Toxic Love

by Kristopher Triana

  “You need to shut up!” I said. “Don’t you ever talk about my daughter!”

  Tony suddenly looked ill. “Aw, shit, man. I didn’t know she was your daughter.”

  Though there was apology in his tone, he didn’t say he was sorry. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have been good enough for me. I was angrier than I’d ever been, the rage against the world that had been festering inside of me like a disease was now flowing over the rim of self-control that had always contained it. My yelling was merely the smoke warning of a volcano about to erupt.

  “They’re all somebody’s daughter, you human toilet!” I shouted. “I’m going to see you fired, you hear me, asshole? Fired!”

  At this threat, Tony’s outrage returned, his moment of remorse squashed dead. “Hey, fuck you, man. Ya can’t fire me just for talkin’. And you can’t talk to me the way ya are. Besides, if your daughter over there didn’t dress like a—”

  That’s when I pushed him.

  Tony stumbled, his legs getting tangled in the dolly carrying the twelve packs. He fell into the display, sending the cases backward, and some of the cans rolled out and popped open as they hit the floor, shooting thin jets of carbonated water. A panicked voice went over the intercom, paging the store manager.

  I hovered over Tony the Douche. “Get up, you bag of garbage!”

  But Tony was already getting up. His eyes were drawn tight, skin pink with heat that came from within.

  “Ya mothafucka,” he said. “I’m gonna wipe the floor with your ass.”

  He took a swing at me, but it was a wide hook I saw coming. I’d never been much of a fighter, but I didn’t have to be one to dodge this sloppy attack. I ducked down and drove myself into him. Tony grabbed me by the waist and started to spin. My feet scrambled to stay on the floor and I was tossed aside like I was being flung into a pool instead of a spinner rack of magazines. The rack toppled, sending issues of People, Time, Newsweek, and MAD across the floor, fanning them out like playing cards. My hip screamed.

  Tony wasn’t particularly strong, but he was six-foot-two and his longer arms got the better of me. As I struggled to get to my knees, he grabbed the collar of my shirt and punched me in the gut.

  Now I’d had my share of rumbles in childhood, but no one had ever hit me in my adult life. It hurt much more than I remembered. All the air left my body. My vision blurred. I felt like throwing up but couldn’t breathe enough to do so. A drop of piss moistened my underwear. Had two clerks not teamed up with the seafood manager to break us up, Tony probably would have made good on his promise to mop the floor with my behind.

  The look of shock on Bahl’s face when he came down from his office loft to find that I was one of the people involved in the brawl was the first hint of real human emotion I’d ever seen on the man’s face, unless you count the constant bird beak scowl of disapproval he always wore to inspire just enough fear in his employees to get them to work just a little harder (his face often reminded me of Sam the Eagle from The Muppets). Tony and I were suspended without pay, and I was sent home to wait to hear from Bahl after he and the regional directors discussed what was to be done with me. But as the head of HR, I already knew.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “She’s working out really well,” I said.

  Ryker grinned. A bit of juice from his roast beef sandwich had pooled in the corner of his mouth and his tongue was hunting for it. He sniffed wetly, small black hairs peeking out from under his flared nostrils.

  “See?” he said. “I told you if you just hung in there we’d land you a good partner. So, what’s the official score you give her for her on-the-job training?”

  He took the pencil out from behind his ear and propped the clipboard on his folded legs. I noticed he was wearing tie-dye socks.

  “I give her an A plus,” I said.

  It was a stretch. Sage was doing a good job, but she was hardly a model student. She worked hard when she wanted to but was too easily distracted, her horniness interrupting her work ethic even after we’d already had sex. The sight of all that tantalizing waste gave her an appetite that was seemingly insatiable. It was like putting an eighteen-year-old boy in a room full of Playboy playmates; even four orgasms later he’d still be sporting a boner.

  “Nice,” Ryker said. He slurped the last bit of his milkshake, making it gurgle in the straw like a water bong. “Business has been good. Lots of suicides lately, have you noticed that? Maybe it’s the coming holidays that have folks so blue, I dunno.” He leaned back in his chair and there was a noise that could have been a creak but was probably a fart. “People keep talking about this epidemic of mass murder. All these sick assholes go shooting up rock concerts and schools with automatic rifles. Can you imagine the kind of bank we’d make on something like that?”

  I winced. “Jesus, Harry.”

  “Come on, I ain’t saying I want it to happen. I’m just thinking out loud about the dough. One job like that could keep us going for a couple of months.”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d just come off a long job and had fucked Sage two-and-a-half times in four hours (I’d tapped out during round three, too exhausted to finish). It was nice to have had a bed this time, even if it was one a young woman had slit her wrists and bled out on. I was ready for my own bed and a bottle of Beam to tackle me into sleep.

  “Still, we’re doing good,” Ryker said. “And now we’ve got us a sexy sidekick. We could call ourselves The Toxic Trio! The Dukes of Hazardous Material!”

  Ryker cackled, a bit of chocolate shake spittle flying out of his mouth. I didn’t find him particularly funny, but he was wittier than I would have expected. He was in a particularly good mood today. Probably put a little pick-me-up in his morning cup of Dunkin’. If he had a bottle in his desk, I wished he would offer me a shot.

  “As long as the work stays steady,” I said, “you can call us whatever you want.”

  ***

  The work didn’t stay steady.

  After the slit-wrist job, Sage and I were called to another multiple homicide, a gas station robbery gone wrong. The clerk and the full-service gas attendant had been shot to death, along with a customer who’d been shotgun-blasted into an aisle full of food and drinks, making one hell of a mess. When I pulled up to the scene, police and ambulance bubble tops whirred, creating a disco effect that lit up the blackness.

  Lieutenant George Hallahan was talking with Sage when I reached the curb. Somehow she always arrived ahead of me, like she was Batgirl sitting on her bike at all times, just waiting for the signal to fill the night sky. The detective was nodding his head at something Sage was saying, but I couldn’t hear her over the wind. She was wearing a heavy coat and scarf. I wondered what she had on underneath. Crotchless panties? Knee-high schoolgirl stockings with cherry bows? Hoop earrings on her nipples? Or maybe if I pulled open that coat she would be naked as the day the delivery doctor gave her ass its first spank.

  “Good evening,” I said. “Or should I say morning?”

  It was just past midnight. Hallahan nodded a hello, rebel strands of his gray hair dancing in the breeze. His coattails fluttered like a cape. The man looked tired. Probably had been on the job the last ten hours, one of those old pulp novel detectives who works themselves into an early grave but always gets their man. I’d seen mountains weaker than his jaw.

  “This one’s going to take a while,” he told me. “Not as unsettling as that one at Pine Heights, but a real mess.”

  I glanced at Sage, expecting this news to put that twinkle in her eye, the one she always got when she grew moist between the legs. But her face was stoic, impressively professional. I was proud of her for this restraint.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s okay. We’re used to it. Did you catch the bastards who did this?”

  He shook his head and changed the subject. “There’s a representative from the store here. Wants to speak with you.”

  Crap. Usually Ryker handled the customer relations.

  “Okay then,”
I said. “I’ll get with them.”

  Hallahan looked at Sage again and the spark in his eyes gave me an unexpected twinge of jealousy. “You’ve made it this far, young lady. When I first met you I thought I wasn’t ever going to see you again, but you must be a tough cookie. This job isn’t freaking you out, huh?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I’m thankful to have it.”

  “Well, good.” Hallahan smiled, but his face was somehow sad. “It’s Thanksgiving time. We all should be grateful for something.”

  A uniformed officer came out of the store and Hallahan excused himself to talk to her. The policewoman carried a notepad and seemed sharp and awake for this time of night. Now that we were alone, Sage gave me a sly, knowing look. She sucked in her bottom lip, biting down on one side of it.

  “A nice, messy one,” she said.

  “Good thing I brought a change of underwear.”

  “I like my boys dirty.”

  “That’s putting it lightly.”

  A part of me was surprised by how easily I could banter with her now. The other part of me wanted to see how much dirtier she could get. I had to resist the urge to nibble her neck right there in the parking lot. I’d already taken my circulation pill and Mini-me was stirring. But first I had to talk to the asswipe from Shellby Gas and show him all the care, consideration, and understanding I was supposed to feel. It was normal for family members of the corpses to want to meet with the cleanup crew they hired, and business owners were no different, though easier to deal with due to their emotional detachment from the deaths. This was where Ryker came in, but sometimes the clients wanted to speak with the hands-on crew too.

  The representative was a tall, olive-skinned man in a cheap-looking suit and a tie that didn’t match. He looked irritated, probably not used to working this late. Two bushy, black eyebrows hovered on his brow like mini-porcupines, matching his mushroom of kinky hair. When he shook my hand, gorilla fur poked out from beneath his sleeves.

  “Gene Galanos,” he said.

  “Mike Ashbrook. This is my associate, Sage Jaworzyn.”

  Galanos seemed much happier to take her hand than he had been to take mine. Sleaze tainted his smile like film. He reminded me of a used car dealer or Amway salesman, someone impossible to trust.

  “Charmed, my dear,” he said.

  Sage didn’t say anything. Clearly she was used to this bullshit from men, but I saw no need to drag this out. I wanted everyone to leave so Sage and I could get down to business, in more ways than one.

  “What did you want to speak with us about?” I asked.

  Galanos barely took his eyes off Sage. “We at Shellby Discount Gas and Food Mart always like to speak with our brokers before moving forward with any contracts.”

  “Uh huh. Well, Harry Ryker is the one to go to with contracts. We just do the decontamination and disposal.”

  “Yes, yes. I know you’re janitorial.” His term made me seethe inside. He was trivializing our skill set. “Mr. Ryker agreed to all of our terms and the contract has been finalized. We just like to do a face-to-face with the actual persons doing the on-site work.”

  The grunts, I thought. That’s what he means.

  “Well, here we are,” Sage said.

  “And now we’ve met,” I added.

  The man’s smile was as fake as silicone tits. “Yes, yes, of course. As you can see, we have a rather ghastly mess here in our establishment. It’s of the utmost importance that we not only sanitize the affected area, but also minimize the amount of customer exposure to this unfortunate incident. You see, we here at Shellby want our customers to maintain the safe and family-friendly atmosphere we have established over our sixty-plus years of servicing our communities. So we need this work, in particular, to be expedited.”

  “An expedited removal?” Sage’s voice lilted, and I could tell she was being sarcastic.

  Galanos didn’t catch her immigration joke.

  “Yes, yes. Exactly,” he said. “We want the station to be void of any traces of the violence that went on here tonight as quickly as possible. We need it clean by our normal opening time of five a.m., so any potential customers who drive up don’t get an eyeful of . . . how shall we say . . . unfortunate imagery.”

  That’s what he called the remains of three murder victims. Unfortunate imagery. These corporate stooges were masters of tacit evil. Even if I had become a regional manager with Shop-N-Hop, I like to think I never would have become one of them.

  “We’ll do our best to have the bulk of it up by then,” I told him.

  “I can’t imagine that with some Hefty bags and a couple of mops this would take you any more than three hours,” Galanos said. “Four tops.”

  I crossed my arms. “It’s not that simple. A job of this size takes time. We have to get into every nook and cranny. The zone has to be completely sterilized, inch by inch.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, but time is more important to us than every minute detail. It’s just that we—”

  “I get what you’re saying,” I said, my hand up like a crossing guard’s. “But we provide a very specific service. We pride ourselves on being meticulous so that everything is done in accordance with the regulations and best practice guidelines of United States governing bodies such as the EPA, OSHA, and NIOSH, Mr. Galanos. This janitorial work, as you call it, is subject to federal law. You don’t rush something like that. We don’t want to do anything illegal, and I’m sure Shellby Gas doesn’t want to ask us to either. I’m sure of that.”

  Galanos leaned back slowly, as if a bee had just buzzed in front of his face. His olive skin had faded to white.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  ***

  “I could barely keep from laughing,” Sage said. “The way you used his own stuffy language against him and threw the government in his face. Just beautiful.”

  I was finishing up my survey of the work site, assessing the damage and planning sections for egresses. Blood, flesh, and bone fragments in three different pools where the bodies had fallen. Aisle three was an abattoir. Near the back, gore mixed with broken glass from cooler doors blasted to bits. This wouldn’t be anywhere close to done by five in the morning.

  Can you suck it, Galanos? Yes, yes, of course.

  “I like a man who stands up for himself,” she said. “It really turns me on.”

  I gestured to the arterial spray on the wall. “I know what turns you on.”

  Sage came up behind me and slid both hands around my waist. The police, officials, medics and that shit-gibbon Galanos had left. She was ready for love, or at least filthy, degrading sex, which was the next best thing, the consolation prize. I had a few more things to jot down in my notebook, so I wiggled away from her, but she came right back, arms snaking around me, warm and hungry.

  “Come on,” she cooed, “before the happy pill wears off.”

  Our sex had been amazing, but at my age I only had one really good fuck in me per day, if that, and Sage and I always wanted to go into extra innings. I could get an erection, but keeping one was another story. Not only was my body older, but I’d also gotten used to not having sex, which meant I’d gotten used to beating off, which doesn’t involve the self-control needed to satisfy a partner. I was like a boxer having come out of retirement to fight beyond his prime. My spirit was strong, but my flesh was stubborn and lazy. But this generic Viagra my doctor had given me was a Christmas gift come early, even if it wasn’t cheap. It got my dick on level with its own ambitions.

  Sage’s tongue went deep into my ear, one hand slipping into my slacks. “I’ll let you come on my face.”

  “What do you mean let me? You practically beg for it. It’s bodily fluids, after all.”

  “Come on, baby. This blood is all so wet still.”

  “Tile floors don’t dry out like carpet.”

  “Let’s take advantage of that. Fuck me right here behind the counter, where that poor clerk got shot.”

  She took off her co
at and bent over the countertop, putting her keister in the air. Her jeans were so tight I could practically see her labia.

  “Are you nuts?” I said. “We can’t fuck there, that’s right by the windows.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, ass bobbing as she switched her weight from one foot to the other and back again. “I know. That’ll make it more exciting. The fear of getting caught can spice things up.”

  “Spice things up? We’re having sex at crime scenes. That’s not spicy enough for you? Because to me that’s a fucking ghost pepper up the ass.”

  She put her hands in her armpits and pantomimed flapping chicken wings.

  “Buck-buck-bwaaa!” she yelled, her neck bobbing.

  It was so unexpected that for a moment I didn’t even know how to respond. She kicked her feet like scratching talons, still doing chicken-flaps, and a laugh burst out of me like a burp.

  “Oh, you are so gonna get it,” I said.

  “Then give it to me, daddy.”

  “What if that shitbird Galanos comes back? What if fucking Hallahan does?”

  Turning around, she flapped her arm-wings faster and stuck out her tongue like we were in middle school. I wasn’t sure if it was cute or idiotic. Once again, her beauty allowed her a pass. I was getting annoyed, but I also had a throbbing erection.

  “Let’s go to aisle three,” I said. “Buckshot turned that woman into spaghetti, for Christ’s sake. And we’ll have a whole wall of potato chips to keep us out of sight.”

  Lifting her chin, Sage turned to the side and pushed her hair away to expose her ivory neck. She knew how I fetishized it, how I liked to take the skin between my incisors, leaving purple dots from the nape all the way down to her pubis, like a bread crumb trail for me to find my way back to her cunt. She walked to the head of aisle three and gazed at the gooey remnants of a customer who’d bought her last Twinkie. The blood was so thick it was purple. Particles of bone dusted the spill like a flurry of snow. At the bottoms of the shelving units, ribbons of wet flesh were spattered amongst the Pringles cans. The woman’s bowels had been blown out of her, and the swamp-colored stool seemed to percolate under the florescent lights as they flickered insecurely.