by Joshua Furst
Especially when, like now, she was trying to nap and he was performing his tricks over her head. “You better watch out,” she said. “I've got a perfect angle on your balls.”
“She stirs, she wakes, she's alive!” His foot lunged in slow motion toward her head, crept forward, his boot stopping an inch from her face. The deep treads of the sole hovered over her forehead. A pebble was caught in the heel.
“Knock it off.” She slapped him away, and he plopped into the broken director's chair.
“I got some shit I want to drop on you,” he said.
“Some shit you want to drop on me? When'd you get all ghetto?”
“Seriously,” he said.
Getting cushy with Mike would only lead to trouble. He'd triangulate and manipulate, use what she told him to further his fascistic argument against Trent. She didn't want to carry any of his secrets and she didn't want him to have power over hers. But it had been a day and a half since she'd eaten and Mike had a job and the other guys had run out to sponge pot off the college kids—who knew when they'd be back. “You got any food?” she asked.
“I'll buy you something. Come on, let's get out of here.”
“You got money?”
“You think I hang out at Chipotle for my health? You think I just do it for the girls?”
He better splurge for something good, she told him, or she wasn't gonna go anywhere.
“Whatever you want.”
The most expensive restaurant in Dinkytown was a place called the Red Barn. It served the same nasty food as Ron's Tiny Diner or the Village Inn but charged a premium for the privilege of enjoying its rustic decor. This was where she told him to take her.
“Sure.” He tapped her shoulder. “Let's go.”
For ten ninety-five, she ordered a bacon cheeseburger with onion rings. The rangy girl taking her order had a teeny gold cross dangling from her neck and the willed sunniness of a farm girl, but she was haughty enough to smirk when Cheryl asked for the burger well done. “What?” Cheryl demanded. “What's so weird about that?” But the girl just shrugged, dropped a gaping grin on Cheryl and, ever so slightly, arched an eyebrow.
The coffee she'd ordered took forever to come, and when she added milk, it turned gray instead of brown. “You're not gonna eat?” she asked Mike, taking a sip. He'd watched silently, a tolerant patron, while she fumbled through her confrontation with the waitress.
“I'm not hungry.”
Cheryl rolled her eyes.
“Fine, you want me to order something?” With a flick of the finger, he called the waitress back and asked for green tea with lemon. He mimed a whistle as she strode away. “Happy?” he asked Cheryl. There was something even smugger than usual about him today.
“This coffee's shit.”
“They're between rushes. It's been there since ten a.m.” So he knew his way around the restaurant business. The service industry. Was that supposed to impress her? It didn't.
Waiting for her food, she drew faces in the spilled coffee on the table and stared out the window at the near-empty street, wishing Trent would stumble past and rush in to hang out and mock them. “Fucking yuppies,” he'd say. “Buy me a coffee.” As the time ticked past and the silence persisted, she filled in this fantasy with greater detail. Him pushing down the street, his head hanging like deadweight on his shoulder, his eyes shifting about for something to pounce on. He'd be brooding over something. Some random thing. And then he'd see her. There'd be a moment of recognition and he'd brighten, his muscles relaxing, his eyebrows melting from those angry arches into wide-open curves. It would be like she was wielding a sloppy paintbrush and slathering over the ugliness of his day with a light glimmering sunshine.
Her body ached toward the burger when it arrived. The first few bites detonated in her mouth like torpedoes. The bitch waitress had brought the burger medium instead of well done, but still, it was wonderful. Hot food. How long had it been? Grease dripped down her chin, down her arms. She didn't care.
Mike remained virtually frozen in place. He watched Cheryl silently as she slid the batter off her onion rings and dipped it bite by bite into the assembly line of salt and ketchup she'd set up on her plate. He studied the pile of things she didn't want, the limp onions, tomatoes, pickle, lettuce, coleslaw. “Throwing out the healthy stuff,” he said. “Nice.”
“You want it? Here.”
“I'll eat at work,” he said. He folded his hands under his chin.
That's what was most galling about all of this. Mike was sitting there like the father in a bad TV show, full of his own virtue and capability. She wished he'd hurry up and get to the moral so she could say, “Gee, Dad, thanks. I guess you're right. Not doing your homework does sort of cause problems.” His condescension was boundless. She thought about sticking her finger down her throat and throwing his charity back up onto her plate. “Here. I don't want it. You can have it back.” That's what Trent would do. But she didn't have this kind of drama in her yet.
Instead, she plopped the last bite of burger into her mouth, and though she was stuffed—her stomach had shrunk, this was the first proper meal she'd had in months—she chewed and chewed, sucked every drop of liquid from the fiber, gnawed on it like gum until it was hard and dry, until her jaw hurt. Then she spit the cud back onto her plate, a gray pile of ground meat that reminded her of Gremlin's chronic hairballs.
“You want anything else?” he asked impassively. “Dessert? Ice cream? Something?”
“No.”
“You sure?” he asked again. “Once I'm gone it'll be all ram en all the time.”
Glowering, she shook her head again, no, and waited for him to pick up the check.
“Aren't you gonna hit on her?” she asked as the waitress walked away with his twenty.
“Nah. She's too skinny.”
“You've been drooling over her since we got here.”
“She doesn't have the look.”
“What look?”
“She likes herself too much to get fucked-up with me.” He cracked a halfway smile. He was looking Cheryl directly in the eyes. A death gaze. A gaze that confiscated the things it took in. She saw him for a second, in the back of a Humvee, covered in dust, surveying the rubble of the Baghdad streets—he'd have this same grim expression on his face.
“Do I have the look?”
“You're pretty much a good girl,” he said. Then he leaned across the table. “Aren't you?” When she gave him nothing, he slouched back and smugly nodded.
A good girl, she thought. Well, fuck you too. What I am is too good for you.
He suggested they head over to Sonic Sounds, the used-record store a couple blocks away that specialized in obscure imports and hard-to-find old indies. “I'm sure they've got all of Nobody's Fool's shit. You can get yourself a souvenir.”
She could feel the beginnings of a food coma coming on. All she wanted to do was go home. That and get away from Mike.
As they wandered back to the Sabotage Café, his pace slowed and slowed until finally he stopped. The faded gray siding of Sabotage was visible now at the end of the block. Whatever he was after, now was the time.
“I'm right, no?” he said. “You are a good girl.”
“Sometimes, sometimes not. I guess it depends on how much I like you.”
“Yeah. See? That's what I mean. A good girl.”
The fucking burger was giving her a stomachache.
“I mean,” he said, “what are you doing here?”
“What, here on earth? 'Cause my mother plopped me out. Or do you mean here, like here going to lunch with you? I'm not gonna fuck you if that's what you mean.”
“Don't be obtuse.”
“Yeah, I know that word too.” What a prick. “Why are you here?”
She could see the blood rising to his face, turning it a deeper, more complex hue of brown. His voice was controlled, forceful. “You think I want to be here? I'm not like you. I don't get to pick and choose. Anyway, I'm getting the hell out.”
>
“Well, I like it here. Trent likes it. Devin—”
“Fucking Devin. That kid's a psychopath. He'll be dead by next year.”
“It's better than fucking joining the system.”
“Don't talk to me about the fucking system. Where are you from? Plymouth? Edina? You are the system.”
“Trent doesn't—”
The force of Mike's laughter was ferocious, terrifying. “Do you even talk to your boyfriend? Do you even— Why do you think he calls you Betty? You think that's a compliment? You ever heard of Betty Page? Betty's what we call girls we want to fuck and forget.” He stepped back. “Screw it. You people aren't my problem anymore.”
For a moment, she wondered, What if he's right? Then she remembered the terror she'd seen on Trent's face when he'd thought he was going to lose her. “You're all I have,” he'd said. She had other things, she had me and Robert, but he was all she wanted. Mike was wrong. Even if what he said was true, he was wrong.
THE THING TRENT AND HIS FRIENDS did to the dog lurked somewhere in the recesses of her mind. I want to think it asserted itself in the most incongruous of moments. As they sat in Arby's sucking down free refills of pop, Trent would slide a cartoon he'd just drawn—the two of them, huge heads on tiny bodies, riding a rocket ship off toward the moon, maybe—across the table, and there it would be, the dog's mottled face, its slick floppy tongue, peeking through the blotted ink. Or the three of them—her, Trent and Devin—would be dropping water balloons from the window of the squat, keeping score of their hits with an elaborate point system that ranged from zero, a total miss, to fifty, a slam dunk into a baby stroller, and as her balloon splattered onto the sidewalk, she'd think of blood and hear the dog whine. They killed the pathetic defenseless little thing, they murdered it. The thought would shoot up like a chunk of rotting wood unmoored from a long submersion in water. It would float around on the surface for a moment, then drift out of view.
Sometimes when she was up late, jittering after everyone else had passed out, taking the edge off with the dregs she found in abandoned bottles, the dog would peer at her out of the blackness and she'd be unable to blink its face away. What they'd done would play out in front of her.
“Hey, Dog. Come here, Dog.”
She could hear them—Trent, Devin—horsing around with it, throwing imaginary balls across the room, trying to get it to run into the wall.
“You want to do something fun, Dog?” Devin had asked it while trying to grab ahold of its hind legs. Then, walking it around the room on its forepaws, “I hope you're into S&M, Dog.”
When he lifted the dog up and swung it like a golf club, it whimpered a little, let out a yowl. She could hear Devin's cackle—the devil laugh he took on when he was feeling extra-evil—as he let go and sent the dog sailing, sprawled out and paddling empty air.
However Trent pitched it after the fact, Cheryl was sure he'd found Devin's antics hysterical. He always did. That's why he kept the kid around, to fuck shit up and make him laugh.
But what about Jarod? How would Jarod take this? His impulse must have been to protect his pet, even as he struggled to prepare himself for what they were all about to do. He would have scrambled after it, wrapped himself around it. Held it tight and whispered in its ear. Cheryl imagined he said, “Be brave,” but that was maybe overdramatic. More likely, he said, over and over, “Hey puppy, hey Dog, hey little bitch, hey, why'd you have to go and fuck everything up?”
And Mike? Mike would just be shaking his head. “Look, if we're gonna do this, and really, I still don't get why we are, let's quit with the bullshit, huh? And, hey, no way are we gonna do it here.”
Trent, always torn between Devin and Mike, would have felt ashamed, his authority threatened. Clapping his hands, he'd shout, “Devin. Stop fucking fucking around. Let's go now.”
Then she'd see them downstairs in the cavernous, musty room where the Sabotage Café had once served up its sludge, that room with streaked layers of dust on the windows, with no ventilation, a concrete floor, filled with wooden tables and folded-up chairs and a dusty copper bar, all four of them—five with the dog—hearts surging, wondering what to do next.
Taking in the chalky, chill scent of the moment, Jarod might let the dog loose to roam one last time. Trepidatious at first, but curious and alert, the dog twitches her nose. She concentrates. Nostrils to the floor, she takes a step forward. A pause. Then another step. Half a step, pause, and her right ear perks up. Her head ticks a notch, like the second hand on a clock. She changes course, moving quickly but carefully toward the chairs layered six rows deep against the wall across from the bar.
The boys hardly notice. They're rummaging, themselves, in search of instruments to aid them in their cause. The curved steel lever from the espresso machine. A screwdriver. They can't find any rope and they're too lazy—or excited—to make the trek back upstairs, so Trent bundles up a hunter orange extension cord. This is what they'll use to bind the dog.
Jarod stands to the side, sinking into himself, a finger to his lips like a high-strung and apprehensive grandmother. He's the only boy not in the spirit of things—it's a game to them, they're commandos on a mission—and if his lips weren't quivering, he might be confused for the captain of this unit. As it is, hidden in the furrows of his hooded sweatshirt, he's more like a specter, a conscience haunting the proceedings.
The dog's found her spot. She splays her legs like a girl in a bar bathroom, squeamish about getting close to the toilet seat.
As soon as they hear the hiss of her urine, the boys stop what they're doing. Trent darts to the squatting animal, lifts it like a barrel. “Hey, Dog—what the fuck, Dog?” He holds it out in front of him on stiff arms, and as he spins it, the dog sprays a surprisingly long, looping arc of piss across the room.
Trent shakes the dog, but the stream doesn't stop. “Shit!” He's laughing now. “Fucking A, look at that shit.”
A trail of moisture cuts across the dust, over the chairs, up the wall, onto the tables stacked surface to surface next to the bar. Then a horizontal slash across Devin's t-shirt, a dribble on Mike's ankle.
Mike just shakes his head, but Devin, behind the bar searching the drawers for a knife, raises a soup ladle. “Oh, you asshole,” he says. Then he lunges.
Trent uses the dog as his shield when he dodges.
Taunting, feinting, testing their skill, they circle each other like kickboxers. They pay no attention to the hectoring from Mike, his reminders that he's got to work after this and if they want his help— and you know you need it—they better stop fucking around already.
“En garde!” The ladle stabs out toward Trent, catches the dog in the ribs, but the blade doesn't pierce. Devin pulls back for another attack, and as he collects himself, Trent kicks. With a quick grab, Devin has his foot. He twists and pulls, trying to throw Trent off balance.
The dog makes sounds that dogs shouldn't make. Crying sounds. Human sounds.
Jarod's found a chair. He's not watching this, he can't. He's hidden his head between his knees. Maybe the crying is coming from him. Probably not, though. He's just waiting for it to be over.
Twisting Trent's leg behind him, Devin slashes at his ribs with the spatula, yanking the leg higher, higher, still higher, until Trent starts to hop and then Devin kicks his other leg out from under him.
The boys fall and the dog flails away. She scrambles across the room in search of escape, runs in loops around the boys, barking, barking, barking.
Pinning Trent beneath him, Devin whips the ladle down indiscriminately. When he gets the right angle, it makes a nice wet sound slapping against Trent's flesh. All Trent can do is buck and protect himself. A few welts, a few cuts, it's all in a day's fun.
They're warming up, getting their blood rushing.
A second, larger collection of tables is stacked in pairs along the back wall, square slabs of treated and finished pressed-wood product, balanced on thick iron cylinders. They're lined up four by four, a double-stacked gr
id. The dog races into the shadowy vault beneath them and backs herself to the corner, pressing down as flat to the floor as she can. She needs to have all four feet on the ground. She needs to be poised and ready to run.
Crawling in after her, Jarod crouches, his palms out in a plea for trust.
Mike, meanwhile, has joined the wrestling match. He acts as referee, officious and scolding, enjoying in a more subdued, headier way, the few kicks and punches he manages to get in.
Jarod pets his dog. He implores it, stop shaking. What his friends are about to do doesn't feel real to him. Death isn't as familiar to him as disappearance—the slow random drift in and out of his life of people and things he doesn't trust enough to cherish. That's the way it's always been with his father. That's how it feels now, here, with the dog. He's saying goodbye, lying on the concrete next to his pet and scratching its forehead. Instead of preparing to accommodate the loss, he's steeling himself to deflect it, priming himself for the moment when Mike reaches in and drags the animal out of the cage of tables. He's detaching himself, telling himself, Feel nothing.
As Mike grapples with the dog, pulling it roughly by the front paws, the nails on its hind legs scrape along the concrete. He reaches one hand blindly behind his back. “Where's that extension cord?” Then wrapping the dog's legs tight, he lays it out in the middle of the room.
The boys are silent now, amateur surgeons surrounding a specimen. Devin's choosing his weapon. Trent stands ready to help. Their brains are flooding with rushing endorphins.
“Should we string it up?”
“What if we, like, dissected it?”
Jarod is still hiding under the tables. He's turned around. He's facing the wall, staring at the graffiti there: “Resist,” it says. He's clamped his arms around his head but the sounds slide in anyway. He's thinking about the Discovery Channel, about the way the gazelles and antelope tumble over themselves, so graceful, when the lion catches up and clips them.
“Just hurry up, huh? I've got to get to work.”
“Fucking here goes nothing, right?” Was that glee in Trent's voice?