Blood, Guts, & Whiskey

by Todd Robinson

  They leave and you’re laughing again. The coke is in your blood now. The river inside of you has turned the corner and gets white-water status. You almost growl. Your blood, it’s telling you that you aren’t tired at all. It’s telling you to go over there and tempt fate. Have some fun.

  So you go with your loose chain—the one you’ve become an expert knocking the shit out of street punks with, spinning it and twisting it and lashing out. Already, it’s claimed an eyeball in San José one night when you stumbled too far from the Bar Dominica. You’d been attacked. Dangerous little shits that come at you in packs.

  You go visit the ladies. In a taxi.

  Pink cottages. All of them in a row, and at the end, a hallway that takes you to the sweatboxes out back. Right about now, the hot sun starts to bake those corrugated roofs. If anyone is trying to sleep, they must be real tired. Or already dead.

  The only relief from the heat might be in the cool cement walls of the hallway or in the communal shower.

  But this morning, there’s a few doors open. Especially—you see with a tinge of respect for the ace consistency of a moron—the door to the dolly you visited. You say out loud with a laugh, “Oh what a coincidence. It’s you-know-who. And she wants me to come into her room. Not a fucking chance.”

  And she’s standing there. It’s such a poor trap, you think. And still, you hear, moto. No moto.

  They don’t know you’ve taken a taxi. They want this so bad, they forgot to even listen. When you walked in, their minds started to race. No one thought it strange that they didn’t hear the bike.

  All they are thinking is that they must now find a way to get you in a room. Obviously, they thought it was a sure thing—that you’d go into the old girl’s room. Why shit, you think—after all, you two are practically married now. Why wouldn’t you go in there?

  That’s what the ladies are bugging out trying to answer. Not why they didn’t hear you come up.

  Now, like out on the highway, driving without a helmet, you want to play cat and mouse for bigger stakes. Maybe this morning, it’s your life you’ll be gambling with.

  Here comes another woman—older, so absolutely a first pick of yours for “Most Insidious. Most Dangerous. The Boss.” When you learn that she’s the landlord, you smile. Instincts. Working.

  This one? She’s mean. That’s what age has done for her. It’s replaced her beauty with meanness and a fragile wisdom of the world. She wants her girls here to toss you on a scrap heap, and she is furious with them for not pulling this off like clockwork. That’s when you really laugh. In her face.

  You’re thinking about Costa Rican clockwork. It’s an oxymoron. Everyone is late. Just like you’re making yourself late right now—late for your own funeral.

  She must be wailing at them, you think. You hear her say es-túpido, tonto enough times to appreciate that their airtight plan has unraveled. And the boss, she’s not going to let her girls forget so easily. Besides, if they hadn’t come out to your place, they could have earned her some real money right here on their backs.

  You also hear, moto. She has obviously just arrived from the entrance, maybe just drove up for the ceremony—the celebration of a gringo locked up like a rat in a cage, locked in a fucking oven-backed tin can.

  That would have been the second thing she had expected to see, not you alive and well and swinging enough chain in arcs and wide loops in front of your chest to seriously maim anyone who rushes you.

  The last thing she expected to see was you alive and out in that courtyard, swinging your chain and matching evil look for evil look.

  But what’s really got her going is that the first thing she did expect to see, your Harley, doesn’t even seem to be out there.

  Like, “Where is this fucking Harley?” Only she doesn’t say Harley. Because she thinks, like they all did, that you’d recognize the word Harley, but that you might not understand the Spanish word for motorcycle. They may as well have asked you to stamp “Stuck on stupid” all over your ass and forehead.

  No, she is starting to rethink this one. In fact, she just fucking leaves.

  It’s just that you won’t let your feet take you all the way into the ole girl’s room. You laugh and manage in Spanish that you’ve been there already. Then, out in the courtyard, you let them circle. There’s another room. They pretend there’s a lady inside. Only she won’t open her door.

  This must be plan two, you think. Like, if you’re not going into a room with a girl you know, why in the fuck you going to go into a room with someone you don’t know? You stay clear of that room, still swinging your chain. None of the girls want to come near you. Plan two has also proved to be a poor one.

  You ask them if they figured it would be nice for you to stay in a locked, 112 degree hellhole while they steal your moto.

  But there is no moto.

  That’s what the dude is asking now.

  Oh good, you think. The guns have arrived. And he’ll have to be a real quick draw before losing a cheek or an eye to the chain. So you get in close. Keep smiling.

  He just showed up. Out of nowhere, so to speak, once the boss left. You’re starting to enjoy yourself more and more and decide all at once that this is worth missing a few hours sleep. What also intrigues you is that you aren’t even a mile away from your bar. You wonder, What in the fuck are these people thinking?

  But you already know the answer to that. They aren’t.

  This guy—you’ve never seen him in town, so you can expect he doesn’t know that you are certified. You will kill this punk if you have to. But all he wants to talk about is the moto. The one he came to steal.

  No one can tell him fast enough that they need him to help get you into that room. While they’re jabbering, you also jabber—you go Chicago, pure street on him, your back constantly against the wall, the chain spinning nunchacku-style in front of you, a blur of steel. He can’t come any closer and he can’t make a move quick enough if he does have a gun—there’s just not enough room in the courtyard.

  He also can’t stop smiling. It must be the only way to hide his surprise.

  Someone, the boss maybe, or these women, have gotten him out of bed to come over for a kill—to roast a duck.

  But all he can see is a mad gringo, also smiling and talking Spanglish a mile a minute. All he can really see is a world of hurt coming from an older, and obviously wiser, bird of prey. He gets it. He gets that you get it. Still, you can tell that he can’t believe it.

  He keeps asking, “No fucking moto? Verdad?” It is true?

  By this time, you have gotten back some of that rooster from earlier in the morning at the bar, when you were the barnyard boss.

  And so that’s how you leave there, feeling better and better. Laughing. Bare-chested, feeling that beautiful heat from the sun once you’re out in the front lot.

  Big bad rooster.

  He follows at a distance, but he already must have known he’d get his ass kicked, plain and simple. And down below, on the road from Cinta Azul to the Roble, a horn honks and screams can be heard.

  Suddenly gunshots from that car. Arms waved out the window, one still with a pistol in its hand. Tattooed arms. Zamora’s boys coming back from a morning delivery at the plant.

  The kid behind you slows down. He recognizes the Zamoras, and for the first time since he arrived to strong-arm you into one of those empty shacks, he hears your name called.

  Maybe leaving the trap, he was figuring, you win some, you lose some. Now, he stops and you wonder just what he’s thinking now.

  “Hey Sal! Gringo Loca! Mi Cumpa!”

  They stop and you run down for a ride to your bar. You can’t say what the punk behind you is thinking, but after you jump into the car, after you fired a shot at the ground by his feet and he about jumped into that only gnarled tree in the lot, you sure know that he is definitely thinking something.

  Even from that distance, you could see that his face had gone completely white.

  You hand O
scar, the shift leader, his pistol. It’s new. He wanted to get your attention and thought he’d also test out the SIG Sauer nine-millimeter. Everyone has already slapped your back, complimenting you on making the muscular Nicaraguan dance out in that empty lot where your motorcycle was supposed to be.

  When you’d jumped into the car, you’d asked Oscar quickly to lend you the gun.

  He proudly handed it over to you and clicked off the safety. A bag of coke was already going around in the car and the music stayed loud. Once you ripped that round, Oscar smirked, then asked what you wanted done.

  You just said, “Respect.”

  He nodded, muttered, “Con respecto,” and sped towards the lone figure in the empty parking lot in front of the pink cottages.

  Bad Move

  Dave Zeltserman

  The news came on while I was still waiting for my ham and cheese sandwich, and it was when they showed the police sketch that the good citizens sitting around me started offering their opinions on what should be done to the freak when he was caught. A glazed toothless sod a few barstools down yelled out that castration would be too good for the bastard, and some fat tub of lard next to him suggested instead feeding the freak into a wood chipper. More of them threw out their ideas on the matter, and all I could do was sit there and take it, all the while feeling a hot burning around my neck. Of course none of them knew the drawing was supposed to be me. The man in it looked wild-eyed, his greasy black hair well past his shoulders, his beard making him look like the Unabomber’s deranged cousin. Four days ago I shaved off my beard and clipped my hair short, then had a barber give me a buzzcut and dye what was left yellow. After that I moved into another rooming house. Still, though, listening to them talking about what a fucking freak I must be was hard, especially with them claiming that I was trying to hurt that baby. They didn’t understand any of it. If Dr. Bendleson was around he could explain it to them. But he wasn’t, so I just had to listen to them blathering on and on.

  Four days ago we were a week into this goddamned heat wave. I tried staying in my room; I knew Dr. Bendleson would’ve wanted me to, but I couldn’t. It was just so damn hot in there, my head feeling like it was going to split apart. I needed air, but as soon as I was outside and saw the way the good citizens were gaping at me, I knew I had made a mistake.

  I might’ve still been okay if that woman hadn’t blocked the sidewalk with her baby carriage. As I stood there waiting for her to move her damn carriage, all I could see was red, every vein in my head throbbing like they were going to pop. Finally I asked her if she thought I was standing there for my goddamned health. She gave me a slow look then and pulled the carriage back an inch so I would still have to step into the street if I was going to pass by. That was all it took to send me tumbling into the abyss. The next thing I knew I was yelling at her, telling her that she was no better than any other piece of dog crap littering the street and how if she thought she was better than me she was the one fucked in the head. I grabbed her baby carriage and pushed it into traffic.

  I was deep into the abyss by this point. The baby carriage made it across okay, but then it bounced off the curb and started to roll back, and that’s when she jumped into the street after it. A car swerving to avoid the carriage clipped her, and next thing she was laying in the street clutching her hip and making the most god-awful mewling noises.

  A crowd had gathered. I’m a big man, almost as wide as I am tall, and all my hours lifting weights at Bendleson’s hospital left me as hard as stone. They should’ve known better. When one of them grabbed at me, I popped him in the jaw and his mouth exploded into a pink spray. And then I ran.

  Since then I stayed holed up in my room. But yesterday I finished the box of crackers that I’d bought, and I needed food and I needed to get out of that stifling hot room. So I went to this bar thinking I could grab a quick sandwich. But as they kept talking about me, I could feel myself slipping closer to the abyss again.

  Something touched my arm. Through the haze I saw that a lady had moved onto the barstool next to me, and she had a small delicate hand resting on my arm, her fingernails painted a deep bloodred. A dark brunette with soft red lips. I couldn’t look away from those lips. She smiled, clearly amused, and said something about a drink. I should’ve warned her then about what a bad move she was making, but I couldn’t, not with the way she had pulled me from the abyss, and not with the way her hand felt on my arm. I waved the bartender over and had her order what she wanted. After her drink was brought over, she moved close so that her lips brushed against my ear, her breath hot against me. What she whispered to me was both an invitation and obscene. I should’ve turned her down. I’m not dumb, I knew she wanted something other than what she was offering, but I couldn’t help myself. I left with her.

  She took me to a hotel. A nice one. When we got to the room she didn’t waste any time slipping out of her clothes and standing naked in front of me, her eyes glistening, her body slender and firm and challenging. Then she was on me, her mouth hard against mine. After a while it was like I was with a wild animal the way her body buckled and heaved. And she ended up doing every single dirty thing she whispered in the bar.

  It was a long time before she was done. Before we were laying together in a sweaty heap, trying to catch up with our breathing. She was stretched out on top of me and I could feel her chest rising and lowering. Eventually it slowed. Not right away, but eventually.

  She got up to use the bathroom. I watched until the bathroom door closed and then searched through her pocketbook. According to her driver’s license she was married and her name was Doris Keegan. I copied down her address. Then I lay back down.

  The bathroom door opened. She moved across the room and sat cross-legged on the bed, grinning at me. She was still naked. “Did I wear you out?” she asked.

  I shook my head. That just made her grin more. She asked what my name was. I lied and told her Paul. She lied and told me hers was Susan. And then she crawled back on top of me and slowly unwound her body like a cat. She moved herself so her face was inches from mine. And then we were going at it again, more wild this time with her looking as if she were caught up in a hurricane. As she thrashed about on top of me, her eyes rolled inwards, and her body shuddered in orgasm. Next thing I knew she was off of me again and heading towards the bathroom. “You got me all sweaty,” she said.

  The shower turned on for a few minutes. When she came back into the room, she slipped her clothes back on. “I have to run, Paul,” she said. “That was fun. How about I meet you Wednesday at one at the same bar?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  She laughed at that. “Let’s hope you can squeeze me into your social calendar. Room’s paid for so take your time leaving.” And then she was out the door and gone.

  This whole thing was crazy, her picking me up and taking me back to the hotel like this, but it made sense in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I tried to remember the last time I’d been with a girl. So damn long, almost too long to still be real.

  I rolled onto my side. I had my eyes shut tight trying to block Doris Keegan out of my mind, but I couldn’t. All I could think of, all I could see and smell, was her. I knew this was a mistake, both for her and me. I almost reached for the telephone. I sat frozen, wanting badly to call Bendleson. But if I called him I would have to tell him about my headaches and the baby carriage and all the rest of it. I didn’t see how I could. I got dressed and left the hotel.

  I didn’t sleep at all the next night. Wednesday was two days away and all I could think of was Doris. Images of her raced through my mind. Every time I closed my eyes I’d see her naked, slender body gyrating crazily. It got to the point where I was afraid to close them. By morning my head ached worse than ever.

  By midday I couldn’t stand it any longer. I soaked a towel in ice water and gave myself a rubdown with it. I looked out the window. The sun was so bright I had to turn my eyes away. I got dressed and headed outside.

  I found a
pay phone and called information and got Doris’s phone number. My heart raced while I dialed the number. A woman answered who turned out to be their housekeeper. I asked if she knew where Doris was. At first she wouldn’t tell me, but finally let it out that Doris was probably having lunch at the Plaza. “I’m sure you’ll find her somewhere in the hotel,” she added under her breath.

  I walked the three miles to the Plaza Hotel. It was hot and muggy and by the time I got there my clothes were soaked through. Doris was there in the restaurant, and with her was a good-looking man about my age. The two of them were laughing. I couldn’t help noticing the soft curvature of her throat. So soft. The way the light reflected off it. For whatever reason Doris turned her eyes towards me, and then her smile froze as our eyes locked. I turned and headed for the door.

  Doris must’ve run after me. By the time I got to the street she was alongside me, her face flushed. “Paul,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  I tried to keep from looking at her. “Nothing.”

  “You knew I was married, right?” she asked. “That’s hubby in there. I hate the bastard.”

  “You didn’t look like you were having a bad time.”

  “Oh no?” She raised an eyebrow. “I can put on a pretty convincing act when I want to, can’t I?”

  She was grinning from ear to ear. My throat felt dry. I could barely swallow. “Pretty funny, huh?” I asked. She pushed herself up against me and answered me by pressing her mouth hard against mine. When she pulled away her eyes were sparkling. “I better go back before hubby gets suspicious,” she said. “We’ll meet later. Tell me where you’re staying, tough guy.”