Apathy and Other Small Victories

by Paul Neilan

  I spent the next day holed up in my salty apartment watching soap operas and writing out plans for my escape, which I immediately burned on my stove so the judge wouldn’t see me as a flight risk when he was setting my bail. The ashes of my failed, untested plans blew all over my apartment and dirtied my pretty, pretty salt.

  I had left my bike mangled on the side of the road the night before without even urinating on it, and I ran home in a crouch trying to stay low, hugging my right arm because my shoulder was throbbing. I ran awkwardly, but fast. I hid behind mailboxes and telephone poles when I could. Sometimes I jaywalked. My bike helmet had twisted around backwards but I kept wearing it anyway. It had saved me from a smashed head once already that night. I hoped it wouldn’t have to again. People looked at me as I bolted past them, bent over and crying, and they kept looking as I shambled down the street. But the General Lee did not make another pass.

  The adrenaline of cheating death and being cool had mostly worn off by the time I got home, but it completely fucking evaporated when I saw the blood on my neck. The wire catch in my helmet had left a gash from my Adam’s apple to the tip of my spine. My fucking brain stem could have been compromised. I looked like I owed the Russian mob money. Another few inches either way and deep and I would have been decapitated. My shoulder was already yellow from where I’d landed on it. It was probably dislocated.

  But the real kick in the ass was that it could have been anyone driving that car. Never in my life had so many people had so many seemingly legitimate reasons to kill me. Marlene’s husband, Gwen, those detectives, maybe even Sooj. And that was just the people I knew. There were always other random lunatics or kids needing to murder someone before they could join a gang. But where would any of them get a Dukes of Hazzard General Lee replica? That was the greatest question of all. It was completely identical except for the tinted windows and the fact that it had door handles. It was the perfect novelty killing machine.

  I immediately suspected Marlene’s husband, but were deaf people even allowed to drive? They couldn’t hear car horns or traffic updates on the radio. There was no way those fuckers at the DMV would give them licenses. It couldn’t have been him. And would Gwen really have cashed in her 401(k) just to buy a new car to run me down in? That wasn’t her style. She’d rather tear me apart with her bare hands. And why the fuck would Sooj want to kill me anyway? Over a saltshaker?

  I couldn’t go to the police. They might’ve been the ones behind the whole thing. They had access to the repossessed vehicles lot. Maybe some moonshine-soaked hillbilly had blown his paycheck trying to be like Bo and Luke Duke and then had the car taken from him when he couldn’t make his payments. I’d be much easier to convict posthumously. I’d be an even better scapegoat dead. The publicity and their promotions were worth more to them than my life. It’s a shame when society has degenerated to the point where that’s a legitimate possibility.

  No, I was on my own. And this was bigger than whoever was driving that car. Bigger than the General Lee. First Marlene gets murdered, then somebody tries to kill me. But why? Why? What was the conspiracy? Was it about drugs? Women? Power? Revenge? What tied me to Marlene?

  Doug. It was Doug. He was behind the assassinations. He’d freaked out when Marlene broke up with him and he killed her, and now he was trying to kill me for some reason. And he was going to frame some hillbilly for it. He was a criminal mastermind. But how could I prove it? The semen sample the cops found on Marlene. If it was in her ass, then Doug was her killer.

  I needed to find out where that semen was lodged. Do they print that kind of thing in the obituaries? Could I go to the coroner and slip him a twenty? Would he think I was a perv? Would the detectives tell me? How do you even bring something like that up?

  You don’t. Whatever the circumstances, no matter what’s at stake, you just don’t. I can’t usually think of anything worth dying for, but I can say to this day that I’d rather get murdered than have to ask somebody if there’s semen in a deceased deaf woman’s ass.

  And Doug was no criminal mastermind. Men with strawberry blond hair aren’t capable of that kind of calculation. Fuck, I didn’t know what was going on.

  I’d have to do some research. Start with the details, start with what I knew, and then the whole thing would come into focus on its own. It was like those stupid jigsaw puzzles that I was never any good at, except this time I didn’t even have the picture on the front of the box to guide me. Okay, first I had to find out who’d just tried to kill me. That was fairly urgent. Once I knew that, it would lead me to Marlene’s killer, if they weren’t the same person. And then, all would be revealed.

  So, I needed to check the papers for car listings, see where somebody could rent or buy a General Lee. That’s where I’d begin. Then I would conduct surveillance. I would use the Internet somehow. I used to watch Magnum, P.I. every day after school—it came on right after The Facts of Life—and I’d read a few Encyclopedia Brown mysteries and done book reports on them too. I knew how to solve things. And I would. Right after I talked to Bryce’s wife.

  The only weapon I had in my apartment was a dull knife, but I took it with me when I went to see her the next day. I was an hour early but I didn’t care. I had to talk to someone, and I could trust her. At least I thought I could. If I couldn’t, that’s what the knife was for. It was a butter knife, the kind that’s on the tiny plate at fancy restaurants, the one that looks like the puffed out sail of a small boat. They were very good for spreading. If it got ugly I’d pull it on her. Then I could slink away in shame as she was doubled over laughing at me.

  I took the stairs, and when I came out on her floor my stomach fell into my ass. Bryce and Mobo were at the end of the hallway. They were standing in front of Bryce’s door, huddled together, conspiring. It was a conspiracy. I was too far away to hear anything, but Mobo was doing all the talking. Bryce was just nodding mutely. He looked sad. Then Mobo reached into his black leather trenchcoat and took out a small package wrapped in brown paper and handed it to Bryce, and Bryce shoved an envelope towards him that Mobo slipped into his coat with one fluid, practiced motion. He started talking again but Bryce jerked his head up and saw me standing dumb and fascinated at the end of the hall. He said something quick to Mobo, and Mobo looked over at me and smiled. Bryce ducked out the side door clutching the package to his stomach as Mobo walked down the hall towards me with his arms out, his trenchcoat flowing behind him.

  “Shane!” He dragged my name out, sounding happy to see me. “My cholo. What’s the word?”

  “Hey Mobo,” I said, gripping the butter knife behind my back.

  “What do you say champa?”

  “You late on your rent again?” And I nodded towards the door that had just closed behind Bryce.

  “Always my man, always,” he said, and laughed. “You never came back up to see me.” But he said it playfully, like I hadn’t offended him at all.

  “Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy.”

  “I’ve heard.” And he looked at me like he knew something. I didn’t like it. “Listen,” he said, and leaned in close like he’d been doing with Bryce. My arm tensed but I didn’t stab or spread him. “The way things are going around here you might want to come talk to me soon.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Opportunity monchuro, opportunity. Everything’s a business, whether we like it or not. And everybody’s either a partner, or a competitor. We all got to choose sides sometimes chamumbo.”

  “Is that what you and Bryce were doing? Choosing sides?”

  He smiled.

  “Attorney-client privilege my friend. We all have to pick our horses, you know what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t have a goddamn clue.

  “Yeah, you know how it is,” he said, and smiled at me. “Things are changing chamanga. They’re changing fast. I just want to make sure a chupo like you doesn’t end up on the outside.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wondering who the fuck this guy was and what he was
offering.

  “There’s money out there to be made cobrana, there’s things to be had if you want them bad enough. We’re still playing by the law of the west out here, every day. That cowboy shit never dies. Every day pucho, every day.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “Maybe I’ll stop by later on and see what you’ve got for me.”

  He clapped his hands.

  “Now you’re in the game gambilo. To las minas muertes, that’s how it has to be!” And he pointed at me with his fingers on either side of his head like he was a bull about to charge, or like he was giving me the evil eye, or like he was a fucking imbecile. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, then moved past me into the stairwell, his leather coat flowing behind him.

  Things had to be bad if I was considering taking this dipshit seriously. But things, things were bad.

  I waited until he had gone up the stairs before I walked down the hall and knocked, because no matter what else is going on in your life adultery should always be discreet. She opened the door in her robe and narrowed her eyes at me, annoyed, and I remembered that I was an hour early. But she still went into the bedroom, and I followed. And after some halting, tentative, terrible sex that didn’t last very long at all we laid on her bed and she smoked a cigarette. I did not. I would have refused even if she’d offered me one. I felt more like a guppy than the majestic, sexual tuna I thought I had become.

  She was smoking just to get it over with, sucking in long and then blowing right out like she was gulping down a drink she didn’t want. I was ashamed. I showed up early and finished early and I’d be told to leave before my time had even really begun. I had nowhere else to go.

  “I hurt my shoulder,” I said, hoping it would somehow explain everything.

  The tip of her cigarette glowed orange in the dark. I waited.

  “All right, I don’t want to freak you out,” I said, and took a breath, “but someone is trying to kill me.”

  “Is it Bryce?”

  Jesus fucking christ. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “I didn’t, think so.” Shit. “Why, is he?”

  “Is he what?” she said.

  “Is he trying to kill me?” I was working very, very hard to keep my voice under control. I wanted to scream like a little girl on the playground whose pigtails were being pulled by a mean boy.

  “I wouldn’t worry about Bryce,” she said.

  “I wasn’t.” Until fucking now.

  “He would never intentionally hurt someone.”

  “How about unintentionally?”

  “Maybe, but anybody can do that. You can’t really predict those kind of things.”

  “What about Mobo?” I said.

  She opened her lips on her cigarette, then finished the smaller drag she was taking.

  “What about him?” She blew smoke up towards the fan.

  “What’s his story?”

  “He has a pet guinea pig.”

  That he fucks until it shrieks for mercy. I wondered if she knew about that.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “He wears a black leather trenchcoat. He looks like a pharaoh.”

  He certainly did. That much was fucking true. She smoked her cigarette down and crushed it out and then lit another. I knew she wasn’t telling me everything.

  “So what do you think?” I said.

  “About what?”

  “About the situation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean me? Getting murdered?” My voice was an octave too high but there was nothing I could do about it.

  She looked at me.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said.

  “What about Bryce and Mobo?”

  “They’ll be fine too.”

  “But could they be in on it?”

  She blew out smoke and lowered her eyebrows like she hadn’t been following the conversation.

  “In on what?”

  “On my assassination?” I was ready to fall apart.

  “You think it’s some kind of conspiracy?” she said, smiling.

  “Maybe.” I was shattering into tiny pieces.

  Then she laughed.

  “If there is a conspiracy to have you killed I doubt Bryce or Mobo are part of it,” she said. And even though she was mocking me it was comforting to hear.

  “Not an important part anyway,” she added.

  And that was less comforting.

  I watched the smoke twist under the ceiling fan and I thought about crying, literally fucking breaking down and curling up on her shoulder so she could rock me and whisper to me and quiet me until I fell asleep. But I couldn’t. I don’t think she could either. Maybe she could have, but you never know with those sort of things. Unless you’re in rehab or married to a nice lady or paying a complete stranger for it you usually can’t. It’s flawed and it’s a shame but that’s how it works.

  “Could you tell Bryce to go bowling on Thursday nights too?” I said, which maybe was my way of doing the same thing.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  We lay there for a long time and I was thinking. She was smoking slower and making it last and I thought about my fortune cookie: “The world is your oyster, but you are allergic to shellfish.” It would be a good fortune cookie. Maybe it would be important to someone at just the right time. People put their faith in strange things and give credence to all kinds of unintentional signs and symbols and stars, so why not a slip of paper inside a lump of Chinese dough? It was your fortune after all.

  It would be a good fortune cookie, but it would be a better bumper sticker, slapped on the back of an eighteen-wheeler and driven all over the country for people and tourists to see. And in that inevitable twelve-car pileup after the tractor trailer had jackknifed, those same people and tourists would inch by in their cars, staring out their windows, and they’d see “The world is your oyster, but you are allergic to shellfish” on the detached bumper of that totaled wreck, slowly being engulfed by flames. And maybe they would finally understand.

  “I thought of a good bumper sticker,” I said.

  “Do you even own a car?”

  “No,” I said.

  And all the world seemed hopeless and against me.

  Chapter 10

  There wasn’t much left to do after that. I made some vague, half-assed plans to tail Bryce and Mobo, maybe even Doug. I wanted to see him get his head smashed in a bus door once before I died, and apparently I didn’t have much time left.

  But I didn’t tail anyone. What was I going to do, run around after them like fucking Mr. Bean, hiding behind bushes and pretending I was a statue whenever they turned around? I didn’t have a car. I didn’t even have my shitty bike anymore. The best I could do was an old pair of binoculars and a cheap Spy-Tech listening microphone that I’d picked up at Goodwill. It had a range of four feet and no batteries. I was fucked.

  So I sat in my apartment wallowing in salt and I waited for the other shoe to drop and kick me in the face. Sometimes I went out and walked slowly past the Mickeypot Tavern on the far side of the street, casting furtive, girlish glances at the door. But no one ever came out looking for me. No one came out to welcome me back home. Sooj did not care.

  I was hoping some terminal illness euphoria would kick in, and that since I knew I had a death sentence hanging over me I’d immediately learn to cherish each day and every breath as a beautiful, wondrous gift from the God I now desperately believed in, and that I’d vow not to waste any more of my precious life that would very soon be ending. Then I could go out and hug strangers and sing out loud and twirl around on top of a mountain like the fucking Sound of Music and be inspirational and brave. Maybe then I could finally do all the things I’d been putting off all these years.

  Unfortunately I didn’t know what any of them were. It takes more than one kick in the pants to reverse a lifetime of unplanned apathy. I should have been keeping track all along like Gwen. Then I could have just gone down the list. But even that wouldn’
t have helped. It takes a special, ironic kind of person to use their own impending death as an impetus to finally live. Maybe I could use someone else’s death for that, but my own only scared the shit out of me and made me want to hide. And having a terminal illness is different than probably getting mowed down by the General Lee the next time you step out your front door. There’s nothing brave about getting hit by a car.

  I thought a little bit about Bryce’s wife, and how she’d never asked me why I thought someone was trying to kill me. That bothered me some, but not in the suspicious way that it should have. It just bothered me.

  The only thing that helped me forget that I was fucked, for a little while at least, was a bubble bath. I hadn’t taken one in years. It was surprisingly frothy. And sitting in that small tub with my bare knees bent up in the air, soaking in my own filth, I felt so good and ridiculous it was almost right. As I began to prune and shrivel I thought about going to the police and falsely confessing to everything, anything they wanted, just to get it over with. After a few years a college journalism class would review my trial and see that I was obviously innocent. There would be embarrassing publicity. The governor would grant me a pardon and I’d be released. At my press conference I’d say, “I knew God would make this day happen. In my heart, I was always free.” And then I would weep. And then I would sue the shit out of the city and the mayor’s office and the police department and anybody else I could find, to make sure that no one would ever have to suffer such terrible freedom in their heart again.

  I would be rich, and I would have my redemption. It was very Christ-like in the end. I’d just have to put up with all those brutal ass rapings every day for a few years, and try not to get shanked during any riots. That was not very Christ-like. But it’s the question all of us have to answer at some point: how much is your ass worth to you?

  I would not go to the police. And fuck those sanctimonious college kids too.

  I went to the movies instead. If I had to die it would be as I had always lived: like Abraham Lincoln. I had a twelve-second complete nervous breakdown as I walked into the theater and saw how huge and open it was. Stadium seating has made it much easier to be assassinated at the movies. After a frantic deliberation I sat in the back row in the corner, so no one could sneak up on me. There were no emergency exits nearby and it would be harder to escape, but I figured if I saw anyone coming for me I’d yell, “He’s got a gun!” and then get lost in the fleeing mass hysteria. There would at least be other bodies to stop some of the bullets.