Good for Nothing

by Brandon Graham

  He shucks off his suit jacket as soon as he exits the front door. Walking out of the artificially cold interior into the raw, wet heat of the day is brutal and sudden, and it steals Flip’s breath for a moment. He storms to his parking spot at the side of the building, and by the time he reaches the Passat, sweat is sheeting down his body. He drops his workbag and jacket on the hood just to get his hands free. He quickly removes his vest, rips his tie off, and pulls his shirttail out. He unlatches his belt, placing one hand on the front fender for balance, and instantly pulls his hand away and blows on his palm. Hot hot hot.

  The belt goes on the pile with everything else. He has to excavate in order to reach his car keys. He unlocks the door, slips into the driver’s seat, and jams the key in the ignition. He cranks on it hard, the engine comes on, and the blower blasts him with hot air. He snaps off the blower and rolls all the windows down, willfully ignoring the degraded integrity of the damaged window.

  As sure as he’s sitting there, he knows he’s just blown it. And for him, that means it’s over. It’s time to start preparing to put the Walther to use. This time he will leave a note. Something meaningful. What breaks his heart is the idea of telling Lynn about the interview, having to dash her hopes again. He’d been harboring hope that his family would be proud of him. That he could save the day, be the hero, get his shit together. He punches the dashboard until his knuckles are scuffed and sore. Slowly, he undoes the buttons of his dress shirt.

  A cross breeze pushes some of the stifling air from the car’s interior, but not enough to make it pleasant. Beads of sweat crawl down the back of his scalp and over his irritated neck. He happily gives into the urge and scrapes at the chafed skin until he thinks it will bleed. He brings his other hand back and pries at the meat over his vertebrae as if searching for a seam, as if he will peel his disguise open and reveal the actual Flip hidden beneath. All he achieves is to inflame his skin further.

  He’s reminded of the parable of Job, scraping at boils with broken potsherds after God has taken everything from him on a bet with Satan. He wonders if cosmic gambling is to blame for his situation. Makes as much sense as anything.

  His mother would be proud, that in a time of personal crisis, he has considered anything biblical. She was always such a calming force in his life. If she were here she would know what to say to put things in perspective, to soothe him and lift his spirits. The conversation would probably take place over fried food. But given the revelation Byron had dropped on him, if she were here now, Flip might tell her to go straight to hell. God, I’m a mess.

  He stares a long time through his windshield at his suit and workbag piled on the hood of the car. He’s tempted to drive off without moving them. But, after a while, he stands painfully and snatches them up, dumps them in his back seat.

  He removes his dress shirt, wads it into a knot, and pitches it in with the rest. He kicks off his painful, shiny shoes, flicking the first one expertly inside the open car door. The second one goes under the car. He just leaves it, doesn’t even consider lying on the melting asphalt to fish it out.

  While he’s at it, he unhooks his pants and lets them drop around his ankles. He kicks them into the back as well. The snapshots of his family fall to the ground, and a hot breeze scatters them like dead leaves. He lets them go.

  He has to laugh. Here he is. Standing in nothing but silky boxer shorts, dress socks, and a sweat-soaked white T-shirt. A whole building of tinted windows staring down on him, like a wall of cold soulless eyes. And he couldn’t give a shit. He stands a long time looking at the building, trying to stare it down, see who will blink first, hands on his hips as if issuing a challenge—David before Goliath, except with even God betting against him. He scratches his neck some more and then his ass. He hustles his balls too, for good measure. The asphalt begins to burn the soles of his feet through his socks.

  He settles heavily into the driver’s seat, shoves the car in drive, and pulls forward. The coffee is there in the cup holder, he pours it out the window and drops the cup in the lot. Then he builds speed and hops the curb, driving straight through the “park” that separates the parking lot from the main road. He extends his arm and waves his middle finger out the window in a final fare-thee-well.

  I need a drink.

  Red-Handed

  At Ed’s Drive Thru Liquors, he goes right to the pick-up window and honks his horn.

  “What do you need?” asks a man who looks like a skid-row Santa in a black Ozzfest tour T-shirt.

  “Rum. The strongest I can buy for the lowest price.” The guy looks down on Flip, takes in his boxer shorts and hairy thighs. He gives a tight nod and slides the window closed.

  Flip snaps the car in park and turns around in the seat, his silky ass pressing on the steering wheel. He feels around for his slacks, grabs them, the horn honks once as he moves back into driving position. He turns the pants over and over, frantic that he has lost his debit card and cash. Eventually he finds them. He throws the pants on the floor of the empty passenger seat, and waits.

  His boxers feel twisty, so he hitches them around a bit, realizes his dick has slipped out. He puts it back and tugs his boxers down his big thighs, making sure Santa isn’t watching through the window. He wonders how long his stuff has been hanging out.

  Santa comes back and says, “I got this big bottle called Drunken Seaman.” He shakes a giant plastic bottle so Flip can see it. “It’s seven hundred and fifty em els and high alcohol content. About forty-seven percent. That’s high for rum. Eighteen twenty-six with tax.”

  “Forty-seven, forty-eight. Whatever it takes,” Flip tries to joke. Santa is nonplussed. So Flip asks, “How’s it taste?”

  “You didn’t say nothing about taste before,” Santa answers.

  “Touché,” Flip replies and passes his money through the window. The man hands him change and a bottle in a paper bag.

  “You have a nice day,” Santa says. But he says it as if he can tell by looking that Flip’s day will not be good.

  “Ho-ho-ho, motha fuckah,” Flip replies cavalierly. He twists the cap off the rum and takes a swig. It tastes like spicy aluminum, and not in a good way. The bottle goes between his legs, and he stomps the pedal to leave. The engine revs but doesn’t move.

  “Oops,” he says through his open window. But Santa is already gone. He shifts the transmission into gear and drives away.

  At the Lakeside, Flip sees several things at once. Dean is sitting on the veranda, Flip’s door is standing open, and a pushcart of cleaning supplies and linens is jammed sideways in his door. Intuitively he knows what he’ll find if he can get in the room fast enough. He leaves the car door open, the engine still idling. He takes his bottle, hobbles in sock feet across the pebbly pavement, and sets it on the table with Dean.

  “Hello,” Dean says. It’s clear he’s about to start asking questions about Flip’s attire.

  “Be right back,” Flip says fast, walking away before Dean can get going.

  He pulls the cart out of his door and shoves into the room. Vanessa says, “Oh. Mr. Mellis. I was just finishing up.” He’s startled her, and she looks guilty.

  Flip thinks back to when he left that morning: He had pitched the pills onto his rumpled bed. Now, the bed is made with a fresh coverlet, and the pill bottle is on the kitchen counter. He can see her face turn toward the pill bottle, in unison with his own eyes.

  “I’m going to be leaving now, Mr. Mellis. Have a good day,” Vanessa says. She makes for the door.

  Flip snatches the pill bottle from the counter and rattles it. He pops the lid and upends it into his hand. Two pills remain.

  “What the fuck?” he says, half to himself and half to Vanessa. He holds his hand out so she can witness the evidence he has against her, but she’s out of the door. He rushes after her.

  “Hey. Vanessa. Wait.” She doesn’t wait. She keeps pushing her cart, almost at a run. “I can call the cops on you, Vanessa. Or you can stop and talk to me.” She stops.
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br />   He walks after her, catches up as she turns to face him.

  “What?” she asks defiantly. She leans around him to see if Dean is watching.

  “You stole my pills. I know you did. Don’t try and deny it.”

  “No I didn’t,” she denies.

  “You know what a nanny cam is? It’s a tiny camera that parents hide in their homes to keep an eye on their children and the people who are supposed to be taking care of them.” He concocts the beginnings of the lie easily.

  That gets her eyes back on him. “What do I care,” she says. But there isn’t much heat behind it.

  “I’m a parent,” he says. “And I have a nanny cam. It’s set up to feed directly to my laptop. My laptop is in my car. And the camera is in my motel room.” He pauses for Vanessa to process everything. Her eyes look past his left shoulder at his car, and past his right shoulder at his room. “I recorded everything that went on in there,” he bluffs. “You are so busted. Now either you come clean, or I give the video to the cops when I turn you in.”

  “What the hell, man?” she says. “That isn’t legal, is it? You’ve violated my civil rights, my right to privacy and shit.” But, she works her hand down into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a Ziploc snack bag full of pills. “There. Take ’em. Happy?”

  He doesn’t take them, just leaves her holding the bag out in front of her. “What do you do with these?” he says, nudging the bag with one finger.

  “What do you think? I sell ’em.” She starts to gain her composure, starts to think of how to get out of this situation.

  “How much?” he asks. She looks confused. “How much do you get for them?”

  “I don’t know. My boyfriend moves them. I think he gets five bucks a pill or something like that.” She glances toward the road, as if her boyfriend might come ripping in any second. But he doesn’t.

  “Okay,” Flip says. He tries to do the math and then reaches out for the baggy and takes two pills. He puts them on his tongue and swallows them dry. “You pay me fifty bucks or I turn you in and supply enough video evidence to convict you.”

  “Now, Mr. Mellis,” she says breathily. Slowly she moves a little closer to him, touching his shoulder. “You don’t have to do that. I bet we could work something out.”

  “Listen to me closely,” he whispers back, as if they were longtime lovers. “If you pay me, you and your gearhead boyfriend can still make a profit. Don’t pay me, and you will end up in jail. And don’t try to manipulate me, or the price goes up.” She takes her hand away.

  “Are you stupid? My boyfriend won’t pay you. He’ll come in here and beat your ass if he hears about this. Let me make you a deal. Drop this whole thing, and I won’t tell him about it.”

  Flip thinks about his gun tucked into the cardboard box in his closet. He says, “You get me that money today or I go to the police and I implicate your idiot boyfriend. If he doesn’t like it, tell him to come see me. But I am not five foot five and a hundred pounds. I’m not a girl. I’m big and feeling mean and I’ve got nothing left to lose. Nothing. You can bet I’ll fight back. He might just get an ugly surprise if he fucks with me.”

  She looks him up and down and says, “You’re mental.”

  “I’m giving you a chance. It’s the only one I’ll offer. You know where to find me.”

  She turns back to her cart and walks away.

  “One other thing, while we’re negotiating. If I hear you’ve been stealing from anyone else, the police get the video. Except Larry. Help yourself to his shit.” He walks back toward Dean’s veranda.

  “What was all of that about?” Dean asks. “And why are you in your underwear?”

  “The short answer to both questions is that I feel liberated by embracing the inevitability of my circumstances. If you pour the rum, I’ll come and give you a longer answer in a minute.”

  He cleans out his car and rolls up his windows, carefully. He finds he still has a couple of pills in his hand and drops them in the empty prescription bottle, slips into some shorts, and changes his shirt. He tucks the loaded gun in his pants pocket, just in case he has to shoot somebody, and goes outside with every intention of getting royally shitfaced.

  The Harshest of Hangover Cures

  When his phone rings the next morning, Flip assumes it’s the alarm clock and he knocks it, as well as the lamp, onto the floor, trying to swat it with a pillow. The phone falls out of its cradle and he can hear a tiny, faraway voice calling his name.

  He fumbles the phone and holds it to the side of his head, upside down, and speaks into the earpiece. “Hello? Hello?” He hears what he thinks is Lynn’s voice, but can’t understand it.

  “Hello? Lynn? I can’t hear you.” He looks around the room, expecting to see her coming out of the bathroom.

  “Flip,” the voice says. “Flip.” He knows that tone: she’s scared. Something’s wrong with one of the kids. Clarity comes immediately. He turns the phone over and says, “I’m here, Lynn. What’s happened?”

  “Flip. It’s Dylan. He was hit by a car.” Flip goes numb with fear. “We’re at the emergency room at St. Elizabeth’s. Please, come. I don’t know how bad it is yet. We’re waiting on the doctor now.”

  “I understand,” he says. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He speeds the whole way. Fortunately, after a late night that included loads of cheap rum and a clandestine, if otherwise uneventful, cash payoff from Vanessa, Flip had slept in his clothes.

  When he rushes into the waiting room twelve minutes after hanging up the phone, he has foul breath and clothes that smell of acrid body odor, booze, and smoke from skinny brown cigarettes.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  Lynn, who is pacing the perimeter of the room, turns to see him, puts her hands over her face, and tries not to cry.

  “What do we know?” he asks.

  Sara rises from her seat and puts her face in his chest; her breath is hot and ragged. She begins to sob. He presses her head against him.

  “Somebody say something,” he demands. His mother-in-law turns her face down, a crumpled tissue clutched in her hand. He knows by looking, she was supposed to be with Dylan when it happened. He knows it’s her fault, and she knows it too. He starts to move toward her, tries moving Sara aside, to shake some kind of response from Coleen. But Lynn is there and pressing against him, draping her arms over his shoulders.

  “What happened to my boy?” he says quietly into Lynn’s hair. “What happened to Dylan?”

  Still no one speaks. He thinks the worst, thinks Dylan is dead. He wants the hell out of there, he can’t take it, wasn’t built for all this, isn’t strong enough. He starts shoving at Lynn, and trying to pry Sara’s arms from around him.

  “Stop. Stop it,” Sara says. “We don’t know anything yet, Dad. We don’t know. The doctor is still in with him. No one’s spoken to us yet.”

  That calms him down a bit. She called him Dad. He stands still. Lets the women in his life find what comfort they can in his expanse. He sees his mother-in-law twist around in the chair, putting her back to him. After a few moments he says, “I’m going to try and find out something from someone. But I need to know what’s going on. Somebody talk to me. Now.”

  “Sara,” Lynn says. “Keep your grandmother company.” Sara doesn’t argue. Lynn takes his hand and leads him to the hall.

  She finds a spot between two empty gurneys shoved along the wall.

  “Dylan wanted to ride around the block after breakfast. Mom said she would walk him. She swears she told him to wear his helmet, but he couldn’t find it.”

  “Typical,” Flip says.

  “He took off down the sidewalk and left her in the dust. She saw the car backing out of a driveway and tried yelling for Dylan to slow down. He was busy trying to coast and stand on his pegs. He couldn’t hear her, or ignored her. The car backed right into him as he shot across their driveway.” She looks to him like a five-year-old who’s fallen at the playground.


  He wants to say, “Didn’t I say . . .” or, “What was she thinking . . .” or, “This would never have happened if I . . .” but he says none of that. Instead he takes her hand.

  “This is the hospital where he was born,” he says.

  “I know.” They stand quietly for a long moment, letting things go unsaid.

  “I wish it had been handled differently, but honestly, it could have happened anytime,” Flip says. “It isn’t your mother’s fault, and we need to be careful not to blame her. He’s a kamikaze every waking minute. God knows he’s gotten away from me before.”

  “I know. But I’m so fucking mad about it.”

  “Me too,” he says.

  “Do you think you could tell her what you just said? About it not being her fault? She’s all torn up right now.”

  “I can. And I will. But first I want to find out how Dyl is doing. Tell me what you know, where is he hurt?”

  “Okay. There was a cut on his head. Lots of blood, and the side of his face was swollen and starting to bruise. His left arm and right leg both seemed really tender, or the other way around. The good news is he landed in the grass and the bike seems fine. So I’m hopeful he’s just banged up. The neighbor, the old man that was driving, he tried to help. Offered to drive us, said he would pay. His wife said it wasn’t their fault, asked why no one was watching him, why he wasn’t wearing a helmet. I think she even called a lawyer while she was standing there.”

  “Okay. Fuck her. I’m going to the nurse’s station now,” he says. He turns to leave.

  “Flip,” she says. “Thanks for being here. We need you here.”

  “You’re welcome.” He starts to go again.

  “Flip.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know what this means for us. I mean, it doesn’t change anything. You understand.”

  “I know it doesn’t,” he says. “And honestly, right now that is the last thing I give a shit about. Can I go now?”