Meeting Amir

Chapter 2

 

            Max lay asleep in his unmade bed. His room was dark as night, which it was; the digital clock proclaimed a quarter after three. Surrounding the bed was a sea of laundry, interspersed with precarious piles of books forming a literary archipelago across the room. The mantle upon which these islets rested where predominantly textbooks; one particularly ungainly tower was founded on a copy of A Comprehensive Introduction to Macroeconomics. As you progress upwards out of the sea of soiled garments, with waves formed by the contours of cloth and breakers made of socks, successive strata become apparent; Hard-cover non-fiction looking as good as new gives way to serious works of literature; Proust, Joyce, Steinbeck and others joined seamlessly the layer beneath it and together they create a solid, immovable bedrock. These layers support epic tomes of Fantasy, murder mysteries and science fiction novellas and anthologies. Strewn across this layer of topsoil you will find an assortment of papers, each was of critical importance in its time, now they lay discarded and forgotten.

            On the bedside table, beside the clock, lay a cell phone. It was ringing. The ringtone was “Fight Without Honour or Humanity.”

            By the fourth bar he had regained some semblance of consciousness, but only seconds later he had fallen back to sleep, rapidly lapsing into a dream in which he was forced into mortal combat with a viking holding a lightsaber...

           

            ...Max stood over his vanquished foe; the viking's wild red beard was alight where the lightsaber had cut through on the way to its owners neck. The surplus adrenaline coursed through him; he thought he could veritably smell his victory, though that may have just been the napalm. He reached down and in one hand he grasped the hilt of his enemy’s lightsabre, his own having been consumed by a passing velociraptor, and in the other the smoking head of his foe. He thrust them into the air roaring a challenge to the surrounding wilderness. And drifting about the background, just above the chirping of the birds and squeaking of the field mice and in tandem with his shout there was a haunting melody; Duh! du Duh! du Duh dun dun Dunna!

 

            The last chords of the song were playing out, there temporary badassery it granted to almost any activity, as if by magic, was wearing thin. Max stumbled out of sleep once more, and groggily reached for the phone.

            “Hello?”

            An intense, pseudo-electronica beat responded. He pushed the Talk button.

            “Hello?”

            “Is this Max Carville!” The voice at the other end of had an Arabic accent. It also sounded angry.

            “Yes,” Impressively Max remained inert and unfocused, most people when faced with a late night call from an unaccountably angry Arabic man would, if nothing else, pay attention. “Who’s asking?”

            “I work for Amir. He has heard you would like to conduct business with him.”

            “Yeah, listen, can’t we talk about this another time?”

            “Today, at 4 o’clock you will meet with Emir personally and discuss the situation at hand.”

            “Do you mean AM or PM; cause to be honest it could get pretty f*****g tricky working that one out.”

            “It will be in the afternoon.”

            “Where?” Even when swaying to and fro with exhaustion, Max remained as incisive as ever. An address on Queen Street was supplied. Max hung up and went to sleep; tragically he had not a single dream involving lightsabres.

 

            About twelve hours later Max stepped off of the bus into the bright sunlight. Behind him roared the traffic, ahead a row of quaint bungalow style houses; one of them was Amir’s. As he walked along the sidewalk Max observed. The people seemed normal and friendly, the houses were nice enough, most of the gardens were well tended and those that weren’t featured children. In short, it was the last place you’d expect a shady, if not outright criminal organization to be headquartered. In the time since his conversation with Giovanni he had built in his mind a labyrinthine building protected by corps of big men and big guns; occasionally a vicious dog featured, but it didn’t last long. He didn’t like dogs. And at the buildings heart, behind several redundant layers of security would sit a slightly sinister man, probably wearing a eye patch and possibly with a cat on his lap, though Max wasn’t sure about the later, he’d need to wait and see.

            Faced with the reality he was finding it hard to overcome his disappointment. The house he was now approaching, Amir’s, was as boring as the rest. Thankfully no dog, but no sign of a cat either, certainly there were no armed guards, unless the vacuum cleaner the woman who answered the door and ushered him towards the living room had in her hand was a sawed off shotgun in disguise.

            The room he entered was sparsely decorated, two wooden rocking chairs, one occupied, faced the blank screen of a television. The chair’s occupant was a swarthy man in his late twenties of average height and slim build. His long, crooked nose glistened in the afternoon sun and his short black was stylishly tussled. When he smiled, as he did when Max entered the room, every part of his head seemed to be trying to accommodate his wide grin; the resulting contortions gave the appearance of a man halfway between deranged and stoned.

            “Hello, Max” He spoke with a mild accent, Max would later learn he was born in Lebanon, “Welcome. We have much to talk about.” He indicated that Max should take the empty seat.

            Max took to the chair, but was uncertain about what to say. Also a tiny bit terrified, in that a tiny, though insistent, part of his mind seemed to be trying to coax him into a run, or at least a canter. “Uh, hi. Yeah, I guess that, well, the first thing is... the issue of... money.” His normal brazenness had deserted him and he found himself approaching the topic as delicately as a mouse walking on eggshells filled with mixed metaphors.

            “Oh, no man. I’ve got what you need with me, Giovanni told me. If this little talk goes well, then it’s yours. No small print, no hidden fees, just an understanding and a handshake.”

            If anything, this only served to make Max more apprehensive, and that instinctive urge to flee stronger. “So, what exactly is the deal here.”

            “I’ve had some startling success in my chosen field, at the local level anyway. But parochial opportunities are not presenting themselves as they once did, competition is increasingly... cut-throat.” He drew out the latter word, savouring it, absorbing it’s flavour, it’s texture. Eventually he was forced to pick it out of his teeth. “I have been forced to look farther afield than usual. Tell me, do you know what House Bill H.R. 519 is?”

            “Sounds political,” Max spoke cautiously, not wanting to commit himself prematurely.

            “Yes. It is.”

            Confirmation of its theory received, Max’s mind flashed back to the root of his political knowledge to the hours he had spent watching The Daily Show, but it found no assistance there, nor among the antics of Conan O’Brien, Colbert’s satire or the ever shifting cast of Have I Got News for You. The only thing this rapid searching of his memory turned up was a mental note he’d left himself years ago to watch less television, and maybe read a paper occasionally. So he took a shot, “It’s your new angle.”

            Amir seemed bemused, “Yes, how’d you know?”

            Max shrugged, “It just seemed to be the way the conversation was going. People generally don’t interrupt their own monologues with C-SPAN clips for no reason.”

            “Ah, OK. Well, the bill is basically a massive tax on fast food. Burgers, fries, pop; all the junk food rendering America’s children unfit for duty. After this bill passes the Senate, which it almost certainly will, even if they have to resort to reconciliation, a Happy Meal will cost about twenty dollars.”

            Max let out a low whistle, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be too happy about that. Eh? Eh?” Amir’s face registered disgust. “Ah forget about it.” His enthusiasm deserted him, like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

            “Anyway, I procure the goods here at what are now rock-bottom prices, I sell them to distributors at a steep mark-up and turn a tidy profit. The only difficulty is in getting them there. It would be next to impossible to drive them across, a combination of hefty tariffs, physical difficulties given the volumes in question and above all the overwhelming aroma ten thousands burgers generate if not properly stored.”

            Max interjected here, “And that’s where I come in!”

            “Yeah,” Amir nodded slowly, “How’d you guess?”

            “It was thematic! Obvious really.” He waved his hands as if to suggest Amir should think no more of it. In this they were highly successful, Amir was too busy observing the epileptic mating ritual Max’s hands were engaged in to consider it further.

            “Alright so, listen. Here’s the deal. You get your cash, you do a few runs for me, our relationship is over.”

            “How many is a few?”

            “I shouldn’t think more than three or four.”

            “That sounds a little vague to me, Amir.”

            “Come what may, you will be working off your debt to me. That repayment depends on my profits which are, in a word, unpredictable. Ten percent of each delivery will go towards your debt. How’s that for vague?”

Max paused for a moment, started processing everything he’d heard. Mulling it over, thinking it through, thoroughly. Deeply. It didn’t take long. “So you want me to smuggle fast food for you?”

            “Exactly.”

            “You want me to smuggle Coke? And Pepsi?”

            “It is unlikely the branding will survive the transition, after which no one can tell the difference.”

            “You want me to be a rum-runner, except the rum is burgers and fries?”

            “This is getting tiresome, can we mo-“

            Max hurriedly cut him off, “I’m to be a contrbandito?”

            Amir appeared totally exasperated, “You know, the worst part is that I know you’re really trying very hard to come up with these. I can see it on your face, a purely internal struggle, against all the odds.”

            He considered this, “Am I outnumbered?”

            “What?”

            “In the struggle, am I outnumbered?”

            “It’s just a metaphor, there aren’t actually tiny people waging a battle inside your head over your ability to construct puns.”

            “OK, but metaphorically speaking, am I outnumbered.”

            “Look, just shut up will you. You’re clearly trying to construct joke about Conservation of Ninjitsu and how it makes your victory inevitable.”

            “Well, I was actually thinking more along the lines of a redshirt army, but more importantly why have I been hired for this.”

            The rapid change of pace dumbfounded Amir. His irritation didn’t fade; it was biding its time and licking its wounds from a respectful distance. “Well, there are a few reasons. Man power shortages and stratification of competence in my organization. But mostly, no one will look too closely at a few drunk frat boys in a boat on a long weekend.”

            “Wait, I’m going by boat?” A hint of consternation garnished his question. “You didn’t mention that before.” He paused, and added, “Also, ‘boys’? How crowded is this cruise?”

            His leaned forward, alighting on a weakness, ready to twist any protruding emotional screws. “That isn’t a problem, is it Mr. Carville? No niggling little bit of hydrophobia, a remnant of a childhood trauma perhaps?”

            “No, just a bit surprised. And disappointed, I was sort of looking forward to a road-trip.”

            Amir hid his own disappointment well, the prospect of subjecting this loathsome person to some torment would almost have made the decision to meet in person worth it. “Two other men will be accompanying you. You leave two weeks tomorrow, the time, locations and your cash are here,” He tossed a sealed manila envelope to Max, who clasped it to his chest.

            “Thanksgiving is in two weeks.”

            “Not where you’re going.” He noted Max’s confused expression and explained, “It’ll be Columbus Day.”

            This mollified him, “Columbus Day, eh? How Ironic.”

            “No Carville, no it’s not.”

            “But he had a big sea voyage and I’m going on a voyage, by boat and...” He trailed off. This could be attributed to sudden enlightenment on the nature of irony or a lack of confidence but the look on Amir’s face.

            “Please leave.”

            He did so.

Author's Note

-For those who don't recognise it, "Fight Without Honour or Humanity" is a song made famous by a fight scene in Kill Bill. It is epic.
-Also, the spell checker in this thing is incredibly xenophobic. It insists on a 'z' in 'recognise' and insists there's no 'u' in 'honour'. Also, it does not recognise velociraptor as a word. I have problems with it.