August, 1991.
Someone jangled the piano a floor below Junior. The sound wafted upwards, drunk and dissonant, and Junior listened to the way that the player's fingers moved over the keyboard. The way white keys followed black keys followed white keys at random.
"Keep telling yourself this is 'head music," Junior said. "As long as it's intellectual, nobody cares if their foot doesn't tap. Right?"
He looked down then to see that his mother's was. She sat across from him at the circular table in the front foyer. Junior could hear his father's muffled conversation behind the closed door to the right.
He smelled coffee then, and a man appeared down the stairwell carrying a pot.
"Some more, my dear?" he said. Sandra, Junior's mother released her finger from the porcelain loop on the coffee mug. Junior watched her. She seemed distracted, her head nested into the tops of her fingers, her eyes glittering down the hall, the way the man playing the piano below them chose his notes, landing on a single place on the wall, and then darting off again. She glanced toward Junior then.
The music stopped below them, and Junior let himself lean backwards on his chair. The door to their right opened, and a man emerged from the doorway, tossed a smile out toward her.
"You may join your husband now," he said. "I think you might like his decision."
Junior found his father sitting inside on an unfolded hardback chair that had been placed in the centre of the room. He saw the way his brown eyes flittered towards him when he approached, and then back to the men who sat in front of him. A man came from behind Junior, and placed a chair beside his father. Sandra sat there, and moved her hand across her lap, joining his father's.
Junior stood beside his father's chair, and stared at the man sitting opposite him. A purple handkerchief reached upwards out the brown, floral pocket of his suit.
"We like the way your husband thinks," he said. Junior realized this had been directed at him, as if the man had sensed Junior's eyes on him without having looked at him. "If you think anything like he does, there might be a part-time job in it for you, too." He turned towards Junior then, lines cutting angles into his jawbones. There was a single, turquoise dot beneath the man's right eye, and Junior wondered if it was a tattoo.
He could hear his mother laughing, and Junior shuffled his feet, tried to lift his lips upwards.
"So we've decided his time might be worth something to us," the man said. His iris glinted beneath the fluorescent light of the boardroom, and he beamed this light toward Junior's father. Junior wished he didn't see the way his father sank backwards in his seat, pierced, and deflated.
The man passed an envelope to his father. "You must know what this is, Terry," he said.
His father's leg jimmied a little as he slid the envelope to his left, passed it to Sandra. Her burgundy nail slit the envelope open. She emptied rectangular pieces of paper onto her lap. She unfolded them, brought one to her face.
"We're taking you home, Sand" his father said.
Junior saw the way Sandra's lips quivered, and her head vibrated. She kept the paper clutched to her face, reading, unsure.
The man reached his hand towards Junior's father.
"Your husband's time is going to be in the right hands," the man said. A film of yellow coated his teeth. His tongue flickered out, unconsciously, glided over them. "And I think you'll like the way we'll pay him."
YOU ARE READING
Escape From Norriswood
Mystery / Thriller"Naughty girls can make a lot of money," Bobby had said again. Click. "And we're going to make you a lot of money. Enough to pay your way through college." He brought the Polaroid down from his eye. "Now let's get some shots of you in the bedroom."...
