Sometimes, life is good.

Most of the time it’s a frantic belly crawl across hot broken glass to wallow in a puddle of piss. The joke here is that the piss-pool is a reward, because at least wallowing is easy.

But sometimes. Sometimes, life is good.

The car smolders, bits of melty plastic dribbling down onto the pavement. It burned so hot you could walk over and sink a screw driver down into the asphalt like it was made of caramel. I know, because I did. I thought about taking a picture of it, but it’s the feel of the steel sinking down into the road that is so… Well. so good.

The heat waves rising up from the whole wreck rise up and make a wavy oilsmear mess of the moon.

One down, two to go.

Continued from Marrowbone :

We got justification for wealth and greed:
Amber waves of grain and bathtub speed.
Now we even got Starbucks - What else you need? - James McMurtry ‘Out Here in the Middle’

If he just hits me one more time I’m going to leave. Just one more time.

It’s my mantra. I’ve been saying it for five years. He doesn’t hit me anymore, not really. Our first neighbor saw me before I put the makeup on one day and called the cops the next time she heard yelling. They came in while my nose was still bleeding and took him away to sober up. No charges, but it convinced him that black eyes and nosebleeds were bad news.

Now he pinches.

I reach down and massage the sore area above my hip, right where the belt hits. My “chub”, he calls it, when he’s being cute about it. My “fat useless ass” when he’s not. It doesn’t bruise up like other places. You would think that pinching would kill the nerves or stop hurting eventually, but it doesn’t. It hurts more every time. But pinching isn’t hitting and the promise I made myself says hitting.

Maybe he’ll die. Fall into a machine at work and die.

The upside of the pinching is less makeup. It’s cheaper, no more clogged pores! I’ve gotten a little tan on my face now, it’s pretty. I have lots of sundresses so I don’t have to wear a belt.

My fat ass will need the room.

I spend most of the day when he’s at work outside. I trim the front yard, I do the hedges, the edging. I have a little spot picked out in the back yard where I like to lay down and pretend I’m dead. I think I’d like to be buried out here, underneath the pecan tree, in the sugar sumac. I think I’m going to plant some lillies.

I am getting my dress all dirty again. Need to change before he gets back.

I don’t think the neighbors would complain, as long as I kept the front yard clean. That seems to be pretty important to them. We got a $10 fine for letting some oranges sit under the tree out front for a week. I clean them up first thing in the morning now.

There was blood in my pee for a week. He just kept yelling about the fine and he wouldn’t stop and I thought he would kill me. I hoped he would just kill me.

A little more time laying out under the sumac and then it’s three and I guess I better start on dinner. If it’s not ready to go when he gets home he gets started drinking, and then sometimes we don’t eat at all, we get started on the entertainment early. If I can get him fed, he’ll probably just go to sleep, and then I can watch some TV with the sound off.

I can’t even look into the bathroom. It’s still there on the counter where I dropped it, stupid tampered with piece of shit.

Maybe a pork roast! Something a little sweet. Brown sugar and mustard, got those. Need to get a shoulder. Got some red potatoes and asparagus and for the love of Christ make sure we have beer otherwise he’ll go straight for the liquor cabinet.

I just can’t take that right now not right now. I’ll buy another test while I’m there because this one was messed up. They’re all wrong. God it can’t be right.

I grab my coat and some quarters from the change jar. I make sure the porch light is on. I might make the 3:08 if I jog.

I pick up the fucking liying little stick and the worthless broken tampered with box and the receipt and stuff them in the bottom of my purse.

I just had the BEST IDEA! I should get some ice cream, we’ll have banana splits for dessert.

Continued from Marzipan :

Ben extracts the clip and holsters the gun, makes some final mumblings into his radio, and sits down on the bench. Angry Mom number two is gone, the tense cloud of her confusion and anger has left the area.

“Did you seriously have to put bullets in that thing?” I stoop to pull the beers out of the bag.

He laughs, grabbing the bagged can out of my hand. “Force of habit, I don’t point it at somebody unless it’s ready to go. Plus it looked more authentic for the audience.”

“Right, sure. Now I’m terrified one of your fumble finger screwups is gonna kill me.”

He just shrugs. A crisp tear of aluminum follows and we sit in the park drinking. Every now and then the quiet is perforated by a machinegun burst of mumblespeak from Ben’s collarbone. Every time his ears perk up and he stiffens, but relaxes once he’s absorbed the communication. I can’t make out a word of it. I only know it’s language because of his reaction.

He breaks the silence. “You know what bugs me about shit like that?”

“The fact that you aimed a loaded gun at me?”

“No, you pussy. I was reading an article in the paper just the other day about gentrification.”

“What, like when a dude wears dresses?”

He chuckles. “I ain’t talking about your plans for the weekend. No, it’s like… You remember the Stop’n Go?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s gone now. Mr. Collins opened it after he got out of the Army. He ran it for forty years, good guy. Did right by a lot of people.”

“Okay.”

“Well, they put in that Texaco across the street, and he was out of business in three months. Four decades of cutting people breaks on gas when they needed it, loaning people cash when they needed it. And they sold him out to save five cents on a Snickers bar.”

“Plus they sold cigarettes.”

“Yeah, well…” He looks angry now. His cheeks are flushing and it’s not just the evening cool. I shut up and drink my beer.

He starts again. “They wrote about it in the paper. The yuppies who moved in wrote a story about how sad it was in that fucking newspaper.” He points at a newspaper box for the neighborhood rag.

“Yeah, that was nice.”

“No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t honest and it wasn’t fucking nice. Those are the same people who put him out of business. They ate their cheap candy and smoked their cheap cigarettes and just ignored the Stop’n Go until it went out of business. Then they wrote a fucking newspaper article about it to show how concerned they were. A bunch of dumb rich holier-than-thou fuckers move into my neighborhood, they put my neighbor out of business, then they want to sell me a newspaper article about how sad it is that he’s gone. They come in and they call the cops on people who have lived here their whole lives and they tear down old businesses and put in Subways and then they wonder why the neighborhood changed.”

I wait a minute for him to calm down some. “So that’s gentrification?”

“Yeah. It’s when a bunch of assholes look back after years of squatting and grunting and wonder where all the shit came from.”

We sit in the radio-punctuated silence and finish the beers. After one false start trying to stand, I manage to pitch the empties, ignoring the hairy eyeball from Ben. The homeless guys can collect the deposits on these, the last thing I need is to be walking around with beer on my breath and empty cans in a bag - I might run into a real cop. I see the thoughts racing in Ben’s head, his gaze punching a hole in the bench where the bitchmoms held court. The walkie talkie squawks some gibberish, and he shakes it off. He speaks some of the secret codes into the noisebox. When he’s done, he puts on a fake grin, but I can still see the gears running behind his eyes. He stands without a waver, and pops some kind of intensely mint gum into his mouth.

“Stay out of trouble citizen.” He purposefully strides to the car, working the gum with his back teeth.

“Try not to crash into any parked cars, drunky.” I yell after him. “And don’t point loaded guns at me anymore.”

He just smiles and flips me off from the drivers seat, and backs out into the street without hesitating. The lights begin to whirl and he screeches out of the area east, headed into a maze of apartment complexes. Domestic dispute, more likely than not.

I head north out of the park towards where the nosy bitches left. I’m not surprised but still a little disappointed that mom number two isn’t still cowering in shell shock around the corner. It would have been pretty satisfying to belch at her. The streetlights are clicking audibly into life, the sodium lamps slowly warming from their cold mustard glow to something like daylight, as filtered through piss. By the time I get to the end of the block, it’s cold and dark, and the beer is making me feel slow and tense and oily. The envelope shifts in my pocket and the bottom drops out of my mood. Guess it’s time to figure out what this shit is all about. I crane my neck around and make sure I’m not being followed.

Nobody but me and the pools of dirty light.

Continued from Mallowcreme:

I get up to take a leak, and when I come out, the plate is gone from my table and there are two things in its place : a hand written bill for seven bucks and a mildly bulgey envelope with a phone number written on it. I stuff it in my shirt pocket and scan the street. The almost-certainly-ex cop car is gone and Lola is back out with her smokes, watching the evening turn to night. I put a ten on the table and try to remember how much smokes cost now. I fish a crumpled single out of my pocket and then thumb aimlessly through my wallet looking for another. No such luck, Lola. I put the ten and the single on top of the bill and wave it towards the window. Lola gestures towards the counter and I set the little pile next to the grimy washrag and ancient register.

“You must be the trusting type.”

“You don’t look like an asshole.” She coughs a couple times and jabs the cigarette at the envelope, disrupting the smokey haze surrounding her. “That guy… now that guy looked like an asshole.”

“Yeah?”. I squeeze the envelope and feel the sticky cheap photo paper. Probably a dozen prints. All wrapped up in a piece of copier paper. “You’re probably right.” I wait a second before asking, “Did he look like a cop?”

She just laughs and shakes her head. “Different type of asshole.”

Halfway up the block there’s a little convenience store and I check out the cigarette prices in the window. Jesus. Oh, well, maybe Lola can grab some GPCs. I ring up three tall cans of High Life and a bag of sunflower seeds. The clerk puts my cans into individual brown paper bags while giving me the full extent of her judgement.

I head off to the park on the corner and sit down on a bench to watch the sun set. A couple of kids are playing on the jungle gym and a pair of women two benches down give me the evil eye when I crack open the first beer and give it a couple sips. I toss a couple sunflower seeds in my mouth and savor the fizzy, salty mash. I feel the corners of the envelope poking into my chest. I think about it, feel the weight again. Stare at the sunset. Take another sip of beer. Get into the zen of it. For a while, it’s just me and the envelope and the sunflower seeds, and the hazy sort of buzz you can only get from cheap cold beer on a hot summer evening.

I hear the squealing thrum of another American car rolling up the street behind me and the ratcheting clank of a automatic being moved to despite being in motion. I look back and catch a big white number 316 on the front quarterpanel and immediately look around for the busybody moms. They’re both smiling a smug little victory grin. I sigh and prepare for it.

“SUSPECT! DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.”

Despite knowing I haven’t done anything wrong, this voice through a roof-top PA is enough to set my bowels on edge. My hands automatically rise up above my head and lace together.

“SUSPECT. WITH YOUR LEFT HAND ONLY, PLACE THE BAG ON THE GROUND.”

I reach down and grab the nearly empty beer and set it on the ground.

“SUSPECT. SLOWLY STAND UP AND STEP TO THE LEFT.”

I step to the left and some sunflower shells tinkle from my lap down onto the ground.

“SUSPECT! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISCARD EVIDENCE!”

“They were sunflower seeds, man.”

“SUSPECT! DO NOT SPEAK. TURN AROUND SLOWLY AND FACE THE VEHICLE.”

I get about halfway around and get a good look at the cop.

“Man, FUCK YOU PIG.”

I start reaching into the waistband of my pants while the cop screams GUN GUN GUN at the top of his lungs into the PA, then charges at me while I duck down to grab the beers. I look over just in time to see one of the busybody moms trip and send her kid sprawling on the ground. The other has just set some sort of record for the loaded hurdle headed towards the station wagon around the corner. No loyalty among them either now that the shit is going down, she peels away from the curb while second mom is still limping towards the bumper. She looks like one of those photographs of Vietnamese people running from their exploding village, just terror and confusion and hate. Doubt they’re gonna have another play date any time soon.

“What a couple of cunts.” the wide faced cop laughs and slams the door of the cruiser. “They called me out here because you ‘made rude gestures towards one of the boys’.”

“I’d have to lower my standards to fuck kids that ugly.” Pitching the empty into the trash can, brushing some sunflower shells off my pants. “You almost sounded like a real cop for a minute there, Ben, I almost felt some respect for your authority. Very macho.”

“Fuck you, pedophile. You got a beer for me?”

Every time he thinks, his third eye blinks - Victor Vaughn ‘Fall Back/Titty Fat’

The car following me is staying far enough back that I can’t make out anyone inside. The lack of flash or hub caps on the plain steel wheels screams either “municipal employee” or “street thug gunship bought at auction”. Almost nobody else drives American anymore. I haven’t done anything that would warrant the attention of either of those groups recently, but they’ve been on my ass since ten AM so I don’t think it’s just a happy coincidence. Can’t really let it worry me, I have shit to do, and if they haven’t shot me in 4 hours it means they’re waiting to make contact when they feel like they’re in charge. I duck into the diner, and the beat up woman smoking out front grunts up a phlegmball and stubs out her smoke on the windowsill. She follows me over to the table and sets down a menu. I catch only impressions of her, distracted by the tail. Lola, wrinkles, hairnet.

“Coffee?”

It’s an almost automatic response, but I remember I’m trying to cut down.

“Just some juice, and I want the eggs and toast. Scrambled and wheat.”, hand the menu back.

“Be right up.”

I check the corner of the window to make sure my buddies in the car are still out there. My juice appears on the edge of the table, and I take a sip. There’s a paper stuffed next to the napkinholder but the stories in it aren’t interesting. They’re just depressing. More dead, more stolen, more broken, more betrayed. And the sports page, which would be interesting only if I gave a damn about the men and women who play games for a living. I fold it back up and stuff it back behind the napkinholder and subconsciously reach for a pack of cigarettes in my breast pocket.

I can almost feel the edges of the pack. Hear the crinkle of the cellophane and foil, a glistening corner still attached to the torn open hole. My attention wanders from the majestic looking logo on the seal to the filter paper gently sticking to my lips and the nutty, dusty smell before I click my lighter. Sccchk! A golden flame comes up, with that faint smell of butane and I puff, a warm flood of rich smoke smothers my tongue. The paper is pulled gently from my lips and I inhale. I can feel it bathing my delicate pink alveoli in rich, luxurious smoke. A hot riot of chemicals floods my blood and rushes towards my brain. The hay and molasses smell of the smoldering butt in my right hand, while the left gently pats my pack and lighter back into the pocket. I exhale and a blue plume of smoke and stress and worry just stream out of my mouth and nose and rise up toward the dingy light above the table, ringing it in a halo of diffuse yellow light.

I shake off the daydream when the waitress with my eggs and toast on a plate, drops it next to the juice. I am a little distressed to see that my now clammy left hand hasn’t left my empty pocket. The cost of kicking the habit, I guess. These days I couldn’t smoke in here anyways, I’d have to go join Lola outside, and even then we’d probably get a ticket. Last time I bummed a cigarette and tried it I coughed so hard I nearly threw up, the memory draws up a bit of bile in the back of my throat. I idly stir my juice with a straw and pretend it’s coffee and cream. The eggs are pretty good, the toast is cardboard with aerosol cooking spray. This whole breakfast for dinner adventure has lost some of its charm.

To be continued.