the biscuit tin

this is a commissioned piece; thanks to

liralen for requesting it! her david li meets my tommy, in a kind of unusual place, but it seems they need to be there, and to help each other... posted with her permission.
the prompts were the Churchill quote in the epigraph, a zippo lighter, and hell money .
sorry there's no cut - looks like i forgot how do do lj-cuts in rich text...

Hell Money

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it – Winston Churchill

He knows something about probability, the mathematics of predicting the results of repeated actions. He knows the way the laws of the universe work, in formulae and code and measurement, always constant. He knows, fuck he knows, that doing the same thing generally produces a similar result and to expect anything different is, at best, unsound science, and, at worst, the royal road to driving yourself batshit crazy. Walk it off.

There is no coincidence. There are no accidents. No action without subconscious motivation. Nothing happens randomly.

He'd tried. The pattern had just played itself out again, the way he'd suspected it might but wanted to believe it wouldn't. Let it go.

But tell me why I can't –

No, no. There is no "why." Nothing more will I teach you today. Clear your mind of questions.

David stops dead in his tracks and beats his head, gently and repeatedly, against the nearest upright object, which happens to be a telephone pole. Luckily, it's Chinatown at one in the morning, and no one who might see him is going to think he's any weirder than he thinks he is, himself. When you start channeling Star Wars in relation to your love- life, it's time to go home, pour a drink, download some porn and watch it until your brain turns all the way off. Sounds like a plan. Anyway, it's beginning to rain, which of course it would do.

His choices are limited – he can duck into one of the bars on the block, or Tin Tin's Chop Suey – it's open all night, and a bowl of gau gee min sounds good, even slurped up alone at one of the sticky formica tables… ethnic slumming…

Maybe he should just jog for his car. Wherever he left it.

A string of little plastic lanterns half-lights the curved eaves of a small, two-storied building to his left, flickering over the gold-painted lettering and making it look as if it's melting. He catches a whiff of incense; it's a Guan Yin shrine, tucked in between a grocery store and a travel-agent; just somewhere for the people who work in the neighbourhood to drop off a supplication on their lunch-hour or to reconnect with something that's a part of their world of receipts and billing and inventory, but also beyond it. David looks up, smiling to himself, wondering if the priest lives over the shop. There are three stone steps up to the shallow porch. It's quiet, it smells good, and he might as well wait the rain out there as anywhere, in the forecourt of Infinite Mercy. Who knows, right? Maybe it'll help.

The worn boards of the floor are dry, and he settles himself, back against the wall, knees tucked up so his long coat covers them, and tries to wipe the rain off his glasses with the end of his scarf. A small scuffle in the deeper shadow of the doorway lets him know he's not alone, and he turns his head slowly, getting his glasses back on. If this porch is already someone's home for the night, he'd better be moving on.

"It's locked." The voice is young – low, light, and steady.

"That's OK. I didn't want to go in. I'm just –"

"I DID. And I don't think it's right – this isn't the kind of place that should be locked." Now the voice is low, light, and kind of pissed-off, in a mild way. "She can take care of herself."

David stays where he is. He'd like to see who's talking, because he's getting a weird kind of vibe – not threatening, but different. Maybe if he doesn't make any sudden moves. He keeps his own voice steady and reasonable. "Possibly the priest doesn't want anyone coming in, messing up the place while he's not there, stealing stuff."

There's a soft snort. "Like she'd CARE." He's out of the doorway now, a kid in a dust-coloured duffle coat, one of the toggles replaced by an old gold tassel that looks like it came off a set of bordello drapes. He reaches up to push the hood of the coat back, and David sees the mala twisted around his wrist. Someone lost who's come home, only to find the lights out and everyone gone to bed?

He folds himself into a sitting position a companionable distance from David, far enough away to run if necessary, close enough to show he doesn't think he'll have to. This close, and in better light, David can see that it's not really a teenager; it's a young man with the delicate build and high-cheekboned face that makes some Asians look ageless and androgynous – "pretty" - to non-Asians. The sifting of freckles over the snub nose and the imperfect epicanthic folds suggest that he's mixed-race, and the overall effect is kind of… hard to pin down. Even though David knows better, he still thinks kid and feels a moment's concern – What are you doing out so late?

But his clothes, if odd, are clean, and so is the roughly-cut dark hair pushed behind his ears. Wherever he lives, it's not the street. – at least not lately. David relaxes a little and waits to see if he's going to be propositioned, since it's clear he's not going to be robbed or raved at.

The kid sighs and pulls a crackling plastic bag out of his pocket, offering it to David. "I got rock salt plum – you want some?"

It isn't exactly the question David was expecting, but he nods and takes one of the nuggetty little things, feeling his mouth fill with soft water in anticipation. Salt, sour-sweet and tender under the tough skin – he hasn't had see moi in years; at least since he was old enough to realize what all that sodium would do to you in the long run. Still, it tastes great, and he and the kid sit there until there's nothing left but pits to spit into the gutter.

When they're done licking their fingers, the kid holds out his hand. "Tommy Brady."

David shakes it. "David Li."

"I'm glad you got here. It was getting lonely."

Interesting way to put it. "Was I supposed to be here?"

"Well, you are, right? You wouldn't be here if you weren't supposed to be."

David thinks about this for a minute. There is no coincidence. If he is supposed to be here, he hopes the reason presents itself soon. The rain continues to fall like swinging ropes of pearls, flashing in the coloured light.

"And what are you here for? It's pretty late - can't it wait until morning?"

The dark head moves from side to side. "I think this has to be done at night. He's closer when it's dark. I don't want him to miss it."

"Miss… what?"

A freckled hand goes back into a coat-pocket and comes out with a crumpled fistful of printed paper, then another, until there's a pile of it on the boards between his feet. It's hell money – a ghost's ransom or a god's bribe or just something to pay your way with in the afterlife so the other ghosts know you're a player, a high roller. David's burnt plenty of it himself, for friends and relatives and dim ancestors long elevated to minor gods themselves in a tidy Confucian heaven.

"Shouldn't you have done that at the funeral?"

Tommy Brady's eyes shift away. "I wasn't there. I don't even know his name for sure."

"Then… this isn't for you, is it? You're doing this for someone else?"

Another headshake. "No. I don't know. He's not mine – I mean, he doesn't come to me, he's Immer's – I can tell when he's around sometimes, though. I don't know what he wants, but it's there, the want. Maybe he's hungry, maybe he's mad, or lost, or maybe something else is just using him." Tommy's head drops a little. "Maybe it's Immer, holding onto him. Maybe they can't let it go."

Who's Immer? What's "it?" David feels like he's started thinking with some other part of his brain, one that doesn't work quite as well as the rest of it. And it's making him act like this conversation makes perfect sense.

Forget it, Dave. It's Chinatown.

"So. You're trying to pay him off?" He nods at the pile of hell money. "I don't think it works like that."

Tommy's eyes look anxious, but his jaw sets, squaring. "It might. It might do something."

David reaches down, touches the ground with two fingers. "OK, yeah. It might."

The two of them sit there in silence, and a small wind flickers the edges of the paper. David's doing some calculations with this new part of his brain, which might actually be a very old part – it's just been asleep in the domed bone castle of his skull.

"Let's do it."

Tommy doesn't ask what they're going to do – he jumps up and runs out in the fading rain, and David watches him quartering the gutters like a little hunting dog. In a minute he's back with a tinfoil takeout tray, wiping it out with a wad of newspaper. He puts it down on the stone step, the top one, and starts going through his pockets. An X-men comic book is sacrificed as kindling, a pair of wooden chopsticks and an empty Marlboro box; then he turns to David expectantly.

David adds a handful of credit card receipts, the fag-end of a packet of Kleenex and a note he's been carrying around for too long. Tommy divides the ragged stack of hell money in half and pushes it over to David.

"You think I need this?"

Tommy nods. "You're here," and David takes it.

There are two last things in the kid's pocket – a battered red zippo that gets the fire started, and a couple of joss sticks that he pokes into the corner of the pan. They start to send up trails of scented smoke, bluer than the burning paper's.

Tommy claps his hands sharply and David does the same – there's a moment of self-consciousness, of smiling at himself that passes so fast he barely recognizes it, and then the two of them begin feeding the mock banknotes into the fire, careful not to smother the small flames.

"Because this isn't for me," David says. It's for something that's gone, should be gone, like the kid's second-hand ghost.

"It's not for us," the kid says, carefully placing his last note and sitting back on his heels. "Which is why… you know."

As the money catches, the flames change, get stronger, the ink giving its passing colour to the fire as the paper curls and blackens and the thin smoke twists its way upwards past the gold-lit roof.

location: SoCal

music: the electrician swearing at

tags: commissions