by Greg Ames
—you hear the shrill buzzing of a tattoo needle. Through heavy-lidded eyes you look down at the ugly tattoo forming on your left biceps: a flaming orange crucifix, the word ROUGHOUSIN’ scrawled in arterial red ink below it, and you manage to slur, “That’s ridiculous,” before—
—being accepted into an art school in Brooklyn. Alone in the cramped cell of a Fort Greene studio, you smoke meth several times a day—first with a classmate, then alone—until you set your bed and carpet and clothes on fire. You flee the scene and are arrested on DeKalb Avenue and, due to the extremity of your reaction—the biting and kicking, mostly—you are court ordered to Hurley House, an inpatient rehab in Queens. Your confused father drives down to visit you, his own breath betraying him. He still believes that Listerine, a mouthwash that is thirty percent alcohol, will cover the telltale stench each morning. He brings you books, magazines, warm socks, and candy. “I see someone raking the leaves outside,” you tell him, using those dull old words that can’t ever express that—
—you’ve met someone here at the rehab, Danielle, a fellow tweaker, a stringy-haired beauty with hollowed cheeks, her dull blue eyes set deep in their sockets as though having receded from what they saw in the mirror, her pockmarked arms sinewy-thin but still giving an impression of dangerous strength, like electrical wires encased in flexible tubing, and it will it will it will be different this time, for both of you, because—
—you bring home from preschool a clay impression of your right hand, each finger painted a different color of the rainbow. A looped string emerges from the tip of the yellow middle finger, so that some adoring adult can hang it on a wall. “I made this in school,” you announce with the pride of belonging, the word “school” still pregnant with a magic and exotic quality. “We did the kiln, Mommy. The kiln is hot, and Mrs. Lucas said—”
—it makes you want to die when the cold wind rattles the window, late October, and you see a resident of Hurley House, a kid your age, raking leaves on the front lawn, his movements in slow motion. He seems to know things about life that you don’t. He seems to know—
—“Hey, boy,” your father says, waking you from a sitting dream, “why did you set your room on fire?” He says he wants to understand. He wants to help you. “Doctor Rosman says you’re a young man with great potential.” His cloud-heavy face is scrubbed and tired. He’s deep inside his old man’s body looking out at you, and you can’t imagine how to rescue him. “Dad.” Your voice sounds rusty and damaged, incapable of forming the words. “Don’t worry.” You know him so well. He eats cold pizza for supper and reads espionage novels in bed. His wife died inelegantly many years ago. Now he still lives alone in a big house—
—“Take it outside now,” she says, frying eggs in a pan for dinner. “Play with it in the yard.” She takes another sip of chardonnay, the wine glass always within reach. Confused, you look down at your art project. “It’s a hand,” you say in your high-pitched voice. “It’s my own hand. Don’t you want to see—”
—Danielle perform some private ritual that you are permitted to observe: peeling a clementine with her painted thumbnail, or tweezing the little hairs on her calves or on her breast, her naked legs folded beneath her in a sunlit armchair. You love it when she bends forward, fresh from a shower, and brushes her long wet hair from the base of her neck over her scalp and down into the air before her closed eyes, a holy moment, her naked ass gleaming, the towel cast aside on the tile floor, before throwing her hair back with a luxurious slap, and—
—your father sits you down on the hospital bed and combs your long, greasy hair. “We need to do something,” he says, his voice rich with American resolve. “This is not right, boy. You don’t belong here.” And it’s impossible to explain to him that—
—nothing is more beautiful than Danielle when she sprays perfume in the air and hurries through its fragrant cloud, insuring that she smells clean and fresh but doesn’t give off the stench of a thousand dead flowers, because her mother “practically showered in attar of roses,” and the smell, she said, made her want to use. You’ve been ready to go to the group meeting for ten minutes, fifteen, thinking let’s go, come on, let’s go, believing that you have a right to be annoyed with her, as if she’s your property now, unwilling to leave her side where it’s safe and go on your own, but she’s still getting dressed and she doesn’t understand why you—
—would rather hide in your room, reading books all night, than go to the Sober Dance. Safe from the confusion of dealing with damaged people, in whom you see a reflection of yourself, you can sit on your bed and travel through London, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Moscow. At times you stop and savor an arresting image, your index finger marking your place in the closed book, while you stare at the glowing streetlights outside the window, ignoring—
—that you can smell your father’s breath as if it were your own. Wake up now. Come back. You’re safe. It’s just the two of us here, sharing our genes. Dad de-clots your hair with an Ace comb. This is how the birds do it, you think but don’t say. You flick a speck of lint off his sleeve. He drove all the way down from upstate, buzzed behind the wheel, to sit here in a room that you share with three other men. “Be good, okay?” he says before he leaves. “You’ll be out of here soon enough.” After he’s gone, you move to the window and watch that same kid dragging raked-up leaves in a blue tarp, an orange knit cap on his head, and you practice what you’ll say the next time Dad visits you. “Remember when we did Adventure Guides? Remember the car we made in the basement out of balsa wood and dowels?” I don’t blame you for anything. “Our car lost every race.”
A LOVE LETTER
Here’s what I know: life is short and life is long. Allow me to explain.
In the sense that life is short, I should tell you right now, before it’s too late: I love you. Crazy because in many ways you’re not my ideal—not even close—and I couldn’t care less. What you have is much greater than my mind could ever conceive. You’ve got what my grandma calls “pizazz.”
But life is long, too, and no sudden changes need to be made yet. We must remain strong, angel. This might seem shocking coming from a thirteen-year-old, but I assure you I have given this ample thought. I understand all the obstacles. You’re married for one thing, and if I remember correctly you have two daughters, Kelly and Kim (?), and a son named Jake in the military. And I have not yet embarked on my high school career.
In the coming four years I will have quite a bit of homework to do, not to mention chores, and my mother has imposed upon me a strict ten o’clock curfew. Believe me, I have tried to sway her with all my considerable powers of charm and rhetoric. She is a rock, unmovable. “Give it a rest, buster,” she says. “You better be in by ten or no TV.” It is an effective hardline position.
The good news is you work afternoons, a choice two-to-five shift, and have I failed to mention how fetching you look in that reflective vest? I rarely, if ever, think of you as a “crossing guard.” You move like a dancer. You blow your whistle like one of the jazz greats we listened to and appreciated in Music Appreciation class.
True, I am impulsive, and some say it is this quality that makes me charming, but I am also patient and caring. I need you to know that I care about you. Your husband is an aloof man with a tragic sense of fashion and a hurried air, but in him I recognize a worthy foe. He will not let you go without a struggle. He climbs in and out of his minivan with the nimble prowess of a linebacker, one who can both rush the passer and cover a halfback in the flat. And yet I cannot arrest my true feelings, lock them up in that dank prison called “repression,” and dump them overboard while nobody’s looking on the Staten Island ferry, like so much illegal medical waste. Maybe I’m not being clear.
Lover, I understand the logistics of compromise. If, for now, we must share only eleven seconds together each day, as you shepherd me across the street, then so be it. We have had that time, and for that I should be grateful. If I were never to see you again, I would cherish the memor
y of our encounter yesterday, the way you spread your arms protectively, shielding me from oncoming traffic, as I bent once again over my untied lace. I have a confession: I loosened my laces beforehand, on Carroll Street, to have a few more seconds with you.
Yesterday, when I looked up at you, the sun hovered over your shoulder, illuminating your dark hair, and exposed the silhouette of your neck. I fumbled with my shoelace. At that moment my hands were like lobster claws—not in shape, of course, or even color for that matter, but in their usefulness. They were useless! And when you said, “Hurry up, for Christ’s sake. What’s your problem, kid?” I nearly wept with joy. I knew, then, and forevermore, that I adored you.
“Ever heard of Velcro?” you said with a laugh, and to me it was a line of poetry more arresting than anything we read this term in pre-AP English.
Ever heard of Velcro?
At night, alone in my bed, I wonder: Are you chaperoning me across the street? Or am I taking you to the other side? What would your life be like without me? I don’t want to say that it would be empty and meaningless and full of drudgery, because I know that you are bright and energetic. You probably have no shortage of interests. Maybe you’re a talented street photographer who exhibits her work under a pseudonym to protect impressionable loved ones from controversy. Maybe you are an activist who stands outside City Hall on Saturday afternoons with your comrades, shouting about vivisection and waving gruesome placards. Maybe you’re an idler, a civilized loafer, a connoisseur of repose, sprawled on the sofa in your sweats. It’s even possible that you like to smoke a little hashish (am I getting warmer?) and after a hot bubble bath, you walk around the house burning things, sage, incense, and various aromatic candles. Your personal life, I admit, is none of my business. But remember these words. I am here now. And I can only cross the street with you so many times. One day I will have to keep walking and won’t see you again. But when that time comes, I promise to stop at the next corner. I will turn and wave. “Thank you,” I will say. “I am safe. Are you?”
You will not hear me say these words, of course, because I’ll be like three hundred feet away, at least, and I’ll probably only mouth the words anyway, because it would be lame to say them aloud and my cool high school friends would totally mock me, but know that I have said and meant them. Remember me, angel. To you, I was probably one of hundreds, maybe thousands, just another face passing by your corner. But you are my only one.
PUNISHMENT
Punishment is a sort of medicine.
—ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics
Dunston was chopping onions for dinner when “Mustang Sally” came up in his shuffle. He started thinking about his ex again, and the knife slipped. The blade bit into his skin. Bright blood dribbled down his finger, down the grooves of his palm, and seeped into the cutting block. He held his hand under the light and inspected the wound.
Later that night, he completed some chores around the house. He washed and dried dishes, vacuumed his hardwood floor, and cleared the stack of partially read books from his bed. Then he threw on his winter coat and headed outside.
In the garage he pulled the cord on his new snowblower and let it run for a while. After a quiet moment of reflection, he lowered his left hand into the spinning blades. Three fingers were sheared clean off. He laughed. Blood spattered his shoes.
“Take that, Sally,” he said.
Ten minutes later, he came to on the living room floor. He felt more than heard the ringing doorbell. But after some doing, he staggered to his feet. The front door seemed jammed. He gave it a tremendous yank and greeted his visitor with a full display of clenched teeth.
“Hey, Mister D, I’m selling candy to raise money for our team uniforms,” said a neighborhood kid that Dunston had always liked. “You like peanut M&Ms or the regular kind?”
Dunston, woozy from blood loss, fumbled with his wallet and managed to extricate a ten-dollar bill with his good hand. “Take it, take it,” he said.
The kid stared at the expanding patch of moisture on the Dunston’s gray sweatpants pocket, where his injury was concealed.
“It’s all right,” Dunston said. “It’s only V-8 juice.”
The kid backed away slowly before he turned and ran.
Dunston shut the door.
The emergency room was unavoidable. It occurred to him that Sally might hear about his injury, which would cause her to worry, so he called four of her closest girlfriends from the hospital waiting room and made them all promise not to tell her. Somehow, in all the excitement, he let slip the hospital’s address, the attending physician’s name, and the best free parking locations in the neighborhood. Sally, much to his relief, did not burst through the door that night, crying, in her peach sweater with the pale blue polka dots. That would have only caused a scene.
Dunston liked to write his to-do lists at night, just before bedtime, but surgery and post-op care interrupted this routine. When he got home from the hospital, he poured himself a glass of milk and wrote: “Buy milk. Pay bills. Sever arm. Water fern.”
Around noon the next day, humming quietly to himself, Dunston found his hacksaw in the garage. He rolled up his sleeve and laid his arm across a sawhorse.
“I’m sorry to do this to you, Sally, but you’ve forced my hand.”
His severed limb fell to the garage floor with a thud.
“Your loss,” he whispered.
That was one man’s arm that Sally Greene would never feel holding her again.
Dunston emerged from another blackout on his living room floor, his open wound geysering blood on the couch and walls. He lost approximately six quarts of blood. Nobody called or stopped by. Clearly Sally’s girlfriends had kept mum on the issue, as he had requested. He checked his voicemail just to be sure, wiping blood from his eyes and peering at his blurred phone.
At three o’clock, he died.
“That’ll teach her,” he thought as they zipped the bag around his corpse, and he imagined hammering a railroad spike through his groin, but he was already dead and could only fantasize.
QUAGMIRE
Paige and I lay naked in bed together. Pinned beneath her, I stared at the ceiling. “Mike’s great, isn’t he?” I said.
“I guess,” she said. “Sure. He’s all right.”
“That dude makes a ton of money. Way more than me. I bet he’s a multi-millionaire.”
“You make plenty, babe,” she said.
“Not as much as Mike, though. He’s making real money.”
“What’s real money?” She nuzzled against me, pressed her nose into my neck. “All that matters is if you’re happy or not.”
“Mike’s fucking loaded,” I said.
The following morning, I said, “Maybe we should have Mike over for dinner. What do you think?”
Paige sliced a banana over her corn flakes. “We have nothing in the fridge.”
“That’s cool. I’ll cook.”
She laughed and poured almond milk in the bowl. “You don’t cook.”
Phone in hand, I scrolled through my contacts looking for Mike’s number. “I’ll make my famous chicken in cream sauce. With the basil and sun-dried tomatoes.”
“Who are you?” She laughed again. “You’ve never made that before.”
“Is tomorrow good for you?”
“Declan, we have to make some decisions—tonight—about the guest list. You haven’t even looked at the binder yet.”
“I’ll text Mike,” I said. “I’ll see if tomorrow works for him. But that guy’s so busy—you never know. He might be in Italy or Mozambique or some place like that.”
“There he is,” I said at the door. “Michael Angelo, Michael Jackson. Come on in. Let me take your distressed leather jacket. Wait, is that your BMW parked outside? Paige, check out Mike’s ride. Mike, you remember Paige.”
“For you.” Mike handed her a bottle of pinot noir.
“Wow, that’s so sweet,” Paige said. “You didn’t have to bring anything, Mike.”
“But that’s what a true gentleman does,” I said and threw a fraternal arm around Mike’s shoulders. “This guy’s got old-world charm.” I gave him a playful shove. “So how’s it going, Mike? What’s new? Give us the goods.”
“Eh.” He looked at his shoes, his hands buried in his pockets. “Same old same old.”
Paige and I smiled and nodded, waiting for our honored dinner guest to say more.
“Gaza.” He frowned. “Am I right? If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
Mike, I noted, needed help with his banter. I pried the wine bottle from my fiancée’s grip and headed for the kitchen. “You two get comfy on the couch,” I said. “I’ll just be in here makin’ the chow.”
In the kitchen, I pressed my ear to the door and eavesdropped on their conversation.
“Nice place,” Mike said.
“We moved here after graduation. Put a lot of work into it. The floors, the woodwork. You see the exposed brick? Declan did all of that.”
“Looks great now,” Mike said, piling on.
“Declan’s pretty handy,” she said. “He does all the heavy stuff himself. My father is like that, too. A worker. Good with his hands.”
My cell phone pulsed in my pocket. The call was early. I burst into the living room, interrupted their conversation. “You guys hear that? My phone is vibrating.” I fished it from my pocket. “That’s odd,” I said, inspecting it. “I wonder who this is. A call at this time of the night? Wasn’t expecting that.” I swiped the screen and plugged my left ear with my finger, nodded a few times, said, “All right, sir, I understand, yes, okay, I’ll be there,” and ended the call with a sigh. “Damn, I was afraid this would happen. I apologize, you two, but I have to go.”
“What?” Paige said. “What’s going on?”
“They want me to come in.”
