THUGLIT Issue Four (2 page)

“What are you—” Then he saw what was in the bathroom. A man in the tub, his head leaning on the rim above the pink water, his arm hanging over the edge, blood running in trails from his opened forearm into a darkening pool on the floor.

“Just stay away,” she warned, edging toward the door.

“No, wait. Hold on. I didn’t do that,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she shouted, spraying a stream of mace. Throwing up his arms he managed to deflect the main blast, but a fine mist got past his hands. It felt like wire coat hangers had been jabbed into his eyes.

“I didn’t even know he was in there,” he yelled back, burning in pain, forcing himself not to rub his eyes and make it worse.

“Don’t lie, Jeremy. That’s why you were so anxious for me to leave.”

“I’m not Jeremy. I was pretending.”

“
Help!
Hey, somebody, anybody!” She was standing in the doorway, yelling down the stairs, still pointing the canister at him. “Call 911! Get the cops!”

Stumbling around the bed, he snatched up his knapsack from where he’d quickly stuffed it the moment he heard he
r coming up the stairs. Inside were some watches, rings and other jewelry he’d snagged in the master bedroom downstairs, plus a few other knickknacks that looked valuable. The front door had been open, people laughing and partying and hitting on each other, plucking food off silver trays and drinking liquor from the hired bar and paying no attention to strangers wandering in off the street. He hadn’t been able to get much from the first two floors, crowded as they were with partygoers, but the third floor had been better and he had just begun ransacking the fourth when Crystal interrupted.

“I didn’t do anything,” he insisted, and a flash of insight came to him. “That must be Jeremy in the bathroom. He killed himself.”

Nobody had seen Jeremy all night. That’s what she said. Jeremy had invited everyone over, arranged for the liquor and the food and the DJ and the cooks and bartenders to be waiting, and then had gone upstairs and killed himself. His guests had breezed in and made themselves at home, boozing and carousing and enjoying the festivities, not knowing Jeremy’s blood was soaking into the grout between the tiles above their heads. It was a gruesome joke, a spit in the face of propriety, a self-consciously ironic farewell from a man who’d lost everything.

“I didn’t do it,” he repeated, feeling like a rat in glue, standing with the half-empty knapsack gripped between bloodless fingers. The steely look on Crystal’s face left no doubt as to whether she believed him.

Lifting the bag as a battering ram he charged for the door and bulled his way past her. Hurriedly scrambling backwards, she sprayed wildly and missed as he burst into the hallway, only to see three burly guys bounding up the stairs toward him.

No way was he going to make it past them. Instead he spun and headed back into the bedroom, slamming shut and locking the door.

“Don’t touch me,” Crystal hissed, sliding toward the corner with her back against the wall.

“I won’t touch you,” he snapped. “I won’t come near you.” There was only one way out. Throwing the knapsack over his shoulder, he be
gan climbing out the window.

The balconies below were framed by decorative wrought iron railings. Easy to climb. A burglar’s delight. Gripping the windowsill, he swung his legs down, searching with his feet for a purchase.

“Guess again,” Crystal said, and when he instinctively looked up, she hit him full in the face with a blast of mace.

He knew better than to let go. But he couldn’t help himself, with his flesh feeling like it was melting away from his skull, his eyes exploding in flame. His fingers lost their strength, lost their feeling, lost their grip. One foot caught in the iron railing and he flipped over, neatly snapping his shin and slamming the ba
ck of his head against the wall. Then as the foot slid free, he tumbled downward, bouncing off one of the speakers on the second floor balcony and landing facedown on the sizzling barbecue grill. A moment later the speaker landed on top of him, splintering his spine and crushing the grill to the patio stones like so much tinfoil.

In the sudden, glaring absence of pounding dance music, the sound of neighbors’ radios and televisions could be heard echoing into the night, drifting out across the river, all tuned to the same station playing patriotic anthems as the smoke of the final, spectacular round of fireworks drifted down from overhead, blanketing the
lawn like fog. Guests rushed madly for cover, knocking each other to the ground and trampling friends and strangers in their haste to escape whatever the hell was happening.

While upstairs in the bathtub, Jeremy grinned on.

by Eric Beetner

"Seriously, fuck this place." Herb threw down the playing cards, scattering his gin rummy hand over the plastic table. The same deck they'd been playing with for tw
o years—the one with two Queens of hearts and no red sevens. Herb ran a hand over his scalp, an old habit from when he sported an enviable head of hair. Now he clung to wisps of white on his skull and a dense new thicket of hair in his ears.

Charlie folded his cards neatly and laid them down, content to ride out another of Herb's rants. These days, Herb’s temper was about the only entertainment at the Four Palms retirement home. He scratched his stubbly chin and pulled up the collar on his plaid flannel shirt. He could never seem to get warm anymore.

"I'm getting out," Herb said. "You hear me?" The question of hearing was a legitimate one around the home. As the population dwindled over the past few years due to die-out, the remaining residents constituted a lowly fifteen percent hearing ratio. Charlie wore a hearing aid, and he kept it cranked up so high he could hear a mouse fart.

"What are you gonna do when you're out?" Charlie asked, mostly to keep the conversation going now that the card game was over.

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have some goddamn fun for a change, that's what."

About once every two months, Herb went on a tear about this and that a
round the home. The beds sucked—true. The food sucked—true. The selection of VHS tapes for them to watch sucked extra hard—true. The staff were trying to kill off the rest of the residents so they could close up shop and move on—unsubstantiated.

Herb’s tantrums usually resulted in a night out
—they were free to come and go—sometimes to a movie he and Charlie both fell asleep in. Charlie and Herb were best friends, but Charlie mostly went on the outings to keep Herb out of trouble. And Herb had a history of trouble.

When he described the circumstances around his arrival at the home
, he split the description between accident and coincidence. But either way he told the story it still ended with him burning down his son’s house, and after they built him a room over the garage and everything. After that, the wide-hipped Mexican lady his son married forced him into the Four Palms. Not that his boy—his only boy—wasn’t complicit in a pussy-whipped sort of way. Maybe the lack of fire insurance gave the kid an extra reason to be cruel to his old man. Any way you slice it, Herb found himself dumped on the front step and they practically burned rubber out of parking lot.

When he and Charlie moved in during the same week two years ago, the Four Palms bustled with good-looking nurses, active residents and the sounds of jazzercise coming from the rec room. Now the whole place stank of death, both recent and impending. The staff had been replaced by more cost-effective employees. To Herb that meant people who could no more care for a human being than keep a houseplant from dying
, and had all the bedside manner of a cactus with herpes. Plus, none of them spoke English. At least not the way he wanted them to. Sounded a little too much like that daughter-in-law for his taste.

"So," Charlie said. "What's on the fun agenda this time?"

"Some real fucking fun for a change," Herb said.

"What's that mean?" Charlie wanted him to say strip club.

Herb stole a conspiratorial glance around the room, then dropped his voice low, even though no one could hear him anyway. Most of the fifteen percent who could hear were sitting at the table, and it was only him and Charlie. "It's no mystery we don't have much time left, right?"

Charlie nodded, curious about where this was going.

"So let's do something we don't have any more excuses not to do."

"What's that?"

"I'm going out and getting some heroin."

Charlie blinked. He wondered if he needed to turn up his hearing aid more. "Some what now?"

"You heard me, ya deaf old bastard." Herb showed yellow teeth as he grinned and nodded.

"I knew this day would come. You've gone off your rocker and now I need to find a new best friend. And look around you, who else am I gonna hang out with?" Charlie looked across the room where a man sat in a wheelchair parked in front of a potted plant, eyes glassy and a line of drool running off his chin and onto a knitted blanket in his lap.

"Listen, you," Herb said. "When I was in the service I had a two-week furlough in Singapore. While I was there I tried opium. I smoked it. Some guys I knew injected it too. I tell you what Charlie, it was the best damn feeling I ever had. It was heaven on earth and I’ve thought about that for more than sixty years since. Didn't hurt I had some teenaged girl working her magic on my tool. If I could pay that girl to suck me off again I would. But she's probably dead now, so heroin it is."

Charlie kept waiting for the joke. Herb stared him down. He seemed dead serious.

"How are you gonna get it?"

"We’ll find a dealer?"

"Where?"

"Skid row."

Charlie blinked some more. He listened to the low mumble of the stereo playing the same mix tape running on infinite loop for the past decade. The songs, for those who can hear them, are a part of the ignored decor, like the peeling wallpaper or the dusty prints of sailboats and sunsets lining the walls like embalmed memories.

"You're serious."

"Damn straight I am." Herb leaned forward. "Now’s the time, Charlie. When else in your entire life have you been able to honestly say it doesn't fucking matter what we do anymore? Haven't you always wanted to do some things? Let's see what all the fuss is about."

"Where are you gonna get the money?"

"I have some saved. Don't worry, I'll buy your share. I'd much rather spend it on living than buy another extra pudding cup with dinner."

Charlie had been thinking about death lately. About life lived and what he'd done and hadn't done. He couldn't say heroin was ever on his to-do list, but most of the things he regretted never getting to do, those opportunities were long gone.

"Go out with a bang, huh?" Charlie said.

"Might as well try everything once, right? Next week we’ll go skydiving."

Charlie laughed until he coughed up a deep-seated ball of phlegm from the bottom of his lungs. He shook his head, not believing the words forming in his throat. "Okay, let's do it."

Herb clapped him on the shoulder, showing those yellow teeth again.

A female voice startled them from behind. "I want in."

Herb and Charlie turned to see Ruth, the only female resident left at Four Palms, and another member of the fifteen percent. As usual she wore a full-length dress, a relic from a bygone era when ladies wore pearls in the home.

"What are you talking about?" Herb said.

"Don't act like an idiot. I’m about the only other one who can hear a damn thing in this place and I heard all of it. I want to go with you." Ruth moved in five months ago and immediately joined forces with Herb and Charlie, two of the only mentally cogent people in the place. In her younger days she broke horses for a living, a profession that gave her, as she put it, “Brass balls bigger than both you boys.
And let’s not forget it.”

"You ever try it before?" Herb asked.

"No, and I never fucked JFK either, but I'd do that in a second too if I had the chance. What do say?" Ruth said.

Charlie looked to Herb for approval.

"We leave tomorrow night."

*****

Ruth showed up at the door dressed for a cocktail party. Herb and Charlie dressed for a trip to the crapper.

Ruth maintained a vanity about her appearance. Despite being well north of 80 years old, she continued to dye her hair a jet black to match the photos of
the younger self she kept on every flat surface of her room.

When he saw her, Charlie cinched up his sweatpants and smoothed his hair with his fingers.

“Where the hell do you think we’re going?” Herb asked. “A goddamn debutante ball?”

“I’m going out, Herb. Doesn’t matter where. A lady dresses to go out.”

Herb shook his head. “The day I retired I took all my neckties and burned them in the back yard. Couldn’t pay me to wear one of those chokers again.”

“I think you look nice, Ruth,” Charlie said.

“Thank you,” Ruth said, smiling.

“Come on,” Herb grumbled. “Let’s go.”

*****

To no one’s surprise, the front desk was empty when they left. None of the staff would know they were gone.

Outside they met the taxi Herb called and all climbed in with a chorus of moans and creaking bones, like zombies crawling from the grave. Ruth sat in the middle, three sets of fragile hips pressed against each other.

“Where to?” the cab driver asked.

“Skid row,” Herb said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Take us to the shittiest part of town.”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“Why don’t you mind your business?”

The cabbie shook his head and press
ed a button to start the meter.

*****

No one spoke much during the drive until the neighborhood outside began to change and it became apparent their destination loomed.

“So,” Charlie said. “How do we know who to ask?”

“They come to you,” Herb said. “Don’t you read the papers? There’s drug dealers all over the place nowadays.”

“Do you know how much to get?” Ruth asked.

“Enough for three. They’ll know.”

“And you said you did this before, right?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah. It was fantastic.” Herb turned to look at Ruth. “Of course at the time there was a girl--”

“I heard all about that and you can forget it.” She turned to the ugly streets outside.

“What happened to a ‘what the hell’ attitude about life?”

“I may be nearly dead, but I still have my standards. If you’re so gung-ho to try something new, why not let Charlie blow you?”

Herb’s mouth hung open as if he might say something, but nothing came out. Charlie coughed up another wad from his lung.

“Where should I stop?” the cab driver asked.

“Here is good,” Herb said. He felt grateful for the excuse to leave the tight confines of the cab.

They got out on a corner in front of a clothing store with signs in Spanish and a sturdy roll cage covering the storefront after hours. Herb paid the cab driver.

“I ain’t waiting around in this neighborhood,” the cabbie said.

“Then fuck off.” Herb gave him the finger as the cab drove away. He hadn’t felt this young in years.

The trio couldn’t have looked more out of place on the corner if they’d time-traveled.

“So where do we start?” Charlie asked.

“I guess we start walking,” Herb said.

They moved as a pack, fear keeping them tightly bunched and walking slow. The people on the street stared. A car rolled by slowly on low-riding rims, blasting window-rattling bass from
speakers filling the back seat.

In nearly every doorway was a cardboard shelter and a strong urine smell. Shopping carts were filled with the sum
total of people’s possessions.

None of the shops were open. Most of them looked to be closed for good. Ruth hooked an arm around Charlie’s and held on tight.

“Let’s try the park,” Herb said.

Across the street was a patch of grass with three overhead lamps, two of which were burned out. A basketball court stood to the side of the park area, but the hoops had been removed. A body stretched out on a bench in a mound of dirt-crusted clothing.

“What the fuck is this?” said a young man from the shadows.

The trio of seniors stopped walking.

The man stepped out from the darkness. A young Latino, puffing on a thin cigar. White t-shirt over baggy jeans. Shaved head and several tattoos in a gothic font decorated his arms and neck. “You lost or something?”

Charlie and Ruth both looked to Herb as their leader.

“We’re looking to buy.”

The Latino pulled a deep lungful of smoke off the cigar. “Buy what?”

Herb swallowed.
Fuck it
, he thought.
This is living
. “Heroin.”

The Latino man laughed, clouds of smoke chugged out above him. “Are you for real?”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck do you want that for?”

Herb screwed up his courage and his newfound attitude and stepped forward. “Because I’m eighty-eight years old and I just don’t give a fuck anymore. Now are you holding or what?”

The Latino man drew deep on the cigar again. He looked Herb over, then scanned up and down on Rut
h and Charlie.