The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

  The position it puts me in is that, first, I don’t have any real ruse to get the kid in here, and, second, if the hall’s full of some police parade that just happens to be going by, it won’t matter. I’ll still be committed to grabbing the pizza boy by the back of the neck, pulling him into what the news will probably call my lair.

  But I can’t let him walk, either. He’ll have seen me. Have knocked on my door. Even if I’m just that prick who wanted company, a snapshot of something young to jack off to later, that dillhole who pretended to not have ordered that boring ass pie, still, I’ll be somebody to him.

  As soon as that happens, it’s like you’re already writing your own suicide letter.

  All it takes is some slow old detective to happen to talk to the wrong person at the wrong time, to file whatever they say into the same place as something three other people said two years ago that didn’t mean a damn thing either, and then, before you know, that greydick’s waking up at three in the morning, suddenly knows everything about you.

  “He’s the cheese pizza guy,” he’ll say to his wife, snapping his fingers in the dark. “Give me the phone, Gretchen.”

  No thanks.

  I like the name, though: Gretchen.

  She sounds like she’d be limber, maybe, but watch you in a kind of haunted way when you don’t think you know she can see you from the other room.

  Yeah.

  “Sir?” the kid on the end of the phone’s saying now. “Mr., um, Mr. Pease?”

  My heart stops beating. Beats backwards. Dies.

  I bark out a little sound, twist the phone away from my mouth, the shapes my lips are trying not to make.

  Kid Hoodie’s watching me from his sideways place under the table.

  I look away slowly, have both hands on the phone now to talk.

  “Do you want it delivered to the front desk again?” the kid says.

  “Front desk,” I repeat. The words are just sounds.

  “You have to leave the money with the girl, though. My guy can’t wait for them to page you again, okay?”

  I laugh a little. Through my eyes, it feels like.

  It hurts.

  I focus instead on the idea of everybody on the floor stacked against the wall in the lefthand apartment. On if I really had sharp thimbles like that, to push through eyes. How I’d probably have to fit garden hose gaskets over my thumbs, to keep the thimbles from filling with eye yolk.

  But don’t thimbles have holes, too, for gription?

  “Front desk,” I say again, almost calmer.

  “If you had an office . . . ” the kid leads off, like I’m supposed to finish.

  “Front desk,” I tell him.

  It’s starting to mean something.

  That I don’t. Have an office. That, I don’t know. That my desk, the one I work at, the one Jason Kid Hoodie Pease works at, that he used to work at when he worked, it’s not in an office with walls and a window or two. It’s just out in the middle of everything, with everybody else. In the soup with the rest of the suits.

  I want to hold the phone over to him, let him finish the order, but I don’t know what he’d say either. That glint in his eye.

  Yeah, trust him.

  “Okay then,” the kid at the pizza place says, doing something else at the same time it sounds like, “that’ll be, with tax, and including the newspaper discount, eleven-seventy-nine.”

  He closes by saying they’ve got a cheese coming out of the oven right now. That it’ll be about twenty minutes. And to leave the money with the girl.

  I nod thanks, find the red button, hold it down like it might all be about to get away from me.

  “No,” I say out loud, shaking my head to make it true. “No.”

  But then I thumb through Kid Hoodie’s contacts.

  Before I can talk myself out of it, I highlight WORK, swallow so that it’s loud in my ears. Call.

  The girl who answers halfway through the first ring, which is days and weeks and lifetimes before I’m ready, what she says in her chipper, ready-to-help voice, it’s the name of the newspaper.

  Then, “Hello? Hello?”

  I shake my head no, nothing.

  Please.

  When I choke the Vegetable Ghost with the charger cord of the phone the next morning, it’s nothing personal. It’s like I heard a guy on television explain masturbation once: it’s mowing the lawn, pretty much. Not what you really want to do, and your shoes are green and nasty afterwards, but still, here you are. Somebody had to do it, right?

  Because I know now that he might be my one drink of water in the desert, I spend most of the morning with my knee in his back, between his shoulder blades, the charger cord looped around my hands, making the piano wire cuts bleed. In the good way.

  The Vegetable Ghost cries and pisses and shits and throws up and runs red from the nose and from the eyes, but I shake him back to me each time, for another round.

  It’s bullshit, though.

  It’s not at all the same as having somebody knock on your door, a hesitant look in their eyes, like maybe they’re in the wrong place.

  They are.

  And the thing is, the Vegetable Ghost knew it, had known it for the last two weeks already.

  Me doing this to him, it’s just what he’s been expecting.

  It’s so fake, so forced, that I almost even let him go, lesson learned, sorry, bub, no hard feelings, ha, but then when he wakes up the next time he’s not all there anymore.

  As an experiment, I take some of the copper tubing from the dishwasher (who’s going to use it anymore, right?), run it up the Vegetable Ghost’s nose until it mushes into brain, and then—it’s CPR—I blow gently, trying to give him the oxygen I’d evidently cut off for ten or twenty seconds too long.

  It doesn’t work, even when I breathe in deep, blow into his head with everything I have. All that happens is that his tear ducts burble their sad little burbles.

  This isn’t usually how it goes, no.

  I mean, sure, sometimes they’ll konk before you’re all-the-way done with them, but that’s live and learn. Next time you’ll know not to push so far so fast.

  I shrug, tap the end of the copper straw, and stand away from the Vegetable Ghost.

  For a long time I try to think of what to write on the list, finally just come up with the usual produce, but then laugh.

  Who’s going to take the list today?

  It’s funny.

  I turn to see if the Vegetable Ghost gets it, but there’s pinkish grey bubbling up from his straw.

  The look on his face, though, it’s so serene.

  “You’re welcome,” I tell him, and squat down, swirl the straw around some then cap the end with my index finger, pop it out all at once, turning it upside down fast.

  What I was thinking about was blowing it all in some meaningful pattern on the wallpaper. Some intentional, meaningless splatter for the next Ghost to study.

  But I don’t.

  The brain plops and gulps out the bottom of the straw. Twelve years of math and science and english and cheerleader fantasies, drip-dripping away.

  I step back so it won’t get on the toe of my shoe. But it doesn’t really matter either.

  The Dead Vegetable, his left leg jerks a bit, rattles around like he’s trying to shake one last thing from his pants leg, and then he’s still.

  I go through the barrel he brought, shelf all the produce, don’t touch the hackysack at the bottom that I’m sure I wouldn’t have asked for, that has to be some sort of set-up, then get the rod from the front closet, sit the Vegetable Ghost up onto the barrel.

  “Any last words?” I say to him.

  My hand’s kind of pushing through a hole in his back now, around the warm column of his spine, my fingers as far into his mouth as I can get them, from the back.

  It doesn’t work as well as I thought. It’s just more bullshit.

  I shake my head, tell him it’s not his fault, and plant the butt of another closet rod just below
his bellybutton, start pushing him down into the barrel ass-first.

  It’s hard because usually I grind them down in my kitchen first.

  It’s hard because I never put them in the barrels at all.

  But today is a new day.

  I pretend the barrel’s the end of that great wet-dry vac in the sky, just doing what it does.

  When he’s in enough I tamp the lid down the plastic wrap around the edges. Because who knows when his replacement’ll come to dolly him away.

  To show I’m not such a bad guy, I go ahead and tip the barrel up onto the dolly, angle it towards the front door.

  On the white board, too, as a joke nobody’s supposed to get but me, I write thinmints real small down in the corner, then smile my way back next door.

  The next morning is better. Maybe the Vegetable Ghost was good for me after all.

  The sun when it comes is a blessing, is just what I need.

  Minutes after it’s gone, the oil I’ve got on is still warm from it.

  Kid Hoodie doesn’t say anything, and I just let him look all he wants. Soak me in like I’ve been soaking in the light.

  This time when the phone rings its five full times, I don’t even open my eyes.

  Just another thing. Something I can whir dead in any disposal I choose. My—yeah. It’s my copper straw, the one connecting me to the outside world.

  I’ve seen how that can work, though. How it can not work.

  That was probably even the lesson I was teaching myself, without knowing it.

  My copper tube, Kid Hoodie’s phone, the only one I’ve ever kept—none of the others ever played the Jack Tripper song, so it’s not really my fault—it’s the thing that can either save me or kill me. And most likely the second of those. Exhibit number one: a certain pizza operator having that phone number already in his system.

  But that was a blessing too, of sorts.

  If it hadn’t been in the system, then I would have had to give him this address, or try to make one up.

  And I would have never known about the newspaper.

  Kid Hoodie wasn’t recording us playing Trouble to use it to keep himself alive. He was recording us playing Trouble as part of a story.

  And yeah, it could be a story on any of a hundred things: the short life and rough times of the workaday undercover agent; what it’s like to be part of this idiot wave of youth; how to be a thug, the underbelly of the city, what happens when the lights go off, and on and on. He might have even been using his pen and notebook to investigate Singer. And then he either somehow really made it to me, or Singer got wise to him, told him he liked him, yeah, but first, there’s this one guy he needed to see, see?

  Except I know it wasn’t any of that.

  He was writing about me.

  And what this means. What this has to mean.

  Every time I think about it I have to make a fist from my hand, hold it sideways, breathe slow through it.

  He was writing about me.

  I’ve become enough of what people talk about on the streets that it’s percolated all the way up to the newspaper. Or the step before the newspaper anyway. The step where this young reporter trades it all in for an ounce of proof. Because even an ounce, a whisper, a recording of a voice making small talk over a board game, it’ll be enough.

  What that says is that—what that says is that what they’re saying about me, that there’s this boogeyman living on the fortieth floor of some skyscraper, eating anybody who comes to his door (never), that the legend’s big enough and heavy enough and wild enough that just a drop of truth is enough to make the whole thing true. Like if you believe in angels, then find this white feather in the alley, then those angels are all real now. Or devils, so that you comb up goat hair from your grass one morning, save it in a baggie when nobody’s looking.

  Kid Hoodie was here for me.

  It wasn’t murder, what I did to him. It was self-defense.

  And way too fast for someone like him.

  And to think I ate cereal with him. Trusted him to watch for robot arms in the hall while I slept, sure that the place was safe for the night.

  I should have killed him twice. Three times. Fifty.

  And it’s not over yet either. Won’t be until Dashboard Mary’s here too. Because you don’t go into a thing like this alone. Your girlfriend, you tell her at least.

  Just keep the car right around the building somewhere, yeah. And if I’m not back in twenty minutes, then call, I’ll say I’ve got to—yeah, a family thing, like last time. That’ll work. He won’t be able to hear. I know, shit yeah. You’re a doll. I love you. I love you love you love you thank you I’ll be right back promise promise okay one more no no don’t I’ve got to it’s okay I’ll be I love you bye.

  He should have never walked away from that car.

  He should have never looked up into the sky, along the side of some tall building, and thought I might be up there.

  I am.

  As far as Riley knows, this is what happened, what’s happening: the day she walked into my apartment, her dad really was in the other room. Deal was, he was hiding. The bad guys all knew his name somehow. His good friend, me, an ex-cop myself, was giving him a place to crash. Not even his wife could know. It was better that way. Safer.

  Except then, when Riley was crossing the linoleum I had unrolled across the dining room back then, one of the bad guys had somehow spidered into the apartment.

  Because he knew better than to try to go into the living room, face her dad and his detective gun that never missed, he crept up behind her, did what he did to the back of her head, and then, when I was suddenly there trying to protect her, to cover her little body with my own, the bad guy did the same blurry thing to me. Only I was older, so died right there.

  It was all pretty heroic.

  Girls like that kind of stuff.

  After that, her dad ran in to see what all the sound was about and his world kind of ended: there was his little girl on the floor, bleeding. His best friend in the world dead beside her. A skinny shadow of a bad guy flitting out of the room, gibbering, maybe even wearing a jester hat.

  Good old Detective Dad did the only thing he could. He hammered boards over all the doors and windows. And the whole time he was doing that, he could hear the bad guys on the other side of the doors and windows, hammering their own boards on, and then iron bars on top of that, and then cement after that.

  If they couldn’t kill me (the dad), then they could bury me.

  The coward’s way, yeah.

  But I didn’t make detective at thirty-four for nothing.

  Before they could know what was happening, I tunneled next door, tunneled to every apartment on this floor, and came back with an armful of food each trip. And I could have stayed gone any one of those times, but, really, I couldn’t: you were here, Riley. I could never leave you.

  So, by the time the bad guys figured out what I was doing and boarded and barred and cemented over the second apartment, I had enough food for a few years, if we rationed it, if we ate just enough to keep us alive. But there could be no light. We’d have to move like shadows, and always whisper, and stay very very still all the time. Our one break, too, was the water. The bad guys could turn it off, sure, thirst us out, dry us up, but I think they know that I could just break into the wall if I wanted, crack open a pipe. Sure, it’d make a mess, but when whoever’s ceiling got wet called the super, then the jig would be up.

  What’s with this cement, Dan? You remember the fourth floor having a bomb shelter? Maybe we better call the city, see about load bearing fire hazard blah blah nothing.

  So what we do in this measured truce, this waiting time, is live like mice. Like father and daughter mice, the father scurrying in to the second apartment as often as he can to feed the daughter, but trying hard to maintain a normal profile next door too, in the lighted apartment. Watching television, doing dishes for one, vacuuming at all hours. In case they’ve drilled a camera in like they probably have,
to keep an eye on me.

  You can’t be too careful, I mean.

  And as for that friend who traded it all in to protect this dad, who died trying to save the daughter, Billy was his name, and he’s memorialized now in three rolls of plastic in the closet, standing up. Billy who gave his life for you.

  And as for me, Riley, I could have left any day, but I never will.

  This is a dream, really.

  Now I don’t have to worry about you sneaking out at night, I don’t have to worry about boys knocking on the door. I don’t have to worry about you leaving lights on or dropping glasses in the kitchen or getting braces or ever saying you hate me or anything. I can just straighten your hair down along the bed and whisper into your ear about how it’s all going to be all right. How it’s all going to be even more all right. Soon they’ll forget about me, and the concrete around the apartments will crack open like an egg, release us out into the sunlit world like two butterflies.

  Until then, though, we’re caterpillars, eating whatever mash I can make from our limited supplies. Giving you most of it, the best of it.

  This is what daddies do, dear.

  This is the way we are.

  The only hard part, really, is remembering to duck into the detective shield each time I cross over into the righthand apartment. Because she can see it glinting around my neck, I think.

  It makes her eyes shiny and happy, sometimes even makes the outside fingers of her right hand tremble and reach.

  What I do then is I take her hand in mine, guide it to the shield. Hold it there until she falls asleep again.

  She can’t see my eyes, I’m pretty sure.

  That’s probably for the best.

  Because I’m nobody’s puppet, I clean the bloody charger cord with five squares of toilet paper and get the cell phone out of the microwave.

  It’s already blinking about a new voice mail before I even give it the juice, but I don’t want it stuttering halfway through, maybe erasing something vital.

  Maybe Mary’s calling to thank me for the pizza. If she’s the girl at the front desk of the newspaper offices. But she’d have had to pay for it too. Somebody would have.