“I’m so sorry, Sandy I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” she said, “It’s okay, you got me.”
She continued to rub her breast, and he watched her, down on his knees, her nipples stiffening against the fabric of her shirt, her skin glistening with sweat, propped up on her elbows. His hands were on her, on her arm, her thigh, unsure as to how they got there. She stared up at him, in obvious pain, a deep pulsing behind her eyes. Michael leaned over and kissed her, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and she pulled him to her, the tender fingers of her hand gripping his neck.
***
Michael hadn’t had a cigarette in six years either, they always came with the drink, but he had one now. He stood in her apartment while the shower ran, staring out the window in nothing but his faded blue boxers. One some level he should be happy, thrilled that he found somebody like Sandy. But all he could feel was the suffocating expansion of his heart filling his chest, his hands shaking, no level of calm or peace anywhere near him. It felt like the old paydays, stepping into the first bar he could find, his lost weekend started. It was opening the fridge to nothing but ice-cold beer and a lot of time.
He stubbed out the smoke and turned his eyes to the bathroom door. He had to go. He pulled on his tennis shorts and t-shirt, and slipped on his shoes. Grabbing for his sunglasses, his house keys and his tennis racket he was out the door before the shower ever stopped. No, this couldn’t happen. She was playing with him, something wasn’t right.
***
He unplugged the phone from the wall, and went back to work, trying to forget her. She knew he lived nearby, but not his exact address. She knew he worked in advertising, at a big company down the street, but not which one, or where. If he simply lay low and avoided his usual haunts, maybe she’d just go away. He’d shop at the discount grocer across town, he’d bury the racket in the back of his closet and forget it ever happened. It would be okay, she’d move on, he was nothing special.
For a week, it went like this. He would run into the bargain grocery store, not a brand name in sight. The bananas were soft, the apples were bruised, and he flung items into a basket with a reckless abandonment. In and out in ten minutes, his car parked around the back, a car she’d never even seen. Every time he turned a corner, her shadow poured over him. He passed the display for honey and flinched. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe these were simply the fried synapses of a damaged mind, unable to accept a gift in any shape or form.
Standing in his kitchen, the mangled groceries a sad display on the counter, he plugged the phone back in. It was silly, really. She must have given up on him by now, assuming he was some guy out for a quickie, a game of tennis and a roll in the hay. What woman would still care a week later, after he ran out like that. The phone sat there like a copperhead, basking in the sun, lazy and tired, but ready to strike.
It rang.
He picked it up.
“Hello?”
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
He hung up and pulled the cord out of the wall. He was right, and he was wrong.
***
When he came out to the parking lot the following Friday evening, the head of security was standing by his beige 2-door Camry, writing on a notebook, clipboard in his hand.
“What did you do, Michael?”
“Huh?”
The car had four flat tires, long slender grooves slashed in them.
“Aw, man.”
“What’s her name?”
“What?”
“Had to be a woman. Or her man, maybe. Who’d you piss off?”
“It was nothing,” Michael sighed.
“Sorry I didn’t catch her in the act. We’ve got four parking lots, and just me in this stupid little golf cart, cruising along at five miles per hour.”
“Well, maybe it’s over now,” he said.
“Maybe,” the security guard said. “Maybe not.”
Michael sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. He stared out at the main road that passed by the building. Cars flew by, the lights of the traffic stop changing from jealous to warning to stop. A convertible flew through the red light, horns sounding, tires squealing, a blur of metal and inside it, a woman with long, brown hair, her eyes glued to him, just missing a collision. He swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I called for a tow truck and we’ll pick up the tab for the tow since security didn’t do a very good job of securing much of anything, but the tires are on you. Talk to Jimmy over there and he’ll give you a loaner until they get the new tires on. He’ll cut you a deal on the wheels too.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Go home, pour yourself a stiff drink, and don’t worry about anything.”
“That’s one idea,” Michael said, and it hadn’t been far from his thoughts.
***
He found himself in a corner bar, not far from his house. It was just a shack, something he’d driven by every day for six years, hardly on his radar. But that wasn’t really true. They were all on his radar, every chicken wing shack and burger joint, every beer special and live band from his house to work and back. He knew them all.
He was looking for her now, eager to see what was on the other side, a cold bottle of beer standing in front of him, sweating into a ring on the counter. It was just that simple. The maroon Nova loaner he had smelled of cigarette smoke, old McDonald’s wrappers on the floor, and it was just that easy to steer it into the gravel parking lot, pretending he had no control. One turn of the wheel, one decision, one failure in ten thousand that had occurred since he’d moved out here.
In no time at all she was sitting next to him, no longer in her tennis whites, or her suburban mom clothes from the grocery store, but tight black jeans and fuck-me pumps, short sleeved blouse tight across her breasts, her tan skin shimmering in the faded bar light. Barbed wire ink ran around the other wrist, her fingernail painted blood red.
“You came here for me?” she asked.
“Yes. I did.”
“I forgive you,” she said raising her hand to the bartender.
“I appreciate that.”
“But you still haven’t decided have you. Your beer is sitting there.”
“I know,” he said, “It’s been awhile, and I’m still holding on to it.”
“You’re holding on to the past, Michael. I know what you are. Let it go.”
She ran her hand up and down his back, softly rubbing, and inside he collapsed. The framework he’d built up over the years that he thought was steel, girders and bolts melted together, revealed itself to be toothpicks and bubblegum. He reached out and lifted the bottle, the cold, familiar shape filling his hand. He opened his mouth and sucked it down, and it was like coming home.
***
It slipped away faster than he imagined. He hesitated to say it was even a choice. The languid afternoons with Sandy in bed, an endless supply of beer and bourbon, her laughter filling the spaces that he forgot even existed. They went to movies, devoured Mexican food and sipped on margaritas. They sat on the balcony of his apartment smoking cigarettes and stared at the forest behind them. When she went inside the shadows would fill the dense acreage and the cracking of tree limbs would fill his ears, the dull whoosh of branches falling from great heights, and he would lower his gaze.
He stopped working immediately, and embraced his death one day at a time, a voice echoing in his head, that of a distant doctor, prescribing what was left for him:
“Michael, I’m so sorry. I give you maybe three months, could be less. Try to enjoy yourself, take that trip, say good-bye to your loved ones, there is nothing I can do.”
He lost weight. It wasn’t even a matter of binging, since it really never ended. You couldn’t call it a bender, since it was straight, and true, with no end in sight except his own. He never asked her where she came from, her last name, or even where she lived. She simply showed up, and he took what he could get. And when he ventured out on his own, which wasn’t often, she would fin
d him. She knew the way he thought, what he needed, because she was the same. He cashed out his 401k and bought a handgun. When the money was gone, or when she left him, whichever lasted longer, it would be the fitting end to a struggle he didn’t want any more, simple and cliché, and expected. No one would be surprised, if anyone was even watching. And he was okay with that. It was a relief, and for once in his life, he was complete.
Crash & Burn by Jonathan Woods
1.
Two Mexican military men stumble up the ill-lit steps and through the doorway of the Crimson Cat, a roadhouse located along the coastal highway a few miles south of the border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Their various badges and regalia reveal them both to be Majors in the crack Brigade Escorpion, an elite anti-drug anti-terrorist unit bought and paid for by gringo dollars. Both wear puke green camouflage fatigues and .45 caliber pistols strapped at the hip. Both are drunk as skunks.
Corporal Emilio Suarez, sipping a cold beer and smoking a hand-rolled cancer stick, looks up from the book he’s reading. It’s his day off, so he’s wearing civilian clothes. Jeans and a surfing T-shirt.
Corporal Suarez is a regular at the Crimson Cat on his days off.
He sits on a stool at the back of the oblong rough-hewn room by the only light that isn’t gaudy neon. Outside the night has washed in. The book he is reading is a story of love and murder by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A romantic, heartbreaking story. Irritation creases his brow at the noisy arrival of the two officers.
Faustino, owner of the Crimson Cat, nervously rubs his hands together like a pair of copulating snakes. A short, walnut skinned man with deep worry lines chiseled into his forehead, he suffers from asthma and constant apprehension that the end is nigh. Which it very well may be.
"Buenos noches, gentlemen.”
“Buenos noches up your ass.”
This guffawed by the heavyset officer with the James Dean haircut whose name is Eutropio Escandido. His duck’s ass do is as black as Maracaibo heavy crude. Bloodshot eyes hug a nose as narrow as a razor blade. Cheeks shaved clean as a military operation in Indian country.
The other, a mulatto named Pablo Delgadillo, is slim and gangly with narrow mean lips to match his narrow mean eyes. His dark features seem to melt into the night.
“Where are the girls?” Pablo asks.
“Yeah,” Eutropio says. “Up the road they said there was a party here.”
“No party,” Faustino says. “No girls.”
“Bastards lied to us,” says Pablo. A Ka-Bar military knife beams into his hand and comes down hard into the mahogany surface of the bar. “Nail their escrotos to the fucking wall!”
Pablo jerks the knife free, leaving behind a nasty scar. The knife disappears somewhere on his person.
“Beer,” Eutropio demands. “Cold fucking beer. And put some God damn music on that thing.” He points at the Wurlitzer jukebox pulsing in one corner.
Faustino leaps into action. Pablo pulls out his dick and pisses on the sawdust-covered floor. Mexican pop music explodes from the jukebox.
Eutropio leans against the bar surveying the scene.
“Guy in the back.” He nods in the direction of Corporal Suarez. Behind him Faustino sets two sea-green long necks on the bar.
Pablo grabs his and walks toward the back of the room. He stops just shy of Corporal Suarez and cocks his buzz cut skull like the parrot from Hell.
“Amigo,” he says.
Corporal Suarez sets a scrap of paper to mark his place and closes the book.
“He’s reading a fucking book,” says Pablo, half-turning his face back toward Eutropio. “Must be a faggot. A Commie faggot.”
Eutropio takes a long swig on his beer, smacks his lips. His cock pushes against the front of his fatigue trousers like an aroused rodent.
“Damn.” he says. “A faggot Commie.”
He breaks the beer bottle against the edge of the bar. Armed with the jagged result, he strides down the room.
“Got to be better than some country puta crawling with HIV.”
Before Corporal Suarez has any idea what’s happening, Pablo has him in a headlock. Pablo slams him against the wall of exposed two by four framing to which plywood sheets have been nailed on the outside. Once. Twice. Followed by a knee to the cojones. Corporal Suarez cascades into unconsciousness.
Pablo hefts the dead weight of Suarez’s body across a handy tabletop. The razor-sharp blade of the Ka-Bar slices through Suarez’s leather belt. His jeans slide down to his ankles and are stripped away, his legs spread wide.
Eutropio’s cock is as rampant as the sacrificial club wielded by one of his Mesoamerican ancestors carved in a Mayan temple bas relief.
2.
Tiara Vega, wife to Major General Artimus Wade Vega co-commander of the Amer-Mex Anti-Drug Taskforce Southwest, or DRAMA, uncrosses her legs and holds them wide apart for the cool, languid air from the nearest air conditioning vent to kiss her sweat-covered thighs.
The four grunts drinking beer at a round table across the narrow room have a clear line of sight into the nether regions beneath the stiff black leather of Tiara’s butt-hugging miniskirt. One of the grunts leans over and says something to his buddies. They all turn and stare ingenuously at Tiara’s crotch.
She flips them the bird; then re-crosses her legs in the opposite direct and turns back to the bar. Iago raises an eyebrow.
“Another,” she says.
Iago commences the carefully orchestrated steps leading to the creation of another perfect froth-rimmed lime green daiquiri.
Tiara’s crotch itches like hell but she resists scratching. Finally, in desperation, she climbs off the bar stool and, grabbing her purse, stomps into the Mujeres. The purse is a Louis Vuitton knockoff she bought that morning in Matamoros for a pittance. A birthday present.
The grunts watch Tiara cross the room and disappear into the pissoir. Though she just turned forty-five at 07:23 that morning, her ass is as slim and tight as a brand new twenty-dollar bill. Her jade green D cup halter-top doesn’t hide much of the rest of her.
She’s in Blanca White’s celebrating her birthday. Blanca White’s is her favorite bar in Matamoros.
Artimus is away on some sort of maneuvers.
Though the latch to the toilet stall is broken and the toilet tissue dispenser is empty, there’s still a flip up seat on the shitter. Sitting on it, she slides out of the leather skirt and scratches vigorously at her mons.
Lately she’d been having a pissing issue, a bladder infection. Maybe that’s the problem, she thinks.
But is there something moving in the wiry triangle of hair hovering like a UFO just above the slit of her vagina?
She leans closer and, using two french-manicured nails like a pair of tweezers, extracts a wriggling six-legged prehistoric crab louse from her pubic foliage. Raising it to eye-level, she decapitates it with her nail.
“Shit!”
Except for a one night stand with Artimus, she hasn’t slept with anyone for the past three weeks. Which means Artimus is fucking a little something on the side.
Actually Tiara knows exactly whom he’s fucking. A woman he met four months ago on a trip to Port Aransas where he’d gone to meet with his commanding officer, a deep-sea fishing nut. There’d been coolers full of beer and plenty of leggy, amoral women going topless along for the ride. One of whom, a thirty-five year old ex-model named Susan O’Faolain, smiled sweetly as her fingers toyed with Artimus Ward’s glands through the heavy cotton of his khaki shorts.
Tiara has already threatened the woman with bodily harm if she doesn’t back off.
Now, she thinks, it’s time to get serious.
3.
At his moment of climax, Eutropio slams the broken beer bottle into the side of Corporal Suarez’s cheek.
Corporal Suarez is laid up for two weeks in a palapa-roofed shack behind the Crimson Cat. The first week he sweats out a fever. An old woman inserts a dozen stitches to close up his torn cheek. His anus takes another half dozen
.
The face of the man who beat Suarez to a pulp floats above his bed in the recovery room like a visitation. Suarez doesn’t know his name. But it’s a face he’ll never forget. His sense of the other officer is hazy, like a long Texas vista in the July heat.
But one will lead to the other.
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