by Micah Nathan
Ginger took another puff. “You’re being too hard on yourself. Have you had sex with anyone else since Jessica dumped you?”
Ben rubbed his palms on the warm curb. “No.”
“There’s your problem.”
“The old man said the same thing.”
Ginger smiled and exhaled a plume of smoke. Ben looked at her and concocted a fantasy in which he stayed in Fitchville, moving into a grungy studio overlooking a basketball court. From his garret he’d pen poems of urban grit. At night under the lights he’d ball with locals, commiserate with the poor black folk, and flaunt his half-Asian girlfriend/former hooker, who’d sit with her back against the chain link and cheer for her warrior poet.
“Why are you here?” Ben asked.
“In Fitchville?”
“With us. With the old man. When he gave you that speech about molecules and whatever—”
“Like I have better options.”
“Do you have a pimp?”
“Uh-huh.” She shot smoke from her nose.
“Amazing.”
“What’s so amazing?”
“I just can’t believe you have a pimp.”
“I’m a hooker. Hookers have pimps.”
“Not all of them.”
“How would you know?”
Ben shrugged. “I wouldn’t.”
“Well, I have a pimp,” she said. “And your grandfather didn’t seem to care.”
“He’s not my grandfather.”
“Oh. I thought—”
“I answered an ad. I’m his driver.”
“I thought he was making that part up. Where are you driving to?”
“A town called Shake. He’s looking for his long-lost granddaughter. It’s complicated.”
“Sounds it.”
Ben took the cigarette from Ginger and puffed. “I didn’t know what I was going to do this summer,” he said. “I was thinking about working at the mall again. You ever work at the mall?”
She smiled a little. “This is my first job.”
“That’s hilarious. I mean, not—”
“I get it. No offense, right?”
“Right,” Ben said. “Anyway. I used to steal ties at my old job. I have a drawer filled with Italian silk ties. Every week I’d roll one up and shove it down my pants. I don’t even know why I did it. It was just … something to do.”
She took the cigarette back. “You don’t look like the shoplifting type.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m a dangerous man.”
They laughed. Then Ben said, “I’m a cheater, too. I cheated on Jessica, with this girl named Carrie. She was anorexic. She had pierced nipples and a red stud in her tongue. Ask me if it was worth it.”
“Was it worth it?”
“I’m not sure. We used to fuck in her parents’ basement. It had been an apartment for her older brother, so there were all these Baywatch posters tacked up over the paneling. Whenever I needed to—you know, not finish?—I would look up at David Hasselhoff.”
She nodded. “That would work for me. Is that why Jessica left you? Because of Carrie?”
“Probably. Who knows. We were doomed from the start.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Ben took the cigarette again. “Making conversation. Trying to paint myself as a neurotic with self-destructive impulses. I don’t even smoke, and yet here I am. Puffing away, confessing to theft and infidelity. Is it working?”
“Almost.” Ginger looked at him from the side. “So do you want to fuck?”
Ben laughed because he didn’t know what else to do.
“If you don’t find me attractive, that’s all right,” she said. “Some guys aren’t into the half-Thai thing.”
“I’m into the half-Thai thing.”
“Would you call me hot?”
“Hot works. Whatever you need me to say, just—”
She ground her cigarette onto the street. “Let’s do it in the Caddy. I’ve always wanted to do it in one of those.”
Ben followed her. There was a tattoo of Asian characters on her lower back and she was still barefoot, her heels black with grime.
They maneuvered in the backseat. As she unzipped his pants, Ben wondered if his previous life was still within reach, even if he didn’t necessarily want it, and there, he realized, was the source of his depression—the unwillingness to leave what he hated because the alternative, whatever it was, seemed worse.
But not anymore, he thought. Now it had all changed. Now he could stay on the road forever, and he could leave his mom because she was crazy and crazy never got better. It just got crazier. Like the old man. But there was bad crazy and there was good crazy, and the old man had shown Ben there are causes worth fighting for, worth dying for, worth loving for. Either that, Ben thought, or I’m simply thrilled to get laid.
“Make it quick,” Ginger said, kissing him between sentences. “I want to finish before the old man gets back. He seems weird about the whole sex thing.”
“Do you know who he is?”
She shook her head as Ben slipped her panties down to her knees.
“He’s Elvis,” Ben whispered, and suddenly all was warm and soft. Her stomach was flat and firm and he grabbed her ass. He couldn’t believe how little of it there was.
“Like Elvis Elvis?” she asked.
He nodded. The seat creaked beneath them. Ginger ground her stomach against his. She bit his neck and clawed his shoulders. Ben closed his eyes. He saw Alex dancing with Heather and Fiona. Sweat dotting her thighs. Daring eyes and her little half-smile.
The car door opened and the old man fell into the passenger seat. Ginger scrambled backward while Ben grabbed his pants and yanked them up. The old man held a sixty-four-ounce plastic cup of Coke and a pouch of beef jerky with a Native American on the front. His speech was slurred.
“What’d you say the name of your pimp was?”
Ginger buttoned her pants. “I didn’t.” She pulled her shirt down. “His name is Clarence.”
The old man went to sip his Coke but missed the straw and it jabbed into his gums. “Tell me about Clarence.”
“He’s mean.”
“Does mean old Clarence have access to the medications I need?”
“Probably.”
He licked the blood off his jabbed gum. “Probably like I shouldn’t waste my time, or probably like probably?”
“Probably like probably.”
“Then tell me where to drive, sugar.”
Ginger shook her head. “If he sees me with you, he’ll cut off my tits. The last girl tried to leave and he—”
“Uh-huh,” the old man mumbled, and he nearly nodded off, eyes flickering shut. Then he roused himself and said, “Ben, when you’re finished getting dressed, get the hell up here. We got a meeting with a pimp who fancies himself the Big Bad Wolf.”
10.
larence Espino lived in the abandoned mansion of a steel magnate. He preferred to sit alone, on a wooden chair in the middle of his empty living room, imagining flames licking the mansion pillars, the angry townsfolk shouting curses as they thrust their pitchforks and makeshift swords in the air. These were the images he remembered from childhood. He’d watched Technicolor movies with his dad in which Rome burned and barbarians rampaged; one day he thought he, too, would rule a kingdom and watch its decline, because the decay intrigued him. Not the fat times, the glory years, the pax romana, but the end of it all. The corruption and decadence. The diseased whores and conniving senators. The crumbling marble, chipped frescoes, and tales of border outposts overrun.
He’d never imagined success—only fading glory—so when it came, he fought against it. He murdered his friends, scarred his whores, and plunged himself into addiction. He fucked bareback and shared needles with hookers and junkies. One night, while walking home from a poker game, an ambush; Clarence took both barrels from a sawed-off in the gut and chest, and was left bleeding on a street corner.
There, facing the fate he’d wished f
or since discovering his father dead in his favorite chair with half a face from a self-administered shotgun blast, Clarence asked for mercy. Not because he feared death. Death was his constant companion. He dreamt of it, death by a million causes. Pushed out a fiftieth-floor window, stabbed in the chest, riddled with bullets while waiting at a traffic light. A garrotte slipped around his throat, smooth and silent as a whisper. Bludgeoned with a tire iron, stomped, drowned, burned alive. Death was the only thing in the world Clarence was certain he didn’t fear.
He asked for mercy because in that moment when he felt numbness crawling across his face, he realized he’d been death’s abandoned twin, left at the world’s doorstep and raised to murder the world. And so he awoke three days later, in his bedroom, chest covered in bandages and an IV drip in his arm, one eye blind from six buckshot pellets. He expected rumors of his death to spread through the Fitchville underworld. The jackals would circle. A fitting end, he believed.
Instead they left him alone. For years the people of Fitchville had whispered about the black Lincoln rolling through the streets at night, Clarence at the wheel, windows down, Tech-9 on the seat, hardbangers sitting in the back with AKs. Not anymore. Now he never went out. As his wounds healed, he realized the hardbangers had all left. There was nobody left to fight. Pretending he was dead was easier than pretending he’d ever been alive. He shut himself in, played cards with his whores, read his books, and sat in the wooden chair in the middle of his empty living room. In his solitude Clarence discovered something worse than death: contentment.
* * *
Ben and the old man stood in the empty living room, Clarence in his wooden chair, legs crossed and his face resting in the L of his right hand. Naked women prowled about silently, others sleeping on the floor in a tangle of dark hair and smooth limbs.
“And why should I give her to you?” Clarence asked the old man. “Why should I give anything to you?”
The old man rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his mouth, but he’d taken too many blue pills. He knew he didn’t sound his best. Like a foolish old man, he thought. Goddammit, when this girl needs your help, you’re no better than anyone else in her wasted life. Remember singing lullabies to Lisa Marie when you couldn’t stay awake with drool leaking down your chin like some fucking retard?
“I remember,” the old man said. He hadn’t meant to speak but the words came out anyway. He swayed and Ben caught him by the arm.
The old man looked at Ben and wished he had a million dollars to give. In his prime he’d known a dozen men who’d take a bullet for him, but not one when he was just a poor kid. Known a dozen men who called him faggot and white nigger, but not one who’d hold him upright when his strength failed.
“What he’s trying to say—” Ben began but Clarence held up his hand.
“I’m not talking to you,” Clarence said. “I’m talking to that old junkie in the ratty clothes. The old junkie who wants me to give up my favorite girl on account of her pitiful life, who thinks he can do better for her.”
“Better than what she has now,” the old man said. “I’m offering her a chance to do something righteous.”
Clarence laughed. “Only righteous thing that girl does is suck a good dick. So get your dick sucked good and bring that bitch back here before I lose patience.”
“God sent her to me,” the old man said. “When He’s finished, He’ll send her back.” Then he took out his wallet and waved it in the air. “There’s also the matter of medication Ginger said you’d be happy to sell.”
Clarence laughed again and sat up with his hands resting on his knees. He looked at the old man wearing his red sweatsuit with his finger-combed hair, and there was something familiar about him, like a McDonald’s sign or the taste of a Twinkie.
“Do I know you?” Clarence asked.
The old man stumbled forward and dropped his wallet. He slipped from Ben’s grasp and fell, splitting his lip on the floor.
Clarence gestured to one of his women. She stretched her arms overhead, slowly, and retrieved the wallet. Ben could smell her perfume as she walked away.
The old man touched his bleeding lip and smiled at Ben.
“Your five thousand is in that wallet,” the old man said. “The rest is all gone. Faster than I thought.”
Clarence stared at the three of them. The old man looked like he was on the verge of collapse but it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter to the old man, except for whatever had pulled him out of seclusion. For a moment Clarence wanted to join the old man like Ginger and this cocksure boy who was too naive to know how close they all were to getting killed, right there in his living room. It must be something special, Clarence thought, if they’re willing to go through all this. I’ve never been a part of something special. Granted, I’ve never wanted to, but maybe that’s just sour grapes.
“Five thousand gets you safe passage out of this town,” Clarence said. “Another five gets you the medication, and I’ll throw in the bitch for nothing. Consider her a gift. From one fallen king to another.”
They drove through the night until the sun washed over the hood of the Caddy. The old man told Ben to stop at the next motel. In separate rooms they slept, the old man in his clothes atop the blankets, sweat washing the coating off pills he clenched like a baby with a rattle. He slept with the lights on because he hated waking up in the dark; the television blared past the twelve o’clock news and into daytime soaps, its music filling his dreams and making his nightmares melodramatic. In one dream he stood on a dark stage and the audience stood shoulder to shoulder, all faceless clones who stayed silent no matter how loud he sang or whether his favorite gospel numbers moved him to tears. He knew they were hungry and his singing could only feed them for so long. When he lost his voice he began to peel off strips of his own flesh, tossing it to them, watching them smear their sharp-toothed mouths with his blood. On it went until he couldn’t peel anymore and then they began to ascend the stage, clawing up the risers, mouths chomping.
Ben slept with Ginger in the other room, both of them clothed under a sheet. Ginger slept with her head in the crook of Ben’s arm. Before he drifted off he realized the last girl to sleep in his arms was Jessica, and she’d smelled different from Ginger. Jessica smelled like the mall, cocoa butter, and raspberry lip gloss. Ginger smelled like cigarettes and the back of an old car.
He’d bought her—it was a blunt way to see it, but he couldn’t see it any other way—with the five thousand the old man had given him. All this time he’d worried about his skin, his jokes, his lack of muscled arms, when the solution had been cash. Just buy a girlfriend. Tack on the monthly payments as you would a mortgage or car loan.
He wondered if there was decent work in whatever town they were now in. Something where he could sweat out his anxieties and afford a small home and a small life. He didn’t need travel; he imagined Ginger wouldn’t need it, either, because small-town hookers weren’t the jet-setting type.
And he’d tell Jessica, of course. Talk about his new life and suddenly he’s a hundred years older than her freshman lap dogs. Maybe she’d even visit—he imagined a dinner with Ginger and Jessica, Ginger dressed in something short and tight, coiling a smooth, taut leg around his leg, fork-feeding him ziti spears while Jessica stares at them over the rim of her wineglass—and the day of their breakup when he asked Mindy to dinner would seem like nothing more than a player being a player. Every stupid thing he’d done would make sense. Failings transformed into charming idiosyncrasies, moral errors a necessary consequence of the life of a sex-starved cad.
Ben had tried those explanations before, after the affair with Carrie. Carrie the anorexic. Carrie the sort-of-goth chick. Chopped black hair, five percent body fat, a victim of sexual abuse who fucked like a berserker, leaving claw marks down his back and purple marks on his shoulders; she’d threatened him with lesbian affairs but never made good, dumped him on Valentine’s Day, and fucked him later that week in her parents’ basement. He’d
known Carrie before Jessica, having met her in a sociology class. In the beginning, when he hadn’t yet fallen into the all-encompassing tailspin of a love affair with a seventeen-year-old blond Lolita, sex with Carrie was therapy with a side of orgasm; she hadn’t been freaked out by his dad’s death. When he started dating Jessica a month after the funeral, he no longer needed Carrie but he couldn’t stop.
There’s a whole culture built around sadness, Alex had said. It makes you feel like a part of something bigger.
He got caught—one morning Jessica dropped by unannounced as Carrie was leaving—and he begged Jessica for forgiveness. He never saw Carrie again, but the spell was broken. His infallibility shattered, the only chance he had at keeping Jessica. Either worship or nothing, he realized.
Ben awoke in the motel room, sweating. He stared down at Ginger’s little head tucked in the crook of his arm. Drawn curtains framed in sunlight. The weak air-conditioning whirred. He moved his arm and she tilted her head up.
“Is it tomorrow?”
He checked the clock radio. “It’s almost five.”
“We should stay here.” She yawned. “I just want to sleep and eat. Eggs, toast, extra-crispy hash browns. Ask your grandpa if we can stay.”
“He’s not my grandpa.”
“I know, I know. But I don’t know what else to call him.”
“Elvis.”
She laughed a little. “I’ve never seen anyone handle Clarence the way he did.”
“He’s good like that. You know he’s got an arsenal in the trunk.”
She looked up at him. “For real?”
Ben nodded.
“What’s he need it for?”
“Hank Rickey.”
“Who’s Hank Rickey?”
Ben pulled himself out from under Ginger and sat on the edge of the bed. He yawned and ruffled his hair. The brown carpet felt stiff against his bare feet. “Hank Rickey took the old man’s granddaughter.”
“You mean Elvis.”
“That’s right. Elvis.”
Then he shuffled to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror under the green fluorescent light. He splashed cold water on his face, letting it drip while he watched Ginger in the mirror’s reflection, her lithe body stretched on the bed. She put her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling as if it were the sky on a summer afternoon.
