What’s with the teardrops? Youre not a murderer are you?
What?
Not a mass murderer? Not a travelling rapist are you?
What? No . . .
Cause I wasnt planning on being raped or murdered tonight.
Well that’s, that’s not . . . I dont . . .
Good. I’m Joanna.
Ahhh . . . Johnny.
Ohhhh, big bad Johnny. Where from?
Wha??? Well . . . originally I’m . . .
Actually, you know, it doesnt matter.
Joanna stands scrutinizing, contemplating, mullin it over. The sudden hard rain slashin sideways across Johnny’s face and hair. What’s to see? Teardrop tattoos, pulsing Adam’s apple. Pius’s battered old suit from some other lifetime, folded beef jerky packet jutting from the handkerchief pocket. Strange, oddly luminous ceramic jar tucked under the armpit. Prayers in hell, hey Johnny. She giggles and steps back into her room and Johnny thinks it’s a giggle and a motion that says Fuck no, I must be off my head, but for reasons beyond reckoning—shaky, dicey reasons known only to Joanna—she unhooks the security chain and allows Johnny full passage.
You probably think I’m crazy dont you?
Yup.
What??? No you dont! I felt bad for you, that’s all. You looked so lost and lonesome out there. You looked like a drowned rat out there. I’m not crazy, I’m good, I’m good, I’m a good girl, goddamn it!
You keep tellin yourself that.
Ha!!! I know right. This is crazy . . . this is . . . I dont know . . . I never get to curse and carry on like this, you know. Usually I’m having to either smile and goddamn nod and yes sir no sir, or I have to be a total bitch. That’s a government job right there in a nutshell. I never get to, you know, be me, cut loose. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!!! Hey do you have any pot?
Pot? You mean weed? No ma’am, I wish . . .
Ma’am, dont call me frigging ma’am. Makes me feel . . . how old are you anyway?
How old are you?
I asked you!
Well I’m asking you.
How old do you think I am?
I dont know, maybe thirty-four, thirty-five?
Ha! Good answer! Sounds like someone’s trying to butter me up.
Yes ma’am, I confess.
Fuck off, I said. Seriously though, how old do you think?
Maybe thirty-six?
Fuck you! Youre a tease Johnny . . . hey what’s your last name?
Ahhh, see now if I told you that . . .
Youd have to murder me! Ha! But make sure you rape me first, that’s all I ask!
And with that Joanna flops backwards onto the bed, slops a drop of wine onto the carpet and giggles and roars and guffaws for a good five minutes with her knees tucked up to her chest and rocking back and forth like an inmate at some trauma centre, streaming tears trailing pink streaks in the pale powder on her cheeks. Johnny sits coolly, serene, in the cheap upholstered chair in the corner across the room and takes it all in, one ear to the cold rain battering off the room’s lone window, tryna decide on his next move, cause if she’s crazy or not, drunk or not, he’s in for a penny in for a pound and cant think on the last time he was in the company of a woman in fucken high-heel shoes. Christ.
Joanna catches her breath, sits up, flicks her tongue inside the rim of her glass, stifles another giggling fit.
Oh my, that’s bad. That’s bad talk. I thought you looked so lost out there, and lonesome. That’s all. I have a husband, you know. I do, it’s true. I do.
Oh yeah? Should I be scared?
Fuck no. Fuck him. I dont want to talk about him. Nothing worse than a limp prick that’s what I say. You know he was almost a hundred pounds lighter in our wedding pictures? A hundred pounds. That’s like strapping a hundred blocks of butter onto your body. A hundred blocks of butter. And he blames me that he cant get it up, or keep it up. Me! I mean, look at me. His friend Gerald, his best man, he’s a multi-millionaire these days. Owns half the west end of Saint John. Investments, real estate, some landscaping deal thing. Millions. Fit too, in great shape, like someone carved him out with a chisel. I coulda had him too. The offer was there. Bet he’s got no trouble keeping it going, Gerald. So hey, tell me about these teardrops Johnny the mystery man. What are they supposed to mean? Or are they decoration or something?
Kinda. I mean, they means something. But when I got em I wasnt thinkin much about anything. I just wanted teardrops on my face. Nothing more to it than that.
But what? Now they mean something?
Well yeah, that’s kind of the nature of a tattoo aint it? They can mean whatever a person wants them to mean. Makes no odds what the original intent was, or how fucked up you mighta been when you got em done . . .
Ha! Were you drunk?
No. I was bombed on morphine.
Oh . . .
In jail.
Oh . . .
Yup.
Sooo . . . should I be scared or something?
Up to you. All’s I’m doing is being honest.
Fuck fuck fuck Johnny, dont blow this now. Fine drunken piece of gear like her who aint seen a hard cock in who knows how long, dying for it, wants it bad enough to cajole some derelict hitchhiker in off the road. Warm, dry hotel room, out of the rain. Wine. Right out of a bloody movie or something this is. This doesnt happen, shit like this. So dont fucken blow it Johnny, with your surly psycho shit. Let her blather on about the husband and then make your move and let her know what she’s missing, wasting her time with some bloated dipshit who cant fuck her, or wont fuck her. Stay the course Johnny my son, stay the course.
Well I’m not scared. How’s that Johnny Teardrops? I’m not scared. You dont scare me. How’s that? Now tell me what they mean. Right now! Or I’ll shout rape! Ha ha ha!
Jesus Christ girl, enough with the rape. Startin to spook me out over here . . .
Ohhh, now Johnny is scared, Johnny Teardrops. Now . . . hey we need more wine . . .
So do you wanna know or what?
Yes! Yes I do. I’m sorry. I wanna hear. But we need more wine. Okay, tell me. Alright. I’m listening. Go . . .
Jesus. Well there’s not much to it really . . .
I love your accent. You killed someone didnt you? You did . . .
No I never fucken killed no one. But . . . they’re like, for people that you lose. People who died. But when I got em I wasnt thinkin that. I guess . . . I guess I was thinkin how I hoped people might think I killed someone.
What?
Yeah, I was stupid, a stupid punk, locked up, you know. I was young.
How old?
Eighteen or nineteen, I don’t know.
How old are you now?
Old enough.
I’m old enough to be your mother, I’d say. So who’d you lose?
Well, I lost me buddy, my cousin. Fella I grew up with. He lived across the meadow. We were the same age and all.
How did he . . .
Shot hisself. Thirty-ought-six. Fifteen years old. I was talkin to him that morning like normal. Said he was going after rabbits in on back of Gorman’s Hill.
Where’s that?
A hill back where I’m from. Going after rabbits, he said. He had snares out but he brought the gun anyhow, just in case. We had a smoke. He brought me back these tapes he had belonged to me. Skid Row, Guns N’ Roses. And . . . small talk, stupid shit. He never gave nothing away, never let on. I guess when you racks your brain afterwards and thinks it through then you can talk yourself into believing that the signs were there, but other than them cassettes I cant think of nothing. Everybody knew he was fucked up in the head a bit. He was after going to doctors the year before and taking pills for . . . stuff going on in his head, you know. But I figured that was all done with, like a one-off thing. He seemed normal enough, that day anyhow. I dont even think Mikey, that’s his name by the way, I dont think he even knew his own self, the why and all that. Anyhow, sometime that afternoon we heard a shot. But I mean no one thinks nothing o
f a gunshot up around our way, not in the fall of the year anyhow. Later on that evening I swung round his house and he wasnt home yet so I went on up Gorman’s Hill lookin for him. Not like he was missing or nothing, just, he wasnt home. And . . . I came upon him . . . Mikey . . .
Hey Johnny?
. . . and he was parked on the quad over at the far end of the gravel pit lying back on the bike, like he was stretched off sleeping, or so I thought. I sang out to him but he never answered, never, like, woke up. And I thought then that he musta come up in the woods and got drunk or something, went off by hisself to go get hammered, and I remember thinkin you dirty fucker, greedy bastard never offered to share the wealth with his best buddy . . .
Hey Johnny?
Next thing I sees his cap, brand-new John Deere cap that he was all smitten with. Well, that was way the fuck up in a tree behind him. And I stops then, cause there’s the gun on the ground beside the quad, and the way his arm is limp like that . . .
Johnny you dont have to . . .
Then I saw the hole in his neck, little black hole under his chin, powder burn, and the blood all run down. A real neat, thin streak down his chest . . .
Hey ahhh . . .
But his shirt was black, ya know, so I couldnt tell from far off. Anyhow, blood and bits of brains . . . flies . . . the back of his head was . . . I dont know . . . one of his eyes had this film, a sorta milky bubble . . .
And then Johnny feels a gentle, very purposeful hand sliding up his thigh and looks down and here’s Joanna on her knees before him, foolish tears brimming in her eyes, the pasty sympathetic shadow of a smile.
It’s okay. It’s okay Johnny. I shouldnt have . . .
What girl? I’m just talkin, just . . . tellin you . . .
But Johnny cant quite get the rest out because his sinuses are all slogged up and his eyes are hot burning blurry and he makes to leap from the chair in sudden outraged disgust but for Joanna’s glistening grey-blue eyes fixed on him as she hoists herself tipsy to her feet and takes Johnny’s head and cradles it to her belly. The smell of her, hey Johnny, the smell of clean clothes, a woman’s clothes, thin tanned strip of bare flesh between the lacey end of her blouse and the smoothened edge of her leather belt, fingers snaking through your hair as she bends down to kiss the top of your head, your eyes and nose and forehead nuzzled luxuriously to her hardy cleavage.
Well now Johnny, not bad, never even made it to the second teardrop for Christ sakes! But enough of this cuddly nurturing shit. One second she’s on her knees with her hands running up your legs and next she’s doing the whole come here you poor lost soul sorta deal. And what are you up to in the meantime? Fucken bawlin? What the hell man? No no no, we’re supposed to be doing the blow job thing right about now. Enough of this psychotherapy shit. Johnny aint lookin to be mothered goddamn it. He aint lookin for compassion, fucken sympathy. Fuck all that. You learn to live without, dontcha? Learned not to expect any of that kinda shit from the world a long time ago. That summer’s day Johnny fell in the bog and nearly sliced his finger off on a broken bottle, ran home bleeding and screamin, panicked. Five, maybe six years old. No one home except Old Bat Shit, who was still supposedly his mother back then. She was kneading bread at the kitchen table. She stopped for a second when Johnny busted into the house, saw the blood-soaked tee-shirt wrapped around Johnny’s hand, saw the tears streaking down his cheeks, heard the panic in his voice . . . and then turned back to her bread dough, humming a little tune. Never said a word. So, not to dwell, not to dwell, but right then and there, hey? You learn to go without. You learn to stitch up your own cuts and clean your own wounds. And you dont go out into the world pining for something you never had in the first place. Not like Johnny lost nothing, so. No. Fuck all that. Not lookin to be mothered thanks very much. He’s lookin to get his mouth on someone, lookin to get fucked and sucked and put to bed with a bellyful of dirty wine. Still, Johnny cant figure why he went there, why he blurted all that out about Mikey, or how he was even able to. Maybe the rain, the sudden unexpected haven of this room with this woman who’s drunk enough not to remember, not to judge. Maybe youre just that fucken tired Johnny.
Next Johnny’s on his feet with his talons clutched at the small of Joanna’s back, her legs instinctively locked about his waist, almost violently ferrying her from chair to bed where she makes a smallish sound confused somewhere between a grunt and a giggle as he bounces her down on her back. With one hand he pins her wrists behind her head and then his mouth is on hers, sucking her cold boozy tongue and thanking the heavens she’s wearing one of those front-clasping bras. Her fleshy hefty jugs spilling out of her blouse and Johnny scooping the left one up and sucking the soft pale inverted nipple into his mouth with a slight pang of disappointment cause Johnny’s always been a nipple man, always had a thing for the dark stiff salty nipple. But beggars and choosers, hey Johnny, beggars and fucken choosers. The backs of his fingers spidering beneath her thin panty line where Johnny is surprised to find a clipped and trim landing strip in place of the snarly unkempt bush he’d expected. You never can tell, hey Johnny, never can tell with these married ones. They’re either after giving up giving a fuck because the hubby wont touch it either way, or they’re after putting the extra effort in just in case, just in case, just in case some teardrop-tattooed layabout comes wandering past on the highway in the rain with an urn and a criminal record to rival the length of the cock she’s suffering to get her mouth around. Just in case.
Joanna humps her pelvis a touch to meet Johnny’s hand until the frenzied tip of his middle finger finds the swollen nub and he joggles it with his knuckle back and forth, back and forth, faster, faster, probing frantically downward in search of wetness, harried pursuit of slick snug suckling heat and it’s been too long, too goddamn long, and Johnny cant help but muse at the bizarre turn of events visited upon this night. How one minute you can be left for dead in the middle of arse-fuck nowhere on the side of the road in the pissing drizzle and rain with nothing and no one for company save for your own twisted thoughts and your dead girlfriend’s ashes, and the next minute, the next minute . . . fucken hell Johnny my son.
He finds the very sweet spot, slippery fevered heat far in excess of his expectations. Two fingers right to the knuckles and her whole body clenches and convulses in a spasm of bucks and jolts and shivers and he watches her face contort in abandoned rapture as she arches her back, pressing her shoulders deep into the mattress, mouth gaping as if to cry out, scream, as if to moan, groan, growl or howl—but no sound escapes her, nothing more than a barely audible whimper. And how’s the old poem go? How’s that old poem go Johnny? How’s the world supposed to end? Not with a bang but a whimper. Always liked that line, our Johnny. But it cant hardly apply tonight, no, cause we’re not ending with no fucken whimper tonight are we Johnny? We’re ending with a fucken bang. Yes by Christ.
Johnny reaches down to undo the old-fashioned fastener at the waist of his pants, his head spinning off again at how curious, how peculiar, how strange indeed how he’s lived this whole life, with that other life under Pius’s roof. Countless itchy insomniac nights in musty damp jail cells, and not in a million years can we any of us have the foresight to see ourselves elsewhere, in some other life. We can hope and we can make spiteful plans and we can even fucken pray to be done with where we are, to be onto some other path, somewhere better, different, out of the tangle, free from the muddle and the maze. But aside from wallowing in the past or wishing for better days ahead, we cant sink our teeth into fuck all beyond the moment we’re in. Because that’s all there is, the moment we’re in. We barely have a say over the next ten seconds. And we have no fucken say whatsoever over the ten that just passed by. But then one day Johnny finds himself in Pius’s Sunday best, rooting to get his cock out of the pants and into some classy civil servant type missus in a roadside hotel!
And out it pops, Johnny’s cock, glossy and stiff and ready to go go go and he’s tugging at the waist of Joanna pants but Johnny d
ont even know if he’ll make it, cant say for sure if he’ll hold off long enough to send it home cause here’s that tingling numb swelling in his balls and aint it funny, the mind, how sometimes it takes all fucken night and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to get there, but then a strange bit comes along, or you finds yourself somewhere youre not supposed to be, and all she’s got to do is literally give it a few smacks with the back of her hand or barely dangle the prospect of it or fucken look at you a certain way and youre ready to splooge and gunk and mess all over everything, no control. Nothing like a strange bit, hey Johnny. And nothing like it when it’s not where youre supposed to be. But this is exactly where Johnny’s supposed to be tonight. The very moment he left town, the way he left. Young Rodney’s mother showing up at Shiner’s door with a fucken envelope of cash! Every ride. The way he turned on Saul back there. That short-arsed run with that fucken garden supply rep. The timing of the rain. How she dug into that bottle. Every happening, however petty, however minuscule, has escorted Johnny right to this lovely gorgeous woman’s famished pussy. Tonight.
Wait. Hold up a second. Hold up.
What?
Just, I need a breather. Hold up.
This is Joanna bumping Johnny off and rolling onto her side to let her feet hit the floor and she’s sitting now on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor swirling the empty wine bottle before her with a mournful, reclusive sigh, her head wheeling on her shoulders, the blouse flapping open from the blast of the heater and a sudden metallic tang in the air, strong enough to take your breath away.
What? Dont say it’s your fucken husband. Cause that’s . . .
No, not . . . fuck him. No. I need a breather. Really. It’s been a while. And I want more wine. Dont you worry Johnny Teardrops.
We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night Page 12
