The Hidden Torso of Kingston

For over three years, I worked in what would come to be known enthusiastically in the Clinton 90s as the “service industry.”  It’s what America has become: a nation that is completely based in service oriented careers, from fast food to telemarketing, as opposed to the years we spent as a leading industrialized nation.  Name me the big wig industrial tycoons of the 21st Century – the modern day equivalents to Ford, Carnegie, or Rockefellar – and the answers are far less clear.  Our modern captains of financial gain are computer wizards – Gates and Jobs – and reliability from the blue-collar backbone of America no longer means what it used to. 

This has nothing to do with any of that mumbo jumbo.

This summer I picked up a job with the Des Moines County Roads Department, and before I get into the spellbinding story I have saved for the most sincere readers, allow me to fill you in on my usual job duties: I wake up at 6 in the morning, roll into the shop around 7, and until a noon lunch, my partner and I usually drive around doing 15 minute odd jobs at our leisure.  You know – for the sake of the county.  Your tax dollars keep our gas tank filled in order to promote what the boss calls “windshield time.”  Maybe we mow a lawn or two, weed-eat a bridge area, or paint some railroad crosses.  Maybe we don’t.  Maybe our mission is to “scout” the county for problems – a wonderful code that simply means “we’ve run out of things for you to do at the moment, so feel free to drive around.”  And we do. 

But occasionally, as part of our lackey duties, we have to participate in roadkill pickup.  With the rest of the crew working on their designated projects, (road fills, culvert work, or sign detail,) my partner John and I are the designated roadkill bitches, expected to drop whatever we are doing to retrieve nature’s corpses.  Understandably, our only calls come for deer.  John is a farm boy and has no squeamish tendencies when it comes to dead animals.  I am a city slicker, but also a part-time nut-job, so picking up decapitated deer doesn’t send me into a frenzy either.  I shared a quick story with John late last afternoon about my elementary days at the bus stop picking up dead possums and swinging them at my riding companions.  I miss the good old days.

Anyway, we had a call yesterday afternoon about a deer on Highway 99 – “real fresh” our boss assured us, promising that the smell would be only minimally offensive.  Without a second thought, John and I headed down 99 toward Kingston without shovels or tarps or anything but our God given strength and beautiful hands.  John claims to be a model.  I claim he’s full of shit.  Either way, within 20 minutes we stumbled across the body of our interest. 

Both of the antlers had been knocked from its crown, and one of its eyeballs had rolled down the white line of the steamy highway.  The neck had been unquestionably broken, twisted nearly all the way around.  The back legs had been run over repeatedly it seemed, both on the verge of falling off, but somehow managing to keep in a whole trail of bowels and internal organs that were beginning to spew from the backside.  And in the mess of it all, there were lots of random pieces of meat scattered across the road, none of which I could place as distinct body parts, but all surrounded by swarms of horse flies.  We put on our gloves and gave it a go.  The plan was to pick her up by the legs and swing her into the back of our truck.  From there, we would drop by Strawberry Point and leave her in a backwoods ditch.  This was all easier said than done. 

It should be noted that we have done this before, and although we are not trained professionals, we weren’t novices either.  Most of the time an intact deer is fairly manageable, or at least manageable enough to load into a truck and discard like the reeking corpse that it is.  But we had never dealt with a specimen that looked as though it had been hit by a tank, run over by a motorcycle gang, and then bombed from the sky.  It proved to be more difficult than anticipated.

John wanted to avoid the backdoor mix-up that was starting to drip down the hind legs, so he took the front two legs by the head, and I grabbed the back two.  Immediately, a stiff wind of death swept past us, but being the footsoldiers of county decency, we pressed forward.  The first attempt to lift her into the bed was a failure, and we sat her down to collect our thoughts for a moment.  The back end was starting to dismantle, and my face was beginning to twist with disgust at the purplish trail of intestines that were winding into the road.  I wanted it all to be done with.

We counted to three and lifted once more to swing the beast into the truck.  As we struggled to raise the head, we could hear the sound of tearing.  Being a lardass of 20 years running, I assumed it was the crotch of my jeans, and for the first time in my life, I was sorry that it wasn’t.  The back legs stretched to their limits, and without notice, snapped off, dropping my end to the asphalt.  The sudden jolt not only dismantled what fragile support there was for the bowel system, spilling the innards across the highway, (and my boots,) but apparently shocked the entire inner workings.  A shot of blood came out of the mouth and left a healthy slathering on the front of John’s shirt.  He squealed and dropped his end with frustration. 

So here we are: John and I standing in the middle of Highway 99 around a mutilated deer corpse.  He’s got blood dripping off his gloves and t-shirt, and I’m holding two legs in the air like drum sticks with yesterday’s berries oozed across my boots.  If I had been a passerby to a similar situation, I would have called local authorities. 

“That’s it!” John screamed, wiping his gloves on the grass.  “I’ll take care of this myself.”  He told me to watch down the road and tell me if anyone was coming.  Not a car in sight.  He grabbed the front two legs and shuffled himself backwards across the highway toward the opposite side ditch.  Pulling the carcass over the edge, he disappeared into the trench with a grunt.  I leaned up against the truck and couldn’t help but laugh, realizing how disastrous the whole process had gone.  Sensing a need to help, I collected all the scattered body parts on the road, leaving a tremendous pool of blood on the east side. With an arm full of parts, I chucked them into the ditch, hitting John with a sliver of belly meat and a renegade antler.  He was not amused.

Peeking over the edge, I tried to see what his plan was.  He had smashed the deer into the ground as well as he could, and was proceeding to cover it up with cornhusks and tall grass.  I almost spit up my lunch with laughter.  A car passed by and I gave him the head’s up.  He quickly put his hands behind his back as if there were no particular reason as to why he had descended into the ditch.  I doubled over with another heave of comedy.

Climbing out of the ditch, John and I stood next to each other and admired the work.  A great brown mound in the middle of a bright green patch of field ditch.  Lying to ourselves, we said it was completely inconspicuous and impossible to see from the road, wiping our hands of wrong doing and committing fully to the idea of practicality.  “There was no other way,” I said looking down at the hump.  “It had to be done.”

We drove off that afternoon with smiles across our faces, knowing that if our boss or the neighbors had seen our display, we probably would be explaining ourselves for the next few days.  We told ourselves that the dismembered limb teetering on the top of the pile could have come from anywhere.  And sadly, we were completely satisfied with our solution.

Driving by this morning, the heavy rain last night had moved most of the grass pile, leaving the sorrowful deer exposed to the elements and more tragic looking than ever.  We had one thing going for us: It looked as though only a rabid animal could have torn it apart like that.  It couldn’t possibly be the product of a couple college kids from the Midwest.  Never.

Silly teenage girl exclamation of the day: I love my job.

Papa Was a Fisherman, But Mama is a Saint (A Possible Novel Sneak Peak?)

The tears that stain a room's carpet remain until the shampoo hits the spot.

This is being considered as a possible basis for my novel.  Maybe, maybe not, considering I have four or five other themes going on elsewhere.  Some have 40-50 pages completed, others are short stories like this that could be adapted. I’m torn.  But I felt I should share some recent output.  Enjoy.

She wrote the names of all of her boyfriends in the back of a Holy Bible her father had given her as a child.  It was a leather-bound King James edition that he snatched out of a seedy motel room in Kingston, Louisiana. He, by all accounts, was a seedy man himself. He told her it was a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation, her mother’s side of course, but she knew better.  The first few pages were littered with phone numbers, and lots of references to “The Rowboat Inn,” the likely result of a missing notepad in the room. Her father had spoken of staying at the Rowboat down in Kingston, more often than not when a drink was placed in his hand. But she treasured it all the same, and carried it with her at all times. 
    

Shannon wrote another name inside, “Alan,” and put a star next to it.  A star next to the name meant that she had kissed him. Only kissed him, one can be assured, because the star denotes this specifically. She had eleven stars in her book. She had created a detailed system for all of her activity. Triangles were for the next progressive step, circles for the next.  Squares were designated for what Shannon called “the cake,” a term she had gotten from her sister when she was younger, so mom would never catch on. She found it a very silly euphemism, but still saw some good in its intentional code. Finally, hearts were placed, believe it or not, next to the boys she had truly loved. Puppy love was an entirely different thing, although not specified in her system. The page was scattered with all kinds of names and shapes, and even one square.  But of hearts, there were none. 
   

  She ran her finger down the page of names, stopping every once in while to drag it horizontally across the shapes.  She had an adequate amount of names, she thought, and closed the book with a thud.  The cover had grown worn over the years, and Shannon often thought of finding a new place for documentation.  But something about the bent and weathered bible made her feel as though what she wrote inside meant much more than teenage mischief. It deserved to be inside she told herself, just as much as the book of Exodus or Matthew. Maybe even more so.
    

Sometimes she wondered how long that old book had laid in the bottom drawer of the hotel in Kingston.  Flipping through it one night, she had found a note at the top of a page in Corinthians that said, “Randy and the whore – 1988.”  The copyright page had been torn out, but assuming the book were placed in that room any day in 1988, Shannon figured the book had been there at least ten years.  Ten years of one-night stands, Shannon thought, and the idea made her cheeks swell with joy.  Maybe even a murder.  How exciting! She liked to lay on the bed with her bible, talking her way through possible scenarios.
    

“So, he drags her in through the door,” she’d say, looking up at the ceiling. “She’s got long blonde hair, but she looks kind of like a slut, so he thought he could get away with it.  Oh, maybe he did!  Anyway, she’s kicking and screaming and trying to get away, but he’s too strong.  He’s got slicked back hair and mustache.  And cowboy boots.  And a cowboy hat.  He’s a cowboy.”  The thought of a rapist cowboy made her laugh, and she adjusted her glasses before continuing. 
    

“He gets her in the room and orders her to take off all her clothes.  She tells him she won’t, and promises she won’t call the police if he lets her go.  ‘They all say that,’ he says.  He’s got a real deep voice, and if he weren’t a rapist, I suppose he’d be kind of sexy.  But not movie star sexy, just kind of dangerously sexy.  Like cowboys.  Anyway, he points a gun at her head and she eventually gets naked.  He smiles, lighting a cigarette with his free hand.  He smokes Marlboros, of course.
    

“And then he rapes her.  Pretty simple.  And this little book caught the whole thing,” she said, tapping her fingernails on the cover.  “Every woman that came in with high heels and too much makeup. A few guys with scars, I’ll bet. Probably a lot of guys with scars.”
    

And in fact that Holy Bible had seen it’s fair share of painted ladies and battered men.  Sixteen years it sat in the bottom drawer of Room 119 at the Rowboat Inn.  It had seen her father with a number of women over the years inside that poorly lit room, and especially atop the ancient tufted mattress. It had witnessed not one, but two murders, but never a rape.  Shannon failed to realize that a hotel room was a terrible place to rape someone, with the paper-thin walls and amount of possible witnesses. A rape is a loud event, even louder than a murder.  But it depends on the subjects at hand, one must gather.
    

But above all else, the book had seen love, in it’s most temporary of forms, and deceit in it’s most primal capacity.  And lots and lots of cake. 

-Alex Denison

A Homeless Aristocrat Fools a Harmless Tourist In An Alley

            So you walked down my humble alley.  Why?  Why do you ask so many questions? I’m sure it’s out of good intention, but I’d prefer if you stayed still.  Before I was interrupted, I spoke of how you journeyed down a sidewalk, Sunday, in the middle of the night.  Let’s say you come across my lifeless corpse inside an awful dumpster.  What’s it doing there? I do not know, and I thought I told you to shut your mouth.
           
This sterile beauty is here for a reason, brothers.  It has been dropped into this dumpster by an otherworldly force that I can not identify.  Can you?  No you can’t.  Let’s go ahead and say that you feed this baby seal.  Peanuts, from your pocket, they are stale and you don’t want them, so you bandy them upon this flopping beast of sea-like proportions.  That’s me we’re talking about, you know.  I’d ask you to stop playing with my britches, and you’d act confused, but you know what I’m saying.  I don’t trust that face of yours.  It’s full of confusion and ignorance, and I’d fill it with caramel corn if I had the supply.  Don’t look at me, you heathen.  But come inside, just a moment, for a harmless drink.
          
  It’s tequila, you child.  And no, you can’t have something else.  And you certainly can’t have anything but this dirty cocktail glass and the bottle.  Do you hear that?  It’s the sound of my heart breaking with every moment that you let slip, when you could be drowning in my bottomless ocean of liquor.  You’re a fool, I’d say, and I’d snatch the bottle from your hand.  It tastes like manhood, junior, but you wouldn’t know.  What if I told you it was candy?  Would you gobble at the beak of my dear friend, Jose?  Probably not, but not because you don’t like candy, but because you think you’re too good to get down on your hands and knees for the sorry man that you love.  How dare you, gentleman.  How dare you.  I’ve been on my knees for every man that I love, not for any other reason than pity, for myself, and no one else.  Can we drink to that, my friend?  I’d hoped you’d say, “Why not?”
          
  Your hands are soft, dear comrade, do you model them in town?  I mean to say, not arrogantly, do you use them for your trade?  Don’t look at them!  You’ll curse them!  Like the battered face of Medusa I can see your evil stare has the same effect of staunch destruction, and I will not have it here.  If necessary I will call in my band of gypsies to escort you from my view.  They are well trained in their musical follies, but also in the arts of war.  Your face will become but a crater in comparison to your world, and I will strike my nimble fingers into the cores of your orbs of sight.  That is eyes, my friend, just eyes, but I like the high-brow verse.  Don’t you?  It makes me feel like a man of God.  His hands have yet to touch me, but I wait, oh yes, I wait.  Quite the same for yours, I’m sure.
           
I have no band of gypsies.  I think they all died in the ‘60s. Do you have a lady, soldier?  Is her name Catherine, or Jane?  I took two blind-eyed guesses, as I’m sure you know, I’m sure.  But what is it that you’re sure about?  The foolishness I give, or the seriousness in which I give it? I hope that it is both, that would make you a knowledgeable sort.  Though your haircut may not be the best hint, I could see you as the type.  The type of man who knows his place, but yet will strive to be much more.  I like the way your eyebrows dance when I propose such lovely theories.  I would ride them, your eyebrows, I mean.  I would ride them like bucking broncos that needed to be tamed.  This is not the place for taming, brother.  This is not the place at all!
         
   My hands are full of money.  Can you see it?  It is dirty, but it serves the same damn purpose as the rest of the dollar bills.  I don’t imagine you can prepared for dancing, I wouldn’t ask you to be prepared.  Can you smell the hint of butterscotch upon my midnight breath?  Of course you can’t, you mindless freak, it’s been doused in pure tequila!  Can you drink to that, my friend?  Or do you fear said drink?  Or do you fear the host you found inside this square of tin?  I was sleeping, dammit, sleeping, and it happens, don’t you know?  So I don’t own a home, so what, as if you’re some humbled saint?  Take the goddamned drink, goddamn it, or I’ll finish it myself.
         
   I pray you’re liquored up, or else my words will seem like Satan’s.  You have a pretty little frame that suggests you work with weights, and although I have dabbled in the past, you can see I lost my touch.  I was a strongman once, the strongest of the world, and I could lift entire buildings above my head at times.  Look at my calloused hands, just look, they testify to my wounded past, but yet they are artifacts of beauty.  And I envy you and your segmented stomach that is full of my generous drink.  A gang of six, I see, I see, and a gorgeous one of that.  Mine has been demoted to a gang of one, a lonely hanging sack.  But this is not about me, oh no, it’s about you and your smooth skin.
        
    You’re poor, I know, don’t lie to me.  I’ve seen your kind before.  But I have yet to see a man so beautiful in his lowest of the low.  So I’ll reach into my pocket, stranger, and give you all I have.  It might be ten, it might be twenty, do you trust me, or will you flee?  I know you’re hungry little soldier, I know you’re hungry for real meat.  And I don’t refer to mine, aha! I mean a steak, a chop, of something, anything, that your belly aches for, son.  And I can help you, yes I’ll help you, if you want it bad enough.  Do you remember those stale peanuts?  The ones that were tossed in a hypothetical time?  I’ll take them if you have them.  And I’ll pay you for them, sure.
           
Your desperation is not the first I’ve milked into my hands.  I’ve had sailors and tailors, and a pair of twins from Salvador, they said.  We’ve all hit rock bottom, but we find a way back up.  And if the way you need back up is through my anxious, anxious sword, then can you turn it down?  Or will you fight it, with your tongue?  The pocket yields a twenty, soldier, I have nothing else to give.  But I promise I will not touch your head, nor will I fail to warn of heaven.  I’ll tell you that you’re in control, if that’s what you want to hear.  This dumpster may not be the Ritz, but it’s better than some I’ve seen.  So I won’t ask you to unhinge your jaw, you wild-eyed hollow snake, for I am not absorbed with my own thickened custard.  But I hope you will be, brother.  I hope you’ll be amused.  For this twenty dollar bill, I say, you should lie to me, just lie.  Keep your eyes on mine, you ass, or I’ll surprise you, this I know…

Bent But Not Broken.

He took off his hat to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead and stared deep into the eye of the sun.  It stared back, and he conceded.  Junior turned toward the car and gave a quick smile to Rebecca. She gave no reciprocation, and he slowly retreated back to the Taurus.  He had promised her no more breaks, but it was a long drive. 

“Sorry,” he said, turning the key.  “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”  She gazed hypnotically out the passenger side window at a windmill across the street from the Shell station.  It looked like the blades had not turned for centuries, and Rebecca began to wonder whether she had ever actually seen a windmill outside of the old movies she watched when she was younger.  Junior certainly never had.  For one reason or another, Fillmore County, Georgia had no windmills.  Some would venture to say no wind.  Junior didn’t know anything about that, either.  He took the exit back to the interstate.

The eastern front of Kansas had been particularly taxing on Junior.  There was nothing remarkable to see, and even less remarkable things to hear.   The choices were clear: any number of country stations and a few Christian alternatives.  He liked Alan Jackson as much as the next guy, but he had grown up with Skynard and the T-Birds.  Rebecca didn’t have much input.  She had tuned it all out of her mind several hundred miles ago when they crossed through Missouri, and it was even less diverse. 

The familiar sound of a small cackle came from the back seat.  Rebecca quickly turned around, and Junior glanced into the rearview mirror.  He saw his own eyes glaring back, and it startled him.  He had never looked so tired.  So broken.  You could count the purple rings under his eyes as simultaneous days of stress, much like the age of a tree.  He licked two of his fingers, and slicked each of his eyebrows.  A small grin spread across his face, and he gave himself a wink before directing his attention back to the road.

Rebecca’s fingers were spinning circles around each other in an attempt to calm herself.  She desperately needed a cigarette, but she already gone so long without one and she certainly wasn’t going to light up in the car.  Junior had been so proud of her, and that was the lone bright spot of these past few weeks.  She pulled at the sides of her t-shirt, still adjusting to the extra weight.  She needed that cigarette.

The car was Rebecca’s father’s.  Junior owned an ’86 Chevy, but it would never make it all the way through the Midwest.  Together they earned less than ten grand, and never planned to make much more.  Junior always said, “money brings out the evil in a man,” but Rebecca had always kept her mouth shut over the matter.  Today was a day in which she wished she had more than the clothes on her back.

Once again, the sound came from the back seat, and Rebecca immediately turned to address it.  “It’s okay, it’s okay.  Soon Ava, real soon,” she said turning back toward the front seat.  “She looks just like a rabbit back there, tucked in between those covers looking out at us.  Just like a rabbit.”  Rebecca liked to repeat herself, and Junior liked it, too.  Ava even seemed to like it. 

The Nebraska border was within five miles when Rebecca really began to get nervous. Why couldn’t Junior just get a job that provided health insurance?  Did he ever even think of that?  She decided it was better just not to work herself up about it at this point because it wouldn’t change a thing.  She would have years to think about it, and why waste her time now.  She turned to look at Junior.  He was tapping his thumbs against the leather of the steering wheel, seemingly trying to distract his own mind.  She turned away. 

Ava was packed tightly into a carrier, wrapped twice over with pink and purple blankets.  The woman who had turned them down at the adoption agency sold it for half price.  Forty-seven dollars.  Junior lifted it out of the backseat, and began walking toward the hospital front doors.  The letters were bright white against the old pale orange brick.  “Lawton County Hospital.”  Rebecca rushed to catch up with him, and grabbed his hand before they went through the automatic doors.

They swept past the check-in desk, and went right to the waiting area where chairs lined the walls of a light purple room.  There was an elderly man stooped over in a chair, and a middle-aged woman with her arm in a cast, each looking impatient as they waited. Both nodded toward the couple. Rebecca and Junior moved behind them toward the back wall, sitting the carrier in a chair.  Junior looked at Rebecca, and gave a stiff tilt of his head.  Rebecca waited for a few moments, looking at Ava.  She slid her thumb across Ava’s forehead and gently squeezed her earlobe before turning and walking away.  Ava giggled, and Junior began to sweat.  He looked around, seeing only the two patrons ahead of him.  He looked down at Ava with a warm smile and winked.  She blinked and kicked her feet as Junior made his way past the crooked man. 

Junior tripped over the man’s cane, and stopped to pick it up.  “It’s a beautiful baby,” he croaked in a voice that sounded as though he had swallowed a jar of thumbtacks.  “What’s her name?”  Junior hesitated. “Ava. Her name’s Ava.”  The old man was bent over too far for Junior to see the expression on his face, but he seemed satisfied.  Looking to his left, the woman nodded and smiled approvingly.  The old man grasped his cane.  “You’ll grow up faster than you ever wanted to, and it will break your heart.  Then she will, and it’ll break your heart again.”  He coughed, and Junior walked out the automatic doors. 

Rebecca was sitting in the passenger seat with the door open, wiping tears from her cheeks.  Junior stopped a few feet short, preparing something to say.  He couldn’t think of a thing.  He walked up to her and pulled her toward him, and held on to her for a long time.  Cars droned through the parking lot for a long time before Junior let go.  He kissed Rebecca on the forehead, and moved toward the car.  The engine started with ease.

It was a long haul back to Georgia.  They were going to try and make it with only one hotel stop.  Rebecca cried for a long time after crossing the state line, but Junior remained quiet.  He felt as though he had rightfully avoided something, whatever it is. He was bent over in the driver seat, with his arms crossed over the wheel, using his elbows to steer.  The Kansas night was cold and dull, but he liked it.  His body felt lighter, and his eyes were alert.  He had avoided something.

He reached into his shirt pocket and handed Rebecca a pack of Marlboros.  She cracked the window and took a light.  By the time they crossed the Missouri line, the pack was gone, and the tears had stopped.

Lucas: A Continuation

10:28 P.M. I winked at the little Asian girl behind the counter, and she immediately looked down.  It’s alright sweetheart, I’m not after you.  You’re too fat for my taste.  And considerably too Asian. 

A blonde on each arm is the only way to travel in Dallas.  A blonde on each arm and a cowboy hat.  In Dallas, the blondes were less expensive. The one on my left was named Caprice, and the one on the right was named Cecelia.  I don’t imagine those were their real names, but who gives a damn?  They’re whores.  Beautiful whores.  As long as I keep my wallet open, and they keep their legs in the same condition, I think we’ll get along just fine.

3:14 A.M. I can’t seem to pry my body away from the stool.  My face is shaking as though my entire skull might self-destruct, sending my eyeballs into the same pool of filth as the rest of the evening.  I’m not sure how long my head has been draped over the lip of the bowl.  I slowly peek over the edge to find it half full of thick and bloody puke.  “Better than shit,” I sputtered as a hearty glob of something attached itself to the rim, forming a mucus bridge to my lopsided mouth.  My hands are numb and they slide right down the sides of the bowl leaving my chin as the only thing holding me up.  I let myself fall to the floor. 

Coronas and ketamine.  That’s all it was.  Fucking coronas and ketamine. Easy to find in Dallas, and a considerable amount of fun on a Tuesday night.  But it had never hit me this hard before.  Well, the ketamine at least.  It’s a twenty-minute high, tops.  Twenty minutes at a time, but you have to keep yourself on course or you’ll blow it all for nothing.  As I lay trembling on the floor, I realize I didn’t blow it all for nothing. Except for that fucking hat.

I could hear crying from the other room.  Obnoxious crying that was only amplified by the substances.  I smashed one fist into the linoleum to push myself up to my knees and eventually my feet.  They weighed six, seven tons at least and had to be shifted across the floor.  The crying stopped for a moment when I tipped over the care basket on the edge of the tub.  Shampoos and creams scatter across the floor.  A goddamn obstacle course. 

I lean against the edging of the bathroom door, one arm hanging below my knee, the other holding me up.  One of them was sitting with her back to me on the bed.  I couldn’t remember her name anymore.  She had wrapped herself in the sheets and swayed back and forth as she sobbed.  “Shut up,” I barked looking down at my socks.  They were covered in puke.  “We’ll figure this out, but you have to shut the fuck up.” 

I stumbled forward and tumbled onto the bed.  It was a queen, and all of the covers had been tossed to the floor, leaving just the girl and me.  I pulled myself on my stomach to the edge of the bed and looked over.  The other one was underneath the coffee table.  The left side of her head was bashed in, and my black dress belt remained tightly latched around her neck.  I chortled and rolled onto my back looking at her upside down, like a bewildered little boy with a kaleidoscope.  She wasn’t quite as pretty as she had started out.

“Makeup won’t fix that up, will it sweetheart?”  She didn’t laugh.  What the hell did she know, she was a whore.  Jesus, Big Doc and the firm are going to kill me, I thought.  “You still had a good time, didn’t you?”  Again, she didn’t respond.  She better have had a good time.  She made one hell of a mess.   Goddamn whores.  I should have just bought the cowboy hat.

I sat up on the bed and the room did a complete rotation.  “Half of the shit in this room would look better on the ceiling,” I laughed and slapped the mattress.  So it was bad.  I knew it was bad, and it wasn’t going to get any better, so why bother.  The suckers at the firm will be scrambling for days on how to handle this, and they are going to end up dividing responsibilities to the low-ball attorneys. Probably Jack Ludwick, or Jesse Dartmouth.  Couple of fucking suckers. We cover each others’ asses down there. One more hit of K.  And a damn corona.

I moved to the coffee table, accidentally nudging the girl’s head as I shuffled to the scene.  There’s a few ways you can take ketamine. Some people snort it just like cocaine, but for Christ’s sake, are we that primitive?  You can also inject it like heroine, but why bother with that mess.  The easiest way is to drink it.  And with a corona, it’s like killing two birds with one stone.  An easy drink, and wait for the show.

I flick the light switch off, and the girl on the bed sucks in a large breath.  “Shh,” I tell her.  “It’s just better this way.”  It’s a lot like short-lived PCP, and the best way to use it is in the dark.  Too much and you’ll be a schizo, and no one wants that.  But with just the right amount, you trip.  110 mg.  Wait it out.

3:37 A.M. You’re a dinosaur Lucas.  Remember that.  A fucking dinosaur.  A triceratops. You have horns you stupid son of a bitch!  Horns!  Dissecting the name, I’d venture to say three!  But what the hell do they eat?  Berries or something?  Fuck that.  I’m a meat-eater. I eat meat.  Doesn’t matter the goddamn kind.  I have sharp teeth goddammit!  Flesh-tearing fangs! Concentrate Lucas.  Remember, you are a dinosaur.

The lights were flickering on and off, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it. The girl sat on the bed trying to cover her ears from all of the noise I was making, still wrapped in the used sheets of the night.  I was coming down fast.  Too goddamn fast.   I had lost my horns. 

I swayed back and worth in front of the coffee table, probably more effected by the alcohol than anything.  That little girl’s face wouldn’t stop looking up at me.  Who the hell do you think you are?  I’m Lucas fucking Phillips! I was once a dinosaur, and you were not, you understand?  I don’t think she did.  I slowly pressed my foot down on the side of her face, and I could feel the blood through my sock.  It was still warm.  I pressed too hard and broke her jaw.  Cheap whore.

The one on the bed heard the crunch, and let out a quick gasp of fright before grasping the sheets tightly toward her mouth.  I turned around with a smile three sizes too big for my face, the room still moving in and out like the beating of a heart.  One beat, and the walls are pressed out like a cartoon explosion had altered all of it’s dimensions.  The next, and the walls were pulled, trying to resist a black hole in the center of the room.  She couldn’t look at me.

I grabbed her by the hair, and pulled her to the floor, and dragged her to the bathroom.  She didn’t quite scream, but cried so loudly it made my brain hurt.  She looked up at me from the vomit-covered floor. “Please.  Please don’t.”  I still had that giant smile on my face.  I could see it from outer fucking space.  I pressed her face down into the toilet bowl and held it.  She kicked and gargled, making the sounds of a Louisiana bog.  Finally she stopped, and I let go, falling quickly to the floor.  I laughed.

4:49 A.M. “Yes.  Yes, Terry I know how late it is.  Ha.  Right.  Early.  But something happened, and we are going to have to have a chat, you and I.  I don’t remember their names Terry, but they were blondes.  You should see this hat I bought.  Anyway, they were blondes and they were beautiful, but now they aren’t, they were whores, and we are going to have to fix that.  Right? Whores with shiny teeth. Terry, you don’t speak to me like that.  I have been a dinosaur, goddammit.  Now, I need phone numbers.  Jesse Dartmouth.  And a dry cleaner. Just remember Terry, I made you, you son of a bitch?  Don’t forget that.  I’m a dinosaur. Fax me.”

The room was seven-hundred a night. The whores cost me two grand.  The beer and K was cheap.  Worth every penny. 

A Whore and An Angel

My body spreads out and a white pillow swallows the back of my skull. She lays next to me looking up at the ceiling with a Camel dangling on her bottom lip.  I had always wondered how women pulled that off so well.  Every asshole with a fedora can roll a cigarette around his mouth, but only a woman can wear one as an accessory.  Everyone hates smokers nowadays.  I couldn’t care less.  And the way that she sports that Camel actually makes me wish I did it myself. 
           
            She rolls over and dangles her arm over my stomach, planting a kiss on the side of my face.  I run my calloused fingers through the back of her hair, and she breathes a little bit harder, like a giggle.  It’s been fourteen months since I last saw her, and she looks just as beautiful, if not more.  I used to think that the people who say “absence makes the heart grow fonder” were a bunch of pricks.  What do they know?  A weekend without a phone call isn’t absence.  It’s space.  But fourteen months can make the toughest man ache.  Not that I’m the toughest man.  But I might crack the top ten in the law community.

Perjury, n.  – the deliberate, willful giving of false, misleading, or incomplete testimony under oath.  It’s not murder, that’s for damn sure.  Hell, it’s not even molestation of the truth.  They should just change the definition to “covering someone’s ass.”  That’s all I did, and I would venture to say that’s what every perjurer has ever done.  In my line of business, it’s the right thing to do.  You don’t pull an associate under the bus.  It’s part of being an attorney.  Lying is just a necessity to get the verdict you want, and when Lucas killed those two hookers outside of Dallas on a business trip for the firm, someone had to provide an alibi.  We drew straws. 

            So it turns out Lucas wasn’t having Martinis in my apartment on the night of the eighth.  Maybe I just couldn’t recall.  I’m a lawyer for Christ’s sake, of course I recall.  But that’s all beside the point.  I did the best I could.  My testimony alone can’t refute plane tickets, hotel check-ins, hotel check-outs, receipts, rental cars, and so on.  But I fucking tried.  Lucas was doomed from the start.  Three people have been executed in the state of Pennsylvania since the death penalty was enacted in 1976.  Tom Ridge is a heartless bastard.  Lucas is going to be number four.  Lethal injection.  He had once called the presiding judge a dike in closed chambers.  Poor decision in hindsight.  But she was a dike.

            Fourteen months.  Could have been much worse.  It was a cushy little pen with large windows.  I had been in a number of prisons in my day, you know, for clientele, and I had never had a defendant go to a place like this.  Hell, if they knew there were prisons like this, every one of them would break out and ring my neck.  Not one threat of ass rape.  Not one prison brawl.  I wore a shirt and tie every day, just like back at the office.  I made the same calls, and counseled the same assholes.  After a stay in there, I felt a lot less passionate about keeping my clients out of prison.  “If I can handle it,” I thought as I sipped my cappuccino the guard had just passed through the door, “those goddamn heathens can too.”

            When I got out all I wanted to do was see Leslie.  Unfortunately, I had to go see my wife first.  It wasn’t that I didn’t love Janine, because I did.  But I had been able to see her through my stint.  Leslie had no legal ability to see me personally. 

            “It’s good to see you without the glass, Jesse,” Janine said, passing a pitcher of iced tea in my direction.  She had apparently forgotten how much I hate iced tea.  If you’re not careful, it’ll stain your mustache and you’ll just look like you couldn’t afford anything but the sample of Just For Men gel.  Leslie would have known this. 

            “It’s good to see you too, babe.  It’s been too long.”  It had been four days.  Honestly, I had more privacy from Janine when I was free than when I was behind bars.  Back home, I could go weeks without seeing her, for “business trips,” and “important opportunities” that just couldn’t be wasted.  But every couple days the guard would tell me I had a visitor, and it would be Janine with a big smile on her face and a tear in her eye.  It didn’t make her look any less of a whore. 

            I grabbed my overcoat and briefcase and told her I’d be gone a couple hours to get some things organized at the office.  She smiled and nodded, picking up the plates from the table.  “Just like you, Jesse.  You’re all work and no play.”  Jesus Christ, she was stupid.  A guy can’t work twenty-four hours a day.  Men sleep just like all other creatures.  They also lie, cheat, and steal.  So stupid.  She couldn’t make it on her own.  I almost feel sorry for her, and whatever airline she would be a stewardess for should I die.  I hope it’s American Airlines.  Bunch of assholes. 

I walk right in the door. Leslie’s place looks exactly the same.  Not a thing has moved.  The gifts all placed out for everyone to see, as they should be.  The gold swan clock on the mantle, and the ivory figurines of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza guarding it on either side.  Those were my favorites, and I think they were hers too.  She stepped around the side of the kitchen cautiously.  I had forgotten how late it was, and I’m sure it scared the hell out of her.  But the second she saw me, she lit up as bright as midnight at a car lot.  Her clothes hit the floor before I could say hello.

That damn cigarette on her lip.  She shifts it from the left to the right. If it were that Camel I had to follow on a field sobriety test, you’d never catch me sober on the road.  The little noises she lets escape are enough of a thrill.  She pulls herself up and lets the cigarette fall.  She kisses me for at least ten seconds, and then falls back to the bed.  I could taste so much in just one of her kisses.

It was more than just the menthol and the warm after taste of smoke.  I could taste every man she had ever been with.  I could taste a guitar player with long greasy hair who would never make it out of his parents’ garage.  I could taste the drummer from his band, too.  I could taste a hint of a football player, maybe a lineman, and how he could pick her up with just one arm.  But he could drop her just as easily.  I could taste a romantic in a suit and tie who had cried with her on more than one occasion before offing himself in the front of his Lincoln Towncar.  Shotgun.  Wasted investment.
            I could even taste myself.  It was gin and coffee, and a pair of Italian shoes that I’ve spent way too much time talking about in over the past few years.  It was designer stubble and cancer jokes, right on her tongue.  But it also tasted like asshole, not in the literal sense of course, but like someone who had swallowed someone else’s bullshit for way too long.  As our heads moved away from each other, I realized it was all mine.

            She had engaging green eyes that you couldn’t get away from.  I was trapped inside her stare.  She ran her perfect little hands up the side of my thigh, and I grabbed them and held on tight. I rolled forward and plunged my head into my hands and squeezed the sides of my skull until I thought I could crush it.  Sadly, I couldn’t.  I stood up and put my suit back on in the mirror, tying the tie especially tight.  When I turned around she was sitting up in the bed, still naked, but covering her breasts with one arm.  I never understood why women covered themselves afterwards.  It’s not like we haven’t seen it already. 

            I took a bottle of gin from her pantry and filled a small glass, and drank it down quickly.  She still stared at me puzzled.  I threw a towel at her and walked out the door.  I heard her rustle inside to get dressed, but I was already down the stairs and out of the entryway.  I leaned on the horn as I sped away, and clipped a trashcan on the edge of the street.  “Nobody knows me, motherfucker.” 

            She called three times, and I never answered.  Janine had iced tea waiting for me when I got home.  Jesus Christ, she’s stupid.

The Eye of the Beholder

            “Nice job picking that one.  You have about as good of eyes as she does,” Eagleman cackled, taking a sip of Old Style.  He was talking about my girlfriend Jane who was on shift at the Bright Light, a shady little hole in the wall that I would never be caught dead in if she didn’t work there.  She was a bartender, but more importantly, she wore a patch over her left eye.  I looked away without responding as Jane spit a series of expletives at a regular.  Eagleman kept laughing.
            I met her at a party, and she charmed the hell out of me.  She was loud, and arrogant, and punched me six times the first time we spoke, and we had a hell of a night.  They had to pry us out of a disheveled bedroom the next morning, still drunk and half naked, with a pokemon card stuck to my bare ass.  It was a Halloween party, and I thought she was a sexy buccaneer.  She hadn’t dressed up at all. 
            But I was willing to look past the eye patch.  What the hell did I care?  I had a beerbelly and a set of cans that were bigger than hers, and she didn’t mind a bit.  She would rub my stomach and call me her “magical Buddha.”  I never brought up the eye.  It had this wonderful element of character that I couldn’t but my finger on, (or in,) and I never really wanted to dissolve the mystery of it all.  Sometimes, I would hold her close and daydream about how she had lost it.  Perhaps a disgruntled customer at the Bright Light who had a few too many, and fish-hooked her right at the bar.  Or maybe it was some kind of childhood injury, like a stick to the eye, or neighbors BB gun.  Could have some fucked up uncle in an asylum somewhere who cradled her in his lap before taking a spoon and scooping it right out, flicking the eyeball across the room like we used to do with mashed potatoes at lunch.  The thought made my stomach turn.
            At the same time, the gaping hole in her head was a sexual turn-on.  She would be on top of me, her head tilted back and the world moving a little bit faster than it ever should, and all I could think about was that eye.  Sometimes in the heat of things, I would mash up her hair, and “accidentally” tug on the side of her patch, hoping for a moment, I could see inside.  But she would always be quick to correct it, and things would continue as though it never happened.  I could hold her for hours without any other thought than how much I liked her, and what the hell was under that goddamn patch?
            I had this dream, and it was a sick one, I know.  It started out boring, not much going on.  It was like a camera was following my morning routine, all from the waist up.  I took my morning piss, brushed my teeth, showered, so on.  Then, I sat down and poured a bowl of cereal, with a great big smile on my face.  But as the camera panned out, I was eating them out of the hole in Jane’s face, as she lay dead on the kitchen table.  And worst of all, it wasn’t one of those shocking dreams where you wake up at the clincher.  I seemed to enjoy eating those cocoa puffs out of her face, too much to ever wake up.
            I realized that I needed to bring it up somehow.  I wasn’t sure how.  I knew it would probably offend her, considering she had never brought it up herself.  I had been around people with situations that were awkward, and usually they would be the first to flirt with the subject.  She had always flown right by it.  Do I just put all the chips in and say, “so what’s with your eye?”  Or do I sneak around it, and put in a subtle hint, like, “I just got a call from mom.  Our dog Lucinda has the glaucoma…might lose her eyes…”  She would probably see right through that.  So I went with plan A.
             It was breakfast, around nine A.M. on a Sunday.  Why we were up so early, I have no idea, considering we hadn’t fallen asleep until four or five.  Or at least she hadn’t.  I couldn’t sleep a bit.  I was still considering all the things I could say in response to the crazy uncle story, or even something worse.  Like maybe she keeps a bird in there or something, I don’t know.  But I decided to forward about it: straight to the point. 
            “Babe.  Tell me about your eye.”  She stopped cold.  I think she assumed I would never ask, and more importantly she would never have to tell the story.  Slowly, she put her fork down and began a sad story of a childhood filled with insults and mockery.  How her family never had enough money to correct the problem, and how she had done the best she could to get over her torment.  And she took off her patch, and it was nothing like I could have expected.  There wasn’t a hole there at all.  Not even a glass eye.  And certainly not a bird.  Instead, it was a normal eye, that just looked a little bit to the left.  She had a lazy eye.  That was all.
            She asked me if I could still be with her, and I said of course.  I told her that I wanted her even more, because of her honesty, and I held on to her a long time after that as she cried into my shoulder.  I stroked her hair and listened to every word she had to say.  I promised her I didn’t mind. 
            After that, she never wore the eye patch again, and she was closer to me than ever.  She seemed to gain a new confidence about her eye that she had never had before, and I was the reason.  I broke up with her two weeks later.  I told her she was suffocating, and that she and I just didn’t have personalities that match, but in all honesty, that eye just looked fucking weird.