Bullets, Teeth & Fists

by Jason Beech

  “What do you mean?” What did she mean?

  “Who are you, John? Where are you from? What do you do?”

  “It’s a question I could ask you. You keep batting away questions as if I was a journalist.”

  “I try to keep a sense of mystery. I like to reveal a layer at a time. All at once and I’ve lost you.”

  “You ought to feel the same about a man.”

  “I do. And now I want to know you, layer by layer.”

  He scratched the back of his head, squeezed away the shake in his leg, and tried to pull the strings of his nerves into obedience. “I’m from Colorado, just like you.”

  “How do you know that?” She frowned.

  “Your accent.”

  She digested his response with food. “Which part?”

  “Lakewood.”

  “You're good. You ought to be a lawyer.”

  Damn, she now touched his leg after every question. As she leaned in he avoided peering down her top. He sensed that he would get an uninhibited view eventually.

  “The ambiguity would get to me.”

  She smiled at that. “When did you come here?”

  “Two months ago.”

  Her foot brushed his leg, so nonchalant it could be mistaken for an accident.

  “Such short answers, John. What are you hiding?”

  He flinched. He couldn’t hide it. She clocked it. It brought her in deeper. The woman liked danger.

  “Nothing.”

  She played with her glass and examined a couple of ants by her feet. “You don’t need to tell me. I understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “You lost your daughter. I’m guessing you lost your wife too.”

  He ignored the comment. Her former grace had dripped. She didn’t understand anything.

  “I was in the army.”

  “Any scars?”

  He blinked. At twenty he would have shown her everything. In her twenties she could have asked. In their thirties she should have known better.

  “Plenty.”

  She wanted to see. Every dilation and expansion of her pupils showed her desire.

  “I killed people. A lot of them.”

  She was his. For all her sophistication, she was primal underneath. Her work in law lent her a sheen of respectability, but she took that route because of the grime. She took her wealth from human misery. Enjoyed its detail while she proved her intellect in closing cases.

  Her toes lifted his trouser leg in search of bare flesh. A smile told her he was receptive. “I have boutique coffee at my place, unopened. I’d love to share it.”

  Anything with boutique in its name was enough to put him right off going any further, but he nodded. “That’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

  They paid the bill and left for hers, John glad she did not question him about his kills. He’d performed none of them while in the army.

  Brendan and Carl have Breakfast

  Brendan liked The Rizzler, a little cafe with barely enough space to let his paunch flop. Carl liked Joe's. Its waffles sweetened his morning and lasted through to a normal day's bitter end. But they had met at Joe's last time.

  “The Rizzler it is then,” Brendan laughed over the pre-paid, content. Saliva flooded his mouth already at the prospect of sausages nobody else could match.

  He arrived after Carl. The fact made him curse. He puffed his chest and strode to the chair beside him at a two-seater table. Pulled his neck free from the sticking fabric of his shirt. He planted his folder on the tabletop.

  “You're late.” Carl didn’t look up from his newspaper.

  “Don't I know it?” Brendan's nose edged to one side, averse to having Carl on his left. It made his knees knock when Carl gave him the occasional sideways glance to show only his white marble eye. He liked to see the other eye’s pupil for balance.

  The waitress’ cheery greeting descended fast, like a waitress' always did with him, to a rictus grin. Brendan liked to think it Carl's fault, but it happened when he sat alone too. He answered her “What can I get you, boys” with “Sausage, eggs - sunny side-up, and a ton of crushed plum tomatoes, please. And a coffee. Cream, no sugar.”

  “Same.” Carl finger-combed the spidery remains of hair across his forehead. He gave Brendan a sideways glance. “They can't do waffles right, here.”

  Brendan looked away and examined himself in the mirror. Dead expression, puffy eyes, a lifeless shell. What the hell. Another waitress, hot and perky, had already anticipated their coffee. He couldn't meet her look. He shook his face and reviewed himself in the mirror again. Get over yourself, he thought, it's nothing the gym can't solve.

  “So what brings us together this time?” Carl said.

  Brendan opened the file and showed him the picture. Made sure no other eyes could see. Harry Bresini, the man in the photograph – pin-sharp, as if a tailor lived in his closet ready to dress him each morning. A suit like that didn't come cheap, and those sunglasses which rested so carelessly on his head looked like they stood at the expensive end of Ray-Ban's range. Man, this is the type he would always have thought needed knocking down a peg or two.

  “Oh, I know him,” Carl said through a sip of coffee.

  The waitress dished out their breakfasts as Brendan scurried the file from her sight. Carl stormed into his meal.

  “You know him?” Brendan asked, once she left.

  “His girl goes to the same school as my daughter.”

  Brendan faced his own breakfast. The tomatoes now looked too much. They might make him sick. “The years we've known each other ... and you never told me you have a kid.” It looked to Brendan like Carl feared to lift his head, as if this revelation was a serious faux pas. “You dark horse – you have a woman?”

  Carl stuffed his mouth, and scooped in more before he swallowed the last.

  “You don't want to talk?”

  Carl's nod shook ragged, all nervous. He swallowed the ton of gunk like one would a golf ball and managed a glance. His non-eye reflected the strip light. “I thought she'd got rid of the baby. I found she kept it. Now I sort-of have a daughter.”

  “Sort of?” Brenda’s upper lip reached for his nose. “You either have one or you don't.”

  His partner giggled – a laugh that didn't belong in the world. Its squeak offended Brendan as much as the zombie eye.

  “I kind of forced the thing on her mother.”

  Brendan shook his head, his upward palms asking what he meant.

  “You know, I I I I forced myself on the mother.”

  “Fuck.” He turned back to the mirror.

  “I know.”

  Brendan loosened his collar as he stared at his colleague.

  “What's with the Nehru?” asked Carl.

  Brendan couldn't hold the snarl, and wouldn't take the bait of changing the subject. “I ought to put this fork in your other eye.”

  Carl rolled the glass eye with his right index finger. “I'm not proud, Brendan.”

  “Man, you have just fucked up my day. I take that back... what's my day compared to that woman's?”

  “Oh come on, we've done worse. Much worse.”

  Brendan unfastened another button as the heat bottled up in his head. “We kill men who deserve it.” He found it hard to convince himself.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that's who the boss targets.”

  “We don't know anything.” Carl's voice lowered. “I've thought about killing myself a number of times since I woke up to who I am. To what I am. When I was a boy, I thought I could be anything I wanted. How I fell into this game – I have no idea. But my daughter...” He ignored Brendan's sarcastic laugh. “My daughter gives me life... I feel renewed.”

  Brendan stabbed at his sausage, imagining it Carl's penis. He didn't think he could eat one ever again. “We got here because we're lazy. Took the easy money and let ourselves become addicted. I've often sat home, alone like I always will 'til the day I die, and wished for a norm
al life.” He pointed to the photograph he had taken out again. “Like this man.”

  Carl glanced between the picture and Brendan, a quick flash of his eye asking how he knew he was normal.

  “I've looked into it. The man has done nothing other than refuse to cooperate with the boss. He runs his own business, is highly successful, and has three damn-good-looking kids. I'm sure he's worked the system. Who hasn't? But he's just a hard-working regular Joe. Who am I to take that from him? To make his kids fatherless and his wife a widow?”

  “What are you saying?”

  He pushed his plate away with a sigh. “I don't know. Just that you're a bastard.”

  “I know what I am.”

  “I'm going to tell you anyway. Why'd you rape her?”

  “I thought she wanted me.”

  “And she didn't?”

  Carl made the slightest nod.

  “I'm a desperate man, Carl. I never had a woman I didn't pay for. I have dreamed of having this man's life. And I know I'll never have it. Not just because I'm a dead-eyed motherfucker, but ‘cause deep down I know I don't deserve it. I have watched women walk by my home as I sat on the porch drinking lemonade, sizing each one up as a potential wife. Not even one ever looked at me other than with suspicion. But I would never force myself on any of them.”

  “I get it. I get it. Jeez. You're not Martha's guardian angel.” He rubbed his glass eye.

  “Does the kid know you?” Brendan couldn't bring himself to say ‘daughter.’

  “No. I watch from a distance.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Leave it, will yer?”

  Brendan felt devils on his shoulders, stabbing, urging him towards hell. “My dad hit my mother all over the place. I heard them every night – ma crying and fighting. She had no chance. He was bigger than me and she was a little bird. One night I went downstairs and she’s on the floor. Her face a pulp, one eye a purple slit. Man, it was the worst I ever saw. She just stared at the ceiling and mumbled about how she should have had me aborted – that she was wicked for bringing me into this world.”

  Carl sipped his coffee and rubbed away the sweat bubbles on his big forehead. “I didn’t know that.”

  “How would you?”

  “Must have felt bad, knowing your mom wanted you dead, I guess.”

  “Nah. I understood. I understood it all. I loved her all the way to her suicide.” Brendan squeezed his eyes and wondered if he would kill somebody today. It depended.

  “How we gonna kill this man?” Carl asked.

  The ‘depended’ just got confirmed. The question is, Brendan thought, how am I going to kill Carl?

  Bring it on Down

  1. Quiet Boy

  Anthony pulled a fistful of copper and silver from his pockets, fearful his voice would not emerge from his chest, wound tight as the clapping monkey which still sat scrunched at the foot of his wardrobe. He heard you could only use no more than twenty one-pence pieces to buy anything, and he now fretted he would be humiliated by the newsagent for handing over too many.

  “Bugger off,” she would say. “I'm not here to count your bloody money.”

  He wasn't sure she would say that, but the anticipation she might caused his heart to loop-the-loop around his lungs. He didn't even think to count the money, though he guessed the amount by the clinks caused by his shakes. Anthony could talk to his mum, had few words for his dad. He clammed shut with strangers. At school he talked only when asked a question. Questions came mostly from teachers, especially from Mr Tappit, who put on his kindly face and thought his questions encouraged the shy boy to express himself. Anthony could never formulate a thought under such pressure – all drowned out by his pumping blood. He didn't have school friends. The questions he got from kids were demands about why he never said anything. John would push him around every other week and take his dinner money. The occasional girl thought him mysterious and started chasing, then gave up as nothing slipped from his dammed lips.

  He yearned for the mystery such girls placed in him – to swash and buckle like Indiana Jones and charm everybody like James Bond.

  Like an arcade claw, he took the bounty-sized Galaxy chocolate bar, all tentative, and approached the counter as if it would melt in his paw. Age had carved deep lines into the woman's face, but her eyes sparkled young. “Just that, love?”

  Anthony thought he said “Yes,” but remained unsure anything other than a whisper came out. He gave her his coins, silver and bronze. He'd not counted them: a mish-mash she had to add-up herself. Her eyes focused, lines around them deepened. Her face shifted into a scowl.

  She looked up and gave him ten pence back. “A little too much, darling – I don't think you're made of money.”

  She was right – the chocolate’s a luxury. His spending money caused constant moods aimed at his mum and dad. The woman's smile warmed his back to the exit, a little human contact that lit his world for the moment. It would soon disappear when he got back home to his room.

  *

  He played CDs with the light off. Mixed The Beatles with Plan B and Faith No More. His bedroom had become a prison cell in which he had got too comfortable. Leaving made his breath short and his eyes widen. Sneaking downstairs for a snack forced palpitation-quickened steps, speed making it less likely he would need to make contact with his parents. The call for tea made him dour. His parents never small-talked with him. They didn't try to talk to each other, each accepted the grey which pushed their lives down.

  He read hand-me-down books, old comics, and played video games on an old Commodore Amiga. Cannon Fodder was good, but lame beside the Call of Duty adverts on the telly.

  The central heating got to him. He opened the window and let the winter air in. It breathed life into his under-used lungs. The terraced houses across the road shone for Christmas. His house would light a cheap little tree on top of the telly on Christmas Eve. It would come down before the New Year.

  The stars told him things, whispered encouragement – to not give up on life like his parents had. He heard their call every night, but closing the window equalled amnesia. This time he listened hard.

  Trevor’s gang kicked a can down the street, shouted the odd swear word at each other, and laughed stupidly at bad banter. Anthony withdrew his head into the shadows, scared, though he wished he could get involved. They stopped a few yards outside his house and formed a barrier across the path. Anthony shivered – from the cold and the idea they might have seen him. They looked like bank robbers, all four of them, woolly hats pulled as far down their faces as possible without blinding their vision. He shook at the idea they would rob his house. Each boy manoeuvred as if connected by rope.

  Ah, Samantha from down the street approached.

  Anthony puffed his cheeks and blew; they would tease her and not him. Anthony could never tell if her shyness matched his. He had never seen her talk to anybody. She always seemed to walk with her head down as if she needed to decipher the path like a map.

  “Hey, Samantha.” Trevor stepped out of line to greet her.

  “Hey, Trevor.” Her weary voice said she had been here before.

  “Where you going?”

  “My friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends.” Trevor laughed. “You can have one here though.” He snorted as he grabbed his crotch, backed by the chorus behind him.

  His fun turned to a wail as she grabbed his balls hard and squeezed with all her might. He cupped them, and swung at her. Samantha sidestepped his wild paws and jogged away with a laugh. Left her bully tormented at the hysterics of his friends.

  Her action seeped into Anthony whose laugh drifted out the window and turned Trevor’s humiliation red.

  *

  He slept as still as a broken-necked bird most nights. Accepted the dullness that left his body undisturbed. Now he tossed and turned. Dreamt of Samantha. Worried Trevor would exact revenge for how she disrespected him. Trevor knew of Anthony. Anthony caught him looking his way every
so often, at how his cogs calculated plans. Trevor and his friends were in the year above. Anthony always deferred to older people, even if only a year older. He couldn’t help it. They had a year’s experience on him. Even if he could not understand their reasoning, he abided by their instructions without question. He once heard his dad call him a mummy’s boy to his mum – a doormat people wouldn’t think twice of walking over. “Bloody hell, even I forget he exists sometimes.” Anthony felt the verbal punch, but accepted it. Tonight, Samantha had shown him something new. A girl he always thought quiet and mouse-like gave him fighting spirit. He hoped it remained by the morning.

  2. Waking Up

  Samantha had not disappeared like a wisp in the new day’s cold light. She faced him in the mirror – grabbed his balls in a far more pleasant manner than she had Trevor’s. His image replaced hers. He examined the new Anthony: eyes sparkled; words did not trip over his tongue in embarrassment at their existence as he practiced dialogue. His heart pumped excitedly without fear. He was not handsome. That couldn’t change. But he felt handsome. He jumped on his bed and bounced to the other side and searched out the window for the girl he would fight Troy for. He saw only cars parked in impossible spaces. They reached as far as the eye could see. The number 9 bus navigated the available road slow, as if one bad turn of the wheel would screech a dozen scratches.

  Three hours stood between now and school. He rummaged in his mum’s purse and took ten pounds. He thrilled at the cheek and pumped carelessness at the consequences. Two slices of toast fuelled him into the medieval streets of York. He imagined himself a Viking in the dark alleys, ready for a one-eyed foe to intercept him; ready to deflect a dragon’s fiery breath in the ruined monastery. He ran through the back streets, backing into the walls of alleyways as the odd copper patrolled in his car. He imagined the car as a horse, the copper inside a barbarian invader.

  He caught the bus to school ready to look the institution in its eye. Recognised its possibilities for the first time. He held his head high through the corridors, all the way to his class. People seemed to notice him. He didn’t talk to anybody, but he felt mysterious, his empty shell filling.