The MatchmanThe woman in the tan trenchcoat stood before the ascending row of time-chewed steps that led into the frowsy brownstone somewhere north of 110th Street and east of Lenox Avenue. Her hat of tan gabardine looked slightly out of place for the season, but it did rather oddly match the pair of oversized vintage late-1970’s sunglasses that she wore. They were the sort with huge, owl-eyed lenses that were partially polarized in an off-umber tone from the top down that one sees from time to time in movies from that period. It wasn’t a very sunny day.
Neither was the disposition of the gentleman in a strappy T-shirt who stood at the top of the stairs, leaning casually against a doorpost that was in the midst of shedding most of its unhappy burden of peeling paint. He masticated a toothpick as he spoke. “No, senorita. Ain’t nobody by that name here. I think maybe you gots the wrong address?”
The woman in the trenchcoat didn’t back down. “Nope. This is it. I’m sure of it. So is he in? C’mon - like, I haven’t got all day, ya know.”
The gentleman flipped the well-chewed toothpick out of his mouth in her general direction and proceeded to follow it down the stairs at her. There was a certain menace in his descending stride - a hint of knife action. “No, you don’t, lady. But I do. Maybe I tell you a little something extra, huh? You come over to my place, and we, ah, we discuss things a bit, eh? Yeah.”
“I rilly don’t think so, Paco,” the woman snapped. She drew aside the folds of her trenchcoat to reveal a glimmering golden void that hurt the eyes accustomed to such a gloomy day in the rest of the world. From this golden void a hand emerged. It cupped, with a faint air of unspecified threat, what looked like an apple made of solid gold. The man looked at it, helpless, for a single teetering instant. But that instant was enough.
The woman put the apple away and closed up her coat. Everything was as it was before, at least on the outside.
“Now show me where El Burro Bandito is hiding his mangy butt,” Discordia breathed angrily, “or I’ll, like, ask you to eat, for me, certain hard-to-reach portions of your own anatomy. Got it?”
“Yes ma’am yes ma’am,” the man said, golden wheels spinning in his eyes as he lurched his way back up the tenement stairs and in through the door. “Yes ma’am yes ma’am anything you ma’am yes ma’am yes ma’am yes…”
The attic door at the very top of the dingy and decaying tenement building was warped, peeling and locked. After sending her unwilling guide back downstairs to lie upon the sofa until her return, Discordia studied the attic door carefully. Then, smiling, she kicked it, hard, just above the ancient doorknob and lock mechanism. There was a loud sound of impact accompanied by a flat crack, and the door mooched inward gratefully.
The noises hadn’t caused anything or anyone to stir a muscle within the dimly-lit garret beyond. She stepped forward through the open door.
The stench hit her in the face like a runaway freight train. It was so bad that she had to fight down her gag reflex. It was indescribable. It was a fetid musk compounded of several layers of extinct cheap cigars, dirty clothing, horrendous breath, and the assorted bodily odors of an unwashed flatulent beast that had not seen the good side of a curry-comb in years. Its source was all of these things, and more. El Burro Bandito lay upon the scattered rags that were once bedclothes that failed miserably in covering a bare, battered mattress on the dusty floor. He looked up casually, holding his place in the book that he was in the midst of reading with one prehensile hoof, and favored her with a jaundiced eye. He was smoking a small cheroot that smelled like a manure fire. His long ears twitched in the artificial dusk of the room.
“So? Choo found me, lady. Whatchoo want, then? I’m busee,” he said.
She coughed before she could reply coherently. “El Burro Bandito, in, like, the flesh\! I’ve been looking for you for a while\! Rumor had it that you were in the city hiding out from a string of jobs that you pulled back down in Texas and Mexico along the border. The rumors don’t do you justice. I mean, like, I thought there had been some creative exaggeration but - wow\! You really do have the head of a donkey, don’t you?”
El Burro Bandito reached up and tweaked one of his long mutant ears savagely. “Choo gots the talent for stateeng the obveeous, chica,” he said shortly. “Now why dontchoo scram? Don’ need my life heestory. I’m tryeen’ to read, here.”
“Whatcha readin’?” she asked.
He held up the book so that she could read the title on the cover.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream, eh? Shakespeare. Class. You read a lot?”
He nodded.
“What’s yer favorite book of all time?”
“The Golden Ass, by Apuleius. Eet’s Latin - and so am I.”
“Sounds like my autobiography.”
“I wassn’t goeen to say eet, chica.”
“You feel like pulling some more jobs in the metro area?” she asked, grinning evilly. “That is, like, if you’re not too busy lying around here, drawing flies and scratching yourself.”
“Maybe I like jus’ lyeen ‘round scratchin’ myself,” El Burro Bandito said. “Choo ever theenk of that, eh?”
“Oh, come on\!” Discordia exploded. “You know that yer like meant for bigger and better things\! I read in the papers all about your capers in the - hey, that, like, rhymed\! - in the Southwest\! You’re very handy with a sawed-off shotgun. I think my boss would like to get a look at you, and maybe use you for a few odd jobs. You ever work as a team player.”
“Nope. I’m soleetaire, babee - all the way. Who your boss?”
“Ever hear of Doctor Dejection? The B.L.A.H. Corporation?”
El Burro Bandito’s eyes lit up like jack-o-lanterns on the day after Halloween. Although he struggled to maintain a calm demeanor, she could tell that behind the impassive mask, he was quite impressed with the names that she had just dropped. Her grin ratcheted just that much wider in response.
“You like the sound of that, fleabag?”
“Yeah, babee. I like the sound of dat.”
El Burro Bandito got up, stretched, yawned and threw his book carelessly into a corner of the attic. “Okay, senorita. Choo gots me interested. Where we go to meet thees Doctor Dejection?”
“Right this way, hombre,” Discordia said, as she walked back through the door and down the stairs.