“…I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.”
--From “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” by W.B. Yeats
Bulldog can wait. The girl’s face plays in the theater of my mind. One minute, she’s pretty—angry and scared, sure. But pretty. Then next it’s a mess. I did it to her. Did it matter that she had a gun on me? Didn’t I start all this when I walked into Luís Colón’s backroom?
My gut reaction had been to blame Bulldog, but that’s just so much bullshit. I started on this path a long time ago but only now do I realize it.
I spent some time in
The last thing I had wanted to do after leaving the blue brotherhood was, well, anything requiring significant thought or responsibility. Nothing had any value anymore—such was my disillusionment. I suppose you could call it my blue period. At any rate, I still liked to eat, so I got a job bouncing at a roadhouse. Alas, no Patrick Swayze. In fact, the roadhouse could more accurately be described as house along a road that served beer. It could further be described as a shithole, if one was likely to observe such details. At the time, I wasn’t. To supplement the meager wage, they let me sleep in the back room and eat all the pickled eggs I wanted. Which wasn’t many.
So, tired, cramped and hungry, I broke up a fight one night. Three rednecks had pissed off a white college boy and his black girlfriend, and the college boy had grown beer muscles. To the college kid’s surprise, his McDojo karate classes proved inefficient. Two of the rednecks were working him over while the third had his hand up the girlfriend’s skirt.
Like I said, I was already in bad mood. Shithole though it was, I didn’t want this in my bar. It pissed me off on a couple of levels. I saw a sort of red mist for a while. When I came out of it, two rednecks lay unconscious and the third cried in the corner, nursing his broken hand. Though a satisfying fit of pique, I was fired on the spot. Luckily, the college boy turned out to have a little more to him than just daddy’s credit card. He got me a job as a bodyguard at his dad’s firm. Hilarity, and violence, ensued.
During this time a friend of mine went off the grid, and I went looking for him. Tommy liked to bet on football games. But, as he would always tell me, he had it under control. Just football games. The pros. Well, an occasional college game. Ok, and hockey games. And horses. Also, baseball. And whether or not you could eat a loaf of white bread in ten minutes. So, pretty much anything that had a questionable outcome.
I was justifiably worried, then, when his sister contacted me and told me he had tried to borrow a lot of money from her before dropping off the face of the earth. Guilt lines creased Natalie’s forehead when she told me; she hadn’t had the money, she had said, and besides, she was sick of Tommy bleeding her dry. I comforted Natalie with the only way I knew how to relate to women back then. After I got dressed, she gave me the address to a place where Tommy sometimes stayed with his baby’s momma.
Bookies love a loser, as long as the loser pays up. So, they will cut said loser some slack before getting rough. Once the well runs dry, though, they won’t hesitate to make an example of a deadbeat.
The snow was really coming down that day, but it didn’t do much to hide the grime outside the apartment building. Boarded up shops and circling refuse didn’t help. As I stepped out of my borrowed car, a mean-eyed Latino in a Ford Mustang nearly side-swiped me as he peeled out in the slush. His passenger held his head in his hands. Lover’s quarrel? I didn’t look after them long. The snow mixed with rain and I hate getting wet. I sought shelter.
Cheap apartment buildings universally smell like piss and mildew. When you get used to it, you don’t mind. Besides, the
The staircase occupied the center of the building. It was wide and wound around in a tight square, with a landing at each half-floor. It was littered with beer cans and shoes. The steps were old and too close or short or something—I had to walk up them consciously and wonder when stairs had been universalized.
Tommy lived in
The door to #3 stood slightly ajar, because the wall it was bolted to had been torn away. The air smelled coppery. I had been in enough fights to know why. Hand shaking, I pushed the door open.
Tommy lay in a pool of his own blood. Someone had just wadded him up and tossed him away. He lay in a heap, slumped the wrong way against bones and tendons. His face crushed, I couldn’t really tell it was him. But I knew. He was as beaten as a man could be. I could hardly stand to look at him.
Standing over him was his little girl.
As it turned out, Tommy was into a lot more than making bad bets. Tommy did some horse as well as bet on them. The monkey on his back was the size of silverback ape, and that had lead him to make some pretty bad choices, choices where people got hurt, robbed and scared. Apparently, somebody had had enough.
I don’t think that mattered to his little girl. She just stood there with his blood all over her dress, dried tears on her face. Catatonic, she let me drag her into the kitchen. I dialed 911. I stayed until I head the sirens, searching the place for a clue as to who had done this. My mind kept going back to the Mustang.
The passenger had been holding his head. He had blood on his hands.
I had been just too late.
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This is really the first time another writer has intersected with my own work. I was fascinated by how you fit Spears on the scene so organically. Reminds me of my favorite Marvel Team-ups.
ReplyDeleteThank you, A.G.. I also appreciate you letting me use such a powerful (and previously most disturbing) story to build around the crossover.
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