvet torso with a cowboy hat in place of the head, an open file box in place of the legs, nothing in place of the arms; a ceiling fan with femurs for blades; an axe falling into a whirlpool; a giant bull eating a small amount of grass; six overlapping Persian rugs, all mostly red; something that looked exactly like a slipper and a spoon; a pressed pig’s heart; a pressed dandelion; oppressed Spanish peasants waiting for a long time beside a dry stream; an avocado being blown out of glass; six glass tears; the Grand Canyon as a mostly dead leaf.

  Breton was spinning around in his desk chair, wearing large mirrored lenses shaped like the silhouettes of coffee cups, his arms spread out like a propeller. Breton jumped up when he saw Pillow, stood and pulled out a chair for him, as he did every time.

  Breton had one of the biggest heads Pillow was able to conceptualize belonging to a human. He moved smoothly and precisely, and Pillow was sure he had been excessively polite, excessively ruthless and impeccably dressed every day of his life. He gave the impression of a nineteenth-century gentleman scholar who’d been allowed to have too much fun in a torture dungeon for about three months too long.

  ‘Hello, how are you today? May I offer you a biscuit?’ Breton pointed with two taut fingers at the plate of cookies on his desk.