“You LIED to me!” Xana boomed from the door. Her jaw was set. Her eyes glowed. She was a behemoth and a terror on two feet.
Abby sat on a stool drinking at the back of the converted garage. She turned. Everyone got quiet. Fans twirled high above half-empty beers. Men holding sticks around the pool table stood straight and stepped back. A cord ran from the ceiling down to a fat TV blaring in the corner.
Xana strode in and the floor shook.
The bartender walked to the register at the back. He was a heavy man with a full beard. “You two dykes take this outside.” He reached under and lifted a shotgun over the counter.
Xana grabbed the pool table with one hand and flipped it toward the back. The sight of flying furniture spooked the gunman, and he pulled the trigger. The buckshot ripped into the green felt as the heavy slab turned over in the air and smashed into the bar. The bartender hit the ground and covered his head amid shattering bottles and splintering wood. The table rocked to a halt and lay at an angle against the shattered counter. The patrons made for the door.
Xana walked to the bar, leaned over, picked up the shotgun, and bent it with a grunt. Then she handed the curved-barreled weapon to the man on the ground. He took it.
The door to the back swung open and a dark man in a leather vest appeared holding a machete. He froze when he heard the growling. He turned and backed toward the front door. The dog matched each step with a toothy snarl. The man turned and ran. The dog bolted after, but Xana whistled and the animal went from snarl to smile. He trotted over and sat by her.
The bartender stood blinking with the curved shotgun.
“I need a few minutes. With my friend.”
The man looked between the women. He looked at the bent gun. He looked at the pool table. She’d flipped it across the room with one hand. One hand. He nodded silently and walked out the back.
Abby eyed the front door without turning her head. Xana stared at the reporter and paced back and forth.
“You’re different.” Abby watched Xana pace. She was so big.
Xana turned and walked and turned. She couldn’t remember wanting to hit someone as bad as she wanted to hit the skinny woman. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It’s just, you would barely look me in the eye when we first met.”
“I didn’t know any better back then.” She kept pacing. She was near tears, but not from pain or sadness or even anger. She clenched her fists. It was frustration. She wanted to pound things. Everything. “Not until I had to go to the courts.” She pointed across town. “Deal with lawyers and businessmen. I knew people were mean, like my dad. But he’s just an angry old fool, beat down by life. You could tell, half the time he didn’t even know what he was doing. But I never thought to ask what beat him down. I never asked what made him that way.”
“And what’s that?”
“You. All of you . . . You’re not fools. You know exactly what you’re doing, using people. Lying. Whatever. You know it. And you do it anyway. And not just one or two but all of you. You’re all so mean and miserable and you go around making everyone else mean and miserable.”
“That’s how it is, Xan.” Abby shrugged. “It’s good to see you’re figuring it out. I had friends once, you know. Lots of them. A whole city full of people singing my praises, saying I was going to win a Pulitzer one day. That I was one to watch. And they were all just liars. They all say it to get a little taste of the glory.” She rubbed one arm. “To get a little rubbed off onto themselves. No one cares. Not any more than to frown at your trouble and say, ‘oh that’s too bad,’” Abby mocked with a whiny voice.
Xana shook her head. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do an—”
She raised her arms. “Why are you in Guyana?”
“Ha!” Abby laughed. “I don’t have to ans—”
“WHY?” Xana screamed. She threw her fists into the air.
The big woman’s bellow was louder than any Abby had heard. It stung her eardrums. It was like standing too close to a bell. Abby took a deep breath. “This is where I got a job.”
Xana raised a finger to Abby’s face. “Truth is the whole truth.”
Abby looked at the finger. Xana’s fist seemed larger than her own head. “I made a mistake.”
“What did you do?”
“I invented a source.”
“So you lied.”
“No. It was the truth. No one ever questioned what I said, just how I said it. I didn’t have time. I was onto something. It was important. People were being hurt. I needed the scoop. I couldn’t get anyone to go on record. Selfish fuckers wouldn’t risk their careers. But it was important, and what I wrote was the truth. No one ever said it was anything but the truth.”
“You lied.”
“I made a mistake. Jesus, so many fucking holier-than-thou assholes come out to laugh at the human being who makes a fucking mistake. And all those people who praised me and held me up, turns out they didn’t care at all. No one came to help. They just called me names. Bitch. Cheater. Brat. And in print, too.
“I could’ve managed it. I could’ve come through if they just would’ve—”
“HA!” Xana raised fists again. “You cheated and then you blame everyone else.”
“I made a fucking mistake. Fucking sue me, okay. So I’m not the next great . . . whatever.”
Xana shook her head. “You aren’t going to help me.”
“Yes, I was. I mean, I am.”
Xana shook her fists. “No, you weren’t. Even if some part of you wanted to, there’d be another story, another big break. You just needed me to get what you want.”
“That’s not true.”
“Stop!” Xana stepped forward. She grabbed the American’s shirt and lifted her into the air. “Stop. Lying.” She wanted to shake her, but she held still.
Abby’s sandals dangled two feet off the ground. She stared wide-eyed at Xana. The big woman wasn’t even straining. Abby’s hands shook with the realization of her own powerlessness. Her teeth rattled. She was a doll in Xana’s hands. A doll. Nothing more.
Abby raised her arms in surrender. “The whole truth.”
Xana scowled from under her heavy brow and lowered the American to the floor.
Abby cleared her throat. “The Swiss guy is a geologist. Ostensibly he works for the Guyanese government, but his salary is paid by some private organization. Something called the Consortium. He’s in Guyana looking for bauxite. You know, aluminum ore.”
“I know what it is. Everyone here does.”
“Supposedly they found another strike.”
“That happens all the time.”
“Yeah, but the last one was west of the Demerara, which is all land claimed by Venezuela. The Chinese and the Americans won’t wade into a border dispute. And the time before that, the deposit was too remote to be cost effective.
“Supposedly, this find is down south, which puts it outside any contested land. Plus it’s close enough to the Essequibo that they can float the ore downriver. The Chinese are interested. They need it as much as this Consortium or whatever, and they’re rich. They’re ready to put up the money for the development as long as the government clears the land for mining and gives them certain legal assurances. And I don’t mean contracts. They want legislation publicly granting them certain rights. I guess they’ve been burned too many times. But that kind of visibility won’t be popular, which means the politicians won’t do it unless they get a cut. Mal McDoom has enough ministers in his pocket that he can broker the deal, so he—”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Xana yelled. “What about Mama Enecio?”
“You should care. Mama cares. If it all goes through, a whole mining town will spring up in the jungle, practically overnight. Workers will come in from all over. They’ll be too far from anywhere to leave, except when the mine shuts down during the rainy season. They’ll need liquor, gambling, drugs, whores. You name it. Mama’s looking to keep her monopoly. As long as she pays up to the right people, she’s in.”
Xana was silent.
“For some reason, this country’s biggest power peddler has put you directly in the path of the Chinese manufacturing machine, with the Guyanese government on the one side and a gangster on the other. They’re all vying for control, or for a cut, or whatever, and Mal McDoom shoved you right into the crossfire, Xana. He doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’s made sure everyone else wants you out of the way.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Okay? I’m serious. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I won’t talk to Mal McDoom.”
“Do you really have a choice?”
Xana rubbed her lips. She paced.
“That’s why the police let you go at the hospital. This whole thing with Boraro is a setup to create a legal paper trail of violence and conviction. My guess is you’ll die in prison. And this Consortium . . .” Abby shook her head. “Whoever, whatever they are. It’s so fucking scary, Xan. Jesus, I’m getting goose bumps. Think about it. This whole deal will be initiated and brokered by a group whose name won’t appear on any paperwork. At all. And with no paperwork, there’s no proof, and with no proof, there’s no story.
“Last night, a couple hours after I got back, I looked out the window of my apartment and guess what’s parked down the street? The Speedy Delivery van. I freaked. Then there’s a knock on my door. These guys made it perfectly clear I had to drop it. All of it. Or I was going to be a story in my own paper when my body washed up on the beach.”
Xana turned back to Abby. “They should have done it.” She stepped forward. “Did they tell you to send Werm after me?”
Abby shook her head. “I didn’t want to end up dead. I have no proof. Of anything. I don’t have one piece of paper that shows these fuckers even exist. Get it? Proof is the only protection a reporter ever has. So I had to shut everything down. Just kill it all. Pretend it never happened. I thought . . .” She stopped. She looked nervous.
Xana nodded. “You thought I was just a big pushover and if Werm scared me, I’d go curl up somewhere and die and it would all go away.”
Abby looked down. “Something like that.”
“He tried to rape me!”
“What?” Abby stepped back. “Look, I just said for him to scare you a little. That’s all, I swear!”
Xana glowered.
“I’m sorry, okay? I am, but that’s not my faul—”
“Is anything? Is anything ever your fault? What do you get out of this, huh? Why chase a story if you’re not going to follow it through? Why go around ruining people’s lives?”
Abby raised her hands again. “You’re mad. You’ve got reason to be. I’m not arguing with that. But maybe we should talk after you’ve calmed down.”
“Why?” Xana stepped forward.
Abby stepped back. She wasn’t more than a few feet from the wall. “I know you don’t think much of me or what I do, and maybe I deserve—”
“Stop. Lying.”
“Listen! Alright?” Abby raised her voice. “People always think the press can just apply some kind of community standard in choosing what to report, but there’s no such thing. Out of the ten horrible secrets you hear about in a week, you can maybe do justice to one or two. So you have to pick.
“Yes, we pick the ones that we think will get the most attention. Sometimes, in hindsight, we don’t always make the right call.”
“What does—”
“Just listen!” She yelled. “I’m doing what I can to call some attention to this part of the world. The people back home, and in Europe, wherever, they don’t care about political corruption and police brutality in some backwater. Guyana’s entire population is equal to the Dayton metro. I looked it up when I came here. You know Dayton?”
Xana shook her head.
“It’s in Ohio. It’s the seventy-first largest city in the US. That means there are seventy cities in the US alone that are bigger than this entire country. Most people haven’t even heard of Guyana. They don’t care about the McDooms. Jesus, every time I even mention the name to someone back home they think it’s a fast food apocalypse or something.
“But a story about the Chinese and how they’re planning to tear up a few thousand hectares of rain forest to feed their insatiable manufacturing machine . . . That might get some eyeballs. But all that was before I found out about this Consortium thing.”
“No.” Xana stepped closer. “You talk a lot, but you don’t listen. What does that do for you?”
“I was getting to that. If I get a few good stories, solid stories, scoops even, well-researched, timely, important . . . maybe someone hires me back. Maybe.”
Xana nodded. “Always about you.”
“It’s because of you, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I had given up. Totally. I thought my life was over. That I’d never accomplish anything. A couple times, right after, I even thought about . . . But then that story about you got some play on the Internet. Nothing spectacular, but it got passed around. I didn’t think I’d be able to write anything here that would interest anybody, but you proved me wrong. You gave me hope. So I started digging.”
Xana snorted. “And you found something. Your big scoop. Never mind the cost. To me. To anyone. Boraro took a little girl!”
“I never wanted to hurt anybody!”
“That article ruined my life.” Xana stared at Abby. It was both accusation and indictment.
Abby was silent.
“Not that you care.” Xana shrugged and sat on the floor. She sighed and dropped her head. The dog walked over and she rubbed his ears. “All that article did was prove to everyone that I was a freak. An oaf. Why couldn’t you have told them that I was a good mother? Or that I worked hard?”
Abby put her hands in her pockets. She was quiet. “No one wants to hear about that. About how you’re just like them. They want to hear about stuff that’s different. They want the freak show.”
“Yeah . . .” Xana nodded. “That’s what the prophet wants. And you led him right to me.” She snorted in derision. Her eyes were on the horizon as she petted her only friend. Her voice was quiet. “I have no money. No place to stay. My son is gone. And I will be dead before I can ever see him again.”
“Oh, whatever.” Abby turned away.
Xana glowered from the floor. Her eyes burned at the reporter. “Don’t ever talk about my illness. Don’t ever talk about my son and don’t ever talk about my illness! You have no idea what it’s like. The docto—”
“The doctors?” Abby interrupted. She pointed out the window. “You mean the ones at the clinic run by the McDoom Foundation?”
Xana bit her lip.
“He’s played you, Xan. Like a fucking fiddle. He even gave you that job at the sugar plant so you’d be financially dependent on him and he could strategically fire you whenever he wanted.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying. You’re not stupid. You like to pretend you are so you don’t seem like a giant threat. But you’re not.”
“You’re saying I’m not dying.”
“I don’t know.” Abby raised her arms. “Maybe. Probably. But I’d be damned suspicious. Shit . . . I don’t believe for a second that your heart’s gonna burst or whatever they said.” Abby laughed. “Jesus, you’ve got the biggest damned heart of anyone I’ve ever met.” She looked at Xana’s broad chest. “Literally!”
The big woman pulled on her wild hair with both hands. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Abby was a liar. So was everyone else. How does anyone ever know what to believe?
“Look, I know what I did was wrong and it’s none of my business—”
Xana’s face snapped up. “No, it’s not.”
“But you gotta go talk to him. I don’t want to see things get any worse for you. There’s just no other way. You gotta at least try to reason with the man. Tell him how great he is. Play to his ego.”
“No.”
“Xan.”
“No.” Xana made fists and punched the floor. It creaked.
Abby sighed. “Wow. I never thought I’d ever actually say this. And mean it. But . . .” Abby took a long, deep breath before she spoke. “What would Jesus do? Hm? Like, what would he say right now?”
Xana closed her eyes. She exhaled slowly. “That I should be humble,” she whispered. She pointed at Abby. “Stay away from me. Forever. If I see you again, I—”
“I got it.” Abby raised her hands. “Really.”
Xana stood and strode to the door on powerful legs. The dog followed.
“Where are you going?” Abby asked.
But Xana didn’t answer.