R/T/M (17 page)

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Authors: Sean Douglas

BOOK: R/T/M
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     I wash of my plate and wash out my glass in the sink and rack them in the dying rack and go downstairs.

     She’s sitting on the edge of my bed, fully dressed with her bag over her shoulder.

     I say, “What’s up, Sleepy McSleepypants?”, and laugh.

     She doesn’t look my way or even respond.

     I shrug it off and say, “Whatever.   Fine.   Be that way.   You want to go home?”

   
She gets up and walks to the door and I grab my car keys.

   
When I get to the top of the stairs she’s at the side door and when I walk over she opens the door and goes out and I get through the door before the screen door closes and she’s walking over to the passenger door of my car.

     I key in and reach over and unlock her door and she settles in and just looks straight out the windshield at the fields behind my house.

     I start the car and take her home.   She’s sulky and silent and distant the whole way home.

     When I pull up to her house she gets out, then leans back in and kisses me and says, “See you next week.” But her eyes are flat and expressionless.

     I’m on the highway on the way back home wondering what the fuck is up with the crazy bitch when my cell phone rings and it’s her.

     I answer and she says, “
Are you on your way home?”.   I reply, “Yeah.”

     She says, “I don’t think things are working out.”

     I say, “Really?   Fine.   Whatever.   The least you could have done was tell me back at my place so I wouldn’t have to drive back and drop off your stuff.”

     She says, “I already have it.   I took everything with me.”

     I laugh and say, “You sneaky bitch!”

     She says, “I’m sorry.”

     I just laugh and say, “Look.   Whatever.   Have a nice life.” and I hang up.

     I get back home and sure enough, she took all of her stuff.   I didn’t give a shit about Firefly.   That show sucked anyway.   I was just pissed because I was, like, halfway through Final Fantasy Tactics.   A couple years later Tactics came out for the PSP and I bought one and played it through.   So fuck her.   I win.

 

     So now I’m single so I go back to the MySpace.

     There was a chick on my “Friends” list that I used to pal around with in college.

     I took a couple film classes because I was in the film society and I figured it was an easy way to fill in some of my distribution classes.

     Sc-Fi.   Horror.

     I practically made up the curriculum for the horror class because the instructor was an asshole that didn’t know a thing about horror.   I mean he pronounced “Dracula” “Draculer” and “Van Helsing” “Van Hesling”.   I mean what the fuck?

     Anyway, this chick was in both of my classes.   I set my mind on her the first day I saw her.

     She had long dark red hair and pale skin and she dressed like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction.   You know, tight black slacks and white button up blouses with dark bras you could sort of see through her blouses.

     You know I like redheads, so she just made me fucking crazy.   I was all up on her, but so was about half of the class.   We’d all sit in the same row as she did.   I managed to score one of the seats right next to her on her right.   I guess I’m some sort of alpha male or something.

     All of us dudes would hang out before class and talk about how hot she was and the things we’d do to her if given the chance and then she’d walk up and we’d all make like fucking stand-up comedians trying to win points, vying for her attention.

     She fucking knew it too.   She had to fucking know it, but she didn’t bother with any of us.

     Years later she told me that all of those dudes that I thought were my friends used to talk shit about me.   Makes sense when they started getting married and I never got invited to the weddings, but still that sort of insincerity kind of went up my ass.   I never talked shit about them to score points.   I don’t have to.   I know how awesome I am.   Fuck them.   They’re all married off and gaining weight and losing hair and I’m fucking girls ten years younger than I am.   Once again, I win.

     I stayed friends with her after the classes were over and we’d go back and forth over IM and send each other wacky stuff on LiveJournal.   She’d always be like, “Man!   I’m so fucking horny right now!”, and I’d be all, “Alright.   I’m coming right over to get you.”.   But then she’d be all like, “Ugh.   No.   I’m in my jammies.”   Same bullshit.   It was just a fucking test to see if I’d jump when she whistled.

     I got sick of it after a while and I stopped trying to impress her and just acted the way I usually would.   We started hanging out and going out for some food and drinks.   We didn’t go out to dance clubs because I hate them.   The music always sucks and the bass thumping always gives me a headache.   She dragged me to a couple but there were always guys trying to break her away and I ended up leaning against the wall with a leg up and a beer in my hand wanting to start punching everyone in the face.

     So we’d go to the same couple of bars.   A rock ‘n’ roll bar, and a basement bar with an open mic night and a jazz night, and a Mexican restaurant.   All places with cool, mellow vibes and great music.   Any place with a lot of Johnny Cash and Social Distortion is fine by me.

     The places we could go would dwindle every now and then because she’d get drunk and blow one of the staff and then she wouldn’t want to go back there.   I was pissed.   I mean if she’s going to go around handing out free blow-jobs then where was mine?   I called her out on that point a couple times but she’d always be like, “I don’t want to fuck up our friendship.”, and I’d be thinking, “Fuck friendship!   Suck my dick!”   So I stopped buying anything over my half of the drinks.   I figure why am I going to pay to get her liquored up if someone else is going to get their dick sucked?

     One time she’s drunk and she wants to take me to this place she used to play when she was a kid.   I figure we’re going to go back there and fuck, but I was always thinking about sex.   I figured once we got it over with I’d be able to just let it go, but until then.   So we shimmy through this hole in this wooden fence and she takes me to a ledge overlooking a trailer truck depot.   She’s all confused and she says that this all used to be this big open area with big mounds of dirt and she used to run around and play back there like a tomboy.

     We go back to the missing boards in the tall wooden picket fence and I squeeze through okay.   She gets halfway through and then she looks confused and says, “I’m stuck!”.

     She tugs and frees herself and holds her right arm up and says, “My wrist caught on something.”

     We’re both looking at her wrist and there’s a little white hole that just starts leaking blood in a thick stream.   She goes pale and I clamp my right hand over her wrist and I say, “Here’s the deal.   We’re going to the hospital, okay?”
.   She nods and she looks like she’s going to cry.

     I keep my hand clamped on her wrist and walk her over to the passenger side of my car.

     We stop and I say, “Okay.   I’m going to let go, and when I let go you’re going to have to put your hand where mine is okay?”.   She’s crying a little and she says, “No.”   I reply, “How am I supposed to drive you to the hospital if I’m holding onto your arm?”.   She laughs and sniffs and says, “Okay.”

    I say, “Okay?   Ready?   One.  Two.   Three!” and on three I pull my hand off and there’s blood like paint on my hand and it’s smeared all over her arm from her wrist to about halfway up her arm to the elbow.   She goes pale and I say, “Stay with me.” And I run around to the driver’s side and unlock the door and hop in and reach over and unlock her door and open it with the handle and push it open for her.

     She gets in and elbows the door closed.

     I take off and I run every red light to the hospital.

     The blood keeps coming and it’s dripping down her arm and off of her elbow onto my upholstery.   She sees the mess she’s making and she says, “I’m so sorry.”.   I laugh and say, “Don’t worry about it.”   She replies, “But blood stains!” and laughs when she realizes that’s the chorus to the Agent Orange song with the same title.   She’s gone fucking blood simple.

     We get to the hospital and I slam the car into park and hop out and open her door.

     We go into the emergency room and there’s no one fucking there.

     She raises her arm in the air and yells, “Hello!   I’m bleeding profusely!”.

     An African security guard is standing, watching a television mounted near the ceiling.

     I yell, “Hey!   Fucktard!   Are there any fucking doctors around here?   My friend needs some fucking medical attention!”

     The guy just looks at us disinterestedly and tells us in a muddy labile accent to follow the red footsteps painted on the floor.   Like the fucking yellow brick road.   Things are getting really fucking surreal.

    We follow the red footsteps and they lead us back out to the lobby.   Incredulously I shout, “Hello!   Is there a doctor in the house?” which makes her laugh.   An overweight nurse waddles over to a computer station behind a window and says, “Can I help you?”.   I reply, “Yes you can fucking help us!” and I point at my friend who raises her blood streaked arm.

     The nurse just keeps looking at us all bored and gives my friend the pre-treatment interview.

     It takes, like half an hour and then I go with her back to the treatment area and the nurse tells her to sit on a gurney and someone will be in to see us shortly.   My friend and I riff on what a stupid fucking place this is and, like, half an hour later this guy nurse that looks like Frank Oz comes in and tries to make like he’s a fucking comedian.   These people are never as funny as they think they are and their feeble attempts at pacifying humor never fucking work on me.   If I wanted someone to try to make me laugh I’d go home and watch my Denis Leary DVD.

     I figure that my friend’s in good hands and I go to the bathroom to clean myself up.

     I get in the bathroom and step over to the sink.

     I look at myself in the mirror and I’m a little sweaty and disheveled.

     I turn on the water in the sink and I look at the palm of my hand.

     Her blood has soaked into the creases of my hand and looks like a crimson “M”.

     I used to be really
superstitious and superstition holds that, in palmistry, if the lines in your hand form an “M” then you’re going to be married in this life.

     I shake off the trance I kind of slipped into and wash my hands and
rinse off my face, drying myself off with wads of rough brown industrial paper towels.

     I go out into the waiting room and I’m there for, like, an hour when all of these fucking ginzos pile in.   They’re all fucking loud and drunk and I figure out that they just got into a bar fight with another group of retarded ginzos.  
They’re all trying to sound like wiseguys but they all just sound like they’ve got a mouthful of dick.   None of them looks that fucked up, and they’re probably not or else they’d have been carried in on a stretcher.   They just decided to all hit the hospital so they can get the scrapes on their knuckles dabbed with iodine.   Fucking babies.   I knew I could dismantle any and all of them and I’m already not in a great mood and I’m getting pretty sick of their bullshit and I start staring down one of the fucking faggots and he says to me “What the fuck are you looking at?” and I stand up to go over and break his face when my friend comes out, holds up her arm like the statue of liberty and yells, “Two stitches!”.   Turns out all of that fucking blood and there’s just a little deep cut that after it was cleaned out, the skin just flapped back in place and they tied it shut with two stitches.   And after all that bullshit the hospital billed her $600 and she refused to pay it.

    She ended up hooking up with some average douchebag one night we’re out and they end up moving in together and we stop hanging out.   She’s all coupled up and watching prime time TV and putting on weight.

     She dumps the guy for being a loser and she’s got a temper and he can’t handle it so now she starts calling me again and wanting to hang out, but I’m busy running my whores so I blow her off and we keep in touch over MySpace.

   
Now I’ve got some free time.

     So we message back and forth and play phone tag and make plans.

     I go to pick her up and she’s wearing the same kind of pants that she used to but a couple sizes bigger.   Her ass is bigger.   Rounder, but it doesn’t look bad.

     She’s wearing a long-sleeved black sweater with a scoop neck
, exposing her collarbones and she’s wearing a slim gold chain with a little pendant of the letter “O”.

     She’s wearing light make-up and she looks nice and she smiles when she gets in the car and jokes about how long it’s been since we’ve hung out.

     I laugh and we’re off.

     We go to the Mexican place we always used to go to.

     To my surprise the girl that I used to have a crush on was still working there.

     My friend and I nicknamed her cowgirl because I said that when she walks her ass moves like she’s riding an electrical bull on the slow setting and I couldn’t help but imagine her in a garter belt and a pistol belt and a peek-a-boo bra riding my bull and waving a cowboy hat over her head.

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