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  I resented that. I was just worried about Halt and now here I was. Doing what? What was I at, exactly?

  I grabbed my jacket and scarf. Enough of that racket. Halt was out smoking again. Just him and her this time.That’s the one, there, that ruined my dress, she said. He grinned at me.

  Where ya goin?

  What do you care? The fuck out of here.

  The blonde crossed her arms, confused.

  You’re not bringin one of them fraternity brothers with ya?

  No. Me and you don’t operate under the same style.

  What style is that?

  Skank.

  Tommy.This is the bitch that ran into me.

  His name is Halt. Halt.

  And what are you? Like his little stalker fangirl or something?

  Rammed my hands into her chest. She went staggering back. Came at me. I grabbed her by the hair of her head. Her nails went into my cheek. Halt laughed.

  Get away from me, I told her. I’m not goin havin a bitch fight. You. I haven’t been able to get ahold of you for days. I thought you were fuckin overdosed or dead. All you’re at is dancin at Holy Show. How many days have ya been on it? How many days have ya been loaded now?

  How many days you been barfing now?

  Only every once in a while when I thinks of your face.

  But here ya are. Out hunting me.

  Don’t worry.Won’t happen again. The crows will have your eyeballs picked out before I goes lookin for ya again, you dirty drunk. Hey missus, I hope you’re alright with takin a scattered beatin. And don’t bother with a condom. I’m sure he’s clean.

  Well I’d only have whatever you’re after givin me, ragdoll.

  And missy. No I’m not a fangirl. I was his girlfriend.

  He went to bolt. Missus chased after him.

  Tommy, where are you going? I’m coming.

  Will you shag off girl and go fuck one of them collared queers. I’ve been on the booze for four days. My dick’s no good to ya.

  She came sulking back, looking at me. I spit, just missing her foot.

  Dirtbag, she said under her breath.

  I stopped into the Jester. Just got in before they locked the door. Sat by myself. No one really around. I was sad for him. It wasn’t about me. He wasn’t doing it to me. He was doing it to himself. Or it was happening to him.

  Walking home, after four in the morning, there he was passed out on the step of the Vessel with neither jacket on, but drink still in his hand. I shook him. Nothing. I yelled at him. Nothing. I sat on him, facing him. Wrapped my arms and legs around him. Blew my hot breath on his neck. Nothing. I took his face in my hands and shook his head. He took me in and flinched back.

  Jesus.What’s on the go?

  You’re passed out on the street.That’s what.You’re half froze to death.

  He brought the drink to his mouth. Coughed and it dribbled down his chin. I wrapped my scarf around him. He didn’t fight me.

  Come on. Get up now, ya big brute.

  I had him up. His weight clumsy on me. We fell.

  Jesus. Stand up. Stand up would ya?

  I am. I’m standin. I’m standin.

  I jumped at a cab going by. Buddy wasn’t too keen on letting Halt in. Would only take him as long as he was able to get in and out by himself.

  I’m not going lugging him, he said.

  Neither am I, I told him.

  Get in girl.

  Not gettin in.

  Please, Devi.You’re a…you’re a…

  I’m a what?

  You’re a…an alien.

  Honest to god.

  No.You’re a…you’re just an astronaut that’s never been to space.

  What are you gettin on with? Go home and go to bed.

  Go on then, cabbie. And if you’re not with me, Devi, would you at least schedule me a lobotomy cause that’s the only way I’ll suffer it without you, I swear.

  I flagged a cab and called the pizza guy on the way home. Yes please, supersize. Yes to the garlic fingers. All of the dipping sauces. You take credit cards, right? Yeah, they do.

  I beat him there, man with pizza, and swung the cupboard doors open like the legs of a working girl, threw my hand in there and grabbed. Whatever came out I pushed into my mouth while I groped at the clothes I was wearing until they surrendered themselves to the floor. Back into the boxers and tank top, tying my hair up and back while hitting the power button on the television. Filled up the jug with water and stationed it within reach of my spot on the couch. Just in time—knock knock.

  The delivery guy was about my age, maybe a bit older, tall, husky, bearded. Looked like the real skeet, ball cap on and jacket flung open. He glared at me with a half-smile. A real prick too.

  $35.80.

  I held out my credit card.

  I don’t take them.

  When I called they told me you did.

  No. If you want to use your credit card you have to do it over the phone. I don’t take em at the door.

  To get rid of him, that’s all I wanted. Just leave me and my pizza.

  Should I call them back then?

  He grunted a yes.

  He was gawking at my skin, all of it, wanting me to know that he wasn’t afraid to look.

  I went to the phone, thinking that he would stay standing in the doorframe while I called, but he followed me in. The door banged shut behind him. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. Just allowed him in.

  I dialed the pizza place, trying to act all casual and in control while thinking in my head, my god, I’m about to be raped. I can’t believe I’m about to be raped. I hope it’s just rape at least, and not murder. When he comes at you, go for the groin and the eyeballs with all you got.

  Nobody was answering on the other end. His eyes, looking up from under his eyebrows, ate my skin. He came closer. Then I remembered.

  I have cash in there. You wait right here. One second.

  Hands shivering, I slid two twenties out of a drawer and said, Johnny? Johnny, wake up. The pizza is here, loud enough to be heard in the other room. I pushed my hands into the mattress to make it sound like somebody was moving around.

  Who are you talking to?

  I give him the forty dollars.

  My boyfriend. He passed out while we were waiting for the pizza.

  He held my eye, looking for a sign of a lie while I tried to keep my lungs still. I tipped him.

  Keep the change. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

  I tipped him. And I apologized.

  I held the door open, he made sure his shoulder pushed into mine as he passed through. He groaned and gave me one last eye over.

  With the deadbolt jammed into the hole, I knelt in front of the couch, arms and face pressed into the cushion and screamed. You’d think that I would have taken it as some kind of sign from somewhere. Should have thrown that pizza over the deck and never again would I even think about gorging like a gull. I choked it down on top of the jaggy tears until it disappeared and then reappeared, mashed up and wet, as I looked down at it. Pulled the handle and the sludge was swallowed down.

  A toilet can take just about anything.

  KC Accidental

  Morgan Murray

  KC WAS HIT by a bus—the Number Seven, one of the city’s busiest, which ran from Fortune City Mall to Vagrant Village, the trailer park where he grew up and his mother still lived—on a Wednesday while trying to cross Milton Street just after lunch. He was carrying a six-foot fake Christmas tree under one arm and trying to send a text message to his mother with the other. He had glanced up from his phone and to his right, but not his left, as he stepped off the curb and in front of the three-quarters full Number Seven. The wallop stopped his heart instantly, and that was it for KC.

  There wasn’t much left of KC. His body and belongings littered Milton Street as if a pack of dogs had torn someone’s garbage bags apart—bits strewn down the block, being blown by passing traffic back up onto the sidewalk. Of what remained, one of the mos
t substantial, and certainly the thing that left the most lasting impression, was KC’s man-sized oblong smear on the asphalt. And even that wouldn’t last long.

  The officer in charge of the aftermath, Staff Sergeant Dover, had been on the force for nineteen years, every last one of them in the Traffic Division, and was a family man—proud father of Pat, eleven, Quinn, twelve, and Sandy, thirteen. So he decided that a man-sized oblong smear was an inappropriate thing to have on Milton Street in front of the Merry Munchkin Daycare Centre. There wasn’t much he could do about the forty-three merry munchkins who’d watched KC step out in front of the Number Seven moments after they’d been sent outside following lunch—Wednesday being chicken nugget day. Nor could he do much for the twenty-four third-graders from Ms. Polliston’s Blaise Pascal Elementary School class who were riding the Number Seven as part of a class project on public transportation. But damned if Staff Sergeant Dover was going to subject anymore children to the sight of something as horrendous as a man-sized oblong smear on Milton Street.

  While EMTs Blumb and Seibert and Constables Dean and Turvill busied themselves collecting the bits of KC and KC’s things off of Milton Street, Staff Sergeant Dover called the fire department to get them to come blast the KC smear off the street.

  Blasting a man-sized oblong KC smear off of Milton Street, however, was a ways down the fire department’s priority list. District Chief Simpson told Staff Sergeant Dover as much when he first got the call. Constable Dean, loading an armload of KC into the ambulance, overheard Staff Sergeant Dover screaming into his cellphone something about, “I don’t give two fucks if you do take it to the D. Comm.”—D. Comm. stood for District Commander, District Chief Simpson’s superior—“there’s a bunch of kids here bawling their eyes out over what they just saw. I need you lazy pricks to get down here and blast ‘im off the goddamned street.”

  Staff Sergeant Dover was, of course, wrong. He was wrong to swear at District Chief Simpson, wrong to insinuate all firemen were “lazy pricks,” or pricks at all, and wrong to even call the fire department in the first place. Blasting man-sized KC smears off of city streets was the jurisdiction of the police’s Crime Scene Sanitation Division. Staff Sergeant Dover knew all of this, he had been on the force for nineteen years after all, every last one of them in the Traffic Division, he had seen his share of horrors, but this was just too much. The sight of those forty-three terrified munchkins who had just seen KC eat it—cheeks streaked with tears and sticky, blood-red sweet and sour sauce—was just too much for him.

  But, no amount of begging, pleading, or good goddamns from Staff Sergeant Dover could convince District Chief Simpson—a real by-the-book man—to bend protocol. So the Traffic Division kept Milton Street closed until rush hour and KC’s memorial man-sized oblong smear remained until mid-morning the next day when the Crime Scene Sanitation Division finally got around to it. By then it was more of a smudge.

  By the time three Crime Scene Sanitation Technicians in yellow rubber HAZMAT suits armed with two pressure washers and one long-handled scrub brush got around to blasting KC’s smudge off Milton Street, that was really all that was left of him. He was cremated, by accident, in Thursday’s wee hours, when Goolie’s Funeral Home, where he was being put back together ahead of his Friday funeral—his mother, staunchly Catholic, insisted on a proper burial for her son—burned to the ground. By the time District Chief Simpson’s trucks from Fire Houses Eleven and Nineteen had gotten the fire out, KC’s ashes, and those of the seven other corpses, including one belonging to the previously undeceased undertaker Melvin Goolie, had mingled with the ash and rubble from the sixty-year-old funeral home with the faulty viewing-room wiring, and it was impossible to tell whose were whose.

  KC’s mother, without a KC to bury, buried what KC had with him when he went. At least what hadn’t been lost in the Goolie’s Fire. Which was quite a lot thanks to EMTs Blumb and Seibert, Constables Dean and Turvill, and Staff Sergeant Dover, in all of the excitement Wednesday afternoon, mistakenly sending most of KC’s things to the Evidence Handling Division instead of Goolie’s Funeral Home with KC.What was to be KC until the end of time amounted to a badly stained pair of blue jeans, size thirty-one-thirty-two; a pair of patent leather loafers with the right sole worn through, size nine; a nylon wallet with Velcro® closure containing a bank card, a driver’s license, a health insurance card, a social insurance card, a gas station rewards points card, an expired condom, a receipt for $27.45 worth of groceries, an expired ten percent off coupon for laser printer toner from Print Heaven on Willbury Street, and five dollars cash; a broke-in-two cellphone with a faulty six key; a forest green windbreaker/rain jacket with detachable hood, which conveniently folds into the left pocket, unfolded; spare change: a quarter, a dime, and two pennies; a knapsack containing a tattered secondhand copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a blank notebook with the first page torn out, a pair of bicycle shorts, a sweat-stained grey t-shirt with “I Survived Thunder Camp 1998” printed in faded blue letters across the chest, a pair of dirty running shoes with a flappy right sole, size nine-and-a-half, a crumpled chocolate-bar wrapper, and half a pack of long lasting winter mint gum; a key ring with three keys—two for building door locks, and one for a car ignition—a remote locking device for some sort of small import car, and a key tag for entry into Rock Hard Gym; and a six-foot fake Christmas Tree. It amounted to enough to fill a casket nearly full, though KC’s mother saved about $200 thanks to the casket that fit KC’s things being a bit smaller than one that would have fit KC.

  KC’s mother learned of KC’s end the usual way.

  After overseeing the evacuation of the Merry Munchkin Daycare Centre and the closure of Milton Street, and after giving interviews to media at the scene, Staff Sergeant Dover left Constable Dean in charge of supervising the towing of the Number Seven to the depot and drove the remainder the Number Seven’s usual route to Vagrant Village Trailer Park—named, half-jokingly, for the Depression-era tent city that used to be on the site, made famous by the 1961 novel based on its 1934 cholera outbreak Run City Run by Rudy Ellington.

  The clomping of Staff Sergeant Dover’s giant boots on the rotting front step of trailer thirty-seven followed by the teeth-grinding creek of the storm door woke KC’s mother—the night dishwasher at Uncle Tucky’s All-Night Diner. She was out of bed, into her housecoat, and grumbling “Who in the—?” down the hall before the first knock came. “Who is it?”

  “Ma’am, it’s Staff Sergeant Dover of the City Police.” KC’s mother could see, through the yellow lace curtain, Staff Sergeant Dover was hat in hand.“Ma’am, may I—” she didn’t hear another word, everything went grey and began to spin and vibrate, her ears began to ring, her stomach, and its contents, leapt into her throat, her legs went soft.

  Staff Sergeant Dover let himself in though the unlocked door after there was no response to several more calls. As soon as he opened the door the smell of cigarettes, mothballs, bacon fat, and cheap whiskey hit him. He found KC’s mother in what he took to be the living room. The room was heavy with a damp greyness, the yellowed floral wallpaper was peeling at the seams and in the corners. Surrounded by piles of old newspapers, flyers, catalogues, and empty cigarette cartons, KC’s mother sat in a stained grey-brown-orange recliner that didn’t recline anymore, with a lit cigarette in her left hand. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes were glassy, and red. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Staff Sergeant Dover stood frozen, staring at her for the longest time. She didn’t move. He explained: “Your son, KC, was hit by a city bus today while crossing Milton Street, he died instantly, he did not suffer ma’am.” She did not move. “My condolences, ma’am.” She didn’t move. “I’m a father myself—three: eleven, twelve, and thirteen. It’s the damnedest thing, ma’am.” She didn’t move.“We’ve collected KC and his belongings, we’ll need to have someone come down and identify his body.” She didn’t move. “It’s the damnedest thing ma’am.” She didn’t move.“I am so sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
She didn’t move. Staff Sargent Dover shook his head slowly and shuck-shucked at the tragedy. She didn’t move. “A real tragedy, ma’am.” She didn’t move. He had run out of things to say so he just stood shucking and shaking. She didn’t move. Shucking and shaking. She didn’t move. Her cigarette burned itself out and a long rainbow of ash fell off the butt and onto the arm of the chair. She didn’t move. Shucking and shaking. She didn’t move.When, mid-shuck, KC’s mother shuddered, sucked snot back into her nose with all the force, violence, and noise of a wood chipper, and sobbed “Ca-argh-rrrrl!” Staff Sergeant Dover nearly had a heart attack.

  The snort and sob brought KC’s mother back. Now she sobbed and convulsed and wailed. Staff Sergeant Dover was much more comfortable with this. Nineteen years on the force, every last one of them in the Traffic Division, he’d seen his share of grief-stricken mothers. This was usually the point where he’d pat the mother on the shoulder and move on with things. But KC’s mother was sequestered in her trash fortress. He sidled past a pile of old TV Guides, inching his way closer to the chair, crunching cigarette cartons and cellophane under his giant boots. “It’s a damned tragedy, ma’am,” he shucked, shook, and sidled, while she sobbed and snorted. He was caught in awkward limbo again, trying desperately to get over to console her, so he could get on with things.“Damned tragedy.” He kicked over a stack of Sears catalogues. Several years’ worth helicoptered off the pile. Spring 1997 ricocheted off a yellow laundry basket full of yellowed Criers and crashed into the TV table KC’s mother had her ashtray on. The legs of the table buckled, tossing the ashtray and several weeks’ worth of KC’s mother’s chain-smoked butts flipping in a graceful arc over the arm of the chair and into her lap. The cloud of ash that went with it gently settled, covering her and the stained grey-brown-orange recliner that didn’t recline anymore in a fine grey-black dust.

  KC’s funeral was held at Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering Roman Catholic Church on Fort Apt Avenue, first thing Friday morning. The priest, Father Lucius Garrire, wanted to get through it quickly, as he had Melvin Goolie’s funeral and a baptism to get through that morning before the monthly Catholic Women’s League Luncheon at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Holloway Street at one o’clock—which, for him, was the most emotionally draining of all his regular monthly social events, though the food was usually pretty good.