Tates like trouble: V

I came back out of the bedroom wearing a pair of pink sweat pants that ended halfway down my calves. The rest of me was covered in her bathrobe. I had found and taken more pills while I dressed. He was making coffee; he knew the apartment like he had been here before.

The door was re-hung but would not close properly. The couch was returned to the center of the living room and a small bookshelf had been pulled over just enough to keep the door from swinging back open. He handed me a cup and retrieved the coffee table from the corner of the room opposite the door.

He removed his jacket before he sat down. He was wearing an solid olive green shirt. This time it was giving off the perception that his tattoos were growing off the shirt. Their pattern was puzzling to me. I couldn’t quite figure out what they were of, and the fact that they seemed to change was occupying more of my thoughts than I would ever admit.

“You a hard-ass?” He asked as he flipped his foot up onto his knee and eased back into the slashed sofa.

I am… I began, but he cut me off. “You’d have to be. First the beating, then the hospital escape. If I didn’t know any better I would think you were a hard-ass.”

I repeated back to him the first bit of the last thing he said. Didn’t know any better, I raised my voice at the end to turn it into a question.

“And you're not much for volunteering information are you? I mean considering your current state.” I touched my ribs and ran my fingers across my eye. I’m not doing to bad I thought, the doctors must have thought I had insurance or something.

“You see what I mean? Hardly a fucking word comes out of your mouth.”

I moved to the window and told him that she would be back soon, or as he had implied, they might come looking for me. He didn’t look in my direction, he had taken out his little notebook and flipped to a marked page. “ I have a guy out there, and your girl knows me. We have a minute, but the hell if I am going to spend it answering you. Tell me a story.”

I reminded him he wasn't going to hear shit from me without seeing a badge. What he provided didn’t help my muddled head. He had no badge. What he handed me was a small piece of paper the size of an index card. Printed on it was his name with military rank. Under that in larger print was, United Intelligence Organization : Special unit in charge of war crimes. It had his photo and a watermark and stamp. A metal tag clipped onto the lower right corner. A series of number ran down the right side and repeated in reverse order across the bottom. I paid less attention than I probably should have to the thing, there were swirls and underneath it all was his photo. It looked legit but I didn’t have a clue as to what kind of authority it gave him.

Big business card. I said as I handed it back to him. He shrugged and returned it to his jacket pocket. “Big organization.”

So I talked, He seemed unconvinced by most of my story. From what I can remember, here is how it went down.