Page 109 of Mr. Romantic (Mister 2)

“Did you ask Ivy?” Match says.

“She had some kind of argument with him when she went home for dinner the Sunday before all this happened.”

“About what?”

“Me, I guess. He looked me up. Told Ivy I was a deviant or something. Told her to stay away from me.”

“But why?” Match asks again.

“How should I know, Oliver? I don’t see the connection.”

“I do,” Perfect says. “Or at least I’m starting to. People are coming back. Allen came back into my life the same day Ellie popped into it. And somehow Allen and that Ellen Abraham woman were connected too. I don’t know how, but I know they were. Same thing with you, Romantic. You find a girl; your sister goes nuts. Now what we don’t know is what part Claudette played in those events ten years ago. Where does she fit in? Because I already know where Allen fits in. Too bad Boring Richard is dead. We could’ve put some pressure on him to give up the answers we still need. I should try and find Ellen Abraham. See if she might talk.”

“Yeah,” Mysterious says, snapping his gun back together with satisfying clicks. “And Boring Richard left me a present on the bed up in Nolan’s house. So that’s another clue that he’s connected to all this somehow.” He looks up at me and I see it. I see just how dangerous Mysterious really is. He’s out for blood over that little gift. And I don’t know how he managed it, but Mysterious picked up every piece of damning evidence left out at the MV house. The cops never saw any evidence of what Ivy and I were doing that night. He got his own reminder of the past safely tucked out of sight too.

Got to hand it to him. When Mysterious takes a job, he’s not fucking around.

“Well,” Match says, “we’re just gonna have to take care of business. That’s what my old man always told me. He always said, ‘Oliver, my boy, when the shit hits the fan, you just turn that fucker around.’”

“Your father’s a regular poet,” Mysterious says.

“Maybe nothing’s happening?” I say. “Not the way we think it is. I mean, we don’t have anything to go on. We just have your old vendetta with Allen, Perfect. And my sister is a crazy cunt. Maybe that’s all there is to it?”

“It’s not,” Mysterious says, stashing his gun in his pants. “You can’t overlook the fact that Mac had some weird woman fucking with Ellie at work at the same time Allen was fucking with him. And now we have two examples. Because Boring Richard was fucking with you at the same time as Claudette. Why was he looking you up?”

“He told Ivy her roommate told him to. But she asked her roommate after, and she said that never happened.”

“Yup,” Mysterious says as he looks inside a duffle bag. “What we have here is a classic tag-team operation happening, my friends. One operative distracts while the other takes care of business. And if anything else happens, I’m gonna do exactly what Old Man Match said. Turn that shit back on them. And they do not want to be my target. Whoever the fuck they are.”

“Someone needs to get a hold of Corporate and make sure everything’s cool with him,” I say.

“I’ll handle him,” Match says. “We have a business deal going, so he’s gonna show up for that in a few days for sure.”

“All right,” Perfect says, peeking through the curtains of his front room. “The girls are back, so just…” He stops and looks at Mysterious. “Dude, get rid of the guns.” Mysterious has another one out, all ready to start cleaning it when Perfect says this.

Mysterious grunts, but he stashes it back into the pack he brought with him, hikes it over his shoulder, and walks out the front door.

“Jesus Christ,” Perfect says. “He’s gonna kill someone.”

And then Match and Perfect both look at me. Because even though Mysterious has killer written all over him, I’m the one who pulled the trigger this time.

“Maybe someone has it coming,” Match says, shrugging his shoulders and sliding his shades down his face. He turns and leaves it at that. Following Mysterious out the door.

Perfect and I watch Ivy and Ellie talk to them for a few seconds before they both get into Match’s Hummer and drive off.

Maybe someone does, I think as I watch them go.

Maybe all that shit we’ve put up with for the past ten years is about to come back around. Only maybe this time, it’s not the Misters who have to stand in front of the fan while people throw shit.

Maybe it’s someone else’s turn.

Epilogue - Nolan

“Just be nice,” Ivy says as she straightens my tie outside her parents’ house.

“Hey,” I say, “they don’t call me Mr. Nice for nothing.”

“They don’t call you Mr. Nice at all, Nolan. Now stop.” She shoots me a sideways grin as the word comes out. We haven’t had another rape fantasy. And I’m not saying we’ll never do it again, but I’m over it. It was fun, but it was a stressful fucking night. And every time I think about yellow rope, I see Ivy’s foot, tied to that bedpost as the guns went off and that sick fuck, Boring Richard, shot her.