Reassigned

CW: Substance abuse, physical abuse

In the church basement, the rules come before the coffee. Don’t sit in your old seat. Don’t say names. Don’t let your testimony run longer than fifteen minutes. What the rules don’t tell you is what to do when your old life texts you.

My leg won’t stop jittering like it’s got a memory of its own. The room smells like wet wood and something medicinal, and every creak feels like the church clearing its throat.

A woman across from me says she’s ninety days clean. Her voice is warm. Sunny. She doesn’t realize—ninety days ain’t shit. She says she’s “learning accountability,” and I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny — because that word has teeth. My P.O. likes to use it like a badge he pins on me every month.

Someone beside me is bouncing too. Same rhythm. Four-beats. Pause. Four-beats again. Eight-Eight. My throat tightens. That was his number. Not a nickname — a brand. Diego wore it like armor. My phone buzzes. Unknown number. I let it vibrate three times. Then I answer.

THE LE FLEUR FOUNDATION IS SEEKING CANDIDATES FOR AN ON-SITE POSITION.

INTERVIEW ONLY.

MUST BE DISCREET.

MUST BE FLEXIBLE.

EX-FELONS ENCOURAGED TO REPLY.

I read it slower, like if I stare long enough the words will blink out. On paper, The LeFleur Foundation is about preservation — grants, restoration, smiling donors in front of freshly rehabbed buildings. But my neighborhood called them something else.

Gangsters.

I should delete the message. I should show my sponsor.Instead, I type:

WHERE

The reply comes fast.

TOMORROW. 10 A.M.

ADDRESS WILL FOLLOW.

The circle claps for the woman. “One day at a time,” they say. I clap too. But my mind is already walking backward.

The address comes at 7:04 a.m.

2800 Flora Blvd, St. Louis, Missouri 63104.

I swore I’d never step foot on Flora again. It’s raining when the bus drops me off two blocks away. Gravel pops under my shoes. Rain soaks my cuffs. The neighborhood looks cleaner than it used to. Money does that. It scrubs blood off sidewalks and sweeps away the shell casings then calls it progress.

The gate is wrought iron — prison bars dressed up as art. A guard stands beneath a narrow roof, hands tucked into his uniform like he’s got nowhere else to be. He doesn’t ask my name. Just lifts two fingers.

“Main house that way.” I step through and the air changes. Hedges trimmed too precisely. Marble benches that no one sits on. Trees planted in rows like witnesses. They dressed the place up. But I can still see the older version underneath.

Back when the windows were blacked out and the house looked hungry, 88 and his boys had the best dope in the city. I had come to chill with my patna and left with a bad habit. Before I knock, the door opens.

“The guard informed me you arrived,” the man says, gentle as a funeral director. “Didn’t want you waiting in the rain.”

His breath hits me — mint layered over something spoiled. “Fredrick Carrington. Pale. Stringy blond hair. Eyes silver and measuring. Beside him sits a rolling metal cart. Rubber wheels. Drawers packed with tools, coils of wire, solvents, rags. The cart pulls a memory loose — highway at night, hard-shell luggage packed to capacity with weight. He catches my gaze and pats the cart like his favorite pet. “You’d be surprised how many problems can be handled if you arrive prepared. Come in.”

The foyer gleams with old money pretending it was always righteous. Mahogany wood polished to a mirror shine. A chandelier hanging like a trapped galaxy. Under the polish, there’s a smell. Faint. Sweet. Wrong. My stomach tightens.

“You smell that?” Fred asks.

I don’t answer. He leans in like he’s telling me a secret. “Old homes have… memories.” “Yeah, I say. So, do I.”

His smile twitches, then resets as he starts walking. The cart rattles behind him. We pass a door with fresh paint around the frame. “New lock,” Fred says. “After an incident.”

“What kind of incident?” He smiles like I asked him for his favorite song. “Oh, you know, the usual” he says. “Poor choices. Screaming. A little coke.”

“That’s not usual,” I say. Fred’s eyes flicker like silver knives. “In this house,” he says softly, “people always think their worst day is unique.” He keeps moving. The smell thickens near the back stairwell. Sweet. Rotten. Familiar. Fred stops at a closet and opens it like a magician revealing a trick. Inside: cleaning supplies lined up like soldiers. Bleach. Ammonia. Industrial deodorizer with lemon on the label.

“Problem one,” he says brightly. “Odor.”

“Odor” I repeat because if I say dead body, I fear that I might become one. I stare at the bottles like they’re witnesses. Fred takes one and hands it to me. “Mask it.” Like we masked everything. Fred watches my face while I work the nozzle, while the lemon tries to bully the air into stinking any less. “You ever clean up a mess you didn’t make?” he asks. I scrub the word “odor” into my skull so I don’t say what it is. Fred lets the silence sit, then adds, softer: “You ever clean up a mess you didn’t mean to make?”

My hands go still. Fred smiles like he got what he came for. “Come on, he says cheerfully.

“Next issue.”

The elevator waits at the end of the hall. Old metal doors. Brass numbers polished too often. We step inside. He doesn’t press the button. The doors close anyway. It rises.

The fourth floor is narrower. Dimmer. Wallpaper peeling at the seams. The smell returns — heavier. Fred stops at the last door. Produces a key.

“The city prefers certain versions of history,” he says conversationally. “Nineteen ninety-six. Nineteen-year-old girl from the North Shore found dead in this room along with her dealer boyfriend. Police say grief. Overdose.”

The key turns. “But an overdose doesn’t leave marks around the neck like that.” My blood runs cold. The door opens.The room is wrong-sized. Too large for the footprint of the house. Mattress on the floor. Trash. A baseball cap with the number 88 stitched in red.

Then I see her.

In the corner. Knees to her chest. Cigarettes trembling between her fingers. And suddenly I notice my hands. Black gloves. Tight. The kind you wear when you don’t want to leave prints. Smoke gathers but hasn’t filled the room yet. Voices in the hallway. Spanish. Angry.

“You can’t do this,” she says.

“We gotta go. Now. They’ll realize he’s dead any minute.”

Her eyes shift to the floor. “I can’t run forever.”

“We’re not running forever.” I say and It sounds thin.A voice rises in the distance. Then another. The math shifts with each second. Exits. Witnesses. Names. She steadies herself against the wall. “I’m not going with you.” The hallway gets louder. Closer. A name snaps through the noise.

Diego.

He didn’t just sell me dope and call me one of his boys. He taught me where survival ends and betrayal begins. And I crossed it. If she stays, she’s evidence. If she talks, the name won’t hold. And if the name doesn’t hold, I go back to being nobody.

“I didn’t do all this for nothing,” I say.

She studies me like she sees the math happening behind my eyes. The sirens grow sharper. Her hand slides along the wall like she’s searching for something solid. Mine moves first. There’s a moment — smaller than breath — where I could stop.

But I don’t.

Her fingers claw once at my wrist. Then nothing but the sound of her trying to swallow air that isn’t there. The sirens turn hard. The house exhales. And it’s done.

The hallway explodes with running feet. I slip out the back. The car waits. Keys in it. Engine warm. I don’t stop driving until the highway forgets my face. And by the time I do, the name fits better than mine ever did.

I get caught later. Not for that. For something smaller. I do my time. When I get out, nobody wants to hire an ex-felon unless it’s for flipping burgers or worse.

Then The LeFleur Foundation contacts me.

Interview only.

Discretion.

Flexible.

It’s raining again when I take the position. Fred hands me the uniform. It fits like it was measured in advance. I stand at the gate under the narrow roof, watching the driveway like it’s a throat. A man approaches. Collar up. Eyes nervous. Trying to look like he belongs somewhere he doesn’t.

He stops at the iron bars and looks at me like I’m the first question. I don’t ask his name. Just lift two fingers.

“Main house that way.” His shoes crunch gravel as he walks and the air changes behind him. I stay where I’m posted because in this house, nothing disappears.

It just gets reassigned.