Chum

by Jeff Somers

  “Flo’s right behind us, isn’t she?”

  I glance up at the window. Flo is staring at us, sitting across from a bland-looking fellow I dimly remember from a party somewhere. I wave. Flo lifts a hand weakly in return.

  “Yep.”

  “I am in so much trouble.”

  I shrug good-naturedly. “Fuck it. Life’s short.”

  We smoke.

  “I didn’t think you liked Mary very much,” she says. “But ever since … listen, don’t kill me for asking this … did you and Mary, ever, you know, hook up?”

  Dusty eyes, accusing.

  “Jesus, Kel, no. And you’re right: I didn’t like her much. She was a loud drunk and a pushy bitch, most of the time.” I pause and fight a smile. “She was perfect for Bickerman, actually.”

  “It’s just, you were so weird right around when she died, and you’ve been … gone ever since,” she exhales fiercely. “I was just speculating.”

  “Jesus, you miss me?”

  She turns and punches me in the shoulder. “Fuck you. I thought we were friends. Of course I miss you. You broke up with Denise, not me, bastard.”

  I’d stopped listening, a horrible thought suddenly blooming in my head. “Christ, does Denise think I slept with Miriam? Holy shit, that’s why she dumped me.”

  “Well, shit, yeah, that’s what we all think. You certainly didn’t deny it.”

  I blink. “Fuck, Kel, I didn’t think … I didn’t, first off. And it never occurred to me … she never said that, she never told me that she thought that.”

  “Everybody thought that, Henry.”

  I nod. Of course they did. But then Denise had not been an angel either, but fuck it, my days of arguing with fate were over.

  “We all miss you, you know,” she says sweetly.

  “Listen, Kel,” I say, looking down, staring anywhere but at her. I didn’t know how to start it, how to dress it up, make it sound better. I couldn’t. So I just say it: “Bick killed Mary, Kel. He killed her.” I wanted to finish with and I think I let him get away with it but my throat closed up and I gagged on the words.

  I couldn’t say what I expected. When she reached out and put her hand on my arm, squeezing gently, I was surprised.

  “Hank,” she says, “everyone thinks that. Bickerman’s like a plague rat around here. No one will touch him. He keeps sniffling around with Tom anyway.”

  I felt like crying. I just let that hang there, staring down at the pavement until two pairs of penny loafers appeared in their own pools of shadow.

  “My God, it’s Henry, back from the dead.”

  I look up. With the sun behind them, they are just inky human shapes looming over us, one slouching with a cigarette, one taller and looking over his shoulder. I squint up at them both.

  “Jesus,” I said, my voice a croak, “it’s Mr. and Mrs. Bickerman. I knew I came out too soon.”

  “And the lovely Miss Kelly. How are you darlin’?”

  “Thomas,” she nods her head with dignity. “And Bick.”

  “Henry, you amaze me,” Tom went on, thrusting his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Out of stir for mere hours, and you’re already on your way to bagging one of Denise’s ladies-in-waiting.”

  Kelly holds up a middle finger at him.

  “I’m hurt!”

  I lean back on my elbows. “How’s married life been, Bicky?”

  There is a moment of silence. Bick is still looking around the lot as if he had no idea anyone else was around. Without looking at me, he says, “Shut the fuck up, Henry.”

  I felt Kelly tense up next to me. I didn’t look at her.

  “So Pirelli’s still the venue of choice for post-party grub amongst the glitterati?” Tom says musingly. “And Henry. The glitterati and Henry.”

  Bickerman scans just over Kelly and me, his eyes skimming away from us as if we were too slick to gain purchase on.

  “Wow,” he says, staring into the diner. “Some weird-looking Indian guy just barfed spectacularly, all over his friends.”

  “Sorry I missed that,” Kelly mutters.

  Bick resumes looking around as if his head had become dislocated, bobbing about in a creepy way. He seems to be bouncing to rhythms only he could detect. Tommy, on the other hand, is all smooth bullshit, as always.

  “Kelly, you’re looking beautiful this morning. And is that the lovely Florence in there with an unidentified and somewhat dank-looking bachelor number three?”

  Kelly couldn’t help but grin. “Yep. Go on in and say hello. She’d love to be rescued.”

  “Isn’t that why you were lugged along?”

  “Probably. But I’m in the middle of a conversation.”

  “Well, now, so am I, so I guess Flo will have to survive somehow with the gruesome … man, for want of a better term, she has in there.”

  “No one’s having a conversation with you,” I point out. “We’re just waiting for you to move on.”

  Tommy laughs, the old familiar braying setting my teeth on edge. “That’s okay, Hank,” he says, scuffing his shoe against the asphalt. “That’s all my conversations. I’ve learned to take what I can get and make the best of it.” He strikes a pose. “I’m really a hero, in many ways.”

  There is a moment of quiet. I squint up at them. “Bye, Bickermans.”

  Tom snickers. “Yeah, okay, we’re not wanted. Steak and eggs, my squire?”

  Bick is looking into the diner intently again. “That table where the guy just yakked? Man, I just saw this tubby little guy do a fucking pole vault over the back of a fucking booth like he’d been training for the event his whole life. It’s fucking unbelievable.”

  I stare up at Bickerman. He is hard to see, backlit and all negative anyway, but he looks like hell. Unshaven. Thin. Disheveled. He stands with a cockiness, though, a strutting posture. He is fucking with me, he is still fucking with me with his bullshit, ignoring me, acting like I had done something rude, something amateurish, something to lose the careful faith he’d placed in me. I lay my half-smoked cigarette on the curb carefully, the burning coal suspended over air, and stand up. I stand in front of him, and slowly Bick drags his eyes to me. They are puffy and reddened, hung over.

  “There was a time,” Tom says jovially, standing next to us, hands still in pockets, “when I would have handicapped this sort of confrontation easily: Bickerman, while frail and sickly on his best days, is a ferociously dirty fighter, and Henry lacks what we scientifical types call balls. In the Golden Age of Bickerman, I would have given Bick the advantage without thought.

  “Now, however,” he went on, because Tommy was never one to be cowed by the disdain of an audience, “we see two changed men. Hank has the lean and hungry look of a man down on his luck, and Bick is Elvis-bloated and somewhat senile, by all appearances.”

  Bick’s shirt is stained. It looks like he’d thrown up on himself.

  “Come on then, boyos, let’s see some action. Don’t just piss-stare. The crowd wants blood.”

  I turn to look at Tommy, glistening in the sun, his hair wild, his sunglasses cocky. He looks prosperous. Fat. In fine fettle.

  He smiles at me. “I bet you could knock him over pretty easily, Hank. He’s a bit on the sorry side of sober this morning, if you catch my drift.” The bastard is enjoying himself immensely, which wasn’t too surprising, since he enjoys just about anything that didn’t bother him.

  “It’s amazing,” Bick says, his eyes focused just over my shoulder again. “They’re all just standing or sitting there, staring at the puke, like stock-still. It’s like a painting.”

  Tom suddenly reaches out and hits Bick on the shoulder hard enough to turn him slightly. “Jesus, punchy, what the fuck are you going on about?”

  His voice is suddenly mean and angry.

  I turn, making a fist, rear back, and hit Tommy a sucker punch right in the nose. Something cracks, and he goes down like someone had cut his strings. I knew Tommy; I knew he was a dirty fighter, and once
you had him down you had to keep him down, or he’d pop up like a fucking animal. I circle around him fast and kick him in the stomach, once, twice, making him curl up like a potato bug exposed to light.

  I could hear my own ragged breathing. Then, slowly, I become aware of clapping.

  “Well done,” Bick is saying, slowly and carefully, as if the pronunciation was getting hard for him. I stare at him. He looks like he was made of plastic, melting slowly in the sun.

  “You’re a bastard, Bick,” I say slowly, as clearly as I could. It was all I had in me. “And everyone knows it.”

  He orients on me as if seeing me for the first time. “But Hank,” he says with a grin, “no one cares.” He starts laughing again.

  I look at Kelly. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “We’re bad guys, you know? Don’t forget that. None of us are any good.”

  I straighten up. Bick is still clapping and laughing this creepy, slow-motion laugh. I take a deep breath, scanning the parking lot: bright, cold, sunny, filled with sharp points of light. And Tommy writhing on the ground. And Bick applauding something only he could see. And Kelly looking at her tennis shoes. I close my eyes and take another breath.

  The subtle rumble of something truly huge, trembling the ground, so loud you can’t hear it, so loud you’re ostensibly deaf, swallowed whole and reliant on the dull vibration in your bones for a gauge of how loud it is, nearby. The trees, swaying first one way and then another, chaotic and frenzied with the approach. The wind whipping through my hair, the air clear and free of bugs because they’ve all fled a long time before.

  And me, sitting there, about to be crushed, unnoticed, under the approaching thing’s heavy tread.

  XIV.

  LUIS’S BIRTHDAY

  “Do we all have to hide in here?” I asked, reasonably enough. “And is it me, or does this whole place smell like Luis?”

  Kelly shoved me. “Shut up, Tom.”

  I rubbed my shoulder. “Christ, just asking a question, and it seems like a reasonable one. Hank, this whole place smells like Luis, doesn’t it?”

  Hank grinned, an arm loosely around Denise, who looked edible in a pair of tight jeans and a green top. “Well, first I’d have to ask you to quantify what you think Luis smells like, and then I’d be able to say.”

  “Shush!” Kelly hissed. “Hank, don’t encourage him. Be quiet!”

  We were crowded into Luis’s small kitchen. Kelly and Flo had finagled Luis’s keys from him somehow and arranged to get us all inside his apartment without him knowing. So there were ten people crowded into the room, which I swear smelled like Luis. Not a bad smell, I wasn’t trying to be insulting, but if you blindfolded me and asked me what I was smelling I would reply, “Luis, or possibly his kitchen.” We’d been in the kitchen with the lights off for ten minutes. I was beginning to wonder if Luis was ever coming back.

  “Does Luis smell like wet shoes?” Bickerman Alpha boomed from the back of the room. “If so, I agree with you.”

  “Shut up! He’ll hear you!” Kelly snapped.

  I twisted around to face in the general direction of the Bickermans. It had only been two weeks, and they were already beginning to resemble each other. Bickerman Alpha was the larger of the two, his girth having swelled to unexpected levels in the recent years of indolence and beer consumption. Bickerman Beta retained her girlish figure, it was assumed, via an exclusive diet of booze and the life force of Bickerman Alpha, sucked out nightly. Alpha had been very reticent regarding the joys of married life, and Henry had surmised that the horror of her pincerlike mouth sucking the sweet life out of you every evening would leave any man contemplative and distant.

  “Quiet, Bick,” I commanded. “Even Luis would be able to figure out what’s going on. Probably. Do they even have birthdays in Spain?”

  “No, they have a national birthday once a year for everyone. They’re socialists, you know,” Henry said.

  “Fuck!” Kelly hissed. “Will you shut up?”

  I grinned. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “No! He could be back at any time, dammit!”

  “I’ll be careful. If he comes in before I get back, I’ll hang back, I promise.”

  I left them in there, breathing the sweet air of freedom. I’d only been in Luis’s apartment a few times before and only had a vague idea of where the bathroom was. I poked my head into a few rooms along the way; if the rest of them hadn’t been there, I would have taken the opportunity to go through some of Luis’s stuff—why not, good clean fun and all that. I didn’t see anything interesting in a cursory search, but then that was Luis: nothing very interesting on the outside, but plenty of dark, damp things going on just underneath.

  I’d known lots of people, and most thought they were unique, unusual: special. None of them had been, and eventually they’d all turned into the same thing: People I used to know. I’d even forgotten their names, the knowledge fading out of my brain like dust in a wind. Didn’t matter—they were boring anyway. Luis, though—Luis was maybe the first truly strange person I’d ever actually known. Years after all the rest of these morons were just vague concepts teasing my syphilitic brain, the name Luis would still be rustling in my ears like a summer wind, mysterious and fascinating.

  I headed for the bathroom and poked my head into the open doorway right across from it, where I found Luis lying on his bed with earbuds in his comically large ears, reading a book. The tinny sound of muffled music filled the air around us.

  “Hello, Tom,” he said calmly, as if he’d expected to find me there. He always pronounced my name with a long O, like Tohm.

  I waited for him to ask me why I was standing in his room, but he just stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t have any remarks prepared, so for a good ten seconds or so we just looked at each other.

  I put a big smile on my face. “Happy birthday!”

  He removed the earbuds. “What?”

  “Happy birthday!”

  “Thank you.”

  Luis seemed satisfied to stare at me. “Okay,” I said. “Gotta go.”

  I turned and walked briskly back to the darkened kitchen, and took my place quietly. I held my mouth clenched tightly shut, resisting laughter as best I could.

  “Uh, Kelly, this is Luis’s apartment, right?” Henry wanted to know. Everyone laughed, and suddenly Luis was standing in the doorway.

  “Is this a party?” he asked, smiling.

  “No,” I said back, still keeping my face as straight as possible, “it’s a surprise.”

  Everyone broke into laughter, a weak cry of “surprise!” went up, and we all broke ranks to slap Luis on the back or kiss him on the cheek. I did both.

  • • •

  Birthday cake and bourbon. I did my usual party dance: I prowled around gauging the general attitude toward meaningless casual sex amongst the lady attendees. Since almost all of the ladies in attendance knew me too well, my chances were slim, but it never hurt to stay in practice, I thought. You never knew when you’d find some previously cool-to-you bird unexpectedly drunk, or wanton, or temporarily confused or insane.

  I followed my old Boy Scout rule: Be prepared. I’d been an Eagle Scout. Somehow getting shitfaced in the woods and tying other kids to trees had helped, not hindered.

  Flo had just broken up a few weeks before with some guy she was now referring to as the Schmuck, which was Flo’s way. When she’d dumped that loser Dublen last year, she’d stopped using his name and started calling him the Shithead. Flo took no prisoners. I figured I had an advantage because she already disliked me and referred to me, when I wasn’t in the same room, as the Ass. I wasn’t sure if she knew that I knew this, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she didn’t much care.

  Based on my encyclopedic knowledge of television situation comedies, that made Flo an obvious choice for seduction. They always end up banging the ones they hate.

  And Flo was hot, in my humble opinion. Not conventionally pret
ty, like Bickerman Beta. Bickerman Beta was a cupcake. Flo was better, and while Bickerman Beta looked like she didn’t perform any sex acts she couldn’t spell, Flo gave me the impression of being very skanky, in a good way. She was a goer, I thought. She was always dyeing her hair—I didn’t even know what its actual color was—and was perhaps the tallest woman I knew. I had developed a theory over the years concerning the height of a woman’s heels and her willingness to have sex. The connection, I thought, was obvious. Flo didn’t need the heels, which had tantalizing possible interpretations when you applied the scientific method. Eventually, I would compose my theory into a printed report and share my breakthrough with my fellow man, but for now I had lots of testing to do.

  The thing with Flo was, she was easily distracted. While that worked in your favor, it also worked against you, because as soon as you had her paying attention to your carefully manicured false charm, someone else caught her attention and hours of charming were forgotten. Thus, the thing with Flo was being in the right time and place. Preparation and effort meant nothing; it was all about timing. So I just always kept my eye out for Flo opportunities but didn’t put much effort into her.

  Then there was Kelly, who seemed to really, really hate me. Flo just disliked me, which was okay. Everyone—except maybe Bickerman Alpha—disliked me. I was a dislikable person. Kelly, though, really seemed to have something against me, and it was weird because back when Bickerman Alpha had met the future Bickerman Beta, Kelly had initially taken a shine to me, I thought, and disliked Henry. Now the pendulum had swung the other way. I didn’t know what the pasty bastard had done or said to get into Kel’s good graces, but I was curious.

  The wanker would never tell me, though. Hank was a great guy and I could generally tolerate his presence, but his sense of fair play was just too much sometimes. Still, if things ever went bad, I’d want Henry in on my side. He was the type to keep promises, no matter how stupid or how callow I was.

  So Kelly was a logistical nightmare. The amount of booze and insincere posturing that nailing her would require was prohibitive, and the chances of it blowing up into an international incident were high. While I held as a personal philosophy that nothing was impossible, the cost just seemed too great. So despite the fact that Kelly was, in the right light, a big dumb knockout promising big dumb sex, it just wasn’t worth it.