Night of the Living Debt Part VIII

"Turn around, Mr. Richardson. I'm calling you out." Ambrose D'Agosto's voice came over the phone.

"Yes, I see that." Duane told his nemesis.

"You can see me?" the newly immortal and well dressed agent of Justice asked. "That's incredible. How?"

Duane dumped out his bottle of Advil and began counting his remaining pills. He briefly wondered what the effect of overdosing on Ibuprofen was, and when it caused him to lose count he sighed and explained "It's an expression."

"Oh. I am right outside your building, though. I can see you." Ambrose told his adversary.

Duane spun his chair around and looked out the window. "I can see you out there, but you're looking at the wrong building." He saw his nemesis on the street scratching his head and looking both ways before turning around. "No, no. You were looking the right way, I'm just in the building to your left." Ambrose began to cross an intersection and was immediately run down by a taxi in a hurry. The noise on the other end from the clattering cell phone made Duane look longingly back at the Advil on his desk and wish for a glass of water. Ambrose slowly rose in front of the taxi, casually dusted off his new Gucci suit, muttered something to the driver, then crawled lengthwise from the front of the car under the cab to retrieve his cellphone.

"Sorry about that," he told Duane. "I'm back now."

"Ambrose, it's the other left. I was talking about your left, not mine."

"Oh." Ambrose responded, standing up again in the middle of the street as a frightened taxi driver speed off walked back across the intersection, eventually stopping in front of Duane's building. "I can see you now." Duane's nemesis informed him, pointing at the window he thought might belong to the appropriate office.

"Higher." Ambrose's adversary told him. "More to the right. Warmer. Warmer. Keep going. Keep…no, that's too far, go back. There, that's it right there." Duane waved enthusiastically from his office window down at his nemesis, who seemed delighted to have spotted his adversary at last and was repeatedly jabbing the air with his outthrust pointer finger like a TV Evangelical soliciting money in exchange for holy water.

"I'm calling you out." Ambrose told his adversary again, jabbing one final time in mid air. A taxi pulled up in front of him, offering a ride.

"Dear lord." Duane muttered. "What is it with you and taxis? Look, just wait there. I'll be down in a minute." He slammed down the phone, grumbling. He picked up a couple of the Advil on his desk and swallowed them dry even though he'd had a dose just two hours earlier. He stood up and pushed in his chair, pulling his coat from off its back. Brushing a luminescent bit of fur off of it, he thought of the Wolf-Dog's words to him.

Now that you've struck him down, Ambrose D'Agosto has become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Fortunately, he's still an idiot. All you have to do is convince him that everything is 'cool beans' and he'll never bother you again. The vengeance that fuels him will burn down and he'll return to worm food.

Cool beans. That's what the wolf said. Bloody fucking cool beans. The thought of playing nice with an inferior creature like Ambrose revolted Duane, but above all else, he was a pragmatist and did what he had to do. He took a last look around the darkened office before mashing the elevator button and riding it down from the job he was paid for so he could go to the job he wasn't. Idiot exterminator.
*

"I just want you to know that this isn't personal." Ambrose explained.

"You're right, it's just crazy. Look, can we maybe discuss this somewhere that isn't the middle of the fucking street?" Ambrose looked as his adversary quizzically. "I know a good deli a few blocks down, let's talk about it there." Ambrose tilted his head to the side as a curious dog might. He stared blankly at Duane for a moment. Blinked, then tilted his head the other way.

A very large man in a very small car, balding and sweaty leaned on his horn and shouted obscenities at them out his window. "Yeah, fuck you too, jerkwad." Duane shouted back.

"This city is so full of hatred." Ambrose sighed, rubbing his now clean shaven and surprisingly squared jaw. "I can see I've got a lot of work to do. So I'd really like to make this whole avenging myself thing quick."

"It…" Duane wasn't even sure how to explain it. "It's a deli, Ambrose. It'll take fifteen minutes to walk there and eat our food. No one interrupting us, right? It'll be nice. My treat." Duane began leading Ambrose by the shoulders back towards the sidewalk, angling him in the general direction of his favorite lunchtime deli. A Chevy Suburban stopped dead, inches from slamming into Ambrose , its horn also blaring almost immediately after they had begun moving. Without a moment's hesitation Ambrose popped its hood open and ripped out several important looking components. "Holy shit!" Duane shouted. "You can't do that. Come on, let's get out of here, huh?"

As Duane slowly pushed him off the road, inch by inch Ambrose plaintively made his case. "She had it coming." Ambrose said, waving dismissively at the frumpy middle aged mother crying over her engine. "First, those things are gas guzzlers, and she's riding it by herself. What does she need such a big car for? Secondly, they're huge. How about a little consideration for everyone else on the road? Third…"

"Shutup. Just shut up!" Duane hissed, pushing harder and moving Ambrose less. Duane was starting to feel like he was engaged in conversation with a wall.

"Plus, my feet hurt because I've been standing here waiting for you all day and they should really be a little bit more appreciative of my pain and my problems."

"It's New York. Nobody gives a shit about your feet, okay? Let's walk and talk, huh? Walk and talk." Amazingly, Ambrose began walking. Unfortunately, it was back into traffic.

"Did you even stop to think about how I feel?" he shouted at the woman gathering engine parts out of the road. "Did you?" The endless honks were driving Duane mad and he was sure a hundred people were on their cell phones calling the police right now, possibly with helpful pictures. Sighing, he thought back to a simpler time when men were men, hobos were dead, and phones were unable to produce incriminating visual evidence against you.