The next morning the three of them crawled out of the rooms like a dead pharaoh from a tomb in a budget horror movie. “never again. I’ve drank alcohol in ten countries, I’ve been poisoned twice, somehow bunker brew has beaten the lot” Irene scolded, gripping her skull like it was full of angry hornets.

Ted grumbled forward, apparently he’d slept in his underwear and was now walking around in a set of spare military scrubs that didn’t quite fit.

They weren’t a soldiers uniform per say, but they definitely weren’t casual wear either – some kind of bastardised budget militia gear perhaps? It was almost like a jumpsuit, but it didn’t quite fit properly.

He’d compromised with the tactile itchy fabric by tying the sleeves into a makeshift belt that turned the jumpsuit into a pair of avante-garde baggy trousers. The look was completed with a jumper that should’ve been too big for him in theory, but clung to him regardless.

Ken and Irene followed suit, commandeering a military style jacket and a little European sailor hat that seemed more Paris fashion week than Dunkirk trenches. They looked better than they’d like to admit, and it was enough to keep the alcohol sweats from permeating the steel deathtrap bunker. The lock timer read 24 hours. 24 hours left until the door would let you open it again.

The interviewer sat there, steely and severe. Mangled croissant in one hand, notes in the other. She looked up at them until they withered into their chairs. After some niceties she parked some breakfast in front of them – boiled porridge and a plastic pack of bulk purchased croissants she’d brought for the occasion - and scowled at them some more.

“You want a scoop, I’ve got a scoop for you” Ted sat down, re-energised with a mischief in his eyes. “Where were we? Vegas!”

Vegas, mid 2010s Six months into working for the Klein family.

Ted stumbled back to the hotel room they’d been living in. He was coated in a thick layer of blood, most of it not his own. It was drying and sticky and the taste of copper seemed to coat his mouth and nose. He was injured and out of practice.

Klein sat on the boxy hotel furniture, his smile dropping when what was supposed to be a quick intimidation run manifested at the door. Designer suit ruined, intricate tattoos damaged, hair buzzed short. Wordlessly, Klein shuffled off the bed and grabbed the medical toolbox.

“It’s fine. Its not mine, its fine” Ted rebuffed. “I just need a hot shower.”

He limped towards the hotel shower, it was a modern hotel room, not the same one he’d been staying at before. While that one was full of thin walls and generic pictures of the cityscape, this one was full of glass and mirrors, clearly built for a couple with no privacy. Ted shed his bloodstained shirt off and his business trousers, kicking off leather shoes with an absolute disregard for whichever designer brand he’d been made to wear.

Ken stood there in the doorway, watching the splatters on his neck and his back dissolve in the water, ruining a perfectly good flannel. “Need a hand with that?” he asked, the guilt eating him up inside. He had to do something, anything, to make it better. There was a wordless nod in response, the poor bastard didn’t have enough strength to stand, let alone reply.

A warm, slightly leathered hand met the man’s back, grasping at a fabric loofer and the thinnest of pretenses. Ted slowly, steadily raised his arms up to wash the blood that was congealing into his hair, a red mist meeting the soap and washing down his face. The shampoo danced down his arms, pooling into scars and divots.

Ken assessed his wounds, his shirt now sopping wet as he tended to the dashes of red cut across Ted’s legs and his chest. There was something that looked like an arrow spike had been torn out. He ran his hand through the freshly trimmed buzz-cut, you could time the fights by Ted’s hair. He’d managed to grow it out to forehead length before tonight, the kind of hair that quiffs up into a rhino horn style spike at the front.

Ted found himself turning around to reach for something, and Ken switched from playing nurse-maid to admiration. “See, I’m fine, only a few scratches” Ted justified, showing off a new scar-to-be across his leg, and a splinter sized scratch on his forehead. Klein felt his arms moving without his control, it was automatic almost. Ted had played a part in their sexcapades before, but nothing like this. It was flirty texts, and naughty images of the man with his wife, her body laid across the bed like a ruben painting. This was new territory.

The warm cloth in Ken’s hand tended to the forehead, and then behind the ear, gradually aware of the eye contact. Should he dare? He risked it before the steam became opaque and locked lips with the assassin. The wafer of silk tailoring doing nothing to protect against the friction of the man’s bare chest.

***

After the hot, steaming shower session, Ted found himself in a hotel bed with makeshift bandages on, trying hard not to bleed onto the white linens. The millionaire mobster laying there in his arms not quite sure what to do with himself.

“Last time I stayed the night in a man’s arms Margret Thatcher had just finished being prime minister” chuckled Ken, clearly not used to the affection.

Ted gave him a playful look “oh yeah?”

“yeah, poor sod was a biker, it was for an art project with my wife’s favorite mistress” Klein replied, now sedate and lapsing into that half state between sleep and wake. Ted tried to lean up and get a better view at the older man, his arm giving way as he perched and causing him to stumble back down a bit.

“Are you still in touch?” he pondered.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“not unless you have a ouija board” Ken sighed, bracing himself for the next question, the one he knew was coming.

“What happened?” Ted asked.

“My wife, she didn’t mean to. I know she didn’t mean to.” Ken replied, considering clamming up if any more questions arose.

Instead all Ted responded with, was a simple reply of “I’m sorry.” and a kiss on the forehead.

***

Back in the bunker, Ken was trying to keep a straight face, or as straight as you can when an old anecdote about a sexual fling came up unexpectedly.

“He didn’t tell me anything else.” Ted justified openly, noticing Irene’s mouth agape.

The interviewer didn’t know how to smoothly pivot on that one. She wanted to ask more, but she knew that emotions were running high. If she held the quiet long enough Irene would say something, she was sure.

Irene didn’t blink. She was British. She kept calm and carried on, not wanting to have the obvious argument in front of guests.

“I can appreciate that, but if you hadn’t …” she protested, before withdrawing from her sentence. The sound of the plastic poker chip against a metal table seemed to cut through the conversation.

“You say this friend was lost during the Thatcher administration? Was this linked to the fire of 88?” the interviewer asked to no one in particular, waiting for someone to answer.

After a few seconds Baltic silence, the interviewer leaned forward and said “I’ve already got evidence tying the Klein crime family to the building in New York, it’ll be smoother if you just told me”.

Irene finally stepped up.

“She was one of few mistresses I actually liked” she began.

* * *

1987. New York.

Irene and Ken had lived in New York for a solid year now. They ran a bar in time square. Time square was different back then, it wasn’t a tourist retreat. It was a back alley, full of people of all walks of life having sex in the piss stained phone booths.

The bar was a fixer upper, but it was mostly for money laundering purposes, there was never a shortage of customers for alcohol sales, they sold the booze cheap and the drugs expensive. It was called Versailles, a misnomer referencing the french revolution. Especially fitting giving the questionable queens trotting around town offering their wares for the oldest profession. Today, however, was the day they’d meet their Madam De Pompadour.

Madam De Pompadour, was the mistress to the king of France, known for her wit, education and cultural wisdom. She was one of few historical mistresses that even had the queen of France on side – though Irene imagined part of that was the much loved reprieve she provided when the queen ‘faked a headache.’

The madam de pompadour of 1980s New York, was an art gallery owner from downtown. She wore heavy, bold jewelry and an eccentric set of wigs that laid on a disco bedazzled mannequin head when not in use. She styled herself in flapperish 1920s art nuevo circles of makeup, her lips pointed into a bee sting of sharp red.

While the other girls were in shocking electric blues dragged across their faces to a point, she was a full stop of a woman. A short, sharp, attention catching bullet of a girl.

She dragged her hoopskirt into the bar with a great scratch of chicken wire against the concrete floor, barely scraping past the door frame and into the bar where a redhead in a robust corset was sat, sorting through money and watching the crowd like a David Attenborough documentary.

“I need a drink, I’ve just come from a John Waters screening in an abandoned subway station and I need something to wash the smell of urine away from my senses. What drink can you legally only serve once?” she told the barkeeper.

Irene nodded behind the bar, producing a pale green liquid and watched the woman closely. “For you dear, I’ll serve it twice” she said with a wink, predicting an easy mark.

Getting art people drunk was always a fun social experiment, they’d froth about Andy Warhol or Keith Harring, or Neo expressionism until they were satisfied people knew they were superior, waving some heavily weighted, be-ringed hands into the air as they ranted.

They were always an easy target because they wanted to believe their own hype. You could sell them a bag of flour and call it ‘elite neo-marxist hypercocaine’ and they’d shill out twice the price, just to pad their own ego.

To her credit, she played the role well. “Lily Fisher” she introduced, with a flourish and a lipstick stained kiss next to her silhouette on her business card. It read curator and host in stylized writing, potentially done the old fashioned way, with a custom stamp and ink blotter to save money on printing.

“I heard there’s an art piece from an undiscovered artist somewhere in town late this week” Irene baited, “Between you and me he was drunk in here babbling about investment opportunities.” In saying this she lent forward, eye contact and a bite of the lips. Two absinthe shots down and rich enough to have a multi thousand dollar impulse purchase, Lily arched a drawn on eyebrow. “Keep talking” she rattled.

Irene and Ken had pulled this routine off 4 times before, getting some cheap street art from a local university student and passing it off as a big deal. It wasn’t technically a scam, some of these kids could be big deals … most of them didn’t pick up a brush again after graduation. She fished behind the scenes for a piece that matched this woman’s vibe, and plucked a painting of a technicolour flower, seemingly bleeding paint in splatters from the petals off onto the stalks. It was passable for technical skills, but more importantly it was 50 dollars.

“He was very rich, he went by the name of …” Irene thought of their locals and which ones would be willing to help out for a small cut “Fred Carlings?”

“Carlings? Like the beer?” Lily challenged gently.

“He’s a motorbike enthusiast, one of those …” Irene began, before using a word that she’d rather not include in a modern news report. It was a rough bar in the 80s after all, people used unpleasant words for all sorts of folks outside of the norm, but as long as there was a large enough financial incentive she’d work with them.

By this point in her career – especially in New York – she’d managed to work with (and against) all sorts of people. Everyone from drag queens to rabbis, the paper dollar didn’t discriminate, and neither did she.

Lily laughed a little. “Fred Carlings. Motorbike Fred …” she said toying with the idea of this man.

“you can meet him if you like” Irene suggested, ready to pen a quick post-it note for her boyfriend the second she was out of eye contact. Wear something TIGHT and SKINNY it would read.

Lily looked over the dripping absinthe contraption that’d been scrapped together in front of her, considering how to break the news. “I know Fred Carlings – he’s on my payroll” she let Irene know. “And that’s not his work.”

Irene winced a tad.

“he’s going through an experimental phase” she justified.

“Those flowers are meant as an intersectional take on the female genitalia, hence the splatter effect of bloods and oozes to represent the pains of birthing. Definitely an experimental phase for a man who specializes in charcoal landscapes… … … and is gay” Lily pointed out. “But you already knew about that.”

Irene backed off, not able to talk her way out of this one.

“Meet me on Friday, at the gallery. Don’t ask too many questions, and wear something light” Lily told her bartender, firmly putting a business card with an address into her hand.