by Jeff Johnson
“How did you know it was just my birthday?” She toyed with the box.
“Looked in your purse to find out your last name.”
Suzanne laughed and started unwrapping her present. She opened the box and took the surprisingly unclunky pendant out. The passionflower looked like it was made of emerald glass and set in slightly tarnished, extremely delicate brass. The stamen rods were a deep yellow, tipped with scarlet. The color interpretation was satisfying, in a playful way. And it was old. She let out a tiny gasp.
“I love it,” she breathed. “I’m not really the jewelry type, but this is fabulous! A passionflower.” She put it on, in the center of her low cut dress, just between her small breasts, and then gave me a glittering smile. The waiter arrived and set my drink down.
“One of those,” Suzanne said, pointing and smiling up. She looked at me and arched an eyebrow. “Oysters?”
“Oysters,” I agreed.
“Kinda big ones,” Suzanne said to the waiter. “Short of jumbo. Just big. Meaty. Whatever you’re moving the most of on that end. An even dozen to start with.”
“And some mussels,” I added. “Clams, too, if you recommend them. And the crab cakes.”
“And I love the snails here,” Suzanne said.
“Snails, too. And calamari. Let’s go all in.”
The waiter kept nodding and nodding. “Which first?”
“Bring them out as they come up,” Suzanne suggested. “We eat like hyenas, so we’ll keep up.”
“It’s true,” I said. “We have tapeworms, too. Real bad.”
“He has rabies on top of it,” Suzanne said proudly. Our waiter retreated, amused. Suzanne fixed her smile on me again.
“What?” I asked. She picked up my drink and took a sip, set it down in front of her next to the pendant box.
“I was just wondering where in the world you got that suit. It’s perfect.”
That night in bed, with Suzanne sleeping next to me in her now customary and unselfconscious sprawl, I thought about what Dmitri had said about gutter heroes and how in his blurry, broken head it spelled generalized doom. It was odd to think of him saying anything so broadly sensible, that a wretched man might have an insightful opinion about humanity in general.
I didn’t want to smoke in bed, so I got up and went all the way out into the living room and lay down on the couch. I used to sleep on it with my clothes on half the time, but I somehow doubted I would ever do that again. It wasn’t like I’d been cured of anything. Things had changed. More signs of dangerous pussification.
Old houses are never totally quiet. I listened to the wind and the rain through the thin walls. Something creaked and settled in the sturdy old Douglas fir frame. The refrigerator motor turned on. I lit a cigarette and the lighter sounded loud, even the hiss of the gas, the crackle of the first puff.
Suzanne and I had eaten almost every appetizer they had, and then we’d split a porterhouse steak and a pecan-encrusted halibut with all the sides that came with it, followed by cheesecake, and finished it off with a bottle of white wine before taking a cab home.
It had been expensive, of course. When I paid with the blood money she had looked away, only for the second it had taken for me to slip the bills into the folder, but I’d noticed. Quiet houses were a breeding ground for memories like that. They got together, those memories, and those horny memories had kids. The offspring of Dmitri’s analysis of the human condition and Suzanne’s averted gaze was an ugly little guy with beady eyes, blotchy newborn skin, and an itchy, spastic palsy. I was terrible hero material, embarrassingly bad.
Consoling thoughts are hard to find for colicky newborns. Some people liked Johnny Cash songs. Some people actually understood them. That was a good one. I sighed and waited for another one, but nothing came to mind, so I thought about Suzanne.
The lovemaking when we got home had been just that—lovemaking. I’d tried not to tear her apart and she had let me try not to, while at the same time showing restraint herself. Everything took a long time and it felt weird, too. Passion, the fiery kind, was a very fine thing. Unfortunately, it was probably the part she was falling in love with, and also the thing that would eventually drive us apart.
Maybe that was the real reason why I couldn’t sleep. Not self-doubt or some kind of idiot spiritual crisis. In the face of what I was about to do, what I’d done to get there, and what I would do if I made it, it seemed like some introspection was called for, even if it led to the same dead end it always did. Was I simply underpowered when it came to common human behavior, so much so that I was incapable of solving life’s problems with a measure of cleanliness? Night questions.
Things were sticking to me in a way they never had before. I didn’t know why, and that fact alone troubled me. The image of Cheeks’s bloody face came bright and clear to me, how he’d looked almost peaceful after I stepped on his neck, like all the red was watercolor from an experiment. I got up and went into the kitchen. I didn’t feel like beer. Whiskey might work, but it could also lead all the way down into an unexplored corner of hell. I opted for a glass of water, but when I looked at the glass a flash of white-hot fury tore through me. I dumped it into the sink and poured two fingers of Delia’s vodka, grabbed my coat and smokes as I passed the table, and went out onto the porch.
It was cold, so I put my jacket on and sat down in my favorite chair. It had been a month and a half since I had last sat there. I leaned back, took a sip of vodka, dug my phone out, and dialed.
“This better not be bad news,” Delia said quietly.
“It is,” I replied. I shook a smoke loose. “I’m turning into some kind of horrible vaudeville burnout. When they finally retire me, assuming I live that long, I’ll write my memoirs in some French insane asylum and the guards will use the pages for toilet paper.”
Delia sighed. “Hang on.”
I listened while she rustled around. There was a click and some walking. An old door opened and closed.
“There.” Her voice was louder. “I’m out on Dildo’s front porch. You’re on yours, too, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“That woman you’re so smitten with is asleep in your bed, isn’t she?”
“Yep.”
“Figured. The Dildo is asleep, too. All of them are. The shower after the hair operation knocked the stuffing out of them.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it. So what the fuck is up with you? Pre-show jitters? This isn’t the whole pussy thing again, is it?”
I almost hung up, but I didn’t.
“No,” I began. “I think I’m getting sick of the character questions, though. But no. Existential crisis, minor. I was mostly wondering if all the shit I’m always up to is going to make me more … questionable.”
“You dummy, of course it is.” Delia sounded genuinely disgusted. She took a sip of something and coughed. “Look, douchebag. Check out the world around you. Look at your own history. When I first started working for you, years ago now, you were with that one chick, what’s her name. And the spoiled little middle-class twat thought just enough of you to show you your station in life by ripping you off in the worst possible way. That was right when we became BFFs. Poor baby needed me to pet his muzzle and scratch his tummy-wummy. Then you had a long period of assorted petty theft and backstabbing, non-women-related, up until your nearly fatal encounter with big money, this time courtesy of a guy you did nothing worse than give a job to. I don’t need to remind you how fucked in the head all those people were. And now this Russian dude. Now tell me, friend. Who did you rip off? You can’t whine about it if they started it. Who did you stab in the back? Huh?”
“Well … I can’t say I’ve behaved in a way the Dalai Lama would—”
“That guy is another culture’s fiction. He’d be dead in Old Town.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t go to Old—”
“Darby! Snap out of it! Every time shit like this goes down, we could just walk away. We could start a boutiqu
e-style, limp-wristed, soulless dental clinic tattoo shop, get our toenails done at the mall and take up polo. People do it. Life could be bland for us. But we won’t go for it. Know why?”
“No.”
“Me fuckin’ neither, but I’m glad we don’t. I know you feel it, Darby. Life, the definition of it as it applies to a person, is in the realness of things. The wildness. Taste, sound, light, and I want it rich and loud and blinding, and so do you. I’ll wear a diaper and a fucking helmet with blinders on when I finally go crazy. But for now, we fly … and baby, that wind?” Her voice had become soft. She whispered what came next. “Promise me something, Holland. Promise me you won’t ever give up even a tiny bit of your soul for something as pitiful as easy sleep. Promise me that tonight, right now, or my soul will stagger. Swear to me. Swear to me.” I could barely hear her.
“I swear.” We listened to each other breathe for a minute. She finally took another sip of something and cleared her throat. Her lighter clicked and she inhaled.
“The Dildo is psyched about San Fran. He wants to bring the whole band and do an acoustic tour of Bay Area laundromats.”
“Lots of quarters.”
“Dildo’s thoughts precisely. I told him no. Romance and records only. Long midnight walks looking for bars we never heard of. You have plans for after whatever happens tomorrow?”
“Weekend in jail.” I scratched my chin. “After that, pure chaos. I have to get all those contractors we had out after the city inspector fiasco to come back. Get started on this idiot strip club scam with the Armenian.”
“Strip club?”
“Over on Stark. One of his abandoned buildings. We’ll see how it shakes out.”
“Huh. What about your new chick?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I took another sip of vodka. “She might have this new job in Asia. The interview was today. I didn’t ask and she didn’t bring it up.”
“Asia. Maybe we can start a satellite shop somewhere out there, get Mikey away from white women.”
“Maybe.”
“You two, the ah, the fuckin’ OK?”
“Tonight was weird. We’re finding our way into the communicative zone.”
“Yeah. I skip that part in general. College for me was two types of guys. The trying to be sensitive type and the jacking off with a chick on his dick type. I never developed a tolerance for either. I’m pretty much in charge anymore when it comes down to it.”
“Sounds bossy.”
“Maybe, but you try going four fucking years without an orgasm.”
“I don’t think so. I need women, which has always been most of my problem with them.”
“How do you mean?” Delia loved to talk about sex. She knew I didn’t, so it was a rare opportunity for her to get some much-needed ribbing ammo.
“Actually, the Armenian of all people put it best. This is right up your alley. He called it ‘The Watching Man.’”
“Sounds like the wrong kind of pervert.”
“His point exactly. We were driving around somewhere years ago, I forget where or why, but he spots this dude wearing a Blazers jacket. The hat, the shorts, whole nine yards. Anyway, the Armenian points him out and says ‘masturbator!’ in a scathing-ass way.”
“What?”
“Swear to God. He was freaked out, disgusted. It was one of those rare moments when his religious side came out. He goes on to tell me that men who watch sports are the same men who watch porn. Voyeurs, I think he was getting at. Watch, instead of play, and in his mind the only reason to watch porn is to whack off because you’re too lazy to pick your shit up and go get a real woman, risk the possibility of love and hate, that kind of thing. So there’s a clear link between wearing team sports crap and jacking off. A dude with a Lakers shirt is essentially advertising that he’s a furious masturbator.”
Delia laughed for a solid minute. In the end I was laughing, too. Abruptly, she stopped.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You don’t even have a TV. Does that mean—”
“It does, but not for esoteric Eastern European Gypsy Catholic Whatever reasons like the Armenian. For me it makes the sex better. The hunt for a beautiful woman, all that. My feathers shine more brightly. I’m more devoted.”
“Ahhhh. Now I see why you’ve put up with so many awful bitches. You poor fucking idiot.”
“Yeah.”
Quiet.
“Maybe I should stop, too.”
“The first twenty years or so are the hardest. Constant fucking can be a nightmare. But then you hit forty and once or twice a day is fine.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this.” Delia yawned. “Long day tomorrow. We should sleep our uneasy sleep. Feel better?”
“I do.”
“I don’t. I was going to diddle around before bed and now I’m on the fence about it. Asshole.”
“It’s probably different for women,” I said.
“Whatever. I forgot already. What’s your timetable tomorrow?”
“Wake up early. Get rid of Suzanne, which makes me sad to say. Then get Nigel and cab over to Romero’s. You guys should be there at ten sharp. Back entrance. Have Dildo park the Empire van right by the back door facing out.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
More breathing.
“I’m going to sit here for a while,” she said finally.
“Me too.”
She blew me a kiss and hung up. I sat and watched the rain fall through the halo of the streetlight. Just when I was about to get up to go inside, the red Miata rolled past one block down, slow, almost coasting. I listened for any sound of the engine for a moment, then went in and curled up on my corner of the warm bed.
Suzanne had already made coffee when I woke up. I sat up in alarm and looked at the clock, then relaxed. It was just after eight. She peeked in and winked.
“Coffee?”
“I’m coming,” I said. I pulled my jeans on and padded out into the kitchen, rubbing the top of my head. She handed me the cup she’d been pouring.
“Eight a.m. and you already look worried,” she observed. She was wearing one of my flannel shirts and a pair of my socks. It was still cold inside. “You OK?”
I nodded and sipped. “Yeah. Just a whoppin’ ton of shit to do today.”
“Me too,” she replied shortly. It looked like she had been getting ready to make pancakes. Flour was measured out in a bowl. She fussed with the coffee machine for a second and then walked back into the bedroom. I followed.
“Pancakes?” I asked. I put my coffee down and wrapped my arms around her. She was facing away from me, holding her pants.
“What the hell are we doing? You wake up and give me the distant treatment first thing? No morning stuff? No—this is bullshit.” She started getting her pants on, ignoring my embrace.
“Nope.” I picked her up and carried her over to the bed, tossed her as far as I could. It wasn’t far, admittedly, but it was OK. Before she could react I pounced on her and bit her neck. She squirmed and I flattened on her.
“You make those pancakes, in your underwear, or no dick tonight. I will cut you off, woman. Wait and see. I have Yoda-level dick control.”
She pushed at me and writhed. She was strong, maybe stronger than me and ready to test it, but I caught her wrists and fast as a cobra I bit her neck again. She grabbed my dick through my pants and it was on.
This time, I was communicating pure animal and she bounced every bit of it back. We tore the bed apart, worked our way through the kitchen and into the bathroom, where she tore down my shower curtain, revealing at last who kept doing it. When she climaxed for the third time I exploded, and for one blind moment I was a thing thrown into a hurricane on the violent tip of a cresting wave, the spinning hallucination of an unknowable aberration, lost in deep space and unconcerned.
When I could breathe again, I helped Suzanne out of the bathtub and kissed her once, long and hard.
“I still have time to make break
fast,” she panted. “If you want it.”
“I do.”
It was nine by then, but I felt curiously light and free. Most of the time after sex, even passionate sex, I felt vaguely bummed out, because the aftermath was never quite as good as the act itself. Falling in love made that different.
Suzanne went back into the kitchen and got back to work on the pancakes, buck naked. I wanted a cigarette in the worst possible way, so I got a new cup of coffee and went out to the dining room table and dug them out of my coat pocket. Pants could wait.
I smoked for a minute, and then I remembered the Miata. They were out there again. I knew it. I went back into the bedroom and dressed for the day. Baggy black jeans, black T-shirt, my scuffed boots, laced tight for no-nonsense high-speed activity, and a black wool button-up with a padded insulation liner.
I took more shit than usual, too. My crusty wallet went in a front pocket, also my last ball bearing, an extra lighter, an even thousand of the cadaver cash, and an unusual multi-tool Nigel had given me a few years ago for my birthday. I rounded things out with a rolled bandanna and the fat check from Delia, which I planned on carrying around for the next few days. When I came out of the bedroom Suzanne smiled. Two pancakes were already done.
“You look like the ghetto version of a ninja,” she observed.
“That’s exactly what I am today,” I replied. “Got the secret handshake down and everything.”
“Eat up.” She handed me the plate. I sidled up next to her and ate standing. She plated one for herself and loaded up on butter and syrup while her second one was cooking.
“Today I have to leave by the back door,” I said around a mouthful of food. She nodded. She evidently wasn’t going to ask me why.
“Where are the cats?” I managed. She swallowed.
“Let ’em out.”
I finished eating and put my plate in the sink, wiped my hands on my pants.
“You free around seven?” I asked.
“Maybe. Why?”
“Well, if everything goes well today, I was thinking maybe we should hit that Ethiopian place over on Hawthorn. Food is so damn good, and I know they’ll love you. I have championship eater status there. Sort of a friend of the family at this point.”
