by Jon Boilard
Come on, he says. Let’s go.
Fucking whore.
Come on.
He takes my arm and I let him because he’s my brother and he is soft.
You’re lucky she didn’t call the cops, he says.
I tell him he’s the lucky one. He looks at me.
That I don’t fuck you up, I say.
Oh, that. I thought you meant lucky I have you as a role model.
Yeah, that too, I say, trying not to smile.
But I laugh and he does too. The Queer can always make me laugh. Even when we were coming up. He tells me Jake is still pissed about the other night, mostly at our mother but also at him. I tell him not to worry about it. Jake will stay away for a few weeks, maybe go shoot some ducks at his camp near Russian River, and then he’ll forgive and forget. The guy can’t hold a grudge. It isn’t in his chemistry. The Queer agrees and feels better now—except for the bruised skull Jake gave him Sunday. He’s supposed to meet a guy at Kimo’s. We take a cab to Pine Street and I pay for it. It’s all pole smokers but I don’t care. My brother orders a gay drink that is some kind of martini, which makes me laugh too. I buy a couple rounds for him and his buddy Nick, who seems like good people, and that puts me at ease; the Queer deserves to be happy. Then the trolley comes shoving down California lugging tourists to the financial district. I smell Greek pizza and Swan’s oysters and the flower shop.
John P. tells me Mike Shannon is banging Nancy behind my back. I don’t say anything. Apparently it’s been going on for months and I’m the last to know. My head starts to hurt. I look around for somebody to hit but the joint is empty. He pours me a shot of Jack Daniel’s. The front of his shirt is dry because Mario finally hired a Mexican. Then I soak the suit I borrowed from Mike in gasoline and burn it on the sidewalk. Mrs. DiMartini yells from her second-story sublet that she’s going to call the fire marshal.
Lorraine invites me to dinner. She slow-cooked corned beef for her godson’s baptism and has leftovers. Garlic mashed potatoes. Cherry-tomato salad with goat cheese. She puts it on a plate for me. I can’t stand the thought of eating. I look at it for a few minutes and she sits there watching me. Then I tell her about Nancy Martini. At first she looks dejected, moves her chair closer to mine, takes my hands in hers and cries. My narrow wrists, blue-rope veins. She smiles. Jesus. There it is again. I almost smile too.
You’re wasting away, she says. A fucking skeleton.
Right.
Well, now it’s just you and me.
She’s glad Nancy’s out of the picture. She wants to mend me. She likes projects. Lorraine gets up and lets me take her pants off. Then I’m standing behind her and she puts me deep inside and we bump against each other like that for a while. That’s how I fix things, make them right at least for the time being. Besides the various substances and the fights, that’s the only way I know how. She wants me to finish but I can’t and she gets upset and cries and so we keep trying until we’re too tired. Finishing isn’t critical to me—it’s the trying. Once I’m there it’s always disappointing; I end up empty and alone.
She falls asleep and I go into the bathroom until my hands are sticky with the mess I finally make. I clean up. The meal is still on the table. I stab a piece of cold meat with a thin layer of fat on the edge and take a bite. Chewing is unfamiliar and I go slow and I only gag a little. I use a stale heel of buttered sourdough to soak up the last of the gravy. Then the sun comes up over rooftops and among white clouds and a bony brown bird sits on a buzzing telephone wire. Startled, it flaps madly and disappears from sight but returns within seconds. There are others too, gray with yellow eyes and bigger wings, but this one stands out. I watch it forever. My head hurts and I get in bed and rest it against Lorraine. She whispers bullshit in my ear until I nearly believe it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These stories appeared, sometimes in different form, in the following publications: The Stinging Fly (“Just the Thing”), Berkeley Fiction Review (“Six Stones Down the Mountain,” “The Mohawk Trail,” and “Cut Me in Pieces and Hide” ), Necessary Fiction (“Dark Days”), SubTerrain Magazine (“Storm Chaser”), The Baltimore Review (“Settright Road”), Whiskey Island Review (“Nice Sleep”), Xavier Review (“Barnyard”), The MacGuffin (“Nuts”), Midway Journal (“I Won’t Wear Black”), Dirty Dishes (“Flunky”), Front and Centre (“Moon or Heaven”), Event (“Stay Where You Are”), Wilderness Literary Review (“Watch Out, Townie Boy”), Puerto del Sol (“Damn the Wind”), Thought Magazine (“Main Street Incident”), and The Dalhousie Review (“Listen to that Train Whistle Blow”).
The author would like to acknowledge the talented and big-hearted people at Dzanc Books for agreeing to go on this journey with him and then never looking back. Damn the torpedoes.