The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel (16 page)

twenty-three

In the middle of the night, Bonnie’s dead body was brought to the municipal morgue where a young mortician’s assistant stripped off the remnants of her schoolgirl costume. The mortician’s assistant dutifully removed Bonnie’s short plaid skirt and her clunky stripper boots. As she went to remove Bonnie’s fishnet stockings, the assistant noticed a small piece of paper taped to the bottom of the dead woman’s foot. Gently, she peeled off the paper and discovered it was a lottery ticket. The mortician’s assistant glanced around the empty morgue. She was alone. Without giving it much thought, she tucked the lottery ticket in her pocket and continued her work with the body. She jabbed a tube into Bonnie’s stomach with a little more delight than usual.

Two hours later, after her shift ended, the mortician’s assistant was driving her tiny blue
1967
VW Beetle down the highway when she spotted a Chevron gas station. Chevron was the best gas station in the whole city, she’d decided, because several times a week they brought in fresh cookies from a bakery. She’d had such a stressful day that only a Smarties cookie would suffice. The mortician’s assistant pulled over and entered the gas station. To her dismay, the pastry case was utterly devoid of Smarties cookies. She looked at the last few stale biscuits and felt herself about to cry. Begrudgingly, she selected the chocolate chip cookie with the highest chip-to-cookie ratio and approached the counter to pay for it. The mortician’s assistant was halfway out the door when she remembered the ticket in her pocket. She handed it to the cashier and took a big bite of her cookie.

The lottery machine played a
MIDI
-version of the song “We’re in the Money.”

“You won,” the stunned cashier said.

The mortician’s assistant shoved half the cookie in her mouth.

“How much? Two dollars?”

“No. Four million.”

Kara almost choked to death on her cookie.

Henrik spent a sleepless night struggling to come to terms with Bonnie’s death. Before the police arrived, he fled in the opposite direction of Roland, who now seemed to dislike Henrik as much as it was humanly possible to do so. Henrik felt himself close to tears for the first time since he struggled to write that poem.

In his search for self-realization, he’d only pictured death in abstract terms. It had been a theoretical notion and one that always seemed so far off in the future that it wasn’t even all that frightening. Now that he’d seen death close up, he was very afraid. He didn’t know what to do or who to talk to. He tried to call Parminder to hear more about Nanak but that Betty Sue woman answered the toll-free number again and informed him that no one named Parminder worked in their office. To test whether or not she was lying, Henrik said he desperately wanted to purchase an Ab Lounger Deluxe and when she hesitated, he called Betty Sue a liar and demanded to speak to Parminder immediately or else he would hang up the phone and call the handsome and heroic Chris Hansen from
Dateline NBC
and order him do a revealing exposé on how the disingenuous Christian cable networks outsource their phone centers to India where Sikh people are forced to work for crappy wages.

Betty Sue told Henrik to fuck off and hung up.

Henrik threw his telephone against the wall and stomped around his apartment like a madman, incensed that not only had all his efforts failed to lead him any closer to becoming unique, but in addition, he’d neglected the entire time to examine death and the absolute finality of it all.

To Henrik, the end of his life would be like the fate of the
Titanic
on that April night of
1912
. The iceberg had been struck and the ship was going down. Some of the passengers had escaped onto lifeboats, but of those destined to perish, Henrik could never have found purpose the way those brave men in the vessel’s bowels did by stoking the engine’s fires to keep the power on until the very last moment. Henrik should have been content to have been one of those courageous souls. Yet what he wanted more than anything was to be noble: inspired and inspiring in the face of the infinite black void, much like the violinist in the string quartet who played on as the ship floundered. Steadfast, the violinist’s melodies sprayed out into the air, the last gasp of an artist dripping blue into the midnight sky. Henrik would have given his left arm to go down like that.

He could never hope to be first violin, not second violin or even the viola player. Henrik would have been lucky to have been the cellist, droning unnoticed in the background, eddying into the water’s black abyss while being completely disregarded by the panicked passengers, the masterful violinists and even by himself.

Henrik yelled out loud. His chest filled with adrenaline. He yelled again.

He stomped his feet and crashed into walls until his neighbors on all sides told him to shut up and go to bed.

The next morning, Conrad, Billy Bones and Alfred met over breakfast at the retirement home. Conrad had woken up in a particularly surly mood. For days, he’d been growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to murder that devious super spy. He declared that by sundown tonight, they would either kill Henrik Nordmark or die trying. Alfred didn’t like this idea at all. He scribbled down his objection on a piece of paper and handed it to Conrad, who in turn told him that he was blind and could no longer read. Alfred showed the paper to Billy Bones and motioned for him to tell Conrad what it said; only Billy Bones had lost most of his cognitive brain functions and completely ignored anything put in front of him, with the notable exception of the twenty-six-year-old nurse’s breasts.

“Damn that Machiavellian man with his trickery and cunning,” Conrad said, referring to Henrik.

He stood up from the table and insisted that Alfred and Billy Bones come along with him. From inside Conrad’s room, the three assassins grabbed the crossbow and a quiver of arrows. Together they donned long black overcoats and marched down the hall. Alfred thought it strange that they were heading down the east wing rather than toward the main doors. When they arrived at the office door, Conrad whispered in Alfred’s ear. Alfred gave him a look of concern, a look which Conrad couldn’t see. Conrad whispered again. This time Alfred’s expression turned cold. He nodded his head.

The door opened.

A swoosh cut through the air.

The elderly assassins turned and left the premises.

Three minutes later a scream sounded. The receptionist had entered Abraham Arnold’s office to finally demand a raise on her weekly paycheck and was shocked to discover the retirement home director’s body lying face down on the floor, an arrow sticking straight out of his back. A pool of red had formed on the carpet. Frantically, the receptionist picked up Abraham’s phone and dialed
911
. Before she could reach the operator, a large bang sounded. The receptionist took cover under the desk and didn’t look up again for half an hour.

Outside, Alfred’s foot pressed down on the accelerator a second time. The old LeBaron fired a second torrid blast of smoke out its tailpipe. This time the engine roared and the vehicle peeled out of the parking lot.

Conrad, Alfred and Billy Bones were on their way to find Henrik Nordmark.

In the alley behind the Safeway near his apartment, Clyde was crying and slowly bleeding to death. Last night he reloaded his gun and ditched his car before taking refuge here behind a pile of wooden packing crates. Knowing the police would search his apartment and the local hospital, Clyde slept overnight on a stack of phonebooks. The only thing that kept him warm was the torn car bra he’d managed to unhinge from his Honda Civic. During the wee hours of the morning, he dislodged the arrow that had entered his shoulder, but he couldn’t unfetter the one from his thigh and the original arrow was still stuck deep in his chest, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.

The wound in his shoulder didn’t hurt so much but the arrow in his chest felt like a hundred bee stings and the one in his thigh was like the bites of a thousand hornets.

Clyde wasn’t crying over the pain though. He was crying over the loss of his beloved Bonnie. In all his previous attempts to kill her, he’d never once imagined what life would be like without Bonnie. He expected to be gloriously happy once she was finally eliminated. This wasn’t the case at all. He found he missed everything about her. He missed the soft skin at the nape of her neck and the gentle caress when she ran her hand through his hair. He even missed the way she used to yell at him and then apologize by saying “I’m sorry you had to act that way” which was not an apology at all but a further indictment of his actions.

“Dear God! What have I done?!” he cried. From nearby, a couple of stock boys were close enough to hear him and Clyde had to keep his wailing to a minimum in order to avoid detection.

He no longer wanted to live. And judging by the amount of blood he’d lost, he would be dead before nightfall. What a joyous death it would be, to be reunited with his beloved Bonnie. But first he would seek vengeance for that kiss he witnessed at the hospital.

Clyde only had one thing left to do on this earth — kill Henrik Nordmark!

When he finally returned to his apartment above the market-place last night, Roland found a yellow Post-it note attached to his front door. It was from his former supervisor Chad. Apparently, Chad had given a second thought to some of the things Roland said.

The note read . . .

You disrespectful punk! I’ve been taking Jiu-Jitsu for seven years and I’ve never once had to lay a hand on anyone outside the dojo. But I’m going to find you and when I do — I’ll rip your head off, spit down your throat and grind your balls into a fine paste!

Chad

Roland was a little surprised that Chad had all of that in him.

He cast a nervous glance down the hallway and then entered his apartment. It was just as he’d left it. Clothes scattered across the floor, a half-eaten burrito from last night’s dinner on a plate in the kitchen sink, the same beige carpet, same
$400
imitation suede couch against the far wall. He closed his eyes and imagined how a millionaire playboy would decorate this space. A giant flat-screen
TV
would take center stage and behind that would be red lights and a fully stocked bar to chill the mood. The couch would be replaced with a heart-shaped bed decked out in purple cushions and crimson velvet sheets.

Roland opened his eyes and his ordinary, mundane apartment stared back at him. Nowhere was the opulence of his dreams. He tossed his coat on the counter and slumped down into his computer chair. There were three emails waiting for him. The first was a spam message offering Roland a gorgeous Russian mail-order bride at Serbian-level discount prices. The second alerted him to the
20
% worldwide death toll incurred by the Influenza Pandemic of
1918
and the
100%
chance such a catastrophe will repeat in the new millennium. Only the third message was real. It was from his former colleague Mason.

It read . . .

Roland, you’ve ruined my life. I thought we were friends. How could you be so cruel? I don’t even want to get even. I just want you to know that I’m really disappointed in you.

Mason

Roland felt like a block of ice had fallen into the pit of his stomach. If Mason had planned some underhanded scheme to get even, if he’d cursed his name from the rooftops and sworn revenge, Roland might have been able to justify what he’d done. But the tone of defeat lurking behind the sans serif font in this email was too much for him to handle. Roland banged his head into the keyboard. He banged it again and fell down in a heap on top of his desk.

There he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the brass penholder his grandmother had given him for Christmas last year. Like a funhouse mirror the metal warped his image, twisted his forehead and elongated his jaw. “Am I the bad guy?” Roland asked out loud. “Was I wrong this whole time?” Roland could barely look at this distorted picture of who he used to be. Moments ago he thought it was impossible to ever feel worse. Now in addition to being buried under mounds and mounds of self-pity, Roland despised himself.

That night he went to sleep with one eye on the door.

The next morning, Roland woke up with a splitting headache. A lethargy overwhelmed him and it was difficult to even move his arms, let alone get out of bed. He ate a bowl of cereal with bits of banana and found it impossible to stop crying. Once he’d finished every last bit of his breakfast, he picked up the phone and called his ex-girlfriend to make amends. She wasn’t home so Roland tried her cell number. It rang three times before she picked up.