Fickle

by Peter Manus

  Burly-Bear: Come again?

  Me: A bunch of dream snippets.

  Burly-Bear: (stubbing his cigarette butt) Well, take another crack at it, huh? Plus, I’m thinking you ought to sit yourself down with a lawyer.

  Me: Got it. (I turn my head so he won’t see my expression shifting from bravado to raw fear.)

  Burly-Bear: Okay, then. (He stands up, then he reaches out and taps my knee) Lookit, better to be a little scared now and get this crud out of your life, right?

  Me: (looking up, reasonably dry-eyed and under control) Damned straight.

  Burly-Bear: ’Kay, then. Anyone asks, tell the truth about my being here tonight, right? Just, uh, see if you can avoid sayin’ anything that makes someone ask. Got it?

  Me: (nodding) Got it. I suppose I should thank you for…

  Burly-Bear: (cutting me off) Not yet, huh? Later on you can, I don’t know, buy me a beer.

  Me: (pretending to smile) Hell, Sergeant, I’ll buy you a bottle of Four Roses.

  Burly-Bear: (pausing as he rounds his car to glance at me over its roof—maybe it surprises him that I even know what bourbon is) I’ll, uh, hold you to it.

  He leaves. I go inside, dump my food, pour a scotch, and blog. Cut. Wrap. End of scene.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 24 08:14 pm

  At work and in the boss’s office! Swee-pea, I think that Burly-Bear is the real deal. Are you sure he’s a cop because I have yet to encounter an exception to that old saying “never trust a cop.”

  roadrage @ January 24 08:16 pm

  Isn’t it “never trust a whore?”

  proudblacktrannie @ January 24 08:17 pm

  My version’s more reliable.

  chinkigirl @ January 24 08:19 pm

  So it sounds like the answer may be in the diary.

  fickel @ January 24 08:22 pm

  Sigh. God help me if it is. The thing is…well, I’ll share a bit at some point. Right now I’m actually held up by some sense of punctiliousness over how one treats the recently deceased. Drat.

  marleybones @ January 24 08:29 pm

  Well, I guess that’s understandable.

  hitman @ January 24 08:31 pm

  Drop the drawing room etiquette, fick. We live in an accelerated age of modern technology. There’s a new etiquette.

  fickel @ January 24 08:32 pm

  Not quite sure about that (she said tentatively).

  hitman @ January 24 08:33 pm

  Opaque, as usual (he responded with jaded disgust).

  fickel @ January 24 08:34 pm

  Ah, yes, but then I’m nothing if not a portentous abstraction (she lobbed with sly wit).

  hitman @ January 24 08:35 pm

  You’re a social whim (he flipped her off).

  fickel @ January 24 08:36 pm

  Quickly evolving into a moral axiom (she topped him with a crafty refinement of language that defied response). Oww, I just cracked my jaw yawning. That’s only supposed to happen at work.

  proudblacktrannie @ January 24 08:37 pm

  Best perk up for your “date.”

  fickel @ January 24 08:38 pm

  Oh-la-la—I’m fashionably late! Lights out, chil’ns: * click *

  8

  01.25 @ 1:26 am:

  Time for another exciting installment of Teee-Talezzz

  Took the T to Killer Chick’s place tonight. Quite a journey. Waiting for the train, some little negroid wanders round me, afraid to make eye contact but honing in like a fly circling horse tail. I check him out without making it obvious. Don’t want to scare him off. He’s this frail dude, hollow chested with these deep craters all over his cheeks, each one dark and round as a cigar burn, and this natty grey knitted cap that’s sagging over one side of his head. Useful for sleeping on grates. Why these freakoids always want to get with me, I’ll never understand.

  He finally screws up the courage and starts like “’Scuse me, sir? ’Scuse me?” I give him a look and point to the buds in my ears. Instead of getting the message he nods and folds his hands at his waist, like to say he’ll wait for me to finish what I’m listening to before he says his piece.

  I figure what the hell and pop the buds. “Yeah?”

  “It is an evening of great beauty, sir, is it not?”

  “It’s raining shit in my head,” I say, just to jerk him.

  He’s flustered for fewer seconds than I’d have predicted. “I stand corrected,” he says. He smiles and his teeth are black as charred wood, his gums a mix of brown and pink spots, like a dog’s. “May I ask you a question, sir? I am attempting to survey the various gentlemen I meet in my perambulations to satisfy a particular curiosity of mine.”

  I reach into my shirt pocket and pull a couple of cigarettes out. “Smoke?”

  The cigarettes look smooth and clean, and he’s clearly tempted to grab them and go. But his blood-encrusted eyes waver past them. “I wonder, sir,” he says, “Might I inquire if you would perchance be blond all over, or just where it shows?” He gestures with his hand from my head down to about the level of my crotch to indicate the various areas of hair he’s curious about. Then he waits, his quivering head unsteady, his disfigured old face drawn up politely.

  I admit, I’m stopped for a beat. Then I shake my head, tuck the cigarettes back in the pack and hand the whole thing over to him. Camel no filters. If twenty of those death-sticks don’t kill him, nothing will.

  He smiles again in a kind of weird-dreamy way—I think he proves something to himself just by gathering up the guts to ask. I walk away, putting my buds back in my ears. It’s truly heartening, how resilient the desire to get laid remains in the most drug-addled, rotted-out, termite-infested walking corpse of a human being. The human race will survive the nuclear holocaust. It’s just a fact, m’friends.

  On the train things are clopping along fine and I’m looking forward to checking in on my favorite T freak, the lovely Killer Chick. Everything goes black heading into Arlington and then the train dies completely maybe thirty yards short of the station and we sit in the dark, listening to the sound of steam and smelling someone’s b.o. This Poppy-Z type with brown lipstick and a tattoo necklace who I noticed sitting across from me just as the lights started blinking gets up and stumbles over to land heavily in the seat beside me.

  “What you’re smelling?” she says. Her voice is raspy. Guys are supposed to dig that but hers sounds like it’s from screaming her fucking head off at someone. She points diagonally and even though it’s pitch dark I’d already figured out who it was, which was so I could make sure not to brush against him on the way off the train. Most people don’t know about second-hand b.o. but trust me, it’s a real problem.

  I don’t answer but that doesn’t bother her. “You have any Nicorette? I could use a tingle.”

  “No, I smoke,” I tell her.

  “Oh, got a cigarette?” she says optimistically.

  “I gave them to a guy.”

  “How come?” she says, turning her head to see if I’m lying, which might be hard to detect by scrutinizing someone you’ve never met before in the dark.

  “He was homeless.”

  “Oh,” she rasps, considering that. She feels around in her stuff. “Here, want one of mine?”

  “No.”

  “They’re Parliaments,” she says, nudging me. “What’d you think, Virginia Slims?” She sniggers to herself at that idea.

  “I’m quitting.” I take the offered cigarette and tuck it away.

  “Oh, that sucks, I thought you were being charitable when you gave yours.”

  “Nope.”

  “So what do you do?” she asks, crossing her legs. She’s wearing black shiny knee-high boots that catch what light there is when she swings her leg. The boots have thick soles and heels like rubber bricks. Also fishnet stockings, but you can only see those at around knee level, where one of them has a tear going on. “You work or anything?”

  “I’m psychotic,” I say. “It’s a full-time thing.”

 
“Tell me about it,” she agrees. “What’s your trigger?”

  I try to see her face, but all I get is the glint of an eye and a lip stud. “What?”

  “Hey, don’t tell me if it’s none of my business, but if it’s being in a dark confined space I kind of think I have a right to know at the moment.”

  “Oh. It’s not the dark.”

  “God, I used to be, like, so, so, so scared of the dark. When I was a kid I used to spend the summers with my aunt and she used to make me and my cousin take turns doing each other. That would be me and her own daughter. Can you believe how screwed up she must have been? Even I got it and I was four.” She pauses to pick something off her tongue, which she scrutinizes, then flicks away. “And five. My mother went into detox two summers in a row. I don’t know why always the summer, so don’t ask. Just something weird she was into about the summer, maybe because that’s when my father committed suicide.”

  “Sure, maybe. What happened to your aunt?”

  She flounces a little, as if impatient. “What are you talking about?”

  “You said she was screwed up, like it was in the past.”

  She snorts. “What, you think I’d be visiting that mess now?”

  I pretend to consider. “Oh yeah, right, of course not.”

  She seems to find some gum that’s already in her mouth and starts chewing. “So anyway, I was incredibly afraid of the dark after that.”

  “She used to make you and your cousin do it in the dark?”

  “Of course not. How could she watch if it was dark?”

  “Right,” I say. “So how’d you get over being scared of the dark?”

  She tilts her head. “You’re not even psycho,” she says.

  “Count on it,” I say assuringly.

  “Say something psychotic, then. Something about us sitting here right now.”

  I think, then quote my favorite psycho: “The light of knowledge and life has caused an artificial erection to melt away.”

  She sniffs, apparently not totally dissatisfied. “You’re the type who thinks you can get with any chick. I can tell. Don’t bother lying about it, either.”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t expect to be getting any from me.”

  “I’m already going somewhere.”

  She pokes me with her finger, hard. “Like you wouldn’t blow it off to get some. I know men.”

  “I’m gay,” I say.

  That stops her for a beat. Then she spurts air from between her lips. “As if.”

  “I am,” I insist. “I’m on my way to get it on with an old guy I met on the internet.”

  “Okay, what’s Agucino?”

  I consider. “A place in Italy?”

  “Wrong,” she says. She makes like to get up, but as she does she reaches over and manages to grab my entire sack in her fist and squeeze so hard that snot bursts out both my nostrils. “It’s a shoe,” she grinds out from between her teeth.

  Sometimes I can’t help thinking that God is smiling on me. I mean, who has my luck in meeting these squeaks?

  So the Poppy-Z chick stumbles off down the train car in the dark. Since she never bothered to lower her voice during our conversation, people give her space. From the back, the silhouette of her rump is high and large in a way you’d never expect from the rest of her. Could be her meds. By the time the train lights up, I’ve managed to find an old receipt on the floor that I use to smear the mucus off my chin. The Poppy-Z chick doesn’t look round when she gets off at Haymarket. From her body language, she’s totally forgotten my existence. I like that quality in a freak who goes for your nads when she’s annoyed.

  From all of the above it seems like a promising night when I arrive at the crack den that Killer Chick calls home, and when she appears at her door only moments after I settle myself across the street I’m pretty heartened. She’s got on one of those skinny suits women favor, black and white checks with this short jacket and a skirt that’s basically pleats. Women go for these costumes because they display to all the other women their waistline which they’ve made twig-like from a careful regimen of starvation and vomiting. They forget to think about their boobs or buns because after examining themselves in the mirror every morning for several hours at every possible angle to gauge how other women will think their incredible shrinking torso looks, they don’t have time to consider what men might think about their deflated tits and ass.

  Anyway, she comes out of her trip-deck firetrap sniffing at her wrists, which is what chicks do when they’ve put on perfume and want to make sure they’ve achieved the exact level of cum-n-get-it cree cree they’re going for. Apparently she’s happy with her results and goes merrily tripping off down the driveway to whatever’s waiting for her in the lot behind her place. A minute later up the driveway she bumps in some shitbox vehicle, side-swiping her building like it’s maybe her second day behind the wheel. I already spotted the turd-mobile I plan to hot-wire so as to follow her and am heading that way when she gasses on past me without a glance. However, when she stops at the yield sign down the end of her block she starts playing with the rearview, like she’s trying to see something behind her and thinks she’s cleverly going to avoid turning her head. Fortunately I have the Poppy-Z chick’s Parliament, so I busy myself firing that up and look pretty natural with my head ducked so the Killer Chick can’t quite catch my face.

  When I look up again, Killer Chick’s driven off. I throw the cigarette away, just in case the Poppy-Z chick put something in it. Can’t be too careful, man. Then I squeeze my “travel size” tube of vaseline along my slim jim and shove that ol’ boy down the Crown Vic’s window. Couple secs later I’m easing that baby up Storrow, right behind KC…

  TALK, NIHILIST DOGS

  chootah @ 01.25 01:49 am

  you gunna knife this chick or something some day? If so, nice record you creating.

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 01:50 am

  How about I just walk up to her and blow on her and let her fall down dead from that?

  boytoucher @ 01.25 01:56 am

  Why, she don’t like your breath?

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 01:57 am

  Yeah, it smells like dick, but that’s just cause I’m double-jointed. What’s your excuse?

  garbo @ 01.25 02:00 am

  you write like a maestro.

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 02:01 am

  what’s that, sum kinda I-talian?

  garbo @ 01.25 02:02 am

  giggle giggle you’re cute.

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 02:03 am

  Thank u kindly, strange new voice. Sup?

  garbo @ 01.25 02: 04 am

  Can’t get you out of my head. Post a pic, so I can see what I’ve been imagining?

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 02:05 am

  Lemme guess: yer a dude.

  garbo @ 01.25 02:06 am

  What difference would that make? Would it make you gay to provide a pic for another guy?

  chootah @ 01.25 02:07 am

  She’s a chick fer sher, mon.

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 02:08 am

  Amen t’that. Do you believe in first dates with happy endings?

  garbo @ 01.25 02:09 am

  We all do, gentle sir, when asked politely. Have you not figured that out yet?

  fullfrontal @ 01.25 02:10 am

  I am all of a sudden finding you interesting, strange person.

  garbo @ 01.25 02:11 am

  right back atcha, m’man

  9

  January 25 @ 2:22 am

  >CURIOUZER & CURIOUZER<

  Oh hi blog howz it goin? Home again, and lucky, too, after 3 cognacs with the Colonel. Please excuzzze typing errors plus any excessive cattiness as am trying to revive my buzz with very sticky bottle of Lillet left over from those 10 minutes when Lillet was so da bomb.

  Sucked down some super-black coffee in that diner just by the ramp to 128 (vintage 1940) before attempting to navigate my way back to town but got nothing but the jitters out of that (p
lus I happened upon this eerily attractive guy there—some mysterious hottie who made me nervous for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, but that’s a story for another blotto blog entry). Fortunately, no cops observed my wibbly-wobbly progress home, but, irony of ironies, I did observe upon alighting from my car back here at the shack that I am currently under police observation. There’s someone parked behind my building, as I verified by leaving the lights off upon entering and then slithering across the linoleum over to the window to peek through the crack between shade and sash (side note to self: wash the floor, bitch). He is smoking out the window of his seafoam-green Mustang.

  Better than some stranger, but, still, unsettling. I mean: is Sergeant Tyler Malloy of the Boston homicide squad monitoring my whereabouts to make sure I don’t make a run for it???

  I find myself wondering (in a room-rotate-y sort of way): was Burly-Bear’s appearance on my stoop yesterday evening just a ploy to see if I’d go racing back to Mr. Suicide’s to, like, erase some more evidence as soon as I thought the cops had cleared out? Because he did make sure to mention that they were done over there. Or—okay, wait a minute while I run off to tinkle…ah, back now (see how fast I am?) where was I?…Oh, yes, something a teeny bit more consoling just occurred to me—maybe Burly-Bear is OFF duty right now and he’s hanging around in my parking lot back there to make sure his creep partner Escroto doesn’t sneak round to PLANT something incriminating HERE. That gotta be it, because if Burly-Bear was supposed to be watching me wouldn’t he have needed to tail me out to Concord, just to make sure I wasn’t trying to make a wild run for the Canadian border?

  OMG!!!—I just had this amazing thought—maybe Burly-Bear DID follow me out to Concord and back but I just never spotted him!!!

  Oh, wait a sec, but then he’d have needed to arrest me for DUI, wouldn’t he? Except maybe when they’re tailing you as a murder suspect they give you a pass on drunk driving, as long as you are the type who drives 25 mph when you’ve had too much. And, anyway, if he’d been good enough at shadowing to tail me all the way out to Concord and back without my spotting him, why was it so easy for me to spot him parked in my lot, where he definitely was already planted at the time I arrived home?