by Sam Pink
Slim Charles climbed up my pants, then climbed my arm and perched on my shoulder, like a parrot.
He sniffed my ear, then sneezed into it.
I turned my hood sideways to cover him.
He lay there purring.
Chris was doing the lip-licking thing that meant he’d done too much coke.
Which was any amount.
It looked like his head was trying to shit out his eyes.
Sitting there on the couch, the blue light of some snowy event coming back at his face.
‘Who’s winning the Olympics?’ I said, smiling.
Robby laughed and said, ‘Yeah.’
Chris turned and looked at me, then Robby.
He didn’t say anything, just stared at Robby, grinding his teeth.
‘What’s up, is there a fucking problem?’ Robby said, leaning forward and clasping his hands.
Chris looked at the coffee table, smiling. ‘Rob,’ he said. ‘Rob.’
He laughed his hyena laugh, shaking his head and smiling, eyes watering.
‘So, how many holes should we put in the walls before we leave?’ I said.
But Chris picked up a wrench from the coffee table and looked at Robby. ‘My problem is that you won’t shut the fuck up, you cunt.’
I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
Robby smiled and said, ‘Yeah because I’m the reason we’re getting evicted, you piece of shit. I’m the cunt.’
Chris stood up, held the wrench high, laughing and licking his lips. ‘Shut the fuck up. I’m gonna kill you motherfucker,’ he said, skinny knuckles pulsing with the grip. He didn’t blink, just wobbled, grinding his teeth. ‘I’m gonna kill you, Rob,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m gonna smash your fucking face in, you rich piece of shit.’
He laughed his hyena laugh.
Nobody said anything.
Nobody moved.
Except for Chris, wobbling and biting at his lips.
A bobblehead with questionable autonomy.
‘I’m gonna fuckin kill you, Rob,’ he said.
‘Okay fine kill me, just shut the fuck up and sit down. I’m sick of this shit. I paid your fucking rent and you treat me like this? Fuck you, man.’
‘Yeah, get the fuck out of here,’ I said.
Chris didn’t say anything for a second, just eyed Robby and me back and forth, grinding his teeth.
He looked scared.
But then he smiled.
He leaned back like he was gonna throw the wrench, laughing. ‘Here it comes, Rob. Here it cooooooomes.’
Robby said, ‘I bet you won’t.’
Everything was tense.
Then Chris threw his arm forward, but held on to the wrench.
And Robby flinched, then yelled, ‘Fucking IT,’ grabbing Chris’s hand and tackling him onto the couch. They wrestled and then Robby put him in a choke hold. ‘I told you to fucking stop!’ He leaned back and yanked Chris’s neck.
Chris dropped the wrench and grabbed at Robby’s arms.
He sprawled his legs out, kicking shit off the coffee table.
He snorted terribly, choking like eggghhhhhckkkkk, eyes bulging.
Robby squeezed hard. ‘Fucking stop,’ he yelled again, then let go.
Chris fell to the ground, breathing heavily, knocking empty cans around.
Holding his neck.
Shirt and hair all messed up.
He struggled to breathe.
‘I fucking told you, you piece of shit,’ Robby said, breathing hard as well. He was pointing at Chris’s face. ‘I told you, motherfucker.’
‘I’m gonna fucking, kill you, Rob,’ Chris said again, weakly, with script-like insistence. He looked up at Rob, still holding his neck. ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you.’
‘If you come near me again I’ll kill YOU. I’m done with your bullshit. Promise.’
Chris grabbed the wrench off the ground and stumbled outside, leaving the front door open.
A cold gust went up my pant leg.
Wind and snowflakes blew into the apartment.
Slim Charles hid behind the TV.
‘Fuck is that asshole doing,’ Robby said, lighting a cigarette with shaky hands. ‘We just, we gotta get out, man. I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry.’
Then there was a cracking sound and some laughter.
Another cracking sound.
Another.
Chris came back in laughing.
He sat on the couch holding his stomach, wrench in hand.
‘I fucked up someone’s windshield, buh HA.’
I looked outside.
A car parked directly out front of our building had the windshield caved and spidered in three spots.
Chris laughed hard, holding his stomach, wrench still in hand.
The veins in his neck filled with mounds.
He got up and looked out the doorway, up and down the block.
Standing in the doorway holding the wrench up, cigarette in his other hand.
He wobbled in place against the moonglow.
He took a drag off his cigarette, smoke blowing back into the apartment.
He went outside.
There was another cracking sound.
Then another.
Robby and I went out the back door and down the alley to go to a bar and avoid the cops if they came.
‘I’m moving out tomorrow man, I’m sorry,’ said Robby. ‘I’m really sorry, man. But I mean, shit.’
*
After we got evicted, none of us really talked.
Robby got his own place, Chris found his way back in with Victoria, and I moved in with the girl I was seeing.
I saw Victoria briefly, when I went to her bakery to drop off some of her books.
I set the books down on the counter and she smiled at me and waved, helping a customer.
And that was it.
*
A couple months later, Robby emailed me.
The subject line read: ‘Hey man, you need to read this.’
Inside the email was a link.
The link took me to a crime report page for Humboldt Park.
It listed the mugshots of four murder suspects from the weekend.
The first three were gang related.
The fourth was Chris.
He’d strangled Victoria.
*
I didn’t really see Robby for a while after that.
Didn’t have a chance to discuss it with him.
He was busy with work and his girlfriend.
Plus I figured he didn’t want to talk.
There was something cold between us.
An ugly feeling.
One night, I texted him: ‘Paging the saucemaster . . .’
‘Haha what’s up, shithead,’ he replied.
And he invited me over.
He was engaged now.
I met his fiancée and saw their new place.
It was clean.
Looked like a place where humans lived.
He even had a new grilling setup in the backyard.
‘Finally,’ he said, slapping my shoulder, ‘a reason to go through the rest of that bag of three hundred mini hotdogs!’
His fiancée shook her head and explained they’d taken a tour of a Vienna beef factory, where Robby had bought a bag of three hundred mini hotdogs.
So we sat in his backyard getting high and eating mini hotdogs.
We told his fiancée stories about growing up.
About how our only entertainment was throwing rocks at each other.
About fights in the alley.
We said retroactive condolences for pets that’d died.
Discussed classmates’ fates.
Family shit.
When it got dark, we went inside and sat at the kitchen table.
Robby’s fiancée lit a candle and dimmed the lights and said she was going to bed.
We hugged.
I said it was nice to meet her.
Robby and I stayed up, drinking red wine and getting
high.
We recounted more childhood stories.
Condolences for grandmas we didn’t know had passed.
I reminded him that I’d sometimes cut his grandma’s grass and she’d paid me in sandwiches.
He laughed and said, ‘Oh sweet Nana. She really loved you.’
A cat walked up to my leg and headbutted me.
‘Slim C!’ I said, picking up Slim Charles, who Robby had taken in and was now fully grown.
Slim C put the side of his head against my chest and purred.
I asked about Chris. ‘What’s going on with him?’ I said. ‘We never really talked.’
Robby raised his eyebrows and breathed out.
He recapped the night.
Chris and Victoria were still living together, but hadn’t been dating, or whatever.
Chris called Robby and told him things weren’t going well.
He and Victoria were arguing, and he didn’t know what to do.
Said it was bad.
So Robby told him to come over and stay with him instead.
But Chris declined.
Robby told him to relax and they’d talk tomorrow.
‘You know how he gets when he’s fucked up,’ Robby said. ‘Like a goofy squirrel or raccoon or some shit.’
But then Chris called back a couple hours later and just said, ‘She’s dead,’ when Robby answered.
So Robby went to Victoria’s apartment.
Chris was already out front.
He’d called the police on himself.
‘I don’t know man,’ said Robby, taking a sip of wine. ‘Something was up with him, man. I’m not making excuses I mean, he’s a piece of shit, I hope he fucking dies, but I’m just saying, he was so fucked up he looked like an animal or something, I don’t know. He looked like a fucking weasel or rat. I’m serious man. Like he was morphing. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying.’
The police showed up and took them both in.
Robby was detained for twelve hours.
The coroner said she’d been dead for hours by the time the police arrived.
Which—Robby said, tears forming in his eyes—meant Victoria was probably dead the first time Chris called that night.
We were quiet.
In the candlelight.
‘Stupid guy Slim Charles was there too,’ said Robby, nodding toward my lap. ‘Poor little guy was in the bathtub shivering the next day when we remembered him.’
Tears fell down Robby’s face.
He blinked a couple times.
Said Chris had broken his thumb strangling her.
‘Fuck man,’ I said, closing my eyes.
We sat there in silence.
Robby said that Chris and Victoria were arguing about Victoria sleeping with someone else, even though they weren’t dating at the time and he’d slept with other people, open relationship whatever.
‘You should’ve seen this kid too,’ Robby said, smiling, arms folded. Tears filled his eyes again, talking about the guy. ‘I know this guy. I’ve seen him around. This guy’s a fucking, he’s a little dweeb, you know?’ He smiled, and a tear went down his face as he shrugged.
He did an impression of the dweeb kid.
It consisted of him hunching over and going, hern hern in a nasally voice, front teeth over his bottom lip.
And for some reason, it comforted me.
Not the impression of the dweeb, but the idea of Victoria having sex with this dweeb.
Not the idea of Victoria having sex with the dweeb, but doing anything, at the same time as all the rest of us, doing whatever.
No real fate.
The idea of doing anything.
The possibility of doing things.
The greatness of anything, through living eyes.
The way if you were stranded in the desert, you would feel like a candy bar was the greatest thing.
Or deep in outer space you’d think a sidewalk was amazing.
The way anything could be that way if you just focused and understood.
Breaking bottles in a backyard.
Talking about books.
Robby and I sat in the candlelight, silently drinking.
Slim Charles slept in my lap, swishing his tail.
Robby told me he’d talked to Chris a few times on the phone.
Chris was making friends in jail and playing a lot of chess.
He’d recently been sentenced to fifteen years in prison, to be transferred downstate soon.
Said he had no idea why he did what he did and looks back on himself as a completely different person since sobering up.
‘Fuck him,’ I said.
Robby’s eyes were glassy.
Slim Charles swished his tail lightly in my lap.
We were quiet for a while.
Robby poured us both another glass of wine and tossed me a bag of weed to roll a joint.
I started to feel dizzy.
Horrible images came to me involuntarily.
Victoria, rotten, floating into space, then opening her eyes and swimming away, hair flowing as if underwater.
Passing away.
Her pale body, eyes closed, floating to the bottom of a dark ocean.
Sinking in mud.
Robby said some things about feeling guilty.
He was crying again and looked small and defeated.
Like there was a series of events he could’ve directed, that would’ve ended otherwise.
Like he wasn’t him, and Chris wasn’t himself, and I wasn’t me, and everything else wasn’t everything else.
Like it was all up to him.
Tears ran down his face.
He cleared his throat.
‘Anyhow,’ he said, then thanked me for vague reasons. He put his hand on mine and slapped it a few times, his voice wavering. ‘It’s great to see you, man. It really is.’
He cleared his throat again.
‘Yeah man,’ I said.
We each took a drink of our wine and smoked the joint.
Robby said he was going to bed but that I should stay and sleep in their guest room.
I said thanks and good night and went to the guest room, shutting the door behind me and standing in the quiet.
I took off my clothes and got in bed, exhausted.
But when I closed my eyes, I began to see bad shit again.
Horrible things imported behind my eyes.
I saw bugs.
I saw skeletons floating into and out of different areas of darkness.
I saw blood.
There were awful sounds.
Sneering, bloody teeth.
People screaming.
Moonlight on a bruised neck.
Victoria on her back, naked and blue, arrows traveling through her in different directions, like how they depict wind on a weather forecast.
Passing.
Eyes closing.
Flies on her face.
Marks all over her neck.
Body turning to ash.
Dead.
I turned and lay on my stomach, facedown in the pillow, arms folded beneath.
Muddy teeth grinding.
Lifeless eyes.
Shrieking bugs in darkness.
Gray skin.
Eye veins turning black.
Lights going out in faraway houses.
A forest of leafless trees.
Victoria throws a bottle into the air and it turns to wasps.
I was biting down hard and felt sick.
Gripped.
Dizzy.
And then it broke, soaking me in cold sweat.
And I saw Victoria—her face blue, eyes closed—sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
Hitting the ocean floor quietly as her hair catches up to her.
Then not moving.
Everything darkening around her.
Everything going dark.
But then—a light, beginning from her chest and expanding outward, absorbing all shapes and contours, all things.
/> Total and blinding.
And as it clears, we’re back in the kitchen at the old apartment, next to the empty lot.
On a warm summer night.
With hours ahead of us.
And no real fate.
Something cooking outside.
Robby and Chris throwing the football at a broken door.
Victoria and I talking about books.
And she smiles, looking downward.
‘Look alive,’ Chris says, laughing, as the football flies into the kitchen and knocks empty cans and bottles off the counter.
Jumping Rope
I had a jump rope I took from the high school where my ex worked.
So I started jumping rope whenever I had nothing to do.
It was my antidote.
Jumping rope.
That would be my saving.
Anytime I felt bad, or had too much time, I’d go to the alley and jump rope.
There.
Easy.
If I was jumping rope, then I’d be jumping rope, and nothing else could be happening.
Hard to worry about anything if you had to keep jumping over a rope.
Today, when I went out to the alley, there was an older lady in multiple bathrobes and something wrapped around her head, pushing a steel shopping cart and looking through dumpsters.
She came up and stopped her cart by me.
We smiled at each other and said hello and she started going through the dumpster.
I started jumping rope.
Felt like I had to put on a show.
I had an audience, even though she wasn’t even looking.
So I did a few high jumps, bringing my knees all the way up to my chest, slapping the rope down twice before landing.
Couple of crisscrosses—you know, the usual.
Then I got into a steady groove.
I cruised for a while.
Jumping just high enough to avoid the rope.
My heart beat hard but I breathed slowly to calm it.
It was a trick I learned—not to focus on legs, but your heart.
Heart, the motor.
Heart, the key.
The lady continued picking through the trash, accepting some items, refusing others, checking stuff already in her cart, and so on.
Seemed like quite a process.
I kept thinking she was going to leave, but she didn’t.
My legs started to burn.
Throat felt thick and hot.
I was ready to stop.
But then I started silently cheering on my heart.
Go, little heart, go.
Goddamnit, keep going.
I’m not sure how much time passed, but I kept jumping.