Baccano! - Volume 4 - Chapter 13

DOPE ADDICT

One day in January, 1932

Ahhhh, this feels great. Absolute tops.

…But I get the feeling there’s something else.

Something’s missing. What could it be…? It feels like I’ve gotta remember.

Everything’s here. It’s all here, inside my brain.

Everything’s melting together right before my eyes. Ah, the sky and the ground and the forest and the town and the day and the night are all melting together messily. Is this reality, in the end? My fingers are melting, too; my arms, my legs, my hips, my stomach, my chest, my bones, my heart… They’re melting, blending with everything around me. I’m enfolding everything I see. The world itself has gotten inside me.

My eyeballs have started to melt. Ohh, I can see everywhere, from everything in the world.

But then, for the first time, I start to wonder what this world is shaped like.

I remove my half-melted eyeballs from the world and try looking in from the outside.

At last, I’ve completely merged with the world. In other words, the world is me.

At that point, I finally realize what it is the world doesn’t have.

Except for me, there’s nobody here.

“………y, Roy……”

Somebody’s calling me.

Who is it? It doesn’t matter who; I’ve got to see them. I’m here, I’m right here. The world of my body has started to crumble. It’s turned into tens of thousands of hands, and they’re coming after me, trying to grab my eyeballs. Knock it off; don’t engulf me. Oh, the voice—the voice is getting farther away. Stop it, stopstopstopstopstop  Would you cut it the hell out, you pile of crap?!

“Roy…… Roy……”

My body’s been thrown to the bottom of a deep ocean. Forget chaos, it’s a pitch-black world, and there’s absolutely nothing around me. I’ve gotta get to the surface fast. I’ll drown. The closer I get to the light at the surface, the brighter the world gets. The sky and the ground and the people and the town and the day and the night all appear in the shapes I remember. The light illuminates my memories, making them clearer and clearer, and my mind desperately crawls upward, clawing through the water, toward the surface, toward that voice.

“Roy!”

Then my body finally reaches the surface.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a place that looked like a hospital room.

“Oh, thank God! You’re awake, aren’t you?!”

“Edith…”

When I looked around, I recognized the hospital. It was Fred’s hospital, in the East Village. They brought me here before, when I hurt my neck real bad. I’d heard he was away traveling and that the place was closed, but I guess it opened up again at some point.

An old guy who stank like liquor and another guy with bandages wrapped around his legs and face were in the beds on either side of me.

“I see he’s come to.”

The doctor, who was dressed all in gray, spoke to us. Yeah, that’s Fred for sure. There was a guy who looked like an assistant beside him; I wondered when he’d hired somebody like that.

“You come here every time you use any sort of drug. We don’t handle drug addictions as a rule, but in your case, you’re always badly injured.”

Then, making the man who seemed to be his assistant bring the implements over, he began to examine my bandaged right arm.

He didn’t reproach me or lecture me about having messed with drugs, and when the treatment was over, he left the room right away. This doctor’s always like that.

When I happened to look to the side, Edith was watching me like she wanted to say something.

“Thanks, Edith. That was seriously all my fault.” I decided to apologize first, before she called me an idiot.

I’m completely pathetic. I bet she calls me an idiot again.

“I’m so glad… When you didn’t wake up, I didn’t know what I was going to do…”

She didn’t call me an idiot. It felt weird.

Neither of us knew what to say to the other, and silence flowed between us. Breaking it, Edith raised her voice, as if she’d suddenly remembered something. “Oh… That’s right, of course. About that truck.”

Truck? …Oh, I remember. She probably means the truck I stole and used to ram the Runorata carriers’ car. Right: Either way, I’ll be going to the cops after this. What do I do…?

I started to feel like something was squeezing my belly. Still, it’s a fact that I did it. I’d have to suck it up and turn myself in.

At that, Edith smiled brightly and said something weird:

“Listen, you don’t have to worry. It’s all taken care of.”

“Huh?”

“The Gandors intervened and paid the owner for the truck and everything. In other words, they negotiated an out-of-court settlement, without going through the police.”

“An out-of-court… I don’t have that kinda money…”

The next instant, Edith said something straight-up crazy.

“With borrowed money, of course. From the Gandors… You borrowed it.”

“Huh? Uh? Wha—?”

“The interest is something awful, but if you buckle down and work hard, you’ll be able to pay it all back someday. The Gandors’ loan sharks are famous for being better than some!”

When Edith had gotten that far, she smiled quietly and stroked my cheek.

“You need to pay for the crimes you committed. I’m the guarantor, so I’ll be able to help you a little. The Gandors say they’ll point you toward a job, too, so let’s pay it back, bit by bit. Oh, and don’t forget to go apologize to the truck’s owner.”

They got me.

Just when I thought I’d escaped the Runorata Grim Reapers, the Gandor hyenas got me by the throat. I couldn’t run now, and if I did any more drugs, the Gandors would probably ice me on the spot. Hard work: That was the only way out of this.

From the way Edith looked, she knew all that. It felt like she had me right in the palm of her hand. I had a hunch that from now on, I wouldn’t be able to defy Edith for as long as I lived… But even that was fine. For now, I could let myself think that way. Just for now.

…Still, something was off. It felt like something was missing.

Am I still in the dream? Have I not woken up yet?

I looked at Edith, meaning to say something, and then, for the first time, I realized she was different from before.

“Is your hair a little shorter?”

“It took you long enough to notice—idiot.”

When I heard that word, I was finally sure I was awake.

“It looks good. Yeah, it looks really good on you.”

Somehow, I felt kinda happy.