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.