by Alex Behr
Terrence asked, “Where’d you hear that from?”
“The Postman Always Rings Twice. The original.” Barb sipped her special scotch, which erupted in her mouth like smoke. The bottle came in a cardboard box printed with a map of Scotland. It made her feel well traveled. She used to drink with her mother; that’s how they got along best. Her mother had cooked meatloaf every time a new man came into their lives. One time she wore a new silk blouse, and the new man, who had red, splotchy skin, pulled her to him, stretching the blouse tight in the back and bunching it into a ball. Her mother turned up Willie Nelson on the radio and kissed this man with her tongue. The spices popped and exploded, and the ground beef charred in the pan.
Barb liked her scotch with ice and lemon. Terrence took a splash of Coke with his. “May I?” she asked, tipping the bottle toward him. She actually felt okay, maybe even human, but not exactly feminine. She tightened her bra strap and chewed on an egg salad sandwich from the office fridge. She pressed the soft yolk against her teeth. “My mom told me, ‘I bet you’ll end up knowing a lot about scotch before you die.’ What a thing to say to your daughter, huh?”
He cheered her on to drink more. “So why didn’t Jake call?” he asked.
“This place is a dump. He’s selling it. He doesn’t care about us. He never has.” Barb swirled the scotch around the plastic cup. She needed to see Jake’s body, but her brain wanted more alcohol swimming around in it.
“I bet I could turn it around—once I get paid.” He tipped his glass toward Gloria’s room. “Think your sister will join us?”
“She likes to sleep a lot.”
“Are you sure you don’t have more ideas about Jake somewhere in those curls?” he asked.
“I can still play cards with you if you want,” Barb said.
Terrence tore open a package of Good & Plenty candy and put a handful of licorice in his mouth. Barb looked up the stairs, hoping Gloria would find something to watch on TV. Instead, she saw Gloria walking down slowly, gripping the handrail.
Gloria walked to the table and opened her palm. She dumped out a handful of quartz pebbles collected by the creek. She stuck each one in a hole in the table. Some fell through and some stayed suspended. “Where’s my scotch, honey?” she asked Terrence. He dipped his finger in his drink for her.
“I’ll get another bottle,” Barb said. She stood and swayed, jiggling her hips. She had to check Jake’s room. She unlocked his bedroom by the office and turned on the light. Jake’s blood and piss formed a misshapen angel on the rug. His body looked purplish-red. Barb squeezed her stomach under her shirt and tried to think. She leaned down and put her hand on the back of his neck. Falling to her knees, she held the edge of the comforter, whispering half-words and moaning. One time in the woods, by his property, he’d put a piece of sap on her tongue. It turned rancid in her mouth and she spat it into the creek. How she wished for that sap now, or anything he could give her.
The door opened and Gloria and Terrence walked in.
“I didn’t mean it,” Barb said. “I didn’t know what to do with him all day. What could I do?”
Gloria walked to the TV, bolted to a small table. She turned on a nature show and kept her finger pressed on the remote’s volume button until the green volume bars crossed the screen. The narrator droned on about the mating habits of tarantulas. Gloria placed the remote on the TV, next to cans of Tecate and Sprite. She crouched behind the TV set, wiping the rug with the corner of her shirt. “The ants are going to come in,” Gloria said. “You guys spilled the soda. You didn’t clean it up. Why didn’t you at least put a towel down?”
“Gloria, honey. Look what’s happening,” Barb said. “Jake’s gone.” She wiped her bloody hand across her shirt.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Terrence said to Barb. He knelt down next to Jake’s body. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier, you idiot?” He smacked Barb in the mouth. She put her hand to it to stop the pain, but refused to cry.
Gloria rubbed Jake’s hair. “How could you do this?” she asked Barb softly. “Why are you such a monster?”
Barb pushed Gloria back. “He’s mine,” she said.
Terrence stood and looked at his watch. “We need to think,” he said. “I need his pot plants. Tell me where he’s growing them. Don’t bullshit me.” Terrence spoke in a deadpan voice, as if he dealt with dead bodies all the time, but Barb saw his hands shake. He lit a cigarette to disguise his panic.
“I can take you there,” Barb said. “But what about him?” She pointed to Jake.
“He’ll come with us,” Terrence said. Barb pulled the flowered bedspread off the mattress and wrapped Jake’s body in it, as if he were her doll. She looked at the headboard she used to grip. Reaching her arms under Jake’s torso, Barb asked Gloria for help. Terrence picked up his legs but Barb said, “No. Gloria’s got to do it.”
On the TV, a man in a blazer and jeans pushed a woman in a garden swing. She pumped her legs and threw her head back so her neck made a smooth curve. Her laugh boomed out of the speakers until Terrence pulled the cord from the outlet.
Gloria and Barb half-dragged, half-carried the body to the Falcon and laid it in the trunk. The moon, almost full, was held in place by swaying, gray-green clouds.
A few miles from the motel, Barb told Terrence to turn down a dirt road. He swore, saying he almost missed it, the woods were so dark. The Falcon rattled in and out of potholes that looked like ink soup. Barb sat with Gloria in the front seat, with Gloria half on her lap, comatose, her cheek pressed against the window. Barb didn’t want to be in the back, with only a bit of stained vinyl, foam, and coiled springs separating her from Jake.
Clouds of dust boiled under the car. A truck coming toward them flashed its lights. Barb reached across Terrence and turned the headlights on and off.
Terrence pulled down the door of the glove compartment. “Get me another pack of cigs. Do you fucking want us to get caught?”
“It’s what we do to be friendly. It’s called being local,” Barb said.
She told Terrence to turn off the road by a large iron gate. Barb got out of the car, entered the combination on the lock, and swung the gate forward to let the car through. Terrence parked by a stand of oaks. Barb could run, but where? She walked to the car and stood by Gloria. She could be strong. Terrence took out the duffel bag and a flashlight. He lit a cigarette and lugged Jake out of the trunk. Gloria and Barb held each other.
“I’d better not get a tick bite,” Gloria said.
They hiked in the darkness past spindly manzanita trees and tall ghost pines that swayed and whistled. When Barb’s arms ached from carrying Jake’s torso, she switched with Gloria, swapping for the bottle of scotch. Terrence held Jake’s legs, not wavering when crossing fallen limbs or moss-covered rocks. The heat eased, and Barb listened for the frogs’ mating calls and the creek to guide her. They trudged past hills blackened by fire, near a ridge that glowed red from a geothermal heat mine.
On a hill above the creek, Barb pointed out indentations in the land, like small altars. In each one grew marijuana plants fed by black irrigation pipes. Terrence and Barb laid Jake under a ghost pine, covering him with the bloodstained motel comforter. Terrence said he would look as if a thief had killed him.
Barb opened the flap to Jake’s tent. She stepped over eggshells, beer bottles, and a porn magazine. She moved a shovel near the tent opening and brought out a tin box of matches.
Terrence filled the duffel bag with the plants, carefully preserving the roots. He stooped over, scooping with his hand and the end of the flashlight. She lit a match to help him see, but he motioned her away. He looked more goblin than man.
Gloria paced in the dirt, shivering. “I want to get out of here,” she said.
Barb considered the shovel in the tent. One good whack and she’d have the car with Gloria. Two good whacks…she looked at Jake for a sign, but Gloria had covered his face with twigs and leaves, and Barb was too spooked to pull them off.
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br /> She frowned. Last night, after feeding the fish, Barb had left the office to get some ice. Jake had Gloria hiked up against the machine so she had nowhere to fall but down on his cock. They didn’t see her—or pretended not to. She waited until Gloria scurried to her room to take her pills. In the office, Barb concentrated on a Springbok puzzle till Jake came to find her. She had to hold one hand with the other, it was shaking so badly. “Help me look for a piece,” she said. She swung the baseball bat at him and smashed the aquarium. He knocked over her puzzles, and she chased him into his room. It went further than she had wanted. She swung at him, but that didn’t kill him. He hit his head on the TV. Who would believe her? You don’t die from TVs; you die from wooden bats. Blunt force trauma—she learned the damn term from TV.
She clutched her stomach and sat across from Jake’s body in the woods, wishing they could trade places. Everyone wondered why her mother went crazy, worrying after Barb and the bad men she dated. And now Barb had to worry about her sister. With the duffel bag full, Gloria hung on Terrence’s arm and shuffled her feet in the dirt, begging him to feel for ticks on her neck and waist.
Terrence zipped up the bag and pointed the flashlight in Barb’s eyes. “Ready?” he asked.
“I need to take a piss.” She lit a match by a rock covered with green lichen and pulled down her shorts. The pee spattered on orange mushrooms, like drops of blood.
HOSPITAL VISIT
You’re lying on a bed. You’re waiting to have eggs removed forcibly for in vitro fertilization. The people next to you are loud. They’re behind a curtain but you can hear them clearly. You’re trying to relax because a nurse has jammed an IV in your hand. It’s painful. But you want to make a baby.
The woman next to you is a patient but also a hospital orderly. “I saw an elderly person whose eye had exploded,” she says to the nurse. “She had glaucoma and high blood pressure.”
The nurse says, “I hope you don’t have to see that again.”
That lady tells more stories. “One time a patient died on a plastic air bag bed. The bed collapsed and the housekeeper didn’t know it. She took the bed to get sterilized and no one could find the body.”
Quiet. Nothing’s quiet here. You are part of a death home. Beeping machines, cold air, naked bodies under thin gowns, thin sheets.
THE DESPERATE ONES
(Lower Haight and South of Market, San Francisco, 1990s)
I.
I’m tired of this neighborhood. The intersection of Haight and Steiner—my world and a little part of Charles’s.
Right now I am high. He is watching TV like a sucker. I want to sock him in the spine. “Pay some attention to me.” I have enough salt to cure the wound afterwards. I am so bored.
I am going to get picked up by some dovetailed orphan. He can set me against his sickness. I’ll castrate the sucker and walk out into the sunlight, lightheaded, and happy—and then I’ll vomit in Safeway. Yes, I’ll do that.
Call my sister a “nice girl”—well shit on you.
Listen, Charles, you don’t need to buy anything. You have me. And I am everything for you. I will rip out the eyes of that product that takes your interest from me. I see you through the glass.
You read so intently the liner notes of that worthless LP. Sand in your eyes. Put that damn record down. Take me to the garden. And prop up the moon. If we don’t repeat. You really have my tongue. Forever. And I can keep your words where they will gain interest.
II.
The reason why I’m not here not wanted by anyone not given ample amounts of “sugar” not even a backrub. Know when I really need you to help out look how I get done my money my dope my time are things I don’t give up to anyone you gotten all three I have gotten attacked arguments downright ABUSIVE mentally. I can’t hang no more. Sorry wish it was different to work ALL day so I can be home for you just to have you shoot my dope and split. Well baby I’m not a jerk or a treat I’m a person.
III.
DEAREST MOTHER; IT IS WITH SINCEREST APOLOGIES, FOR THESE LATENT BELATED EXPLANATIONS; AS TO MY ACTIONS THE CAUSES, AND ACTIONS, WHICH I HAVE TAKEN OVER THESE PAST WEEKS; THAT I SET FORTH TO WRITE THIS LETTER.
IV.
Would you like to do some speed with me?
Want to do some speed with me?
V.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
God damn this motherfucking shit.
CUCKOO
Gabe’s mom lived in the Berkeley flats, near the Ashby BART station. Chain-link fences enclosed many of the one-story homes, but Gabe’s mom had an open yard. She believed in neighborhood unity. Gabe pulled up to the house on his mountain bike. His laundry bag was hung over his back as though he were gunning for Santa’s job.
Gabe’s twin brother, Dylan, sat on the porch of the bungalow, its wide concrete columns pockmarked by rocks and BB-gun pellets. Dylan disgusted Gabe a lot of the time, but he did have balls. Last year, when their mom’s boyfriend had moved out, Dylan had hung a Confederate flag in the living room window. His mom had strung Tibetan prayer flags between the porch columns to hide it, but kids flicked matches into the yard. Older kids threw eggs at the bungalow and pulled the birds-of-paradise flowers out by the roots. Soon enough the house was being stoned. Gabe took down the flag so their mom wouldn’t cry. Dylan claimed it had to do with Southern pride, his Virginian heritage. Bullshit, Gabe thought.
Dylan got off the porch, walked to the sidewalk, and hoisted his body perpendicular to a lamp post. His knuckles were red and swollen from push-ups; he kept up this Army practice to be arrogant. When Dylan dropped down, Gabe punched him in the arm. It was how he showed his birth-order dominance, that ten-minute edge of being the first twin out of their mom’s womb.
Dylan flicked Gabe’s nose. “You have the money?” he asked.
“It’s not with my dirty laundry, dipshit,” Gabe said. He had some money, but didn’t want to waste it on his brother. Plus, Timmy had called last night; he had relocated from Chico, in the Sacramento Valley, and wanted Gabe to get in the weed business again. He kept texting him. Gabe rolled the bike to the side of the house and locked it to the neighbor’s fence. Dylan took off down the street, saying he was going to the corner store for some beers.
Gabe carried his laundry into the house. The front door opened to a wide living room with a built-in bookcase on each side of the fireplace. The cuckoo clock above the mantel spat out a bluebird. It was missing its beak. Dylan liked aiming his BB gun at it.
After Gabe put a load in the washer, he got the spackling supplies from under the sink and spread compound over the holes by the clock, swearing under his breath. Gabe preferred to leave Dylan with his own shit, but he felt bad for their mom.
For one thing, Gabe had a kid, Sam, who was nine. He felt the fatherhood guilt hard, especially with his mother’s mantel was cluttered with Sam’s school pictures and his clumsy ceramic turtles. He didn’t bring Sam to visit Berkeley too often, since
his son lived in Chico. Lately he felt nervous around Sam. It was hard to figure out what to say to him on the phone, and his kid was constantly playing games on his iPad in the background.
Besides, Gabe finally had a girl in his life, Karen. He liked sleeping with her; she moved like a Slinky, pudgy with big tits, and he didn’t want his screw-ass brother to mess it up. If his mom kicked Dylan out, he’d end up living with him.
Gabe whistled quietly and went into his mom’s bedroom. He opened the top drawer of the dresser, looking for loose bills.
He found Dylan at the side of the house, crouched down by Gabe’s bike. He was adjusting the derailleur. The six-pack of Bud was next to him, like a puppy.
“You’ve got a problem,” Dylan said.
“What’s your point?”
“Never mind. I fixed it as best I could.”
Gabe unlocked the bike, stood on it, and pushed down with his right foot. “Seems OK to me.”
“The gear shifts are slow to engage. It’s the derailleur. I bent it back, but don’t think you owe me one. Just get me the money.”
Gabe’s ringer was turned off, but his phone still buzzed. He knew it would be Timmy. He needed to think—he could think when he rode his bike. “Come over later,” he said to his brother. “We’ll head out for drinks.”
From his mom’s house, Gabe biked south on Shattuck, then southwest on MacArthur into Oakland. The boulevard, named for a general, devolved into neglected neighborhoods. College kids from Mills dipped into some blocks, sampling Hispanic or Asian food on the cheap, but for Gabe it was a ride-through—past gated convenience stores and bodegas with fruit bins and piñatas hanging from the ceilings. His mom called herself a liberal, but she never drove through MacArthur’s Fruitvale district. Maybe she was scared of carjackers, drive-bys, or the hookers with thick knees who worked the burger joints’ parking lots.