Settright Road

by Jon Boilard

  There’s a black-and-white television hooked up to power in the garage by an orange extension cord that runs through the window in the kitchenette. Harlan watches reruns of The Price Is Right. The reception is not so good. He only barely gets three of the local channels.

  Some yahoos race old American cars down South Main. Harlan likes the way the chrome bumpers look. He stands under a tree and watches them go up the hill. Then here comes the police with the lights and sirens and everything. It looks like Westy behind the wheel, and Harlan figures those knuckleheads are lucky because he is one of the good ones at least. Then Sonny rolls up in his El Camino just out of the shop. He’s listening to metal and it’s cranked up really loud. Harlan flicks his cigarette butt into a pothole in the street and gets in.

  Turn that shit down already, he says.

  If it’s too loud then you’re too old.

  Fuck you.

  Sonny turns it down a little and then he continues to sing along and drum the steering wheel. Harlan puts his arm out the window and his head back against the sun-warmed vinyl seat.

  So where in fuck we going, he says.

  There’s this thing I heard about. But first we got to meet Spider.

  Ah that fucking guy. It sounds complicated already.

  Nah.

  Harlan doesn’t like it when things get too complicated. He needs a drink. He knows there’s always a half pint of Jim Beam in a speaker hole and he takes a couple healthy pulls from it and hands it to Sonny. Then they park in the dirt lot of the abandoned shoe factory.

  They said for us to go right in, Sonny says.

  Who’s they, Harlan says. You said Spider.

  Sonny lifts the plastic that’s hanging over a side entrance and holds it up for Harlan. Come on, Sonny says again.

  Harlan goes in first and Sonny follows and it takes a minute or two for their eyes to adjust. Rats scurry around and you can hear them in the shadows.

  Then somebody pats them down, tells them to put their arms up, to spread their feet apart.

  This is the one you told me about, another voice says.

  Sonny puts his hand on Harlan’s shoulder. Yeah that’s right, Sonny says. This here is my man.

  And together you can do this thing.

  Sure we can do it.

  I want to hear your friend say it.

  Harlan can see now and he takes it all in. He doesn’t say anything.

  Cat got your tongue.

  He looks at Spider, who’s leaning against a doorframe.

  I’m not a talker, Harlan says. That’s what he does.

  He nods toward Sonny.

  I see, Spider says.

  Harlan spits into the dust at his feet and eyeballs the bodyguard who is still looming, looking to get smacked.

  Let’s go, Harlan says. I don’t like this one bit.

  He pushes Sonny back out the way they came and Spider doesn’t say anything.

  Those are bad people there, Harlan says when they reach the car.

  No shit.

  I don’t know, man. But go ahead and break it down for me.

  You fight a guy or two. Five grand if you win.

  Harlan looks out the window at nothing and whistles.

  That’s a lot of fucking scratch, he says. A guy or two, huh.

  That’s right. Like tournament style.

  What guys.

  His boys. He brings them in from the city.

  Where and when.

  He says we can pick a location. The weekend.

  Jesus Christ.

  With that kind of bread you can steal Annabelle away from that Greek fucking nigger.

  Yeah, well, I guess that’s the thing.

  Darling Nikki isn’t at her place but her roommate lets him wait inside. They smoke a blunt. Her name is Celia. She’s a bohemian little thing. After an hour Nikki comes home and looks excited to see Harlan. She hugs him and sits on his lap and Celia rolls another one. They all three watch television and he rubs Darling Nikki’s back and shoulders. Celia falls asleep on the floor with her mouth open and Harlan covers her with a blanket.

  You’re so nice, Darling Nikki says.

  That’s just a front.

  Well your back’s nice too.

  Harlan laughs. He likes that she can make him laugh. Annabelle makes him laugh or at least she could when they started out but now she has put him on a break. Whatever that means.

  Nikki tells him Joe isn’t coming around so much anymore. He seems to be getting the hint, she says. And she has a line on a duplex in Greenfield. It’s a good place for her right now.

  I’m in a good place, she says. And I have you to thank.

  Well, go ahead and thank me already.

  She works him from the outside of his pants with her hand. Then she unzips his fly and leads him like that to her room. Her dog is sleeping on a pillow on the floor and he looks up. Harlan makes a comment about performance anxiety in front of an audience and Darling Nikki laughs and shoos Bushy from the room and locks her door.

  My poor baby, she says.

  Him or me.

  Him, because you’re about to be all right.

  She gets on her knees and undoes his pants and he watches the top of her head move up and down for several minutes until he finally relaxes and she even stays down there so that there isn’t a mess. She looks up at him and then lets go his ass cheeks.

  Where’d you learn that, he says.

  Some things you don’t need to learn.

  Is that right.

  Like you with the fights, she says, standing. Just comes natural.

  Then she pushes him playfully back onto the twin mattress that she uses. It doesn’t have a box spring. She catches him by surprise and he actually does lose his balance. He struggles through a brief bout with vertigo.

  Not so tough now, she says.

  Never said I was.

  No you didn’t, she says. But everybody else did.

  Lila is outside having a smoke and Harlan bums one off of her. She can’t smoke inside because of the oxygen tanks. They joke about what a mess that would make and Harlan even pictures it in his mind. Together they watch the full moon rise round and perfect. It’s that curious time of day when the sun and the moon are in the sky at the same time. That nothing time caught between day and night. Not quite one or the other. Harlan’s favorite part of the day, in fact.

  A blood-red sunset is draped over Mount Toby.

  I had to call the volunteers the other day, she says. Everything just stopped. His heart and everything. He wasn’t even breathing.

  So that was it.

  Maybe, Lila says. Almost.

  Harlan looks at his old man.

  I panicked, she says. I called Boho and the fire truck came. They generally do. Harlan looks at Lila and she looks away from him.

  They brought him back like but took him to Cooley Dick to make sure, she says.

  Should’ve just let him go like that, Harlan says. He doesn’t mean to upset her but she cries just the same. I mean that wouldn’t be too bad a way to go, he says.

  I thought of that afterward. Of you. I knew you’d say that, she says. I looked for you downstairs.

  I was out.

  You were out, she says. You’re always out. So they kept him overnight for observation. I just got him back.

  How is he now.

  Same as always.

  Harlan can smell his father. Lila cries some more. Harlan just stands there and lets her get it all out.

  Bitch gives him warts and he’s not even sure which one. A small doctor with a foreign accent and delicate brown hands freezes them off Harlan’s pecker. He’s going to quit all the others, Sally and Nikki and whatever else pussy gets thrown his way. He doesn’t need it anymore. It’s become a hassle more than anything, and Annabelle wants to escape with him—that’s how she termed it. Escape to Vermont or New Hampshire or where-the-fuck-ever. Escape from the fighting and the stripping and the whoring.

  We’re both whores, she’d said to
him one time when they were just starting out together. And so how did we end up like this, she’d said.

  How could we not, was all he could think.

  But they’ve each managed to save a bit of scratch, although he doesn’t know what else he’d do once they got there, wherever. He figures he could get a job doing roadwork if there are any such jobs left.

  I don’t want to go somewhere new and do the same shit, he said.

  Yeah, I’m done with this wrong life, too, she said.

  She said it like she meant it but Harlan wasn’t convinced they could either one of them pull it off. Even back then it had seemed like a fucking pipe dream. And now they’re on a break.

  He calls her on the phone.

  Anyhow, he says.

  So anyhow I’m going away for a few days, she said. It’s no big deal.

  The Greek takes Annabelle to Atlantic City. They stay at the Trump Towers and he plays blackjack until five in the morning. Annabelle gets bored and wanders around the casino, people watching. When they meet back at the room she’s hammered and says he can do whatever he wants as long as he hurries. But what he wants is for her to use toys on herself while he squeezes his own juice out. It doesn’t take long. The next day she drinks watered-down Mai Tais by the shitty little pool. There’s a group of professional bowlers lounging on the cement deck. They try to get her attention but she’s good at ignoring drunk rednecks. Finally one gets up the balls to approach her, and he’s all right, but she tells him to fuck off and so he does. His buddies laugh at him and speculate aloud about her sexual preferences. She shuts her eyes and tunes out all the noise and she thinks about Harlan. He said he was going to kill the fucking Greek.

  She believes that he will, that he can, but she is more worried for him than for the other one.

  He’d do it for sure if he knew she was with him right now.

  She shouldn’t have mentioned the casino trip to Harlan. She saw it as her chance to get away and think. And she doesn’t blame Harlan for being pissed, but she had explained that there are some definite pluses to what the Greek has put on the table; she’ll be living in a nice pad rent-free, so she can stop dancing for money and focus on her poetry, for example. And the Greek’s various connections in the printing industry might be able to help get her work published. These are the things he has promised her. The downside of course is that he is a disgusting pig and she’s going to have to let him ravage her a couple times a week. But she’s been there before. She can handle that. There’s a place she goes inside her head where nobody can touch her. She learned about that special place as a young girl and can transport herself there with the blink of an eye. But Harlan can’t stand the thought of her being with another man like that. It drives him crazy.

  We can still be together, she’d said.

  He’ll never even know, she’d said. Nothing will ever change between us.

  But they both know that is a huge crock of shit.

  ______

  Harlan’s hands are hard as marble. He hits the dude’s jaw so square it feels like a bag of sand. Sonny cheers. Spider from the shoe factory and his bodyguard are there to watch, even though they don’t usually get many spectators. He nods in approval but Harlan ignores him. It’s the last one of the night and Sonny collects the money from everybody. Then he speaks to Spider but Harlan doesn’t hear what they are saying, doesn’t even want to know. He puts a clean T-shirt on and drinks a shot of warm whiskey. He sits on an old stool that is peeling paint.

  He coughs blood.

  Sonny gives him most of the money. That’s the deal. Nice work, Sonny says. Hey, our friend was impressed.

  Your fucking friend.

  Whatever.

  Harlan spits more blood and puts his head in his hands. He feels around his mouth with his tongue for a loose tooth. He spits it on the cement floor.

  That night Annabelle stops by his father’s place and says she wants him back.

  I thought we were on break. You and the Greek and whatnot.

  Fuck that, she says. I miss you.

  Lila snorts. She’s sitting on Harlan’s bed with him. She’d brought him aspirin and orange juice and he’s drinking it. Annabelle looks at Lila and dismisses her with a wave of her hand like to call her a skanky old bitch.

  Well, she says to Harlan.

  Well what.

  You coming or what.

  Where in fuck you been.

  I went to Atlantic City with him. You remember.

  You can’t just waltz in here with his cock on your breath.

  Annabelle can’t believe what she’s hearing. She’d convinced herself that Harlan had been pining away for her. She looks at Harlan and at Lila, then back at Harlan. A light bulb goes on in her head.

  She has convinced herself of something else now.

  You got to be shitting me, she says. Are you banging your father’s ass-wiper.

  Jesus fucking Christ, Harlan says.

  Lila snorts again and drinks her orange juice in three gulps. There’s something else in there too that gets her through the day, most days anyhow.

  That’s it, Annabelle says. He’s dying up there and you’re fucking this washed-up bitch, she says. Splitting his social security probably.

  Lila stands up.

  You always said that’s all she was after, Annabelle says.

  Lila balls up her little hand and throws it at Annabelle. It hits her in the face and takes her completely by surprise but doesn’t do much damage at all.

  Harlan gets up and bum rushes Annabelle before she can react. He practically carries her to her Z28, puts her inside. Get the fuck out of here, he says.

  You cocksucker. I’m with the fucking Greek then.

  As soon as she says it Harlan wants to pound on somebody. It hurts to hear those words. The hell you are, he says.

  She starts the engine and pops the clutch and has to start it again. Harlan watches until she’s around the corner and he can’t hear her grinding the Z28’s gears anymore.

  Lila is crying inside.

  Sorry about that, he says.

  Oh, that’s not on you, she says. I never did like that one.

  Yeah.

  It’s not the money, you know. I don’t want you to think that’s what it is, she says. The only thing.

  I know.

  Did you really say that.

  Well, I don’t mean half what I say.

  I mean it does help, she says. The checks. I won’t lie. It helps me some days when he’s really awful, she says. To think about it.

  All right, Harlan says. You don’t have to explain nothing, I know how the world works.

  I didn’t even know about it at first, she says. That he even had a pot to piss in. Then when I found out he was already in such bad shape.

  Come here. He hugs Lila as best he can and she shivers against him.

  It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, she says.

  What’s that now, he says.

  You and me.

  Ah, he says, looking over her head out the window. He has never seen the sky so fucking blue. Sometimes there’s God, he thinks, as a swarm of black crows alights just beyond the grain silo in the field across the way and other kinds of birds sit on a telephone wire that alternatively stretches and sags above Route 5. Harlan doesn’t even want his old man’s money. Lila can have it all. The house and the money and every-fucking-thing. He figures she deserves it. She’s the one who has kept him out of the hospital or the nursing home or the graveyard. She’s the one who has taken all the abuse, replacing his mother. Harlan likes Lila and never really thought that she was just in it for the checks.

  Mary asks Sonny for some nose candy.

  Nobody calls it that anymore, he says.

  Whatever, she says. You know what I mean.

  The great white snake, he smartasses.

  Let’s chase the great white snake then.

  What do I get in return.

  What do you want.

  Sonny laughs his laugh because
she knows exactly what he wants.

  There’s a zip lock bag in his sock drawer and he sets up a couple fat lines for her on the glass top of his coffee table. She uses a credit card to straighten them out and then hoovers them up her nose.

  Where’s your sister at.

  What you want with her.

  Nothing. I’m just asking.

  We’re not talking right now, Mary says. That bitch has mental problems, she says.

  Sonny takes a couple quick toots just to be sociable. I’m supposed to meet Harlan, he says. Want to come, he asks.

  Where.

  The Bloody Brook.

  That fucking place.

  Yeah. I know.

  All right.

  Mary sits right up against him in the car, like they’re going for couple of the year. It feels good to him when she does that.

  This is like high school music, she says. What is this shit.

  Creedence Clearwater.

  Jesus Christ, she says. That’s right.

  Sonny opens the glove box and fumbles around with some tapes. Mary takes them from him and looks them over and snickers. She looks at one and then drops it on the floor and then does the same with the next. Then she starts fooling with the radio dial, cruising the airwaves for something good.

  Boy, you are out of touch, she says.

  There’s nothing wrong with those, he says. And you better pick them up.

  She picks up the cassettes and puts them back carefully. I’m just saying, she says. That shit’s old as fuck.

  She knows he’s in a bad way now and so she rubs his leg until he relaxes and then she puts on a station he likes. Sonny shakes his head, enjoys the way she’s grooving in her seat. Then they’re out in the street and Sonny hits her. But it isn’t that hard and it won’t even leave a mark. In his mind, the problem is that she’s a fucking drama queen. He considers it more of a love tap than anything but she’s screaming bloody murder. And of course he has to shut her up. It isn’t like she hasn’t been touched like that before. It isn’t a new thing to her, getting knocked around a bit. So Sonny doesn’t understand why she’s getting all excited. When she finally calms down he tries to help her stand up but she just stays huddled against the curb, sobbing.