What Could Be Gained

WHAT COULD BE GAINED

She had bought a book.

It was an antique, leather-bound, Julius Caesar. The lady who carried it out, shivering – not from the city air – was named Ada. She walked purposefully, like a ghost in a nightmare, but when she realized the significance of what she’d done, Ada ran for her life to the black Town Car across the street.

“Joe!” She banged the tinted windows with her palm.

The young man in the driver’s seat hastily opened the passenger door for her.

“Ms. Antillado, get in the car.”

“No,” she pleaded feverishly, “No…”

“You’ll be okay,” he assured her, “Come on, I’ll take you for a drive.”

She submitted to sitting in the passenger seat, and Joe buckled her seatbelt. As the bookstore faded from sight and the beautiful asphalt of the highway seemed to widen into the rest of the universe, Ada relaxed. She only hoped Joe wouldn’t force an explanation out of her.

“Mr. Williams sent me. I’m all yours for the day.”

Ada was touched by his trust.

“You were always all mine, anyway,” she kissed him at a red light. She smiled at him, and her brown eyes softened. And they rarely did, too.

She pulled away quickly though, and stared at the book in her hands. Her mouth twisted into a sneer when she remembered the decision she’d made. Noble Brutus, she thought, You lead, and I follow.

“Take me home, Joe.”

The opaque veil of evening fell when they arrived, and Ada slammed the door without saying goodbye. Joe never fully understood why she alienated herself when they became close. He knew it had to do with all the strange places Ada had to go in the city, 6 nights out of 7; and the pig-faced man who came to her house sometimes, whom she obeyed without question. What are you hiding from me? he wondered. The answer eluded him; so he slept, waiting for her to need him again.



“Nice suit, Williams. Paid for with blood money?”

Ada had come into the kitchen fumbling with her keys when she recognized a very familiar suit jacket tossed over the counter.

“Indubitably. Nice book,” Williams drawled, “Very witty choice. When the boys told me you’d agreed to the job, I asked which book you bought, and was bloody amused – Brutus.” He erupted into peals of laughter.

“You must be Cassius, then – two-bit gangster who can only rise above being No.2 by offing No.1.”

He sprang up from the kitchen table and began to strangle her, “Shut the hell up!” When her eyes began to bulge, he released Ada. He needed her after all. “Don’t forget I’m not the only one who wants The Benefactor dead. And he’s your father, too.”

As she lay gasping on the floor he retrieved a hockey bag and left it by her side. “One rifle, one semi-automatic handgun, silencers. The addresses are in the left pocket – I want the full job,” he added.

“Oh, and,” he sauntered out the back door, “the 300K will be in your account tomorrow afternoon…Brutus.”



Afterwards, Ada couldn’t sleep. She lay in the canopy bed that The Benefactor had sent, in the house that he had furnished, and the land he had deeded to her, and stared at the imaginary stars that floated in the lightless room. Everyone sees in Monet at night, she thought.

She got up from bed and pulled one of Williams’ rifles from the hockey bag. The thick black shaft of the rifle seemed to fit right into her slender arms. It belonged. She heard the shudder of a shower curtain somewhere. Suddenly, she pivoted in a 180 degree arc, carried by the momentum of the immense weapon, and blew a hole straight through the bull’s eye of the dart board across the hall.

“Naturally,” she said, even though she knew it wasn’t true. Some people on this Earth are gifted with aim, but she was no such exception. Her technique had been forged from seven years of practice everyday, forcefully cultivated by the sheer mental want of it. She was good – but not a natural.

The full job, Williams had said. In assassins’ circles it was a terrible order; a full job meant taking out all the adults in the primary target’s immediate family as well. The tactic would allow Williams to usurp power without any interference.

As she fell asleep, Ada thought about Williams’ accusation – And he’s your father, too. Williams was wrong. “He’s not my father,” she said out loud, “He’s my adoptive father.” And that made all the difference.



At noon the next day, Joe drove Ada to a small cul-de-sac outside of the city. Joe watched Ada rip the pages from Julius Caesar coolly; her eyes were glassy and she smiled a smile stranger than Mona Lisa’s. Was it madness? Determination? Fear? Ada paused her shredding of Caesar for a moment when she tore out Act II; she shuddered as she read, and finally understood the implications of Brutus’ words, “Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.”

Joe felt suspicion metastasize inside himself like a tumor. Usually, Ada’s ‘chores’ from Williams were questionable contracts, agreements, kickbacks -- all conducted in the festering slums, never the suburbs. But he stayed silent for her sake.

“Stop here.” Joe brought the car to a grinding halt.

“What?” he asked, his voice brimming with concern.

“You like muffins, right?” she said dreamily, “We should buy some.”

Before he could say another word, Ada bounded up to the picturesque neighborhood deli. She came back carrying an awful Carvel creation – all shaving cream icing and chalky pastel flowers.

“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly, “This was all they had left. We can eat it after I finish my chores today.”

Joe knew that they wouldn’t be eating it afterwards. He stared at the rows and rows of muffins on sale at the deli without surprise. When Ada bought specific, strange, desserts they were invariably stuffed with God knows, cocaine, marijuana, and it was her job to make a delivery. He sighed with relief. Just a normal job today.



They arrived. The house in question was a cavernous mansion undoubtedly crammed with the most beautiful things blood money could buy, built on heavily forested grounds that extended, perhaps, half a mile back. It had the soul of a disgraced King.

Ada was shocked out of her trance by the actual sight of the house, and felt her breath go shallow when the shadow of a woman passed the translucent drapes of the master bedroom like a phantom. Why am I doing this? Her skull throbbed, and she thought she smelled burning newspapers somewhere. But there was no ‘why’ anymore, only a ‘what’ and a ‘how’ remained. I must kill The Benefactor’s wife. I must shoot her through her kitchen window, because it’s the clearest shot.

“Take the car around the block and wait two hours. If I don’t come out, come find me.”

“Ada, wait…”

“Two hours,” she whispered.

Joe drove away and said a prayer for her over his steering wheel.

Ingenious, Ada thought bitterly, I’m brilliant. She laid the cake on the front steps and retreated to the backyard. A few moments later, somewhere behind an ordinary shrub, was the snout of a rifle poised at attention like a bloodhound, waiting.



Anne was a tall, intellectual, redhead – mother, designer, muse. Or at least she liked to think so. In any case, she was convinced that at least two out of the six qualities had clinched her successful ploy to marry into money. She wasn’t quite sure what her husband actually did, but in a house with all the luxuries she desired, she was not pressed to investigate.

She had woken up shortly after noon and had been plodding around the house in her slippers, passing the time until her son came home from summer camp. She settled eventually into the living room, and read the newspapers with a half-full coffee cup in hand.

The doorbell rang, and she jogged to open it in delight.

“Mom!” a young male voice called.

The door swung open. “Check it out, someone left a birthday cake on the front door steps.”

“I guess the delivery guy got the wrong address. Oh well, why don’t we take it into the kitchen and have a slice?”

She took the flimsy box in her hands and gestured for them to follow. Anne wasn’t a particularly superstitious woman, and more often than not, ignored her intuition. But there was something in the way the curtains had whispered the night before, and the manner in which the light had broken into a spectrum through the crystal mobiles in her bathroom. Something wasn’t right.

The tiles of the kitchen floor hummed to her, but still she walked over the threshold. Walking past the kitchen window, her mind pulsated, Something is wrong! Something –

The boy screamed when his mother crumpled to the floor, crowned in broken glass, robed in crimson blood.



Bull’s eye, thought Ada, but I’m not done. Professional that she was, Ada leapt through the kitchen window to be certain that she did her job.

“I’m sorry,” she told the body, and sat beside it for some time, bathed in the light of the noonday sun, until Joe came to pick her up.

The sun was high and cold that afternoon; it seemed to be haunting the windshield of their tiny car. She looked instead at the thin, tortuous trees and wondered out loud if perhaps, apple trees were the souls of anorexic girls. Joe said nothing, and drove towards the city docks as she requested. Earlier that afternoon, as he waited patiently, Joe had begun to read the shreds of Caesar abandoned on the car floor. He was gripped – in the horror of Brutus’ noble betrayal and the genius of Shakespeare’s pen. When he came to retrieve Ada, the implications were undeniable. For the first time in his life, Joe broke the silence first with a startling question.

“Did someone die today?”

“Yes.” There was no reason to deny it.

“Did you do it?”

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Joe touched his thumbnail tenderly to her coat spattered with blood – hers? (How distraught he’d been at the thought of her injury!) No, someone else’s.

“But why are you so calm? You’re a murderer!” He gestured wildly with his left hand while steering with his right, “Why did you do it?”

“Was it Williams? Did The Benefactor tell you to do it?”

So many questions I can’t answer.

“Why are you doing this? What did you have to gain from,” he spat out the word, “Killing?”

I’m a murderer. I don’t deserve to live. I only deserve to finish what I started.

“I was given a responsibility that I couldn’t shirk. A call to action to fight for my freedom.”

“Are you insane? Do you feel validated by what you’ve done? Do you think you’re some kind of psychopath that gets off on a pseudo-religious high?”

“Why?!” he roared when she stayed silent.

“I can’t tell you.”

“How are they making you do this? What does The Benefactor hold over your head? Don’t tell me it’s the money.”

Tell me you’re not evil, Ada. Tell me you’re the victim, not the whore.

She couldn’t, for he would hate her more for the truth.

“Okay,” he said. When he said that one syllable, he sounded eighty years old. “I can’t take you farther than this.” Joe pulled over in the driveway of a fish factory, the macabre logo of a grinning carp advertising its own entrails for sale. “Please accept my resignation, Ms. Antillado,” he murmured, “I refuse to be an accomplice to a murderer.”

Ada’s resolve faltered. He was Joe -- the man who would take her home after her final ordeal. The only one who could absolve the terrible sins her hands had committed.

“Please wait for me,” she pleaded, “I promise to tell you why…someday.”

Joe slammed the car door shut. As he drove furiously away, he saw Ada in his back mirror begin to trudge resolutely, hockey bag in hand, towards the sea front – head high, shoulders strong…unstoppable.

I am safe, she thought, I can do anything now, because I hate everyone and everything. Rain began to fall in thick sheets, and her every step grew heavier from the weight of water soaked clothes.



“Mr. Williams, my friend, colleague, confidante; to call a meeting in such an unorthodox locale allows me to assume that you have top secret information.”

Williams glanced at his watch with a flick of his wrist. “Let’s step outside,” he indicated The Benefactor’s bodyguards, “It’s bloody private, after all.”

“Of course,” agreed The Benefactor from under his mantle. He didn’t like the way Williams had checked the time, and he didn’t like the way he was being distanced from his men, so he shadowed Williams, protecting himself with a shield of human flesh.

Williams’ steps became erratic in an effort to free the target for his assassin, but the man who hid his face from the world orbited around him like a satellite. Williams eyes scanned in a twenty yard radius, but found nothing. When he finally turned back to address The Benefactor, he went rigid.

“My Benefactor,” said Ada with a mock curtsy. She gazed demurely at him, semi-automatic in hand. Without realizing his slip, Williams barked, “You were supposed to shoot him from a distance!” His thick, cruel, hands strained to crush her neck.

“Traitor,” said The Benefactor, motioning his guards; they took Williams into the noxious darkness, and he was never seen again. (In one piece.)

“I assume Williams conscripted you to kill me. Why am I still at the objectionable end of the gun…Ada?”

Still holding her pistol steady with her left, Ada began to lash The Benefactor to a stake of the pier.

“I traded my soul for this opportunity,” she said. Ada finished her work, and stepped back seventeen paces.

“Seven years ago, I was an orphan in the streets of this city with nothing but an old handgun to protect myself. I hid in an abandoned warehouse one night, but was awakened by the sounds of three men. One had a deep scar from collar to ear; another had gold cufflinks, but I did not see the third man at all. I listened in the loft above, and learned that the scarred man was the most powerful crime boss in the city. When he and the man with cufflinks unexpectedly attacked the third, I panicked. My hand slipped, and I killed the crime lord by accident. I ran for my life, tripped, and went unconscious. I awoke in an orphanage, and was adopted immediately by a man who till this day, hides his face from me,” she shuddered, “The mistake that my hands made allowed this man to usurp the power of the dead man. And for this gift, he took me as his daughter.”

“You stand accused, My Benefactor, of robbing me of my life; for seven years you’ve held that man’s death over my head so that you could make me do your dirty work,” she announced, “Remove your mask.”

She jammed the gun into his sternum.

“I owe you that much,” he peeled the shroud from his skull.

“My God,” she nearly fired the gun in shock, “The man with the scar.”

“It’s you,” Ada said in awe, and touched his face, “It’s really you.”

“You saved me, Ada. I was to be put on death row the next day for high crimes. When you shot me, I was left for dead, and could assume a new identity. To thank you, I saved you from the streets; I gave you everything, gratefully– money, power, status,” he declared.

“But you let me believe I was a murderer,” she murmured all of a sudden.

“What?”

She began to understand, “You let me live in guilt and horror of myself for SEVEN YEARS!”

“But I saved you, Ada,” he begged, “You had everything!”

“Almost. But from killing you, do you know what I will gain?”

Freedom.

She cocked her weapon instantaneously, took aim, and fired.

She missed.

Her weapon clattered onto the wooden boards of the pier. She stared at her hands, as if to ask, “Why do you fail me, now?”

Because no matter how much I’ve abused it and denied it – I still have my soul.

I am I.

Ada.

She began to untie The Benefactor when suddenly he grabbed her and pressed a switchblade to her neck.

“Nice try,” he said, “But unlike you, I know how to survive.”

Forgive me, Lord, she prayed.

Suddenly, The Benefactor’s knees buckled. Behind him, a triumphant, if pale, Joe uncertainly wielded a rifle like a baseball bat.

“I’ve called the police, Ms. Antillado, and we should leave before they come for him.”

“You waited for me,” she said blissfully. Joe laid her gently onto the hood of the car.

“I’ll always hate you for taking a human life,” he said abruptly. “I’ll drive you to the police station downtown, so you can turn yourself in.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“But,” he paused, “I think we can take the long way.”

Without warning, Ada embraced Joe violently, in awe of him, the rising dawn, the endless highway stretching to infinite possibilities, and realized – she had gained the world.