You got the recipe?
No.
Still tellin’ me no with all this shit?
He’s gone, man.
Little Chase popped him?
No.
Cheng laughs, rocks a little bit. He rubs some of the powder around his gums. He says, No, man, I can tell. Little Chase Daniels is a killer. Fucking rich kid learned to kill, huh?
I shake my head. Tell him something about doing what we need to do and he interrupts me by saying, Now you’re gettin’ it.
Getting what?
Just what you said. Doin’ what you need to.
I nod.
I look up at KK and I start to introduce them and Cheng waves his small hand. I stop.
He says, Why you here?
Because—
Because you figured us Hmong trash know what to do when the world ended.
Dude, I just thought—
Your little game of pretend got bad, huh? Got bad. Got real. So you come running to the ghetto where we’ve been gettin’ by the whole time.
No, like, all I was thinking was who smokes shit, you know? Like who might still be alive and we’re—
And mommy and daddy are dead. Gone. Can’t bail you out with rehab. Can’t float you money.
Just trying to find people still alive.
Cheng grins. He leans back, his arms outstretched. He says, This is it.
This doesn’t make sense. I wonder where his boys are, the guys he’d surrounded himself with since I knew him back in high school. I ask him about this.
He leans forward. He points a finger at me. He says, It’s not a game for us. Get it? We don’t traffic in this shit to get high. We do it to make money. To survive. We sell shit to stupid motherfuckers like you, the rich kids with daddy’s check-book.
His stubby finger waving in my face makes me feel like I pissed the bed.
My boys, they didn’t fuck around with their own supply. I did. So it’s just me.
I want to tell him that I didn’t come here to exploit him and that we’re not that different, that I was on my own, that my parents hadn’t given me money in years, that I just put a bullet between my mom’s eyes. But I get it, Cheng’s anger. I know it’s different. Growing up, I’d make the five-minute drive in my father’s Camry across I-94 into Frogtown. I’d look for Hmong teenagers standing on corners. I’d slow down, money in hand, get my shit, and drive off to my seven acres, to my own room that locked and had a walk-in closet and connecting bathroom. I get it. I hand over another shard.
Atonement, Cheng says. He laughs. Snorts the whole thing. He sets his gun on the table. He looks over at the couch like it’s the first time he’s noticed there were other people besides me. He tells them to relax, that the big bad gangster isn’t going to hurt them.
Jared lets out a nervous laugh.
Typewriter introduces himself. Cheng says, Remember you. Only fat guy who smokes crank I ever known.
I laugh at this. So does KK. Then it’s what we know how to do. I dole out bits of shit and the three on the couch cook them up and I share a freebase with Cheng and we’re better then, our energy veered away from confrontation and guilt, and we’re just five people getting high.
I eventually ask Cheng if he knows anyone still cooking on a large scale.
He tells me everyone’s dead.
We aren’t.
Bullshit, he says.
Anyone?
He tells me that he’d heard a rumor, back when phones were still working, that a group of motherfuckers were staked out in Ramsey County lockup.
You for real?
What I heard.
Hmong?
Don’t know. Heard it from Tou. Said he was going down. Haven’t heard from him since.
Think it’s legit?
Fuck if I know. But I know I’m set up here. Cookin’ a dime a day, enough to keep me not dead.
Maybe Cheng sees the way I’m looking at him, the way it’s a plea, a bartering, because he says, Enough for me. One day, motherfucker, one day.
FRIDAY
2:57 AM
Cheng is a cartoon. Typewriter is his mother. KK’s a demon. Jared’s a horse. I’m peeking out of Cheng’s windows and giving status updates about how many of them walk around. There’s fifteen. I keep track, marking race, age, and gender. I think this is very important.
We all hold guns.
The paint on the walls is peeling.
Cartoon Cheng holds the bin. He’s claimed responsibility for the dope, cutting everyone off. I’m glad that I’m relieved of this duty.
I see another one. A middle-aged man, squat, definitely Hmong, and he wears the navy blue of a janitor’s uniform. I mark him down on a sheet of paper.
Sixteen, I say or maybe think.
I can hear them all talking. Their voices get louder. I hear just one more. I can’t be bothered because I’m on lookout and I’m important and I’m on the frontlines perched in a tree and our species’ survival depends on my ability to catalog the enemy and I’m a researcher and these are my subjects and demon KK says, Fucking quit, and I need them to be quiet because my brain is beautiful, my mission of utmost importance, and I’m top secret and chemical weapons and I wish I had a battle-axe, razor sharp on both crescent arcs.
I’m not sure if I’ve already counted the woman in a fuzzy bathrobe. I jot her down anyway. Seventeen.
I taste the blood of my heart and it beats through my chest and my eardrums and the ooze drips down my throat and voices are raised and I need concentration, need secrecy. We’re in a castle and our moat is Prince Street and dragons fly overhead and golems stalk the streets.
Movement in the yard across the street. Eighteen.
I open the blinds with the tip of my pistol. I think I see the Canadians, the motherfucker with the mesh cap, his throat, his sidekick, the concave dent of his face. I see my dad’s rotting body. My mother’s red Hindu dot of a bullet hole. I see them all and they’re outside in a single-file line and Innocence in her little umbrella socks is in front and I’m only a little certain they can’t see me. I mark them down—nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—and I report my findings to the group.
They don’t respond.
I can’t take my eyes off the street.
They know we’re in here.
I tell them again—twenty-two.
I hear Cheng’s accented English. He’s saying something about pulling the trigger.
Twenty-two of them, I say again.
Jared, KK says.
Bro, Typewriter says.
I hear Jared’s voice and it’s waving in pitch and he’s saying just give me the fucking shit.
For the briefest of moments, I understand what’s going on—Jared has finally lost it, snapped—and I feel bad for him. But I can’t turn to help because I’m Braveheart and I’m the only line of defense and what I’m doing is important.
Pull the fucking trigger, Cheng says.
Another one down by the stop sign. Twenty-three.
Give me the fucking shit!
Just chill, just fucking chill, Type says.
I’m not fucking around.
Pull the fucking trigger.
I hear KK’s pleas, Cheng’s threats, Typewriter’s confusion. They need me. Everybody fucking needs me. I’m being pulled in so many directions and I’m a peacemaker and I’m a Boy Scout and it’s painful to pull my stare away from the window but I do.
I’m like, What the fuck? Jared stands with a pistol pointed against Cheng’s head. Cheng sits in the red chair, his arms around the blue bin.
Give it right fucking now, Jared screams.
You better fucking kill me. Because ain’t nobody point a gun at me and live to tell about it.
Jared cocks the hammer.
Cheng smiles.
I understand everything and I see each of our auras—KK’s is golden and withdrawing and Typewriter’s is blue and stationary and Cheng’s billows in red flames and Jared’s is black and suffocating—and I see the f
uture, somebody dying, and this doesn’t make me sad, not like it should.
Everybody out, Jared yells.
Bro…
Everybody out. Right fucking now. Out.
Cheng says, You really going to do that? Be a fucking coward, send us out there, instead of killin’ us yourself?
Put the gun down, KK says.
I was wrong. She isn’t a demon. She’s a princess. Her aura is too bright to be demonic. I love her. I think about how many Chucks I’ve missed counting. I say, Twenty-eight.
Get the fuck out!
Jared’s pointing the gun at me now.
Drop the gun, and get out. All of you. You’re all trying to kill me.
I want to tell him his aura is Satan.
He’s screaming and waving his gun. KK and Typewriter make their way to the door but Cheng hasn’t moved, still the king in his throne. KK’s crying and begging. Jared screams at me to drop my gun. I do.
Open the door, Jared says.
Typewriter opens the wooden door but not the metal security door.
KK’s on her knees. She’s pulling at Jared’s jeans. She’s saying please.
You’re waiting for me to fall asleep so you can slit my throat, he yells.
I see the twenty-eight walking dead outside. Some of them have started giggling.
Get the fuck out or I’ll shoot. Jared looks down at KK. He shakes his leg. Tells her, You too.
Somebody is about to die.
I know it because I’m God or a fortune-teller and because I see our energies working things out before our earthly bodies have the chance and the red of Cheng darts toward the duffle bag and the black of Jared throws a thunderbolt into his back and the golden of KK reaches for the pistol. I see it explode, golden light blinding, and maybe angels sing and the black of Jared drops to the floor. It’s a tire losing air and then it’s just him, his horse face gasping, blood trickling, KK draped over his dying body.
4:30 AM
KK won’t come out of the bathroom. I tell myself this is for the better. Typewriter and I have dumped Jared’s body in the basement. Then Cheng’s an hour later when he took his last breath. She’s probably burning her stomach. It’s probably worse, what she’s doing. Slit wrists. Only part of me cares. We’re all going to fucking die.
Bro, should probably go in there, don’t you think?
She told me to leave her alone.
Dude…
What the fuck am I going to say? It’s cool you killed your boyfriend? We’re looking good, a few days’ worth of dope left?
I’m just saying.
Fuck.
She was there for you, Typewriter says. He’s digging his face. Blood drips down his chin. I don’t have the energy to tell him the bugs aren’t real.
I know he’s right, that I need to try again. I think about how when she left me I’d called and called and waited outside her apartment, our apartment, and I’d bought gas station flowers and stalked her at meetings. I tried everything. I told her I loved her. I told her I’d kill myself. I told her she was the only thing I had and that I would do whatever it took.
But I didn’t.
I smoked scante. Day in and day out.
And I think about the time I spotted her from the bus. She was sitting outside Starbucks on a black metal chair. My boy Frank from the halfway house had died in that very restroom a year before. She was with Jared and some other people I knew from my stint of sobriety. They were smoking and sipping from large white cups. They were laughing. They looked so fucking happy. And I was on the bus, taking it back to Summit Avenue, down, down, to the river flats of St. Paul, to West Seventh, to Rebecca and her loud-ass TV, to mysterious Svetlana, to the Groveland Tap, to Tibbs, to women working parking lots and brothers working corners, to my mattress on a dusty floor. I knew she was better off without me. Like not just some bullshit self-pity, but I legitimately knew it. I cried that night. I cried and dialed my parents’ phone number. My mom answered on the first ring and this broke my fucking heart because it meant she waited there in fear. I didn’t say anything. My mom was all hello, hello and then she was like Chase, is that you and I didn’t know how to speak, to say I need help, to say everything I’ve ever tried has gotten me into this miserable little efficiency and alone, and she was like honey, talk to me. I was silent. She said I love you so much.
I knock on the bathroom door. I brace myself for what I know I’ll see.
The softest of voices tells me it’s open.
I push on the door.
She sits on the floor, her back against the side of the bathtub. I scan her wrists and thighs for blotches of red and then I look at the green tile for blood and there’s nothing and she says, Remember last time we were here?
I sit on the toilet. It’s covered in curly black hairs. I tell her I do.
She laughs and it’s a defeated sound. She says, You were so fucking worried.
Yeah.
Still have them, she says, raising her shirt.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to look so I study my fingers and she says, It’s okay to look.
I do.
Her stomach is nothing but ribs and healed burns and she traces them with her fingers and it feels wrong. I pick a nail.
Thought I was gonzo, didn’t you?
I don’t know.
Crazy KK off slitting her wrists in the bathroom.
Stop.
KK reaches her hand toward me and flaps her fingers. This is an invitation to join her on the floor. I do. Our shoulders touch. I’m still looking at KK for an injury I missed, and she must see me doing this because she says, Didn’t do anything.
I didn’t—
Didn’t have to.
She moves her foot on its heel. Her toes trace my shin. She asks me what the fuck happened. I tell her she did what she had to do.
Sounds familiar. That’s what I was telling you just, fuck, yesterday, the day before?
Yeah.
I can feel each of her breaths against my side. Each one seems like so much work.
Is that enough? Reason, I mean.
It’s all there is, I say.
You really believe that?
I think so.
Do what you have to.
Yeah, do what you have to.
I killed my fucking boyfriend.
I killed my mom.
KK laughs and it’s real, her body clenching, leaning forward a few inches. When she settles back against the tub, she’s closer. She rests her head on my shoulder. This is nice.
What if it’s not? she asks.
What’s not?
A good enough reason.
Then what the fuck do we tell ourselves? I say.
That we’re fucked up.
That nothing matters.
That everything matters.
But what does that really do? I ask.
Fuels the fire.
Talking self-hatred?
Check.
I feel her hands on the outside of my thigh. They’re moving up and down and remind me of a kneading cat.
She asks me if I really think Jared would have forced us out.
No doubt.
Fucked up, yo.
Scante takes over. You know that. Fucking snaps.
I killed him.
Then she has her right arm around me, her face buried in my armpit. Her leg ventures over. She’s shaking. I put my arm around her and I tell her she’s okay. I can hear her repeat I killed him, I killed him. She fumbles around at my zipper and I move my knee up and tell her to stop. She doesn’t. She’s bawling. She has my dick out and I’m telling her to stop, that I can get her some of the Oxys, that tomorrow she’ll feel better, and she’s stroking my dick and I feel wetness on my dickhead and realize it’s tears and this is rape of some kind and I give a tentative pull of her waist but I don’t do it hard and then she has her mouth around my dick and I’m a bad person because I close my eyes. She keeps going. My hips give an involuntary jerk. I’m trying not to think, to liv
e in the moment, to be present and embrace this opportunity and to know that this was how it had to turn out, us, and I think about what we’d been talking about—doing what we had to do—and if this was good enough. This isn’t something I have to do. Not even a little bit. And I can hear her crying and I’m a fucking pig and I wrap both arms around her. I pull her off my dick. She has snot running down her nose and over her thin upper lip.
Come here, I say.
She leans forward to kiss me and I pull her closer, past my mouth, my hand around the back of her head. She tells me to fuck her. I shake my head. She reaches her hand back down to my dick and I cross my legs and I hold her tight and she tells me to fuck her and I say shh and she’s reaching for me, for anything that will distract her, and I know that shit matters even when it doesn’t seem to and she’s demanding that I fuck her and I tell her I love her and that it’s okay and that I won’t do that to her and she finally stops fighting and I feel her body relax all at once and she’s a broken child in my arms and her eyes close and open, close and open.
Finally, they close.
I know she won’t be able to sleep but I like to think of her this way, asleep, dreaming of rainbows and lollipops and returned phone calls.
I hear the crashing of glass.
I hear Typewriter yelling fuck, and gunfire.
KK digs her chewed nails into my chest and I stand and yell, Are you okay?
Shot after shot. I sprint out of the bathroom and draw my pistol with my right and KK holds my left and I come to the main room and Chucks are climbing through the window and I don’t hear their giggles because I’m unloading bullets into the opening. A few reanimated tumble against the windowpane. A crash from the left side of the house and I turn and there’s another one, the janitor type, and I fire three shots, two of them hitting his neck, and he falls, his Hmong giggles fading.
There’s the briefest of lulls and I ask Typewriter what the fuck happened. He says he doesn’t know. KK says, They can smell death. I look at her and she’s dropped my hand, picked up a shotgun, and I love her and know she’s right. It’s not just sound but smell and death and fear: that’s how they find us. Another one appears at the window and she aims and fires.
Then a window in the kitchen explodes and I hear another noise in the back of the house.
Fiend Page 13
