Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (3 page)

He walked up
to the counter and looked at the food in a glass case as the coffee-making
woman with the holes in her ears eyed him with disdain. Her attitude billowed
off her like waves of fog pouring in from the coast. She didn’t like him, or
she didn’t like people, or she didn’t like men, or one of those things that
makes people instantly dislike someone else.

“Are you gonna
want any coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What kind?”

“Uhhh, I don’t
know… coffee.”

“Just coffee?
We don’t do ‘just coffee.’”

He was getting
annoyed with the girl with holes in her ears. He noticed she had a little
moustache growing. He wondered if she did that on purpose or just didn’t know.

“What do you
recommend?”

“How about I
just make you something?”

He guessed she
disliked him so much that she didn’t even want to recommend anything. That was
fine. He didn’t much feel like talking to her either. Besides, if she was busy making
something, he could take a little time and interpret the strange food that was
contained within the glass case.

“Make me
something.”

She whirred
into life, temporarily dropping the chip on her shoulder, and started to pour,
grind, fill, and steam something. He redirected his eyes back to the glass case.
Little pastry things gleamed in rows as grease stains spread imperceptibly on
the paper that surrounded them. Biscotti, scones, and little cakes all peered
up at him. He picked out a little cake with some type of jelly on it and asked
the lady with the holes in her ears to grab one for him when she got the
chance. Three minutes later she had finished preparing whatever she had
concocted and retrieved his fatcake and proudly announced that his total was
$7.50.

He handed over
the cash and took his high priced snack over to the window to watch the Stanks
live their lives from behind the nasal protection of the glass. He devoured the
cake in no time at all. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t two dollars and fifty cents
good, but it was ok. He still would have rather had a whopper or two.

The Stanks
outside sat in their chairs with ease and sipped their coffee every now and
then. They seemed in no hurry to get to their lives. He wondered if the coffee
shop owner paid them to sit there, because they all looked bored. Their eyes
searched the streets for something that they never seemed to find and they
didn’t even seem to be conscious that they were looking for anything. Some of
them read books or magazines, while others engaged each other in the sort of
conversation that was free of laughter. He watched as one girl reached down to
scratch her leg; he clearly saw the shine of blonde hair all over her legs.
This was definitely not the place for him to be.

The inside of
the café was quiet, except for the occasional blast of steam. He wanted to
leave as soon as possible, so he pulled the lid off of his drink and took a
sip. It was like swallowing liquid earwax. He felt stuck. There was no way that
he was going to throw away five dollars worth of coffee, but he definitely didn’t
want to drink it. He felt the eyes of the other customers focus on him in his
front row seat. What were they thinking? Were they wondering why he was still
here? Were they silently waiting until he had left before they began talking
about him? He wanted to go. He wanted to throw his five dollar cup of earwax on
the floor and run down the street and go to sleep with the bums. At least bums
didn’t expect anything from you. They didn’t care if you didn’t belong. Shit,
they were the lowest of the low. What did they care about style? What did they
care if you let a swear word slip every now and then? What did they care if you
liked to laugh a little? Society said they were nothing and so they had nothing
to say… not anything that mattered, at least.

He took another
drink.

The lady with
holes in her ears began straightening up the café. She carried a wet towel with
her and gave each empty table a cursory circular swipe that left water streaks
in the dampened brightness of the sun. She gathered together sections of the
day’s newspaper and put them back in the rack next to the front doors. He
watched as she flitted across the room and wondered why she had holes in her
ears.

You could put
your fingers through her earlobes. He took another drink.

Shit, the
right man could put his cock through her earlobes. He wondered if she liked
cocks and if her moustache would feel pleasant on his balls. He took another
drink.

He wondered
what she would do if someone got their dick stuck in her earlobe. Would they
have to rip her earlobe to get their dick back out? Or would they simply pull
out that piece of pipe she had stuck in her ear?

The lady with
the holes in her ears wiped down the last empty table and stepped outside for a
quick cigarette. He took another drink.

He wondered if
she took out those pipes in her ears, would her earlobes go back to normal.
Would they close up like a butthole after a rectum-tearing dump? The lady took
a drag off of her cigarette and smoke billowed around her head like attitude
pouring off of a waitress. He took another drink.

            He
finished his coffee and his wondering and decided to find a real place to eat.
The coffee was tearing at his insides and sitting painfully in his stomach. He
left the cup on the table so the lady with the holes in her ears would have
something to clean. He strolled past the hairy-legged lady and the man with the
dog and the sandals. He was sure that if he came back in four or five hours,
they would still be there.

            He
continued his journey down Burnside. The morning sun had been replaced by the noon sun and his skin quickly resumed cooking again. He wondered if bruises burned like
regular skin. His nose throbbed but he couldn’t tell if it was burned; it was
usually the first thing to burn.

            In
the distance, he could see the beginnings of the bridge that he had crossed
earlier in the day, when he was driving the U-Haul. The street sloped down
towards the bridge at an almost imperceptible angle. Heat waves danced in front
of his eyes and even the bums had disappeared. He walked past cheap hotels,
used car dealerships, and a used condom glittering in the sunlight.

            He
saw some bus stops along the way, but he didn’t know where they went or if they
would take him to the right place. Plus, the people sitting at the stops didn’t
look like the type of people you would want to sit next to. Hell, at the
moment, he didn’t look like the type of person you would want to sit next to.
He would rather just keep walking rather than deal with the awkwardness of
scaring people.

            There
were no food places on the east side of the bridge. There wasn’t even a burger
place. The people changed as he approached the bridge. There were still a few Stanks
and bums, but now there were people on bikes and people on skateboards. There
were even a few ragged punks walking dogs and carrying the things they owned on
their back. He liked the ruggedness of the punks. They didn’t seem to have
given up on life yet. They seemed to have some sort of purpose.

            He
walked by all of the new-to-him denizens of the city and set out across the Burnside Bridge. The bridge began to rise from the city floor and soon he was walking past
the tops of buildings and then over some train tracks, until he was finally
able to peer over the side of the bridge at the water below. The water was
fascinating. What made certain sections of the river calmer and darker than
other sections? Tiny boats moved across the surface of the river headed for
nowhere in particular.

            The
food wasn’t great but it was certainly better than the crap he had consumed at
the coffeshop full of Stanks; he sat in a shitty McDonald’s downtown on Sixth Avenue with a beautiful shaded view of the bus mall. A never-ending stream of busses
filed past the pristine McDonald’s window as business people strolled past the
bums that peered into garbage cans looking for magic beans. All they ever found
were half-eaten sandwiches and empty bottles and cans. No beans, no hope of
grabbing the golden goose, just more of the same.

            The
sun couldn’t penetrate the valley between the tall office buildings so it was
cool inside. He was glad of this, because the warmth emanating from his nose
told him that he had already gotten his fill of sun for the day.

            Greasy
meat and potatoes filed past his teeth and down the back of his throat in an
orderly, but nonchalant, manner.

            The
plan – a guy had to have a plan. There was no use moving from this spot if he
didn’t have a plan. He felt a little overwhelmed at the possibilities. Nothing
could move a man to indecision like an overabundance of choice, and he had
never been good at making decisions. Even if he only had two things to choose from,
he could waste four or five hours weighing the consequences of each choice
until he finally jumped in and dealt with the consequences. He thought back and
realized that this was his problem; this was why he was here, in a new city, trying to build a new life and bury the old. Maybe he wasn’t trying to build
anything. Maybe he was just trying to bury the past and forget about the
present. It was always harder to get rid of what had already happened than to
deal with what was going on.

            Unfortunately,
he didn’t have anything going on at the moment. He just was. For all intents
and purposes there was no present; there was no now. He was here in the window
of a McDonald’s watching bums dig in the garbage; the only thing keeping him
from being one of them was the shower that he had taken a few days ago. Give
him some time and some expenses and he could just as easily be digging for
magic beans like the guy in the sailor cap and the beaten up white loafers who
had just found a barely edible chicken nugget at the bottom of the garbage can.
It wasn’t a magic bean, but you couldn't eat a magic bean anyway.

            He
laughed to himself, looking dangerous to those around him. He wondered what
would have happened to old Jack if he had come home and soaked the magic beans
for a couple of hours, eaten them when they were soft, and then gone to bed. He
wouldn’t have had to worry about his shitty little life anymore, because that
goddamned beanstalk would have erupted right out of his stomach and climbed the
clouds to the sky. He would simply be a pile of fertilizer under the great
roots of a beanstalk that fostered false dreams of redemption and security in
the minds of simpletons. Isn’t that what they all were anyway?

            The
brief glimpse of a smile disappeared from his face, as he contemplated what he
would do with some magic beans. He thought it might be better to just down the
fuckin’ things and go to sleep. Have a magic night of sleep and a magic night
of death; none of it really mattered anyway. Magic beans didn’t exist and he
still didn’t have a plan.

“I guess if
you want to forget about the past, you have to have a present.”

He finished up
his burger and walked out of the McDonald’s, filled with grease and
ambivalence. He filed past a newspaper box that held some counterculture rag
that purported to be the alternative to the daily newspaper. It was free, so he
snagged a copy. On the cover was a drag queen, complete with bad make-up and conspicuous
Adam’s apple. He walked home in the comforting valley of the office buildings.

            He
got back to his apartment and slowly climbed the two flights of stairs that led
up to his apartment. His muscles, legs and brains throbbed from the trials of
the last two days. He leaned over the wrought iron railing of the first landing
stairwell and looked down at the street. Rather than climb the last flight of
stairs, he just sat there and watched the street below him. There was no Cap’n
Skin & Bones and no toothless bums; just the sun baking the street and the
swaying of the hanging willow branches. The hum of the city had died down for a
second, one brief second, and he almost felt that everything was alright.

            He
watched the street for a few minutes more and then clomped his way up the last
flight of stairs to his apartment. The key rattled in the lock and he stepped
inside his apartment. It was still warm but not as warm as it was in the
morning. It was dark inside because the sun had moved to the other side of the
building. He walked inside and plopped down on his mattress. He leaned back
with his arms behind his head and tried to go to sleep.

            Thoughts
ran through his head like a mob of angry children picking on an outcast,
lashing out with sticks, spinning away, and laughing before they could be
comprehended or stopped. Then came thoughts about her; her and the baby. Well,
she hadn’t been a baby exactly, but that was how he thought of her. She hadn’t
had time to grow up and become a child.

            He
sat up abruptly, not liking the sting or the direction of his thoughts. He
grabbed his “independent” newspaper off of the recliner and began thumbing
through it. The articles were your typical liberal articles. Joe-so-and-so has
been misappropriating funds… blah, blah, blah. Residents are upset that a
Wal-Mart will be coming to Southeast Portland. The Stanks are going to love
that. Maybe Wal-Mart will bulldoze that shitty coffee shop and the creeps that
sit out front stinking and being. There was a mind-blowing exposé on the
intensifying violence of Portland’s youth. Apparently, a group of twenty kids
had pulled a Stank off his bicycle and beat him to death. Maybe if they didn’t
dress like nerds that wouldn’t be a problem. There’s a fine line between
wearing unique clothing and putting on a "beat-me-up" costume.