#roy maddock

With the cafeteria’s breakfast crowd finally dispersing, Upham set down his serving ladle, hung up his apron, and set to work clearing the dirty dishes that hadn’t been returned to the serving station. There were a few other volunteers and friendly folk helping out with the cleaning, and Roy nearby was making a valiant effort to rouse Alkins from where the man sat slumped in his seat with his head buried between his arms. He shook his head fondly at Roy’s well meaning but probably futile attempts, shooting him a commiserating grin as he passed Alkins’ table. Roy cracked a smile of his own as he caught the look, and then returned to gently shaking Alkins’ shoulders.

‘Gently’ isn’t going to do much good with someone like Alkins, Upham mused, stacking plates at a table a little ways away. He never moves until he’s good and ready. Or if… He glanced over at where the so-called assassin Raz Smith and his apprentice Mark Wilmans had sat down fifteen minutes ago for an apparently very late breakfast on Smith’s part, since he was the only one of the two with a plate. Where Smith’s hair hung limp and mussed and his ill-buttoned shirt sagged underneath his trademark long coat, Mark cut an impressively neat figure for his age and living conditions, hair combed straight and plaid shirt minimally wrinkled.

“I guess you two were lucky that I still had some food leftover,” Upham remarked, shifting his grip on the plates and cutlery as he approached their table. Smith paid him no mind as he hunched over the table, too busy stuffing his mouth with beans and pork sausage. His apprentice, Mark, stood at attention.

“Master slept in this morning, so I ate before him,” Mark said. He looked down at Smith with a blank expression. “On his behalf, I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Smith washed down his food with a large gulp of water, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “No need to apologize, Student Number One. Breakfast is included in the rent, and it is his job to have it on hand. To do otherwise would be insanity, and such insanity would be meager in comparison to my own.”

Upham had no idea whatsoever if that was supposed to be a compliment or insult coming from Smith, and reacted with little more than a mild shrug as he swept past their table. “Well, I don’t mind as long as you return your plates and utensils to the front. It all needs to be washed before the next mealtime.” With that he was off to the next occupied table, where a little girl in patchwork clothes swung her feet and stared at him with wide, hawkish brown eyes. Hers was the only chair at the table.

“Hi,” Upham said, in what he hoped was a pleasant, non-threatening sort of voice. “You’re not alone, are you? You got someone here who looks after you?”

The girl nodded. She had yet to blink. Upham didn’t want to admit it, but he was starting to feel a little creeped out. “Can you point them out to me, please? I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

Without turning to look, the girl pointed off to the side at a woman in equally threadbare clothes furtively wrapping a large chunk of cornbread in cloth and tucking it away in a pocket of her dress. Apparently she had yet to realize that the facility was perfectly happy to let diners store food for later.

Upham sighed, the knot in his stomach untying itself. “Phew. You stay right here until she comes back for you, understand?” Not that he didn’t trust the facility’s boarders, but it was always good to reinforce the importance of caution. The girl nodded, and he walked away with her gaze prickling at his back.

He spent the next five or so minutes clearing tables, and it was only after he’d collected all the abandoned plates did he sit in an abandoned chair for a small break. It was common for him to spend the entirety of the breakfast rush on his feet, bending over sizzling stovetops and refilling the buffet serving trays when their contents ran low. His feet were probably more callus and blister than skin at this point, and he ruefully acknowledged that he might have to use some of his precious savings on a new pair of sturdy boots.

Hell, and it wasn’t as if his hands weren’t feeling similar wear and tear. Minor burns from oil droplets speckled his skin, shallow half-healed cuts from kitchen knives cracking across second and third knuckle joints like comet trails. The calluses he’d earned during training with the Lemures seemed laughably pillow-soft in comparison to some of the doozies he’d earned as a part-time cook, especially the thick one he’d developed at the base of his forefinger.

Make no mistake – training with the Lemures hadn’t been easy. They had taught him knives and guns and how to use them against humans, how to kill a man in two minutes and how to kill him in thirty. They’d taught him to be a terrorist, and that in itself felt like something between a bad dream and a waking nightmare, no matter how useful the skills were. Sometimes it felt like being a cook was harder than anything he ever had to do as a Lemur, and it was easy to believe such a thing when his life as a Lemur had happened to some other Upham – Upham the terrorist because ‘terrorist’ didn’t fit him, not him, it sounded wrong and unreal and he didn’t want it.

Most of the time it was harder being a cook than a Lemur, and then his arm would ache and he’d feel the cool sting of steel plunge into him all over again, hear the distant roar of gunfire as he shot round after round into bull’s-eye targets and play at being a soldier in military uniforms he didn’t deserve to wear. One moment he’d be prepping sausage for the breakfast rush, slicing through meat with ease, and in the next he was sliding a blade into a real human being and putting more effort into it then he ever had into a slab of dead pig. There had been terrified innocent passengers and there had been him, equally terrified and mostly indisposed and still complicit by association no matter how timid or reluctant he had been. A timid, repentant terrorist was still a terrorist.

He pressed his callused hands to the soft skin of his face and tried to remember a time when his hands had ever felt gentle.

“…Hey pal, this seat taken?”

Upham lifted his head and saw a slightly young man wearing a purple-hued outfit standing by the opposite end of the table, cap in hand. He seemed unassuming enough, if not vaguely familiar, but Upham had to wonder why such a fellow wanted to sit with him when there were plenty of empty tables at his disposal. Not wanting to be impolite, he nodded his consent and straightened in his seat.

The man claimed the chair without further ado, keeping his right hand shoved into his right jacket pocket in a way that made his movements conspicuously awkward. “The name’s—” He paused, let out a long, resigned sigh, and began again. “Aw hell, just call me Shaft. It’s the only name that people seem to know me by, these days. It’ll be easier on both of us.”

In comparison to the variety of eccentric characters Upham had met while working at the cafeteria, this guy’s odd introduction was hardly worth sneezing at. “Upham,” he said, giving Shaft an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid you just missed breakfast, but if you’re hungry I can see what I can do. I work here, so...”

Shaft waved away the offer with the cap in his left hand. “Nah, I ate already. Appreciate the offer, though.”

“Well, I can get you some water,” Upham said, getting to his still-aching feet. “It’s the least I can do.”

A tense silence levied the air between them. Shaft’s smile faltered, and his gaze drifted over to the serving stations. “Ah…yeah. Sure. Thanks.”

And so Upham was off, passing Alkins – who was still slumped across his table – on his way to fetch and fill two glasses from the kitchen. Roy was nowhere to be found. Presumably he’d given up – Upham didn’t blame him. The return trip found a group of unfamiliar dockhands loitering around one of the serving stations, burly and swaggering and just loud enough to warrant an alert eye their way.

Once he reached home turf, he set the two waters down on the table and retook his own seat with a relieved sigh – he figured that chatting with a potential boarder was as good an excuse as any to stave off washing the dirty dishes for a little while longer. With that in mind, he cleared his throat. “So – are you needing a place to stay a while? We’ve got rooms if you are.”

Shaft, who’d been staring fixedly at Upham’s glass of water, roused himself and let out a sheepish laugh. “I got a place to stay, actually. Didn’t mean to lead you on or nothin’.”

That was all right. No harm done. Upham shrugged. “Someone else who needs a room will come along. They always do. I figured I’d ask ‘cause most people who come here are usually looking for either food or board. …Well, it’s none of my business why you’re here, but if I can help with anything, just say the word.”

Shaft stared at him for a good couple of seconds, working his jaw like he was mulling something over. “You probably don’t remember me, but I saw you in the hallway when my bosses and I were visiting this guy called Nader a while back? He apparently blacked out or something so we followed Doctor Fred to Nader’s room, and you and your pal were already there talking with him. You guys left pretty quick, though. Something about maintenance?”

The comment had Upham choking, something close to alarm but closer still to anticipation skittering up his sides as he tried to dredge up the memory. What came to mind first was not Nader lying in his bed, but Nader holding him tight and pressing a fork to Upham’s throat, then Alkins smashing his bottle into Nader and dropping him with ease. Then came Nader situated in bed, pale and paranoid; and then there was that White Suit, poking his head into the room with a feral grin and – ah.

“O-Oh,” he said, throat so dry it was if he hadn’t drunk any water in the first place. Which he hadn’t. Right. “I, uh, may have blanked when I saw one of your bosses’ faces. The taller one. We’ve…met before.” He could vaguely remember making some sort of excuse about needing to do maintenance, and he definitely remembered the next hour of half-hearted tinkering in the boiler room, but Shaft’s face remained a mystery. “Sorry for not recognizing you.” He took a deep breath, and tried very hard not to think about the White Suit sicko holding his fellow Lemur at knifepoint three years ago. He failed.

Shaft frowned, brow furrowing. “Don’t be.” The look he gave Upham was hard and searching. “Really, don’t. I didn’t expect you to. I just…” He shrugged a lopsided shrug, right hand still shoved firmly into his jacket pocket. “I wanted to talk to you because…well, you’ve probably met a lot of people and seen a lot of things, working at a place like this. I like getting to know people who know people. That, and…” A long exhale, a twitch of the lips. “…We small fry gotta stick together, ya know?”

Upham’s mind whirled in a way that made it difficult to focus fully on Shaft’s words, but he’d caught the general gist and latched onto it with gusto. “Yeah,” he agreed, with a vigorous nod. “We do. I–”

A shout behind him had him on his feet in seconds, jerking around to find its source. The dockhands had crowded around Alkins’ table, jeering at and jostling him. One of them pulled at the whiskey bottle in Alkins’ hand, and pulling became yanking when he finally realized that Alkins’ grip was no less than that of iron.

“Hey!” Upham took a few steps forward, the folding knife in his trouser pocket conspicuously heavy. “Hey, knock it off. This isn’t the place–”

In an arc of glinting brown, Alkins brought the bottle down upon the offending dockhand’s outstretched hands. As the glass shattered, Alkins pulled out a whiskey flask from his pocket, stood, and proceeded to relentlessly beat the other dockhands with it. The flurry of blows was so fierce that there was nothing else the dockhands could do but retreat in inches, bumping into chairs and tables all the while.

A great smashing of wood on wood heralded the arrival of Roy, who burst into the cafeteria with a broom in one hand and dustpan in the other and thrust himself into the line of fire, heedless of the shattered glass underneath his shoes. He blocked an errant blow of Alkins’ flask with the dustpan and wielded his broom like a spear, jabbing it at the dockhands to hasten their retreat.

“All right, that’s enough. Alkins, stand down if you don’t want me to throw you out. You glaikit bastards can leave on your own…yeah?” It wasn’t a question; he knocked at the chest of the nearest dockhand with the broom bristles with no-nonsense authority. The men scrambled away from him and for the door that Roy had originally entered from, presumably realizing that there were far easier targets than Alkins out there to harass.

Sporadic lazy cheers sounded off from stragglers around the cafeteria, but Roy wore a rictus of a grimace that twisted his already sickly face into that of a corpse. Upham could guess at why: Roy wasn’t the type to speak so sharply to visitors at the housing facility, preferring to deal with conflicts with measured, reasonable dialogue. Upham sympathized, similarly inclined, but when it came down to it the facility didn’t always attract the best sort of people. One always had to deal with such folk firmly, and Upham suspected that Roy had been harshly reminded of the fact when his placating had failed to deter Nader from nearly killing him.

“Damn fools,” Alkins snorted, taking a swig from his flask. “Cretins, the bunch of ‘em.”

Roy shook out his arms, but his shoulders remained taut as he swept the glass shards into a neat pile. “I’ve never seen them before. …I hope they weren’t looking for a room.”

Another generous swallow of whiskey had Alkins jabbing a finger Roy’s way. “As if you’d give them one in the first place. If I see their sorry faces again I’ll let them know they’re not welcome, believe you me.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” snapped Roy, pausing in his sweeping. It was a rare sight, seeing him so aggressive. “Not within the facility, at any rate. I don’t want any trouble for Doctor Fred.”

Alkins grumbled but resettled in his seat, making no move to assist Roy in cleaning up what was technically his own mess. Upham bit his lip. “Er, Roy, do you need…?”

“No, no,” Roy said, already bending to sweep the shard pile into the dustpan. “I’ve a handle on things. Don’t keep your visitor waiting.”

Upham had nearly forgotten about Shaft, but when he turned he found Shaft sitting exactly where Upham had left him, fingers of his right hand tapping an idle rhythm on the table. With burning cheeks, Upham returned to his chair. “Sorry to leave you out to dry all of a sudden.” He flushed further at the brooding expression on Shaft’s face, but when Shaft didn’t immediately respond he found himself wondering if Shaft’s concerns really were elsewhere.

He tried again. “Everything fine?”

It took a moment for Shaft to look at him, but even then his gaze dropped to Upham’s glass. “Mm-hm. I guess it’s been a hectic couple of days, y’know? My boss ain’t exactly easy to work for. To be honest, I’m really looking forward to hitting the hay tonight.”

“I know the feeling, trust me,” Upham said, reaching for his neglected glass. Shaft’s eyes followed the glass upward, and his mouth tightened when Upham drank from it. Upham forced a laugh. “C’mon, quit looking at me like I’m gonna die or something, wouldja?”

He drank deeply, draining half the water in one go and relishing every drop. It was solely etiquette that kept him from imbibing it all at once, his body yearning to replenish all that it had lost during the breakfast rush. Shaft sagged in his seat, abruptly boneless with fatigue. “Die?” He hunched in on himself, shook his head. “Who’s to say you would have died?” Another shake of the head, viciously sharp. “Never mind. Look, I’d better get going, my boss doesn’t know I’m here and I can’t leave him alone too long or who knows what he’ll do.”

Whatever he’s going through must be something big. Upham stood as Shaft stood, pushing his confusion and alarm to one side. “I’d ask you to stay longer, but I gotta get back to work too…” Which was true; he hadn’t really expected their chat to last much longer than it had already. “Will I see you around?”

Shaft nodded after a long pause, flitting between meeting Upham’s gaze and staring fixedly at the spot between Upham’s eyes in an attempt to pretend like he was. “Count on it. You’re a good guy, y’know?” He gave Upham the smallest of grins, yet the sincerity was unmistakable. Upham’s chest tightened. “Maybe I’ll pop by sometime this week. After some sleep, that is.”

Upham saw Shaft off with a wave and a smile, taking a shaky inhale to collect himself. Smiles like that weren’t often turned his way. They certainly hadn’t when he was with the Lemures, who traded barbed smiles and raucous laughs without kindness and always with malice. Jokes were to be held at someone else’s expense. Their joy was ruthless, unforgiving, and wicked to the core, and perhaps if Upham had remained with them he would have forgotten how to be earnest, that life could be lived without cynicism for all things innocent and heartfelt.

…Honestly, he’d never been the most stand-up guy before the Lemures. A tad judgmental, a touch too rudely dismissive, and several yards shy of downright crude. Hell, the fact that he joined the Lemures in the first place and willingly took part in their terrorist activities, all for the sake of immortality…well, if that didn’t say something about his moral integrity at the time then Upham didn’t know what would. Spending time with the Lemures and immersing himself in that world had only exacerbated his worst traits. Spending time away from the Lemures meant spending more time in his own head then he had in years. He’d taken a hard look at himself, and hadn’t much liked what he saw.

After three years, Upham could say one thing with confidence: the Lemures would have made for terrible immortals. He could no longer fathom spending an eternity in contempt of all that was good and genuine. Elmer the Immortal, as terrifying of a nutjob he had been, had turned out to have the right idea of things – or so Upham had concluded. If one were to become immortal, one should above all else try to cling to optimism and sincerity.

This was not a conclusion Upham the terrorist would have drawn. Upham the terrorist had never viewed the world with such sentiment.

It had not occurred to Upham that he’d been deprived of sincerity until he found himself chasing after it in the wake of the Lemures’ downfall. He clung to every exhausted but appreciative smile from boarders in the breakfast line as thanks for the food he cooked, savored every thank you and compliment like a drowning man. The most important smiles of all, back then, had been Roy’s, for Roy had been quick to call Upham friend and friend as it turned out was so very different to comrade. Roy’s smiles were the sort of smiles that were small but always threatened to break into something broader, unabashed and unashamed of openness.

Shaft’s smile echoed the first smiles Roy had sent Upham’s way, back in those first couple weeks. Reserved but genuine, and always a tacit invitation for friendly conversation. Just as he had in those early days, Upham latched onto Shaft’s smile and its promise of camaraderie and headed off for the stacks of dirty dishes with a renewed spring in his step. How nice it was, to have a spring in one’s step. How wonderful, he mused, to have hope.

The Next Day

Upham was ten minutes into a fitful doze on one of the benches outside the facility when the shadow of a little girl eased him into wakefulness. The girl stood in front of him, blocking the setting sun with her hands clasped behind her back and piercing eyes that instantly marked her as the same girl whom Upham had briefly talked to in the cafeteria the day prior. She skipped away as soon as Upham straightened in his seat, vanishing around the corner before Upham could even consider calling out to her.

With a yawn, he squinted against the sunset and spent the next minute in a groggy haze of blinking and wetting of the lips that achieved little in the way of further rousing him. He would have slipped back into sleep were it not for a second shadow, tall enough to be that of a grown woman, and he reluctantly opened his eyes once more in the faint hope that perhaps she too would be kind enough to skip away and leave him to his nap.

The woman in question wore a tidy business outfit and a smile to match it, tight-cornered, cool, and pointedly unreadable. That her green blouse and grey mid-calf skirt were crisp and fashionable suggested a respectable job untouched by the Depression, and practically guaranteed that she was not here in search of a room at the facility.

Upham snapped to attention, posture ramrod within seconds. “May I help you, ma’am?”

“Only if you are Mister Upham of the poorhouse,” she said, and her accent was just as incongruent with the housing facility’s grubby neck of the woods as Upham had anticipated. “And you are Mister Upham of the poorhouse.”

“I am,” Upham said, heartbeat thudding through his ribcage. “That wasn’t a question.”

The woman acknowledged this with a dip of her head and a spark of pleased self-satisfaction in her eye. “When one already possesses the answers, one has no need of questions.” She stuck out her hand for Upham to shake rather than kiss, and the vigor with which she shook far outmatched Upham’s own meek offering. “Cynthia Forsyth of the Daily Days. Pleasure. I’m here to ask you about the Flying Pussyfoot incident–”

Upham jerked his hand out of the handshake, manners forgotten along with the ability to breathe. “I don’t understand,” he croaked. “I told you everything already ages ago. You’re not going to tell me that the Daily Days of all organizations somehow misplaced my statement, are you? I didn’t leave anything out, did I? What the hell do you want from me?”

Cynthia paused, her mouth snapping shut over what had just moments before been a toothy smile. “…Of course we have your statement on file,” she said, finally. “There were some items that I thought were worth looking into further. Just a few tiny questions more – that’s all I ask, Mister Upham.”

“If you’re wanting the names of the two immortals,” muttered Upham, sweat trickling down his back, “I haven’t changed my mind. You’re not getting them. I was a lowlife then and I might be a lowlife still, but I made a promise to that Smile Junkie that I wouldn’t name names.”

Cynthia’s hesitation this time took the form of her eyebrows ascending into her hairline. “Immortals…? Smile junkie…? No, I mean to leave you your privacy. Though if you do someday change your mind, I have a telephone number you can call.”

“No, thank you.” Upham normally never spoke so coldly to a lady, even back in his terrorist days, but he could not help the curt tone he used now. “How do I know you’re with the Daily Days, anyway? Your coworker had a name card pinned to his lapel, you know.”

“Come now,” Cynthia purred, smiling once more. “Is it so hard to believe that discreetness is fundamental to an information broker’s job?” She took the empty space on the bench next to Upham without invitation, sitting so neatly that she had no need of smoothing out her skirt. “All I want to ask you about is some follow-up questions about you and the Lemures. You spoke more of your time on the train than you did of your relationship with them, did you not?”

He shrugged, too frazzled to really properly recall how much he’d said one way or the other. “So what? I’m a nobody. It’s what happened on the train that’s the important thing, right?”

Cynthia leaned toward him, eyes bright. “We believe that everything is important, Mister Upham. Now, please, if you don’t mind… Let’s begin with the traitor Nader Schasschule. You informed your Master Huey of Nader’s despicable plot in advance, as I understand it.”

“Um. Yes.” Upham recoiled at the venom with which she spoke Nader’s name, pressing his back into the bench’s armrest. “I did.”

“And you never sought to betray Master Huey similarly, on the train? You may have been acting on Goose Perkins’ command rather than Huey’s, but you were always acting on good faith?”

They were veering into even stranger territory. “I was tied up for half the trip,” Upham retorted, heedless of hyperbole, “And when we arrived in New York, all the others were arrested. I was just a low-level grunt, I had no idea how to report back to Master Huey on my own. Master Goose was the one who maintained direct contact with him.”

Cynthia nodded, and though she possessed neither paper nor pen Upham got the feeling that she was taking notes. “I see. And do you still retain loyalty to Master Huey, even now? Or do you perhaps…wish ill will toward him as a result of your experiences?”

Every cell in Upham’s body crackled with nerves. This wasn’t an interview. It was an interrogation. “He hasn’t…contacted me,” he rasped, lungs creaking with every attempt at deep breathing. “I’ve acted on my own for all this time without a word from him. I don’t think he cares what I do. Hell, I doubt he remembers my name. If he showed up on our doorstep tomorrow and asked me to return with him, I’d…I’d…”

…He’d never thought about such a thing before. The possibility had occurred to him, but he’d actively avoided thinking about it despite it being an inherently inane concept. Once a coward, always a coward.

“I don’t know what I’d do,” Upham finished, after a long pause. “Look, I’ve just been trying to live my life as it is now, all right? I was cowardly enough that even if going against Master Huey had crossed my mind back then I’d have never done anything about it. To be honest, I don’t want to go back to that life of terrorizing people, I really, really don’t. And I may not have known Master Huey personally, but like I said – I have a feeling he doesn’t care one bit what I’m doing now. There are plenty of other disposable mooks out there who’ll hear the word ‘immortality’ and come running to take my place.”

Cynthia folded her hands in her lap and was silent for a long while. The last vestiges of deep golden sunlight faded into a gauzy lavender sky lashed with pink-hued clouds, and goosebumps shivered down Upham’s spine at the nascent evening chill. Something inside Upham begged him to enjoy the twilight for what it was, for him to take a great lungful of crisp air and savor the act, but he shuddered and shuttered in on himself and could not bear the thought of facing the world.

When Cynthia finally spoke, he could not bear to raise his head.

“I suppose all that matters, in the end,” she said, “Is that you didn’t betray him.”

“No,” Upham whispered, his strength spent. “I didn’t.”

His companion stood abruptly. Upham didn’t stand at all. Etiquette be damned, for all he cared. “If you had,” Cynthia amended, “You would have been hunted until your life came to a swift and abrupt end.” She pivoted with all-too-familiar militaristic precision, striding off without so much as another word.

Upham’s eyes burned, wretchedness pulling at the corners of his mouth, and he did not feel the breeze nipping at his fingers, did not tilt his face to the cooling sky. He did not look behind him at the light spilling through the front entrance of the facility, did not think of Roy or his fellow volunteers mingling with the dinner crowd in the cafeteria. He sat with despair ghosting across his skin, and even that hardened into all-consuming numbness. He sat, and felt nothing at all.

Two Days Later

“D’you ever feel like you’re being watched?”

Upham tossed the question out with featherlight ease, broaching the comfortable silence that had settled between him and Roy with only the barest hesitation. About half an hour ago, he and Roy had camped out at the front desk with a stack old ledgers dating back to 1931, taken one ledger each, and set about copying their aged, nearly illegible contents into brand new ledgers Roy had bought the week before. The contents in question recorded which tenants were staying in which rooms, what day they’d first checked in and when they checked out for good.

He’d initially been bemused by the ledgers’ existence, wondering why they existed at all considering the facility’s firm tradition of not squealing on its tenants. As it turned out, it was due to that very policy that the ledgers were the most curious guestbook records Upham had ever seen in his life: for instance, the previous front clerk had filled one such ledger dating to September-December 1933 with the likes of Mr. C.F. and Mrs. Daffodil and Little Boy Blue and The Tramp and all manner of other fantastical names, all of which would have made sense to the clerk at the time. And all scrawled in cobweb handwriting.

Their current front clerk had joined the staff almost a year ago, now, and Roy had once confided to Upham that he’d hired the man almost solely on account of his exceptionally legible handwriting. Upham and Roy were camped out at the front desk as a favor to him, as a matter of fact, covering for him so that he could finally take his girl out to see The Gilded Lily picture over at the local cinema. Not a single tenant had approached the front desk for assistance since Roy and Upham had arrived, oddly enough, not that Upham was about to complain.

Even the normal arguments and wailings one was wont to hear echoing off the hallway corridors seemed less piercing than usual, and the fusty, drowsy atmosphere that had enveloped the front desk must have gone and draped itself over Roy’s shoulders at some point because it took him several long seconds to register that Upham had said anything at all. With a ponderous blink, Roy shook off the dust-mote haze and finally offered Upham a lethargic nod. “I used to,” he said, setting down his pen, “Sometimes when I was high I was convinced that Martians were spying on me. One time I saw the eyes of a Bengal tiger blinking at me from the wallpaper. A few trips were so bad that I couldn’t shake the feeling even after the high wore off.”

It was the answer Upham had been expecting, one inevitably rooted in drugs, but it wasn’t the answer he’d wanted. Roy raised a knowing eyebrow Upham’s way. “…Now that I’m clean, though? Sure, from time to time, but doesn’t everybody? Although in my case—” he broke off to stretch his arms over his head, ever languid “—I can’t be too sure if the feeling is just residual of what I felt back then, or if it’s a separate feeling all on its own.” This was followed by a bitter tch, but whatever scorn Roy harbored vanished with a bob of his Adam’s apple and a smile Upham’s way. “Never mind all that. You’ve been feeling like you’re being watched, then?”

Upham replied with a non-committal hum, turning to the next page in his new ledger so as to absentmindedly scrawl JRB & R in the top row. “I guess so,” he admitted, all of a sudden reluctant to elaborate. Stupid. He’d brought it up in the first place. “Not all the time, just…now and then.”

“Well, it’s not like you aren’t being watched,” Roy mused. He flipped a page of his old ledger in turn, only to sneeze at the ensuing cloud of dust. “That girl in the cafeteria watches you like a hawk.”

“It’s not her. I mean, you’re right, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” Upham squinted at the name three rows down in the old ledger and tried to decide if it read Miss Dally, Dolly, or Dully. He settled on Dolly.

“…Does this have something to do with that reporter lass?”

Upham pressed into the downstroke of the y with such force that he punctured a hole through the page. He cursed himself, cursed the page, cursed the pen, and cursed once more for the hell of it until his temper was once more under control. “I won’t deny that she brought back some bad memories,” he allowed. And left me with a healthy case of paranoia. He couldn’t claim that she hadn’t, not after Roy had found him still sitting on the bench a whole hour after Cynthia had left. Not after Roy herded him back into the facility like he was an invalid.

At Roy’s expectant look, Upham hurriedly continued, “But that’s not it either. It started before I ever even laid eyes on that kid. Sure, I know, I know, I feed breakfast to a whole crowd of people on the regular, ‘course someone’s going to be looking my way, but…I dunno. It’s like the hair stands up on the back of my neck or something.”

He paused. Frowned at the hole in the page. “Maybe I’m the nutjob after all. Maybe that lady shoulda just turned me into the police.” Shoulda paired up with that Smile Junkie from the start.

Roy’s expectant look had turned into one of abject concern. “I think we should change the sub—”

“You know what the worst thing was?” Upham slammed a fist onto the counter, not even realizing that he’d shot to his feet until he registered the sound of his chair clattering to the floor behind him. Two days worth of latent molten rage surged within him, fever hot. “I told her that I was too much of a coward to even think of betraying Master Huey. And goddammit, that was the truth! I was a coward! I was a no-good coward and a no-good terrorist, and I told her as much. I let her walk away believing that the only reason I’d never thought about betrayal was because I was an incompetent little worm!”

He had to stop and gasp for breath, forearms supporting his weight as he slumped over the counter. “I never told her – I never told her – that there was another reason for why it never crossed my mind. That it wasn’t just because I’m a good-for-nothing coward.” Unfair, unfair, unfair. It was beyond unfair. “I never thought about betraying Master Huey because betraying him would have… It would have…”

With a wet, unhappy moan, Upham sank to his knees, folded his arms on the counter, and buried his face in the crook of his left elbow. “…It would have hurt Chané.”

It sounded pathetic even as he said it; it was exactly the sort of pathetic romantic notion that resulted in Spike and the others jeering at him over their beers and whiskeys evening after evening after evening. That he still pined for her after three years was pathetic in and of itself, and that he pined over a woman who’d never shown any interest in him in the first place – not even as a human – was the most pathetic thing of all. The other Lemures had made that abundantly clear.

Pathetic or not, it was the truth: doing anything that would have earned him Chané’s hatred had been unthinkable. He did everything he could to remain on her indifferent side and as far away from her wrathful side as possible. Pathetic, maybe, but wasn’t it at least something? He should’ve told Cynthia Forsyth, I was too much of a coward to think of betraying Master Huey, but you know what, lady, I was also too much of a lovesick idiot to think of betraying Chané. No, wait, try that again. I would never have betrayed Huey because I cared about his daughter. He should’ve told her. He could still tell her. He should go to the Daily Days right now, and–

“Upham?”

Upham instinctively looked up at the sound of his name and found himself on the receiving end of the most intense stare he’d ever seen from Roy, narrowed and steel-sharp. “Tell me about Chané.”

“...” Upham briefly lifted his head upward, thought better of it, and let his chin plop down once. Where had all that fiery anger gone? “I’ve talked about her before,” he said, voice muffled by the crook of his elbow. Reluctantly, he shifted so that his mouth was free. “What’s left that you don’t already know?”

Negativity and pessimism were not on Roy’s agenda, it seemed. “That you still talk of her three years on is proof that there’s something worth telling,” Roy insisted, his voice gentle. “What made her so special?”

Upham was sure he’d gone on and on about Chané to Roy in some long past conversation, but…something about the situation made him hesitate to take the question lightly. In that past conversation he had brought up Chané unprompted simply because he’d found himself missing her and ranted about every single remotely positive thing about her that he could recall. Like he was trying to give a sales pitch for his favorite pageant girl or something.

This…was different. This required thought. Upham scrambled to come up with something other than she was the prettiest dame I’d ever seen. He didn’t want to open with something as skin-deep as looks.

And yet...

“The first time I laid eyes on her, I couldn’t believe it,” he began, the words slow and tentative. “She was the most beautiful lady I’d ever seen. She’s still the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen.” He still saw her eyes in his dreams, but that was far too personal to share. “And it’s embarrassing to admit, but for a while that was all I saw. Her looks, I mean.”

That her beauty continued to play a substantial role in his continued pining for here was even more embarrassing, so that too would remain unsaid.

“Then I saw her in action, see, and realized that she was better with a knife and better on her feet than I’d ever be. See, that’s the one other thing about Chané that’s usually obvious right off the bat – most people don’t stand a chance in a fight against her. I’d never seen a girl like Chané before. Hell, I’d never seen anybody fight like Chané before.” Sure, one sometimes heard of women carrying around knives or umbrellas around to defend themselves, but lady combatants were something else entirely. And Chané was faster, more agile, and more precise than just about all the men who ever tried their luck against her blade.

At first, Upham had merely been impressed by the sheer novelty that a lady combatant promised – and then as the novelty wore off, he’d found himself deeply, genuinely admiring her skill. It was obvious that she must have been training since childhood. He couldn’t compete with her, and it turned out he was absolutely fine with that.

“There’s more to her than that, though,” Upham insisted, because there was, and it mattered. “She was always alone. I don’t think she cared, but…she was. She never tried to fit in with the other Lemures, and they wouldn’t have accepted her as one of them anyway because it’s not like they cared about her either. Spike kept making wisecracks about how frigid stiffs wasn’t his type and a few guys would try to, you know, goad some sort of reaction out of her now and then. Never worked. They didn’t affect her at all. That’s how strong Chané is.” He hesitated, the gears clicking into place. “That’s how strong I wish I’d been.”

Click. “The others kept calling her ‘Fanatic’, and I’m not going to say her devotion to Master Huey was healthy or anything, but she lived for something, yeah? Like a passion? She may have acted like she was just a tool for Master Huey to use, but that was her choice.” Click. “All right, so she was a fanatic, and I’m not trying to glorify that, but you know something? She was braver than all of us combined. She never hesitated to risk her life. Me, I’m terrified of forks.

“I guess I’m stuck on Chané because…because I’ve never admired someone so much in my entire life.”

Click.

Upham fell silent, flushed hot from the passion with which he’d delivered his speech. He blushed further still when it finally hit him that yes, he had, in fact, delivered a whole speech where just a few sentences would have surely sufficed. With passion to boot. That Roy had yet to say anything only made the silence that much more deafening. If it was possible to die from embarrassment, Upham expected he’d keel over at any moment. God, he hoped so. The sooner the better.

“C-Come on,” he said, wondering if his face was as crimson as it felt. “Your turn. Tell me about Edith.”

Roy stiffened slightly, but the wryness in his smile was apparent. “I’ve talked about her before,” he parroted. “What’s left that you don’t already know?”

“Hey, between the two of us, you’re the only one who actually has the girl,” Upham shot back, his confidence growing. “If I can say all that about someone whom I haven’t seen in three years and was never involved with in the first place, then you should have at least five times as much to say about your lady love. So…what makes her so special?”

Roy’s mouth opened and shut as he struggled for words, and he dropped his head into his hands with an honest to God whimper. “Oh, Edith,” he groaned, hands sliding downward to cup at his mouth. “I don’t deserve her. I really, truly don’t.”

Upham slid away from the table to finally righten and reclaim his chair, though it was more of an excuse to delay replying than anything else. Roy had always been fairly upfront about his past history with drugs, but he was always a little more reserved when it came to Edith. Upham had the vague understanding that she was somehow responsible for Roy’s recovery, and Roy’s various anecdotes painted him as hard to handle when high, but many details remained obscured.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Upham offered, wincing at both his own hypocrisy and the pithiness of the line. “Just look at how far you’ve come.”

“She saved my life, don’t you get it?” Roy shuddered. “I was horrible, back then. I was horrible when high and I was horrible to her, and when I was lucid I felt so bad about how horrible I’d been that I’d chase another high to forget how horrible I felt in the first place. Some people are sensitive when it comes to drugs, and then there’s me, so hypersensitive that I react to them on a whole different level.”

His gaze snapped upward to meet Upham’s own, dark and glittering. “You know how many times she must have cleaned up after my own vomit and tried to stop me from peeling my own skin off? I don’t, because a few trips I was so out of it I ended up with whole days just…gone from my memory. When the first fight broke out she should have left me for good. She should have left me ages back, but she didn’t.”

He let out a cracked sob of a laugh, shaking his head. “When I finally went and got myself into a worst case scenario – stealing drugs from one of the most powerful Mafia families on the East coast – she took one look at the scared mess that was her boyfriend and took it on herself to dig me out of the hole I made. She lied to her own Mafiosi employers for me, Upham. She went against two Mafia families all for my sake. You’re tryn’tae tell me I deserved that?”

“Uh—”

“I didn’t deserve her then and I don’t deserve her now.” Ah. A rhetorical question. Roy snapped out the statements like they were gospel, waving a hand at his body in an up-down gesture. “All this? I didn’t quit drugs and start making an honest living so that I’ll ‘deserve’ her in the future. I’ll never ‘deserve’ her, understand? That’s now how this works. Am I trying to make up for everything I’ve done? Maybe, but there’s no way I’ll ever be able to make up for everything. I can’t repay her for all that she’s done to me. All I can do…”

He trailed off, dragging the nail of his thumb over the large scar on his wrist. “All I can do is strive to be the ideal that she deserves. She’ll always deserve better than me, and I owe it to both of us to carry myself like I’m someone better than I am. Sort of like the idea where you dress for the dream job several ranks above your current station. Every drug-free day, every suit I wear, every honest dollar I make – it’s all for her, because she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. She’s the bravest and strongest woman in my world, and she always will be.”

Upham found himself nodding, having been swept up in the current of Roy’s fervor. A tiny part of him wondered if Roy had been similarly moved by Upham’s own passion, but he had to shove the thought to the side – Roy wasn’t quite finished, it seemed, though he was definitely winding down. “Well,” he amended. “It’s for both of us. For our newfound normal. Every day I’m clean is another success, and what I look forward to most… What I want more than anything is to continue living like this with Edith…until our peaceful days overwhelmingly outshine the days from hell.” With that, Roy dipped his head and let his hands fall limp between his thighs.

What was a plainspoken guy like Upham supposed to say to something like that? He ended up just giving voice to his thoughts, as simple-minded as they were. “Look at you, Roy… You’re dreaming so far ahead into the future, with a noble sorta mindset and goal and everything. Me, all I’ve been doing is saving up to become a musician. That’s the only goal I have right now, I guess. I’d say you’re way ahead of the game then most other fellas.”

“Having any sort of goal is already a start,” Roy said, not missing a beat. “Well, goals that don’t involved getting your next fix, that is.” He snorted at his own joke. “For me, weaning myself off the drugs meant all sorts of small goals. Being a musician sounds like a fine goal to me. Not only is it respectable, honest payment, you’ll be doing something that’s practically guaranteed to make other people happy. Not everyone can boast about something like that.”

Roy was at it again, always knowing just the right things to say that would make Upham feel warm all over. He hastened to try and reciprocate. “And not everyone can say they overcame a drug addition, kept their sweetheart, and landed themselves an honest job. Chané might be the person I admire most, but, uh, well...” Ears tingling, Upham cleared his throat and mumbled, “…I guess I kinda admire you, too. You really pulled your life together when the going was the roughest. The way you talk about yourself back then, it’s like you were somebody else altogether.”

He faltered. “And I’m the same old coward as ever.”

Roy regarded him for a long moment, sucking his already sunken cheeks further inward as he thought. “I never told you this, but I strongly vouched for you to Doctor Fred when you first came by looking for work. We’d only talked once or twice by that point, but, well…you reminded me a lot of myself.”

Upham’s jaw just about unhinged itself. “Huh?”

“Don’t worry, not in the way of smarts or nothing. I was a colossal idiot back when I was an addict. I talked like an idiot and thought like an idiot. What reminded me of me when it came to you were two things: you were a frail-looking coward,” he paused to shoot Upham an apologetic grimace, “And you kept beating yourself up all the time.”

“See, one of the reasons I liked being high so much is I was practically fearless during the ups. Downs are a different story… Point is, off drugs I was timid as anything. And all the time I kept putting myself down. Sure, I still do that, but I’m just saying that you constantly calling yourself every variation of lame, pathetic, and cowardly under the sun was pretty much my thought process throughout the whole mafia mess. So…when you came looking for work, I saw me in you and knew I’d have been grateful for someone, anyone to take a chance on me in your place.”

Roy blinked, and then threw back his head and laughed. “For the love of… Aren’t we a pair? Going on and on about how our girls are the greatest dames in the world and how we’re the worst reprobates to ever live. What a couple of old hens. The ledgers have been sitting here neglected all this time.”

Upham glanced down at the long-forgotten ledgers still spread open on the counter in front of him. “Ah.” The hole in the page was exactly where he’d left it –an observation so absurd that he couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face. Somehow he was drained and buzzing with a strange merry energy all at once. “The poor things.”

The quip earned Upham another minute of wheezing laughter from Roy, and his grin spread wider, wider as he ducked his head and tried to act nonchalant. He achieved this by fumbling for the pen he’d discarded earlier and checking its nib, pleased to see that he hadn’t accidentally split it.

“All right,” Roy said, tapping his own pen against the desk. “We should probably get back to work, otherwise at this rate we’ll never finish—”

From behind Upham came the jingle of the front bell, set to ring whenever the front door was opened. He twisted in his seat to get a good look at the newcomer: he was a man perhaps a year or three older than him with short blond hair, cheeks dusted red from the February cold. The man flashed a winning smile in their direction as he pulled off his gloves and stuck them into one of his coat pockets.

A prospective tenant, maybe? Upham didn’t recognize him, at any rate. He looked back at Roy with raised eyebrows, and Roy shrugged. Not a clue.

“Cold out today,” the man remarked, his beaming smile resettling into something a little less blinding. “I really oughta buy me a new pair of boots. Hope you fellas are insulated, otherwise one of these days the whole building’s going to come down with hypothermia.”

The man, like Cynthia and Master Goose, carried himself with an unmistakable military bearing that had Upham tensing and reflexively sitting a little straighter in his seat. He tugged at his tie. “Does that mean you’re interested in renting a room?”

“No, I’m here on other business,” said the man, looking over at Roy rather than Upham. “There’s no mistaking that scar on your neck – It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Maddock. I’ve a personal apology to make to you later, but first I’d like to speak with one of your volunteer staff. He should still go by Upham, I believe.”

Upham jolted as the man’s gaze swung back his way. Again, he looked back at Roy, but Roy could only give him a wide-eyed stare and a shake of his head. Upham slowly turned back to give the man a thorough once-over.

The man loosened his scarf with a relaxed fluidity that only wound Upham up more. “Please, don’t be alarmed,” he said, still with that affable smile of his. He carried himself with a brisk professionalism, sure, but Upham couldn’t stop himself from noticing that the man’s shoes were straight-laced in the army-style way Master Goose had required all the Lemures to follow; or the way he squared his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back like Master Goose did even in their time off-the-clock. Maybe he was with the police or the Division of Investigation, come to finally arrest Upham and make him see the justice he’d been avoiding all these years. Maybe he was one of Serges’ guys after all, come to reclaim him for some new mission.

“Really, it’s nothing serious,” the man insisted. He reached into his inner breast pocket and pulled out a notebook and pen. “My name’s Nicholas Wayne, and on behalf of the Daily Days–”

“What?!”

Upham’s stool crashed to the floor. He’d gone from sitting to standing with his feet planted wide, knife out and pointing at Nicholas from a shaking, outstretched hand, world fading in and out in whites and greys and fear, fear, fear. “Why won’t you people leave me alone?” he cried, alone pitching upward into a high whimpering wail. “Two times wasn’t enough? You think this is a game? I–I–oh God–”

His words fizzled into little hitching gasps, lost to the overwhelming roar of blood pulsing his ears. Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense, what the hell–

Nicholas closed the distance between them, and drove his right hand into the underside of Upham’s wrist and his other hand into the flat side of the blade. Upham’s fingers loosened involuntarily, and the knife flew out of his hand and skidded to a stop on the other side of the room.

“Shit…” Upham let out a sharp exhale, looking up from his now-empty hand to Nicholas in disbelief. Some of his shock was reflected in Nicholas’ expression, in the way his eyes widened in mild surprise.

“I didn’t know I still had it in me,” Nicholas said, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t beat yourself up over it – it’s not like your training failed you. I used to be in military intelligence, and besides – it looks like you were scared pretty badly, there.”

And then – he frowned. “Now what’s all this about you people and two times?”

Explaining it all took days, or hours, or minutes, for all Upham knew. It took backtracks and halting pauses and it took a warm cup of tea and Roy standing by Upham’s side throughout it all as he huddled on his stool and tried to keep himself together. He started with the Daily Days reporter who’d contacted him back in January 1932 and listened to him talk about the Flying Pussyfoot over the course of two days in the Jane Doe – No, he didn’t know the reporter’s name. No, he didn’t know how the reporter found him. Yes, he thought it probably was the thirteenth and fourteenth days of the month, but he wasn’t too sure. No, he never saw the reporter again.

Then he talked about Miss Cynthia Forsyth, whip-sharp Daily Days reporter who’d showed up two days ago interrogating him on the Lemures as a follow-up to the three-year old interview. How Nicholas’ military demeanor was reminiscent of hers. How strangely she’d acted. No, Upham didn’t have her business card. No, she never gave him that telephone number. Yes, she’d seemed sort of surprised when he mentioned the first interview, come to think of it.

“Well,” concluded Nicholas, his notebook shutting with a satisfying snap, “There’s no one named Cynthia Forsyth working at the Daily Days, I can tell you that much. And we definitely didn’t interview you back in January 1932. Oh, sure, we looked for you, but nobody ever made contact.”

Upham sluggardly shook his head. The entire conversation, he’d been treading water. “I don’t…get it.” He kept his gaze locked onto his hands, where they’d been tightly clasped in his lap ever since he’d finished the tea. “If that guy wasn’t a real Daily Days employee, then who the hell was he and what did he want?”

“The whole mess on the Flying Pussyfoot was covered up, right?” Roy folded his arms, leaning back against the counter. He hadn’t spoken much since the beginning of Upham’s explanation. “I mean – I sure didn’t see anything about it in the papers at the time, but from what I know through Upham it sounds like that train ride was a real nightmare. Maybe that imposter figured you were a good opportunity for firsthand information.”

“But how did he know?” Upham bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. He wiped it away with his thumb, and let his hand drop back into his lap. “How did he know who I was? Back in Chicago we were travelling under aliases, and once I reached New York I kept my head down and made sure not to attract attention. How... How did he…?”

A throat-clearing from Nicholas finally prompted Upham to raise his head and look at Nicholas proper. There was no trace of Nicholas’ earlier good humor to be found in his expression or stance; his mouth was drawn in a somber, thin line, and his eyes were murky with dissatisfaction.

“The Daily Days is going to be looking into this, believe you me,” he said, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “Impersonations of our employees, interviews under false pretenses… No, I don’t like it one bit. I’ll have my people start looking into the Jane Doe and taking statements from its bartender and regulars as soon as I get back to the office – normally I’d start talking prices with you, but since you’re a victim in all this I’ll keep you informed of the investigation free of charge.”

“Gee, thanks.” Upham wondered if he sounded bitter. He was too drained to really care how he came across, anymore. “And what about that interview? I mean, you must have come looking for me to ask me about the Pussyfoot, right?”

Nicholas’ lips twitched. “It’d be lousy of me to hound you for an interview after all that, right? But yes, I’m still interested in your story.” He withdrew a business card from his left pocket and handed it to Upham as he talked. “Give us a call or a visit when you feel up to it, Mister Upham. I’ll personally hear you out, of course. I realize there’s something a little kooky about me expecting you to talk about one three-year-old incident while not being able to guarantee information on another, but – think it over.”

With that, he retrieved his gloves from his other pocket with a flourish. There was a startled noise from Roy on Upham’s right as he pushed himself away from the counter. “Er–didn’t you say you had some sort of apology for me?”

Nicholas paused, glove halfway on his left hand. He tugged it off once more. “So I did. Shall we take this into the next room?”

And so, Upham watched Roy and Nicholas head off into the nearest corridor with a quiet sense of unease churning his stomach. He’d already resolved to apologize to Nicholas for pulling a knife on him, and just thinking about what he’d done had him rigid with mortification. Was this what Nader had felt like, back when Nader nearly killed him with a fork? That Upham had been on edge since talking with Cynthia (if that was even her real name) was a pretty piss-poor excuse for what he’d done.

Beyond the guilt and shame, though, was the persistent unease that had coiled itself around Upham’s neck like a noose and refused to vanish. To be visited by a Daily Days employee imposter and a real Daily Days employee within the span of three days was – it was weird, wasn’t it? It felt too coincidental to be a coincidence, even though he couldn’t see how it could be anything other than a coincidence. And Shaft’s visit earlier that week… Upham hated himself for this, hated himself for doubting. That one of Shaft’s bosses was another Pussyfoot passenger had to be coincidence too, but then – why’d he visit Nader out of the blue?

Upham had the nauseating feeling that he was being dragged into something big. Bigger than a train hijacking, even. To be honest, working at the housing facility was like voluntary limbo, where the employees were always on the periphery of the grand machinations of the outside world; where you could rub elbows with assassins like Alkins, Smith, and Mark on a daily basis, and where the Mafiosi investors would drop by and exert their influence in nudges and side-eyes and under-the-level deals.

He didn’t care about the Lemures anymore (excluding Chané, naturally). He didn’t care about train hijacking and guns or the government and he’d certainly stopped caring about becoming immortal. He cared about his newfound normal, his daily life with Roy and Doctor Fred and all the rest as he worked toward becoming a musician – all the things he cared about were precisely what a life with the Lemures could never have offered him. Sure, there were times when he missed those little moments of excitement sparking up his spine, when he managed to go beyond the limitations of his timidity and do something impressive or out of the ordinary…but if he had to choose, if it was an either or…

...Whatever. The point was, he had been just about content in his place in the periphery, and now he was heading into some great, all-consuming whirlpool, or teetering on the brink of a chasm he’d have a hell of a time climbing out of after falling down, down, down into its depths.

Upham briefly squeezed his eyes shut, and then spun around on his stool to pick his pen up once more. Misses Jekyll & Hyde; Dracula McAlucard; King Kong. He scribbled the names and dates down with a fervor that he hoped would not so much as mask the uncertainty inside him as overwhelm it. If he was going to be dragged into some tangled mess of a ruckus over the upcoming weeks then he’d have to act braver than he actually was; he could hide all he wanted, but at some point he’d surely have to come face to face with something, and he meant that literally.

He’d face whatever happened straight on and not run away – no matter how scared he was – because if he didn’t then he might as well never think about looking in Chané’s general direction again. There was no way she’d ever respect a gutless coward like him – certainly not when he couldn’t even respect himself.

So…Upham would try to be brave. That was all he could vow, when it came down to it. He hoped he had it within him. He owed it to Roy – no, he owed it to himself – to try.

The Fifth Day

With the cafeteria’s breakfast crowd well underway, Upham donned his apron, picked up his serving ladle, and set to work serving the steady stream of patrons lined up for his food and his food alone: a mix of fried potatoes, diced bell peppers, tomatoes, onion, and carrots, offered up in large vats alongside applesauce and old loaves of bread generously donated to the facility by two nearby bakeries. He’d woken up around four AM to start the prep-work, and a few other volunteer staff were helping out in doling out portions to the hungry diners. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t just leave the serving stations unattended – there’d been an unpleasant incident a couple years back where some hooligans had run off with two of whole vats of food because the stations were self-serve, and…well. One had to be careful.

Upham made sure to smile at every tenant and non-tenant he served. Be brave, he told himself over and over again. Be brave. Be brave. Easier said than done, when that awful feeling that there were eyes on him had been pricking at him ever since he'd taken his place behind one of the serving tables. The hairs on his arms had yet to un-stiffen, and his smile was perhaps a tad more brittle than he would have liked.

Be brave. Be brave. Be brave.

“Well, Student Number One? What do you make of today's breakfast?”

Be brave, Upham told himself, even as Smith gave him one of his mulish, imperious glares. He could only offer Smith a weak smile in return, suddenly reconsidering every culinary decision he'd made from four AM onward. Did I use too much pepper? Salt? If only we had oregano in the pantry...

Mark, on Smith's right, held out his bowl expectantly; Upham ladled a heaping mound of the potato-vegetable medley into it, and tried not to be anxious as Mark readied his fork for a taste test. "...It's good, Master," he said, and Upham couldn't suppress his sigh of relief.

“Well, then.” Smith shoved his own bowl forward, and Upham obligingly filled it. When Smith readied his own fork, Mark's hand shot out to grip his arm.

“Don't, Master. We're holding up the line.”

Smith frowned, perhaps taking umbrage with the fact that his apprentice was taking it upon himself to instruct him, but after a moment's begrudging nodded once and followed Mark off to a table in the back of the lobby-turned-cafeteria. Before Upham could so much as blink, Alkins appeared in front of him with a plate in both hands and absolutely reeking of whiskey.

“C'mon, fill 'er up,” Alkins said, words punctuated with a heavy cough. “Gotta offset this hangover somehow.”

Upham winced in sympathy, and hurried to give Alkins a tad larger portion than he gave Smith. Not too much larger, of course – they really had to ration breakfast and dinner servings at the facility, because there was only so much time and effort Upham and his coworkers could put into prep and there was only so much money that could be spent on food in the first place. They'd toyed around once or twice with the idea of offering seconds at a price, but it really depended on how many non-tenants showed up and how many people total lined up for food daily. There were just too many random variables that could affect how likely seconds were, and Roy didn't like chancing them.

Alkins inhaled deeply as Upham filled his bowl, muttering appreciative phrases once in awhile under his breath. When Upham finished, Alkins said, “You're the best thing that ever happened to this place, y'know that? Long overdue for a decent cook, we were. Long overdue.”

“Th-thank you very much,” Upham stammered, at a momentary loss. Alkins was the sort of person whose opinion you wouldn't typically hold in the highest regard – at least, not if you were a sober, non-murderous member of society – but you couldn't help but want him to have a high opinion of you regardless. Maybe it was his age, or the understated but clear confidence he had in his abilities, or both – there was just something about him that made you want to be respected by him. So Upham couldn't help but preen a little at the praise.

And so Alkins went off, and so it went; the peripheral members of human society filed past Upham at a steady, unrelenting pace and he did his best to feed them, still never able to fully shake the feeling like he was under some sort of microscope. He shuddered at the thought, and shuddered from fatigue, and tried to pretend like he was a functioning member of society to those who passed him. Nothing to see here, folks. Move it along.

“Wait a minute - hey, wait just a minute. You're the trespasser, aren'tcha? Hey, Rachel, it's the trespasser!”

Upham jerked his head up in shock. On the other side of the table stood a redheaded man, whose hand shot toward the shoulder of the blonde lady in front of him as to punch it – only, the man seemed to think better of it at the last second and settled for shaking her shoulder violently instead. The blonde lady turned and gave him a blank, uncomprehending look.

“C'mon, don'tcha remember?” It wasn't entirely clear whether or not the redhead was talking to 'Rachel' or Upham - likely, he'd been addressing both of them. The man leaned over the table and Upham drowned in his gaze, his wide, wide eyes that seemed to reflect and absorb the light overhead all at once. “Say, didja ever meet up with that Elmer guy you were with afterward? I ran into him a few months after the Pussyfoot incident and told him to deliver a message from me if he ever saw you again. Well, did you ever meet up with him or what?”

Even after everything that Upham had gone through over the past few days... He still had the urge to say, 'I've never felt more confused in my life.' It was all he could do to reply, “N-No?”

“Ah, it was a long shot anyways. Well, I may not be a conductor anymore, but the message still stands: don't enter the conductor's compartment without permission. Sure, I told you that on the train as well, but it bears repeating, yanno?”

Conductor. Conductor's compartment. Pussyfoot. Upham's jaw dropped. No, it can't be... “You – don't tell me you're – ”

The man's answering cheshire grin was far brighter than the overhead ceiling lights and far sharper than any knife Upham had ever wielded. “The name's Felix Walken. I was the guy covered in blood who ran into you two in the caboose on the Pussyfoot. That reminds me – what happened to your arm back then, anyway? One of those Russo White Suit whatevers stab you or something?”

“I–I–” Upham felt as helpless as a newborn lamb, and just as lost. He'd slipped just a bit more into the chasm, been swept that much more into the whirlpool, and he was absolutely frozen to the spot. He was only just aware enough to notice Roy stepping up to the table on his left side, picking up his slack. Thank you, Roy. “No…it wasn't one of the white-suited men who stabbed me. I...you're not…” He swallowed. Did you know I was a terrorist? Are you going to turn me in?

Felix cocked an eyebrow, and nudged an elbow into Rachel's side. “Who'da thought I'd meet another Pussyfoot passenger in a place like this, huh? Whatshisname, Upham, that was it. I bet you Daily Days types love it when this sorta stuff happens.”

Upham sucked in a sharp, horrified breath, but Rachel merely shrugged. There was clear curiosity in the tilt of her head and the narrowing of her eyes, but it seemed on the vague side without much in the way of sharp intent. Maybe she didn't know anything about Upham or his situation? “Well...it’s something, I'll give you that much,” was all she said in response.

It was all coming back to Upham now: the grisly sight of the two conductors' corpses in the conductors' compartment; the man coated in human gore who'd appeared outta nowhere just to chastise them for trespassing; the knife that had pierced through the wall of the car and nicked the bloody man's ear. The strange encounter had more than perplexed Upham while simultaneously piquing his interest at the time, and he could hardly believe that the answer now stood in front of him after three years of putting the incident behind him.

“Excuse me,” a new patron said, and Upham was only dimly aware of him through the flash of purple shirt and bowl on Felix's left as he drunk in Felix's appearance and compared it to that of his memories. He could...yes, he could see the resemblance – the red hair, the pronounced jawline and piercing gaze – it wasn't impossible to match the man in front of him to the scarlet figure of his past.

“Excuse me,” the patron repeated, and Upham didn't even look at him as he ladled potatoes and peppers into the proffered bowl; he registered the man's leaving only as a swish of long, long brown hair and black jacket and a soft “thank you” and didn't stop to think about why the patron didn't just have Roy serve him instead. All that mattered was this sudden specter from his past, and the apparent Daily Days employee beside him.

“Look, once you're off the clock, why don’tcha join Rachel and I at our table for a little chat? The fact that you and I reunited in my world means that you may not have been just a one-off extra after all. Whaddaya say?” The redhead shoved his own bowl out for Upham to fill just as Smith had done: without much regard for manners.

Be brave. “...Sure, why not.” Upham filled Felix's bowl with care, trying to work up the nerve to look Felix in the eye. Be brave. When he did meet Felix's gaze he almost looked away again - Felix possessed the sort of electrifying gaze that threatened to swallow whatever power and agency you thought you had when you met it. But he met Felix's gaze, and he held it. “If you - if you promise to quit harping on me on train etiquette.”

“...Ha! You got more guts than I thought.” Felix beamed at him and Rachel in turn, and Upham's legs nearly gave out on him. “Well, Rachel's giving me the stinkeye, so you'd better go ahead and fill her bowl up so's we can stop holding up the line. ...That is why you're glaring at me, right, Rach?”

“Wow,” Rachel muttered. “You've improved.”

Upham saw the two of them off with the usual niceties and proceeded to not keel over onto the ground – no matter how much he wanted to do just that. In fact, he resumed serving patron after patron as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened...as if he hadn't just reconnected with a fellow Pussyfoot passenger, very probable murderer, and man-who-somehow-knew-Elmer in one fell swoop. Who also personally knew a Daily Days employee. Oh God. OhGodohGodohGod. He'd have to take him up on that offer on a chat, though - he had to figure out how much Felix knew about his activities on the train and how much he might be thinking of squealing to the cops. And how much Rachel knew, of course.

“Hey,” Roy murmured, on his left. “I realize that you knew that guy, but we only have so many hands on deck… You're not going to suddenly jump ship, are you?”

“N–” Upham snapped his mouth shut. The feeling of being watched was back - he hadn't realized it'd gone away during the unexpected reunion with Felix, but it was back again, creeping over every inch of skin and boring a hole into his very soul and he shivered and wanted nothing more than to crawl back under his moth-eaten blanket and never reemerge. Be brave. “No, you don't have to worry about that,” he croaked, sending another patron on her way. “I'll meet with him after the rush is over.”

Whatever Roy said next was lost to him, lost to the mantra of be brave, be brave, be brave whispering at him in the face of that wretched, miserable feeling. He didn't have any plans on being too proactive in the days to come; he knew what his capabilities were as a peripheral player to the Mafia and the Immortals' machinations, but – now was a time where he'd never been more befuddled, and quite possibly never more vulnerable. So he promised himself this:

You think of Chané, and you think of what it'll take for you to be able to hold your head high if you face her again someday. You think of what it takes to stay alive, and you do it, and what it means to be brave, and try like hell to be it.

Be brave, but also, strive to be the good man Shaft said you were. Upham raised his hand, pressed callused fingers against soft lips. Willed them to curve into a smile just like the one Felix had shown him, strong and hearty – and in the mode of Elmer’s smiles, one that would not falter in the face of danger. If his smile had a bit of Roy’s kindness, a pinch of Shaft’s stoutness, a smidgen of Nicholas’ bracing attitude… He’d be the better for it. Rather them then Spike’s nastiness, Goose’s frostiness, Serges’ sly underhandedness. He once had his comrades, and he now had his friends, and there was no question as to whose smiles he now wanted at his side.