My Dead Body

by Charlie Huston

  Standards down here being what they are, a man only has to do so much to pass as human.

  There’s not much to know.

  A guy living in the sewers, what do you need to be told that you can’t figure out for yourself?

  Figure he fucked up somewhere along the way. More than once. Figure he’s got enemies. Many. Figure he’s got reasons for not just running far away. One reason is, he’s got nowhere to go. Never been out of the City. Another reason is, he has certain minimum requirements as far as living conditions.

  Anonymity. If not crowds to get lost in, then a place where no one cares who you are or what you’ve done.

  Darkness, he needs. Night is best, but protection from solar UV rays will do. Too many of those and he erupts in a welter of pustules and wet scabs. Seen pictures of guys with severe eczema? Picture that in your mouth and ears and nose and on your eyes. That’s what the sun does.

  And people, he needs. Not to practice his social graces, but as a food supply. Blunt, but there it is. Not like I’m hiding anything. No food supply, he starves in short order, goes crazy just before he dies, crazy strong and crazy fast and woe betide the motherfuckers in his immediate proximity when it happens.

  Sound like something’s been left out of the equation?

  Yeah.

  Figure there’s a girl.

  Guy living in a sewer. There’s got to be a girl in the story somewhere. My story, it’s thick with them. Lost girl, rich girl, smart girl, dyke girl, crazy girl, tough girl, pregnant girl. Over the years, I’ve dealt with all of them. Dead girl. Yeah, her too. But only one matters. My girl. A girl worth sitting in filth for. Waiting. Watching. Feeling the walls of the tunnels for vibrations that will tell you something about what’s going on up top.

  What the hell is going on up there? Who’s bought it? Who’s still kicking? How are the cards coming off the deck and where’s my play? Confused? Well come late to a tale, you got to expect to have to tread a little water.

  Last thing is this, I’m not the way I am because of god or the devil. I’m like this because it’s who I am. I’m a bastard. That I happen to be a bastard that got infected with something called the Vyrus that turned me into something called a Vampyre, that’s just bad news for a lot of people who happened to cross my path over the years. Not because I’d have left them alone if I wasn’t infected, but because being infected makes me a damn sight harder to put down than I’d have been otherwise. Some people, they’ll argue against that. They’ll tell you there’s something mystical about the Vyrus. Some will tell you it’s nothing but a bug, a bug that makes us special, makes us dangerous. Some will say it makes us sick, makes us need to stick together, makes us better off if we went public and got help. Some will say that we need a cure. Some hover around the top of the fence and put off making a choice about which yard they’ll jump into.

  Those people, they’re all at war against one another.

  My bad.

  I’d have kept my mouth shut, it wouldn’t be happening. But that girl, I needed to see her, and I needed a distraction to make it happen. Starting a war seemed what the occasion demanded.

  Looking back, I maybe made a mistake. Not about starting the war, but listening to the girl. When she said to leave her where she was, I shouldn’t have listened. I should have dragged her out. I’d done that, we’d be gone from here already.

  So I like to think. In the dark. With nothing else to think about. Sit and brood on what I should have done. What lives saved. Which throats slit.

  Even a guy like me, we get one go-round, and regrets come with the ticket.

  Just I never had time to entertain them before. And now they’re all that’s come to the party. Makes me want to kill.

  Chubby Freeze finds me curled in a ball in the shack I took over from Q-line Dave after he went under the tracks of the Hudson Valley Express.

  Chubby makes a lot of noise coming up on the shack, which is good. It keeps me from acting rashly and slipping the amputation blade behind his windpipe and pulling it toward me. But it doesn’t keep me from putting it at his throat while I ask him what the fuck he’s doing down here. What does keep me from putting the knife to his throat is the gun his boy Dallas is holding on me.

  Probably for the best. Me and Chubby, we’ve always been friendly for the most part, I’d hate to kill him without a good reason. Of course, the fact he’s found me is a pretty good reason. But I’d maybe like to know if there’s anyone else knows I’m down here.

  If there’s killing to be done, I’d just as soon have a complete list.

  —You don’t look well, Joe.

  Some people, they feel strongly that the obvious must be stated. Me, I’d take it for granted that some poor son of a bitch holed up in the tunnels was gonna look like shit and spare the commentary. Not that it hurts my feelings, just that there’s only so much time in a man’s life, so why waste it stating what’s clear to start with.

  Chubby squints and purses his lips.

  —No, you do not look at all hale.

  I point at the grease stains on the trouser cuffs of his three-thousand-dollar custom-made suit.

  —You’re gonna need some sprucing up yourself, Chubby.

  He fingers the material gathered in pleats at the front of what passes for a waist on a man that big around.

  —I made a point of wearing one of last year’s. I generally give them to a charitable organization when my new wardrobe arrives from Hong Kong, but I’ve found it’s wise to hold back one or two. For grubby work.

  I nod at Dallas, the pretty boy with the well-defined muscles and the gun.

  —That what I am these days, grubby work?

  There’s more gray in Chubby’s afro than when I last saw him. More fat being held in by the five-button vest he sports. More wrinkles around the eyes. It’s cold in the tunnels this time of year, our breath puffs out white. Even so, Chubby’s top coat is draped over the arm Dallas isn’t using to point his gun. The fat man has worked up a sweat coming down here.

  He fingers a handkerchief, a plain white one, not the blue and white silk that fans from his breast pocket, matching his tie.

  —I’m not certain I could say what kind of work you are these days, Joe. It’s been some time since we crossed paths. Some time since anyone has crossed your path. I’d hazard to say that the nature of your work these days is a subject for wild conjecture.

  The place is lit by a fluorescent bulb Q-line Dave scavenged from a demo site somewhere up top. It hangs from a hook of coat hanger that’s been twisted around the scrap-wood beam that supports the sagging sheets of waterlogged Sheetrock over our heads. Power comes from a daisy chain of extension cords that snake and tangle through the shanties; little more than bare wires wrapped in electrical tape in some places, they disappear into the darkness, running to a source I’ve never bothered to explore. The head of our Nile down here. There’s a dozen blackouts a week from people tripping over cords in the dark. The lifers live in fear of the real thing: some city engineer noticing the drain and cutting the juice.

  I wouldn’t miss seeing the surroundings, but I don’t have much to pass the time other than reading the moldy paperbacks that get passed around. Right now the light is bright enough for me to see that Chubby’s eyes aren’t just decorated by new wrinkles, they’re also cracked with red.

  I move for one of the patch pockets on my Ben Davis mechanic’s jacket. I took it off a greaser who came down slumming. Clinking along the tracks with a sack of Thunderbird pints, looking for an experience he could impress his friends with. He left in his underwear and a pair of yellow plastic flip-flops someone with a kinder soul than I gave him so he wouldn’t shred his feet on the broken glass and ballast lining the tracks. I got the jacket mostly because he was a big guy and it didn’t look to fit anyone else. Which is to say that I got the jacket because I’m pretty much the biggest guy down here. I had another jacket, about the only thing I owned that I cared about. I left it topside.

  Better not to
think about that jacket. Or who’s holding it for me. It’s a distraction. Something I don’t need when Dallas lends a little more emphasis to the way he’s pointing that gun at me because he doesn’t like me sticking my hand in any pockets he hasn’t gone through first.

  I put my hand in the pocket anyway.

  Dallas wags the barrel back and forth a little, like the thing is shaking its head at me.

  I nod my head at him.

  —You go ahead and pop one off.

  I fill my hand and it comes out of my pocket.

  —I’d rather take the bullet than go another second without a smoke.

  He flinches when he sees the fluorescent flash off what’s in my hand, but give the kid credit, he’s not half-cocked, gives himself enough time to see the light’s just reflecting off the cellophane on my pouch of Bugler. Truly, I’m grateful he’s a touch gun-shy. I want the smoke, sure, but I was just talking big about the bullet being a fair trade.

  I pull a paper from the cardboard sheaf tucked inside the pouch and fill it with cheap dry tobacco. Given my choice, I’m a Lucky Strike man, like my father before me, may he and my mom both be suffering in a miserable ditch somewhere. Not that I want to introduce a note of bitterness to the story. In any case, store-bought smokes come dear, and I can’t make a pack last more than an evening. I can tease out a pouch of Bugler for a couple days. If anything might drive me to the surface and into the eye of the shit storm up there, it’s the taste of a Lucky.

  I lick the strip of glue at the top of the paper, roll it up, strike a match from a pack with an advertisement for a phone sex line on the cover, and get the thing going.

  Chubby pats some more sweat from the back of his neck.

  I tear the spent match from the book and flick it into a corner littered with a couple thousand of them.

  —Tell me, Chubby, who is it up there doing all this conjecturing about me?

  He refolds his handkerchief and slips it into his pocket, smoothing the front to be sure no bulge shows to ruin the hang of the material. Not that is really hangs on him. Clings, more like.

  —I’m not one to name names, Joe.

  —Unless it’s a name you’d like to see dealt with.

  He takes a moment to consider his manicure.

  —I’ve never been one for spite or rage. Any dealings I’ve had with you have concerned business. And I don’t recall either of us ever expressing any squeamishness about how matters were closed. Not I when I asked for details. Not you when you’ve been paid.

  I’m still sitting on the ground, a chunk of broken concrete digging into the back of my thigh. I reach under my leg to move it.

  Dallas, a little more relaxed after the tobacco incident, doesn’t wave his gun around this time. Which makes me feel better about my chances when I whip the chunk of concrete at his head. It doesn’t bounce off his skull, more like it skips off it when his head is snapped back. Either way, he drops the gun without shooting me, and he drops himself immediately after. I don’t bother to go for the gun. Dallas won’t be making a move for it anytime soon. And if Chubby decides to make a play, I trust I can reach over and scoop it up a full minute before he manages to bend his knees to stoop.

  I blow some smoke his way.

  —Sorry, Chubby, I know he’s your boy and all. Just the gun was a distraction.

  I grind out the butt end of my cigarette, get out the pouch and start rolling a fresh one.

  —So about those people you’d hate to name, what were those names again?

  He clears his throat, shakes his head.

  —He was only doing as I instructed him to do, Joe.

  —You should have known better.

  He nods.

  —Yes. Yes, I suppose that is true.

  I light up.

  —Never had guns between you and me before, Chubby.

  He looks around the trash and debris in the shack for something he might sit on, but it’s all half-rotted, so he stays on his own two feet.

  —That’s also true. But then you were always a somewhat known quantity. As I said before, your actions and intents are mired in uncertainty now. And these are dangerous times. I didn’t know what I might expect from you, having found you in circumstances such as these.

  He waves his fingers at the place.

  —A man could come to anything down here.

  I scratch the side of my nose with a broken thumbnail rimmed with someone else’s dry blood.

  —How’d you find me, Chubby?

  He shakes his head.

  —Joe.

  —I need to know how you found me.

  The shake travels from his head, his cheeks tremor, the roll of fat at the collar of his shirt, his whole body begins to wobble.

  —Joe. If you could.

  I push myself into a squat.

  —Chubby?

  Tears are starting from the red eyes, filling the wrinkles, washing down to his chins.

  —I think I need.

  I get to my feet and cross the space between us and catch his arm before his legs collapse.

  Recently fed, I’m strong, I can break bones, shatter teeth; called upon, I could tear a healthy man’s leg from his body. But still I have to strain to keep from dropping Chubby when he goes limp. I manage to ease him to the ground, half-sprawled on his side, sobbing.

  —I need to sit. I need to sit. I’m sorry about the gun, Joe. I. Oh, Joe.

  I pick up Dallas’s gun, in case this is a play to get his hands on it. But I know it’s not. Just that the gun makes me feel better.

  Chubby rolls onto his front and pushes his face into the dirt and cries louder.

  I walk back and forth a few times, smoke. Keep touching the gun.

  Chubby wears out after a while, gives a heave, and rolls to his back. I reach out and he takes my hand and I pull him forward as he scoots, then he leans his back against the four-by-four at the middle of the shack. It groans, some hunks of plaster drop, the whole structure lists an inch or two to the left, and it settles.

  Sitting strains his trousers at the waist. Unable to get a hand in his pocket, he pulls out the blue and white handkerchief.

  —She’s gone, Joe.

  I grind the cherry of my cigarette between my fingers.

  —Who’s gone, Chubby?

  He wipes snot from his upper lip where it’s turned the dirt to mud.

  —My girl, Joe. My daughter, Joe. My little girl. I can’t find her.

  Sitting there in the ruined suit he wore here for grubby work, wiping at the dirt that’s given him a tear-streaked Kabuki face.

  Saying it over and over, about his daughter.

  Like it should mean something to me.

  I maybe owe Chubby.

  Was a time he did me a solid when I found myself on the wrong turf. Vouched for me. Put his name behind mine. Backed me when DJ Grave Digga, president of the Hood, would just as soon cut my windpipe out and blow a tune on it while I bleed all over him.

  I did him back for it, some errands that qualified as grubby. Could be we’re all square.

  Then again, could be, you put a hard eye on those books and they show an outstanding balance still due.

  I maybe owe the man.

  Still, I wanted to, I could just rip that page right out from the book. I have the blade, I have the gun. Where I come from, either one closes all accounts.

  Better yet, neither one of these guys is infected. Neither one carries the Vyrus. They know enough to do a little business with us, but they’re both clean. Truss them up, find some place cool to stash them, they could last weeks. Fit as Dallas is, fat as Chubby is, they’d last. I could be better fed than I’ve been the whole last year.

  I think about it.

  But it’s just the tunnels talking to me.

  It’s not me. Not really.

  That’s Chubby Freeze there in the dirt. Crying about his lost daughter. Looking at me like I can help.

  And I know there’s no question of how things lie between us. I ain’t gon
na kill the man.

  I look up at the crumbling ceiling. Think about the thousands of tons of stone and concrete hanging overhead. The City above. I think about the war I started up there. What would be waiting for me if I went up top, started poking around, showed my face.

  Chubby is watching me, waiting.

  I look at the cigarette between my fingers.

  —I can’t help you, Chubby.

  He spits into the dirty handkerchief and rubs it across his forehead, leaving a smear.

  —Yes. Well. To be expected.

  I shrug.

  —In your line, a missing girl, you know plenty of people for something like that.

  He raises his eyebrows, exhales, long and tired.

  —Surely. The pornography business is rife with young ladies disappearing or wishing to be disappeared.

  —You’ve had to find them before.

  —Yes.

  —You know people.

  —Yes.

  —You know everyone, Chubby.

  A slight smile, the first since he came in from the dark.

  —Yes, I do. And yet. And yet.

  He waves the handkerchief at the decaying interior of the shanty.

  —Here I am.

  He nods at Dallas, still inert other than deep breathing.

  —With my favorite young man.

  He touches the handkerchief to each corner of his mouth, first one, then the other.

  —Bearding the wounded lion in his den.

  He gives the handkerchief a shake and a little flip and tucks it back in his breast pocket, fanning it perfectly, filthy or not.

  —Why, I wonder, would I do such a thing? Take such a risk. When I could simply hire the detective of my choice.

  I think about life with a sky overhead. Governed by the sun. The way we perform up there, shadow-puppet lives. Hiding what we really are. Hiding it from the world, from ourselves. Down here I’m almost myself. Almost my nature. Almost the predator the Vyrus would have me be. It comes easy. What’s up there always came hard. Even before I was infected.