It’s because of my dad, Shane told me, He’s had me read this shit since I was a kid and neither of us believe a word of it—but it’s habit, right?
But Shane believes in the cult and in quantum mechanics, and maybe he’s been right all along—it’s really something if someone like Shane was tuned into something the big boys in Manhattan or Washington or wherever couldn’t figure out.
The particles, though, man, legit, like so much is in flux it’s possible to walk through a wall, to fly.
We creep over the empty highway and I’m picturing the empty streets of what once was the Fax’s north end—I lived there once, like a million years ago. I was Brit’s age, and me and Leo were here—he was hustling for his bosses back then, moving around like constantly, like, always.
We lived on Falkland, Cornwallis, Creighton, and Agricola.
We lived on North, Gottingen and West.
For two days we lived in a house on Uniacke Square.
When we lived on Creighton there was this bar on the corner Leo went to. It had one of those neon OPEN signs and it was always on. Sometimes, after it rained, I’d look down from our window on the third floor of the apartment building and see the red and blue in a puddle in the gutter and feel like I was in a detective movie or some shit.
Leo sold coke and meth straight out of his pocket there and then tried to shark people at pool but he was never good enough—motherfucker used a house cue warped as a gimp’s dick—but he’d be gone all night and spend every cent he made. That’s part of why we split for T Dot, but anyway I loved that corner and one summer a boy got shot there and we had to leave.
The black guys told us—this is the most racist city in the North American Zone.
They were like, Welcome to fucking Baltimore.
The Big War had come to those streets, I’m picturing it right now, but the other one, the Secret War, had been going on for centuries.
Fuckers have been under the boot-heel for, like, ever, yo—and the rain is pouring down on all of it.
The only thing that town had going for it when I lived there was like some accident that killed a million people. An explosion like flattened the city, I guess, and now looking out the windshield at the wreckage around us I’m like they’ll be charging admission on this shit in the Fax a hundred years from now, know what I mean? Like, today’s trauma is tomorrow’s tourism.
But anyway, maybe the Fax is flattened or maybe it’s not, but thank fuck we ain’t gotta go through that town, but if what’s happening everywhere else has happened there, those motherfuckers are fucked, like legit.
Dear Craig,
It’s okay, okay?
You were never a big believer in marriage, but you popped the question didn’t you? And look where that got you.
You were in your robe in the kitchen with the baby and you called out, Can you come in here for a sec, and your wife came in and you said, the baby in your arms, Will you marry us?
She said yes, but you already thought she had other plans, didn’t you?
You thought she thought you were a loser, but she didn’t think that she thought something else.
She really loved you.
It’s all just dreams, okay, babe?
It’s just bad dreams.
It’s okay, okay?
We have the Painting Game, but you had another game didn’t you?
It was the game you were taught when you lived in Vancouver and it was the game that was called Waving Goodbye To Someone You Love.
So many games, aren’t there?
We play so many of them but only a few have names we can remember.
But in that game you used to have with someone, you’d picture them leaving you on some rickety and creaking ship that sailed away—they were on the deck of the ship, and you were on the dock, and the thing was that you would just wave goodbye and watch them recede, and that was like, death, wasn’t it? But it was also everything, wasn’t it, you know? You were waving good bye to her and her and her and him and him and they and they and yourself and me weren’t you, baby?
The person leaving wasn’t really leaving and the truth is that you were the one going away, weren’t you, baby? You were the one dying.
When you played this game, something you’d whisper to them or to yourself was, It’s okay, okay? It’s okay.
And maybe that’s why you worry so much about this book because you feel like you’re saying goodbye but you never can tell how shit is gonna go, can you? Nobody ever really knows shit, do they?
Anyway, I was reaching out tonight to you—the ferry arrives in the morning so we’re told—and I knew I’d find you out there—I knew you’d be there if I needed you to be—and sure enough you were.
Keep going, okay baby?
We need you to.
Until the end and then we’ll see what happens.
Brit
They took the motherfucker right onto the lawn of the White House, and the first thing they did was shave the motherfucker’s head—it was fucked up, yo—it was kinda the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen.
We’re in the terminal watching replays on the big screens.
TV dawg, everywhere—we’d gone so long without contact, when we saw that shit—like the news channel or whatever—we were shocked, know what I mean?
Brit was like, If TV is still working, then is everything okay in the world?
Tariq(e), G, seriously—they shamed that motherfucker, and make no mistake, shame is like the most potent weapon in the world.
They make you ashamed of what you are, if you’re not like them—and on the news we watched it happen.
Like Tariq(e), yo, they started crying, and their clipped hair was falling onto their shoulders and shit, and they were like looking like directly into the camera and crying and shit. And then once they were done with the hair, the dudes in the masks made Tariq(e) like pull up their skirt and we saw Tariq(e)’s dick for a second and Tariq(e) was mouthing the words, It’s okay, it’s okay—Don’t worry it’s okay, and then the men just shot them in the head and the video cut back to the anchor and just then we were told that our ship had come in.
The ocean is black, and so is the sky.
There’s no one on board but us—it’s like a total ghost ship, G—the captain and crew and seemingly just one steward and they’ve all gone bonkers, know what I mean—like legit insane. Like Day-Pass motherfuckers the whole lot of them.
In the night, we list like mad, the rigging groaning and the motor so loud Carter is scared shitless, yo—a mist patterning the circular windows in the lounge where the steward—this fat dude in a dirty shirt with greasy hair and paws like ball mitts—mixes drinks for us on the house because he says we’re probably the last guests they’ll ever have—VLT machines blinking silently all around us—everything sways with the tilt of the waves.
We’ve got sixteen hours on this sucker, maybe longer, and we’re wondering what’s waiting for us on the Island, G, seriously.
Sixteen hours of watching dude split ice with a pick in the sink behind the bar, making Tom Collinses for the girls and Shirley Temples for Carter and the howling wind beating at the windows and otherwise the place is like a tomb—like a motherfucking tomb haunted by banshees or some stupid shit like that.
But in the cabin, at least there’s a shower that works.
And after everyone gets a wash—like, legit, it had been weeks, yo—we all crash out in the two bunks we got, but I can’t sleep and leave the girls and Carter in the room and go out on the deck and watch the waves crash against the hull, thinking of our car, the only one on the ship, down there below-decks in the belly of this thing.
Shit changes so quickly, yo. Like, you’re cruising along—you’ve got your girls and you’ve got your money, know what I mean? You can’t see the future but you think the future is gonna be okay, right? Yeah, you’re gonna die someday, but not yet, know what I’m saying? It’s point-blank-period-like-totally-legit sweet as fuck.
You’re liv
ing well.
You feel good about shit.
And then, how does it happen, G?
You go back in time and try to figure the exact moment when shit went seriously awry, right? Like that might help you make shit right again, but it don’t, because you just can’t place it. And everything that happens in the present—like, fuck you, it ain’t the present—shit is the past and the present and it’s also the future—the whole time, bitch is trying to read it all—you see these angles in your head, legit—everything is happening—and motherfucker is trying to read it all, and you’d never tell he was because maybe he’s just like some guy on the bus—but he’s trying to read everything that happened and is happening and could happen or not—and that’s what is otherwise known as being jaded or like being smart as fuck, dawg, seriously—or insane—and you’re doing the same thing too, G—everyone doing their best to read like what this world is or is supposed to be or what was, know what I’m saying?
How it went wrong—I think sometimes it had to do with seeing that satellite fall outta the sky like months ago, you know? Or when I saw the cult’s stencil on our apartment building back in T Dot—like maybe that was the moment. And then I think it started even before that, like when me and Nina came up with the Painting Game and that was it—but really I know it began even long before that, right? Like maybe when I was a kid even or even before I was born shit was fucked up and the good times are just like a total illusion, G, for real.
It’s like this—even when I was a little boy, motherfucker had, like, serious anxiety—it’s how come I pace so much and shit, and chain-smoke like I do. It’s because of my dad, right? And he’s the way he is because of his dad, and his dad before him all the way back into history.
But because Dad is rich, I had shrinks and drugs and shit when I was a kid and most people can’t have that shit because they’re broke-ass motherfuckers, right, and I want to be poor so bad—that’d be like the dopest shit ever seriously—but I’m not.
Leo would always say that shit to me—like, You could make the world a better place, but you’d rather pretend you’re a bad-ass. He’d say, You had every opportunity in the world but you’d rather wear a costume.
Leo hated me for that, because bitch grew up poor as shit, and really did have to hustle—with me it was like totally the same as the way Nina used to shop online—just some fucking get-up, know what I mean?
And anyway, I’d be like, Fuck you, dawg, but bitch had a point.
Dear CFP,
Don’t worry.
You feel the same way about palmistry and astrology as you do about French continental theory, broken window policing, and contemporary literary fiction—like total quackery.
Late at night, I see you on the couch in your mom’s living room while the baby sleeps in the spare bedroom, watching YouTube debates from, like, 1982, and thinking to yourself that Foucault makes Chomsky sound like a pragmatist.
But it’s okay, baby—in the morning, you look at the jagged lines across your hand and pick out all the failed relationships that are etched right in there—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—your daughter beside you in the sunlight in the park with her counting book while ducks gather at the edge of the water, waiting to be fed.
We both had to come a long way, didn’t we?
I went from the boulevards of my hometown to the ethnic enclaves of T Dot, then all across the east to the 7-0-9. And you’ve been everywhere else, haven’t you, baby?
It’s a long way to go—and I feel like for you and me, things are about to change again, aren’t they? Maybe we’re getting close to the end of our time together, I don’t know and neither do you. But unless a miracle happens, that’s just the way it goes, doesn’t it?
No matter what, the story ends sometime doesn’t it?
Last time round, you liked to say that you’d never fall in love again because of what happened—your heart couldn’t take it, and you were too old for all the silliness—all that trauma and all those terrible things you did to the people you loved.
Time doesn’t heal shit, does it, baby?
Nina knows that better than anyone, but she don’t talk about that shit too much, you know? I know you know.
You were coming outta the store with an eight pack of beer, and there on the sidewalk coming toward you was your old lover from years ago, and when she saw you, you saw how freaked out she got, right? She began, like, nervously adjusting her hair and her glasses and this scarf thing she was wearing.
You were already pretty drunk, weren’t you? And just then you decided you weren’t just gonna let her walk by you without saying something—so you said something—like, Hello how are you or something like that—and you saw how hurt she still was and how angry she still was and how she hated you and how she def was not, like, indifferent to you at all and that’s how I know that time don’t heal shit, right? I know that because you know it, too.
And then you went back to what you had been calling your studio—that place where we first fucked, except not really—but it wasn’t really a studio at all, it was a place you would go to hide because you were forty-two years old and living with your mother and you were ashamed of yourself. Then you texted the girl you were fucking and told her what happened and then you texted her to say you couldn’t wait to fill her mouth with your cock and punish her, didn’t you?
And then you stayed there all night looking out the window with your CD player and you cried all night, didn’t you? You cried so much snot was dripping out your nose and you couldn’t breath—and that’s when I knew I loved you—because you were doing that for me, weren’t you? You were doing it for a person nobody in your world even knows really exists—but here I am.
And there you are, C.
I don’t know for how much longer I can write.
But I’ll try, okay?
Goodnight.
Brit
So this is the most fucked up shit in the history of the world, okay?
Like legit, man—this shit’s a bigger nightmare than what we’ve already come through for real—like, worse than Leo and the world burned black and Tariq(e) shot the way they were outside the White House and even all those bodies we saw in that little town with their mouths like stretched open from the pain and horror of it all—this is worse than all that shit.
We drive the car off the ferry in whatever town—it’s just some shit town from a postcard or some shit—like really pretty and like a total ghost town—just these quaint little clapboard houses and tarpaper roofs or whatever—like legit, laundry on the line in some of the backyards and as Shane pulls slowly outta the mouth of the ferry it’s like just totally surreal, you know what I mean?—given everything we’d just come through. It’s like we’re in some other world, and for the first time since we got him from my Granny’s place, Carter seems sort of happy, or whatever, like seriously happy—he points out the car window at some big ugly seagull roadside, and like, I’m thinking: Maybe it’s gonna be alright, right?
But it’s not alright—the sun is shining and it’s, like, beautiful here.
And we’re so dumbfounded Shane pulls the car over to the shoulder and I roll down the window and we all watch this seagull with a, like, TexaBucks wrapper in its mouth. There must be like a piece of burger or some shit in there because dude’s really intent on ripping that thing apart. It begins just furiously whipping its head back and forth with the wrapper in its mouth. It’s kinda walking around in circles and flapping its wings and ripping the TexaBucks wrapper. And its little feet are stomping around in the grass, and bits of the wrapper are coming loose as it does, and Carter begins to laugh at it.
The wrapper is yellow with red lettering, and it’s dirty looking. For a sec, the wind catches it and tears it from the seagull’s mouth, and he has to fly over a few feet and lands on it and begins tearing at it again, only this time the gull has his feet firmly planted on the wrapper, and it comes apart in no time. Then some other gulls fly over and land besid
e the first one, trying to get the prize or whatever but our gull swallows the burger or whatever in one big gulp. His neck bulges a bit as he swallows it, and he’s up and into the air and out of sight.
Shane puts the car back in drive, and we keep going.
The rest of the world covered in ash, and here, on the Island, it’s like God’s country, right? It’s like, really real here.
And man, the road, right? It’s this little beaten down thing that’s just crumbling away, and it winds beside the ocean and the ocean is like calm as a motherfucker—there’s these cute little tree-covered islands out there in the water—and the birds, man, dozens and dozens of them are wheeling around high up in the sky.
Shane looks over at me and smiles and tells me he knows from the way they’re flying that there’s a storm coming—Like a fucking motherfucker of a storm, he says, showing off how, like, rugged he is, or pretends to be, even though he’s really a city boy or whatever—the Islander thing he likes to bust out for me sometimes—like that story about the caribou he shot—I’ve heard that one a million times like legit.
And I guess things aren’t the same as they once were here—water-breaks and levees are everywhere because of that sea-level shit, right? Shane saying everything here was once so perfect and pristine, but it looks pretty good to me—there’s all these cute little hills and boulders roadside and there’s this wind blowing and it smells so clean—I see myself in the side-view mirror and, man, I look good, you know—my eyes are like ringed and baggy, and my lips are all cracked and fucked up—the wind blows my hair over my face for a sec, and I can’t see.
But I push the hair out of my face, and there in the side-view, man, I see the ferry behind us in the water getting smaller and smaller, a little plume of black smoke going up from the stacks into the sky.
Skeet Love Page 10