THUGLIT Issue One - [28]

Brice stabs out his cigarette in a heavy glass ashtray filled with two days worth of half-smoked butts. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t raise his voice. “Token-don’t lay that crap on me. I’ve never been that person, Mike. If you want to call it quits, fine. If you want to make excuses, fine.” The corner of his mouth jerks up and he leans forward on his desk, lacing his battle-scarred hands together. “But you’re not being rational. And you’re a mess, kid. I can smell you from here.”

I want to respond, but have nothing left to say. Sarge still has plenty, though. He takes a breath and lets fly.

“Don’t know if you heard, but the Hughes girl showed up last night.” A head shake. “Bad shape.”

Calm and easy. “Yeah?”

His steel-gray eyes run down and then up my body before settling back on my face. “Somebody dropped her off downtown at the hospital ER and split. Left a note with her. Just a scribbled address, but it was the right address. Fucking bloodbath. Her white trash loser cousin and a couple other model citizens. Looks like the cousin was selling her for cash and dope to his buddies. Him and a fat boy were DOA. The third guy managed to crawl outside, but bled out on the back porch steps. Femoral artery and gut shot. That’s a hard way to eat it.”

I shrug. “Doesn’t sound like much of a loss.”

“Neighbors must feel the same way.” Brice snatches up a pen and gives a rat-a-tat-tat on the desk. “At least six shots were fired but nobody heard anything. And not one person got a plate number or even noticed the make of the getaway car. Tire-burn marks for twenty feet and no one saw a goddamn thing. Sled had to be a beast to lay rubber like that.”

Blood thumping. Mouth like cotton. I dry gulp and nix the car conversation: “Say what? Telling me no one at the ER had anything worth a damn to add? Not one motherfucking thing?” I shake my head, lay it on thick. “Seems kinda hard to believe, I mean, joint’s jumpin’ all day every day. Shiiiit-cops and staff must’ve been all over that motherfucking place!”

“You’d think. But all they heard was the admittance door buzzer. Girl was sitting outside in front of the door. She was sitting there alone in her own fucking blood and just…humming to herself. One of the attendants lost his chow and set off a chain reaction. Whoever dropped the girl off slipped in and out tout suite.”

I lick my lips. “How is the-?”

Brice cuts me off. “I think you know how she is, Mike.”

My right foot starts tapping out of control. My brain’s telling my foot to play it cool. Play it Billy D. Fucking Williams cool. I spread my legs, dig my toes into the carpet and lock my knees. I don’t answer him.

Brice, chewing his lower lip bloody. “Come on, you’ve seen this kind of thing before. Jesus. You know how she is today and you know how she’ll be twenty goddamn years from now.”

I don’t push him. I put my shades on beneath the buzzing and flickering fluorescent lights. “Yeah, I know, Sarge. I’ll see ya around, huh?”

Eyes down, Brice bobs his head of thick black hair, palms flat on the desk. “Yeah.”

Through the cubicles, through the rows of questioning eyes watching me. My legs nearly give way as I step from the building’s sterile air conditioning out into the heat of a new day. I breathe deep-dig that nasty smell oozing from my pores, snuffing out the fresh summer jasmine.

I walk through the parking lot and to my car, the blood-smeared seats covered with beach towels and already frying pan hot. My stomach gurgles. I open the door and heave up yellow bile. I put my head between my knees and mutter the one word which seems to makes sense: “Hold.”

Don’t fall apart.

Don’t lose your fucking mind.

Hold it together.

Ten minutes go by before my hand is steady enough to put the key in the ignition and drive away.

*****

Hindsight and conscience rips and tears at me. Not them, never them. Her. I’d given Audrey the worst years of my life and those same years are what I now have left to live with. I try to tell myself that if she’d left me on her own, because of the man I was, I wouldn’t feel this way because at least she would still be alive. She would have moved on and eventually, I’d have done the same.

Nothing is a lie if you truly believe it.

Only I couldn’t.

*****

Booze and blow, blow and booze. I’d left a running tab with Full Time Freddy and orders to keep product coming until my funds dried up and my credit was gone.

Till there is nothing left.

Drifting. Days turning into weeks of highs and lows, fear and depravation. The phone ringing, me hiding-paranoia at its zenith: It’s Audrey and she knows about my transgressions. The sweet Lord has told her why our lives turned out this way and now she’s angry. She wants to hear the truth from me.

Two weeks in, I rip the phone cord from the wall. It still rings. I chug bourbon. I loop one end of the cord around my neck, the other around a bedpost. Ease into it. Feel that cord go tight around my neck. Feel my head getting light. Feel that badass floating sensation.

Feel that cheap-ass cord go snap!

On my feet and screaming: “Now what, nigga!”