Page 20 of The Triangle

There’s been an accident.

A great deal more silence than I might have expected lingers on the line. I certainly expected some, but it goes on for a length of time that seems almost designed to encourage me to speak again first.

I don’t.

Finally, he says, Say more.

I don’t have a great deal more. Christine and I were engaged in an affair—I don’t choose those words by accident—and something appears to have gone awry—

Fuck have you done?

And right now, my china, I don’t know who I can fokken trust. Except you.

I’m not your fuckin’ china. And what the hell makes you think for a second that I’ll do anything for you?

Not a thing in the world, bru. But I do expect you’ll do what’s right for Christine.

Again, silence.

I continue, Or—

What happened?

I’m not precise on that. I’m not there—

Where are you?

—but from what I can glean, she took a bit of a knock on the head that required some attention.

Fuck does that mean?

Honestly, it’s probably the most straightforward thing I’ve ever said, bru. It means what it means.

I used to know precisely how to get Danny to do things. I knew his triggers. What would work, what wouldn’t, how to best manipulate him into giving what I needed.

The man on the other side of this call is not the Danny I used to know.

I’m not entirely sure how to proceed, and I don’t have the luxury of figuring it out, so I opt for something resembling the truth. I proceed to fill him in on all the information that Lars provided me.

Then, Are you in town? I ask.

Yeah. I’m in town.

I need you to go to her and make sure everything’s hundreds.

Again, another lengthy silence.

Eventually, How the fuck am I supposed to trust anything you’re saying?

No clue, boet. I wouldn’t trust me. But, simply, either I’ve turnt up, after all this time, to telephone you with an elaborate plot designed to somehow cock you up—which, if we stop to consider it, is the stupidest fokken thing I ever heard—or else I’m telling the truth and really, really have no better option.

I don’t get short of breath very often. Usually the opposite. Like the Hulk thing. I breathe deeply into myself and then myself grows and expands and becomes bigger than life. I never even practiced that or had to learn it. I think I inherited it.

But waiting for Danny to say, Where is she? I find myself not breathing at all.

Where is she? he finally, finally asks.

I close my eyes and breathe again, giving him all of the particulars on where she should be. ‘Should,’ because even though Lars is Lars and even though Lex and Reggie weren’t chosen to watch out for her because they won a contest—it’s because they’ve proved themselves loyal—somebody threw Christine off the roof of a fokken building. And that means that someone is either trying to kill her, trying to weaken me, or both.