by Ezra Blake
“How many words?” The guy asks. He’s dead serious.
“Uh, let’s stick with ten.”
He nods.
“What are your names?”
“Jacob Caruso. My friend is Ash—Ashton Webster.”
“What drugs have you taken tonight?”
“Nothing!”
Elliot eyes him—sniffling hawk nose, scabs dotting his arms—and Jacob looks away. “Adderall,” he says. “But I know you guys give that out like candy so don’t even say shit. And also some 4-CL-PVP and a little bit of norflurazepam to take the edge off, but they’re not illegal in the States and I’m using them as medicine basically, for—”
“Okay,” he says. “Is anyone in immediate danger?”
Jacob closes his mouth and thinks very hard about this question.
When Vic met Latzke’s nameless contact in a bar on Christopher Street, she’d just gotten clean, and she wasn’t interested in ethics. She was interested in keeping her outlandish Greenwich Village apartment, in getting loaded every night of the week, and in two grand per delivery. Better than doctors’ wages.
She was drunk when she agreed, and she’s rarely taken a break since then. She sips from a bottle of merlot and dangles her legs off the fire escape. From a distance, the buildings look organic, like hunks of granite growing from a bed of asphalt. The wind whips around them and sheers through her jacket. No heat inside, either.
Then her cell phone rings, and that’s it for peaceful reflection. It’s Elliot. She lets it go to voicemail. The text comes less than a minute later: Pick up. Important.
It rings again. Again she ignores it. What would happen if she chucked her phone off the fire escape? It would fall four stories and shatter, obviously, but could Latzke still find her if she lost his number?
Client lead, long story. Didn’t want to text.
2.5k full nullo tonight.
You have somewhere?
Vic sighs and takes another swig of wine. She doesn’t need to call back.
What she needs is a decent resume and a job she can do outdoors. She needs a fresh start, a detox, a better addiction. Some people swear by meditation.
But her index finger hovers over the screen, because wasn’t she the same at his age? Desperate to get out of the classroom and on the front lines—can she really fault his enthusiasm? Elliot is safe enough. He isn’t under Latzke’s thumb. He’s appropriately cautious, and he’s good at the job.
And Vic took his kidney. She owes him.
Elliot dresses in black and steps like a water strider. He hails a cab. Tonight, he can afford it.
Vic is squatting in a grungy, subdivided brownstone off North Broad. The brick facade crumbles like wet sand, and electricians hung the call box in a hole twice its size. Elliot hopes this is the right place. He doesn’t want to barge through a stranger’s window.
He skips the call box and rounds the building, clutching his coat around him. Though the drizzle has stopped, beads of moisture cling to his eyelashes. He slips and nearly kills himself on the second step. As he climbs the final flight of stairs, a gentle pan flute melody drifts through the open window.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back turned, a tattered t-shirt hanging from her shoulders. The room is dark except for a single candle, vanilla, whose light flickers across a pile of laundry on the floor.
He creeps through the open window, anticipating the traitorous creak of his own shitty floor, but Vic has carpet. He pauses with one foot inside to remove his shoes.
“You don’t need to take those off. I found this rug in a dumpster.”
“Did I walk in on something?”
She laughs. “Nah. I’ll turn the light on.”
The sickly yellow walls clash with everything. The furniture is beyond sparse: plastic folding chairs and table, a torn print of an album cover tacked above a wooden bench. Vic’s record player is the only thing that doesn’t look salvaged.
“Are you living here?”
“Haven’t gotten the chance to stop at IKEA. Where are your new friends?”
“They’re coming.” Elliot pokes his head into the barren hallway. “Where are we doing it?”
“I was thinking kitchen island.”
“I don’t understand how you keep finding abandoned places with kitchen islands.”
Vic smiles at this, but it’s the kind of forced smile you give a kid before he goes into the dentist’s office. Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re doing just fine. She says, “Where’d you find the client?”
“It’s a long story.”
She shrugs.
They have twenty minutes, assuming Jacob and his soon-to-be-eunuch friend don’t get shot on their way here. With his knees drawn to his chest and heels on the bench, Elliot combs through the sparse literature on nullification. It’s a practice which has fallen out of fashion. One surgeon’s name pops up a few times, but nowhere does he explain his methods.
He drifts, watching Vic through the doorless frame. She looks like a painting, caught in the blade of dull light streaming from the window. The kitchen island warps and oscillates: an operating table one moment, and the next, a decadent buffet of lamb, escargot, and chocolate cherries. Lower it a few inches so his mom can reach from her wheelchair. This is the right thing to do.
“You good?”
His head snaps up.
“Oh, yeah. Just thinking.” He stands and cracks his back. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom.”
“On the left. You’ll see it,” Vic says. “Wash your hands.”
Elliot will do her one better. He brought his own gloves, which he dons now to uncap the syringe and trash the needle. He shakes up his squeeze bottle of Adderall—not that it needs shaking; his solution is perfect—and siphons out a generous dose. Within seconds, buzzing power spreads down his limbs. No need to worry. He’s a genius; it will go off without a hitch, and he’ll probably teach Vic a thing or two about rearranging penile nerves.
He returns to find Vic helping a small, pretty college student through the window. As soon as Elliot lays eyes on him, the mystery of his motivation evaporates: he must be the opposite type of transgender. Nobody looks that effeminate on accident.
Jacob leans against the radiator, his sunken eyes darting around the room at the speed of sound. “You’re the guy?” He asks.
“I’m the guy. Victoria, but you can call me Vic. So, you’re here for—”
“Moral support.” Jake stands up straighter and unzips his hoodie, revealing the faded psychedelic tattoos poking out above his neckline. Professional, anatomically correct pieces are interspersed with basement stick-and-poke eyeballs. “Ash is the one getting the thing done. Ash, uh, this is—”
He gently shoulders Vic out of the way. “Doctor Alvarez,” he says, ignoring Vic’s glare. “I’m her partner.”
Ash looks at Elliot the way Elliot looks at preserved specimens. “Thanks…” he says. “Uh, I’m sorry, are you a boy or a girl?”
“I’m the guy cutting your cock off.”
“Right.” Vic claps her hands. “Let’s get to it. Our fee is $2500. Sort that out and we can get started. Any questions?”
“I have a question,” Jake says, handing her a thick wad of bills. “Do I need to be in there for it?”
“Only if you want to be. I can grab another chair.”
“No, no. I’m. I’ll wait out here.”
“Fine by me. Put on music if you want, but be careful with the records. We’ll be quick.”
Vic leads them to the kitchen and instructs Ash to sit on the island, now dressed with the same sheets that adorned Elliot’s makeshift operating table. He hopes she washed them.
“Here’s how this works,” she says. “We’ll ask you a few questions to make sure we’re all on the same page, and then you can get undressed and we’ll get started. We’ll give you some painkillers so you can’t feel it.”
Ash is chewing on his thumbnail, watching her with huge, black eyes.
&nb
sp; “I’ll leave you with instructions on how to take care of it and prevent infection. Sound good?”
“I can’t take drugs,” Ash says, and resumes shredding his cuticles.
Vic glances to Elliot. “Medication allergies?”
“No, I just…I can’t. It’s wrong.”
“Not if you’re under the knife,” Elliot says, brushing past him to aimlessly organize tools on the counter. “Trust me, you won’t want to be sober for this.”
“I don’t care about the pain,” Ash says.
“People die of acute pain. It can send you into circulatory shock, and I don’t need a felony on my record.”
“That’s okay. Nobody’s looking for me…uh, Jake will be fine.”
Elliot and Vic lock eyes. She offers a minute shrug and then launches into a series of questions which Ash seems ill-equipped to answer, about allergies, medical history, etc. They don’t touch on the most pressing issue: what the hell is wrong with Ash? If he was actually trans, he would have clocked Elliot in an instant. As the conversation draws to a close, he realizes that Vic isn’t going to broach the subject. Fuck tact. He has to know.
“Ash, why are you interested in this procedure?”
Ash slips the nail of his pointer finger once more between his lips. “Um…” he tears, chews, swallows. “I made some mistakes. I wanna be…clean.”
“Clean,” Elliot repeats.
“Yeah. Saved.”
And Elliot’s shoulders slump. Nothing to see here.
They scrub in without speaking. When they return, Ash is lying flat on his back with a sheet over his crotch, mumbling to himself. Elliot doesn’t care what he’s saying. He rips the cloth away and gets his first glimpse of the doomed organ, and when Ash tries to cover himself, Elliot slaps his hand away.
“We need to work with the sheets off.”
He rolls his shoulders in circles and, after a moment, resumes his mumbling. “Jesus, Lover of chastity, Mary, Mother most pure…”
Vic has painkillers stashed in her duffel bag. Elliot knows how to cook smack, now, so while she cleans, he sits on the floor and watches the yellow lighter flame lick the spoon; he soaks the sterile cotton, draws fluid into the syringe.
“Obtain for me a deep sense of modesty which will be reflected in my external conduct—”
“Elliot, what are you doing?”
His attention doesn’t stray from the surprisingly difficult task of palpating Ash’s median cubital vein.
“He doesn’t want them, let’s start with benzocaine and—Elliot, don’t.”
Ash stops praying. “Don’t what?”
Elliot pierces the vein and depresses the plunger. A moment later, Ash’s eyes drift shut.
“Jesus, how much was that?”
“Dunno.”
“If you killed him, we’re in so much fucking shit—”
“Hey, Vic,” he says. “Uncertainty is a part of life.”
Ash fucked him in the same bed he shared with his father as a child. Though acid is its own headspace with its own rules, repelling language and, by extension, memory, Jake remembers that: visiting camp when he was still too young to shoot anything, the innocent joy of living in nature, according to nature.
He felt that with Ash. Ash must have felt it too.
Jake snaps out of his trance to find that he’s peeled all the scabs off his arms. He stands, closes the window, and takes inventory of his body. It’s a relaxation technique he never remembers to use, and it’s too depressing to be very relaxing. His knees ache, his skin is raw, and he feels grimy. He hasn’t showered in longer than he cares to admit. At this point in his life, he was supposed to be managing a small team of recent accounting graduates and contributing to his 401k. He was going somewhere. Now he’s motionless. No room for synchronicity in a stagnant universe.
A soft moan echoes from the kitchen, and he is once again reminded that right now, two strangers are burying a scalpel in the soft tissue of his best friend’s pubic mound. He’s spending the last of his savings on Ash.
Vic has has weird taste in music. Her collection is a combination of Latin jazz and albums with banjos prominently featured on the jackets. He pops on a record called Soul Sauce and sits on the floor as a metal xylophone fills the room with an upbeat melody. Nothing he can offer will ever be good enough, but still he keeps trying.
“Jake, can you come in here?”
He leaps to his feet. Ash is dead. He’s sure of it. He skids down the hall on threadbare socks and nearly slams into the doorframe. Ash is meeting his creator and Jake wasn’t even there to see him off. Fuck, he’s going to be so disappointed.
“What’s going on?” He asks. “What’s wrong, is he—”
Ash lies motionless on the table. His crotch is the color of raw chicken, smooth except for a plastic tube poking out from a line of stitches, like someone impaled a Ken doll on a drinking straw.
“He’s fine,” Vic says, catching Jake’s wrist before he topples the heart rate monitor. “We’re finished. I just wanna show you how to dress this and change the catheter, when the time comes. You’ll need to do it yourself.”
Jake lets out a long, pained sigh.
Elliot straightens up. His olive skin is damp and flushed. “He’ll also need painkillers for the first few days. You can buy some from us if you need to.”
“No, I’m…” His dick twinges in sympathy. Whether or not Ash was conscious, his body must know it’s been maimed.
Vic gently touches his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Jake shies away and braces himself on the door frame. His stomach churns. “I’m cool, just. Give me a second.”
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“Uh.” He rubs his eyes. “Cheese puffs?”
“Elliot, I need to get some food in him. Write up a care sheet, will you?”
Jake stumbles out of the room without hearing the rest of the conversation. He leans on the wall. The record has skidded to a halt and is skipping through the same three notes over and over and over.
The sky above Taco Hut is the color of rotting peaches. Vic doesn’t know who else is buying greasy Mexican food at five in the morning, but it’s not empty, so maybe their business model is the work of an unsung genius.
“Sorry for freaking out,” Jake says, crumpling the take-out bag and tossing it in the back seat.
Vic shrugs. “It ain’t for everybody.”
“Still. You probably need to be back there with the other guy, what’s his—?”
“Elliot.”
“Elliot, yeah. Doesn’t he need you there to—”
“I think we both prefer to work alone,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jake considers this for a long moment, stabbing the icy dregs of his soda with the straw. Vic has always despised the pity of strangers, but here she is, dumping the same discourtesy on him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not you. It’s this whole thing.”
Vic grunts and lights another cigarette.
“I get wanting to kill yourself, I mean I’m right there with him, but what he has going on is…I dunno. Something else.” Jake pulls a pack of cigs from his hoodie pocket, rolls down the window, and lights one himself.
“Why do you wanna kill yourself?” She asks dully. When somebody drops that bomb, you’re obligated to follow up.
“My parents think it’s because I’m bipolar, but I don’t even believe that. I think it’s ‘cause all my friends ditched me and my life is fucking pointless.”
“And you’re on a comedown,” Vic adds.
“What?”
She glances at the scabs on his arms. “I spent a lot of time with addicts. Is it meth?”
Jake glares at the scuffed-up Prius across the lot. “Adderall, Ritalin,” he says, and spends a minute chewing on his tongue. “Sometimes 4-CL-PVP and BZP. Some benzos and psychs, I dunno. I’m trying to quit.”
“You’re making me feel old,” Vic says. “I get it, though. Whatever it tak
es to get high.”
“Guess we’ve all done some bullshit on drugs.” Jake chuckles weakly. “Like how I met Ash. He was posting these insane personal ads trying to find somebody to murder him, like he’s too Catholic to kill himself or something, and I was—”
“Hang on,” she says. “I should let you know, I have to do a write-up on Ash. Don’t air out his dirty laundry unless you want my boss sniffing it too.”
“Boss?” Jake’s face falls. “Like, mafia shit?”
“No, nothing like that. Just some guy who helps me make connections. It’s like…” She wracks her brain for a plausible explanation. Latzke sells himself as an international kingpin, but as far as Vic knows, she’s one of about six people in the States. That hardly counts as ‘mafia shit.’
“Like a startup?” Jake supplies hopefully.
“Yeah,” she says, though he couldn’t be further from the mark.
“Awesome, I was trying to launch this tech startup that’s kind of like Tinder for weed, but I—” he furrows his brow. “I haven’t found the right…people. Sorry, I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Write whatever, I don’t care.”
“Alright.” She takes a long drag, burning her cig down to the filter, and flicks it out the window. It steams and sizzles on the wet pavement. This is the part where she’s supposed to start the car, but maybe it can wait another minute. Playing therapist is a lot easier than playing doctor. “You were saying something about Ash.”
“I don’t know what’s happening with Ash.” Jake’s self-conscious fingers peel a weeping scab off his forearm. “He wanted me to murder him but then I gave him acid and we—I mean, I pussied out, obviously, so I guess we’re doing the dick thing now. I dunno.”
“You don’t have to answer this,” she says, “but why are you footing the bill if it bothers you so much?”
Jake stubs his cigarette on his own jeans, leaving a black smear down his thigh. He shrugs. She starts the car and they drive for a few silent, dilapidated blocks. Jake reaches for the radio dial, but before he can turn it on, she says, “I know it’s not easy.”
“What’s not?”
“Anything,” she says. “Nothing is ever easy, and sometimes it feels like God is shitting on us. Look, can I give you some advice?”