13- The Copernican Revolution

“The thing of it is,” said Nick Knack, a little emo punk kid with spiky blue hair and little blue knob jutting out from underneath his lip, as he leaned over the front rail, pool cue in hand, “the guy could be anywhere.”

            Knack took his shot, and he banked in the twelve ball off the rail.  “I mean, at this point, he could be in Mexico, Argentina, fucking Poland, dude.”

            Tim Tim, who was the other half of the eight ball game, was standing at the bar with a beer in one hand and a pool stick in the other.  “Why would he go to Poland?” he asked.  “Nobody goes to Poland.”

            “Fucking Nazis did,” Nick said.

            Laird was sitting at the bar, looking at the TV, trying not to look at the girl down at the end of the bar.  She had long, black hair and sat five stools down on his left, with one index finger curled around a cigarette, and the other twisting along the edge of her drink.  She was looking right at him.

            “Dude,” Tim Tim said.  “Are you comparing Kevin to the Nazis?”
            Knack was still shooting.  “Two ball into the eleven,” he said.  “Corner.”  He calmly stroked the cue into the two, which edged the eleven into the corner pocket, just as he’d said.  “I don’t know, Tim.  Figure the Nazis swept through Europe, taking whatever they wanted, pissing off just about the whole world in the process, and before you knew it, they were off to fucking Argentina or whatever.  Sounds at least a little like Kevin, if you ask me.”

            Knack sized up another shot and he leaned over the table.  Tim Tim was using a house stick, wooden, ever so slightly bowed.  Knack, on the other hand, was using this big maple and ivory baseball bat of a cue stick that nearly shook the table every time he struck a ball.  The place was Kay’s, a shit hole of a place in Jamaica with a juke box full of blues and country songs, and a single pool-table which was last re-felted sometime during the Reagan administration.  It was two o’clock and there was nobody there that wasn’t laying face down in front of a half-full beer and smelling of seven days without a shower and a month without a paycheck.  Aside from the seemingly indigenous peoples of Jamaica, black, white, drunk and watching re-runs of Judge Judy on a thirteen-incher with a fucked up vertical hold above the bar, there was the girl behind the bar- Debbie, a dyed blonde, black roots showing chick so skinny that her neck muscles stood out and the bones just above her tits jutted out like a little, jagged mountain range leading to her neck.  On the other hand, she had absolutely perfect teeth.

There was Debbie, and then there was this girl down the bar.

            Laird’s eyes met with her green eyes, and she smiled at him.  He sipped his beer and turned around to Tim Tim.  “What does it matter where he is anyway?”  The girl was still looking at him.  Debbie was cleaning glasses and tapping her feet to “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles.  “Gone is gone.”

            Knack had run the table down to nothing but low balls, which were hanging around the pockets as evidence of Tim Tim’s misses.  Knack and his maple and ivory baseball bat smoothly sunk the eight ball in the side pocket on a two rail bank.  He let out a big, whooping laugh, stomped the end of his tusk of a pool cue to the floor and said to Tim Tim, “Pay up, motherfucker.  Gimme my fucking money.”

            “Fuck,” said Tim Tim, tossing a ten on the table, which Nick Knack added to a messy fistful that he pulled from his breast pocket.  The lip-ringed, emo punk counted his money and formed it into a loose stack, hooting and howling.  “I’d say that’s…a healthy eighty bucks you just gave me, pip-squeak.”

            Tim Tim lit up a cigarette and wiped snot from his nose with the sleeve of a dirty T-shirt that said “You Aren’t Here.”  He let out a smoke-filled sigh and collapsed onto a stool in the corner with a cue in one hand and a smoke stuck between his lips.  He was fifteen years old, and he looked younger than that.  “I thought it was seventy.”

            “Whatever, kid,” said the Knack, “I flunked math.  Every fuckin’ time.”  He spat out a cackling laugh and danced to the bar between Laird and the pretty brunette, who was licking her lips after a sip of whatever whisky-looking beverage that was in front of her.

            Laird was staring at her hard enough to knock her over, and he took a sip of his beer and he licked his lips, and he wondered if she’d make him use a rubber.

He smiled at the girl and she smiled meekly back, and then Nick Knack started talking.  “Nicely done, Junior,” he said to Tim Tim, “Nicely fucking done.  You don’t fucking gamble unless you’re capable of winning, fuck-wad.”  He pulled a ten from his bundle of cash and set it hard on the table, and said to Debbie, “Two shots of Jameson, Love, and your fucking phone number.”

The Brunette took another sip of whisky, something dark, scotch maybe, and she smiled and she looked down at the bar.  There was a girl sitting next to her, blonde, a little bit chubby, with a bright red leather coat that looked like an ugly couch.  She was whispering in the brunette’s ear, and the two of them were laughing.  Laird felt his cock stir a bit and he took another sip of beer.  Maybe I can lay both of them, he thought.  Fat girls give great head.

Debbie the waitress poured two shots of Jameson in front of Knack and Laird.  “I don’t have a phone,” she said, giving Knack a look over.  There wasn’t much to look at, but she took in his 125-pound frame and shook her head.  “Are you even old enough to drink?”

Knack smiled at her…crooked teeth…and pushed forward the ten and without answering, he did his shot in a long swallow and then picked up the shot in front of Laird.  This, he took down in similar fashion, with a single swallow and then slammed the glass down on the bar for effect.  “Kneel before Zod!” he yelled and pumped his fists into the air, one after the other.

Knack unscrewed the two halves of his cue and he put them into a long, thin case, which he snapped shut, smiling.  “It’s a good day,” said the Knack.  “It’s a good day.”  He turned to Laird and gave him a long look over, and Laird apprehensively looked up at the mirror that served as the back of the bar and he saw that his face was white all over.  He hadn’t shaved in about five days.  He looked over at the girls and realized that he kind of looked like shit. Knack cracked an uneasy smile and said, “You alive, partner?  You don’t look so good.”

“Bad shit the other day,” he said.  “Wasn’t a big deal, but I’m still, you know, recovering.”

Knack took a sip of Laird’s beer without asking and he cringed a bit with the swallow.  “Nice medication,” he said.  “If I see your boy Kevin, I’ll give him a holler.”

“In Argentina?” Laird asked, smiling.

“Fucking Poland, baby.  I hate spics.”  He nodded to Debbie and said, “Keep the change on that ten, but only after you get this fucked-up junky another beer.  It’ll balance him out.”  He smiled and slapped Laird on the back a little too hard and he barked, “I’m gonna go find an ugly girl and get my dick sucked.  Nice working with you,” Knack said to Tim Tim, who flipped him off.

            Then, Knack was gone and Tim Tim went over to the juke box.  Laird was looking at his beer and he was thinking about Kevin and about Pink.  He was thinking about Vermin’s apartment, and the few wadded-up bills he had in his jeans and what they could buy him.

Suddenly had a headache and his stomach felt like it was tied into a large, single knot.  When he closed his eyes, he saw a bright blue canvas with stark, white lines that looked like…something.

            It looked like a secret.

            “You want to buy us a drink?” someone asked him, and when he looked up at the mirror, there were two girls standing on either side of him, the cute brunette with the pale skin on one side, and her chubby red couch of a friend on the other.

            Laird blinked his eyes, and he faked a smile and he said he would.  When Debbie came over, the couch, whose name was Emma, ordered a whisky sour, and the brunette, whose name was Mia, ordered a Sex on the Beach, and Laird made an obligatory Coney Island joke and they all pretended to think it was funny, and Laird felt the knot in his stomach being pulled tighter.

            “Do you come here a lot?” he asked and Mia said they didn’t.

            “We go to St. John’s,” she said and he acted impressed.  “Emma’s a Communications major and I’m undeclared, but I like Philosophy.”

            “Who doesn’t?” Laird asked, sipping his beer.

            “Ooooh,” she said, smiling wide, “Do you like Kant?”

            “Oh yeah,” he said, wishing he hadn’t even made eye contact.  “Who….doesn’t?”

            “I love the Copernican Revolution, you know?  The idea that the representation makes the object possible and not the other way around.  I mean, that’s just so…deep.  Isn’t it?”

            “Sure is,” Laird said, looking at the curving line of cleavage that dipped down from her breast.  “Deep.”

            “What do you do?” the couch asked, and she sipped her drink.

            Laird put his hand to his face and laughed into it.  “I’m an upholsterer.”

            “That’s interesting,” said Mia, while the couch rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette.

            “I specialize in red leather,” he said, and the three of them laughed, everything was fake and Laird felt his stomach turning over and over again.

            They talked.  Laird looked at Emma’s leather jacket and figured it was worth a few bills on Dad’s credit card at some designer store- not one in Manhattan, not someplace nice, but some shop in a mall in Passaic.

            “I think that there are so many jobs open to a communications major,” Emma the Couch said, absently, but when Laird asked what kind of jobs, she shrugged and said that she didn’t like Queens very much.

            Mia said, “I don’t know what the big deal about sex is, I never really feel anything.  And if I never feel anything, then what does it matter who I fuck?”  Laird put his hand on her leg and she smiled and said she wanted another drink, and Laird told her that he’d need to be paid back and Emma let out a snort of a laugh, and Mia smiled and laughed, and Laird saw that she had some Chinese symbol tattooed on her wrist and when he asked her what it meant, she said it was the Chinese symbol for “Smoking is bad for you, but I don’t give a fuck.”

            Her hand was on his leg.

            “It says all that in one symbol?”

            “Chinese is very fascinating.  I almost went to college in Seoul, you know?”

            Laird asked Emma for a cigarette, and she obliged, and Debbie brought them another round, and there was a replay of a Mets game on the TV, and the cigarette was some generic brand that tasted like it was packed with dirt.  He smiled at Emma, “I think you should sell that ugly jacket and get a pack of descent cigarettes,” and she didn’t hear him, and he told her to never mind.

            All the while, his head was pounding and he was starting to sweat.  Warm, wet pockets in the small of his back and under his arms and he didn’t want to take off his jacket because he wasn’t cold.  There was something behind the mirror behind the bar, something behind everything he was seeing.  Steve Trachsel was walking off the mound after being hit with a line drive, Debbie chatted with Tim Tim, who had one hand tucked down the front of his jeans, the girls giggled and laughed, and talked about Descartes, and whether or not we can prove that any one thing that is not our own consciousness exists and all Laird could see behind every one of these things was a sea of blue plains and white lines and he got up out of his seat.  He almost fell down.

            “Are you, like, okay?” Mia asked and she put a hand on his shoulder.

            His heart was screaming in his chest.

            “I’m cutting you off, Laird,” Debbie said.

            He was standing in quicksand.

            Tim Tim was looking at the TV.  “I can’t believe I lost all that money, and why the fuck are we watching baseball?”

            His eyes were burning.

            “What kind of fucking name is Laird?” Emma the couch asked, and then he was stumbling across the bar for the men’s room.  He knocked over two chairs and he nearly fell and he locked the door and turned on the faucet and stuck his greasy head into the sink and let the cold water spill all around him like a cold pocket of crisp air on a warm day and he looked in the mirror and he saw Kevin instead of himself.  He saw a wide blue plain and white lines, and little diodes and capacitors and shit he didn’t know anything about and a bright flash of light spread all over everything and he fell onto the ground next to the john with his hands over his eyes, trying to see nothing.

            Everything was loud noises and flashbulbs and brightly burning lights and green, bubbling fluid everywhere.  His lungs filled up, and his stomach enlarged, and his body swelled with it.  He saw his entire life and he knew that one day, maybe even this day, he was going to die and he reached into his jacket and he took out a little bottle of pills and the chalky taste of chewed up Demerol filled his throat and mouth and his nose and he vomited all over the floor and he threw the empty bottle against the wall and he screamed as loud as he could, “The Aurora Project!” and then he fell into the dark.

12- Pink

           I’m standing in a hallway, and I can smell cat piss coming from somewhere.  Probably the ventilation system.  When I used to come to see Pink, I used to hear the slightest murmuring of kittens in the ceiling, but I don’t hear them anymore.  Maybe it was my imagination.  Maybe it was trapped kittens.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I don’t hear them right at this second, but I can smell them.

            I’m knocking and knocking on this goddamn door, in this shitty-ass apartment building with asbestos in the ceiling tiles, and holes in the walls.  My hands are shaking because I stopped taking my Buprenorphine treatments, because personally, they don’t work for shit, at least not for me.  The treatment costs $350 for the first three days, and 100 dollars for every fucking office visit- not including the prescription cost.  It’s money that I don’t have, and if I did, I’d be spending it on the real deal- not some shitty wanna-be pharmaceutical cure.

            I wanted Methadone, but they- the doctors kind of They- said it was too close to the real thing, and I’d get stuck on it.  Methadone, at least, is cheaper.

            There’s something rattling around my brain tonight.  It’s pokes and prods and probes, and an itch…a feeling behind my brain like…I’m forgetting something.

            Something…important.

            I’m not riding along the razor’s edge today, which is good, thanks to all my good friends of course.  Mr. Wellbutrin, Mrs. Celexa- thank you Mr. Zoloft, and of course the twins: Mr. Paxil and Mr. Effexor.  The docs would say that I’m not socially functional today, and I’m being my real self.

            Being my real self…smelling imaginary feline urine.

            I know she’s in there with some tricky dick, some business suit-wearing motherfucker with an Irish Springer, a wife named Jane, and Audi A8, and 2.5 kids to drive it home to.  She’s fucking his brains out acrobat-style, hanging from the ceiling and letting this guy skewer her with his married prick.

            I put my ear to the door, and I try to listen, the fucking paint chips off and crumbles around, and within my ear, and still, I can’t hear shit.  Not even the ocean.  I press my ear harder, maybe I’ll hear the bed creaking around or some shit, or maybe the TV will be really fucking loud, trying to drown out the wet slapping sounds of sex with the sounds of the Jefferson’s moving on up.

            Finally, the door opens.  She looks a little wrecked, tired, like I just woke her up.  She’s wearing a gray bathrobe and probably nothing else.

            “Jesus, Laird, you’re pounding the shit out of my door.  You’re gonna wake up the baby”

            I step inside and I tell her I’m sorry, and she leads me out in to the kitchen where she takes out a coffee can that’s in the cupboard above the beer vomit-colored refrigerator.  She pulls out a wad of money and counts out $250.

            “Here’s what I owe you.”  She hands it to me.

            “Thanks,” I say, looking around for a guy in the room- pulling up his post-coital pants or something.

            “Laird, what are you looking for?”

            “I’m looking to see if you were fucking a guy while I was waiting in that disgusting hallway.”
            “I wasn’t working.  Today’s my day off.  Besides, Todd’s asleep in there, and I don’t turn unless I have a sitter.  You know that.”

            “Can I see him?” I ask.

            “Why?”

            I smile, and I open her fridge.  “Because I want to show him what 250 bucks looks like.”

            “No, you can’t see him,” and she shuts the fridge door on me.  “Besides, he’s sleeping, and double besides, what the fuck are you ever gonna show my kid that’s worth showing?”

            “Jesus fuck…lighten up a bit.”  Eggs, bacon, vegetables, butter…she has more food than I’ve seen in a week.

            “You seen Kevin?” she asks me.  I notice the way she shifts her weight when she stands, how her legs shift, and bend under the robe.  I take mental note of this particular image and I’m going to jerk off to it tonight.  “You hear anything from him?”

            “No, I have not seen Kevin.  No one has.”

“Yeah,” she says.

Trying to care, I say, “He’s not coming back.”

            “He’ll come back,” she says.  “He’s going to take care of me…and my baby.”

            “Right,” I say.  I say this knowing that Kevin is either in a jail cell in Tijuana or dead and buried in the desert somewhere.  Kevin is a bad man who’s done lots of bad things to bad people.  Some of those bad people want revenge.  Ain’t no way he’s coming back.  Not for me, and not for her. 

Not when he owes all that money to Getch.

            “I’m sure he’ll be home real soon.”

“Is that sarcasm I hear coming out of your mouth, Laird?” she asks, pulling some ice from the freezer and sucking on it and nibbling the clear cube.  I watch her tongue glide over the smooth, wet surface of the ice cube and I have to turn away into the living room.  Stacked on top of the TV, there are a lot of old CDs- Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Del Shannon, and about a dozen cheaply made pornos.  I chuckle a little bit to myself.

“I have money, you know.  More than you think, anyway.”

            “Working overtime at the mill?” I ask, finger-leafing through titles like Asses in the Air 3, the cover of which promises ‘more ass to mouth action than the first two films combined!’  Leafing through titles like: Big, Black Dicks, and Tight, White Bitches, and I admire their adherence to the laws of titular punctuation.

            “You’re funny,” she says.

            “I think so.”

            She sucks on the ice cube and smirks at me.  “Well, I’ve been saving, so fuck you.”

            The apartment looks different than it has in a while.  The floors have been swept- maybe even mopped, I wonder.  I go into the kitchen, where she still is, and I notice that there aren’t any crumbs on the counter by the toaster, and my hand runs over the smooth wood finish of a brand new kitchen table.  Clean, and pristine, and real estate agent perfect as this shitty place can muster.

            “Things must be good,” I say, sort of absently to myself, thinking about the busted leg of my own kitchen table.  To her, though, I say, “Got a cigarette?”

            “Don’t you have smokes?” she asks, tossing the ice cube into the sink, fishing a pack from the pocket of her robe.

            “Yeah, but you know I only smoke the cheapies,” I tell her, popping my generic menthols out for a peek.  “I want one of yours,” I say, smiling.

            “Whatever,” she says, fishing out two smokes, and tossing one to me.  “Choke on it.”

            I light my cigarette with my scratched up, nearly empty Zippo, and she leans in and lets me light hers.  Her mouth around the base of the smoke, the deep, puffing breath, and her open robe…legs bare, and chest expanding with breath.

Another image to file away for a lonely night. 

“Stop fucking looking at me,” she says.

In the other room, the kid starts crying, and Pink flashes me this ‘He was sleeping soundly until you got here,’ look, and she goes into his room.  “Don’t fucking steal anything,” she yells back over her shoulder as the door opens and then shuts behind her.

I think about stealing her coffee table, I’m not going to lie.  But getting it all the way back to Queens seems…problematic.  I took a deep breath of tar and nicotine.  Newport.  A decent cigarette.  I suck in that Virginia tobacco flavor, and that cool menthol and I realize that I’m thirsty.  That I probably haven’t had anything to drink all day.

I open up Pink’s fridge, and there’s orange juice, but I think the acid would make my stomach bleed.  There’s milk, but I hate milk.  I take Bud Light, congratulating myself for cutting carbs.

I pop it open and suck back a few swallows, and it tastes good, even if it’s Bud.  I close the fridge, and a post-it catches my eye.  Just a little yellow slip of a post-it note with red block lettering.  “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY,” and beneath that there is a phone number –where the fuck is there a 954 area code?

Is that the Bronx?

In case of emergency.

“What are you doing?” Pink asks from behind me, her hands on her hips, and her robe hanging now all the way open.

“Getting a beer,” I say.  “Want one?”
            “No,” she says popping open the freezer and getting another ice cube.  “And what are you doing going through my fridge anyway.”

“Sorry,” I say, and I drink the beer anyway.  She runs the ice cube over her face, and I wonder why she doesn’t just buy an air conditioner.  “Who’s this?” I ask tapping the note on the fridge with my can of beer..

She’s startled for a second, and I think she’s going to say something else, but she says, “An old trick.  He helps me out sometimes.”

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

“Do I know him?” I ask, and I go to pull it from the fridge, but she snatches it away before I have the chance.

“Who are you, fucking Dick Tracy today?” she says.  “Mind your fucking business.”

We stand there for a moment, and it’s awkward.  The baby is quiet, and I drink my beer.  She puts the post-it in her pocket, and she looks right into my eyes, and I notice that she has the ice cube trailing down the ridged path between her tits.

“When was the last time you got fucked, Laird?”

I haven’t been laid in a considerable amount of time- she knows that.  Standing there, feeling suddenly as self-assured as a fourteen-year-old boy, I start to think that she can read my thoughts.

            In case of emergency.

            “Yesterday,” I say.

            “Fuckin’ liar.  You didn’t get laid yesterday.”

            “I did.”

            “By who?”

            “No one you’d know.”

            “I know everybody,” she says, sucking on the ice.

            “Well you don’t know this girl.”

            “I’ll bet I don’t, and by you saying I don’t know her means that you’re lying and you’re just not quick enough to come up with a name that doesn’t sound fake.”  She’s smiling.

            Fucking bitch.

            “Katie.”

            “Katie?” she says, a drop falling from the ice and rolling down between her tits.  “Katie’s a little girl’s name.  Where’d you pick this bitch up at, a nursery school?”

            I don’t say anything.

            “I’m horny, and Toddy will sleep right through the five seconds it’ll take me to make you come.”

            “You serious?”

            “Do I look serious?”  She presses the ice cube to her thigh, and it melts on contact.  She lightly tugs at the edge of her panties (she is wearing panties), and shows me her magenta pink pubic hair, shaved into a little triangle.  I reach out for her and she slaps my hand.

            “What the fuck?” I say, as I wind my hand back form her waist.

            “Take your ill-gotten two-fifty and get the fuck out of here.”

            She says this while adjusting her panties and wiping the condensation from her thigh with her robe.

            “And if you talk to Kevin, just if, then tell him to come by here when he gets into town.  I really miss him.”

            The door slams behind me and I start looking around the hallway.  Ugly wallpaper, and doors with peep-holes.  I start back down towards the elevator and I swear I can hear a faint meow.

11- A Thin Sliver of Blood

     Laird stood in the middle of his living room, and he took off all of his clothes.  He did this slowly, a ritual.  Unhooking every button, and unzipping every zipper with aching precision, and when he was done, he tossed his clothes to the floor, and they crumpled together on the ground, mixed together and forgotten.  The exception was his belt.  He tossed his belt down onto the ground next to him.  It had gotten colder in the night, and a draft came through the window.  He shivered, but he stood perfectly still, holding a little bag in his right hand.

            It was the kind of thing that an electric razor would be carried around in, black, fake leather, with a small, crooked zipper that sometimes got stuck about halfway through.  He set the satchel, his kit, on the ground, and he fell down onto his knees.

            Kevin, and the old Chrysler.  Hot Pink in that lonely, lit window, smoking an unfiltered cigarette, and bright blue and white lights burning up his eyes like tiny embers.  The sky in Queens filling up with angry clouds.

            He opened the bag, and he took out an envelope of carefully folded white paper, and he set it on the ground.

            The aspirin taste of cocaine, the feeling of flying from Xanax.

            He pulled a spoon from the bag, a spoon bent into a small handle, and a small, glass syringe.  He opened the envelope, and there was a pinch of brownish powder, and his heart was beating faster, and he wiped his hands on his legs, because he was sweating.  Laird ran his fingers through his hair, and he grabbed big fistfuls of it, and he looked up at the ceiling and he screamed as loud as he could.

            He poured the powder into the spoon, and he emptied the syringe on top of it, and he opened his lighter and he started to cook.

            Kevin.

            The two of them as children, and playing basketball outside of P.S. 232, and the letter on the door, and the feeling of rough, dirty hands on his body, a the sweat-grease of palms on his hips, and saliva and the grinding of course facial hair and dry skin, and fifths of cheap, dirty liquor.

            The solution sizzled into a bubbling, boiling cauldron, and Laird dropped the lighter to the floor.  He balled up a piece of cotton between his fingers, and he wadded it up real tight, and he thrust the needle into the cotton, and the bubbling, sizzling solution filled the syringe.

            Kevin holding a beer and laughing.  Are you fucked for the night?

            He reached out into nowhere, and he found his belt, and he looped it around his bare arm, and he held it tight with his teeth.  His heart sped up.  A vein stood out at the bend of his arm, asking.  He took the syringe in his hand, and he bled it, he pressed the plunger…just a bit.  Just enough to let out a thin spray of cloudy, white fluid.  Let the pressure out.  Let the air out.  Outside, behind the dark cloud cover, there was a full moon.

            A single bubble of oxygen caught in the bloodstream could cause a heart attack or a seizure.

            He pressed the needle against his arm, and he held his breath.  He closed his eyes.

            Tim Tim jumping on the trampoline, going higher and higher into the air with his tousled hair flaring up into the clouds.  Laird pressed into his flesh, and he pulled back just a little on the plunger.  A drop or two of blood swirled into the solution like a bad special effect, and he knew he was in the vein.

            Outside, there was a full moon, and New York was filled with vampires and werewolves, and there were dogs howling and people screaming, and people disappearing.  A little girl with an Italian name in a little pink dress was swallowed whole in Bensonhurst, and five young, Latino men raped a black woman repeatedly in Central Park while the police watched and cheered, and the sky filled with thunder and lighting.  On the West Side, there were car accidents and assaults, and a white woman with a rich husband smashing another woman in the face with a claw hammer, and the sky opened up with a giant thunder clap, and there were people sitting in the streets naked in the rain, and covered in blood, and Laird could see everything.

            He could see…everything, and then nothing but black.

10- Snow Cones in the Bronx

“They say,” I say to Pink, wiping ice from my chin, “that this is the best snow cone place in the entire city.

“I don’t think the best of anything is in the Bronx, Laird.”

“Well, that’s what Tim Tim said.”

She ran her tongue slowly over blue syrup-flavored ice.  “I’m not sure exactly how sugar syrup and ice can taste any different someplace else.”

She and I were walking past the bars and gift shops around the Stadium, the roar of a Yankees-Indians game going on behind us, when she said to me, kind of out of nowhere: “I’m not going to fuck you, Laird.”

            “Huh?” I asked.  “I didn’t say any…who said anything about fucking?”

            She was wearing a halter top and pink lycra mini-skirt.  She was looking good.

            “The eyes.  I can see it in your eyes.”  Her mouth was all blue from ice and syrup.  “You’ve looked at my ass at least five times this block- and you’ve been staring at my tits all fucking day.”

            “Your tits aren’t even that great.”  Her tits are fantastic.

            “This isn’t dinner or coffee or a drink or anything like that, you fucking dirt bag.  I’m not going to fuck you.”

            My arm was itching.  I stayed sober all day for this.  Well, mostly sober.  A little Xanax, a few sugar packets and some Bufferin because I had a headache.  I looked up and around, and there were people sitting on stoops and sitting by their windows and some of them were watching us pass.  I needed a bath.  I ran my hand through my greasy hair.

          “I think I hate the Bronx,” she said.  “I think we’re the only white people on this block.  And I hate baseball.”

            “We could go back to my place,” I said.

            “I could throw up.”

            “Why?”

            “Laird- this is not a date.  If I fuck you, you’ll love me, because that’s what you’re all about.”  She licked the snow-cone and laughed at me.  “You want love just like all the men in this town, and remember that I know a lot of them in a fairly intimate way.  And that’s just shit.  Love is…” she looked up at the sky- cloudy, gray.  “…disappointing.  I don’t see the point of getting all worked up about love when it’s just the right synapses firing in your brain, the release of the right neuro-chemicals telling you that this person you’re with is so fucking great.”

            “You’re a hooker,” I said.  “Sex and love aren’t the same thing, doll.”

            “Fuck you,” she said, calm, and then, “No two people are any different, and if you were in love with me, it’ll just be some kind of scam.”  She had bright magenta hair and it was cut really short and it was waving around as she talked.  “I love my kid.  I fuck for money.  Fucking and love aren’t the same thing, but for you, and for most of these assholes I see every day, it’s all the same thing.”

            “What if we were the last two people on Earth?” I asked.  A Korean woman standing in the doorway of a little grocery looked at me as if I was from another planet and she said something to a little boy at her side in Korean.  Maybe she was Chinese.

            “Are we it, or have other people survived as killer mutants or some shit?”
            “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

            “I’d rather fuck the killer mutants.  They’d just want sex, and maybe they’d let me live if I gave it to them.  Shit, isn’t that what my life is right now?”

            “So you’d rather cross-breed killer post-apocalyptic mutant babies than suck my dick?”

            “I’d rather lick the underside of a ’72 Gremlin with a bad transmission than suck that disease-ridden thing you’ve got dangling between your legs.”

            She was a very sweet girl. Sweet as a Snow Cone in the Bronx.

9- Sunglasses At Night

I was sitting in a window booth at the Sunshine Diner, drinking a shitty cup of coffee when this familiar face stopped and hovered over my table.  "Rick," he said.  "Holy shit, are you Rick Laird?"

            I said I was.

            “Holy shit, man.  It’s been like forever.”

            My head was hurting, already.

            I agreed that it had, and Joe, Jack, Jeremy, invited himself to sit down across from me.  My waitress- April, according to her little faux silver name tag- came over with a pot of coffee and a cup for Jack, Joe, or Jeremy.  She smiled at me as she asked, “Can I get you fellas anything else?”

            “Well,” he said, tearing open three sugars all at once and emptying them into his coffee, “I guess you can get me a grilled cheese on rye and a bowl of tomato soup.”  April wrote this down and asked if I wanted anything.  I said I didn’t.

            “You sure?” she asked.  “It is lunch time and all.”

            “I’m fine,” I said, “thank you.”

            She smiled at me again.  “Grilled cheese on rye and tomato soup coming up.”

            Jack, Joe, Jeremy’s eyes followed her ass behind the counter and back to the kitchen.  “Oh, miss.  Hold the mayo on that would ya?”

            She looked back, confused, and said, “Um…okay.  Whatever you say, buddy.”  She shook her head on her way into the kitchen.

             Jack, Joe, Jeremy smiled like mad, and he turned to me with his eyes rolled back in their sockets.  “Holy shit, man, did you see that girl, man?  Fucking hot.  When you want hot, always look for a fucking waitress, know what I’m saying?”

            I said I did.

            “She was giving you the fuck-eye, too, my man," he said.  "I think you should talk to her."

            "I just did talk to her," I said.

            "Nah, man, that's not what I mean.  I mean talk to her, get her number."

            I said maybe I would.

            “So how’s Kevin, man?  I haven’t seen him in years.”

            I told him I hadn’t seen him in years either.  I don’t know why I lied.

            Jack, Joe, whatever the fuck his name was, took a sip of his coffee and gave an approving nod.  "That's some fucking good coffee.  Jesus, man, posterior like that and a cup of coffee like this?  If you don't get her number, I will."

            "How do you know she made the coffee?" I asked.

            "Cooks are too busy to make the coffee," he said.  "It's always the waitress who gets stuck with it.  So, how you been, man?" he said, reaching an arm across the table and slapping my shoulder.  "What've you been up to?"

            "A little of this, a little of that.”

            "Yeah, man, I hear you.  I hear you.  I've been doing some work in the industry, you know, the movie industry…out in So-Cal.  I've only been a P.A. so far, but I'm trying to get a script or two in circulation."

            "That's cool," I said.  I asked him what movie he was working on at the moment.

            "Road Rage," he said.  "One of those empowering, man versus the system with an automatic weapon at his side kind of rampage movies.  Nothin’ special.  Falling Down without Michael Douglas."

            "At least it's work," I said.

            He nodded.  "Plus, the director's a pretty cool guy and he and I are talking about one of my scripts.  Just think of the poster, man.  Sunglasses at Night, by Jared Lockhart."

            A name.  I still didn’t know him.

            "So really, man, what do you do?"

            I laughed at myself a little bit and I shrugged my shoulders.  "Well, Jared, I don’t really have a job.  But for my last job, I had sex for money."

            His eyes opened wide.  "You're shitting me."

            I shook my head.

Jared smiled.  "It figures, man," he said.  "Only a guy like you would get a gig like that.  Classic, man, fucking classic."

            Clenching my teeth together, I forced a smile.

            "So what kind of chicks do you get to go in for this?  They hot?"

            "Depends on what you mean," I said, wishing he'd stop with the questions.

            "They're hot aren't they?  I mean tell me these aren't old ladies paying you to grease their wrinkled flesh."  He was laughing.

            I was still smiling.  "No, it's not like that, exactly."

            "Dude, I can't believe a guy I know, man, a guy I know from fucking high school is a fucking gigolo.  That's fucking cool.  Fuck it, man, that’s fucking hot!”

            The waitress, April, was headed back our way, sandwich and soup in hand.  Jared saw her too.  "Dude, I think you should talk to this girl."

            I could feel gears moving inside my head.  Mechanical parts.  Was this a hangover? This dull, building feeling that something is trying to rip a hole through my brain? Could that be a hangover? My head was going to explode.  I needed some coke.  I needed Xanax or Nembutal.

            "I don't think my lifestyle would accommodate her very much," I told him.

            He shook my statement off with a wave of his hand.  "Man, business, pleasure, people in your situation keep that shit separate all the tim..."

            "I fucked a man for money last night," I said, loudly.  April was maybe five feet away from our table, and she very nearly dropped Jared's sandwich and very nearly spilled the soup.  Jared sat across from me, his mouth hanging wide open while April set his order in front of him.

            "Thank you," I said, since Jared didn't really seem up to it, trying to get her to make eye contact with me.  I stared at her hard, feeling each cell of her body with my eyes.  Her eyes stayed on Jared and on the table and on the floor.

            When I asked her for my check, she smiled and looked out the window.

            I gave April a $20 and told her to keep the change.  I didn't mind too much that she didn't say thank you.  I got up and put on my coat.

            "It was nice seeing you again, Jared.  I'll keep my eyes open for Sunglasses."

            "Okay, man," he said, eyes on his soup.

8- How It Feels

          The first time you have anal sex is a lot like the first time a woman has sex.  You bleed, and it hurts, and it doesn't feel very good.  You bleed because of the tearing of tissue- vaginal, anal.  You bleed a little or a lot. For some people, you bleed for a long time afterwards.  My first time, I had to sit down with wadded up toilet paper crammed up my ass for three days.  Every time I sat down, I felt like I should have been checking the chair for great big shards of glass, and every time I stood up, I could feel this steady, digging pain from my upper thigh all the way up inside of me. 

            Each time it happens, I shit razor blades for almost two weeks. I don't know if it always hurts for a woman, but it always hurts for me.  Every time.

            How it feels is hot, like a heated knife digging into your skin.  How it feels is the tearing of your flesh.  These days, though, there isn’t much blood.

            You wake up in the morning, sore but paid.  You wake up, and you take a shower and you don't feel clean.  A bit of blood swirls around the drain, and when it’s over, you’re Ivory soap- 99.44% pure.  That’s as good as it’s going to get.

            You turn the cold water as far off as you can stand, and you feel that hot water digging into your skin.  The heat is going to blister you, and you feel it melting away layers of dirt, layers of skin.  Sometimes it gets so hot…you almost can’t stand it, and you feel like if you just stood there long enough, it’d all be over.

            You watch the shower door and the mirror fog up and you cover yourself in soap and shampoo and you wish it was bleach and Lysol toilet cleaner. 

            You do this whenever you don’t have another scam running.  You do this whenever you need some money to make rent, to score.  That’s it.  It doesn’t make you a faggot.

            You get out of the shower, and you wipe the steam from the mirror, and you’re forced to see your face.  You brush your teeth, and you still think you taste semen in the back of your throat, so you take two, maybe three hits of mouthwash.  This can become a ritual.  You brush again and again.  You go through a tube of toothpaste in a couple of days when it's a steady work week.  You brush until your gums bleed and your teeth gleam, and this time you swim your tonsils in Listerine until they burn.

            This is how it feels.

            And, tomorrow, maybe…you do it all over again.

7- Ten Years in a Heart-Shaped Box

           “Is this all you have to drink?” the guy asked.  He was naked, standing in Laird’s kitchen, wiping his dick clean with a dish-towel with one hand, holding up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with the other.

            Laird was sitting on the couch, wearing only a towel, watching the news.  A car bomb in Iraq- twelve servicemen killed.  Some little white girl, a rapper, calling herself Kreayshawn, had a new album out- but who the hell was she?  Warm weather on the way, but rain this weekend.  Wasn’t it the weekend already?  A little girl was missing on the Lower East Side, and the police didn’t have any suspects.  The Yankees won, the Mets lost, and nobody really said anything about the how or the why.  Re-Elect…somebody from Jersey.  He changed the channel and Debbie Harry- hot, young Debbie Harry- was wearing too much make-up, and Blondie was signing “Call Me.”  The film was black and white, and her voice was out of sync with her lips in a way which made Laird want to close his eyes.

            “Hey, Conrad?” the guy asked.  “You hear me?”

            “Who?” Laird asked.  Bill Murray was committing suicide over and over again on Comedy Central.

            “You, Conrad.  That is your name, isn’t it?”

“What?”
            “Do you have anything else to drink?  I hate this Tennessee shit.”

            “There’s…um….water.”

            The guy…

Did he say his name was Donald?

…stuck his head in the fridge and shook around a few things- condiments mostly, maybe a box of baking soda.  The guy was black, forty, maybe- cheap suit, expensive tie- probably a salesman.  He was handsome, but getting soft around the middle.  Bending over wasn’t the most attractive thing he could do.  “There isn’t any water in here.”

            On the TV, Brad Pitt was talking about a new movie he was in, the Vice President was talking about securing our position in the Middle East, elections in Iraq, and some guy with a flap of black hair over his brow and a face that looked like it belonged in a high school year book photo was wearing a bowtie and was talking about political currency, liberal arts colleges in New Hampshire, Jack Kerouac, and Humphrey Bogart’s real name and why nobody knows about it.  “The tap,” Laird said.  The guy (Derek?  Devin?) shook his head and closed the refrigerator.  He took the Jack back down from the shelf and without looking for a shot glass; he took a short swig straight from the bottle.  He crossed the room and sat back down on the couch with the bottle in his hand, and he scratched at the hair on his chest.

            “Anything on TV?” the guy asked.  He’d paid for two hours an hour and a half ago.

            “They’re holding elections in Iraq, and Colin Farrell’s fucking Lindsay Lohan.”

            “Who are they?” Devin asked, taking another swig from the bottle.

            “I don’t know.  Are you gonna pay me for that?”

            He drank again.  “I thought it was free,” he said.  “I’ll give you an extra twenty.”

            “Whatever.”

            The two of them sat, watching TV.  Commercials: Kobe Bryant selling Sprite, Michael Jordan selling underwear, a new movie with Kristin Stewart, and a quick, easy new way to chop all of your vegetables and grind your own fresh coffee.  It was two in the morning.

            Donald asked, “Do you have a family, Conrad?”

            “Who’s Conrad?” Laird asked.

            “Didn’t you say that was your name?  Conrad Bain?”

            “My name’s Arnold,” he said, laughing.  “Arnold Palmer,” he said.  He lit a cigarette- cheap, generic brand, tasted like shit.  “My name’s Jack fucking Nicholson.”
            Daniel looked at him, bottle tipped slightly at his lips, his mouth hanging open.  He had large, droopy eyes- brown, like his skin.  They were red all around in random, scribbled patterns against stark white.  “Do you want to do some coke?”

            Laird didn’t really answer him.  He was going to say yes anyway.  Darren reached over into his jacket, and took out a little vial of white powder and spilled a gram out onto the glass surface of Laird’s coffee table right next to a copy of Rolling Stone with Kurt Cobain on the cover.  The headline was Kurt Cobain: Ten Years in a Heart Shaped Box.  Dennis used a credit card to sort out about a half dozen neat lines.

            “You want to hit this first?” he asked.

            Laird took a rolled up dollar bill from him and did the first hit, wiping a few loose grains away and wiping them over his teeth.  It felt like a buzz saw ripping through his forehead.  His face went numb all the way down into his throat and down into his stomach.  He felt his feet moving involuntarily.  Very good shit.

            A hand was on his chest now, Darren’s.  It dug its fingers gently into the flesh of his tit and ran through his hair.  Daniel did another big swig of Jack, his eyes darting back and forth between Laird’s lap and his face.  Laird closed his eyes.  Jennifer Lopez and Paris Hilton were going to be in a movie together- news at eleven.  Plus, what spice, found in any household, could cause seizures in the elderly?  These stories and more- tonight at eleven.

            “Where are your parents?” Damien asked.  “Do they live in New York?”

            “Nebraska,” Laird said.  He picked up the dollar and made sure it was rolled nice and tight and he hit another line of that fine ass coke, and his toes were dancing in the carpet and his eyes and his nose were running and his balls were tingling.  “Ma and Pa Kent,” he said, smiling.

            The hand was working its way down his stomach.  Laird was skinny- bones and muscle and whatever fat the body used to live off of.  Not fit- skinny.  On bad mornings he thought he could see his heart beating just under the skin.  Maybe that was just a dream.  Dickhead’s hand ran down the line of hair that traced down his chest and his abdomen and was fingering the pubic hair that hung just underneath.  One hour and forty minutes, the clock said.

            “They raise cattle,” he said.  “Cattle and unicorns.”

            “You’re very handsome,” Derek told him.  “You’re a very handsome boy.  Has anyone told you that?”
            A fifteen year old girl disappeared in Hell’s Kitchen yesterday while she was walking home from a friend’s apartment.  She was last seen on Eighth Avenue, had dyed purple hair, and was wearing leather from head to toe.  Police are investigating, and they don’t believe her abduction to be terror related.  News at eleven.

            “We still have twenty minutes,” David whispered to him and kissed his cheek.  Laird leaned over and did another line of coke and he could taste the rust salt taste of blood in his throat.  Darwin hadn’t done any of it yet.  The hand sunk down under the towel and ran over the hair and the skin of his balls and his cock, which was getting hard from the coke.

            “You like that, don’t you?” Damon asked him.  “Don’t you?”

            “Did you get this from Getch?” he asked and Devin’s mouth was on his, hungrily kissing his lips and sticking his tongue in Laird’s mouth.  He was starting to go numb all over, and maybe that was a good thing.

            The taste and the smell of Jack Daniel’s.  The feeling of a finger in his asshole.

            He kissed Daniel back, thinking about Hot Pink, thinking about Kim Basinger, thinking about something- fifteen year old girls in Hell’s Kitchen and the collective works of William Shakespeare.

            “Tell me that you love me,” Donald asked him.  The finger became two fingers, and they moved roughly, urgently.

            “I…um…love you.”

            Dennis sighed into his ear, pressing a stubbly face against Laird’s, rubbing cheek against cheek.  “Jack…Arnold…my wife hasn’t told me that she loves me in months.  I think she knows that I’m a fag.”

            “My name is F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Laird said and he started laughing.  “And my family lives in the…People’s Republic of China and make their living as bean sprout farmers, but they have a really great HMO.”

            “I want you to suck my cock,” said Dallas, lips right up against Laird’s ear.  “Is that okay?”

            Laird slunk away to the other end of the couch, feeling the rough, unplanned exit of two fingers from his asshole and pointed up at the clock.  David looked up at the clock and frowned.  “A hundred dollars more if you’ll suck my cock right now.”
            Laird looked down at the three lines of coke and at the bottle of Jack.  “Give me that,” he said, and Donald gave him the bottle.  Laird took a long, hearty swig of Tennessee’s finest, and he picked up the dollar bill straw. He sucked up two more lines of coke without breathing.

            He smiled up at Donovan, who was smiling back at him.  “My real name is Richard Laird,” he said.  “I think my parents are dead, I only like to fuck women, I went to Catholic school, and college for a little while until it got boring, you owe me twenty for the bottle on top of the hundred, and by the way…I love you.”

            The last line of coke went into his face like fire and before he could feel an inch of his body below his nose, he had Devin’s dick in his mouth.

            David was so happy that he started to cry.