Not for the first time, I thought about all that had happened in this place. The place where Nif and I first had sex. Where we’d fallen in love. I knew every square inch of this building, and I could run the entire restaurant by myself if I had to. (And I did have to from time to time. That was the price of having teenagers as employees.) This was the only job I’d ever had.
Like I said, it had been six years, full-time for almost five. Though I’ve never sat down and done the math, I’m pretty sure I spent more time in this restaurant than in any other building in my life, including any homes I’d had. In many ways, this stupid place was more my home than anywhere else in the world.
The kitchen was trashed, and the freezer hung open, revealing people had actually stolen 250 pounds of raw chicken. Pieces of one of my Rubik’s Cubes lay scattered across the floor. The manager’s office door had been kicked off its hinges, and I fought the temptation to check if the safe was broken open, too. The floor was covered in oil and flour, and the place stunk like rotting buttermilk, grease, and mayonnaise.
To my relief, what I came for still remained in the kitchen, hanging with the other utensils over the sink. I grabbed the cheap flashlight. It was for checking the grease trap at closing time, though it rarely got done. I switched it on—dim, but it worked. I tossed it in the bag and turned to leave.
Four people blocked the exit.
I recognized all four of them. They were skinhead punks, roller derby regulars, guys I had seen more than once at parties, though none of them I would consider friends. In any group of people, there were sub-cliques and inner circles. The Tucson punk scene was no different. Even within the skinheads, there were several distinct groups. Most were cool guys who weren’t the mouth-frothing, neo-Nazi racists people made them out to be. In fact, most of the skinheads I knew hated the racist connotations associated with the skin subculture.
These four, however, all belonged to the mouth-frothing contingent, which was why I didn’t know them that well. They made me nervous during the best of times. These guys were the type who hung out in the backyard at parties, drinking beer, picking fights, smoking weed, and talking about how they’d one day take over the world when they barely knew how to take care of themselves.
One was enormously fat, and he wore a white T-shirt with red suspenders. People called him Hippo. I didn’t know the other guys’ names. Each carried a baseball bat, like they thought they were those assholes in A Clockwork Orange.
All four of them advanced on me. I took a step back. My foot splashed in the oil. I regretted not taking Clementine up on her offer of a shotgun.
“I knew you’d be here,” Hippo said. “Everyone else is staking out your house or Peach’s place, but I said to my colleagues here, isn’t he that Jew faggot who works at the chicken place? Nobody’ll think to look there. He’s probably there now guarding the safe because he’s a cock-gobbling kike.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not Jewish, you racist cunt. I’m half Filipino.”
“You know, I never liked you,” Hippo continued. “There’s always been something off about you. Your wife, she’s hot as fuck for a half spic, but you…you always act like you’re better than us, you conceited piece of shit, holding your nose up in the air like a fucking faggot.”
If you’ve never been hit in the head with a baseball bat, I recommend that you call in sick the day it’s supposed to happen. This was the second time in my life I’d been smashed in the temple with a bat (the first being an accident in the first grade that had bought me a night in the hospital and a mess of stitches.) Neither event was pleasant, this one more notable in terms of extreme, excruciating, I’m-going-to-die pain. In the instant it took to register that the guy next to Hippo was playing piñata with my head, and the actual moment the bat crashed into my skull, I hoped that I would either: A) Die, or B) Get instantly knocked out.
Unfortunately for me it was C) falling-to-the-ground, wondering-if-my-skull-had-been-fractured-while-I-puked-my-guts-out.
My memory of the moment immediately after is a bit fuzzy, but I think I said something like, “Gah, what the fuck, man? Gah.” I sat up, my dry suit covered in cooking oil, flour, and puke. I had to blink several times to see straight. It didn’t seem like any bone was broken, but the side of my head felt like it would pop from the pressure, like a car had parked right on top of it. I put my hand at the wound, jerking it away in pain. Again, I felt sick to my stomach.
“Don’t fucking move,” Hippo said. “He only hit you with half force. Next time he’ll crack you open like a Jewish watermelon.”
At first I had thought they were doing this because they were a new kind of drone, but I was beginning to have my doubts.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I don’t have a problem with you guys.”
“He’s on his way,” one of the guys said, putting a device in his pocket. Couldn’t have been a cell phone. It had to be a sort of walkie-talkie.
“You fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us,” Hippo said.
I realized, then, what these assholes were on about.
“This is about Scooter?” I said. “Are you kidding me?”
“The government has collapsed,” Hippo said. “Our time has come. Scooter told us how you jumped him and stole his truck. The new world order requires us to take care of our own, to set examples of those who don’t follow the rules. Our rules. And rule number one is: Don’t fuck with our friends.”
I shook my head. “The government hasn’t collapsed, you moron. If you had half a brain, you’d take your fat ass as far from this place as possible. This entire city is toast, along with everybody inside.”
The one who had hit me jabbed the bat in my direction. “Oh, yeah, smartass? Then why are you still here?”
My head throbbed. I feared if I tried to stand, I wouldn’t be able to.
“Did Scooter tell you why I took his truck? My wife was one of the ones taken at the bout. He offered to help me, and then he pussed out. I had to take it.”
“That’s not what he says,” Hippo said. “He’s nearby. He’ll be here soon.”
“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” I said. The closest edge of the Grinder was a mere two miles away. Past the pain in my stomach and head, I could sense the pull in my chest again. The fourth guy in the group continually looked over his shoulder, toward the outside. I eyed him closely. Yes. I could see it in him.
He felt it, too.
“What’s the combination to the safe?” Hippo demanded.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. None of this was funny, but I laughed all the same. All of their talk about changing the world, all the plans they’d been making for years—and the first thing they clamored for in their supposed anarchist new world order was the single biggest symbol of the government they reviled: the almighty dollar.
“There’s probably a hundred bucks in there,” I said. “If you’re lucky.” If Jeremy and Nan had closed the store properly after all the shit started, there’d actually be five or six grand, maybe more. But I doubted any of it was left, not after the chaos from earlier in the evening. Three shift managers along with the store manager and district manager all knew the combination. I wouldn’t be surprised if any one of them had come back here and raided the safe before skipping town.
“I didn’t ask you how much is in there. I asked you to tell me the combination, faggot.”
I sighed. I told him.
“Dale, go open the safe.”
One of the guys—Dale—nodded and went into the office. He came out a minute later, saying I gave them the wrong numbers. I swore at him, called him an idiot, and he went back to try again and got it open.
“It’s empty,” Dale said.
“I guess you’ll have to start your new world order without being financed by corporate chicken,” I said.
“Shut your Jew mouth,” Hippo said.
I touched my head again. Ouch. Still tender. In a couple hours—if I lived that long—
the side of my head would be swollen like a water balloon.
Dale said, “Where’s Gobo?”
I looked up and saw the four were now three. The missing skinhead was the one who seemed affected by the Grinder. No way he would come back. Outside, the fog was as thick as ever, but dawn had embraced the world, and everything glowed orange. The Grinder was still about two miles away, moving parallel with our position. I no longer heard airplanes overhead, which I took as an ominous sign.
“The fuck? Gobo! Gobo!” Hippo said, looking around. “Go find him,” he said to Dale, who went outside.
“You know,” I said, “the first thing I did when I got in here was check the safe. I’m really surprised you let Dale go in there alone.”
“What’re you talking about, fag boy?” Hippo asked.
“I was lying when I said there was only a hundred bucks in there. There had to be at least ten grand. Saturday night is our busiest time, especially with a football game. Think about it. It’s all in a blue bag, small enough to stuff down your pants.”
Hippo and bat boy looked at one another.
“And now that your friend is outside in the fog,” I continued, “he’s got all sorts of opportunities to hide that money. Or maybe he won’t come back at all. Or maybe he and Gobo are in this together.”
“We’re not retards,” Hippo said. “Your Jew mind tricks won’t work on us.”
“Maybe…maybe I’ll go out and look for them,” bat boy said.
“No,” Hippo said. “You stay with me.”
I shook my head. “Ten thousand dollars. You know, if it was my plan, I’d probably have it all worked out. I bet Dale comes back, saying he couldn’t find Gobo. But what he really did was pass the bag off to him, you know, to make it look less suspicious.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Hippo said, raising the bat above his head. He paused as two people walked into the restaurant.
Dale and Scooter.
“Gobo is gone,” Dale said. “He’s disappeared. But look who I did find.”
Scooter walked right up to me, pushing past the other two, his shoulders square, trying to look big. He got real close in my face. His nose was swollen, and he had the beginnings of dual black eyes. Geez. Had I hit him that hard?
“You look like you got the tar beaten out of you,” I said.
“Where’s my truck?”
“I tried to fuck your mom with it, but I couldn’t get enough traction,” I said. “Still, I’m pretty sure she liked it.”
I don’t know what had gotten into me. I think I was in so much pain, and I was so scared and tired and frustrated that I just didn’t give a shit anymore. Earlier, I had been so fearful of being cowardly, of running when others needed me. That was gone. Even Scooter looked taken aback. His surprised look evolved into a mask of unadulterated rage, and he slapped me hard across the face. His hand smashed right below where I’d been hit with the bat, and little bright lights of pain exploded in my vision.
He pulled a pistol out of his waistband and stuck it against my head. The cold metal of the barrel stung where it pressed against the massive bruise at my temple. I remembered what the twins said about the Glock they had sold him. It contained a clip filled with blanks, but there might be one bullet in the chamber.
He leaned close and whispered in my ear. “Just so you know, before you die. After we got Nif fucked up on meth, we took turns with her right there in the record store. She would beg for it.”
My memory of what happened next comes back to me in slow motion, even though it happened in a second.
The whole time I’d been on the floor, I’d been reaching toward my leg—and the Rambo knife. By the time Scooter had whispered in my ear, my hand was firmly grasping the handle. I was poised to push the gun away with my left hand and plunge the knife into his chest with my right. If I couldn’t get the knife into him, hopefully he’d fire a shot in the confusion, which would clear the barrel of a possible real bullet.
That was the plan, at least.
I’ve been told I have a long fuse. I’m a friendly guy, and like I’ve mentioned, I avoid genuine confrontation. As a manager, I’d act the part of an asshole, but I really wouldn’t be mad when I was ordering employees around. I was just playing a role. I would get irritated, and I would snap and sometimes even berate the teenage staff, but it was all for show, and I almost always felt bad afterward.
Even when I’d punched Scooter earlier, it was because I was frustrated and irritated, but I wasn’t enraged.
Monobrow Sam used to joke that one would have to literally piss in my cornflakes before I’d feel anger. They’d tease me to get a response, and I’d pretend to get all irate just to get them to leave me alone.
This time was different.
I felt fury. I didn’t believe what Scooter had said about Nif, of course. Still, something darker and more blinding than anything I’d ever felt welled up in me and burst out in a volcanic eruption of Vesuvius-strength rage.
I launched up from the floor and tackled Scooter with every scrap of my adrenaline-fueled might. I had the knife in my hand, but I didn’t even think to use it. It went flying as I rushed him. Scooter’s head smashed against the metal mixer we used for the coleslaw.
At the same moment I attacked Scooter, Dale took his baseball bat, and he smashed Hippo in the head with his full might. The impact sounded like a lightning strike. Hippo dropped like a bag of bowling balls, and Dale turned on the other guy. They started beating the shit out of each other with the bats like they thought they were samurai warriors, knocking over things and banging across the kitchen in a whirlwind of shrieking, skinhead rage. I barely had time to register what the hell was going on. Still, this distraction saved my life.
I no longer cared about the stupid gun or being shot in the head, so blinded by absolute ferocity I was. I thought of the words, written in blood on the wall at the school. Come not within the measure of my wrath. I turned the table over so it crashed onto Scooter’s legs. He lifted the gun and pointed it at my face.
He fired.
The concussion of sound and the smoke and fire belching from the barrel, just five feet from my face, blinded me.
I should’ve been dead, right then. Either he’d already fired off the live round in the chamber, or there never was one there in the first place. Either way, I didn’t die. Scrambling to get up, I reached for the utensil rack hanging from the ceiling and pulled it hard to the ground, and onto Scooter’s head.
A long, second-level rotisserie skewer pierced his neck. He looked at me in absolute surprise, his dumb eyes registering nothing but pain and shock. He tried to say something. Nothing came out. He lifted the gun again in my direction, but I took two steps forward, stepping over the rack, and I stepped hard on his hand. I picked up the gun.
The Rambo knife lay on the ground by his head, and I picked it up too, wiping the oil off on my chest. I sheathed it onto my leg.
Scooter gurgled and struggled some, but after a moment, he stopped moving. His eyes stared up at mine in death.
She would beg for it.
I spit in his face.
“Fuck you, Scooter,” I said.
I turned toward the two battling skinheads, who had paused to stare at me. Both looked wide-eyed at the gun in my hands. If they realized that the gun was shooting blanks, they didn’t let on.
“Get the hell out of here,” I said. They ran like rabbits, falling over each other to get away.
On the ground, Hippo groaned. Dale had smashed his head in, but why? My anger abated as quickly as it rose, but I knew I had to deal with him now.
“Stay down,” I said, pointing the gun at his head.
He made a bleating noise and tried to sit up. I pulled the trigger, to scare him.
Hippo’s head exploded as the bullet tore into his forehead. A wide spray of blood, shaped like a fan, spread out the back of his head and over the wall behind him. He collapsed to the floor, dead.
I dropped the gun in shock.
&
nbsp; Behind me, I heard the glub, glub, glub of dripping Italian dressing in the otherwise-silent room. I turned to stare at a shelf near the ceiling. The dressing container was there, leaking from the hole made by Scooter’s bullet.
So, no blanks after all. He’d just shot and missed.
Outside, tires squealed as one or both of the skinheads fled in whatever they were driving.
I picked the gun up and wiped it off. It read “Sig Sauer P226” on the side.
This wasn’t the gun the twins had given him.
Still clutching the gun in my shaking hands, I picked up my duffel and staggered out of the restaurant. Fucking’ A. I turned and stared at the open door for a few moments, knowing no matter what happened, I would never again go inside this place.
I leaned against the Volkswagen as I tried to catch my breath. The side of my head ached, and my ear on the other side of my head, where the bee or wasp had stung me earlier throbbed almost as painfully.
I’d killed somebody. I’d killed two people. But this was different than me shooting to defend myself, like with those guys under the monster’s control. Now I’d shot a regular person. An asshole, yes. Self-defense? I guess. I looked at my hand, and it stopped shaking as I came to terms with what I’d done. I don’t know what that meant, but it felt significant.
A Vespa scooter sat parked nearby, obscured in the thick fog. That was Scooter’s old ride. He’d switched to the truck last year.
She would beg for it.
I didn’t, I wouldn’t believe him. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. In the midst of her drug rehab, Nif had said all sorts of things, including that she’d fucked everybody in town. Later, she’d admitted it was a lie designed to hurt me. I hadn’t believed it then, and I didn’t believe it now.
I strode forward and kicked the Vespa over. It crunched.
The Grinder now moved away from me, further north into the city. The intensity of the feeling hadn’t changed much since I’d left Clementine’s house. I wondered about that, why guys like Gobo who seemed fine one moment, would suddenly give in to the urge to sulk away toward the beast.
The Grinding Page 15