by Aric Davis
“What if I’d been saving it to buy you a ring?” I screamed at her, and for the first time since we’d been together I really felt the age difference. I was acting like a shitty parent, and she’d already had one and a half of those. What made it doubly cruel was that she knew I would never buy her a ring; she was probably even more sure of that than I was. My divorce was still pretty solid in my rearview mirror, and marriage was the last thing on my mind. Not that I let her know that. She had to take all that from me while she was high as a kite, and probably going pretty near apeshit.
We stuck it out though. She went through all the withdrawals and mess that come part and parcel with quitting, and I just tried to keep the shop going. Now that I’d been spoiled by having a counter girl, I was having trouble putting that particular hat back on. In the booth I was as nice as could be, but in the lobby I was rough. I could see it, too, mostly where it really hurts, in the bank.
Sid came back to the counter eventually, and that was a blessing, let me tell you. I’ve never gone without counter help since, and I don’t intend to ever again. That was another way those old guys like Jack had it wrong: the money you pay some nice girl to run your counter comes back in spades. Something about not having to see my ugly mug until I actually work on you helps pay the bills, as it turns out.
Sid and I made it one more year before shit went bad again. This time I found out before she could steal from me, at least, but that would prove to about the only blessing. She’d been snorting heroin again. I found a little fold of it in her jacket pocket at the Laundromat, and remembering how bad I’d felt after I’d yelled at her the last time, I came home nice and calm. Probably shouldn’t have bothered. She’d been trying to get high the second I walked out the door, and she sure wasn’t surprised that I’d found the skag.
We got her in counseling down at the YWCA. It was free, and that was all we could afford, so the hope was that it would be good enough. I guess for the using it was. She did stay quit for a while, and that was nice to see.
But neither of us figured on the depression. We talked about it, but that was all I could do, and unfortunately talk was all her counselor would prescribe. She was worried that Sid would hook to any drug the way she had coke or heroin, and that the crutch would never get tossed away. I didn’t have the sense to argue with her, and I don’t know that I would have been right even if I had. I’m sure that even if I had it wouldn’t have helped. We just came merrily along, Sid getting more and more miserable and me right there with her.
She’d always been rowdy, that was just her way, so when she started to want rougher and rougher sex I thought she was just replacing the drugs, and I went right along with it. Mostly she wanted to be choked and held down. I’m not sure where my head was at that point; I knew that something bad was getting unearthed in all the therapy sessions, and I tried to make myself as available as possible for her to talk to, but all she wanted out of me was sex, and like I said, it was getting worse all the time.
That came to a halt when she told me she wanted me to dress differently than I normally did and pretend to break into the apartment to rape her. I told her that I just couldn’t, and she told me I was useless. I took that in stride, that and all the other lumps she tried to put on me. Rough sex turned into no sex. I slept on the couch for about two months before we decided to break up.
It was best for the both of us, even she agreed with that, and she got a room at the YWCA until she could get enough money for a security deposit to move into an apartment. That’s really where the two of us should’ve stopped, but we didn’t, because Sid kept working for me. A week later, she was back living in the apartment.
She said she was clean and things would be better. She wasn’t and they weren’t. I found out she was using after about a month; she was working the counter and her nose started bleeding so badly that she literally had to run to the bathroom in the middle of a conversation with a customer. I freaked out on her again that night. I told her she was fired and that by the time I was home from work the next night I wanted her and all of her shit gone.
She begged. She begged me, and you know what I did? I’d been twenty-eight when we met and she’d been nineteen. Now I was almost thirty-two and she was twenty-three. After almost four years, all I had for her was get the fuck out, get your shit and don’t come back.
She never left. That night when I came home, she was in there, dead on the floor with my old revolver next to her. No note, but I guess I really didn’t need one. We’d been right downstairs when she’d done it and hadn’t heard a thing. That was what messed me up the most: all she had to do was come down a flight of stairs and tell me what she was going to do, and maybe things would have been different.
The police held me for three days; Lamar was able to keep the shop up and didn’t cheat me an inch. He fired Stumpy without even asking me, because Stumpy told him they should only report about half the tattoos they did. I guess saying Lamar fired Stumpy is kind of an understatement—he thumped him up pretty good, too.
The cops asked all sorts of questions, and had a few threats for me, too. I didn’t say much; wasn’t much to say. The gun was registered in my name, and my tox screens came back clean for the dope she’d hidden in the apartment. Her counselor corroborated that Sid had been dealing with depression and that this wasn’t all that surprising. It made me sick to hear her say it, but it was true enough, I guess. Finally one of the detectives, a guy named Van Endel, put an end to the whole thing. He’d been the only one who acted decent since the start of it. He said they’d bullied me enough, and that was that, I was gone.
Lamar cleaned up the mess while I was locked up; I’ll never be able to square up that debt all the way. I stayed with him for a few days and only came to the shop to work. With it just being the two of us now, it was either sink or swim, so there was no time for any real grieving. I’d missed the funeral while I was in jail. Finally, after about a week, I came back to the apartment. It was cold and smelled like the disinfectants we use in the store. It was awful, but I stayed. If there’s one thing I can be proud of, it’s that I stayed. Of that time, there’s nothing else.
Lamar and I kept the thing going, but just barely. Appointments stayed steady, but we were much more of a street shop back then; we lived to do custom appointments but got fed by walk-in business. Lamar moved back in with his mom but didn’t tell me that until later, when I could take it. He was running the whole store like it was his then, and working as a nursemaid for me. He did my shopping, made sure my clothes were clean, and I’m pretty sure was just waiting for the day when he came to get me from the apartment and I was dead. It should be his shop now, because when it really needed somebody, I was gone. Just like with Sid. When she needed me the most, I pushed her out.
I came back around, obviously. Wasn’t easy, but probably could’ve gone a little bit smoother if I weren’t so pigheaded. I refuse to share any of the blame with Sid. She was a child as an adult, and even more of a child when we met. I dragged her through all the chemicals and depression that my divorce would have caused either way, only I knew in my guts I’d make it through. I never told her that, but I’m pretty sure she knew it anyways. We would have been perfect together for about two weeks, but anything longer than that was dangerous for both of us. Four years, though? That was only dangerous for her. By that time I was over those wounds, I was done being destructive. She knew as well as I did that it was only a matter of time for us, and that had to have been a weight. Who am I kidding—another weight.
I s’pose that’s all of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Phil reveled in the power after a kill, and that had been no ordinary kill—the little bitch had put up a fight. He was proud of himself as well. Sleep had been wonderful, long nights spent torturing that bitch over and over again in his dreams, taking everything he wanted at his pace. As far as Phil was concerned, he may as well have been stealing their souls, such was the psychic residue left over in his head to pla
y with, to distort and twist, to make pain an endless loop, a tidal wave of blood and thresholds crossed. His mind could be hell, and it was wonderful.
In reality, the girl, who according to the paper was named Annie, had died very quickly. Phil had been sodomizing her, holding her down with his big frame, which, after her broken arm, hadn’t taken much effort. He was thrusting in and out of her, awash in blood, as he slowly tightened the garrote. He could feel the shiver of a death rattle through the rope and dowel rods, and came simultaneously. After he’d taken the rope off of her neck, Phil stripped the rest of the way and used the bitch’s shower. No reason to rush. If the law was coming, it was already too late.
The law hadn’t been, though, and Phil was starting to doubt whether it ever would. How could they catch a god? If they caught him, it wouldn’t matter much. Phil had the utmost confidence that in prison the girls would come back, that other acts of violence could force them back to him. Seven memories, strong memories, and Phil relished the new one most of all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When Mike and Deb went to the museum that Monday, both were amused to see that it was free on Mondays for city residents. Mike happily handed over his driver’s license, and they walked in. Unlike the last time he’d been there, when his mouth had filled with irrational bile, this time was different. Today was a mission. Deb took a notepad from her cavernous purse, and the two walked hand in hand through the foyer and into the main hall. There was a mundane exhibit on automobiles to the left, and above them hung the enormous skeleton of a finback whale.
“Good thing they took that. Your apartment’s way too small.” Deb grinned at Mike, even as he elbowed her in the side to keep it down. “Jeez, relax. Nobody heard me. Now let’s see your damn museum.”
Mike sighed and walked ahead of her. Deb followed him through a modest archway and then underneath the whale. They passed a small, glassed-in area, full with both real and replica fossils, and then they entered the transferred little city from the old museum.
The smell of it was old and familiar, yet foreign all the same. The shops were myriad, and Mike pointed out all the ones that he recognized as the memories of their old home came back. He stopped in front of the apothecary to say, “It was winding, but not nearly as winding as it is here. I recognize three of the four storefronts so far.”
“No butcher shop yet though.”
“Let’s keep moving.”
They saw a gun shop that Mike saw contained a good quarter of the firearms, and all of those fit to the period. He said as much to Deb, but she just smiled and they continued. When they’d finished the trek through the small town, Mike felt quite sure that better than a third of the storefronts were new. Most of the old decorations had made the move, but several of the storefronts he could recall as being open, such as the doctor’s office, were now no more than just empty buildings with false fronts and blackened windows.
After the little town they passed down a short hall filled with all manner of hats. Turning a corner, they ascended the first of the two massive staircases that led to the upper floors of the building.
At its top the route curled again, past the enormous internals of a gigantic working clock, and then through an exhibit that Mike felt sure was new, an obvious corporate sponsorship on the wonders of furniture making. Deb near to jogged through the labyrinthine quarters, finally landing them back to its beginning. Just to the right of its exit, Mike found another reason to sigh. What had been a blank wall was now a case full with guns.
It was, he assured himself by way of Deb, certainly not all of them. Unfortunately, it was definitely most of them. Aside from a pair of pepper-box style revolvers, he couldn’t remember any firearms from the old building that weren’t in the case, and even those not in the case could be in the new location in storage somewhere. Dejected and frustrated, he led the still beaming Deb up the final staircase.
They strode first into an exhibit on the early natives of Michigan, the Chippewa and Ojibwa. Mike found little he recognized and felt his spirits soaring again. The exhibit took up at least a third of the space on the floor. The next rooms were filled with a legion of animals and skeletons, but nowhere near the number that the old museum had housed, or had at least housed in Mike’s memories.
There were four dioramas with stuffed animals inside of them: one with three wolves hunting against a backdrop painted with deer, another with a moose family visiting a well-constructed watering hole, the third with a possum family clambering over their mother atop a log, and the last contained a warren of fox children being offered a fellow in stuffing, a rabbit, as dinner. All of them had been well maintained, and when Mike and Deb turned the corner to see that those were the only such things to have made the trip, they smiled and linked hands.
They saw fiberglass fish, two larger pieces built just for the new museum that housed whitetail deer, owls, ducks, geese, fish, and a number of other forest, river, and lake animals. The next chamber had a case harboring a giant dead rat that was being devoured by a bevy of enormous insects; sitting atop a large cavity in its chest was a mealworm. There were a few other cases but nothing of merit, and certainly no more transported collections. Across the hall sat the sparse Egyptian offering.
The museum had a mummy, which Mike recognized immediately, as well as a head purchased under dubious circumstances just better than a hundred years prior. In the news article accompanying the head, which Deb read aloud, there was the information that the head had been bought at a street market during a period in Egypt where the gentry were quite desperate to own a mummy, and not so likely to care of its age. The article wondered if the head housed in the case was actually ancient or merely unlucky.
“Why don’t they just carbon date it?”
“Because if it’s not a mummy—”
“Then they’d have to give it back to Egypt or at least bury it! That’s pretty evil.”
“Well, if they gave it back, all we’d have is that lady over there. That head’s been here for a while, and at least it gained the owner some notoriety.”
“Yeah, that seems fair. C’mon, this stuff gives me the creeps.”
“Thousand-year-old bodies creep you out? You?”
“It just seems kind of shitty. These people busted their asses to be interred in as close to a natural, living state as possible, and now they’re here for us to ogle. I think if I could take these guys, I would.”
“They’d fall apart the second you touched them. Look, there’s a thermostat right there in the case.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Don’t pout. Let’s get out of here.”
“Are we still a go?”
“I can’t think of any reason not to. Well, besides the obvious ones. Those are still pretty glaring.”
“Nothing risked, nothing gained.”
“You keep saying it, I’ll keep trying to believe it.”
They walked hand in hand down the staircases, under the whale, and through the main doors.
The wind bit, but not hard, as they crossed the street to return to the apartment. It was a longer walk than Mike usually took in weather like this, but Deb didn’t complain about it and neither did he.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The morning after the museum, Mike slept more poorly than he had in recent memory. Deb slept next to him, and Mike fell back into a similar abyss a few times too. Finally the waking stuck, and when he’d cleared the fog from his eyes he saw that she was up too, sitting in the bed and using the sheet to cover her breasts. She smiled at him and said, “What do you have today?”
“More work on that young kid’s pirate sleeve. His name’s Jeremy, the one with the orange hair. What do you have?”
“I’ve got a scarification appointment tonight but mostly just piercings. Oh yeah, I know that kid. His tat’s turning out nice. You need to tattoo me one of these days.”
“God, where?”
She feinted as if to smack him, and he pulled his hands up in mock d
efense.
“I have plenty of space left—you should know that better than anybody.”
“I could use a refresher.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “If last night wasn’t enough of a crash course on where I do and do not have tattoos, I don’t think anything’s going to help.”
“You know, you’re right. I think I saw some space on your left butt cheek, but like I said, though, memory’s a little fuzzy. Perhaps if I were to see—”
She tackled him before he could finish, batting at him for a few moments before he could throw her off. The sheet covering her breasts was off now, and he spared them a quick glance before she demurely recovered herself.
“What was the worst time for you?”
“How do you mean?”
“At work, what was the worst time you ever had in this job? And no crappy answers like you’d give a customer asking what the weirdest tattoo you ever did was. I want to hear the real thing.”
“You still owe me a story. Why should I have to go first?”
“I don’t want to talk about that this morning, but I will go first. Is that good enough?”
“It’ll do.”
“My worst happened in the second shop I worked at in Toronto. Two of the tattooists had split from the old shop I worked at because the owner was a dick, and they invited me along with them. I was young enough not to know that our owner wasn’t all that bad when you got right down to it, and I hadn’t come to appreciate the idea of a shop clientele. I thought that since we were the three most talented people working there, the customers would come right along with us.”
“Did they?”
“Some, not nearly enough. The ‘perfect location’ that the two artists had picked out was perfect: the area was nice and arty, but only during the day. At night it changed a bit—dealers, prostitutes, that whole mess. Not scary enough to keep the hardcores away, but for regular people the area had a pretty rotten reputation. It ended up being a nice little renaissance zone, but we were just a little too early.