Chapter 5: BIG BRIDGE (Excerpt from Killer of Killers)

It's morning and the sky is pinkish, the tear in the sky orange and speckled magenta. It is magnificent. I can't remember my dreams. I've apparently been sleeping against a mossy tree for some time. Next to me is my supplies, the double, knife and mutt included. Dillinger is just awakenening as well, with the necessary routine of yawns and stretches. Flashes of last night and the fake young girl. A smile overwhelms my face. I gently push my hand down my jeans and feel that I'm still a touch touchy. Dillinger looks hungry, so we eat some more of the jerky. I take in a deep breath and am hit with the urge to snuff. I like it best in the early morning. The colors keep willowing as they burn brighter and brighter. The witch or the young girl is gone. The fountain is dried up and deeply cracked. Vines are dead. Woofers patrolling in the distance. Two seperate packs from the howls. Dillinger looks into the expanse, standing proudly, wanting to know more about what he hears. I snap out of my daze and stand up ready to push ahead to Tully's.

Two tucked toots as we further ourselves.

The rest of Chinichillia Vento is calm, only the horrible birds to edge me. They drift along with their nightmare mouths and they look at you from their high perches as you pass. Screaming to alert the others of a weakness or threat of any sort. They always seem to be smiling. They are the top of the food chain around here.

I make it to the big bridge before the pink has even redened. The tear blemishes the natural sky like a captured flicker of fire, by now stretching across half of it. It's been a time since the last tear, maybe it's stopping.

The big bridge is scattered with burnt-out autos with their melted rubbers. Searching them would be pointless. I'm uncomfortable being in the open like this, so I'm walking briskly. The air is crisp, cutting in from the sea. Dillinger is practically galloping, he's excited to see so much water. He loves to swim. I hate this bridge because there might be snipers, or bombers. I remember snorting two squares of some of the dirtiest brown snuff I ever had under another giant bridge with Ramananda. I was never scared with that kid around. I wish Ram was still alive.

Dillinger stops to lift his leg and it strikes me as a good idea. I watch my stream of piss break apart on it's descent down to the bay. The drop-off dizzies me. Down in the water I can see a massive figure swaying along rythmically. I see hundreds of fins that run in parallel lines. Electricity is bouncing all over it in subtle hops. It lets out a deep moan that shakes the world and another responds somewhere far away. From the piece of it I can make out I'd say it's bigger than this entire bridge. Dillinger is squeaking at it. I tell him we need to keep moving and so we do.

I pass families of the melted, some with melted dogs. I always feel worse about the dogs.

Almost to the end now a large man steps out at the end of the bridge with an axe over his shoulder. With him is a bald woman with an uzi trained on me. I think these two will underestimate me, so I continue towards them without slowing. When I am within twenty feet the large man yells, "HAULT!"

His voice booms through the air. It made Dillinger sit down in place. I remain motionless. He continues, "everything you've got son, or your going over. The mutt as well."

Whether he means the mutt goes over the edge as well or he wants me to hand over the mutt as well I don't know. Both ways, I respond, "how about a fair fight instead. Winner stays on the good side of the edge. I promise not to hurt your betty, if you lose fair."

The man is a touch shook by this. He and his betty look at each other for a moment. She jerks her head back to eye me, the uzi still locked in place. She has metal-spiked eyelashes around big violet eyes. They're saying she might hop the buzzer on me. He puts the ax in between his legs and spits on his hands before saying, "you've got a deal son, toss that double down slow and any other guns you got. What's your fair weapon?"

"My mutt."

The man looks to his betty once again but this time she doesn't look back. He says, "that's fine by this one. When I kill him you'd better not run or reach. I'd hate to have to put this ax into your back."

I lay down the double and my pack. I lift my shirt and do a quick spin to show that there is nothing in my belt. But there is a bulge in my back pocket that they miss.

"Don't worry about that. Tell your betty to put that uzi on the edge. That gives me a fair chance at my double if she should feel vengeful when my mutt kills you."

He knods and she places it on the edge next to her after a flicker of resistance. I can see that she knows she'll get to the uzi before I reach the shotgun.

He stretches out his huge tattooed arms and then loudly pops his spine. He takes a swing and then twirls the handle in his hand, "Whenever you two are ready, son."

I kneel next to Dillinger and look into his brown eyes. I whisper, "throat" and clasp my hand onto my throat to signal. Then I point at the man. Holding his collar I ask the man if he is ready to die. He raises his axe and focuses on my mutt. The axe is lightly swaying, hovering over his shoulder. His betty looks a finger nervous. Dillinger is bucking as I hold his collar. He is growling his raspy shrill. Foam drips to the ground. Almost every time Dillinger lunges the bald betty jumps slightly. I continue to hold my mutt back. A line of sweat begins to drip down the man's red face. Bald betty clenches her fists. The siren in the distance starts up. I start to laugh at them. My veins are pushing, clearing off the walls. My heart is laughing too. What a spectacle for us to share!

"Let the fucker loose already!"

I continue to laugh. Tears run down my face. I am laughing. It feels rockets. I am full with glee. Most thrilled with what has become of the morning.

She yells, "Let him loose!"

The man is showing his teeth trying to remain focused on the mutt as he's becoming eruptious with my behavior. I stare into his eyes. They are small for his head. He breaks his focus and looks at me, with those tiny eyes, to yell, "Let your-" He stops his plea as Dillinger is suddenly bursting towards him. The betty screams as Dillinger closes on him fast. I catch her in the side of her face and she flips over the edge, taking the uzi with her. The man looks over in time to see her legs disappear in an instant and tries to scream "NO!" as Dillinger shoots, ripping out his throat in one brutal tug. The man looks at me astonished, still trying to scream with blood spouting out of his exposed throat. He drops the axe and collapses to the ground, with a fading gargle. Dillinger proudly trots back to me still holding the flap of skin and I kneel down again, giving him another piece of the salted meat. I give myself one of the suckers, lime.

I decide the ax is much too heavy, so I toss it over into the bay. I can't believe she nabbed the uzi on her way over, I thought it was mine for sure. The man has a box of matches, which is tizzy, because I'm almost out. That's it though, nothing else of use. Twenty one pistol bullets now. I replace the empty. Flick that shell and the ones from the park off the bridge one at a time wondering how many people I've killed. I ruff up Dillinger's fur for a moment and then continue across the bridge into Prittsco, pondering my chances of scoring.

New Article for Working Class Magazine

This is an article I wrote about my friend, the incredible artist Brandon Friend, which will be in the November issue of Working Class, the Boy issue. Check it out:

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE!

The Bus Driver

On the weekends I opened, so I would get there at 8 and she'd already be there. She was enormous and dark as asphalt. I never learned her name. She was there for the QuickDraw. She was there to stare at the blue screen and the white lines, hoping for the 3D ball to land on her numbers. It was a liquor store, but really it was sustained by the QuickDraw worshipers and the scratch off ticket junkies. At first I found it odd that she spent so much time there but over time I became acclimated to her presence as though she was a velvet painting or some ornate lightswitch cover. I would watch her thick fingers scratching in her numbers with the plastic halfpencils. I found myself staring at the huge mole on her cheek. The mole was darker still, achieving true black, and it hung from her skin like a marble attached with a dab of epoxy, like it might break off and roll away any moment. She never brought anything to eat or drink and I don't recall her ever using the tiny bathroom with its woodpanel wallpaper. Harvey let her run her own cards into the machine. This was the same man that checked my bag every time I closed, trying to act as if it was more of a joke than an accusation. She worked longer hours I did considering I at least got two days off. In the lot outside would rest her little yellow school bus. What kids call the short bus or in more extreme cases, the tart cart. I asked my boss Tom one day what he thought she would do if she hit all her numbers and found herself a millionaire. He said, it's better if you don't think about such things.

Soon-to-be-Cops on the Train

The platform is full of police academy kids wearing clean gray uniforms. They carry identical duffel bags. Patches on their shoulders tell everybody what they are.

Inside the train they are in two packs, with each pack holding down the train-car's exits. Just like real cops. The pack closer to you consists of two guys, a blonde haired girl, and a very unflattering short girl; kicking around across the isle but still close enough. The little one looks at you with a kind of muffled suspicion. The boys muse over the blonde one. Trying to act casual. They talk about cases that they read about in the news or overheard at the academy. The guy on the left has blotchy skin, but is a far more skilled conversationalist then the guy on the right, who is always looking down and has thick eyebrows that some girls love and others hate. His face makes him look like he might grow up to be the occasional nice cop. The blonde is a pretty enough girl, with a nice enough body, but it's the hair that makes her stick. She has the hair of an angel. It's her strong-point and of that she is fully aware. She swiftly unties and flips it down, running her fingers through it, letting it soak up the fluorescent light. Eyebrows is mesmerized. He gulps. He does a weird hard blink and takes a step back. The other one, the conversationalist, isn't allowing himself the pleasure of watching her hair, he's waiting. Waiting for his next words, planning for what words she might use. Blondie throws her head back up, still using her fingers to comb. She flips and twists it into a little swoosh and checks her reflection in the dark window.

Eyebrows never looks away.

She sees his backwards face hanging stuck and is pleased.

All the while the short female cadet is just standing there, looking around and waiting for her turn to say something. It's never going to come and she's beginning to see that now. She looks familiar. Her face is soft and round. Her hair is dark and somewhat curly in that frazzled, un-angelic way. You might know her. She's getting sick of their babbling. Sick of watching moths bumping into the light bulb. Some of the others on the train are becoming irritated, having no interest in their stories or their enthusiasm, while others have them zoned out, along with everything else. They don't sleep, these others, their minds just float up and to the left. An internal clock tells them when their stop is coming up.

Riders are rushing on and off the train. A large black man is among the new passengers and Blondie is whisper shouting, "it's him, it's him", to Eyebrows, who doesn't get it. She thinks he's the principal from the television show Boston Public. It does look very much like him, but it's not, he's too young. His voice confirms this when he asks a female passenger across from him what year she graduated. The cadet who doesn't exist is fed up. She makes a noise and walks away from the pack, turning and planting herself onto the closest seat, which is still quite close to them. Eyebrows notices this, and seems to feel something, but the golden hair catches his attention and he realizes that he's lost vital seconds. Blondie still thinks that it's the guy from Boston Public and the resulting jabber forces the little pissed off cadet out of her seat along with another noise and this time she plants down even harder. The passengers are pleased that she made such a definite statement. This is how her life as a cop will be; oppression and fortification. She is going to be a good cop. Eyebrows is regretting not saying something to her. He will say something to her on Monday at the academy, but she will ignore him. That's it! You know her. You went to school with her. She lingers in your memory like someone you recognize from the background of a picture. She might know all about you. What's her name?

Outside the windows is a blur of piping and paint up close. Now the wall is gone; the tall lights make everything look like a zombie movie. An empty playground drifts along, the past and future site of something horrific. As Jamaica station approaches many of the passengers are shifting and gathering. Many are standing and approaching the not-quite-cops. The blonde is saying her goodbyes. The conversationalist hits his mark with a well-paced reply. Eyebrows says, "See you on Friday then", and Blondie says, "Monday" and waves as she steps away. "Oh, yeah Monday". An exiting old woman appears disturbed by one of the advertisements that faces away from you. A wall of people is rushing the boys. Eyebrows yells, "See you later" and then hopes that she didn't hear him. The little cadet rushes by them with her giant duffel bag. The people have finally stopped and Eyebrows looks a little dazed. He does the weird hard blink thing. He says, "Don't you want the express to Babylon?" pointing to another track. The conversationalist says, "I know that. What're you trying to get rid of me?" a bit standoffish. Eyebrows says, “No, I was just saying". They finally sit down across from each other and they think about Blondie for the rest of the trip, not speaking again. The far pack of cadets is gone now. The train is nearly empty and those that are left are mostly those up-and-to-the-left types. When the lights go out it looks like a teenager’s room. All of the emergency signs light up, like those sticky glow-in-the-dark stars. The mood softens and you are allowed a short break before returning to:

Inside the Wall

I was a zombie those mornings, rarely getting more than two or three hours of sleep. I had to wake up at 5:30, which for me was hell. The sky was gray at first and the heat was already there, just a taste of the swelter to come. This was my summer construction job. I was sixteen

I didn’t like any of the guys I worked with. Sitting shoulder to shoulder in the cab of the truck with them, I wondered what I was doing there. Once we got to the site they would slack around and tell stories, while I broke my back. They called me, “the Mexican”

It was a half-burned down house on a street that could have been almost anywhere on Long Island. As I got out of the truck I could already feel it had gotten at least ten degrees hotter on the ride over.

At first I had to rip down the insulation from the ceiling of the charred kitchen. I was wearing gloves but it wasn’t long before the fiberglass had infiltrated them. It fell like sparkling dust as I tore down the yellowed sheets that looked like giant used cigarette filters. My neck began to itch and the more I scratched the deeper those little triangles of glass would dig into my skin. By the second hour I was shirtless with red scars all over my neck and arms.

For lunch we had Chinese, which would not have been my choice for my first meal of the day. We sat on around a long forgotten rusty seesaw. The youngest of my coworkers, the kid who used to have my job, told us about his fiancé and her newest anal beads. They all laughed and dug for more and more filthy details, the filthier the better.

I tried to think about the ride home and the joint I had waiting in my pocket. Then the prison guard began telling us one of his prison stories. He was a pear-shaped, red-skinned man with a moustache. He took so much pleasure in telling us these stories.

This one was about a man who was inside for raping little girls. A short little man that wore thick glasses and looked like a math teacher. The guard decided one day to sit across from the rapist in the chow hall and strike up a conversation. He asked him questions about the little girls. Disgusting questions until the rapist began to squeal tears.

The guard did his impression of the crying man for us, using his hands to make the “boo-hoo” motion in front of his face. I could barely stomach my wanton soup with the chunks of soggy gray meat. I put down the warm container and went with the bag of fried noodles.

The guard went into another story about how he liked to walk down the cellblock clanking his keys against the bars. He said it echoed throughout the entire complex forever. He tells us how the inmates beg him to stop; to let them sleep. He’d stop for about thirty seconds before starting it up again, clank, clank, clank.

My next task was in the basement, which was totally exposed to the outside toward the back, because one of the corners and most of the floor was completely torn away after the fire. The boss took me deep into the basement where he showed me a long wall next to the water heater.

He took out his razor and cut out a strip showing me how to remove drywall as if I hadn’t been doing just that for weeks. I began cutting the wall with my own razor and he watched me for a moment before going back to bullshiting with the others.

The prison guard had found a shoebox full of homemade Poloroid porno. He started up describing each one in his usual graphic detail. I heard the descriptions in pieces as I went back and forth to the dumpster with the strips of the wall

I noticed there was a woman up in the window of the neighbor’s house watching my trips. Even after I spotted her she continued looking down on me. I was drenched in sweat and covered in soot, so I was dripping black water. I hoped at least she was getting something out of it.

Eventually I found that it was much quicker to just pull the drywall off with my hands. As I tore down the final piece I saw something jammed inside the wall, catching the light behind one of the beams. It was a butcher knife that was never meant to be found.

I pulled it out, using a piece of paper, and examined it a bit. It looked like it had been inside of that wall for a quite some time. It had been the type of basement wall that was almost certainly a later addition made by whoever rented there. People on Long Island are notorious for sprucing up dank basements and pretending they don’t smell the mold.

I told the boss about the knife and he told me to go back to work. I told the prison guard and he said that they find knives inside walls all the time. He grabbed it from me, getting his fat fingerprints all over it before chucking it into the dumpster. After a moment, I went back to work.

The Drive Home From Work

My reactions are delayed, dulled, like my brain and my hands are fighting parents passing messages through the children. I don’t mind it. What I’ve really been trying to do is regain control. While every thing else is a mess, at least I can not care about near misses on the shiny wet highway as I cruise along somewhere between sixty and one hundred miles per hour. That twang of instant sweat when one becomes intimate with danger is supposed to be a natural reaction.

I’m listening to music- well, listening isn’t the right word- it’s more like hearing the way you smell. The accompaniment is something I’m aware of, but only in an underneath-way, like an old lover rubbing your back while you tell a story you’ve both heard a million times. This song affects my mood as the sound-version of fresh baked cookies. The type of reaction I sometimes have to remind myself to acknowledge. So I bob my head and sing along. Some old song I never particularly liked or disliked, one of those songs I am simply aware of.

It’s dark and all you can see is bright light shining through colored plastic skins. The headlights coming at you white, the break-lights coming at you red as you breeze by. The occasional bone-head maneuver reminds me that there are people inside of the cars. Blurry people each with their unique back stories, stockpiling frustrations. Sometimes they make me livid, but not now. I could care less about these people. I let them stay nothing but sliding sets of red lights. I imagine I’m a space-custodian sent to do some important cleanup amongst the machines, the endless looping machines.

I’m not paying attention to the road like I should. It takes me too long to flip through the radio stations. Little insignificant details strike me as interesting. My shifter, which I thought was becoming worn out is actually just filthy, the ashtray is leaking black water, the dual cup holders are too close together to hold anything but straight, Tom Collins glasses, I have seven different thermoses on the passenger seat and floor, though I only remember having one. The backseat holds piles of sweatshirts that I never wore when I lived in California..

I know it’s dangerous only because of what I know can and does often happen on these slick endless bands of concrete. I know all about the twisted car-like or truck-like heaps and the greedy gasoline fires and the rip of the windshield and the blood and the guts and all of the horror that a moment’s carelessness can bring. I’ve seen the flipped vehicles and the dazed bloody passengers staring off as if seeing things through someone else’s eyes. Maybe there were others back in the wrecks some mash-up mock of what they were just a few moments earlier. It’s strange to think of dead people stuck within these chewed up steel-miracles as you pass them, perfectly safe within your car with your pre-set radio stations and ass-groove. These are things I never dwell on for long, not while I’m driving. It doesn’t interest me, counting the cars in a pile up or stopping to see if anyone’s dead.

When I’m in my car I don’t have to care about anything outside of wherever my mind wanders. I think some people find this mental-state while jogging, or sewing, or humming with crossed legs and o-forming fingers, or fucking. I find it while driving. Just as fast as the red lights ahead of me will allow. It gets harder for me everyday to not push that little needle as far as it can go, forcing my car to its limits like I was hiding inside of some unstoppable primeval beast. I’m not in any rush to get where I’m going. I just like passing the others. Something about making good time than them makes my head tingle a bit. I think bliss would be an endless road of yellow lights. At first you might think seeing green after green would fill you with joy, but the yellow holds something better. Being allowed to continue on when others must halt is fulfilling.

So I press down the go-button when the music hits its climax, for some reason believing my slow reactions will keep me safe, that is to say, it keeps me from over-reacting. I know I wont crash, I’m not saying I’m a great driver, I just know I wont crash. I can’t explain it, but I’ve always felt that way, even during near misses that would have likely torn my vision of the world to tattered scraps. It’s during those blown out slow-moments of surreal captured speed and violent proximity that I am most comfortable. It’s like I’m in the hands of some God, feeling no need for guilt or anxiety. There’s no point in being scared about things like that, there’s plenty to be scared of outside your car.

Rainy Days

It better stop raining soon.

This is getting out of hand. It started on St. Patrick’s day. Twenty weeks later, it hasn't stopped. This is like Vietnam, except there's nothing to do. I don't have my buddy’s brains in my lap or anything, it's not like that, but it is still a type of warfare. It's an internal conflict. Both sides are on break waiting for the rain to stop, using only propaganda to fight for the cause. Every morning is a continuation of this dreary, drowsy experiment. I'm becoming like a vampire with the flu. Like Letterman delivering jokes that he knows are trash, content with mediocrity since his surgery. Never seeing the sun and never willing to do anything more than eat cereal out of the box and watch the rain. I have the cereal because my mother is crazy and she has a problem. She sends me packages. It's been going on for years. It's either cereal or barbeque sauce or the latest Disney release, filling my walk-in closet. It used to make me angry but now Honey Nut Cheerios are keeping me alive. The mail stopped once the water started creeping up the buildings. It's like this everywhere. TV stopped a few days ago. I've seen the Lion King more times than I care to estimate. I keep picturing my cigarettes inside of the truck, but since I never got my back window fixed they're ruined. I barely even want them anymore. If I'd kept my setup from my trip to Long Boat Key, I could be snorkeling all over the place seeing how interesting things look submerged as opposed to not-submerged. Treasure hunting, that type of thing. There probably aren't any cigarettes anywhere by now. Most people left a long time ago. Many that stayed starved or sunk and bobbed. For a while I was talking, or I guess screaming, with this girl across the street on the second floor, but one day she wasn't there anymore. I guess she left too. All I do now is sit on my balcony and watch the Abercorn Street River. Like the fool who ruled the abandoned city. I watch the rain drops kurplunk, kurplunk, kurplunk, and think about nothing at all.

I hope it never stops.

Victor Waldo is David Dishman

(ON THE SET OF THE NEW RUSTY CAITES ACTION FLICK, WITH THE FAMOUS METHOD ACTOR VICTOR WALDO AND THE CREW OF MONEY MAKES IT BETTER)

VICTOR: "I've been DAVID FUCKING DISHMAN FOR THE LAST NINE AND A HALF MONTHS, go back to your little chair. I've got it, okay, I'VE got it. Me."

RUSTY: "That's it, that's exactly the intensity I was talking about. Run it!

TOM: "Roll sound."

MORGAN: "Speed."

TOM: "Roll camera."

JIMMY: Camera Speed.

STACEY: "Scene 27, 55 apple, money makes, take 26"

RUSTY: "ACTION!"

VICTOR: "Listen Piscatelli, I want my fucking money and I want it NOW. Not when the dog's fed, NOW! Understood?"

JOE: "Okay, Mr. Dishman, calm down I'm, I-I mean we've-"

VICTOR: "You, you mean you've nothing. Don't ever tell me to calm down. Money NOW Goddamnit! Make your call."

JOE: "Okay, I'm sorry."

VICTOR: "Don't."

JOE: "Hello, yes. It's Piscatelli, Mr Dishman is here and he would like the, the, um...Yes. Okay I'm sorry, No I know, I mean okay sir I'm, I'll do that then. Yes, thank you sir. Here is your money Mr. Dishman. Sorry for any, um, inconveniences. Sorries all around actually."

VICTOR: "Well it's too bad for you sorries can't make you bulletproof."

JOE: "Oh NO PLEASE SIR DON"T-"

GUN: BANG!

RUSTY: "Yes! Cut! That's a print people. Vicky I love you. Jimmy, I take it all back, don't kill yourself."

JOE: "Goddamnit. Rusty that fuckin blood went in my eyes again!"

RUSTY: "Sorry baby."

JOE: "Oh you think that's funny?"

RUSTY: "Sorry baby."

VICTOR: "I'm leaving. That's it, right? I'm done now? Rusty? I'm done?"

RUSTY: "Yes darling. Done for now. Loved that, "before the dog's fed". Get some sleep, I'll see you mahnyahnah. People, bid a sweet farewell to our beloved Mr. Dishman!"

EVERYONE: "GOODBYE MR DISHMAN!"

VICTOR: "Fuck You All."

(IN THE YELLOW CAB OF AMBROSE WILLINGHAM. THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS LAYING DOWN A STEADY BEAT LIKE DUEL PENDULUMS)

AMBROSE: "Where to pal?"

VICTOR: "Downtown. (GOOD ADDRESS) Take the parkway."

AMBROSE: "You mind if I smoke?"

VICTOR: "What brand."

AMBROSE: "Reds."

VICTOR: "Can I bum one, I'm without for the moment."

AMBROSE: "No problem pal. Here you go."

VICTOR: "Thanks."

AMBROSE: "You need a light?"

VICTOR: "No I've got it."

AMBROSE: "Hey don't I know you?"

VICTOR: "I don't know."

AMBROSE: "Yeah you were in that one with Michael Keaton."

VICTOR: "No I wasn't."

AMBROSE: "Yeah, yeah, yes you were. The one were his wife was a cop and she killed a bunch of guys, because he used to beat her and she kept seeing his face, you know, like, on their faces. There were Michael Keatons walking around all over the place."

VICTOR: "You mean Multiplicity?"

AMBROSE: "No not that shit. Not that one, it was the one with that killer bitch. The killer bitch cop. Come on, you were the therapist. The gay therapist with the glasses."

VICTOR: "Oh you mean Mind Trigger, that was years ago. And it wasn't Michael Keaton, it was Gary Sinise."

AMBROSE: "Oh okay, yeah you're right. Oh yeah alright, I always confuse those two. Gary Sinise was Batman right?"

VICTOR: "Wait a minute did you say I played a gay therapist?"

AMBROSE: "So that was you? Yeah you were the fag with the glasses. The guy who spilled the grape-juice and it led to that secret room. You remember it. You guys heard it dripping, like in the Goonies, but then you needed-"

VICTOR: "No, look, I remember the film, but I wasn't gay. The character wasn't gay."

AMBROSE: "Look I'm not saying you're gay or anything."

VICTOR: "I know, I'm just saying Dr. Noyes, my character, wasn't gay."

AMBROSE: "Whatever you say pal."

VICTOR: "I'm telling you he wasn't gay. I wasn't gay."

AMBROSE: "Then how come you didn't bang that broad."

VICTOR: "What? Which one?"

AMBROSE: "The killer cop bitch. Who was it? Uma Thurman?"

VICTOR: "No it was Patricia Arquete."

AMBROSE: "Yeah? What's she like?"

VICTOR: "Nice. Sweet girl."

AMBROSE: "Yeah, how about that? Patricia Arquete. Yeah she's hot, so that's what I'm saying, she's a fucking foxy broad, why didn't you bang her if you weren't a fag then?"

VICTOR: "She was a serial killer."

AMBROSE: "Yeah I know, but what about that one scene, where you were both all covered in paint. She was all tied up and covered in that paint. That was that one right?"

VICTOR: "It wasn't really up to me."

AMBROSE: "You couldn't what-do-you-call-it? Improv that shit? What would happen if you just im-improved that shit?"

VICTOR: "I don't know."

AMBROSE: "That would be great right? Getting to bang Uma Thurman like that?"

VICTOR: "I don't think my wife would approve. But, yeah it would be great."

AMBROSE: "Wow, what's your name again? I mean, if you don't mind me asking?"

VICTOR: "I don't mind. Victor Waldo. I was Hawk-Man. You might remember me as Hawk-Man."

AMBROSE: "Never saw that one. So what are you doing now?"

VICTOR: "It's called "Money Makes it Better" It's supposed to be out next summer."

AMBROSE: "Do you play another faggot? Just kidding pal."

VICTOR: "I play David Dishman, he's a FBI undercover in too deep who gets involved with the Mafia. It's a thriller"

AMBROSE: "Sounds like fun. Sounds like Donnie Brasco."

VICTOR: "It isn't. It's a right coming up here, before the Banana Republic. I mean it isn't fun, it is just like Donnie Brasco. Then it's that first building on the left. You know people just forget. You can get away with making the same film every few years. People are stupid."

AMBROSE: "You're telling me. I deal with people all day long. Well, here we are Mr. Victor Waldo. How about that? Victor Waldo."

VICTOR: "Keep the change. Thanks for the ride. What's you name?"

AMBROSE: "Ambrose."

VICTOR: "Have a good night Ambrose."

AMBROSE: "You too Mr Waldo. Victor fucking Waldo."

(INSIDE THE FLAT. MARBLE FLOORS, A LITTLE WHITE BITCH WITH A DIAMOND COLLAR SLEEPING ON A FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR PILLOW. TARA WALDO TURNS OFF THE TELEVISION AS SHE HEARS HER HUSBAND'S FOOTSTEPS)

TARA: "Hello dear."

VICTOR: "Hello."

TARA: "How was it?"

VICTOR: "How do you think it was? How could it be anything but torture with Rusty?"

TARA: "Victor, I was just trying to help. David, David, I was just trying to help. Don't look at me like that, I remembered. I'm sorry that I have interest in your day."

VICTOR: "Well don't."

TARA: "Sorry."

VICTOR: "Don't."

TARA: "Did you take a cab back?"

VICTOR: "Did you make my smoothie?"

TARA: "Did you take a cab back or did they send a car?"

VICTOR: "Listen, I want my fucking smoothie and my fucking sandwich and I want it NOW. Not when the dog's fed, NOW! Understood?"

TARA: "I can't wait until this ones over."

VICTOR: "Me neither."

TARA: "Next movie you're not going to play such an asshole."

VICTOR: "Agreed."

At the People Zoo

So many awkward bodies, each doing their thing. I'm the only watcher amongst all these interesting subjects. A fat and red-faced little bastard annoys his mother as time counts down and the older red-red-headed brother jitters, awaiting the possibility of a sweet escape. Another smiling boy, probably fourteen. Too happy to be anything be at least slightly retarded; he derives endless enjoyment from shaking up his ginger-ale and opening it up again and again over the garbage can until the bubbles have all been bubbled. He is invisible to his father, like I am to all these careless actors. Across from me at gate A1, I see a medium haired brunette who might be beautiful. It's been that up close everyone here is ugly, so I leave her blurry and perfect.

Reading, cell-phoning, French frying as I try to break down lives with little satisfaction. I'm jealous of a plain looking blonde girl/woman who is either meditating or dead. Motionless and serene like a rock that belongs just where it is, regardless of the river.

So many awkward bodies on display before me, each teaching me nothing as I try to form their back-stories. Self-prescribed pessimism extorted my imagination long ago. What's left is a set of squinting eyes stuck on record. A small child, also in gate A1 is looking right at me, amused at how I've been mouthing the words to the songs I've been listening to. He has chocolate ice-cream smeared across his face and sleeve. He is looking right at me. If he wanted to, he could probably pretend the soon-to-come immense stretched mountains of clouds were real instead of just weightless garnish to be quickly dismissed.  

An Outdated Experiment

I met up with my old friend Maureen and her friend Kathleen, who I'd met once almost exactly one year earlier. We were having a joint Capricorn birthday celebration, as we all happened to fall into that nonsense category. In an attempt to show up smooth, dry, and loose, I ate a fiver while waiting for the train at the Lindenhurst train station. I tried not to think about anything at all, knowing well that any deep thought might send me in the wrong direction. I smiled to smile and for a while it worked as I walked in casual circles. The platform was nearly desolate and I killed time by cutting my name into the brown plastic garbage bins with my box-cutter from work.

Inside the train I listened to the played-out new songs on my iPod and I tried to remember Kathleen. I let myself feel the darkness and listen to upbeat music. It was imperative that I prison the other me and not allow any tells. This was my chance. The other passengers gave me dirty looks for the overflow of music they could hear coming from my headphones and after a moment I decided that I didn't care.

As I entered the apartment I felt that vague shame I get when all eyes are fixed on me from comfortable seats. I was an intruder within a comfortable old-friends setting. I wasn't dry and smooth. My shoulders were riding too high and I didn't know what to do with my coat. I saw Kathleen with a new haircut, quite beautiful and not at all what I remembered. She was the same as her Myspace pictures. Her voice was the same as it had been on the phone earlier that day; a bit raspy in that subconscious cool and powerful way. Yet, I immediately could tell something wasn’t right. We drank Pinot and watched the new season of Dancing with the Stars. I wandered in circles around the tiny apartment, looking for a book that I had read so I could speak. They all talked about something and I tried to figure out exactly how to sit in a strange bowl-like chair.

The place appeared at first to be a cake shop. In fact, I think that might have been what it was titled, the cake shop. Downstairs was a dark struggling band bar complete with self obsessed struggling bands. Drummers pouting out their lips and spinning their sticks, singers touching their hearts when the lyrics called for it, bass players unsuccessfully trying to stand out. I lied and told Maureen that I thought I'd been there before and I think she could tell it wasn't true. I've always been ashamed of my lack of hip NY knowledge, being a Long Islander. Friends of the bands joined in the chorus and hooted unfunny remarks. While standing at the bar, buying the next round, a brunette sitting next to me slid the three glasses a bit closer to me. I was shocked to find that she was gorgeous and exactly edgy enough. I thanked her and when I looked back a few minutes later she was gone. I should have talked to her.

Outside Kathleen and I smoked cigarettes. I had been quit for nearly two weeks, but it was just the two of us and I genuinely enjoyed talking to her. I loved her voice, although it made me feel a bit like a virgin.

We all decided to bounce to a nearby Mexican restaurant and I ordered the same thing as Kathleen, having no clue what I would get. We ate complimentary chips and slopped up our colorful messes and then Maureen started saying that she wanted to go home. My mind dropped a little into a lower recess of my skull. This could go either way: the sour end to a promising night, or one-on-one time with the potential reason for me to not want to die for lack of escape.

Maureen hopped out of the taxi first and I was already more than a little lumpy. The corners of my mouth hung low. My blinks were in slow motion. Against all better judgment I told Kathleen how badly I wanted a girlfriend and then we had the standard follow up conversation. The pattern of my speech came sporadic and uninspired, with lots of half sentences and abrupt stops. I once again welcomed death as a change. Kathleen and I talked about my life and she offered me the standard advice as if she wasn't only a few days older than I was. I was a child. I no longer wanted to speak. I no longer wanted Kathleen, or anyone else for that matter. What I wanted was a head on collision. To perish in a ragged tear and tumble of brilliant pain. I sunk into the taxis black seats and thought about how easily I could kill myself. The plastic bottle in my jacket could end this rerun of a disappointing pilot. I could die, but of course, I would not. She got out and gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, "Call me" which presented a glimmer and then followed it up with, "I've been through the same thing. Are you okay?” destroying me. As the cabbie and I sat in silence, I sunk in further; having no clue whether or not he was ripping me off with the scenic route, hoping that he was.

All is (was) White

I'm a camera whose iris is opened too far, if that helps. The edges are muffled. Figures bob by, just floating vignettes, not to be bothered. Clarity occurs only within the whitest pieces of the lightness. Light, light, light. Everywhere is lit. Everywhere is white. Shadows have been vaccined. Chased away into an imaginary place for children, like Candyland or Hell. Everything is what it is. No trickery. No veils. I appear as I am. My skin is perforated and craggy, blotched with red in sporadic locations. My eyes are gray and yellow. My teeth are like ancient elephant tusks. We've all adjusted. Everyone is ugly and textured. All is white.

It changed today. A day lost in an endless parking lot of days and days and days.

It walked by me on the street; on the other side of the street. I was shielding my eyes from the ground's reflection when my attention was drawn. Somehow the light was being cancelled. An aura of less-ness hung in the air and moved with absolute grace as it cut through the crowd. A hard blink did nothing. Its teeth gleamed, unashamed. The passers walked by it unfettered. They were busy shielding the light and repeating the day’s tasks in their heads, totally unaware of their brush with an alien. I, apparently, was the only one who noticed. In front of its eyes hung huge tinted fish-tanks.  Its thick hair broke away from the shoulders like a forever-crashing wave. It was driven by an unheard melody. That was just then. My eyes are adjusting. The world is being pulled closer. It's all moving and yet somehow staying in place. Shifting really. The world shifts as it selectively approaches and retreats. I cannot look away. My cells are screaming. Rockets are firing. It is too glorious. It isn't, this isn't, real. All was as it should've been; all was white. This mystic being has infiltrated the blown-out sameness that I lean upon. I'm dead. I must be dead and it's a demon come to get me for the things I did before the light came and washed away my misgivings. The demon smells like a forbidden garden, like a god's stash. Its eyes are as black as a million miles from a candle's flame; so black they're sucking in the world outside. It speaks in a lullaby rhythm that makes my dick hard. My ears lift slightly. It smokes, because it asks me for one. Its name is Jessica and above us the sky is dark.

County Line Liquor

Today is my son's sixteenth birthday. There's ice-cream cake and some VR games wrapped by the Macy's wrapping department. After the cake he'll run along with his friends. They say they're going to the mall, but I'm suspicious. He is my son. This reminds me of a story.

…

When I was sixteen I got a job at a liquor store.  I told my parents I got hired at Baskin-Robbins as an ice-cream scooper.

It was the type of place most descent people would only go into in an out-of-town/late-to-a-party emergency or to briefly slum it before dashing back to their cars, boop-beeping. I applied because I thought it would be exciting for me to work at such a shit-hole, figured I would get some crazy stories and could maybe cop some booze, impress girls, that type of thing.

Wearing an old t-shirt and my dead brother's jeans, I lied and told him that I lived two blocks away. Sick Tom hired me on the spot. I thought I was too young to sell liquor, but I guessed I wasn't. He started me right away, telling me to throw my schoolbag in the back. Sick Tom with his ridiculously congested voice and red hair plugs. He kept his arm just behind me as we walked through the chores, as if he thought I would turn and run at any moment. This was a very grimy place. Roaches patrolled, rats sidled, harshly dirty and often racist quotes lined the sheet rock of the stairs to the basement, always referring to someone who had once worked there; mostly referring to Harvey.

Sick Tom informed me of the long hours I would work and the shitty pay I would receive. Which was no big deal because I had lots of time and money meant nothing to me. It was seedy and vulgar and exactly where I wanted to work.

The isles were lined with old burgundy carpeting that felt like it was made from plastic. Here and there were organic patterns with feathered edges that looked like contour maps of mountains, a result of someone’s careless handling of a dark bottle. I made it a point to never step on them as I spent most of my days playing scoreless games inside of my head. They weren't exactly land mines but maybe puddles of poison or radioactivity.

The shelves high above the bottles were lined with statuettes of Jesus and Elvis. There were also model cars and Virgin Mary's and orange tabby cats and other odd arrangements all sharing the same desaturated color scheme and all featuring a secret plug that entranced an empty coated chamber. On the Jesus or Elvis ones, it was always the head that served as the cork. This was so old ladies could hide their booze, so no one would know, then when the coast was clear they would pull off Jesus' head and pour brandy out of his hollowed torso to blurrier the already blurry.

The smell upstairs was close to old socks forgotten inside a bag of nacho Doritos on a road trip. The smell in the basement was my grandfather's breath.

Strategically positioned throughout were big colorful half-shells of plastic or inflatable oversized novelties, shinny and goofy and out-dated, happy and splendid nonsense that had no business being there. This place was for the old and/or forgotten. The poor daydreamers you can see looking out of a window on their lunch brakes. They came here to buy forget-juice and angry-juice and sleepy-juice and change-anything-just-please-change-something-in-this-neverending-dissapopintment-no-one-planned-me-for-juice. These people were the walking dead and we sold them brains. At first I was scared of them, then kind of amused, then I felt sorry for them and then I became one of them. I even developed my own version of their slow speech. I hated what they hated and they came to love me. Some of them called me Slim.

2.

There was Santa Claus who religiously purchased a bottle of Beefeater gin. Every day. Always exact change, quiet and polite. He looked like a hard workingman; red cracked skin, stubby catcher's mitt hands. He looked like my father when he was talking to a stranger. If I had to guess I would say he probably had a 23-year-old daughter that he never spoke to anymore. His wife left. He had been a splicer for New York Telephone for 23 years, he looked at Internet porn and slowly his dreams had been getting stranger, more disturbing. A friend of his gave him the number for a "safe" prostitute and it sat in his top drawer. On it the word "hooker" was actually featured because there was no danger of any one else reading it. 

There was this other white guy who came in around 8:30 every Saturday night stinking of cheap cologne. He'd buy seven different liters of booze: whiskey, rum, gin, tequila, vodka, vodka, vodka. He was skinny and sunburned with thin glasses and rode a camouflage bicycle with a sealable metal bucket secured on the back with bungee cords to hold the booze. I always wanted to ask him what he needed that much liquor for so consistently but I was too afraid to listen. Harvey warned me to never ask them about their drinking, so I didn't. Probably a rotating swinger's parties where guys watch other guys with bigger dicks fuck their wives. Snapping pictures, Taping tapes, collecting debauchery. Snapping little mental pictures like in those old Cam Jansen books I was ashamed to read when we went to the library in grammar school, the one with the little girl detective with a photographic memory. He must be one of the big dicks because he's too poor looking to be one of the husbands.

Another all-star was Johnny-be-Good. To be fair it really was more of a double act. Johnny-be-Good's alter ego was Slow-Mo Jones. Johnny was a lot slower than Slow-Mo but I didn't name them. Johnny's left hand always hovered as if holding an invisible martini at a party; his eyes were only slits dividing bulbs, like Gizmo from Gremlins when he's tired. He wore an old slickster hat, brown with a black band and a pleather overcoat, also brown. Slow-Mo was dark and bald, tall with the frame of a former athlete who has been drinking and telling jokes for twenty years. He rocked teal sweatpants tucked into his mismatched sneakers. His tee shirt commemorated a New York Knicks championship that they didn't win. I'd say Johnny has killed at least four people despite being shy of five feet tall. Slow-Mo used to work in a high school as a security guard, but was dismissed for coercing a dim-witted chubby freshman to take a ride with him.

Big Mama drove a short school bus for a living. The tart-cart, if that’s one you used. She looked like a gorilla in almost every way. A mole hung off of her cheek like a marble attached with a dab of epoxy. She had the softest lightest most un-filtered voice I have ever heard. She never bought any booze. Her vice was the machine. The machine brought in more heads than the booze ever did, lines of the walking dead filling in circles with plastic half pencils. 50/50 box, strait for the week, please god give me a reason to keep pushing against this stone wall. Of all the lotto junkies Big Mama reigned supreme. She was there in the morning when I got there and she'd be there at night when I closed. She was allowed to run her own cards through the machine since before I was hired. Harvey with his cameras, giant fish eye mirrors and would often pat me down before I left at night, pretending to be kidding- he let her run her own Quickdraw tickets. They had some sort of unspoken arrangement.  She spent all of her free time breaking even in a game were the dedicated never win. If she ever did hit it big I'd guess she would probably open her own store with eight Quickdraw machines and an octopus to run her numbers for her. She was almost certainly dying of some terrible disease. 

Mrs. Robinson was my favorite. She had no business being on display at such a place. She was tan and not too thin, always wearing dress suits during the week and tight white tees during the weekends. Mid-thirties, dark brown hair tied back. Never wearing a bra, always pretending to not notice my stare as she twisted her hair. Her legs were longer than Johnny-be-Good's entire body.  I remember thinking that I would step over my dying grandmother just to be able to run my hand up the inside of either lengthy leg. She wore fuck-me secretary glasses and had toothpaste commercial teeth. She called me cutie sometimes and as a result would send me walking awkwardly, all sideways, to the bathroom or basement to expel the demon. She controlled every action of every cell of my body. When she was around I studied angles and reflections, I dropped pens and climbed ladders. I snapped pictures like Cam Jansen. I memorized her voice and used it later. My eyes studied Mrs. Robinson like a lesbian explores her lover's vagina. Except her name wasn't Mrs. Robinson, but Mrs. Goldberg, she was my boss’s wife.

3.

I'd like to tell you about the last day I ever worked at the County-Line Liquor store. It's the day I've come to reflect upon more than any other, even all these years later.

I was dusting the bottles because that was what you did when there was nothing to do. The bottles gradually got dustier going from bottom to top, all the way up to the fancy stuff that I didn't ever bother getting the ladder for. Behind a forgotten bottle of Crème de' Menthe the wall read, "LUCY GIVES GOOD HEAD".

The buzzer buzzed and a fat Spanish woman entered with her fat kids. I made my way behind the counter and asked her what she wanted already knowing exactly what it would be. She paid for her pint of light Bacardi with exact change and left. Then Harvey told me to come to his office. Inside, he barked me to the basement where I had forgotten to un-pack the J&B. Harvey didn't even look at me as he barked, he kept his bright grey eyes on the flickering colorless security monitors. He was watching two young black girls, probably under age, looking at a bottle of Alize'.

"Do you want me to ring them up first?"

Harvey wiped at a glob of mayonnaise on of his chin, missing it completely, and brushed crumbs off of his protruding fake-tanned belly. He was wearing his usual tropical un-buttoned button-down showing off his gold medallion and grey fur. After a moment of realization he looked at me like I had just called his mother a whore.

"Do what the fuck I say and don't make me fuckin' repeat myself. Go downstairs and finish two hours ago's job and I will handle them."

Harvey only rang up under-age female customers, sometimes as young as fourteen, no ID, never a tussle. As an afterthought his voice dropped and he said, "Do a count on all of the opened pints and half-pints and bring me the sheet." He scanned me with those vulture eyes. Someone had been stealing half-pints. Everyone thought it was me, but I knew it was Sal. Sal was lazy and loud and consistently told the same lame jokes. I grew to despise him and his proud parents who brought him lunch nearly every day. I said, "Okay" and exited the office.

On my way down the stairs: "HARVEY BEATS OFF UNDER HIS DESK TO JILL'S FAT TITS." Next to it was a surprisingly accurate illustration.

Another one: "SAL IS A FAT FUCKING FAGGOT!"

"CARL IS A SMELLY HOUSE NIGGER." The word "nigger" was in taller thin letters.

"SICK TOM HAS SHIT BREATH."

"LUCY HAS HERPES."

Everyone has their defining characteristics and they would eventually end up on the wall. I hadn't ever written anything and I was starting to feel left out. I un-caped my sharpie that I used for marking boxes and wrote the first thing that came to me.

"I WANT TO FUCK HARVEY'S WIFE IN HER ASS."

I wrote it with my left hand in an attempt to disguise my handwriting. I thought my quote fit in with the hundreds of others both in simplicity and vulgarity. Then I capped my marker and continued into the dank to where we kept the scotch and whiskey, which was towards the back. Along the way I could here the door buzzer buzz a few times, so I figured I had time to hit a jay a few times at the least while Harvey and Tom were stuck behind the counter. I had it inside a disposable film case; a left over roach from my voluntary walk to school. I lit it with a match while crouching behind a stack of nine cases on Dewar's, hiding just incase Sal showed up early and Harvey made it back to his monitors. The joint crackled as I lit it because it had dried out in my pocket during the school day. I took in a long and skillful pull letting it resonate the inside of my mouth and lungs, yellowing my teeth, cancering my pink, slowing what wasn't moving fast at all. These were my second favorite moments.

"Kid, get up here right now," Harvey snapped at me through the intercom "Stop what you're doing"

My head hit the boxes behind me as I spasmed. The stack swayed then settled. I put out the joint on the sole of my shoe, briefly shaking my hand around in the air in front of me trying to mix my weed with that smell of whiskey and death.

Upstairs I saw that Sick Tom was helping an old white lady pick out a Sangria. The old woman was praising him for his vast knowledge of Sangrias. Sick Tom looked over at me saying, "I know what you've been doing", without saying it. Tom always knew what I was up to. Everybody else was too selfish to notice but Tom always knew every little thing that I did. I could see it in his dull, unimpressed eyes.

Inside the office again, Harvey told me that I had two deliveries one was in the Ville and the other was to Santa Claus. This was a bit strange because I'd only delivered to him once before, when he had the flu, but even then he usually came in for his gin. He seemed too proud to have someone else bring him his whatever-juice.

Harvey wrote out the order and carefully counted me out some bills incase they needed change, which I knew they wouldn't. Outside was sharply cold and already getting dark. Crunchy gray snow outlined the parking lot, frosted over and sparkling under the tall lights. On the way to my car I saw Jill- the one with the fat tits that Harvey beats off to under his desk- locking her car. We pretended not to see each other the way people do when they've shared a one-time embarrassing sexual encounter. I hoisted my box of liquor into my piece of shit Jeep and started it, deciding to let it warm up, more so for me than the car. On the radio a young Latin girl was telling me how much she'd like me to eat her pussy set to a generic club beat. I changed the station and was pleased to find some Simon and Garfunkel, telling me the importance of keeping a secret. Good traveling music. I wagered I would die within a year if I didn't get past the Burger King before the song was over.

4.

I stopped in front of the small house in the Ville and tossed an old sweatshirt over the box of booze after removing the Beefeater, which I left under my seat in a brown paper bag. What I was doing was technically illegal but I covered it more afraid of getting jacked than the police. On my way to the door someone in the not so distant distance yelled, "you know where you are white-boy?" After knocking while waiting for the door to crack someone of a deeper pitch yelled, "Your not in Kansas anymore." Despite that being an outright cliché the voice itself was enough to scare me shitless.

I could smell barbecue in the air. Two little girls were riding down the cracked sidewalk on their pink bicycles. I could hear Big L breaking down slang terms for me via boom box.

The door opened and a pitbull's head exploded out of the opening but got caught in the gap between the door and it's frame. Foaming at the mouth, it's eyes fixed on mine. It's coat colored mediocre marbled brown and black. Four feet above it's head a boy of probably seventeen stood still looking at me blankly. He wore a wooly hat with a Vanilla Dutch Master sticking out of the fold. His name was Rashad and we used to play basketball together in the PAL league a few years ago. He was our best player but rarely came to practice and sometimes missed games. I was the point guard and he was the three and together we led the yellow team to a championship. He was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. I didn't try to pretend we were friends and just held up the box. He scanned me up and down and yanked the dog's head back, then doing something else to make it yelp. Rashad unchained the chain then let me in and I was immediately hit with the familiar but forgotten feeling of a warm household. Warm in terms of decoration and overall feel not temperature; in fact it was freezing inside. Another kid sat on the couch grilling me with glowing eyes. He had ripped me off on weed at the park the previous summer. His name was McKnight. The pit was nowhere in sight but I was still looking for it. The room’s tension had a zooming out effect on me for a second. From the back a sing-songy voice floated into our standoff. It had a little foreign twang that I couldn't place.

"Rashad, is that my spirits?"

"Yes Grandma."

"Send him back in here, Rashad."

Rashad and his friend just stared at me and I took it apron myself to trace the Grandmom's voice back myself. As I moved further back I could here a beautifully voiced black girl telling me she knows a thing or two about love. The tune was catchy and it calmed me down a bit. I ran the pointer finger of my left hand along the grainy rice-paper walls of the hallway, needing to know how it felt for some reason.

It seemed strange to me at the time, when I came to an emptied kitchen with a octagon table as it's center surrounded by five very old black women playing something pokerish. Piles of pennies and nickels and dimes lay in stacks in front of each. Grandma was the first to notice me and she stood and walked over to me smiling with her hands out. She reached up and grabbed my cheeks looking at the others, who also looked pleased to see me, except for one very skinny woman with thick glasses and a puff of white hair, who I noted had the smallest stack of coins. The skin on Grandma's hands felt like the pads of an old cat’s paw.

"I told you he was a handsome one." The others mostly agreed. Grandma was rubbing her hands together and her eyes disappeared into a crossfire of competing wrinkles as she grinned at the box in my hands. I traded the three bottles of Meyer's Rum for her exact change.

One of them said, "You got a sweetheart sugar?"

"Uh, no Ma'am not right now I don't."

They laughed at/with me and I could tell they didn't want me to leave, all except for thick glasses who seemed eager to get back to the game. As pleasant as they might have been I was in a rush to get back because it was Thursday. I was sure Mrs. Robinson would probably come by soon. She would take inventory of the previous day's delivery and it would be just her and me. Her telling me to lift boxes and me pretending that they were full of feathers. Two Thursdays earlier she'd told me I had nice knees while i was up the ladder. I'd never heard of a woman complementing a man's legs before but it sent me sideways to the bathroom regardless. Her calling me cutie, sometimes winking seamlessly. I'd never experience attraction like that again not even with the woman who would become my wife. Upon remembering it was inventory night I teleported back to my car and shot over to the North Pole.

5.

Santa's house was on a bend off of 110 and hidden behind a row of ridiculously tall pines. Cut off from the world. From the power lines and his bitter daughter and bitterer wife.  I was only able to find it because I'd been here once before and that time it had took me an hour to find it. Harvey docked had me the hour, of course. This place was Santa Claus' hidden world. Either his sanctuary or his prison- probably prison. I grabbed the bagged bottle from under my seat and followed the flat rock path around the trees to his door.

When I knocked the door creaked open revealing to me a wide strip of his leaving room in which everything was dark wood and polished, it reminded me of an old TV show set. I could see a black piano with a picture of a little girl playing a black piano above it. It looked like it was being preserved. It smelled like spoiled milk.

"Hello? I got your delivery here, Sir."

I took a step inside, leading with my head. I could hear a steady drip of something spattering. I took another step and saw the hand.

It was all I could see edging out of the entrance to the kitchen, laying deadly still. A lifeless stubby catchers mitt. I closed the door behind me and walked into the kitchen to put the Beefeater on the kitchen table. I could clearly see that Santa had shot himself in the head. Apparently he had come to this decision over breakfast. An over turned bowl of cereal had been flipped onto the ground and milk was flowing past the cavity that used to be the back of his head. Where it mixed, the blood and milk made choppy red spirals within the white, rather than the pink I would have expected. The composition of it was beautiful.

He was wearing a stained wife-beater and too-ironic Christmas tree boxer shorts.  His beard full-on white dipping into the mixture like an expensive paintbrush. His eyes were wide open and I noticed for the first time that they were green. Pale green, but still green. He had marshmallow clovers and a blue diamond stuck to his face. The room was absolutely silent as I took a seat at the table. I tried to capture this image of this man. I tried to Cam Jansen it, but just saying "click" wouldn't ensure I would be able recall it later. So there I sat trying to soak it up my eyes bouncing from one specific point to the next, wishing I could somehow see it all at once. I wanted to fill the room with some sort of expanding foam and then remove it in sectioned numbered divisions which I could then reassemble as a mold that I could fill with something else which I could then dry out and paint. I remember thinking that spending the rest of my life trying to get this scene just right would be a worthwhile aspiration.

Then I noticed the Luger at the other end of the room. I'd watched a special about the same Luger on the history channel the previous day. This particular model was one developed for the American government by its German creator. The government had rejected it and instead went with the far inferior Colt 45 as the standard issue. This one lay in the corner of the room ten feet away from his body. I figure it must have flown from his hand when it recoiled. I picked it up not worrying about fingerprints because I knew I would be taking it with me. It was perfectly designed for my hand as if that Nazi inventor had known I would eventually pick it up. I put it into my belt, in the back, like in the movies and made my way over to the sink, being careful not to step in anything that would leave a mark. The sink was splattered with watery red fluid and what appeared to be brain matter. I could see where the bullet entered the tiled wall directly behind where Santa's fallen chair once stood. I wondered how far into the wall it had gone. I stuck my pinky into the bullet hole but couldn't feel the end of it. Looking at the angles things began to change, I'd come to suspect someone had murdered Santa.

Then the phone rang, startling me. It was too loud, seeming to overwhelm the room. One of those really old phones without buttons and a real bell inside. I re-remembered that Mrs. Robinson was waiting for me and I grabbed the exact change Santa had left for me on the table. I took on more click at him, briefly pretending it was my dad to see if that would make me cry. It didn't.

Back in the car I stashed the Luger under my seat. Neil Young started telling me about how he shot his baby down by the river, but he's overcome by static before I can find out why. I headed back towards the store wrongly guessing that I would pass no more than 27 cars along the way and as a result giving myself some form of cancer.

6.

Inside the store, I had to excuse myself through the lottery worshipers, all the time avoiding eye contact with Jill. Once in the back I walked up the three wooden stairs into the office.  Harvey snatched his money, which he immediately verified, counting every penny. Then he told me his wife was waiting for me in the basement. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.  I brushed my hair around and tried to make myself look careless and sexy, briefly practicing looks that made me laugh. I walked down the stairs slow, careful not to creak them, half-hoping to see something that I shouldn't.

I WARMED UN-SKINNY VINNIE'S BEER AT A KEG AT THE COBRA

SO DID I

HARVEY GIVES LITTLE GIRLS CANDY SO HE CAN GRAB THIER LITTLE TITS

KARL FUCKED HARVEY'S WIFE

"Is that you cutie pie?"

I probably blushed. I probably offered a shy smile, rather then the sexy looks I had practiced.

"Yeah that's me." I said this coming slowly around the corner. She stood there with one leg up on the handcart lightly rolling it back and forth. Her skirt falling a little each time the cart rolled towards her. She caught me looking at her thigh.

"There you are, well look at you.  Come on over here."

"Are we going to dig out the wine today?"

"No, not today we're not."

I wanted to say something but found myself speechless. I felt my dick lengthen slightly. She was looking at me differently than usual. Harder. I was still standing several feet away from her, starting to perspire a little.

"Come over here."

I walked over and stood next to her then she said, "That's better." She was definitely smiling right at me. I must have looked embarrassed based on the way she was looking at me.

"So what are we doing today Mrs. Goldberg?"

"Don't call me that. Well, let's see, what would you like to do down here in this awful basement? Anything in particular come to mind? No?"

She was talking slow, stretching out parts of words. Biting her fat lower lip. It was like the beginning of one of my daydreams except she was making me desperately uncomfortable. I wasn't stepping up and smiling and flirting like in the fantasies.

"I don't know. Whatever you want to do, I guess."

"Well wasn't it you who wrote they wanted to fuck me in my ass?  Or should someone else be down here right now?"

I felt instant sweat. My brain vibrated and I felt shame like never before. I found myself looking back and forth not focusing on anything at all. I got choked up and was trying to steady myself. I said, "I didn't write that." I forced a false smile, feeling my cheeks hit the lower lids of my eyes. Blood rushed to the limits of my skin. My sweat felt cold.

"So then you don't want to fuck my ass?"

She took off her fuck-me secretary glasses, placing them on top of a stack of Johnny Walker red label.

"I-"

She took my hand and placed it on her left breast. The tight shirt shifted like a second skin and I could feel her sharp nipple against my palm. I was now so erect that she noticed. I was confused and tried to kiss her but she grabbed my chin saying, "no kissing." Then she said, "Well look at you", and grabbed it much too hard. She wrapped up her hair and tied it. I thought she was going to go down on me right there. She grabbed both of my hands and forced them all over her body, roughly. She said, "Fuck me hard, you dirty little boy.” and bent over a short stack of boxes. She pulled up her skirt and she wasn't wearing panties. My hands were shaking and I couldn't catch my breath, I was caught off guard and things were moving so fast. She said, "Fuck me.” this time louder, almost annoyed, like an order. I felt her ass; it was a bit chicken-skinned from the chilly basement like a basketball. She told me to slap it and I did. She told my to slap it harder, but I couldn’t. She reached back and grabbed my dick without looking and pulled me towards her. She spit on her other hand and rubbed it onto me. This was the craziest sensation I had ever felt, having never gotten that far before. I sucked in a sharp breath and came onto her skirt, almost immediately. She looked back at me over her shoulder and said, "You've got to be fucking kidding me." Before this day I'd never even heard her curse. I felt a warming shame swarm throughout my entire body. It hit my fingertips. She touched the material of her skirt and shot a look at me. She was shaking her head. I was sweating onto my sneakers. I hadn't felt anything like this since I was caught stealing candy from my father's friend's store when I was I child. She straightened herself out, replaced her glasses, and gave me one more disappointed glance on her way back up the stairs, muttering something like: "Where's Karl when I need him?" I quickly pulled up my pants and sat down on the ground, buckling my belt. I covered my mouth and stared at the wall for a very long time. I recalled meeting her children. I was dirty now and so was she and I didn't like it. I held my breath trying to make myself pass out, trying to escape. I counted the towering boxes to distract myself long enough to forget about breathing. Then Harvey from over the intercom, "Get your ass up here, right now! Now!"

I didn't know if he knew what I'd done, because he was always furious. My eyes opened wide and I looked at the ceiling, remembering the cameras. Somehow I'd forgotten about the cameras. The lights buzzed above my head and I thought I was going to black out even though I was breathing again. All of the tiny hairs on my body were raised and sensitive. Panic overcame me. I shot to my feet and made a break for the emergency door which I booted open setting off the alarm. Now I was in the back parking lot running for my life. Around the corner I bumped into the Sajo's deli crew, who were a smoking a dip. I muttered something and resumed my escape. One of them burst out laughing. I stepped in a deep pothole that was brimming with street-water and fell onto my chest, bouncing my chin off of the ground. Before I realized it I was back on my feet and almost to my Jeep. Sick Tom came out of the front glaring at me with no surprise in his face. He told me he knew exactly what I'd done with those dull average eyes. Inside the Jeep I frantically attempted to start the engine but I wasn't getting any power. The notion that my battery had died flooded my mind. I could see that I hadn't left my lights on. Sick Tom was approaching in a fast walk, carrying out Harvey's command, prepped to drag me inside so Harvey could duct tape me to a chair and cut me up, Margarita mix on my wounds; all the while making sure my eyes stayed fixed on the looping colorless tape of me awkwardly coming onto his wife's skirt.

Johnny-be-good and Slow-Mo were in the corner of Compare foods and the liquor store intently observing a garbage tornado.  Out of nowhere I remembered what the problem was. I'd flipped the emergency cut off switch that was underneath the dash. I almost never used it and I have no clue why I was compelled to that day. Sick Tom was now only a few feet from me and gaining speed. His face held that look that I'd come to attach to his ever-growing awareness of his own quiet omnipotence. He took off his watch; I assume he was anticipating a struggle. The engine came to life and I screamed out of the lot, hopping a divider and not once looking back. They never even knew my real name.

7.

Walking through the glass front door, my dog Freddie jumped at my face, eager to piss me off. I removed my shoes and filled the empty spot on the mat next to everyone else's shoes. I walked across our white carpet, following the plastic trail, and caught a look at myself in one of our many mirrored walls. My chin was bleeding, from my fall in the parking lot. I briskly walked back to my room and stashed the Luger up in my closet, behind a Reservoir Dogs poster that covered a hole which I'd punched in order to hide drugs and pornos. I slipped into the gray sweat pants and my Bruce Lee T-shirt. I washed my face and penis in the smaller bathroom and then tended to my chin, thinking about Santa's last breakfast. As I was staring at myself, bouncing from one eye to the other, my mother called out that dinner was ready in her shrilly, lingering voice. I was curious to find out what Maria, our maid, had made for us tonight. I was the last one to arrive at the table. My father was looking over his shoulder at the huge TV he had just bought for the living room to replace the older huge TV that was now in the den next to boxes of promotional material from some prescription drug company. Maria brought out the platters and I could smell Italian, which was always good. My mother was staring at herself inside of her little turquoise compact. Kristen was on her cell phone with her latest boy and I silently bet my balls that she wasn't going to eat anything. Mom looked up from herself and said, "So how was work today?” her eyelids fluttering as she attempted to pull a mascara glob from her lashes.

I looked around to try to figure out if she was talking to me and then said, "You know, same. We ran out of Rum Raisin, but besides that it was pretty quiet tonight. Just a regular Thur-"

Father screamed at Patrick Ewing for his lack of hustle. Mother informed Maria that she was required on Friday night, because the new Christian Slater was coming out and she was not going to miss it. Kristen said, "Christian Slater" out loud and then resumed talking in codes to her scumbag boyfriend.

Reaching for the garlic bread I offered, "I saw a dead man today and then I nutted on my bosses wife in the basement of a liquor store, which is where I've actually been working for the past six months." I did this all the time.

"Are you serious?" Mom's head darted up from the table setting and she shrilled, "What have I said about using these forks. The silver set with the beveled edges is for when we have guests. Maria, do you even listen to me when I speak to you?"

…

Monica, my wife, claps her hands once and says, "Do you listen to me when I speak?"

"What? Yes."

She says, "Birthday boy and his friends are leaving."

They all babble some nothings, heading for the door with hidden hands. Off to the Monorail with stuffed pockets, still pulling their stupid little jokes, randy with the possibilities. Off to the big city to grind up and snort the filth out of the gutters and lick the walls of the great ivory towers.

I say, "Have fun at the mall fellas'" as the door swings shut.