The Broker

The Broker

Corsica, 2018. Wet streets snaked around huddled stone buildings, bare and rustic. The scent of brine and fish residue clinging. The Kid, the only black one, worked nights in a harbour bar, sat by the edge of the dock. He was forty three. He looked younger. Time in this coastal place was slow and arrested - caught in an amber strangeness of memory and centuries of fishing, boats, and salted wind.

By day the Mediterranean stretched out before the town, an aquascape of blues and greens - rows of liquid agate. Everywhere shimmering in tiny flecks of sun.  The horizon appeared as a blurred vector where sky met sea and they coalesced awhile, hazed one into the other under briny heat in a fine, white weave of nimbus thread. The Kid found solace in its endlessness. And in the way waves spoke in rhythm, lapping percussively against hulls of fishing boats. And likewise against the rugged, rough-to-the-touch harbour walls, worn over years. Rust. Rust on everything that could rust, and dared to be there.

In the town, among the serpentine alleys and peeling facades - painted in once joyful colors - he was no one. The Kid anonymously wiped tables touched by the oily pads of countless hands. He poured drinks for local fishermen who paid him no heed, an occasional tourist too. Quietly he watched as lives sifted and drifted through the bar, spectre-like. 

The Kid had come to the fishing town because it was the kind of place that permitted a black migrant to be as insubstantial as smoke. He sent money home devotedly. He folded himself into the creases of the place, moving namelessly and deferentially through its narrow arteries, his apologetic presence barely noted by those around him. In the dim light of the bar, he was just another black face serving drinks and food. Cloth or mop in hand. Helpful and obliging. Unremarkable.

As night fell, the town took on otherworldly torchlight. Tangerine street lamps flickered with paltry luminescence and cast reflections of dirty gold onto grooved, wet cobblestones. The rain began as a soft patter, a gentle drizzle from the heavens that would soon grow into a steady downpour. Washing streets clean of the day’s dust and misdemeanours, shoring up a malodour of fish and brine. The Kid smoked Gauloises, stood by the window, watching as raindrops traced patterns on the glass, reflecting muted light.

Inside, the bar was nearly empty. A few older fishermen sat hunched over drinks, weathered and aged well before their time. The air replete with smoke; French cussing, and red wine aroma. Their voices were but low murmur, a part of the ambient sound that was as constant and inconsequential  as the ticking of a clock; as inconsequential as The Kid, the black one. He moved quietly  among them - a servile wraith, clearing their empty glasses, the clinking the only punctuation in the steady rhythm of the rain and conversational hubbub.

Then the mahogany door swung open, creaking. With it came a familiar gust of cool, salt air and the ozonic scent of storm. A man stepped inside, his silhouette sharp against the dim glowing of the bar’s interior. His coat dripped, beads of water pitching onto the floor. The Kid felt his breath catch. He knew this man. His heart all but stopped, missing beats- and then missing more beats. The Broker. 

The Broker paused and surveyed the room with slow moving, calm eyes. They missed nothing in their methodical sweep left to right. He then strode across the space with confidence. He took a seat at the bar, the item creaking under his weight and substantialness. Ordering a whisky in a voice that was smooth and unhurried, he turned his gaze upon the Kid. Looking him up and down. Didn’t miss a beat.

The Kid’s hands revealed a tremor as he poured the amber distillate into the glass, the bottle tapping lightly once or twice against the tumbler. He slid the drink across the bar, their fingers nearly touching. The Broker lifted it, swirling its oily, golden contents slowly before taking an intentionally long, savoured gulp in which the whole serving was consumed. Wordless silence hung between them, fevering.

Outside, rain beat its steady cadence, a drumbeat that matched the Kid’s pounding heart. He could hear the familiar tolling of a bell buoy. The November night pressed in around the bar. As two hours and six drinks slipped by, the place emptied until only the pair remained. The Broker sat, unmoving. A man accustomed to bars, to whisky, seemed very much at ease. The Kid could feel walls closing in. The space between them shrinking, even as they remained some yards apart.

Finally, the Kid could bear it no longer. He stepped from behind the bar.  Footsteps were muffled on the worn, soft-fibrous planks of loose floorboards. His hand found the knife he kept tucked beneath his apron, its unambiguous steel a comfort against the push-pull tension within him. He approached The Broker from his blindside. 

“You remember Pointe-Noire?” the Kid asked, his voice barely more than whisper. The Broker looked up, a slow, false, smile breaking across his face; an eyeless expression, devoid of joy. “Have we met before?” he asked, tonguing his cheek and rotating his tumbler. The Kid felt a surge of anger. “You took from me,” he said, his grip tightening on the knife. The Kid rolled up his white service shirt to reveal the longways cut that transected his flank, where his kidney had once been. 

“I paid you well, and I left you with plenty, all you needed.” The Broker shrugged lightly, as if discussing a trivial matter. “We all lose things,” he said. “It’s the way of it. Business. You got what you needed. You’re still here, no? Alive I see. Fifteen years it must be, maybe more? I got you out of hell. Congo hell. You ought to be grateful. Are you not alive and free?”

Rage flared in the kid.  “You took it!” he spat. The Broker’s dummy smile never wavered as his eyebrows rose and creased his forehead. “You had something somebody needed more than you. And they had money. Lots of it.” The broker leaned in and pointed  his forefinger forcefully on the Kid’s upper chest. “And thanks to me, you got paid for it. I didn’t cut you open against your will. You signed the paperwork. ” he said plainly. “A transaction, nothing more.” The Broker laughed in a quiet, high pitch that moved through his nostrils.

The boss was out the back somewhere, bottles clinking. Without warning, the Kid lunged forward, grabbing The Broker and pulling him toward the store room off to the side. The sudden movement caught the man off guard and they stumbled through the doorway into the dim light. The tall, cold room smelt of stale beer - cramped, filled with crates and mildew. The Kid shoved The Broker against the wall, the knife pressed to his throat; skin dimpled and pressure-whitened. The  blade gleamed in half-light and glowed white in short flashes.

“You think you can just take from people?” the Kid hissed, now weeping, weakening. His face was just inches from The Broker’s. “That there are no consequences?” The Broker met his gaze unflinchingly. “There are always consequences,” he said softly. The Broker’s eyes were large and moon-like, hazel and sleepy looking. Unperturbed. 

They stood locked in that moment, history suspended between them. The Kid could feel the pulse of The Broker’s heartbeat against the steel blade, steady and unhurried, calmly metronomic.

In a sudden blur of motion, The Broker moved. A swift twist of his body, a sharp strike to the Kid’s wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor. They grappled, a tangle of limbs and sharply drawn breaths. The Kid fought with a ferocity unknown to him. But The Broker was strong, his movements precise, calculated. He was something and the Black Kid was shit. Same as it had been all those years before.

They crashed against stacks of crates, bottles shattering, liquid spilling out like a foaming piss that squirrelled across the grout lines of the storeroom’s stone tilework. The Kid could feel strength waning, each breath an effort, his vision blurred by sweat and the sting of tears unbidden. His bottled emotions, his undoing. The Broker overpowered him, forcing him to the ground, a heavy and pointed knee pressed into the Kid’s chest. Behind clenched eyelids he saw his home, his mother, his brothers, his aunt.

“You were always too sentimental. Donors always are. ” The Broker said, his voice devoid of emotion. “That’s why you sold your fucking kidney. And give your money to your family. And live here in this shithole I expect. Meanwhile, millionaire white women pay me thousands for  weak black boys’ organs and anything else besides.”

The Broker kept his forearm pressed hard against the Kid’s throat. “And she needs another one from you. She’s a very selective client, and she likes your…product. But the first delivery has recently failed. Call this a second instalment. Sleep now.” The Broker blew a kiss - the last thing the Kid saw as darkness closed in upon him.

***

The Kid awoke to bright clinical light and the sterile scent of antiseptic. The ceiling was white and all but featureless. A faint hum of machinery, the only sound. Panic surged as he realized he could not move his arms or legs, straps binding him to a metal table. He turned his head with effort, his gaze falling upon a man standing beside him, clad in a surgical gown and mask. “Let me go!” the Kid rasped - his throat dry, words slurred unintelligibly from whatever sedative lingered in his bloodstream. Everything went black.

***

The Manhattan private clinic decor sparkled. Steel and glass everywhere, tasteful neutral furnishing. “Remarkable. Bloods are better than they have been in years. Whatever you’re doing, keep at it,” said Dr Harel. Emily Spencer smiled at her husband and got up to leave.