Pillow nodded sarcastically as he peered at a fairly accurate charcoal drawing of Charles Lindbergh.
Emily slapped him on the arm, instinctively and almost simultaneously reaching out with her other hand in apology. ‘Just because you’re a boring, lame monogamous hobby-haver doesn’t mean the rest of us should feel bad for occasionally losing interest in stuff we once thought was by far the coolest way a person could or would ever want to spend their time. You might take a page out of my book, mister.’
Pillow cast another look around the storage locker. ‘I wish I could, but trust me, I have no spare talent. I used it all. I think we might be the two bad ends of that scale, sweet bits.’
Emily pulled her shirt up to cover her face and then blew it down. ‘I knoooowwww. But I loved each of these hobbies so much the first three times I did them. Dude, when I finally figured out how to blow glass … But as soon as I get, like, the tiniest bit good I just start hating the thing, whatever it is, so much. I cannot tell you how much I loved RC boat-racing for six weeks two years ago. That was a fair quit, though. It’s a viciously competitive subculture.’
She did a deep memory-shudder. ‘So I keep them around, like a huge weirdo, because I always think, y’know, maybe I’ll love one of them again. Maybe I just needed a break from it. But no.’ Emily listlessly poked a set of calligraphy pens. ‘This stuff looks exactly as shitty and pointless to me as it does to you.’
She craned her head all the way to the side and sighed as she looked over a scale reproduction of the Battle of Waterloo. Pillow was watching her very carefully as a small drop of water leaked down from the ceiling, and hit her neck, and she started for a second, then remained still as the water rolled slowly down the curve of her neck.
‘Hey, how about you teach me about one of them?’
‘What?’
‘One of the hobbies. Teach me about it. What was the last really good one?’
Emily straightened up and took a solid grip on her chin. ‘None of them. I’m going to call it. It was all wasteful and sad, and all I need to do is look at this place to know it.’
Pillow pulled the hand off her chin, then he put the chin in his mouth. Emily pushed back and slapped at her face.
‘I hate that! I hate it every time you do it. There’s no call to slobber on a person.’
Pillow grabbed the chin again. He tilted it up a little, then he let it go wherever it wanted. An idea occurred to him. ‘Hey, can I have that key? Maybe I’ll take up …’ He picked up a wooden ring with fabric in the middle.
‘Needlepoint.’
‘Yeah, maybe I’ll take up needlepoint.’
She looked at him quizzically, then tossed him the key. ‘Sure, I’ve got the spare anyway.’
‘They gave us two?’
‘Three. I lost one.’
‘Well, fuck a duck.’
‘Please don’t do that. I have often wondered what you do at your “zoo.”’
Pillow was genuinely offended. ‘I wouldn’t do that, it’s wrong.’
‘Yes. Bestiality is wrong. That’s sort of a given. For most people.’
Pillow waved the key at her. ‘But it shouldn’t be. People think it’s wrong just because it’s gross. And that’s not the reason. A dog can’t tell you they’re not into it. No matter how much you think you know what a dog wants, you don’t. People should keep that in mind.’
Emily wrapped a hand around his waist and cast a quick, sighing gaze over the locker. ‘You’re a moral man.’
Pillow nodded. ‘I’m sorry about the appointment, I –’
She pinched him hard on the hip to stop him. ‘I gave you the option. And you won’t have it next time. But I gave it to you this time.’
They stood in silence for a little bit, then Pillow turned her and walked them out the door. She broke his grip, turned and squinted at him.
‘I don’t think needlepoint is for you, though. You’re more of a Fimo clay man. Scratch that: Sculpey. Back in the day, when Sculpey came around everybody was like, “Fimo can suck a dick!”’
Pillow closed and locked the door, then they linked arms.
‘So, I’m a Sculpey guy. You can tell, can you?’
She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Oh yeah, I can spot ’em a mile away.’
That night it took less than the length of time it takes to eat a very small amount of brown rice and eggplant for Pillow to remember how much he hated spending time alone in his apartment. He went for a long walk and ended up at Mad Love.
After the storage-locker reveal, Emily had become ‘sleepy and grumpy and gross’ and refused to let Pillow sleep over. He took it in stride. It gave him a planning evening.
He had a few drinks at Mad Love, trying not to think about exploding heads, and kettles, and money he didn’t have anymore, and money he didn’t have yet. Then Pillow hung around in the parking lot, looking up at the bright, flickering sign and feeling the heft of the rock in his hand. He’d gathered a bunch of them in a line behind him and was making plans for where he was going to throw them. Pillow wasn’t doing as much productive thinking about the coin business as he’d planned to. He had the rock thing pretty much sorted out, though.
‘Pillow?’
He spun around, ready to make a huge mistake with a medium-sized rock.
Don covered his face with his forearms. ‘Watch out, Pillow, Jesus, it’s fucking me. Don’t go caveman on me, fella.’
Pillow came back to himself quickly. ‘Donny! Sorry, shit, I’m sorry.’
Don grabbed him around the waist in a sort of side-hug. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was going to pelt this bar with a bunch of rocks.’
‘Is that a good idea?’
Pillow felt dizzy. Don sat Pillow down on the curb, rubbing his back and talking him down. ‘Pillow, we should leave. This is a place you go to hurt yourself. Let’s not be seen around here, with the cops and all. Let’s go over to my house and we’ll have some drinks there. Okay?’
Pillow nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s go. I really do want to bust up that sign, though.’
Don stood and offered his hand. He hoisted Pillow up. ‘All I’m saying is throw peace a lay every now and again.’
Pillow laughed and started to walk away. He turned around and Don was looking at him like he was crazy.
‘I said every now and again, not every time. I meant that we should each throw one rock, and then run away.’
Don caught the very bottom corner of the E, Pillow hit the join where O and V met square. They saw the sparks start to rain down onto the entrance, and they could hear the shouts and curses as they turned the corner.
Don owned more cushions than anyone could really need. Pillow was stretched out across a number of them on the floor as Don paced across the room, occasionally swigging an obscure green liqueur as he listened.
It felt good to talk about the pregnancy with someone who wasn’t the pregnant person.
‘Okay, do you want to hear my one and only parenting idea? I think it could help. No disrespect, but you don’t seem to have given much thought to child rearing.’
Pillow waved him on. He liked to think of himself as a person who knew what to do with advice.
‘This is only for a boy. When you give him the sex talk, right, when he’s like eleven or twelve. The birdsies and beezies. My talk is just one word: cunnilingus.’
Pillow snorted.
‘I’m serious. Almost every man has a dick, and a few of those are going to be bigger, harder, veinier, better-smelling, whatever. A dick, no matter the dick, is never that nice. But if you are the eleven-year-old boy who eats pussy, that’s the kind of shit that makes you special.’
‘Fair point. It’s like with anything: if you want ’em to make the pros, you gotta start ’em young. But I think that’s the only talk I’m ready for. I know what I’m going to say. I think I’ll tell the kid, if it’s a him, a her or a dealer’s choice, I’ll tell the kid that it’s a wonderful thing, a wonderful part of life.
And you have to be careful with wonderful things, because you can fuck them up, and they can fuck you up really easily. And I’d just tell them, y’know, fucking isn’t wrong or bad, but there are a lot of bad reasons to fuck. The good reason is that you like the person, and they’re nice to you, and you want to be nice to them back. And if you’re open and really into it, that’s what sex can be. It can be the best way to be nice to someone. That’s what I think I’ll say about birds and bees, and snails and puppy-dog whatevers.’
Don didn’t give Pillow’s sex talk much thought. He started up again.
‘I want your take on this: yesterday I had a sexual fantasy about a girl scratching her shoulder, but I had it because I was scratching my shoulder. I pulled my shirt to the side and I reached in, and then I thought that if I saw someone doing that it would be really cool and interesting. That strange, frank physicality. You’re in the middle of a crowded Portuguese restaurant and – oops, there’s some collarbone. In any event, I think it’s a reasonable thing to see and think is hot, but I’m not sure how standard the shoulder scratch is as an auto-erotic act.’
Pillow agreed in a fluttery and fundamental way he felt in his chest. Having gotten drunk with Don about fifty times, he knew he wasn’t supposed to agree out loud. They had a rhythm. ‘I’m sure you and your collarbone are going to be very happy together.’
Don nodded and grinned into the mouth of the bottle. ‘Be careful, Pillow.’ He sat down and, having misjudged the distance, scooted forward and looked Pillow in the eyes. ‘With Breton, and with all of this. I know you’re freaked out, but you’re going to have to move Artaud soon. Tomorrow, at the latest the day after. Breton thinks it’s important you killed him. He’ll take care of all of us if we’re loyal.’
Pillow motioned for the bottle, and Don gave him a doubtful look before handing it over. The stuff tasted like a fermented honeydew melon.
‘I have one theory,’ said Pillow. ‘All you guys have tons of them, but I just have one good one. And it applies to you and Breton, especially. Shit champagne. So, champagne is good. Who doesn’t like champagne? Thousand-dollar champagne is so good that you’ll ignore a lot of stuff to drink it. There can be a hair in it, a bug, a squirt of piss even. It takes a whole lot to make thousand-dollar champagne not drinkable. But if there is a flake of shit in it, that champagne is now shit champagne. And nobody should drink shit champagne. Shit champagne has got to be poured out right away, so you’re not tempted, because you can’t reason or haggle or compromise with shit. It just is what it is. A pickle is still a cucumber, no matter how long you keep it in the jar.’
Don’s head rocked back with sudden realization. ‘Pickles are cucumbers?’
‘Umm. Yup. Yeah, they are. Did you not –’
Don’s face reddened. ‘I hate pickles. I never eat them.’
Pillow was rolling around on floor, slapping a spare cushion.
‘All right. Laugh. But I understand. It makes sense now that I’ve been told it once. But I honestly, I just never thought about pickles.’ Don took a big swill from the bottle and laughed it back out. ‘Well, I’m glad that I could cheer you up. But you know what, Pillow? I like you, I do. But your attitude about this is bullshit. You spend all your time thinking the syndicate, the whole way we do it, is dumb. You play aloof, and you make fun of it, and then you complain when you’re not included. It’s a fucking syndicate, Pillow. We all bought in.’
‘You know the things I’ve done. I’ve been around a long time, man. What did you spend to buy in?’
‘You’re oblivious. I’ll tell you how I bought in. Breton and Bobby Desnos pick me up from my house, random Tuesday. They drive me out to the middle of nowhere and they pull over by the river. And they tell me to walk down this really steep hill, so I walk down the hill, and they tell me to look at the hole they dug, so I look at the hole they dug. They tell me to get on my knees, so I do. Breton puts a gun to the back of my head, he stops a second and then he flicks off the safety. I remember that sound and I remember the sound of him pulling the trigger. That sound of invisible things shifting. Then I died. No taste, no smell, no touch, no hearing, no air. The whole world was just this nothing I could feel. For about half a second. And then I opened my eyes, or maybe they were open the whole time, but either way I could see again and the grave was still there, and the sky was still there, and my hands were still there, and I kept waiting. I didn’t turn around for a long time. From my memory I’d have to guess about two hundred thousand years. When I did turn around Breton came forward, dropped to his knees and told me he loved me.’
‘That’s crazy. Nobody’s doing that to me. If that’s in, I’m staying out. You let him get over on you like that?’
‘No, Pillow, you don’t understand. It’s not about him and me. It’s not about getting over on someone, it’s not a contest. I’m not my ego. It’s about pushing yourself. Agreeing to life until you die, and then a little bit past that. It’s the only way. I don’t mean to be shitting on you, but that’s who you are working with. That’s how we all feel. And I hear you, Pillow, I do, and you should be tempted and you should be frustrated, I would be if I was you. But you should hear me as well. We’re telling each other to be careful. And we should both listen.’
Pillow wiped his eyes. ‘I’m supposed to listen to a forty-year-old man who found out what pickles are two minutes ago?’
‘You’re not supposed to. But it would be wise to.’
‘I hear you. Thanks.’
‘By the way, I’m actually thirty-eight-years experienced. And I know what pickles are, motherfucker: pickles are pickles.’
Don insisted on walking Pillow to the subway station. The subway stop was being renovated, so there was a large construction tarp by it. As they got to the entrance, Pillow heard Don let out a little yelp behind him. Before he could turn around, a huge hand grabbed him behind the neck and he felt the insistent press of a gun barrel in the small of his back. The hand shoved his head into the construction area and then against the wall and frisked him. Then a leg no bigger than a spruce tree kicked him prone. His face was pressed into the ground, loose pebbles nestling softly into his cheek.
Pillow shifted his hips and twisted his head a little to look. He caught a flash of a skinny ski-masked person with a gun in Don’s face. Don looked almost bored, his hands stretched out above him, drooping at the wrist a little. The huge hand twisted Pillow’s face back down, and he closed his eyes to keep out the dirt.
‘All right, Costes. You deliver a message to Breton. You tell him those coins are in play. And when we find them we want the same deal Bataille got. Fifty grand on delivery and twenty after it goes through.’ There was a long pause. They were muffling their voices but they sounded half-familiar. ‘Can you give that message, or are you done with those kneecaps?’
Pillow managed to get his face turned sideways. He started moving his hand slowly down, finding some purchase between the giant kneecap and his back. The ski mask was twitching out around the shoulders, waving the gun in Don’s face. Don closed his eyes and breathed.
‘So the message is that some anonymous winter-sports freak knocked off his deal and wants to sell his already-bought coins back to him. Coins they don’t even have yet. That’s the message? Sure thing, I can deliver it. I can do a lot of things. Can I tell him for whom I’m speaking?’
Ski Mask drove a knee straight into Don’s crotch and slammed the butt of the gun into his kidney. As Don started falling, Pillow gripped the knee on his back and shoved up as he bridged his hips. The big guy on top of him got off balance and started tipping over. Pillow got to his feet and caught the big one with a body shot and he let out a muffled, injured breath. Pillow hadn’t even started to turn his head when something that felt a lot like a car, but probably wasn’t a car, hit him and his knees gave out, and there seemed to be no directions anywhere in the world.
Pillow woke up on the subway with Don holding his head up straight. And for the whole ride he was at this rave he’d be
en to eight years ago. The lights of the tunnels moved past, and with each shuddering stop more people came on, and it seemed like they were dancing. There was a girl sitting across from him, and he was sure he’d seen her before. He was almost sure it was Louise Aragon. She wasn’t standing up and dancing with everybody else. Her eyes were on her book and she wasn’t looking at the lights but the lights were looking at her, moving across her face and slipping off and into the dark and she was scratching at a hole in her tights at the very top of her knee. Pillow felt Don pulling at his shoulder like a chicken wing and telling him that they had to go, but his whole torso felt like a bottle floating in the ocean, and his legs were buzzing in a tight band around his knees. He stayed sitting.
Pillow didn’t want to leave. He wanted to dance.
As Don was calling the doctor – actually a veterinarian who’d lost her licence for dealing ketamine – Pillow fell asleep sitting at the kitchen table. When he woke up he didn’t recognize his apartment until he saw his running gear drying above the sink. He took to asking Don whether they’d flown home and where Don’s plane was. Don moved Pillow over to the couch and cradled his head, gently shushing him, occasionally twisting the skin over his ribs to keep him awake.
The vet took almost two hours to get there, and by the time she arrived Pillow had come back to himself enough to bluff a couple of the cognitive tests. She gave him a cold compress for his head, prescribed rest, laying off the painkillers, and really hoping he didn’t have a brain bleed. Don asked what they should do if Pillow did have a bleed, and she snapped her glove off, shrugging.
‘Take him out behind the stables and shoot him.’
Everyone was tired enough to laugh.
Pillow spent the whole next day somewhere in between being incapacitated by a headache and too depressed to move. After Don left, Pillow had a shower. He sat down in the tub, standing only when the water lost the last hint of heat. The cheap walls of the bathroom looked like the sides of a cardboard box full of water. In his bedroom he decided to lie down on the floor instead of the bed for a little bit. He stretched his hands out in front of his face and stared at them for a long time, then he called Emily.
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