by Andrew Post
“Hey man, thanks for calling me back, I—”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on. What are you talking about?”
“Me and my cousin, we…well, we may or may not have run afoul of some not-friends of ours and he’s got a nine-millimeter round in his leg. Up high, maybe in his junk.”
In the background, someone squeaked, “It fucking hurts, man. Really, really bad!”
“And you’re at my fucking house?” Frank said, beginning to sweat. His lower back felt like it was gluing permanently to the leather seat.
“Just about, I think. Okay, yeah. Is it this little green one on the corner with the red shutters? Three-ten Market Street? This you?”
“Do not park in my driveway. Keep driving. Take him to the ER.”
“This is your house, though, right? Are you home? Is this your blue Honda?”
Frank’s blood froze in his veins. The blue Honda was still there. She was still there.
“I’m waving, if you’re home. That’s me waving if you see a dude waving in the black Caddy.”
“How do we know each other?” Frank said.
“Bryce Petrosky, dude. We bunked together in the pen, man. I know it was only for a couple months before they moved me but I remembered you told me you were a doctor and—”
“Not anymore.”
The passenger on Bryce’s end shrieked again. Bryce said, “Just keep pressure on it, man.” Then, to Frank: “Look, word gets around. I know what you do. It’s cool.”
“It’s not cool, Bryce. This isn’t how I do business.” The light changed. On the next block, he pulled into a fast-food parking lot to concentrate. “Keep driving. Take him to the ER.”
“So, you’re not home?”
Frank had no idea what would be the best thing to say at this juncture.
“Because we can wait, dude. I mean, he’s bleeding but it’s not like bad-bad.”
From the background. “It’s not bad-bad? You get shot in the balls and see how fucking bad-bad you think it is!”
Frank said, “I’m out of state. I’m on vacation. Very far away.” He closed his eyes and wished it was true. It didn’t work.
“There’s ten grand in it for you, cash, if you get here in the next fifteen minutes. I got other sawbones in my contact list, man, but I figured you might want the business – word on the street is you’re struggling. Also, did you mean to leave your garage open?”
Frank almost wanted to ask Bryce to repeat the price, but figured that’d show too much interest. He didn’t like his clients to know how hungry he was – but evidently everyone already knew.
“Stay in your car. Don’t play any loud music, my neighbors are old and they will call the police.”
“That’s cool. Quiet it is. Say, what are we talking on time? Because, my cuz here is actually looking kind of pale.” Then, muffled: “I said keep pressure on it, dude. I know it hurts but just keep pushing down on it, you’ll bleed to death.” To Frank: “Fucking amateurs, right? So, think you’d be willing to cut short that vacation you’re on?”
“I’ll be there.” Frank hung up, pitched his phone into the passenger seat. “Great.”
Chapter Two
In the hearse the undertakers fired up cigarettes, got the radio going, turned on the AC, and merged with the early afternoon traffic on Hiawatha Avenue.
Jolene sat behind the wheel, cigarette forgotten between her fingers, waiting for the light to change. She kept hearing Missus Petrosky’s threat.
A hiss of carbonation was freed, followed by a faint tang of citrus filling the car – and something else, something smoky. Amber’s soda bottle didn’t contain the impossible shade of green of Mountain Dew but something a few shades darker.
“Hair of the dog,” Amber said. “Enough with the face, all right?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you made a face.”
“I made no face.”
“But you did.”
“I made a face. Sue me.” Jolene squeezed her voice into Amber’s higher register. “Do you love me still?”
“I don’t talk like that.”
“Oh, but you do. You sound like what’s her name.”
“Jennifer Tilly,” Amber said with a sigh. “If I had a dime for every time I heard that, I’d put them all in a sock and beat the next person who said it to death with it.”
“Kitty brings out the claws when she’s hung over.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
They were quiet for a while. The hearse’s engine sounded like shit. The check engine light was on – and had been for weeks.
“You think she’d really do it?” Amber said.
Jolene didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. “Yes, I do.”
“She have ties to the mafia or something?”
“I’ve seen the Petroskys show up in the papers a few times, so maybe,” Jolene said. “Racketeering, I think.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Racketeering? No clue.”
“I used to think it meant people were making knock-off tennis rackets.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“I know. I said used to.”
Amber clicked away on her phone. She had a few friends from high school who still lived in the area. To Jolene, they were very annoying. Every one of them would never start a sentence without beginning with ‘I’ and when they were in a room together it was like they weren’t speaking to one another, or even hearing one another, but just bleating thoughts at random. She hated how Amber got around them.
“Sorry. That was Susie. They’re going to Vegas next week.”
“I remember you mentioning that,” Jolene said flatly. “And I can see you out of the corner of my eye: you can stop with the puppy dogs anytime you like. We can’t afford it.”
“Not to be a turd, but it would just be me going. Somebody needs to stay home.”
“Exactly. Both of us do. I can’t do this alone. And we need to talk about what the fuck you’re doing with people’s makeup. Clownish has been used, more than once. I let it slide because we got so much else going on, but after today…”
“That chick was scary.”
“Yeah. She was. So next time…”
“I’ll try better,” Amber said, on a delay, still clicking away on her phone – texts going out and texts coming in, rapid fire. “They’re going to stay in the Bellagio. Oh, can you drop me up here? I need to go see Slug.”
“We’re broke.”
“I’m not going to get anything. I just need to talk to him.”
“Do not ask a drug dealer for a loan so you can go to Vegas. I would think that’d be obvious.”
“I’m not. I just wanna talk to him.”
Jolene pulled up to the curb. “Laundry tonight, remember? That’s on you.”
“Yes, Mommy, I remember. I’ll catch the bus back. You all right to bring in Missus Tamblyn and Mister Wicks when they get dropped off?”
“It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”
“I just wanna talk to Slug for a minute. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“You’re not going to buy anything, right?”
“No, I said. I know we’re strapped. It’s fine.”
“Please don’t offer to blow him. Have that much respect for yourself.”
“What? Gross, no.”
“Oh, my God,” Jolene said with delight. “That’s why you wore the miniskirt. Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Because I’ll tell you, it may’ve worked in Basic Instinct, but Slug won’t just want a peek.”
“Stop. We’re talking about Slug here. Slug.”
“All right, well, don’t become an after-school special.”
“Fuck you. See you at home.”
“Love you to pieces. Make good life choices, okay?”
Amber threw the door closed and watched Jolene pull off.
Once the broad back end of the hearse was out of sight, Amber turned and started down the sidewalk, texting while she walked. Her skirt restricted her legs quite a bit so she wound up doing this quick little shuffle with her knees always touching. She didn’t mind. She was the best-looking one at the funeral today. She saw how some of those old men looked at her, their thoughts burbling up behind their eyes – those drifting gazes, nabbing peeks when they thought she wouldn’t notice. Oh, she noticed.
A new text came in. Amber frowned. None of them were going to volunteer to pay her way to Vegas. Not that she’d ever asked them to. She was hurt, and shoved her phone in her purse after putting it on silent.
Amber clicked her way down the sidewalk with her restricted, short steps.
Slug, or Shawn Klegg as was his Christian name, lived in a two-story Craftsman he got for a song because it used to be a crack den. Not that it really changed much after it was signed over to him – just a different kind of crack den. She never used the bathroom or sat anywhere or touched anything other than the little baggies he handed her at the end of each transaction.
She went around the side of the house, careful of where she stepped to avoid the many piles of dog shit and sun-bleached trash blowing around, and knocked on the back door.
Inside there was a shout, a thunder roll of someone charging down some steps, another shout, saying there was someone at the door, and someone else shouting, ”Then fucking answer it.”
The door came open a crack. A little kid with a filthy face, no shirt, and shorts two sizes too big for him peeked out at her. He had that look all urban squalor kids have with the puffiness around the eyes like they sleep in an aquarium or something.
“Who’re you?” the boy asked Amber’s tits.
“Is Slug home, honey?”
“Who?”
“Shawn.”
“Who?”
“Your daddy, sweetheart,” Amber said through gritted teeth. The itch was on her and it was hot out here and she didn’t have the patience for this.
“My daddy plays Xbox with Jesus and Uncle Bunk now. That’s what my mommy—”
“Then your stepdaddy, honey,” Amber cut in. “Is he home?”
“Yep. But he’s pooping right now. Wanna come in?”
“I’ll wait.”
The kid remained standing in the doorway, staring at Amber’s tits, mouth-breathing. Amber idly rearranged the apps on her phone, sighed a bunch. More martini glass emojis and yaas queen-ing continued as the Vegas preparations moved on without her. None of them seemed to notice she’d stopped contributing.
At last, Slug smacked the kid out of the way and let Amber in. “Sup, boo? What you here for?”
“I was wondering if you were holding.”
“Sheeit, I always holding, girl. Come on in.”
Slug was probably a buck thirty soaking wet. He was white as white comes, wore his hair in cornrows, weighted himself with a collar of gold necklaces, baggy everything save for a ketchup-dotted wife-beater over his thin hairless chest. On the inside of his forearm he had, no joke, SHAWN aka SLUG tattooed. Amber nearly died of laughter the first time he showed it to her.
“Why’re you so dressed up?” Slug said, leading her through the kitchen with the overflowing sink full of dirty dishes and a bowl of milk and cereal left to congeal on the counter. Flies were in her ears and angling for her eyes behind her sunglasses.
“I worked this morning,” Amber said, batting the flies away. “Could we maybe, you know, do business back outside?”
“Fuck that, hotter than a grilled cheese sandwich out there. We’ll go up to my office.”
Amber wanted a buzz more than she hated being in his house, she decided. Even though it was always full of the headache-making thrum of a thousand electronics going at once and always smelled faintly like cat pee and leaking industrial refrigerant.
“I was thinking you up and went AWOL on me,” Slug said. “Forgot about your boy or found some new slinger to get your shit from.”
“I couldn’t possibly forget about you, Slug,” Amber said.
“That’s sweet. But I know it’s because I’m your numero uno hook-up.”
Amber smiled. She wouldn’t hurt him lying to him more. They knew what they were to each other.
“Where’s my manners? You want a drank or something? I got that purple soda.”
“No purple soda. I wanna buy so I can get home.”
“Aight, aight, sheeit, you in some kind of hurry?”
“It’s laundry day and they close at ten.”
Slug laughed. “Chill. It only but noon.”
“Yes, but time loses all meaning for me when I’m here, Slug. It’s always been that way with you. That one time senior year I thought I was at your parents’ place for an afternoon, getting stoned in the basement, and it turned out to be three goddamn days.”
“That wasn’t my fault. That was the shit we were doing. Can’t blame me for the time-altering ways of Oxy.”
“See? And we’re burning even more time talking about how we burned time. Can I make my purchase so I can fucking go home, Slug?” After this morning, with her morning puke still burning the back of her throat and all of the stress with work, Amber needed a pick-me-up the way fire needs air.
“Goddamn, girl. Bring yoself on upstairs then, if you is in such a damn rush.”
Slug guided Amber up a creaking staircase with missing spindles and toys littered all over and a laundry basket heaped with dirty diapers, carpeted in flies. At the end of the hall, he threw out one sinewy arm for her. “Step into my office.”
The windows were covered with tacked-up beach blankets. Posters for Insane Clown Posse were hung about the room along with pictures of topless chicks with enormous boobs brandishing machine guns and plenty of smeary ink-jet printouts of screen-grabs from Scarface, and a large swastika scrawled on the wall in purple marker.
Slug collapsed into a pleather recliner, cranked up the footrest, and gestured to a duplicate chair opposite. Between the chairs, on a milk crate, Amber noticed, was yet another overflowing ashtray, a roll of tinfoil, a pump-bottle of lotion, and a box of tissues. “Take a load off. Put your feet up.”
Amber stared at the empty chair, wondering what sort of nightmares had been perpetrated upon its cracking fake leather seat. “I’m good.” She hooked a finger into her purse for her money-clip. “I will take a gram, though.”
Slug drew out a few feet of foil, tore it off, and produced a small plastic tube from over his ear and bit it between his teeth, smiling up at Amber, who by now had crossed her arms and was trying to ignore the smell of burnt cheese making her stomach turn. “Homeboy of mine swung past the crib last night with some Oxies,” Slug said, grinning. “Care to partake, for the sake of old times?”
“No. I want a gram and I want to go. I’ve got laundry to do.”
“You mentioned that. You really need to learn to chill.” Slug used a Boondock Saints DVD case to grind the little orange pills into powder with his lighter. “You gotta kick back sometimes. Actually sit down when someone invites you to. Gotta learn to take it easy for reals, boo.”
“If you were to ask Jolene,” Amber allowed, “she’d probably tell you I take it a little too easy.”
“Just because a girl has a sniff-sniff now and again don’t mean nothing bad.”
“I’ll tell her you think so, Slug.”
She watched him sprinkle the pale orange powder onto the little boat he’d made with the tinfoil. “Say, you remember Terrance Stephens?”
“No, but does he sell coke?”
“Naw, he works at Taco Duck now on the drive-thru. Remember in gym class that one time – wait, did you have that gym class with m
e or was that Jolene?” Sucking on the tube, Slug wiggled the lighter’s flame under the tinfoil and vacuumed the thin trickle of smoke rising from the graying pill powder.
“Jolene didn’t go to school with us. I met her in college.”
“You sure?” Slug said, holding his hit. “Because we went to school with some Daria-looking chick.”
“That was Natalie Rodriguez. She died on prom night in a car accident. You were driving.”
“Oh, right. Anyways, I was just up here the other day, sitting right in this chair, thinking about that time Terrance Stephens shit his pants in gym class climbing the rope. You remember that? A big ol’ glob of it slipped out his drawers and hit Mister Langford right on the shoulder, bloop, like Terrance was a fucking seagull or something. Man, I fucking miss high school. Being grown sucks.”
Fanning the stink of burning pills away from herself, Amber looked around Slug’s office – the décor, the trash everywhere, the jackoff-helping paraphernalia. “Things seem pretty much the same where I’m standing.”
Slug burned and sucked another line. His eyes were getting glassy. Now was the time to get what was needed out of him before he fell into the haze and couldn’t remember his own name, much less where he kept his stash.
“Slug. I’ll say it again. One gram. Here’s the money in my hand.”
Slug tried twice to get his reaching fingers to go where his eyes were looking. He flicked through the bills once, then again. “We’re a little light here, boo.”
“Front me the last ten.”
“How are you gonna do laundry?”
“What?”
“If this is all your cash, how are you gonna get quarters?”
“I’ll busk outside the Laundromat playing a kazoo with my ass.”
Slug exploded with laughter. “That’s real fucking funny. You were always funny, Amber. Man, it’s usually the fat bitches who have to have a sense of humor. But you got the whole package. You’re like that one bitch, that one comedian bitch in that movie where she’s a pussy doctor.”
“A gynecologist.”