7:00 pm. The meeting came to order. The lights were dim, but the silhouettes of several tables surrounded by wooden pillars were visible in the dim light of the yellow ceiling lamps. The walls were decorated to give the place a sort of homey log cabin feel, with old road photographs in red frames, fish mounted on wooden panel, a stuffed stag’s head and various other curiosities. Some very soft jazz played over the conversation of the patrons.

A constant low chatter filled the room. There were several tables occupied, some with plain looking diners in tees and with their families, but they seemed eager to leave considering all the rest. Taking up most of the center tables was a distinctly menacing group. A good few with uniformly dark clothing were in the darkest of tables, grunting and muttering amongst themselves, nothing at their table but drinks.

The booth tables lining the sides of the room were all vacant but one. In that one booth, centered below one of the few dank yellow lamps, there were four important looking individuals, who were all dressed in either perfectly tailored blazers and ironed shirts, except for one, who had chosen the ‘alternate dress code’. They were sipping simple glasses of iced water and pretending not to be glaring around suspiciously.

‘Now would be a good time to discuss shipping plans. Like I say every time, they’ve needed… reforming for a long time now,’ said one of the important looking individuals, tightly grasping his glass. He was a tall, large bodied man with hair streaked with white.

‘The loss of the factory up north is a bigger concern to us,’ said another. This one was a leaner looking fellow with oily yellow skin. ‘I always said the workers were not going to be happy with the conditions, but nobody ever listened. How does it feel now?’

‘I think we need to think about our own safety first,’ said the third, a short, snide looking character with a cigarette. ‘Soon we’re going to have a lawsuit on our hands courtesy of Uranium Trousers Ltd. It seems that one batch we shipped still had their labels attached, and the buyer wants to know the source of the pants that fell apart at the seams on the legs their employees at their opening party. It caused a major media upset for them.’

‘That sounds hilarious,’ said the yellow man.

‘It won’t be hilarious when we’re in court,’ warned the short, snide man.

‘Lousy immigrants being careless,’ grumbled the man with streaked hair. ‘I could do a better stitching job with my eyes closed.’

‘Why don’t you, then?’ demanded the yellow man, reaching into his jacket pocket and leering forward menacingly. ‘Huh? Why don’t you?

‘Oh, you want to start something here? Right here and now?’ roared the man with streaked hair, also reaching into his jacket.

By force of peer pressure, the short man also reached into his jacket pocket, but before anybody could draw anything out, their fourth associate, the one in the alternate dress code of head-to-toe black Daily Pants clothing, slammed his glass of water down so hard an ice cube flew from the glass and clattered onto the tabletop. The three combatants jumped and turned to him at full attention. This was a guy they had to respect. He was very important member of the operation. Not only did he deliver their pirated goods, he was the one marketing their legitimate products. He was a guy whose support they needed. Not any of them had the public image that a bike gang did. Or the mode of transport.

‘Cool it,’ growled the biker, hand still on his glass, and the others cooled it. ‘You’re all getting worked up over nothing. Uranium will probably let it go once we remind them that they were the ones who requested pants from us, knowing our reputation. They should have read the contract more thoroughly. But if you start a riot here, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourselves.  Keep your hands where we can see them. All of you.’

The other three reluctantly obeyed. The murmur around the room coming from their cronies intensified.

‘So, what do you want to talk about then, Uriel?’ the short man asked acidly.

‘How about you stop calling me that?’ the biker who was not Uriel said. He was about to say more, but entranceway door opened at that second, setting off a faint tinkling from a bell hanging at the top. Four very special guests stepped into the room.

‘Table for two, please,’ commanded their leader, a man with oddly dark hair, a matching dark suit, and a single dark eye, or at least that’s what it looked like at first.

‘You mean four,’ corrected one of his companions, also in the dark suit with one dark eye. But his eye stayed dark. He surveyed the room with his one working eye. In the light the diner-goers were able to see that his other eye was covered by a piece of black cloth.

‘This is a diner. Are you sure we’re in the right place?’ complained the least classy looking of the four newcomers, a girl wearing an oversized old black sweatshirt and sweatpants. Both pieces were emblazoned with the words DAILY PANTS in a heinous sans-serif font.

‘Of course. Just take a look around,’ said the black haired leader. The four of them did. The last member of their group – one young looking man, who was also in a suit (although it appeared too small for him) looked ready to bolt at the sight of gangsters but the girl had him by the back of his shirt so he was just stuck sort of leaning towards the door earnestly.

The waiter at the entrance led the quartet to a table near the bar, near the doorway. Their leader evidently disagreed with this choice and pointed instead to the booth not two spaces away from the one where the business meeting was going on. The waited smiled nervously, looking left and right, but the black haired man went ahead and sat his group down without further question.

They important looking men at the table were assessing this group of newcomers through narrowed eyes, attention temporarily taken off each other. Though the four of them were dressed for the occasion, they didn’t seem like company staff, they didn’t look familiar– except to Uriel the biker, who was mortified by their very appearance. Val had certainly made an entrance. He just managed to hide his shock. His faint flicker of recognition when ignored by his three cohorts.

‘Raphael, were these four on the guest list?’ asked the one with dyed hair.

The short man reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a bulging black notebook. He flipped through it and frowned. He flipped through it again. ‘That’s strange,’ he grumbled, and patted his pockets again.

‘You’ve lost it, haven’t you?’

‘Keep your pants on, Azrael, it’s not like you ever keep anything organized. Remember the time we trusted you with just two of the month’s shipments and you ended up sending lingerie to our arctic client?’ sneered the yellow man, who had decided that harassing the man with dyed hair was more important than dealing with suspicious newcomers.

‘Yeah,’ protested Raphael, the short man, returning his notebook to his pocket. ‘Anyway, it’s just four guys. And it’s not like they’re cops or anything.’

‘How do you know?’ demanded Azrael. ‘You don’t even have the brains to keep track of a fucking guest list, what gives you the right to flap that hole of yours?’

At that moment, a waitress with a frightened smile was softly asking the newcomers what drinks they wanted. As she placed down their menus, the black-haired man struggled to get his coat off. His two other suit wearing friends had removed theirs already and were watching him. After maybe two minutes, the girl in the sweatshirt slammed her hands on the table and hissed, ‘Just leave it on!’ At this, the man sheepishly sat down on his chair and proceeded to get tangled in his napkin and knocked all the menus to the floor.

‘I’m pretty sure they’re not cops,’ Uriel assured his tablemates with some sense of relief at Val’s incompetence, and there was no reason for his partners to disagree. He continued, ‘What’s on the agenda here?’

‘Yeah, better get started. We’ve got a lot of propositions to look over before the night is done,’ grunted Raphael.

Reluctantly, Azrael turned to business matters as opposed to infighting, even though that was what he much greatly preferred. ‘Hadriel, get the call log.’

Hadriel, the yellow skinned man, pulled a camel colored folder out from behind him and placed it in the middle of the table. Unfortunately, at that moment, the waitress came with their appetizer of French fries and it had to be moved. Azrael was the one who picked it up. He leafed through it as Raphael poured the ketchup.

‘Five calls from Uranium Trousers. They even left us a message yesterday. That makes three legal threats. Are you sure we can just ignore them?’

‘It won’t come to anything, trust me,’ Uriel said, helping himself to a single French fry.

‘Alright, next we’ve got an order for a shipment of denim out east,’ Hadriel said, grabbing a handful of fries. ‘I’m thinking we can just send our leftover Fall Season product to them, clear out the warehouse for what we’re going to be having sent here this month.’

‘Better ship them out quickly, then,’ Raphael muttered ketchup rolling down his chin. ‘The Winter line will be delivered here soon, and those coats take up a hell of a lot of space. Remember last year, a man was trapped in one of the storage containers by an excess of down jackets and we didn’t discover his body until- how long was it? All I remember was it smelled awful.’

‘The spring. That was an embarrassing incident. Those jackets were poreless plastic, too, he suffocated in that container,’ Hadriel recalled mournfully before turning to Azrael. ‘Hey, wipe your goddamn hands before you get grease all over those papers.’

Azrael ignored him completely. Eyes still on the paper, he asked, ‘Hmm, we wouldn’t want another smothering. Maybe the stock should come in a little slower, how about that? How much would it be to have the winter coats delivered in smaller shipments?’

‘Why not just have large deliveries to begin with? They always sell out faster at the start of the season, when everyone’s panicking about the first cold days of winter,’ Uriel said. ‘And we should get out as many as possible before the big brands perk up and start pointing fingers about copying their designs, the studded waistlines and all that. We don’t want a repeat of what happened last winter – as fun as it was.’

‘Their jackets may have been waterproof, but they didn’t provide protection from all the elements,’ Raphael guffawed, patting an ominous bulge in his jacket.

Everyone at the table snickered a little, sending some bits of potato spraying out onto the table. Uriel smiled darkly. ‘So, I take it I can I trust one of you to call the factory and confirm our shipping schedule for–‘ He stopped halfway through his sentence because he noticed a strange pair of eyes looking at him. He stopped so suddenly that his cohorts also turned to see what had caught his attention.

In the corner booth, not far away, half-lit by an overhanging lamp, Val was staring at his table with a wide grin on his face aimed right at them. His chin resting on his hands, his gaze was unnervingly steady. Uriel stared back at him blankly and regretted ever revealing anything about the meeting to him. He made the most aggressive scowl he could to make Val turn away, which worked for a second before Val turned back to him and gave an exaggerated wink as if to say, Just give us the sign, and we’ll let all hell with break loose. At least, that’s what he had come to expect from Val.

Uriel was horrified.

‘Did he just wink at you?’ Hadriel asked. ‘Do you know each other?’

‘No,’ Uriel said quickly.

‘I think you have an admirer,’ snickered Azrael. ‘Tall dark and cross-eyed. Just your type, huh?’

‘He isn’t cross-eyed, he’s heterochromatic,’ said Raphael with a smug air of authority.

‘I doubt he’s hetero-anything.’ Azrael continued to leer at Uriel.

‘No, he means his eyes are different colors. They really do look like different colors from here,’ Hadriel said. He shifted his head back a little. ‘But from here, they don’t.’

‘I know what the word means!’ Azrael shouted.

‘Really, do you?’ Hadriel sneered.

‘You were using it wrong,’ Raphael said, and took a sip of water as Azrael rounded onto him.

‘STOP,’ Uriel commanded. They stopped. He sighed. ‘We have a lot more work to do so just ignore those buffoons in the corner and get on with the call list. What’s next?’

The group fumbled into order again. The issue of the dismantled factory that Hadriel had brought up earlier was next, but the four angels had considerable difficulty in ignoring those buffoons in the corner.

While Hadriel was advocating workers’ rights, the table in the corner was ordering appetizers, and Patches was calmly debating with a very lively Val about whether they should order barbecue sauce or ketchup with their fries. Lei took the side of ketchup, and also wanted onion rings. Ravel was still itching to leave and practically sliding off his chair.

When the waitress came to them, she suggested they get both onion rings and fries with barbecue sauce and ketchup, to which they agreed. She gave them a bottle of ketchup which Val opened and passed to Patches, who swung it so mightily that half the bottle was emptied onto his plate. When he saw his friend’s face fall at his error, Val asked the waitress for a new one.

Lei then poured a little bit of ketchup on her plate. Just enough, a perfect serving. Patches was boggled, and to show him her method, she slowly poured another puddle of ketchup onto Ravel’s place. When Patches wanted her to do it again, she made another pile in front of Ravel. She handed Patches the bottle for his second try. Unfortunately he strong-armed the thing again, emptying the rest of it on his new plate. The waitress’s smile was thinning when Val called her over a second time.

Hadriel was stuck staring at this ketchup debacle when Azrael lost his patience and snapped, ‘Who cares about those factory goons anyway? We’ve got more important things to deal with.’

Azrael got started. He attempted to bring up cost-cutting ideas for the construction of their new warehouse, including a few things of dubious legality, but it wasn’t long before his attention was dragged elsewhere. A few plates had arrived at Val’s table and the group was getting to work on their appetizers. Lei hauled all the onion rings to her side, offering them only to Ravel, who still looked primed for a nervous breakdown. Val jokingly chided that they should all share what they had, and offered her a fry.

Patches was helping himself to a dinner roll. He broke it into two pieces but when he picked up his bread knife his hand began shaking violently, as it had in the house in front of Ravel and Lei. Unable to butter his bread, he put both his knife and hand back down on the table, and put his steady hand over his shaky one. Lei noticed this first and seemed to ask him what the problem was, but Val laughed away her question and threw a handful of fries at her plate, and missed. Some hit the tablecloth. A few sprawled to the floor.

Lei shook her fist at Val, and went to attend to the wayward fries. Ravel almost leapt out of his seat when one of the fries landed in his lap. When the kids had their attention turned elsewhere, Val leaned over and touched the quaking hand. He said a few words to Patches with a serious face, but by the time Lei and Ravel were back at the table, his hands were to himself and there was a stupid innocuous smile plastered to his face.

Azrael wanted to point and jeer, yell ‘Just look that them!’ to his fellow businessmen, but knew he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be appropriate. But by the time he realized he couldn’t he also realized that he had forgotten when he was talking about.

And so Azrael was lost to the conversation. After a moment’s silence Raphael took the opportunity to voice his concerns. ‘Well, that’s not all. I was thinking we should open an outlet, or at least build a partnership with one of the larger clothes markets, you know the bargain basements, have them stock our products in stores. I’m sick of working with small time companies like Uranium who can’t even…’

But as he was speaking, Val decided it was time to start complaining about the temperature. He wanted to call the poor waitress over again to turn down the heating, but Lei refused to let him, telling him to take off his coat instead. Ravel gave her a fearful look that said, Do you really want him to start that again?But before Lei could take it back, Val had already begun.

He removed his coat with all the grace of a man having a seizure while dressing. He pulled and wrangled his sleeves and collar and stood up and shook one side of the jacket off. As he started to tug off the other side, there he saw the problem. His hideous patchwork top had somehow attached itself to the inside of the coat with some spiky wool threat that had unraveled itself from the pieces of the shirt.

The shirt itself was easily the most awful piece of clothing Raphael had ever seen. Working for a pirating jeans company, he had met plenty of people who made him feel inferior about his fashion know-how, but he knew poison when he saw it. And yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. It was like the stiff spiky thread had planted its barbs in his eyes as well. And it hurt. As he winced, the others turned to look at the disaster too.

Val seemed to be trying to unlace the thread from his jacket, which wasn’t working. At the end of her patience, Lei tugged the stubborn sleeve and Val’s jacket dropped off him and onto the ground. The council of the Daily Pants all observed its descent in complete silence. Their subordinates in the surrounding tables were all locked on the scene too. The room was mesmerized by disbelief. Everyone was now out of their senses but Uriel. He coughed discreetly. When that didn’t get anybody’s attention he banged the table with a fist. The three angels jumped back to earth. The black suits in the tables around them quickly started muttering amongst themselves again, trying to get their minds back to their own business.

‘Sorry Uriel, it’s just that those uninvited guests are just so distracting,’ Hadriel apologized. Raphael took another drink of water to calm his nerves. ‘It’s like something out of a sitcom.’

‘If you wanted to watch sitcoms, you should have stayed home!’ Uriel shouted.

‘Why don’t we ask them to go home?’ Azrael said, patting the bulge in his jacket.

‘Don’t you fucking dare! Jesus, am I working with three year olds here?’

As Uriel shouted at the top of his lungs, Val appeared to be trying to get his attention. Uriel gave him the most venomous glare he could muster, but Val just beamed at him. Uriel continued his rant.

‘Have you never dined in a public place? Do you just go knife every guy on a cell phone, every television owner that happens to be functioning in the same room as you?’

Now Val was holding what looked like a disposable cell phone. What was he doing? He was talking very quietly but quickly into the phone, but still staring in their direction. As he did this, he gave Uriel the thumbs up. Uriel wanted to go over and smack his head over, had no choice but to continue his little tirade.

‘Do you have to make a scene wherever you go? Azrael, I’m talking to you!’

Val listened to the phone and appeared to be in agreement with the operator. Uriel continued:

‘We’re supposed to be professionals here! So just leave them and move on with the meeting!’

The restaurant had grown quiet. Another soft jazz track started. Val put his phone away. One of his entrées arrived, a plate of spaghetti, which he proceeded to douse with barbecue sauce. The angels looked down and fiddled their hands in shame. Uriel settled, and tried to put Val out of sight and mind. He didn’t want a whole room of mobsters gunning for his friend, but at the same time this was an incredibly embarrassing friend and he was tryingto run a meeting. Perhaps his embarrassing act would stop them from taking him seriously. He’d have to hope so.

But the phone worried him. It was odd. He never had anyone to call. As far as he knew, Val never had a cell phone.

—

Ten minutes later, the council of the Daily Pants was digging into their dinner. The four of them had ordered a nice variety of burgers, soups and ribs, and the mood had lightened up considerably. They were far more productive when focused on food. Val’s group, also distracted by food, had not done anything outrageous in a while. Uriel’s nerves had subsided a little.

He and his cohorts didn’t even notice when a few other groups entered the diner, office workers in button down shirts and city commuters, chattering amongst themselves, lugging along briefcases and handbags. The angels became somewhat aware that the booths around them were beginning to fill up.

An attractive young couple came and sat in the booth to their left. A bunch of serious looking workers in blue suits came and sat in the booth between the angels and Val’s family gathering. A bunch of young men with golf bags, some middle aged women, single customers taking up their own booths. Uriel felt a cold sweat coming on as he forked pasta into his mouth. Something wasn’t right.

Many of the new patrons were choosing seats near theirs. The room was now lively with chatter, something surely unwelcome at a business meeting. But nobody at his table was reacting. They all looked completely engrossed in their means. After Uriel’s outburst, they did not want to look like they weren’t paying attention to things that were irrelevant to the meeting.

Since the bosses were ignoring it all, the henchmen at the other tables were too.

When they finished their food, Raphael lit up a new cigarette (he unwisely had put out the old one in his glass of water, rendering it undrinkable.) Hadriel fished out his folder of documents again. Azrael stretched like a cat, his arms rising over the couple seated behind him.

‘So, shall we continue?’ he said.

Uriel nodded and pushed away his bowl, which was still half full. He didn’t have much of an appetite at the moment. The meeting continued.

—

All things came to a head when Ravel decided he needed the bathroom. Maybe he was feeling more at ease now that the room had filled with friendlier looking customers. Or maybe he had grown so nervous that he needed a quick break away.

‘Where is the washroom?’ he whispered over to Lei as quietly as he could. Unfortunately, Val heard him.

‘What a coincidence, I think I could use a visit to the bathroom too!’ he said.

Ravel glanced over at him doubtfully. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you where it is when I get back.’

‘It’s probably down in that corner over there,’ Lei said, chewing on some garlic knots. ‘Val, just wait for him to make sure.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll go with you and save you the extra trip back to the table.’ Val got up from his seat, putting his awful shirt in full view once again.

‘It’s okay, really. I’d… rather go to the bathroom alone.’

‘I’ll just stand outside the door then.’

‘There’s really no need.’

Lei and Patches were sitting through this scene looking completely blank, not entirely at ease.

Ravel looked briefly around. He shook his head in frustration. ‘Val, just… wait here.’

‘Don’t be a coward.’

‘What? What does this have to do with me being a coward? I just want to go to the bathroom! There’s no reason to make a big deal about that!’

By now they had gained a couple of odd stares, not only from the thugs in black suits but also the other diner-goers. A band of women sitting two booths away chortled lightly at the conversation. Ravel’s face turned red, although it looked more orange in the lighting.

‘I’ll be back,’ he muttered, slipping away from the table.

Val quickly struggled out of his seat too, and leapt off the bench, shoes landing right next to Ravel, hand landing on his shoulder. He gave Ravel a quick shove. ‘Good. We’ll be back. Patches, watch my coat.’ He continued ushering Ravel away. ‘And take care of the bill.’

‘Oh, is it time already?’ Patches asked flatly.

Surrounded by a discussion of factory safety precautions, Uriel sat very still. Something horrible was going to happen. Val was throwing a fit about going to the bathroom. That wasn’t unusual, but the air had changed. The couple behind them were quiet. So was the gathering of men on their opposite side. As if they had been listening to the conversation.  The women who had chuckled over at their table were still watching. All the tables, all the tables that weren’t theirs were waiting for something.

Val hustled Ravel past Uriel’s table. Uriel caught Val’s eye for a split second. That look of determined idiocy was there as usual. Instinctively, Uriel shrunk away from it. As Val moved by, a crisp green thousand dollar bill came fluttering down, right in the middle of it. It sat there like a dry leaf, a dazzling, hypnotizing dry leaf. The business meeting froze.

‘You dropped a bill, sir,’ said Hadriel.

‘Don’t tell him, idiot!’ Azrael hissed.

‘Yeah, hurry, grab it,’ Raphael said, making no effort to do so himself.

‘There will be bigger hell to pay if he finds out we kept it!’ Hadriel slapped Azrael’s hand away as it inched towards the bill. Uriel didn’t say anything, but stayed as far away from it as he could, as if it were a time bomb, which wasn’t far off the mark.

Val turned around and the three arguing businessmen stopped guiltily. ‘Keep it,’ he said, apparently to nobody in particular. ‘Think of it as… compensation.’ He nodded at them pleasantly and hurried Ravel along towards the back of the diner, towards safety. Uriel stared at the bill and desperately looked over at Patches and Lei. Lei was finishing a glass of cola, but looking at him with the corner of her eye. Patches saw Uriel’s expression of horror and very slowly shrugged.

‘Did he say compensation?’ Hadriel asked.

‘It must be for me, then,’ Raphael claimed. ‘After all, I was the one who had to face their table this whole time. He’s paying me for the trauma. Did you see that shirt?’

‘Don’t you dare, it’s probably for all of us!’ Azrael roared.

‘Oh, now you feel community benefits are the way to go?’ jeered Hadriel.

‘Are you saying you don’t want a share?’

‘Don’t be so hasty,’ Hadriel protested, ‘One thousand doesn’t divide evenly into three anyway.’

Still aware of the quiet around them, and the stares, Uriel cut in. He felt he had to. ‘Don’t start anything here, please, gentlemen. We won’t be dividing it into three, or four, or any ways for that matter.’ He looked at them all very carefully in turn.

They were looking at him now, waiting, and expectant. Uriel inhaled deeply, exhaled. He was in no rush to end this. They weren’t going to be happy. It was such a shame that they trusted him. His judgment supposed to be was fair, and it was final. What he said now would be the final word. So what he said was: ‘He was giving the bill to me.’

In the horrible, still second that followed, Uriel snapped the bill out from under the noses of his three friends. ‘Although I don’t think a thousand is going to cover the damages.’ He stood up from the table solemnly, but quickly, and after shoving the bill into his pants pocket, ducked out of the booth and made a mad dash for the restroom. The three remained where they were, stunned. All eyes were on them. And there were a lot of unfamiliar eyes.

Raphael, who almost never came up with ideas first, was somehow the first to see what they had gotten themselves into. He got to his feet. ‘Uriel, you traitor!’ he reached his hand into his jacket.

It was Hadriel who came next. ‘You’ve sold us out!’ He, too, reached for an inner pocket. His papers flew to the floor.

Always quick to join in any act of violence, Azrael was up soon after. ‘You won’t get away! We’ll hunt you down and all your little friends and fill your guts with some burning hot-‘ But before he could finish his innuendo laced threat and draw anything out of his jacket, the cops were on them.

The couple behind them pulled two automatic pistols from their shoulder holsters. The four men behind them in business attire whirled on them with similar guns, but larger. From golf bags came rifles, from handbags revolvers, jackets flew to reveal thick vests and hidden weapons. Laser sights poked through the gloom and there were a hundred arming clicks. Their exits were blocked. The black-suited thugs of the Daily Pants were surrounded.

It looked like the end. Things should have gone smoothly from there, but when it came to denim bootlegging companies, which should never have been a trend in the first place, you could never really tell. The tabled thugs refused to put their hands up. They kept their hands on their weapons, in their jackets. Azrael was looking around furiously for something to take his anger out on. His eyes rested on the table where Val had been seated. ‘YOU,’ he bellowed. ‘IT WAS YOU!’

Patches and Lei, the only ones left at the table, looked duped. Lei put down her glass tensely. ‘What?’

‘YOUR LITTLE PAL. HE DID THIS. TELL ME WHERE HE WENT.’

‘Into the bathroom,’ Patches said. ‘I thought you were listening to our conversation. You weren’t really listening to your own.’

‘YOU!’ Azrael said again, and strode towards them. He drew his weapon.

At that moment, all the member of the Daily Pants also drew their weapons. At that moment, Azrael launched forward while Hadriel and Raphael pulled back. At that moment, Lei ducked and Patches stood. And also at that moment, the police force took their first shots. Glass shattered, chairs fell, a waitress screamed, there were enormous, ear-blowing bangs. The room erupted into chaos.

Surrounded by more noise than she had ever heard in her life, Lei pitched herself under the shots and smoke and towards where Val and Ravel had dashed off. She had known, or should have known that Val was planning something ridiculous, but was this really necessary? If Azrael didn’t catch him, Lei thought, I’ll obliterate him myself. She was stumbling forward on all fours ready to strangle the first person she ran into, when a large hand grabbed the hood of her Daily Pants sweatshirt and pulled her back.

She was dragged in towards a booth, and from behind her she heard a grunt, ‘This is the girl who was with them, right? Trying to make a getaway.’

‘Yeah, yeah maybe we can use this…’

It was Raphael who had her by the neck, with both of his hands. A bad idea. It was Hadriel who was holding a gun to her. Well, he wasn’t really holding the gun to her, more just sort of holding it in her vicinity with its muzzle pointed out towards the chaos, which was a bad idea. He was always the least violent of the group.

‘What did-‘ began Hadriel before a fist embedded itself into his oily yellow face. Another fist drove towards his wrist and collided with a crack. There was a second crack as his gun fell to the floor and skidded off into the void. Lei grabbed his cream colored shirt at random points and hurled him into the void as well. He didn’t travel very far, but it was far enough.

‘Don’t-‘ Raphael started, and reached one hand towards his weapon, but didn’t make it. Lei caught his hand as it left her hood and yanked it forward. The mobster’s hand lost her hood, but found the neck chord. It pulled tight. Lei choked slightly, but there was plenty of time to recover. Raphael wasn’t getting up quickly. No longer in a secure grip, Lei pulled herself into an upright kneel and elbowed him in the chin. His crown smacked right into the gum-laden underside of the table. Up above, the plates and glasses bounced. Lei saw spaghetti fly off the table and onto the floor. Raphael collapsed on the ground, but she kept one forearm against his back and his shoulder pulled backwards, just to make sure. She poked her head out from the under the table. She needed to keep an eye out for Hadriel, and Azrael…

There was a crash, a huge, explosive, crackling crash just to her left that sent her back under the table again, ears ringing. She cringed and let go of Raphael, who seemed to have passed out. Under a table a few feet away she saw Hadriel huddled under a table with shredded tablecloth, he must have heard the noise too, she wasn’t going crazy. She panted and tried to calm down. That was way too loud. Was it a gun? She didn’t know. Maybe it was a different kind of gun. It might have seemed loud just because it was close. Maybe someone had busted a table. Something had broken.

Whatever it was, the explosion blocked out all other noise for half a moment. After it had filed down to some crumbling, Lei squinted out into the dining area. Whatever its caused, the rest of the noise had died down down in its wake. The fight was also about to come to an end..

It took a few seconds for the smoke to settle, so for a few seconds, everyone just listened to soft jazz – everyone who was alive, that is. The police started moving first. The gangsters backed down. They looked for their leaders, they looked for the source of the bang that had stopped the fight. Lei saw that there were a couple of bodies lying around, but no more than three or four. They were all dressed in black, so she guessed they were gangsters. They were wearing black. Apart from the members of the Daily Pants, only Val, Ravel and Patches had been wearing black. In a sudden fit of concern, Lei emerged from under the table.

‘Patches?’

A few worried police officers turned their guns at her, but quickly turned back to their work. Lei dusted smoke from her eyes and looked back towards the table where she had left Patches with Azrael. They were both still there, and still alive, but something had happened and neither of them seemed willing to explain what.

The table had been shot, for one. There were two bullet holes in it. There were several tables with more extensive gunfire damage.

But their table also had a crater smashed into it, a crater larger than the bullet holes, at least five times as wide, and nearly as deep. There was another crater that had the thin wooden pillar next to the booth in two clear halves, punched clean through. And finally, there was an enormous hole in the wall that drove straight through the yellowing wallpaper, the rotten wooden paneling and a few inches into the concrete and brick underneath. Black splinters poked from the hole, fringing the edges and hanging over the table like some spiked leery creature.

Azrael was sitting on the bench in front of the hole, clinging to his bloody, fractured arm. Patches was standing at the next booth, keeping an eye on him, rubbing his hands together as if he were cold.

Lei walked over to them. Azrael kept his eyes down, scowling, and his hand on his arm. It seemed to be dangling from his shoulder, no longer part of him. It was like he had been shot with a cannon, a cannon that had shot into the table, and into the pillar and wall. He spat at her feet, but missed. Lei turned towards the rest of the dining area. She saw there were flashing lights outside. Hopefully for Azrael, they would be ambulances. She called out, ‘Hey, can somebody take a look at this guy?’

There wasn’t much of a reaction. The police were busy removing Raphael’s contraband cigars from his pockets, and one of the mob grunts had tripped, bringing down a whole line of them that had been handcuffed together. She shrugged and went over to Patches. He was still rubbing his hands over each other when she approached. At least he didn’t seem so shaky anymore.

‘Hate it when he does things like this,’ Lei said. She was, of course, talking about Val.

‘Part of the job,’ Patches said. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘No doubt this one will pay well. And… at least things don’t get boring.’

‘Yeah, like that matters in a job. I guess we should go find where he ran off to.’

‘No worries. He said he’d be back.’

And indeed, Val was coming back to them right at that moment, having emerged from the bathroom. He was carrying a suitcase-sized white first aid kit. He waved happily at them, at the police. ‘Job well done, everybody! Things are looking good here!’ He handed the first aid kit to Patches. ‘Nice work. I thought you would need this after hearing the commotion. I don’t know why but they only put these in the ladies’ room…’

Behind him trundled Ravel, looking somewhat traumatized.

‘Have a nice trip to the bathroom?’ Lei asked casually.

‘What in the world happened here?’ Ravel cried.

‘You wanted to see it? You should have told me while I was still planning,’ Val said. He looked around, distractedly. ‘Did you see where Uriel went?’

‘I thought he was headed for the bathroom too,’ Patches murmured, rubbing his hands with some of the wet wipes in the first aid kit. Lei saw that his knuckles, the backs of his palms and fingers, while now still as stone, were torn and bloodied, skin flayed and pierced with who knew what. The wipes he was using were dyed completely red. It was a sickening sight. Those wet wipes weren’t going to do the job.

Val evidently thought the same. ‘We should be going home now, don’t you think?’

‘That’s right,’ Patches said, abandoning his cleaning process. ‘We have another meeting to make.’

‘Are you kidding me?’ Lei asked hoarsely.

Val laughed in response. Lei wanted to punch him in the neck. ‘Don’t worry, you two don’t have to join us. Just some follow up to the incident tonight, have some things to check up on, people to talk to. Unless you’re really interested, then feel free-‘

‘No thanks,’ Lei mumbled. Ravel just hung his head.

‘Yes. You two just put on something comfortable, watch TV, get some rest…’ Val smiled and led them towards the exit. As he passed Azrael he paused, infuriatingly, in front of him. To either Azrael or his assistants he said, ‘Things are safe for now. So just take this time to relax.’

Without observing Azrael (or Lei’s) response, Val proceeded out the front door. The bell hanging up above jingled as he pulled it open, and when he let it swing shut. Police cars were surrounding the building. Their sirens seemed like they would never end. All in all, things had been a success. Val hung back behind Lei and Ravel to take it all in, and take his jacket from Patches’ bloodied hands and put it on. It was a cold night. The reports would say it was the coldest fall night in ten years.

It would also be remembered as the night the Daily Pants Corporation dissolved and vanished, never to be seen again.

—

A bit of flurry had begun to fall when the clock neared midnight. A sleek black motorcycle, parked outside a destitute Laundromat, was starting to gather some frost by then. It was the only vehicle in sight. Inside the small square building, Uriel was emptying the contents of several washing machines into a duffel bag. The fluorescent lights, the cold, and the thought of having to travel on night like this one were giving him a major headache. He paused periodically to lean his head on the cool surfaces of the washing machines. They were very still. They weren’t plugged in. This wasn’t really a place for washing clothes. As he emptied the last of them, the last of his possessions (that he would need,) he sighed and stood up and slung the bag over his shoulder, unaware that someone was standing right behind him.

The bag swung right into the gut of someone who had been standing behind him, and I don’t think I need to tell you who it was.

A yelp of pain echoed through the empty streets.

That was a lie. They weren’t entirely empty. But the one person listening was right outside the door and knew exactly what he was going to see.

Patches pushed the glass door with his shoulder, his hands being occupied by bandages and bruises from his run-in with the restaurant wall, as well as a cheap plastic bowl of noodles. He looked entirely past Val writhing against the countertop in the middle of the room that was piled up with a mass of black clothing, and said to Uriel, ‘Do you have everything you need?’

‘More than enough.’

Patches eyed Uriel’s bag full of black clothing and dragged a few steaming noodles to his mouth. Uriel’s clothing all looked very similar, but all the clothes that he weren’t packing – the ones left on the table- these were decorated with the Daily Pants logo. Uriel was not taking any of these with him. He tossed another onto the pile and waved his hand over at them. ‘Do me a favor and burn these for me later. Or toss them into the sea, ship them out, I don’t care. Just get them away from here.’

‘That seems like a waste.’

‘Oh, right, I’m talking to a good Samaritan. Then give it to charity, if that’s your thing.’ Uriel tried in vain to zip up his belongings. He propped the bag up on the wall of drying machines with his knee and wrestled with the zip. ‘The point is, make sure nobody can connect me to the Daily Pants anymore. Our business partners won’t be happy to know a friend of mine got the whole operation shut down just before a big selling season.’

‘I’m sorry you had to leave tonight,’ Patches said carefully.

Val straightened himself up and resumed standing behind Uriel defiantly. ‘There’s no reason to be sorry. It had to happen eventually. This is actually a good time to leave. The weather’s about to get bad.’

Uriel dropped his bag on the tiled floor, spilling a few socks, and pointed an accusing finger at Val. ‘Hey, don’t forget you were the one who told me to come down here in the first place. You’re telling me I shouldn’t care that you tell me to go somewhere else every time I start to get settled?’

‘Yes. Have you never held a job before? That’s how it works, right? I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, since I’ve never held a job either. But that just means I know as much as you. Well, that’s not exactly true. Because who is working for who?’

Uriel sputtered incoherently and tore at his bleached hair, but perhaps it was better that no words came out. Patches made a face at Val, who looked back with a look of utter mystification. Patches shook his head and went back to his food. Finally, slamming his hand down on poor washer in front of him, Uriel got his thoughts in order. ‘Fine, boss. I’ll leave happy. That’s what you’re asking for, right? You know, maybe this is a good thing. Are you also telling me not to come back? I can do that too. With pleasure.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘What part of that did you not at least suggest?’

‘What?’

In response all Uriel did was gawk at Val, who seemed oblivious to his declining patience. ‘You always talk like that,’ Val said. ‘I wish you’d visited more often, seems like we could have had some fun conversations. But no, you couldn’t stand up to a little cat hair.’

Uriel made another choking noise and threw his hands up in frustration. ‘I don’t understand any of this. But hey, it’s going to be a relief getting away from you.’ Once again he pulled the bag over his shoulder and purposefully allowed it to mash in Val’s lungs again. Satisfied at the resulting croak and collapse, he lugged his belongings over to the doorway and pulled two coats off the coat rack. It was a chilly night, and this was the first time he’d needed both. One was his everyday leather piece with the snake and skull. He threw this one on first.

The other was a much thicker jacket, but much more finely tailored, at least in most places. The buttons, the stitching, the robust silver zippers were all of much higher quality than the mass imports the Daily Pants had always used. It was dark blue wool rather than the usual puffy sheeted plastic, not something these small towners would be wearing. Although somewhat worn out, it was very well kept, except the entire left hand side was riddled with extra stitching and fabric table where it appeared a lion had gotten to it – or perhaps, where it had been dragged across a city road in some sort of freak accident.

‘You still have that thing?’ Val asked suddenly. Uriel was prepared to not listen to anything Val said ever again, but his voice was painfully serious. Was he referring to the coat? He was remembering something. Uriel sighed as he pulled the sleeves on.

‘Yes. I didn’t throw everything out. Hey, it’s a quality coat even after the crash. They just don’t make stuff like this out… out here.’

‘Here?’

‘In the middle of nowhere. Nothing worth keeping in the places you take us.’

Val gave this some thought. Not about to wait for him to stretch out their discussion, Uriel zipped and buttoned his jacket. Patches was finishing off his noodles and used a free hand, or rather, elbow, to hold to door open for him. Uriel tried to muster up a little appreciation. ‘Take care of this fuckup.’

‘You take care too.’ The steam from the noodles drifted into Uriel’s face as he passed. He stopped in the doorway.

‘Something is about to happen, isn’t it?’ Uriel said in a slightly lower voice. Patches didn’t respond but just looked at him with that one tired eye. Doing the work of two eyes all on its own, no wonder he always looked a little drowsy. Uriel frowned. ‘Is it his birthday?’

‘Wait,’ Val called. Both Uriel and Patches stopped to look at him expectantly.

‘That… that reminds me, there’s one more thing I wanted to say,’ Val said. He paused. Uriel’s flickered his gaze between Val and the white clock on the white wall at the back of the room. ‘Uh. I didn’t get to say this to our other friend before he left, but I just feel like I should say to you, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ Uriel muttered. This was not what he had expected. He looked at the clock again, then at his feet. Val continued staring holes into him. Uriel picked at the loose threads on his left sleeve. ‘Like you said, I couldn’t expect to stay here forever. I’m already over it.’

‘Huh? Staying… Oh, no, I didn’t mean about tonight.’ Val corrected himself quickly, as though it were only the right thing to do. ‘I mean about that I told my assistants.’ Nothing. The air was frozen. Uriel breathed deeply.

‘What?’

‘I told one of them about you.’

‘What did you tell them? What did you say?’ Uriel seethed. Patches took a very small step away from him, out into the lightly falling slow. Indoors seemed too dangerous now. ‘What did you say to… your assistants?’ Uriel repeated very slowly, the words dropping like rocks. Val’s somewhat remorseful stare didn’t waver. He was barely even looking at Uriel.

‘I told her about the accident. I also told her that you were an idiot. Exact words, “What an idiot.” I think she believed me too. I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t fair. I know it wasn’t an accident. You know that I know that you-‘

No longer listening, Uriel heaved something between a groan and a sigh and a roar, and dissolved into an indecipherable mess of enraged cursing. He yanked his bag up over the net of thread work on his shoulder, this time driving the black bulk into Patches’ ribs on his way out. He didn’t apologize, but grunted faintly in his direction, ‘I don’t know why you keep coming back.’ Patches held very still. Then, as if coming to a verdict that only mattered to himself, he just shrugged half heartedly, although he continued to hold the door open as Uriel brushed by.

Uriel stomped over the fresh dusting of snow to his motorcycle and after quickly sweeping the snow off that, set his bag and himself onto it. After a few seconds, the machine roared to life. Over the din, Val shouted ‘You did good! If you go back to the city, you show them what they really have to fear!’ And perhaps as a final peace offering, ‘Happy holidays!’

Uriel gave Val one last sidelong glance through narrowed eyes. He might have smirked then, or just bared his teeth at his continually awful ‘boss.’ Then, without a word, he kicked up his cycle’s stand and tore off into the night, leaving a ringing ears and a cloud trail of black smoke in his wake, and those faded quickly. Soon there was nothing but the snow and buzzing lightbulbs, and the tiny clouds that rose from the mouths of Val and Patches as they looked out at the empty parking lot, the empty streets, the dark buildings all around them with people who wanted nothing to do with being outdoors at this time, in this temperature.

A shame, too. It was quite a beautiful night, but that might have been because nobody was around.

Val didn’t seem too motivated to do anything, so Patches straightened up slowly and leaned against the glass door sorely. He had managed to spill some of his soup on himself when Uriel’s bag had clubbed him, so he had to be careful. He also knew that it was likely Val was standing right behind him, ready to be elbowed in the chin, so he was all the more careful.

‘I think that went well,’ Val said.

No reply was needed.

‘Do you think we should get a tree this year?’

Patches shrugged.

Val came up next to him and leaned against the door too. He stared into the sky, at the incoming snowflakes. It was a bit like the stars were falling from the sky, although not quite like the architects metal fallen stars, so Val didn’t find them very exciting. They also fell on his eyes and made them cold and wet and red. He squinted. ‘So… what exactly do you have planned?’

‘I don’t know yet. But the last innocent party has left, so I’d better start planning.’

‘That isn’t true.’ Patches suspected Val already knew, but had made the mistake intentionally to get some sort of response. But you could never be sure. ‘There’s still one more.’

‘You’re not talking about yourself, right? You’re staying this time.’

‘I’m not talking about me.’ Patches exhaled a wisp of white smoke into the dry air. ‘But… you know who, close enough. I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually, like he always does when it gets cold.’ He stared up at the stars. Or maybe they were just lights in windows. It was so dark, and with the flurries and their clouds of smoke, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. ‘Who’s getting the tree?’