Until the Last Dog Dies

by Robert Guffey

  “Who cares what Mike thinks?” She swung open the door and dragged me into the hall. A hefty biker dude with an incongruous tattoo of Alice in Wonderland on his hairy forearm pushed past us, flashing us an annoyed glance. A whole line of people were waiting outside, sighing and tapping their feet against the carpet. I could see them looking at us sideways. I ignored them as best as possible.

  Esthra took me into the bedroom at the end of the hall. I don’t think she cared where she was going, just as long as it wasn’t the room where Mike was holding court. A half-dozen spacecases were lounging about on a circular waterbed, smoking marijuana and listening to an old Tom Waits album.

  In the darkest corner of the room were a clump of empty beanbags near a closed door. Esthra was about to plop down in one of the beanbags when I heard a familiar, hyena-like laugh. Karen Griffin rarely laughed, but when she did she sounded like a pack of hyenas giggling to themselves as they fought over the corpse of a baby tiger.

  I opened the door to find myself staring at another bathroom. This one was a lot smaller than the one in the hall, or perhaps it just seemed that way because there were so many people packed inside it. Griffin was sitting on the counter with her legs dangling over the edge, laughing uproariously at Twee-Boy19, he of the now-infamous Neo-Gothic Hipster Peanut Gallery. TweeBoy19 was leaning against the wall across from Griffin, sinking a needle into his pale arm. Danny sat behind Griffin, his hands resting on her stomach, his long legs wrapped around her slender waist. The rest of the Peanut Gallery was sitting on the edge of the bath, watching TweeBoy19 with a strange, dull-eyed fascination. On the lowered toilet seat sat a burly, olive-skinned man who seemed somewhat familiar, though I couldn’t quite place his face right off the bat. Black wraparound sunglasses obscured the top half of his face.

  Danny’s eyes grew wide when he saw me. He smiled and said, “Hey, Elliot, what brings you here?”

  “Oh, I was just passing through,” I said as casually as possible.

  “How the hell did you get here?”

  “Well, I was hitchhiking along the side of the freeway and this clown just happened to pick me up—”

  Esthra peeked over my shoulder and said, “Don’t listen to him, he exaggerates by nature. He opened for our band, so we decided to drag him here. We’re thinking of making him our mascot.” She mussed up my hair as if I were a little kid.

  Almost every eyeball in the room popped out of its socket upon seeing Esthra. Even the Peanut Gallery (whose sexual proclivities might have fallen anywhere in between total asexuality and forced group orgies with hairless Filipino boys—it was hard to tell which) seemed to oggle Esthra’s scantily-clad body with an obvious amount of prurient interest.

  “Hey, you’re in that Doktor Delgado band, aren’t you?” Griffin said. Esthra just nodded. “You’re pretty damn good. You want a fix? On the house.”

  By this time TweeBoy19 had drawn another shot into the needle from a moist cotton ball perched upon a blackened spoon. He offered the needle to Esthra, who held up her hand in a gesture of refusal. TweeBoy19 seemed confused.

  “She already had some with her Cocoa Puffs this morning,” I said, which was meant to be an absurd non sequitur, but Twee-Boy19 actually appeared to accept this as a rational answer.

  Esthra leaned toward me and whispered, “A Cocoa Puff is a mixture of PCP, coke, and marijuana.”

  I slapped myself on the forehead and said, “Jesus Christ, you can’t say anything anymore! You mention dog food and it turns out to be code for crack cocaine.”

  Esthra said, “No, no, dog food is heroin. At least in Cincinnati.”

  I could only roll my eyes at the ceiling. In this day and age any random noun is suspect. You could get raided by the DEA just for trying to order food for your kid’s poodle over the phone.

  I mentioned earlier that almost every eyeball in the room popped out upon seeing Esthra. The only person who didn’t seem to care was the burly man sitting on the toilet. His gaze hadn’t left the needle since we’d entered the room, like a house bound cat watching a bird skip along a tree branch just outside the window. When Esthra refused the heroin the man said, “Shit, pass it here then, man.”

  I did a double take upon hearing the voice. I’m not sure why I didn’t recognize him before; perhaps it was the sunglasses. Without a moment’s hesitation the man unzipped his pants and whipped out a thirteen-inch dick with the circumference of a beer can. Yes, it was Chino, the strange Mexican who had molested me on the bus! I had the urge to run screaming from the room, the initial symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome already triggering a mental meltdown in my crumbling skull. Instead my feet remained glued to the linoleum floor as my eyes locked onto the grotesque, phantasmagoric scene before me.

  Chino said, “Please excuse my manners, but all the surface veins have collapsed on my body so I, uh, kind of have to jab the needle through the veins in my dick, you see. Sorry. Please look away if you can’t handle it.”

  I didn’t look away. I was both repulsed and fascinated as I watched Chino ease the needle into a bulging blue vein that ran along the top of the penis before disappearing into a wild forest of curly black pubic hair. I glanced up at the Peanut Gallery. Judging by their stoic expressions their interest seemed far more clinical than mine. A tension-charged silence filled the air; I could sense that even the most blasé junkies in the room were holding their breath. At the exact second that Chino pressed the plunger on the syringe I released a low whistle that sounded like the descent of an incoming missile. Esthra burst out laughing. Even the Peanut Gallery cracked a smile. A mixture of a smirk and a scowl appeared on Chino’s face as he attempted to keep his hand steady. After the brownish liquid had disappeared into his vein, he slipped the needle out with a doctor’s care. Pure, undiluted rage flared up in his bloodshot eyes. I suspect his rage was fueled by a whole pharmacy of mind-altering substances.

  Chino slammed the needle down on the counter. “What the fuck’re you doing?” he screamed. “I could’ve missed that shot, man!”

  Griffin was now staring at Chino with a bemused look on her face. “Who the hell are you anyway? We didn’t invite you in here, did we?” She glanced around at her friends as if looking for an answer.

  Chino opened his mouth to respond, but before he could do so I said, “Oh, that’s Chino. He likes little boys.” I don’t know why I chose to say that. I guess I thought it was funny (but of course that’s always my excuse).

  Chino’s anger filled eyes swivelled toward me as he rose from the toilet, his pants dropping to the floor. Then his anger turned to puzzlement. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  I began to reach into my jacket. “That’s right. I’m connected to the Mexican Mafia and we don’t like you mouthin’ off about those two guys you killed.”

  Chino backed up against the counter, raising his hands until they were level with his chest. Sweat began to trickle down his forehead. “Uh, look, man, I-I didn’t tell no one important… .”

  “Only every commuter on the Rapid Transit Authority!” I poked my index finger into the inner lining of my jacket, hoping he’d think it was a gun. “Shut your pie hole, Chewey. This is your last warning. The next time we catch you mouthin’ off about those corpses, we’ll saw off that horse-dick of yours and feed it to you like a kielbasa. Now get the hell out of here!” Chino nodded and reached down to pull up his pants. “Forget that!” I said. “Just scoot on out of here and don’t look back.” To my surprise, Chino proceeded to do exactly that. When he was halfway through the door I said, “Oh, and if we catch you with your hands on the little boys again we’ll tie your dick to the fender of a Jaguar and floor it, ya hear?”

  Chino nodded as he scrambled out of the bathroom in an awkward, crouched position with his giant schlong swinging back and forth in the air like a clock pendulum. The spacecases lying on the bed watched Chino dash past them, then erupted into nonstop giggles, no doubt thinking they were having some kind of shared hallucination. At that mome
nt Tom Waits’s “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” began playing on the stereo—one of those odd details that happens to stick in your brain during surreal moments such as this.

  Along with the spacecases I watched him run out of the bedroom, then glanced back at my friends in the bathroom. They were all staring at me as if I possessed some sort of mystical power. Since I couldn’t quite imagine being able to top that particular performance (every comedian knows the value of quitting on a high-note), and since I didn’t really want to engage in further flatlining experiments with Danny’s little post-mortem pals, I decided to bail out while I still could.

  “Well, gotta go bust in some heads for the Santiago Boys,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “See you later, Danny, Griffin, et al.!” I turned on my heel and walked right out of there, Esthra following close behind me.

  “What the hell was all that about?” she said.

  “Oh, I never told you about my ties to the Mexican Mafia? They call me Elliot ‘The Fighting Enchilada’ Greeley. I’m infamous in the Tijuana underground.”

  Once again we found ourselves in the hallway. This hallway was so packed full of people it took a hell of a long time just to fight our way through half of it. At one point I was looking at Esthra and not really paying attention to where I was going, so I crashed into someone coming out of the bathroom. “Oh, excuse me,” both of us said at once. Since my face was smashed into his chest, the first thing I saw of the man was his tie. I thought it was pretty damn snappy; it consisted of striking, fractal-like geometric patterns that immediately caught one’s eye, particularly if your eye was pressed up against it.

  I took a few steps back and looked up at the man’s bloody face. “Brother Lundberg?” I said.

  The blond-haired, blue-eyed Mormon glanced from side to side as if searching for a convenient escape route. “Uh … ,” he said.

  I asked him exactly what Danny had asked me only a few minutes before: “How the hell did you get here?”

  He said, “Uh … well, I was handing out copies of the Book of Mormon door to door when I came to this house. I deduced from the loud music that this was some kind of den of iniquity and knocked on the door. Some strange bearded man invited me in and gave me this funny cigarette.” He held up a fat roach that was giving off as much smoke as a brush-fire in Malibu. “I began wandering around the house, preaching the word of Joseph Smith while looking at all the weird colors on the wall.” The walls, by the way, were bare and white. “Then I felt myself getting hungry all of a sudden, so I went into the kitchen to find some Oreos. As I’m opening up the refrigerator this half-naked Mexican with what looked like a thirteen inch member zipped past me and rushed out the back door. It was at this point that I began to suspect there was something odd about this cigarette. I felt myself having a panic attack, and whenever I have a panic attack I throw up, so I ran into the bathroom past a whole line of people and puked all over the toilet. If only someone hadn’t been sitting on it at the time everything would’ve been fine. I’m not sure what happened next. All I know is that this clown leaped up off the toilet and began beating me with a leather bag packed full of heavy objects. At this point I knew I was hallucinating. What other explanation could there be? But I’m not quite sure I understand how a hallucination can beat you as hard as this.” He touched his fingertips to the streams of blood still trickling down his face.

  “What happened to the clown?” I asked.

  Lundberg gestured toward the bathroom with his thumb. “He caught one whiff of my cigarette and collapsed.”

  Sure enough, Esthra and I peeked into the bathroom to see Ogo sprawled out on the floor, pinkish vomit staining his black and white outfit. I looked at Esthra and said, “Okay, that’s it, things are getting way too weird around here.”

  I patted Lundberg on the shoulder and said, “Give my regards to Brother Fleetwood if you ever get home again,” then made a bee-line through the living room, past the groupies surrounding Mike, who was now singing an acoustic version of Lou Reed’s “I Wanna Be Black,” and out the front door.

  When I reached the porch I heard Esthra’s voice behind me. She said, “Where are you going?”

  I turned to see her standing in the doorway. I could still hear Mike singing within; he hadn’t wavered for one second, not even while seeing his girlfriend chase another man out of the house.

  “I’m gettin’ the hell out of this nuthouse,” I said. “You want to join me? I’ve got some vintage Marx Brothers movies back home. We can cuddle, drink hot cocoa, and watch Duck Soup (Paramount, 1933). What do you say?”

  Esthra closed the door behind her and joined me out on the porch. She smiled. “It sounds lovely, but how are you going to get back home?”

  “Well, I was thinking of stealing Ogo’s van.”

  “Mmmm, I don’t think he’d like that.”

  “Really? Maybe it’s a bad idea then. I don’t want to end up with a nose like Lundberg’s.”

  “Who was that guy?”

  “He’s a member of the Mormon Mafia. They’re fighting with the Mexican Mafia to take over the dope trade in Southern California.”

  Esthra laughed. “Do you ever give a serious answer?”

  “What makes you think that wasn’t a serious answer?”

  “Okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “I’ll just accept anything you say as true. It’ll probably be easier that way.”

  “So if I say that Mike’s a putrid scumbag you’ll accept that as true?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the closed door, then said, “Yes, but I can’t promise I’ll do anything about it.”

  “Not even hop into a cab with me and head on back to my place for a quick screening of Duck Soup?”

  She stared at the ground and shook her head. “Mike wouldn’t like it.”

  “Wouldn’t like Duck Soup? C’mon, how could you not like Duck Soup?”

  “No, I mean he wouldn’t like me going home with you.”

  “Why? My intentions are entirely honorable.” This was true, of course, as true as the gang warfare between the Mexicans and the Mormons.

  “I know that, but I don’t want to give him any more ammunition than he already has.”

  “What was that whole scene in the bathroom for then?” She began pouting. “I know. I feel guilty about that now. I was just so angry… .”

  “You had a right to be. He was making fun of you in front of all those—” I saw her biting on her red thumbnail, looking down at the ground with worry lines creasing her brow, and realized she was beyond reason. She was hooked into Mike as much as Mike was hooked into junk. “Oh, forget it,” I said, fed up with the madness, and walked away.

  I got all the way to the sidewalk before I heard Esthra’s voice again. “Where are you going?” she repeated, this time with an edge of desperation like a whiny little child who wants two dolls instead of one. I knew then that she was never going to make up her mind. She didn’t know what she really wanted.

  I turned to face her. Even in the dark, with an entire driveway separating us, you could tell she was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman you’d risk your life for just to hold in your arms for the briefest of moments. I contemplated the situation, then said, “There’s a scene in A Day at the Races where Groucho lays his watch down on the table beside him to wash his hands. When he sees Dr. Steinberg staring at the watch, Groucho grabs it and tosses it into the water. ‘I’d rather have it rusty than missing,’ he says.” I smiled. “I think that applies to this situation just as well. Au revoir!”

  And I walked away as fast as possible before I could hear her voice again.

  CHAPTER 13

  Books, Baths and Blowjobs

  (October 4, 2014)

  The night had been such an all-around adrenalin rush that I wasn’t able to go to sleep until about five in the morning. After the taxi dropped me off at my apartment I ate a dinner of leftover spaghetti from the night before, then climbed into bed and lay there staring at the ceiling. I f
elt both exhausted and hyper at the same time. I turned on the radio and listened to strange people talking about UFOs and Bigfoot and the coming End Times. I wasn’t really paying attention. Instead I was thinking of Esthra. With a little more sweet talk I might’ve convinced her to come home with me. Any normal guy would’ve done exactly that. But I’m not normal. I have a low self-esteem, especially when it comes to women, and I give up much too easily. I tried to convince myself it was for the best. After all, who wants to be on the hit list of some paranoid punker hopped up on a speedball or some other equally nefarious illicit substance?

  Nevertheless, my doubts triggered old memories, a whole laundry list of Lost Opportunities (I can’t help but think of the phrase in capital letters), but one in particular always stands out because it’s the earliest. Back in eighth grade, during a theatre class, I broke character on stage to do a brilliant impromptu monologue insulting the teacher who had been riding me the entire year; she was sitting in the front row and maintained an uneasy smile on her face as I confessed to the illicit affair we’d been carrying on for the past twelve weeks. I had the audience in stitches. That was the very first time I told something more complicated than fart jokes in front of a large group of people. It felt exhilarating and addictive to just let the craziness flow out of my mouth without any planning whatsoever. I got such a high from it I wanted to do it over and over again. I felt new possibilities opening up within me.

  After my little performance I slunk off-stage and, for some reason I’ll never be able to fathom, took a seat in the darkest shadows of the auditorium as far away from the rest of the class as I could possibly get. Why did I do that? It should’ve been a moment of triumph, and instead I ostracized myself from everyone I had just entertained. It was almost as if an outside force had taken over my body and forced me to be isolated from the others.

  While my fellow classmates performed their scenes, a cute little brunette with mocha-colored skin and soft brown eyes approached me and told me I had done a wonderful job. “You should be a standup comedian,” she said, “you’re that good.”