Hitman Melodies Section 7

VII.
Maddy looked out the window at the lengthening distance that separated her from the wrath of Jack Milano. With her right hand she lightly stroked the fingernails of her left and turned to Sebastian Chronic, chief enforcer for the Milano crime family.
"Can you--do you want to tell me where we are going?"
"Got a place. Gotta think."
Silence. It had become the primary modus apparandi of their relationship.
"I'm not giving you to them. I know you don't know anything. I know it."
"Thanks." Silence. "You're right, you know, I missed it--I don't know shit."
"Don't suck up to me--I'm still going to kill you."
"Ah."

Black water flowed beneath them as they crossed the George Washington Bridge; the liquid movement was almost imperceptible, but, like unconscious thoughts, an occasional white ripple betrayed the river's secret progress toward the ocean of its non-being. The inward curve of the suspension arches, and the diffracted glare of yellow lights, (spewed out of the bus terminal on the New York side), gave the scene a suffocating, sickly-surreal cast; but as her glance bent back on the magnificence of the city the never sleeps, the breadth of scope almost tempted Maddy's soul to flights of freedom. Almost.
The George Washington Bridge was a portal into the mental mediocrity of New Jersey. Sebastian hated New Jersey. That's why he'd kept a secret hideaway there for years, against the advent of a clean escape from whomever. He knew someday he would need a place. He had bought it, cash on the barrelhead, almost ten years ago, paid an automatic monthly fee to a maintenance company from an account twice removed from his legal name, and had not set eyes on it since. He almost didn't remember how to get there, but the address, Orpheus Street in Apollo New Jersey, was a pnemonic he had chosen apurpose when he bought the place, (the deciding factor really), and he knew it was located at the plumb end of a cul-de-sac, which (the cul-de-sac part) he figured would be a memorable, albeit vulgar, symbolic reduction of whatever future emergency sent him reeling there.
They rolled up the driveway, headlights off, at about 5:00 A.M., and sat for a moment before trudging up the wooden steps. The house had the look of a lakeside resort; it was surrounded on three sides by an enclosed porch, its shutters were that ugly Lincoln/RobinHood green color that people paint their Sherwood-foresty houses with; and, if you looked at it straight on, ignoring the other five or six houses on the short street, its pervasive brown, melting into the color of the trees among which it was comfortably nestled, gave it a feeling of privacy and protection more appropriate to a mountain cabin than a house in a New Jersey suburb. Sebastian had enough money saved to retire there and never show his face to the forces of evil ever again, and the thought had crossed his mind more than once. In the rising dawn, the dark criss-cross of the screens became livid with tiny squares of gold, and the sunrise lifted Maddy's heart with hope she did not think ought to be there. Perhaps the hope had risen from the silence between them.
She followed Sebastian up the steps, docile, almost trusting. They were together in this, and thoughts of escape had never entered her mind. She knew that any attempt to flee would be an insult to his intelligence, and an invitation to corrective surgery. Her only chance of overwhelming him had been at the opera house, and (he was right) there had never been more than a 30% chance of success there. The rest of her eggs resided in a completely other basket. For now, waiting, in the web of his fascination, was the signature of the moment and of any immediate future lurking in the shortening shadows of breaking day.
Indeed, "fascination" was a key descriptor of Maddy's general mood. Of course, she was terrified of dying, but fear of death had unexpectedly taken a back seat to another feeling--a feeling of hypnotic distraction. Considering the circumstances, most people would consider getting caught up in feelings of fascination with one's executioner to be fucking bonkers, and Maddy's higher self, witnessing the scene from above, knew this to be true. However, here below, she found it more and more difficult to look upon him as a coarse murderer. The music of the dance hummed its refrain in his every movement, in the refinement of his expression, spoken and unspoken, in the smoothness of his physical gestures, the way he swerved the Jaguar through New York City traffic, the masterful way he had swooped her through the doors of the Met, the way he drove Chico to the floor with one balletic arc of his arm; his every completed act was a phrase in a chain of melody that seemed to stretch to infinity, and she was swept into it, brought along by the force of it, as a mere note of orchestration in the grand design of a cosmic symphony, a glorious vision that an insensitive world would not see, but which he heard with every breath, with every sigh.
The key was not under the mat--it was underneath a little white plastic 8th note screwed to the door, the single hint as to the house's true owner. Sebastian slid the 8th note sideways, caught the key as it dropped out of its niche, slid the key into the lock, twisted and threw the door back, all in one fluid motion. His arm swung wide with the door, and he surveyed his domain for the first time in ten years with the familiar air of one who has never left it. It might have been the drawing room of a Victorian aristocrat, replete with hearth and hound, except there was no hound and the hearth was cold and dark. Maddy followed him in. She almost tripped over a package on the floor, a long, thick envelope that had been dropped through the mail slot and knocked to the side by Sebastian's sweeping entrance.
Stooping to pick up the package, he said, "This is not only my getaway, this is my library. I send stuff here every few weeks (addressed to Gilbert Sullivan) and the cleaning lady has instructions to place the envelopes on this shelf over here." He stepped over to an enormous bookcase which took up the entire far wall. On it could be seen rows and rows of yellow 9"x12" envelopes, like the one he had just picked up, neatly stacked in vertical piles. "This is my life's work sitting on these shelves," he mused, almost to himself. He checked the date, gave a nod of satisfaction, and placed the envelope on the shortest stack. "Have a seat."
Before she knew what was happening, Maddy had been maneuvered over to a plush Victorian divan; the left arm of the sofa had a metal bar, about two feet long, growing out of the top of it, affixed by a two-footed steel frame. She looked down and was surprised to see her wrists inhibited by restraints. It would not be fair to call them handcuffs, because they were padded with soft rubber, quite as comfortable as they were confining; there were three feet of play in a thin chain linking the hands, and in the middle of this chain was connected another chain that Sebastian was padlocking to the metal bar on the arm of the couch. She could see the feet of the couch nailed to the floor.
Maddy was taken aback by the suddenness of the action, and because, all night, Sebastian had barely laid a finger on her--it was understood that she was his prisoner, and she should not try any funny business. Eventually, their dual complicity had made the idea of funny business contrary to their shared project--getting away from Jack Milano. Now, she was almost insulted to see their colloquial confidence so betrayed, but she immediately saw the wisdom of it.
"Let's be clear," Sebastian said. "I just broke faith with one of the most vicious, unforgiving monsters on the face of the planet. I crossed Jack Milano for you, which makes us partners in complicity, and makes me the target of a relentless, remorseless, murdering crime family. The fact that I couldn't stand the idea of them torturing you for no reason, doesn't mean I'm still not going to kill you. I admit that I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with you, but, for the time being, you are in my power and are going to stay that way, and I am NOT going to underestimate you, or give you any more free pokes at me. You almost got me with that poison letter, you know--twice."
Maddy attempted to quell a blush of professional pride, but her bosom would not obey her inner command. Her breasts swelled with the smile she would not allow to break upon her face. Sebastian reached down and swiped the emerald broach off that pleasantly pneumatic convexity, and checked it for microphones one more time, before throwing it onto a lampstand on the other side of the room. This was the third savage gesture he had visited on Maddy's person--the first was at the Met, the second was at Tony's when he told her to keep her fucking hands off the cymbals, and now this, the most violent, taking away her emerald broach--it was like shaving Samson's hair. She could not have been more humiliated if he had stripped her naked. She hated him then, and with the hate came the clarity: he had already checked that device at the opera house, he didn't need to check it again--he just wanted to touch her. Once again, a disdainful act had protested a secret, involuntary attraction. It was a false move, and they both knew it.
This would have been the time for talk, but it turned into a time for sleep. Sebastian threw her a quilt from a corner closet, installed himself in a great overstuffed chair, neatly out of range of her restraints, and, before either of them knew it, their dreams were intertwined like kite strings, each tugging in different directions, each flying up the same.