Knuckle Balled

by Drew Stepek

  “Fuck. You still stink.” He headed back to the spigot.

  I followed him toward the house and played to the dog bite in my side. “Is there any chance I can use a shower? Clean up this wound and maybe get some clothes.”

  He waited a second before turning the water back on. “I don’t know. You’re like all homeless and shit.”

  I shook the Oxy bottle in my hand. “I’ll give you this.” I had no intention of giving him my precious opiates and I figured that this could be my ticket inside.

  He took his hand off the faucet crank and stood up. “We should wait for Brax to get back.”

  I pointed to the lacerations on my ribs and my leg. “Come on, man. I need to fix this up.”

  He pulled the gun back out. “Yeah, okay, bro. But I’ve got, like, my eye on you.”

  I started to head toward the door. “Fine. You want to watch me shower?”

  He started following me to the front of their house. “No way, bro.”

  I let the warm water pound against the laceration under my ribs and pissed all over my feet in the shower. My urine was darker than the water and it smelled like the back of a garbage truck. My body felt like it wanted to open up and dump all unmetabolized drugs inside of me down the drain. My spine creaked as I tried to clean in-between my toes. I put my mouth up to the shower head and slurped until I felt full. The water quality in Austin was shockingly sweet, compared to the mud that we Angelinos had become accustomed to during the never-ending droughts.

  I was surprised that my host let me take a shower. He was probably scared I would sue him for the dog attack. I also knew that he was no match for me, even with his gun. When he sent me upstairs, he patted me on the back and called me friend. I knew he was sucking up to me because his Pit Bull took a chunk out of my side, but it felt nice for once in my life to be called friend, even if it was because I never told him my name. As a matter of fact, buddy, pal, Mack, guy, and dude all would have sufficed. He had already called me bro over a hundred times, so I wasn’t interested in hearing that again.

  I scrubbed the new bar of soap he unpackaged for me deep over my skin, trying to get rid of the blood and hide from the McCoys, blood and hair from the opossum mother, and pieces of teeth from the pack.

  When I was as satisfied as I could be, I took a quick look outside of the shower curtain. I jumped back a bit. He was in there. Fucking creep. Had I gone into hibernation or were my ears filled with water? Was he a vamp? Either that or I didn’t even care at that point if a prowler came in and killed me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  He laid some clothes down on top of the toilet seat, as well as some peroxide and bandages on the sink. “Sorry, bro.” He called me bro again. I was really hoping for Mack.

  “Didn’t mean to alarm you, just wanted to give you this stuff. Holler if you need anything else.”

  I looked at the shower caddy. “Do you have that shampoo and conditioner in the same bottle?”

  He laughed. “You can take the extra time to use both. Don’t worry. I won’t shut off the hot water if you take the time you need.”

  I snorted up some phlegm and spit into the drain. I closed the shower curtain. “You didn’t really need to get me new clothes. I like mine just fine.”

  As he left the bathroom and closed the door, he returned, “I threw those away. They smelled like a dead person.”

  If he only knew, I thought.

  I opened the shower curtain to see if the Oxy was still on the sink where I left it. I was quick to suspect a switcheroo when he dropped off the bandages. It was still there. I opened up the bottle and checked the contents. Since I had never met a nice person, I always suspected the worst from everyone. So far, this guy wasn’t giving me any reason to think he was after me “Lucky Harms”.

  I took his suggestion and completely cleaned and conditioned my hair. When I was satisfied that it was less gross than usual, I turned off the facet and stepped out of the shower on to a nice, warm and thick shower rug. I sunk my feet into it, enjoying the moment. It might have been the first time something that nice had touched my bare feet. The only shower mat that I had at my old house was ratty and was pitched as soon as Bait had an abortion all over it. Awful shit.

  I picked up the jeans. Size thirty-two. There wasn’t a bunch of cheesy stitching on the back pockets and they weren’t wangster baggy. They were just the way I liked them. I don’t know why, but I sniffed them. The denim smelled clean, almost new, so I slipped them on. Then, I grabbed the shirt—that fucking shirt—and observed it. I hadn’t noticed when I shimmied on the jeans that it was a tie-dye. I shook it out and read Keep Austin Weird in big white letters across the front. I folded it back up nicely and put it back on top of the toilet.

  I walked over to the door, opened it and yelled downstairs to my new friend. “Hey, Mack,” I called out as I smirked.

  “Yeah, bro,” he shouted back. “Name’s Cody.”

  “Is this, like, the only shirt you have?”

  He paused for a second. “I think so. I don’t want the blood on your side to seep through and jack up my good shirts.”

  I took a look at the bite wound from the dogs. It was nearly healed at that point. “Right,” I muttered to myself. I closed the door, locked it and walked back to the sink. “Gotta make this look legit,” I whispered.

  He had seen the size of the wound when he washed me off with the hose. I didn’t need the peroxide, but I poured some down the sink to not raise any eyebrows and then firmly planted an extra-large adhesive bandage horizontally from back to front.

  It’s not so much that I was trying to trick him as it was a narcotics thing. They make you feel guilty even when you weren’t really doing anything wrong. Sure, I had done a lot of things wrong to this guy already, like killing his pet opossum, but he seemed to want to help me. I was injured and needed shelter and he was the closest thing to a do-gooder that I had ever met. And it was pretty clear he didn’t want any cops sniffing around his place.

  I shook the shirt open in front of me again. “Keep Austin Weird,” I read aloud this time. I smelled it as I had with the jeans. Smelled the same. Good. Probably should have smelled weird. After a few seconds debating whether or not I wanted to wear it, I pulled it over my head and looked at myself in the mirror.

  “Man. This shirt is lame as shit,” I gulped as I rolled my eyes sideways to check out my bloodshot level.

  Before I left the bathroom to formally introduce myself, I opened the mirror in front of me and scoured the medicine cabinet. Tylenol. Q-Tips. Extra toothbrush. Crotch spray. Nothing that was any use to me. The Gooch stayed quiet for the time being.

  He pointed to my chest as I sat down at the kitchen table. “Now that’s a cool shirt, bro,” he joked. Then, as if I hadn’t already seen it, he nodded his eyes to his hand, where his six-shooter was resting on the table.

  “Ah, yeah. Totally bitchin’,” I said acknowledging that he was armed. “Thanks.”

  His fingernail flicked against the trigger. “You’re welcome.” I expected him to raise the gun at me and take a couple of shots. He was on to me. Luckily, he pushed the gun off to the edge of the table. “Ha. I’m just fucking with you.” He extended his hand to shake. “I’m Cody,” he said.

  “Arnold Babar,” I fired back at him.

  His fingers retracted before our hands met. A little grin slipped out of the corner of his mouth. “Two B’s?”

  Right before I was about to engage in the whole routine, I bit my lip. “You’ve seen Fletch, huh?”

  “Of course, bro.” His hand deliberated midway between my hand and the gun.

  I reached further toward him to sway the decision. “Look, man. My name’s RJ.” I closed one of my eyes, realizing how ridiculous my name was. “RJ Reynolds.” It sounded a hell of a lot more badass when I was fourteen and living on the streets. Like my existence, my name made me cringe and my skin shiver.

  “Like that’s any more real than Arnold Babar.” He met my hand i
n the middle of the table and shook it. “You from Austin, RJ?”

  I released my grip and pointed to the tie-dye. “Of course. Don’t all locals wear these?”

  He turned his head sideways, still unsure of how the meeting was going. “My mom loves Austin. She doesn’t get it.”

  If I had a mother story to share, other than the story of my mom aborting me into the hands of The Cloth, I would have told it. Instead, I simply said, “Moms. Right? Can’t live with ‘em. Whores.”

  He took a drag off of a giant eCig. “I don’t know about that, bro.”

  “Which?”

  He tilted his head back and blew out a gigantic cloud of bakery flavored vapor. “That moms are whores.”

  “Mine was.”

  He scratched at the grip of the gun. “Mine wasn’t.”

  “Must be an L.A. thing. I’m from L.A.,” I admitted.

  “Really?” He looked me up and down, trying to sniff the rat out of me. “Yeah, I can see that. You look like an L.A. guy.”

  We sat in silence, waiting to find something that we had in common when I realized that my phone wasn’t in my jeans. I stood up and patted at my pockets. “Phone?” I said.

  “Your phone was broken.” He pointed over to the counter next to a TV that was on mute. “I took the SIM card out and put in my old phone.”

  I walked over to the charging outlet. It was a nice phone. Maybe a little too nice.

  “Don’t worry,” he continued. “It’s untraceable and jailbroken.”

  I put the phone down.

  He took another pull off his vape. “It’ll be charged in like two hours and then you can split. I put some money inside the case.” He coughed a little and then blew out another cloud.

  I looked toward a window. It was night out still. I could have made a break for it and maybe taken, at most, six bullets to the back. “What do you want? Sex? Do you want mouth sex?” I asked, becoming strangely hysterical.

  He re-gripped the gun. “The real question is what do you want, L.A. boy.”

  Even though I didn’t have to, I put my hands up. “I don’t want anything.”

  He swung the barrel of the gun upward. “Lift the shirt up.”

  I rolled my fingers around the bottom hem of the shirt. “Why?”

  He lifted the barrel again and then stood up. “I just need to be sure of something.”

  I slowly scrunched the shirt up to the bandage. “Where’s your friend?”

  Pointed the barrel at my head. “Braxton? Oh, he’s kind of my bitch. He doesn’t live here. I’m sure he went over to Whitley’s house afterward and they’re probably on a bender.”

  I pointed to the bottom of the bandage.

  He gripped the gun handle with both hands. “All the way. All the way up,” he insisted. “I’m not dicking around here, bro.”

  I pulled the side of the shirt to my armpit. “What’s going on, Cody?”

  He quoted Fletch again. “It’s nothing of a sexual nature, I assure you.”

  If I wasn’t in the South. If I knew this guy any further than I could throw him. If I had any idea where I was. Then, I would have played along. I slowly peeled the bandage back and revealed the nearly healed bite mark. I ripped off the bandage completely and shrugged my shoulders. I rolled the bandage up into a ball and tossed it underhand onto the kitchen table. “I guess the wound wasn’t as bad as we thought.”

  “You can put the shirt down.” He waved the gun down and returned to his seat. “So, I guess you’re here to take my drugs? A new gang tries to take control of the coke in Austin and just cuts me out. You know, that’s bullshit, bro.” He tapped the gun against his head. “Stupid. I shouldn’t have made that deal.” He took the tank off his vape and started refilling it with a dropper. “It’s in the garage. Take it.”

  I unraveled the shirt and tucked the front into my jeans. “Take what?”

  He screwed the tank back onto his battery. “My coke.” He pointed to a door that I guessed led to the garage and his stash. “Fucking new L.A. vampire gang comes to town, pushes out the local businesses. Fucking L.A. posers.”

  I looked to the garage and then back to the kitchen table. “So, you know about vampires?”

  “No shit, bro. You took on a pack of guard dogs less than an hour ago and you don’t have a scratch on you.”

  I studied his defeated face and asked point blank. “So, you’re a dealer?”

  “Cut the game. We both know why you’re here. Please don’t kill me or whatever. I can’t call the cops on you. I let you in so you wouldn’t call the cops on me.”

  “I am a vampire,” I confessed. “I’m not here to take your cocaine. I’m a heroin vampire.” I realized how stupid that sounded and immediately retracted it. “Look, we’re not really vampires. We’re kind of like gangs of walking, homeless abortions.”

  He flipped his vape over in his hand. “Not according to the Austin vampires. Or all the L.A. gangs who come here for South by Southwest every year.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Every year?”

  “Certain L.A. gangs come out here every year to hear bands and get fucked up.” He waited a beat and then asked, “Are you going to take the coke or not?”

  I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. “Step back a second. I am the leader—was the leader—of an L.A. gang. I was never invited to come out here.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, bro.”

  “So, do you know Stephan Rodderick?”

  He shrugged and looked down to his placemat. “I’ve met him a few times. Kinda full of shit.”

  I got excited and looked at the phone. “But he is kind of the leader, right? You can take me to him.” I needed to get this information to Eldritch as soon as possible. The thought of redeeming myself in the face of so many fuck ups was exciting.

  “RJ, I never deal with any of them. I’m the distributor.”

  I walked back over to the phone and turned it on. “You said some gang moved to Austin and took over. Who the fuck are they?”

  “They call themselves the BBP.”

  I gripped the phone tightly, almost demolishing it in my hand and stared at the black screen. “Preppy assholes? All dress the same? They look like they just got shit out of a country club?”

  “Yeah, that’s them.” He sighed. “They don’t really fit in around Austin but they’re constantly here. I think they moved here.”

  Suddenly, the stars aligned just as the screen on my phone lit up. Linnwood Perry was the only person in Los Angeles who talked regularly about how great Austin was. Everything that had happened to me, to L.A. vampire drug kingpin King Cobra, and to Bait all lead back to the night Linnwood Perry arrived at my door.

  As the illustrious leader of the Blue Blooded Perrys, he sent me and my former best friend Dez to take care of a snitch in his gang who was working with the cops to get rid of vampires. We were supposed to intercept a bunch of coke that the snitch stole from Linnwood and Cobra. Long story short, Dez and I brutally murdered the rat and the two cops he was working with, and the coke turned out to be heroin. Since Dez and I are vampires, we’re automatically stupid. We took the heroin and put it back on the streets under King Cobra’s nose. It was a set-up from the second Perry gave us the marching orders, and Cobra knew it was heroin the entire time. He also knew that we would take it.

  It may have seemed like a lucky coincidence but at the end of the day, drug dealers follow users. They always end up swimming together in the same shit, just in different toilets.

  I’m safe. Just found out Linwood Perry was here with his boys.

  I pressed send on the phone.

  “So let me get this straight.” I pointed to the fleet of jet skis in the three-car garage. “You take the innards out of the jet skis and fill them with coke?” I taped my hand on one of the neon noses. “How much can you fit in one of these?”

  Cody’s eyes lit up as he shot me a wink. “About forty pounds, bro.” He opened one of the engine covers, revealing
the guts. “Everything inside was taken out and replaced with these. He pulled out a pound bag that was tightly bound in brown shipping paper and tossed it to me. “Try it,” he said.

  I peeled off the husk, revealing the white gold. “Do you have any blood?”

  “Oh, yeah. I always forget about vampires.” He walked over to a wok bench that sat beneath an enormous seventy-inch TV. But rather than common tools like hammers, screwdrivers and drills, it housed sifters, scales and cutting boards. A different kind of work bench.

  He lifted his hand like an outfielder. “Throw me that.”

  Not goNNa hElp.

  “You got any heroin?” I asked on behalf of The Gooch.

  “Heroin? Hell no. Heroin addicts are poor and never pay their tabs.”

  I rewrapped the bag and launched it to him. My mouth started to get wet but my body reminded me that cocaine was only going to infect that itch and make me crave heroin more. “You don’t have to do this.”

  He caught the package. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” I questioned my judgment and wiped the spittle out of the corners of my mouth. “I’m kind of putting you out. Besides, I don’t think that I need any blow right now.”

  He tore into the package, grabbed a coffee mug off the workbench and headed toward a mini fridge in the corner. “You’ll want to do this.” He opened up the fridge and pulled out a plastic gallon bottle filled with what appeared to be blood.

  “Is it human?” I asked as I tried to look over his shoulder as he poured some blood into the mug.

  “It’s great coke,” he said as he topped off the mug.

  “Not the blow. The blood. Is it human?”

  “Of course. The gang that used to run coke around Austin robs blood banks. They always make sure I’m stocked for times when I get new product.” He put a paper towel over the top of the mug and put it in a microwave on top of the fridge. Before starting it up, he asked, “How long?”