Worth a Shot by Danny Coleiro

from the Candlewick Stories

And this is all that’s left of the Baytowers Block.

Once fifty storeys high and home to over three hundred families, a gas explosion three months ago had reduced it to what it was today – a jagged, rotten tooth embedded stubbornly in the black tarmac gums of the city of Candlewick. Forty-eight stories worth of rubble had been cleared away almost immediately after the incident, but now no one was sure what to do with the remaining ruins of the two storeys left standing. After weeks of disclaiming responsibility, pointing fingers all over the shop and wrapping the whole thing up in miles and miles of red tape, the powers that be had conveniently forgotten all about it. Last I’d heard, the land was up for sale, but no one was buying.

Which suited me fine.

A rat, so large that even the most ferocious and streetwise alley cat would have demanded padded body armour and a machine gun before tackling it, was gnawing at something stomach-turning as we entered the second-storey apartment. It looked up at me with a red-eyed glare that clearly translated as ‘fuck right off’ as I was stepping carefully over the denticulate remains of the front door. I froze in mid-straddle, one foot suspended in mid-air, in a potential testicle-crushing position.

“What’s wrong?” whispered Aimee from the gloom behind me.

“There’s a rat”, I murmured out of the side of my mouth, eyes glued to the pointy-nosed bastard as it resumed chewing its meal as if I didn’t exist.

“You’re not scared of rats”.

“That is true”, I agreed. “This one, however, just happens to be the size of a rather large mountain goat”.

There was a metallic ‘clunk’ as Aimee put her bag down, and I felt her peering over my left shoulder.

“Bloody hell, that’s a big one”, she pointed out helpfully, with the amazing skill of stating the blatantly obvious that all wives everywhere seem to possess.

I slowly lowered my foot to the floor, holding myself steady against the door jamb, and leaned forward, my testicles sighing with relief as I cleared the door. Crouching noiselessly, I picked up a large chunk of brick, testing its weight in my hand as I gradually straightened up again. The rat watched me malevolently as I drew my arm back.

The brick left my hand with the speed and grace of a hunting falcon. It arced across the room with an audible whoosh, and missed the rat by such an impossible distance that blind people around the world suddenly felt inexplicable bursts of self-esteem without quite knowing why.

The rat gave me a contemptuous look, then turned away and casually sauntered off into the shadows, trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, you better walk away”, I muttered, only very very quietly in case it heard me and came back with its dad. I helped Aimee over the broken door, and we stood in the gloom silently, looking around at the place. Sunlight battled its way through the dust-covered window pane in stripes, setting dust motes on fire.

“So”, I said eventually, “what do you think?”

Aimee walked hesitantly over to the window and rubbed a long finger across the dust. She peered out through the peephole her finger had left for what seemed like an eternity, and then looked over her shoulder at me.

“The school’s right across the road”, she said.

“Exactly”.

Yet another eternity passed by, in no particular hurry. I was about to speak again, when Aimee sighed.

“It’s perfect, I guess”, she said in a near whisper.

“But…?”

She paused for a second, then bravely ploughed ahead.

“Well, it’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?”

“We spoke about this. I thought we had agreed”.

“I know, I know. But still…” She tailed off, and turned to look out of the window again.

“Honey”, I said, in my best ‘it’ll all work out’ voice. “You are two months pregnant. We live in a flat that is hardly big enough for the two of us. I am unemployed. Couple of months, you’ll have to stop working too…”

“I know”.

“We need to move out of that shithole”.

“I know”. It was as if Aimee’s mental DJ had stuck the ‘I know’ track on repeat mode and buggered off for a quick fag.

“And half the payment has already been made anyway. We can’t back out now”.

“You gonna keep telling me things I already know?” said Aimee.

I grinned at her.

“We’ve got to give it a shot”, I said.

Aimee laughed at that. She looked devastatingly beautiful when she laughed. She had been laughing when I’d first met her. It was one tenth of the reason I’d married her.

The other ninety percent was everything else about her.

“So let’s give it a shot then, you funny man you”, she said, as, across the road, the Candlewick Primary School’s bell rang, signalling the end of another school day.


***

They say that the first time is always the hardest, but it was easier than I’d expected.

According to the man who knew a man who knew a man who knew our client, Cuthbert ‘The Rat’ Carthwright enjoyed a bit of paedophilia with the students from his gym class. He figured they would leave school and forget all about it. Some did. Others got rich, and remembered. That’s all we needed to know, the man who knew a man who knew a man who knew our client had told us.

I pulled the trigger. This time, I didn’t miss.

I watched Cuthbert Carthwright’s head explode into a red mist as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor at the school’s gate. Somebody screamed.

I was already dismantling the rifle. Wordlessly, Aimee held the bag open and quickly and expertly packed the pieces into it. Just as we’d practised.

“Right”, I said, when the rifle was gone. I stood up and swung the bag over my shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here”.

We got the hell out of there, sixty grand the richer.

With a few more contracts, we’d be able to afford that nice place we’d seen on Maplenut Drive.

It was worth a shot.