Reay Jespersen

Penny jammed the barrel of the gun into my mouth. It tasted coppery. Or maybe that was my own blood from the three newly missing teeth, courtesy of the gorilla sneering a smile at me from behind her.
I’d seen him before.
Where was that?
Then it hit me through the dazed fog: that musclehead with Papillon in the club that first night. The night I met Penny.
Built like a brick shithouse, that guy. I’m no slouch in a street fight, and he took four of my hardest, dirty hits like he didn’t feel them. That was before he hit me back, like a wrecking ball. One hit for each of mine. I’m not sure which ones took the teeth out or when I fell to my knees, but it doesn’t matter. I heard that click of a Colt’s hammer and knew it was over.
I didn’t know it was her, of course. Not until she stepped out of the shadows with the heater leveled. Not that she needed it. One dance with the silverback in the Italian suit, and I was all but finished. Seeing Penny step out from behind him – realizing what was going on – and I was already done. The gun was a formality.
“I told you to stop digging,” Penny said, pushing the gun. Angry. I looked up at her as well as I could with one eye swelling shut; her beauty now severe. “But you couldn’t help it, could you? ‘Johnny Delmar, the Great Detective.’ You couldn’t let it go.” It was then I saw the crack, the tiny fracture in her wall. A glimpse of humanity; of the woman she’d been. She caught it. Composed herself again. “Why couldn’t you just let it go?”
Because it’s who I am.
Because Papillon is killing you with drugs.
Because I love you.
I couldn’t say anything around the gun’s barrel, but must’ve said it with my eyes, because there was another crack in her wall. Bigger this time.
I pleaded through them.
This isn’t you, baby. I know it, and you know it.
End this. Take that heater and plug that mook standing behind you and let’s get out of here. Away from the city. Away from the country. Away from everything. To the end of the world. Just me and you. No one else and nothing else matters. Don’t do this. Don’t –
“Why do you hesitate, my dear?”
That voice. With that smooth French accent.
Papillon slid into the light behind her and stopped, eyes never leaving the back of her head. Not so much as a glance down at me.
“Do you love him?”
I looked up at her.
She gritted her teeth, jaw muscles flexing. “I did.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled, biting on the gun barrel, willing myself to stay still. I’d been waiting to hear those words from her these last three months. Waiting for some confirmation I wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
She never told me. Why didn’t she tell me?
But then, why didn’t I tell her?
Christ, how different it would’ve been if we’d just admitted it to each other.
“You don’t any more?”
A pause. Too long a pause. I looked up at her. Her eyes were welling with tears.
Papillion eased forward, stepping silently, until he was right beside her ear. “Change is never easy, cherie. You know what I offer you. But – ” he stepped away from her, stopping at the edge of the light. “… if you feel you still want to be with Mr. Delmar instead, I understand. You would, of course, have to… join him.” Papillon stepped into the shadow as the gorilla cocked his own gun. Penny stiffened.

I flashed back to that first night at the club. I was there to catch a hot new piano player – a colored kid name of William James Basie – but was typically early. Only a few people around yet.
I was half way through my second Coke at the bar when Penny slid in beside me. At an empty bar. She was always blunt that way. She started talking, and I started listening. Kept listening, even when I caught Papillon and the musclehead coming down the stairs with the club owner, a guy I knew named Russ, who was looking nervous. My detective alarm was clanging at the back of my head.
“Are you even listening to me?” Penny asked.
I turned back to her. “I am,” I said honestly. “Just wondering who those two were, with the owner.” I glanced back to see the three of them heading out the front door.
“Probably best to not know,” she said.
I looked at her. “Oh?”
“I’ve been here a few nights a week for a while. I’ve… seen some things.” She half-shrugged.
“Things? What kind of things?” Russ was a good guy. Straight shooter. Wouldn’t even get into the speakeasy racket he’d told me about one night, even though it would’ve meant big money for the place, which I knew was having some money trouble. Maybe that was what the other two were here about.
She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head, sucking her juice and soda through the straw. “And I don’t want to know. You know what they say: ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’”

I smiled.
Even with the gun barrel stuck in my mouth, I smiled.
Penny frowned down at me. “What are you smiling at?”
I smiled wider. She was upset now. “Stop it.”
And then it came: from deep within me, a tiny laugh.
“Stop it, Johnny.” Getting angry again.
The laugh grew.
“You stop it!”
And grew.
“Goddamit, stop laughing! Stop it or I’ll –… ” Past angry now, into hate; this woman who I’d loved, and who’d loved me.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
And it erupted from me: the biggest belly laugh I’ve ever had… cut short.