Motive ; One Last Day ; Going Viral

by Dustin Stevens

  Bastard really needs to learn how to take a punch.

  “And what happened to your arm?” Mom asks, folding her arms across herself. Despite the quilted bathrobe and slippers she is wearing, she appears to be freezing, swaying from one foot to the other.

  A stab of panic hits me as I glance down at the bandage plainly obvious on my arm. Even in the pale moonlight, the white gauze stands out against my dark clothes, drawing attention directly to it.

  “Um,” I begin, trying to formulate some sort of response through the intense hangover encapsulating my senses.

  “It looks bad,” she says, stepping forward and making her way down the steps.

  “No, it’s fine!” I snap, the words spilling out of me much sharper and louder than intended. “I, uh, just had an accident earlier, that’s why we’re so late. Quasi took me to the emergency room to get it looked at.”

  I can see the look of disbelief on her face, though she comes no closer down the stairs. A frown accentuates the age lines on her face as she looks at me, all exhaustion having receded.

  “Your second trip to the emergency room this spring already?” she asks. “What are you two boys up to?”

  For a moment, I fight to grasp what she is referring to before latching onto the stitches in my forehead six weeks ago. There is no way she is going to buy another work accident.

  “Oh, nothing,” I say. “We were down by the river and I was trying to show off for some girls. I fell and hit it pretty hard.”

  Even I know it sounds thin at best, but in my state, it is the best I can do. Any further attempt to explain myself will only get me caught in a web of details that I know won’t end well.

  The look on her face tells me she is seeing right through it, though for whatever reason she doesn’t press the matter.

  Most likely, she just doesn’t want to know.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, hugging herself even tighter as she looks at me.

  A small sigh passes from me, a momentary hope that maybe I have pulled it off.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I say, nodding just a tiny bit.

  She stands and stares at me before stepping to the side.

  “Well, come in out of the cold already. You must be exhausted.”

  A string of obscenities flow through my mind as I cast one last glance down the street. Quasi’s taillights are long since gone, though I will damned sure be calling him on this little stunt tomorrow. The bottoms of my boots scrape against the steps as I trudge upward, moving very slow, careful not to wobble from side to side.

  “Sorry I woke you,” I mumble, making it to the top, just a few short feet away from the door.

  There, the unthinkable happens.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” she replies, reaching towards my left arm and peeling back the sleeve of my t-shirt before my alcohol addled body can stop her.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Friday, January 21st, 2015

  5:58 pm

  The inhalation is so sharp that it sounds like a wheeze. It isn’t loud, but it is distinct enough to stop me mid-sentence. There I wait, knowing another question is coming.

  I would be surprised if it didn’t.

  “So, she saw?” Pearson asks, a bit of something in her tone that gives me the impression she is cringing, even if I can’t see her.

  “She did,” I say quietly, my gaze drifting down to the table between us.

  Despite what most pundits would like to believe, there is very little from the last few years that I am truly ashamed of. Many things didn’t play out the way I intended them to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are a source of embarrassment for me.

  That night, though, is.

  “How much?” Pearson asks.

  My eyes drift shut, the corners of them pulling tight in a mild wince.

  “Everything you just saw,” I reply, “from the elbow up.”

  Once more she cringes, though doesn’t offer any follow up. I pause a moment to see if she will before lobbing a question of my own.

  “Do you have any tattoos?”

  There is no response, no movement of any kind for a moment, not until the plain fingernails appear alongside the computer screen and nudge it to the side. She stares at me in silence, the look on her face either telling me she doesn’t appreciate my asking the question or the insinuation that she might be covered in ink as well.

  Either way, she does not appear pleased.

  “Just asking,” I say, holding up my hands in a sign of appeasement. “Most people with tattoos will tell you that one is never enough. It is fun and novel and all that stuff for awhile, but eventually there comes an itch for another one.”

  “So that’s what that was?” she asks, dipping her forehead to motion to my arms. “Scratching an itch?”

  This is the reason I set up today the way I did.

  Over the last couple of years, since I accepted my fate and vowed not to fight it, I have given scores of interviews. Each time, the person on the other end wants to know about the murder, about the details that led to that night.

  About Chaz D.

  What all of them have failed to realize is that Chaz D was not something that sprung from the womb fully formed. Once upon a time, he was a pudgy, nerdy, fast food manager. It took an unholy alliance of bad luck, greed, timing, and a host of other things to lead to the end product.

  In making such an assumption, the misstep so many of them made was the import of things such as tattoos.

  “Yes and no,” I say, sliding an inch lower so the back of my head can rest against the top of the chair behind me. “Part of it was that for sure. After that first tribal band, I needed something on the other shoulder. Once I had that, I wondered what something with color would look like.”

  She nods a tiny bit, following the logic.

  “And after that, it became a race to see how fast you could use up all of the white space?”

  The right corner of my mouth shoots straight up at the comment, a natural reaction to an unexpected statement.

  “Possibly, though I would never put it in those terms.”

  Before I can expound further, the door into the room opens. A black man standing my height with a thick neck and forearms enters, the overhead light shining off his light brown skin.

  “How much longer are you guys going to be?”

  The question is directed right at the center of the table, his gaze locking onto neither one of us. His voice is deep, though lacking any interest whatsoever.

  Pearson looks from him to me and back again, her hair shifting in front of and back behind her shoulders.

  “I think a couple more hours anyway, right?”

  “Anyway,” I agree, knowing we’ve still got quite a bit of story left to go.

  He nods, retreating from the room without saying another word. Once he is gone and the sound of the door shutting fades away, Pearson turns back to me, confusion on her face.

  “His name is Bo Marshall,” I say. “I know he’s a little jarring at first, but that’s just his nature. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  The first time I met Marshall was six months before when he transferred over from the general population. Given his demeanor and seeming disdain, I spent the first month he was here convinced he had made the switch just to terrify me.

  After a while though, it became apparent that was simply how he operated. No more, no less.

  “I see,” Pearson replies, clearly not entirely buying the explanation.

  With a flick of my gaze to the clock, I say, “It’s six, he was coming to see if they should bring us dinner.”

  The only thing The Shawshank Redemption had right about prison life is that it is routine and more routine. After three years in this place, my body can tell me at any given time how long until the next meal.

  “So what terms would you put it in?” Pearson asks, drawing a questioning look from me. Again she nods to my arms and says, “If not a race to fill the blank canvas, then what?”<
br />
  Trying to condense everything that happened in the spring of 2012 into a simple response is no easy feat, my mind working for a moment to determine the correct way of putting it. What I say next could go a long way in helping her understand the mindset not just of myself, but everyone involved.

  “Excess,” I say. “In a way, my arms - the white space as you called them - are a perfect metaphor for how we approached life. After we had that first smoke, that first drink, that first sexual encounter, we became voracious.”

  She nods, though I’m not entirely convinced she understands exactly what I’m trying to tell her.

  “Quantity, not quality,” I explain. “It was like we had been pent up for years, not experiencing everything life had to offer. Once we did, we couldn’t get enough of it.”

  I can see she is beginning to grasp what I’m saying, realization settling across her face. She remains that way a moment before looking up at me, arching an eyebrow.

  “We?”

  “Absolutely,” I reply without a moment’s hesitation. “Me, Quasi, Pauley, Rae, all of the people who started coming by the parlor. Everybody.”

  Whatever understanding was in place a moment before evaporates, her face squinting into incomprehension. She leans back in her chair and runs both hands over her face, shaking her head just a bit.

  “I have to use the restroom,” she says. “Get up, stretch my legs.”

  Just like with Brantley earlier, is it a blatant cast-aside, one she is simply too polite to utter aloud.

  “I don’t mean we were all doing the same exact physical activities,” I say, pushing straight ahead.

  It is imperative she gets this before stepping away. After this, my dinner will arrive and she can take a few moments, allowing the information to marinate in her mind.

  Not until then, though.

  “You’ve seen the videos. I was the only one doing most of the crazy stunts seen on there.”

  “So then how can you say everybody was thirsty for this life experience they’d never known?” she challenges, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. “Sounds to me like most of these people had quite a head start on you in that department.”

  “Fame,” I say, skipping the full back story and hitting her straight with the crux of it. “It wasn’t booze or sex or certainly not tattoos we were enamored with, it was fame.”

  Her features remain even as she looks at me, saying nothing.

  “Think about it,” I say. “I never wanted all of these tattoos, didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of tequila. What I couldn’t get enough of was that external validation from the world. For the first time in our lives, we were important, we mattered.”

  The line sounds a bit rehearsed, and a little over the top for sure, but it is the only way I can fully get her to understand everything that was happening at that point in time.

  “Sure,” I say, “I hated like hell that my mother saw my arms that night. Seeing the way her eyes filled with tears, the way she was deliberately gone the next day when I got up to head to work, those things crushed me. But, at that point, it didn’t matter to me the way it should, and you know why?”

  I pause, pretending to wait for a response I know isn’t coming.

  “Because within twenty-four hours of posting that Cinco de Mayo video, over one hundred twenty thousand people had watched it. People we had never met, would never know, were sitting down at their computers all over the world to see what we were up to.

  “Can you put yourself in our shoes? Imagine what that was doing to us?”

  The door opens before another word can be passed between us. Through it walks Marshall, two Styrofoam containers stacked atop one another in his hands. From his wrists swings a white plastic sack, the red outlines of Coke cans pressed against the side.

  We sit in silence as he walks in and places the food on the table, removing his keys from his hip. Without saying a word, he unclasps one half of the cuffs from my wrist and returns it to the bar, providing me the precious freedom to stand I’ve been lacking most of the day.

  “I’ll be back in a half hour to collect the garbage,” he says, turning on a heel and heading towards the door.

  “Actually, can you show me to a restroom?” Pearson asks, standing to follow him out.

  “Certainly,” Marshall manages, stopping his exit and standing to the side of the door.

  “Go ahead and eat without me,” Pearson says, her knees letting out a series of low pops as she walks forward.

  “You don’t want anything?” I ask, hoping it’ll be a repeat of her refusal at lunch, already smelling the beef stroganoff through the containers sitting beside me.

  “Go ahead,” Pearson responds as she exits. “I’ve definitely lost my appetite.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

  7:34 pm

  I can hear the television playing on the other side of the door. Normally, I would walk in without so much as a pause, but given how things stand, I decide to knock instead.

  The sound of my fist connecting with the wood echoes through the basement as the volume on the television disappears. A moment later the door opens, Quasi standing before me in a pair of sweatpants, his hair disheveled. Most of the puffiness is gone from his eye, though some faint green and yellow bruising remains.

  Aside from that, he appears to be back to the guy I’ve known all my life, far removed from the one playing director in a vest.

  “Hey,” I say, my voice and my tone both neutral.

  On the inside, I am so excited I am practically bursting from my skin, though I can’t yet show it. I’m not sure how receptive he is going to be to seeing me, not entirely certain how angry I should be about him waking my mother the other night.

  “Hey,” he responds, holding the door in one hand, the jamb in the other, his bulk blocking the opening.

  “Can I come in?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says, looking at me but making no attempt to move, “but tell that asshole Chaz D to stay outside. I’m not ready to see him just yet.”

  My eyes tighten just a bit at the comment, though I don’t lash out in any way.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I reply. “He’s still pretty pissed at you as well.”

  Still he lingers in the doorway a moment before cracking half a smile. “Good.”

  At that, he pushes himself away from the door and walks across the room, his feet shuffling over the floor. Stepping inside after him, I shove the door closed and head for my end of the couch, a muted episode of Criminal Minds on the television.

  “I thought about honking when I drove away but that might have been a bit much,” he says, settling into his corner and pulling a knit blanket across his legs.

  The move would have for sure angered me to no end, though I don’t bother pointing it out.

  “Would have probably made my head explode,” I say instead, glancing over and offering a smirk. “I was hurting for two days over that one.”

  Quasi matches the smirk, his head rolling back and forth an inch.

  “I bet. More than once I wanted to stop you, but wasn’t about to get anywhere near another haymaker.”

  I had hoped for a moment we were just settling back into our roles without having to go into any sort of formal apology, though now that it’s in the open, there doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid it.

  “Yeah,” I start, “about that...”

  “We’re good,” Quasi says, cutting me off before I have a chance to get any further.

  His timing is fortunate, as I’m not sure what I would have said moving forward. It has been three days now and I still haven’t figured out how to speak to my mother either.

  “Have you seen?” I ask, traces of excitement present in my voice no matter how much I hope to hide them.

  Since the moment the video first went live, I have been obsessively checking numbers every ten minutes. I even carried my phone to work with me and burned through most of my
data plan, refreshing the screen as much as I could.

  After months of this, I’ve learned to discount the comment section, most of it packed with haters making disparaging remarks about how they could be doing better. Of course, they’re not, choosing to just lob grenades from afar, so there’s no need to engage them or put any worth in their presence.

  The pure stats, though, are difficult to argue with. A view means someone was watching our work, whether they intended to or not. A like means they enjoyed it.

  No room for interpretation, just simple indicators.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen,” he says, watching the characters move about in silence on the screen.

  After a few moments, he looks my way, the slightest inkling of a smile on his face. Just like that, it is gone though, his features returning to solemn.

  “Sorry about setting you up with your mom the other night.”

  I can tell there is more he wants to add - it was a shitty thing to do - but I wave him off.

  “I probably would have done the same in your position.”

  “How’d it go?” he asks.

  My eyes bulge a bit as I fill both cheeks with air, letting them puff up before blowing it out.

  “Not good.”

  “The drinking or the late hour?”

  “Actually,” I say, nodding down towards my arm, “she saw.”

  He stares at me a moment before rocking forward and resting his elbows on his knees. His fingers furrow through the thick hair above either ear, a long groan rolling from him.

  “Oh man,” he says, elongating both words. “I am sorry. Damn.”

  “Don’t be,” I reply. “With this newest one, it’s not like I could hide it forever.”

  I’m still plenty pissed about the way he hung me out to dry, but after four days now, logic has started to sink in. There is no way I can keep that much skin covered forever, no chance she wasn’t going to eventually see it anyway.

  “She blow up?”

  “Worse,” I say, shaking my head. “Not a word. Straight to tears, been avoiding me ever since.”

  “That sucks,” Quasi says, placing his palms on his knees and pushing himself to a standing position.