Page 24 of Iris
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Xavier
Most of the rich think I’m stupid. A little “touched” is one of the terms I’ve heard.
Actually, most people do. Until I start ‘talking’ to them via either writing or my phone.
Their preconceptions don’t bother me.
Information flows more freely when others think the big man has a feeble mind.
It works for me, so I cultivate it.
The storm clouds taunt the edges of the sky, making the blue ocean turn to gunmetal with choppy white waves. I sit back at the open bar that overlooks the port in the small seaside down of Bala, not that far from Sabine City.
Nothing is far enough away from Sabine City.
The man on the dock ropes the large boat to its moor, and my mind drifts like the foam on the sea. I think back to when I was seven and my step fucking father tried to drown me, tried to kill me in a drunken rage. My mother managed to stop him in time, but I found my strength, then. Not in body, but in mind, in spirit,in intelligence. And after that moment, I decided I needed to do some things.
Learn to fight. Learn to swim. Learn. I needed to learn. I needed to be smarter, and not just for myself. But for my mother, too. I had to protect her just as much as I needed to protect myself.
So I bided my time, took the drunken beatings for her when I could, and tried to get her to leave. She was staying with him so we could have the money to eat and a roof over our head, but to me, it wasn’t worth it.
It wasn’t until I was ten that I was able to kill the monster.
Unfortunately, I lost my mother and my vocal cords in the process.
I sip the starshine—sweet, strong, it’s the type the underage society kids drink. It isn’t a drink I’d normally choose, but I want to see what’s popular in other parts of Sabine.
The man crosses to the other side of the boat—I couldn’t tell aft from starboard—and loads a pallet with the prettiest blue and purple flowers on top.
If there was an inspector, he’d look at the flowers, then at the bottles of regular cheap bubbly and white wine beneath. He wouldn’t think to search for a fake bottom. This contraband shipment is small, only twenty bottles. There isn’t enough on the pallet to risk it. At least that’s the idea.
When he takes the pallet, wheeling it down the ramp, I rise, leave cash on the bar, and go to greet him in the universal way that men like him understand.
With money.
He does a double take at seeing my height, my size, but I don’t mind. Most do that. But the guy mumbles about the troubles he’s had getting the stuff here, of extra fees and the near miss with a boarding from Sabine’s water patrols.
All that means is that he’s gunning for more money.
I’d respect him more if he just said it outright, instead of stumbling around the subject and lying.
Instead of writing to him to express my displeasure, I do what I do best and impersonate a mountain. Not saying or signing a word.
I just hold out the money in the envelope.
He starts to stammer.
I just hold it.
“Look,” he says, eyeing me, “maybe you’re a little slow, but the price went up.”
He and I both know that if there’s a fight over this pallet who will win. Question is, is he stupid enough to take that risk anyway?
“Lemme break this down for you,” he tries instead. “If you don’t give me another fifty percent, I’ll be taking this back.”
