Black Stetson

"No thank you" Parker replied

"I don’t think you understand, mister. You must buy a beer or the boys get angry" The boys, it appeared, were a group of muscle-bound and tank-topped men standing by the front door. Parker thought he could win, but didn’t want to cause a scene; Parker was a professional, after all.

"Beer then" Parker said and the bartender nodded. "Could I ask a question?"

"Sure" the bartender replied, apparently revelling in the old cliché of the sympathetic and ever wise bartender.

‘Those ladies, why are they taking the pictures?"

"Oh, some do it for fun, but not many. If you want to see the pictures they took, why don’t you go downstairs" With this, the bartender indicated a small stairway that was barely illuminated in the dim bar. Parker nodded and proceeded down.

Once he got down, Parker found that the room was very small and that pictures dominated every wall. These pictures of the city showed a steel grey morning sky and dark spires that reached towards the heavens in Babel-like futility. These pictures weren’t very good, a bit too clichéd and Blade Runner-esque, but below each one was a price tag with the label: (Name) took this photo and received an amount of $x.

Parker smiled briefly and imagined himself as one of the photographers. They weren’t really so different, they both did things for money, it was just that Parker’s work was of a higher quality.

The woman reached the wooden door of her room, opened it and walked into a musty smelling place with an unmade bed and navy blue carpeting. It smelt of the mixed sweat of man and woman and of cheap champagne. The woman didn’t consider this, she was exhausted, so exhausted that she didn’t even reach the bed and collapsed on the floor.

The woman woke a few hours later to the noise of innocent children, an all too rare commodity in the city. She opened a window and in the alley below saw two children playing with a hologram dog. Around them, the reactor steam of the city flew up into the steel sky and past it, into the blue heaven and warmth of the sun. She was envious of the steam; she wanted to be like it, to reach to the heavens and a new, better tomorrow. That’s why I did it, the woman reflected, that’s why I stole this thing; she reached into her shirt and withdrew a bag hanging by a necklace, but what’s it all for? I’m done for, dead. Maybe I should just lie down and die.

The woman slumped into the bed and fell asleep.

Parker had wasted time in the bar but he didn’t care, as long as the job was done the period meant nothing; after all, he was being paid a fixed amount. Nevertheless, as a true professional should, Parker wandered the markets in search of his quarry but he found no trace of her. He passed the spot where he had seen her last and decided that the smartest thing to do was to walk in that direction and see if any sort of shelter was available, because even the hunted have to rest. Parker decided that this train of thought was logical but it might be wrong, people being pursued don’t always do rational things and, as he thought about this, Parker touched a tender spot and scar on his neck where a bullet had once grazed him. In this day and age it was possible for Parker to have the scar removed but he decided not to, it was a reminder of the most valuable lesson that he had learnt at the cost of his own blood and it was a reminder of his foolish arrogance and pride. It still ached when it was cold.