what they left behind. Rudy did good bidding on this lot. Did you see all of those laptops? Those must have been worth 50 grand right there. And all that copper wire, holy shit. That’s a small fortune.”
“Seriously,
bro.”
“But what was with all of the dry ice?”
“I don’t know. Reminded me of that hospital job we did, you know, for organ transplants.”
“Weird. And that desk? You think he’ll let me take it? Maybe I can make him an offer. The hand carved top, it looked like it all came from one giant tree, a redwood or something. Like when they carve a canoe out of a fallen oak? Something like that. Man that had to be a big tree. Do they even let you cut down redwoods?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Shit, Simon. I love that desk. What did they stain it with, it looks almost black. Looked like a really dark red mahogany or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It was a weird color wasn’t it? Not the Chinese red of the same brown stains everybody uses. And it looked sticky but it wasn’t. Some sort of varnish or lacquer.”
“Here, Bobby, let’s see if we can move it.”
Jamal places the clipboard back down on the ledge. It pokes halfway out the open window. The wind flutters the pages as the two big men approach the box. As they place their hands on either side of it, as if to shift it, to push it back a little bit, just to see how much it weighs, the bulb lights up. It glows a deep red, the same strange syrupy red of the desk they moved earlier.
The twenty-foot long desk had been hand carved by the medicine man of a Fyat tribe deep in the African jungle. The totem had changed form many times before it settled on the form of a desktop. Many had questioned it, but none out loud. The African Blackwood came from a 33 foot tall Mpingo tree that had stood guard over the tiny village for as long as any could remember. They said its soul went with it as the exotic art dealer took the sculpted furniture out of the jungle, for that special buyer in New York. And they were glad. The healer, his arms aching from the carving, the hacking of the machete, grinned as the took it out. Finally it was gone.
“Kwaherini,” he said as they took it out.
The wind picked up and gusted through the alleys of New York, pushing around the garbage, whipping up a frenzy on the isle of Manhattan. Hands shot up to keep hats on heads. Scarves fluttered and whipped at cringing faces. A row of garbage cans tipped over, lids clattering to the ground, glass breaking. A lid slammed shut on an oversized industrial dumpster, the noise level on the street raising, as car horns honked and people bounced off each other is confusion and disarray. Nobody noticed the clipboard clattering to the ground. Its fall from the 16th floor could have killed someone, but it simply cracked in two, bits of fiberboard splintering, the requisition slips flying into the wind, drops of blood splattered over the ivory sheets.
Sixteen floors up the sound doesn’t travel far. The floor is empty, the offices bare. Whatever might have been heard on the street it would be dismissed later as nonsense. No screams. Must have been something else. The pounding, the screech of metal grinding on metal. Construction maybe. Besides, keep moving. Don’t get involved.
The lone glass sphere glowed now, liquid, a hurricane of fire and molten lava, the implosion of a distant star, a crimson throbbing in an otherwise bare facade.
“Kwaherini,” the black box purred.
7. ROLAND
I got dragged along, it was part of the deal, all or nothing. Did I have any choice? Not really. Maybe a distant aunt or uncle I’d never met. Mom has never been called boring. Having to walk to the ATM on a Saturday morning to get bail money when you thought she was in bed asleep, that’s one way to grow up fast. Sure, I was the cool kid with the leather jacket taking the Milwaukee 22 bus to school. Sure, I had a pack of Marlboro Reds in my pocket and access to a liquor
“Seriously,
bro.”
“But what was with all of the dry ice?”
“I don’t know. Reminded me of that hospital job we did, you know, for organ transplants.”
“Weird. And that desk? You think he’ll let me take it? Maybe I can make him an offer. The hand carved top, it looked like it all came from one giant tree, a redwood or something. Like when they carve a canoe out of a fallen oak? Something like that. Man that had to be a big tree. Do they even let you cut down redwoods?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Shit, Simon. I love that desk. What did they stain it with, it looks almost black. Looked like a really dark red mahogany or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It was a weird color wasn’t it? Not the Chinese red of the same brown stains everybody uses. And it looked sticky but it wasn’t. Some sort of varnish or lacquer.”
“Here, Bobby, let’s see if we can move it.”
Jamal places the clipboard back down on the ledge. It pokes halfway out the open window. The wind flutters the pages as the two big men approach the box. As they place their hands on either side of it, as if to shift it, to push it back a little bit, just to see how much it weighs, the bulb lights up. It glows a deep red, the same strange syrupy red of the desk they moved earlier.
The twenty-foot long desk had been hand carved by the medicine man of a Fyat tribe deep in the African jungle. The totem had changed form many times before it settled on the form of a desktop. Many had questioned it, but none out loud. The African Blackwood came from a 33 foot tall Mpingo tree that had stood guard over the tiny village for as long as any could remember. They said its soul went with it as the exotic art dealer took the sculpted furniture out of the jungle, for that special buyer in New York. And they were glad. The healer, his arms aching from the carving, the hacking of the machete, grinned as the took it out. Finally it was gone.
“Kwaherini,” he said as they took it out.
The wind picked up and gusted through the alleys of New York, pushing around the garbage, whipping up a frenzy on the isle of Manhattan. Hands shot up to keep hats on heads. Scarves fluttered and whipped at cringing faces. A row of garbage cans tipped over, lids clattering to the ground, glass breaking. A lid slammed shut on an oversized industrial dumpster, the noise level on the street raising, as car horns honked and people bounced off each other is confusion and disarray. Nobody noticed the clipboard clattering to the ground. Its fall from the 16th floor could have killed someone, but it simply cracked in two, bits of fiberboard splintering, the requisition slips flying into the wind, drops of blood splattered over the ivory sheets.
Sixteen floors up the sound doesn’t travel far. The floor is empty, the offices bare. Whatever might have been heard on the street it would be dismissed later as nonsense. No screams. Must have been something else. The pounding, the screech of metal grinding on metal. Construction maybe. Besides, keep moving. Don’t get involved.
The lone glass sphere glowed now, liquid, a hurricane of fire and molten lava, the implosion of a distant star, a crimson throbbing in an otherwise bare facade.
“Kwaherini,” the black box purred.
7. ROLAND
I got dragged along, it was part of the deal, all or nothing. Did I have any choice? Not really. Maybe a distant aunt or uncle I’d never met. Mom has never been called boring. Having to walk to the ATM on a Saturday morning to get bail money when you thought she was in bed asleep, that’s one way to grow up fast. Sure, I was the cool kid with the leather jacket taking the Milwaukee 22 bus to school. Sure, I had a pack of Marlboro Reds in my pocket and access to a liquor
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