Names and Faces

‘Everything alright, hun?’ Andy’s wife asked him after setting down a lukewarm fry on the table. Everything had been better than alright since Andy and his newly wed, newly pregnant wife had stumbled upon thousands in cash under the upstairs bathroom flooring of their new house. Everything had been great.

“You were a little restless last night, coming from someone who feels like their son may be into kickboxing when he grows up’ she continued, rubbing her stomach. Andy rubbed his face, eyelids thick. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

‘Yeah of course Lou, I’m just … the baby and stuff’ his reply was muffled over a cup of coffee, also lukewarm. He didn’t mention the faces.

‘Oh, I know me too. But look, God is looking out for us. First he sends us our little miracle and then he sends us this house with a welcome home gift and everything. You just have to have faith. I do.’ The belly rubbing continued. Andy found it obnoxious. Especially when combined with one of Lou’s faux sermons. He wondered how God was going to dig him out of this one. ‘Found money, spent money, earned money’. His dreams had been littered with the conversation he’d had with the house’s previous owner a few months before. A conversation he didn’t feel like relaying to his god-fearing wife.

“Yes. I’ll do that.’ He pacified her, moving away from the table. He dumped most of his fry in the food waste bin behind her and kissed the top of her head on his way out of the kitchen as she babbled on about something to do with faith again.

“My wife and I… we’ve already spent the money, we didn’t know - we thought we had just gotten lucky - we’ve been struggling financially, we have a baby on the way and we’re both paying off educational debt… but I’m the only one with a job, I work as a bank assistant for Christ’s sake, I don’t have twenty thousand dollars!’ He remembered despising the panic in his voice. He still did.

‘Well, now thanks to you, neither do I. So either you can come up with the money or you can take care of a few little jobs to repay me. Look, you found the money, you’ve spent the money and now I’m gonna have to make you earn the money, okay?’ That’s what Andy had been doing. A ‘few little jobs’ here and there in order to pay back the money his wife saw as such a blessing. He wondered what she’d think if she knew how much they were paying for it. He resented her oblivion. She never had to see the faces. Andy’s ‘little jobs’ were listed in a little black book, mostly containing the names of the people he had to ‘take care of’. Rick, the previous owner of the house, had been into a few less conventional ways of making a living, drug dealing being the only one he cared to indulge Andy in, which Andy remained perfectly content with, considering his debt was also being repaid unconventionally.

‘Look, Andy. All of these people. They’re not nice people, okay? Don’t feel bad about it, it is what it is. If it wasn’t you doing it, it would be me and you would be one of them. So, who’s side do you want to be on?’ Andy tried to believe these words when he hit the brown eyed supposed drug dealer, who had apparently dealt dodgy drugs to Rick’s kid brother and consequently killed him, with a car at 130 kmph. He tried to ignore his guilt when he falsely seduced but intentionally overdosed the thin-lipped woman, who had supposedly stolen from his new employer and allegedly given his equally dodgy girlfriend injuries equating to fourteen stitches in her head. By the time he got around to seeing to the thick eyebrowed man, who reportedly used to beat said girlfriend, with a tragically staged slip off a ladder, he began to feel numb around the whole arrangement. This had been going on for a few months. Distantly spaced. Meticulously planned. Diverse and unsuspecting. These people were completely unconnected, despite their extremely bad choices in screwing over the same guy. And the fact that their names and crimes remained a few pages apart in a little black book the size of Andy’s hand.

He was due to meet Rick at two o’clock today. At a coffee shop. A casual friendship between two men who had a house in common. As well as a couple of murders and twenty thousand dollars. A casual friendship. Andy had decided while one of his many nights awake that he was reaching the end of his tether. The faces. The number of faces in the book alarmed him. He knew Rick could hang this over his head until it equalled out that he had paid him a single dollar for every face he had had a hand in taking. He’d applied for sick pay last month and got it after providing a doctor’s note. He didn’t have to do much to prove his mental instability. He moved through the glass door of the café to a table a little from the back, where no eavesdroppers could have an easy time of it. He thought about wearing a wire, maybe getting a plea bargain from the police. But here he was sitting at a coffee table waiting on someone who could ruin his life just for the fun of it. It was too late now. He’d been stupid and naïve enough to get involved and there was no going back. He was stuck reliving the night Rick had forced him into this mess every time his brain had a second to rest.

‘Are you crazy?! I’m not going to kill people I don’t even know for someone I don’t even know, and I don’t have twenty thousand dollars to pay you back. I’m calling the police this is some insane prank or scheme or something.’ Andy remembered the blow hitting the side of his head as he raised the phone to his ear. He still remembered feeling his skull vibrate.

‘Look don’t fuck with me okay. I gave you your options and if you call the police, you’re the only one going away in handcuffs. You’re the one who’s spent thousands of dollars of drug money. And even if they don’t take you away, I will make you wish they did. I’m sure there’s a couple of pages left at the back of my little hit book for your lovely wife and if I’m feeling generous, bump can have a page all of its own. What do you even care? They’re just names to you.’ Blood seeped out of Andy’s ear and down his neck. Even if he sacrificed himself to prison he left the future of his family completely unguarded in an address very well known to the person they were most in danger of. Rick had him and they both knew it.

Rick even used to hold a couple of their ‘business meetings’ at the house. Lou had become unknowingly fond of him. It was a threat.

‘Andy, my man!’ He was broken him out of his reflective daydreaming as Rick sat in the seat in front of him. Rick was surprisingly visually unthreatening. More like a rich man who had enough money to be powerful, rather than a tattooed, skin head, could-kill-you-with-one-hand kind of guy.

‘”I’m not sure why we’re here since you know, you can move on to the next page of the book by yourself can’t you? We’ve really discussed everything that needs to be discussed and here isn’t the place for it if we haven’t.” He reached across the table dipping his finger in the foam of Andy’s coffee. The faces.

‘Look, I just feel like … maybe I’ve paid off my debt okay?’

Rick’s foamy finger froze mid-air. Andy held back the urge to flinch while he watched the cogs of Rick’s brain work overtime. ‘Okay. One last one. And we’re done here.’ He moved away from the table. But it was those cogs Andy worried about. He couldn’t tell whether God really was finally digging him out of his hole, or if the devil was about to push him into his grave.

Linda Buckley. A new and last face for him to take care of. Apparently she was the type of woman who thought of herself as the pinnacle of moral standing. A preacher of her own beliefs and justifications. She ran an AA meeting on a Wednesday night out of the goodness of her own heart. Or to force said goodness down other peoples’ throats. Which coincided when Rick told Andy she’d driven one of his own work partners to suicide. Rick had done his research and declared to Andy that she kept a gun in the second drawer of her bedside table. What he would use to stage her very own suicide.

And here Andy was. In her garage with the small, middle-aged woman tied up in front of him while he made the necessary preparations. She was somehow able to talk her way out of a gag. Rick had been right about the preaching part. And Andy was an amateur assassin who couldn’t comprehend how to effectively gag someone.

‘Look I don’t even know you sir, and to come into my home and invade my privacy is one thing but to tie me up like an animal! You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not going to say anything? You’re not even going to try and justify your own actions?! You are an evil, evil man I swear when this is over and you’ve robbed me or whatever you want, I will have the authorities on you so fast you won’t even be able to enjoy your stolen goods I-’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Andy spoke for the first time of the thirty-minute ordeal. He was running out of time, but she was making it difficult for him. He looked down noticing silence for the first time and saw his hand was pressing the gun against her forehead. The faces.

‘Sir’ she quivered. She was visibly shaking. ‘Whatever I’ve done to hurt you, I’m sorry, I am truly sorry.’ Her voice was practically a whisper.

Andy was crouched in front of her, his own face in his hands.

‘Can you please stop talking? It makes this whole thing a lot easier for me, if you all just... stop. Talking. Because this isn’t my fault if anything it’s your fault.’ Every face he’d watched the life drain from whirled around his brain like film running off its track. ‘It’s all of your faults…’

‘All of us?’ Linda's voice cracked.

‘You’ve all pissed off the same guy- I did too- that was different- an accident, I didn’t even know… what you guys did was bad, objectively bad.’ He wasn’t making any sense. But the faces.

‘Who are you doing this for? All I do is spend my time with recovering addicts how do you know anything he tells you is even true, I’m a good person I swear to you I am.’

‘No, you’re not, none of you are! Neither is Rick… look it’s me… or it’s you…’ He was talking too much. It didn’t matter she’d be dead soon anyways.

‘I didn’t do anything to a Rick, the only Rick I know is a low life who used to sell to the addicts I sponsor! I haven’t done anything to him! He’s lying!’ She was screaming.

Andy felt his heart stop. Recovering addicts. Rick’s clientele. The faces.

‘Shut up!’ What if? What if it was a lie… every single face. He couldn’t breathe. The faces. He could see them. They would never stop. The gun shot up; he instantly pulled the trigger. Linda watched his body hit the ground.