Mr. Clarinet

Max searched the bar for seats and saw none at all. There were small towers of crates stacked against the walls. He guessed the patrons arranged those as stools and tables. This was drinking at its most rudimentary, frontier-style.

The man looked at Chantale and started talking to her, his voice making the sounds of a train going off the rails and rolling down a long, steep hill, dumping its cargo of logs with every turn and bounce and crash. Max heard the name "Carver" crop up twice in the spill.

"He says if you're looking for the Carver boy too, you're wasting your time with him," Chantale translated. "He'll tell you what he told the others."

"What's that?" Max asked the man, trying to meet his eye but failing to, because the way he stood under the bulb drowned them in shadows. The man replied, laughed, and waved.

"He hasn't got him. Good-bye."

"Very funny," Max said. His head was beginning to sweat. He felt the sweat sprouting all over his scalp, neighboring droplets fusing, seeking out others, finding them, fusing, building up, getting set to run. The bar stank of stale smoke, sweat, and, above all, of ether.

"Why did they think you had the boy?" Max asked.

"Because of my great friend, Eddie Faustin," the man answered and pointed off to his right.

Max went over to where the lightbulb's reflection marked out a single photograph in a frame. He recognized Faustin straightaway—he'd inherited the family resemblance to a furious donkey: big head, bulbous nose, protruding chin, eyes, and ears, and a genetically transferred scowl with flared nostrils and fully exposed upper teeth. Faustin wasn't a big guy. His body was slight, too small for his head. Max was surprised he'd survived the bullet he'd taken for Carver.

In the picture, he was standing between two people—his brother, Salazar, and the barman, who had a revolver in his hand and one booted foot parked on a dead body. Jagged exclamation-marks of blood splashed the ground near the corpse's head and back. The hands and feet had been tied. The trio were smiling proudly for the camera.

"Those were good times," the barman said.

Max turned and saw him smirking through a few crooked teeth with plenty of empty space in between them.

"Who took the picture?"

"I can't remember," the barman replied, leering at Chantale as she translated, the space around his eyes twitching as his head moved gently up and down her curves, his grip fastening on his broomstick.

Just then, there was a quiet fff-fut, as something struck the lightbulb and fell to the ground with a faint trail of smoke. It was a moth, wings instantly burned useless by the bulb. It lay on its back for a moment, struggling furiously in the air before it ceased all motion.

The man chuckled and swept the moth into the pile he was building. When Max looked at it, he saw it was made up of nothing but dead moths. The broom was crude and homemade—a long stick with a bunch of dried reeds wrapped around the end for a brush.

"What's your name?"

"Bedouin," the man said, straightening up a little.

"Bedouin…Désyr?" Chantale asked, her tone dropping to a hush.

"Oui. Le męme."

"Dieu…" Chantale whispered, stepping back.

"What is it?" Max asked her, moving in.

"I'll tell you later," she said. "When we're out of here."

Another moth self-destructed on the bulb. It fell on Max's head, bounced off, and landed burning and kicking on his shoulder. He flicked it off. Désyr tutted and said something under his breath as he walked over with his broom and swiped the dead insect deftly across the floor into the pile as though it were a puck.

"Taffia?" he said to Max, making a drinking motion with his hand.

Max nodded and followed Désyr to the bar. Désyr got a paper cup from under the counter and held it under the water cooler. The liquid came out, releasing an air bubble inside the plastic bottle and a sharp, chemical smell that was similar to gasoline.

Désyr handed the paper cup to Max. Max took it. The fumes stung his eyes.

"People drink this?" he asked Chantale.

Désyr chuckled.

"Yeah. They also clean and run their engines on it when they can't get gas. Runs almost as well. It's a hundred-and-eighty-proof rum. Be very careful with that. It can make you go blind," Chantale replied.

Max took a very small sip of taffia. It was so strong it was tasteless and burned his tongue all the way down to his throat.

"Jesus!" Max said, wanting to spit it out.

Désyr laughed and motioned to Max to throw it down his throat in one go. Max sensed that this might win him a little credibility with the bar owner, and he might tell him something more about Faustin and the kidnapping. There was only about a finger of booze in the cup.

He took a deep breath and tossed back the taffia. It hit the ends of his mouth like a firebomb and proceeded to burn its trail all the way down into his stomach.