“You ever see a man hanging around here?” she asked.
“In this building?”
“Shhh,” Vi whispered. “No, I mean...what you called it earlier...the concrete barrens. This whole area.”
Matthew sipped from his jug of wine.
“Like I told you, there’s bangers who come out here to do drug deals, initiations. People like me who try to live quiet and undisturbed. I mean there’s rumors, sure, but I never paid any attention—”
“What rumors?”
His brow furrowed, confused by her sudden interest. “Rumors of a man. They say he brings people here to torture them. It’s just an urban—”
“Who says this?”
“I don’t know. Just in passing by the people who live in or have reason to come to the concrete barrens. We hear things occasionally. Screams in the night. Hear about people dying, strange people around, but out here, everyone’s strange in one way or another. They chalk it up to some boogeyman, because I guess we need monsters, but the truth is, this is just a weird and sometimes dangerous place.”
“What else do they say?”
“Just horror movie crap—he’s supernatural, he’s a demon, he takes your soul.”
“You don’t believe it?” Vi asked.
“Of course not. Then again, it doesn’t mean I go wandering around the old GM factory after dark, or any time for that matter, but people just want to—”
“What’s special about the GM factory?”
“Nothing. It’s just a big empty building, and people say that’s where he’s from. The ruins.”
“Do they have a name for him?”
“El hombre con el pelo negro largo.”
“What is that, Spanish?”
“Yeah, the Latin Kings coined it.”
“What’s it mean?”
“The man with long black hair.”
A shard of ice trailed down the length of Violet’s spine.
“You’ll be okay right here?” Matthew asked.
“Yeah.”
“Look, you’re welcome to stay tonight, but—”
“No, I understand. You’ve been very gracious.”
The pillow smelled like spoiled cabbage, so she rested her head in the crook of her arm, facing the oil drum for the heat that radiated off the metal. Through tiny perforations, she could see the glow of the coals, pinpoints of sun-colored brilliance in the dark.
She closed her eyes.
Cold creeping in from every side except where the heat lapped at her face.
His voice came through the earpiece: “Violet? You asleep? Violet...”
“I’m awake,” she whispered.
“You sound tired, but I’m afraid your night isn’t even close to over. You handled yourself well up on the tower. That was fun to watch, but in all fairness, purely self-defense. Kill or be killed. Tonight, I want to see another facet of Violet King, specifically, just how cold your blood runs.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the knife, Violet. I’m talking about Matthew. About you killing him while he sleeps.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I can’t, Luther.”
“Matthew reminds me of a dear, departed friend.”
“Luther, please.”
“My mentor. A man named Orson, who, very much like Matthew, escaped into homelessness to find himself.”
“I do not have that in me.”
“Well, that is very bad news for Andy and little Max. Andy you there?”
“Violet?” Andy’s voice.
“Andy.”
“Luther, please,” Andy said.
“Would everyone stop begging me already? I didn’t bring you into this, Andy, for you to plead for me not to do what has to be done.”
“Then what?”
“I just thought you might advise Violet. You’ve been in this situation before, right? You’ve murdered an innocent to save yourself and others. Tell us, Andy, did it change you?”
“Fuck you, Luther.”
“Tell us, Andy, did it change you?”
“Fuck you.”
The wail of a baby filled Violet’s earpiece.
“Andy stop!” she whispered.
“Yes, Luther, it changed me.”
“For the better?”
“Hardly.”
“You still think about them?”
“Sometimes.”
“And this pains you?”
“They were some of the worst moments in a life filled with bad ones.”
“That’s because you’re weak, Andy. I never understood what Orson saw in you. You should’ve emerged from that experience stronger. Harder. A pure human being.”
“So that’s what you’re holding yourself out as, Luther? A pure human being?”
“Violet,” Luther said as she wept softly into the sleeve of her tracksuit. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not rushing you. We’re going to leave you now, so you can have this moment. Please believe me when I say that it can be revolutionary. Life-changing. If you let it be. If you’re strong enough.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Aren’t we past the threats, my love?”
Andy screamed something and then the line went dead.
She could hear the freezing rain coming down again, feel the shudder of her heart against the filthy floor. She lay there in the dark and the cold. Waiting. For something to change. For reality to break through and end this nightmare.
But the rain kept falling and the fire dwindling and the cold sinking in.
After awhile, she came to her feet. The knife blade reflected the firelight. She stared at it, then picked it up.
“Throw some wood on the fire,” Matthew grumbled from his cardboard box.
“Sure.”
Violet walked over to the scrap wood heap, grabbed several pieces of crown molding flaking off dark paint, and tossed them into the oil drum.
“You were talking to yourself,” Matthew said.
Violet moved slowly across the floor to the foot of the cardboard box and squatted down by the opening. As the new flames licked up out of the drum, she saw Matthew in the lowlight sprawled under sheets of old newspaper, lying on his back, his eyes open, blinking slowly—glassy from the wine.
“How do you live like this, Matthew?” she whispered.
“Always wanted to live in nature,” he said. “Someplace pretty, you know? Now I do. This is my wilderness. I think the concrete barrens are beautiful like the desert is. Empty and quiet. Those abandoned buildings, that water tower...they’re my mountains. Sometimes, in the evening in the summertime, I’ll just go walking through the ruins. It reaches some part of me. Some itch I was never able to scratch.”