by Jeff Strand
"I'm not crippled or anything," said Wulfe. "It's just a comfy fuckin' chair, know what I mean? Sure you don't have severed heads in here? Can you imagine the expression on my face if I unzipped this bag and there was a fuckin' severed head in there looking back up at me? My men would be cleaning so much shit up off this chair that it wouldn't even be funny."
"I promise there isn't a head in there," said Marc.
"Yeah, well, that's just what somebody who was carrying around a bag of severed heads would say. I guess it would be leaking more. And you'd know that my men would rip you to fuckin' pieces if you tried something like that. So I'm gonna unzip this bag and feel pretty comfortable that I'll see merchandise and not heads."
Wulfe unzipped the bag. He reached inside and took out something the size and shape of a brick, covered with aluminum foil. I didn't know much about drugs, but I assumed it was heroin. Maybe I'd seen this kind of thing in a movie or TV show. And though I didn't know much about the price of heroin, I felt like the merchandise in the duffel bag was worth enough that I was getting totally screwed doing this for two hundred and fifty bucks.
I'm sure I was getting screwed the other times, too, but this was the first time anybody had actually taken the contents out of the bag. The other times I'd tried not to think about what was inside.
"Test this out," said Wulfe, tossing the brick to one of his men. The man sat down at the desk and began to unwrap it. Wulfe set the duffel bag on the floor and rolled his chair back. The wheels squeaked. "Anybody know any party games for while we wait?" he asked.
Nobody offered any suggestions.
"You're a bunch of joyless sons of a bitches. There's a rod up every single ass in this room. We're not in a nuclear fusion plant—it's okay to relax and enjoy life a little bit. How about some Truth or Dare? Lurch, truth or dare?"
I had absolutely no desire to play Truth or Dare, or any game, but I didn't want to set him off again. "Truth."
"When's the last time you busted a nut in a chick? I asked this earlier but you never answered. Now you have to."
"Last week," I lied.
"What day?"
"Saturday."
"Who was she?"
"You only get one question," said Marc.
"Why doesn't it fuckin' surprise me that you're a stickler for the rules? All right, all right, I'm not gonna mess with the proper fuckin' procedure. My turn. Somebody ask me if I want truth or dare."
"Truth or dare?" asked Marc.
"Dare."
Marc fidgeted for a bit as he tried to think of something. "I dare you to drink an ounce of the crab water."
Wulfe gaped at him, delighted by the answer. "Oh, wow! That's some fucked up shit right there! Drink the crab water. Did everyone hear that?" He clapped his hands together as he laughed. "You're out of your damn mind if you think I'm gonna drink any of that nasty-ass crab water. Nice try, though. Marc, truth or dare?"
"It's good," said the man who was testing the product.
"I knew it would be," said Wulfe. "They wouldn't be dumb enough to try to rip me off. Oh, they would have such a bad night if they did. I've got a whole fuckin' restaurant full of ways to torture somebody to death. Know how many knives you need to run a seafood place? Lots. Lots of knives. I'm no psycho, but it almost would've been nice if the brick was filled with Play-Doh or some shit so you could suffer the consequences of trying to pull one over on me. You know how long it's been since I've had to really fuck somebody up? Like, I don't even remember how long ago, that's how long."
"That's a good thing," said Marc.
"Yeah, I guess." Wulfe waved to the unfriendly looking man who'd let us in. "Get these fine gentlemen their money! They're in a hurry to leave! Lurch probably has some hot chick waiting in the car. Don't forget to save some pussy for the rest of us."
The man handed Marc a small blue duffel bag.
"Thank you," Marc said. "Pleasure doing business with you."
"You can count it," said Wulfe. "You won't hurt my feelings."
"Nah, I trust you."
"Then you're a fuckin' idiot. We're doing a goddamn drug deal, man. You don't just say 'Nah, I trust you.' There could be a severed head in that bag. It's too small for a human, but it could be a dog head. Chihuahua head. What if it's just filled with dog shit? You're gonna let yourself walk out of here with a bag full of dried-up dog shit?"
Marc unzipped the duffel bag.
"I'm not trying to bully you," said Wulfe. "Just trying to teach you life lessons, that's all. You'll be walking out of here a better person than when you walked in. I'm a good influence."
It was awkward for Marc to hold the bag and count the money at the same time. He pretty much just poked around in it for a minute or so. Wulfe continued talking during the process, of course.
"All there," said Marc.
"Good. Now get the fuck out of my face, you uptight pricks."
Marc and I left. We got in his car and didn't speak until we'd driven out of the parking lot.
"Dude was a trip, huh?" asked Marc.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry about that. I thought it would be like the other times."
I shrugged. "Nobody got shot."
"That's true. I didn't know he was going to make fun of your physical appearance. That wasn't cool. I'm going to give you three hundred because it was kind of tense in there."
"Thank you."
"I mean three hundred total. Not three hundred on top of the two-fifty."
"I knew what you meant."
"Next time we'll know what to expect."
"I'm not doing that again."
"No?"
"I think I have a girlfriend now. I accepted your job offer because you're a nice guy, but I can't keep doing this. It's not me."
"Hey, I respect that," said Marc. "We all need to choose our own path in life. If you need some extra spending money to take your lady out for a night on the town, you know who to ask, but I won't bug you about helping out again."
"I appreciate it. You're a good friend."
When we got back to our apartment building, he gave me my three hundred dollars and wished me goodnight. I was relieved that my criminal days were over. It was hard to believe I'd done that kind of thing. I could've gone to prison. I didn't know what kind of sentence you'd get for just being in the room where a drug deal happened, but there had to be some jail time, right?
The next day I did what I'd do on any other Sunday: not much.
On Monday I went to work. I usually ate lunch at my desk, but since Abigail and I had gone on a date, I didn't see any reason I couldn't walk over to her flower stand. It would no longer be creepy.
She smiled when she saw me. She hadn't been smiling before.
I'd never seen her wear makeup, not even on our date. She was wearing it now. It was heavier around her right eye.
four
I didn't want to start off our conversation by asking about her eye.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi."
"How are you?"
"I'm good."
"I thought I'd come out and see you on my lunch break."
"I'm glad you did."
"I only get half an hour, though, and it takes ten minutes to walk here, and then ten minutes to walk back. So I can't hang out very long."
"I get as long of a lunch break as I want," she said. "It's one of the perks of owning my own business. So if I meet you at your work someday, that gives us an extra twenty minutes." She tapped her forehead. "Yeah, I did the math in my head. You have to be good at numbers when you own your own business."
(She was being funny. You may have gotten that, but I didn't want it to look like she was legitimately trying to portray her arithmetic as an impressive accomplishment.)
Our first minute was just about over. I figured I should probably address the elephant in the room. "Makeup, huh?"
"Yes."
"It looks nice."
She sighed and touched the area under her eye. "Can you tell?"
"Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look bad. A normal person wouldn't notice. Did you fall?"
"No."
I waited for her to explain. She didn't.
"Did you bump into something?" I asked, to fill the silence.
"No. It's...it's the bad kind of black eye."
"Who hit you?"
"You don't know him."
"I don't know anybody you know."
"I want us to be open and honest with each other," said Abigail. "But I also don't want to discuss this out here on the street. I'll tell you what happened tonight. Do you want to get dinner?"
"Sure."
"I'll close up at six. There's a good vegan restaurant near here."
"You're vegan?"
"No, I just like to eat healthy sometimes. Meet me here?"
"Okay."
"Perfect. See you then."
Our ten minutes weren't up, but it seemed like she was ready for me to go. Which was fine because I didn't feel like talking about trivial stuff when the question of who had hit her remained unanswered. As I walked back to work, I breathed deeply, trying to be at peace with the world. No reason to fly into a rage until I knew the details of what had happened.
Who could it have been?
I'd kill him.
No, I wouldn't kill him. I'd have a very stern, very serious talk with him, and it would not happen again.
Have you ever tried to be a customer service representative when you're almost trembling with fury? It's not an easy task. It's difficult enough to be professional and polite on a normal day, when you have people on the phone yelling at you and not listening as you try to calmly explain things to them. I couldn't afford to lose my job, and it wasn't the customers' fault that somebody had given Abigail a black eye, so I remained courteous while gnashing my teeth and squeezing one of those foam stress balls that I borrowed from a co-worker's desk.
I always got off work at four. I didn't want to walk past the flower stand; I wouldn't have known if I should stop and say hi, or just wave as I walked past, or what. Instead, I took a different route home and hung out in my apartment for a couple of hours.
At six o'clock, she greeted me with a hug, and then we walked to the vegan place.
"Get what you want," she said. "It's on me."
"Who hit you?" I asked.
"Can you please not pressure me? Could we at least order our meal before we get into this? It's not like he's fleeing the country and he's going to get away if I don't tell you all about it right away."
"Okay."
"I didn't mean to snap at you. You're concerned and I appreciate it. It's just a very stressful situation, obviously, and I need to work my way up to it or all you're going to get is me crying and punching the table."
"I understand." I glanced at the menu. "They have chicken nuggets here?"
"Imitation chicken nuggets. They taste just like the real thing."
"They can't."
"They do. You won't be able to tell the difference."
"Pretty sure I will."
"I don't know what your taste buds are like," she admitted. "Maybe your palate is so refined that you'll pick up on the subtle intricacies in flavor. I'll just say that they're a very good approximation of what it tastes like when you mash up a chicken into paste and deep-fry small chunks of it."
"Maybe I'll get that, then."
When the server came to take our orders, I got the nuggets and Abigail got olive hummus with pita chips. She glanced around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping, then leaned across the table and spoke in a very soft voice.
"A couple of years ago I was in a relationship with a man named Neal. It wasn't all bad. Some of it was great. Overall, though? Dysfunctional as hell. Lots of yelling. Lots of jealousy. I'm not saying that I don't get jealous, too, but this was the 'I don't like you having lunch with your male co-workers' kind of jealousy. He didn't like that my doctor was a man. You know you've got a problem with jealousy when you don't want your girlfriend to have a male doctor."
"Agreed," I said.
"He never got violent, not at all. Even when we were screaming at each other, he never so much as grabbed my arm. That's not why we broke up. I just eventually realized that it wasn't going to work out and told him it was time for us to be done."
"How long were you together?"
"A few months. I never thought we'd get married or even move in together. It was just one of those toxic relationships that you stay in even though everybody else around you can see that it's a bad thing. So it was over. Every once in a while, not often, he'd text me and ask if I wanted to meet him for coffee, and I'd always say no. He'd text 'I miss you so much, let's give it another chance.' I assumed he was just horny." She took a long drink from her glass of water. "I hate that we have to have this kind of conversation. We're supposed to be talking about fun stuff."
"It's okay."
"That's all it was. A text maybe every few weeks. He can turn on the charm when he wants to, so I don't think he was lonely all that time. Maybe I should've been flattered. Anyway, it was no big deal. It wasn't like he showed up at my place. At least not until yesterday."
The story was about to get dark, and I hoped my face—unpleasant to look at in the best of times—didn't make her reconsider our relationship.
"I told a couple of friends that I had a date. Somehow, word got back to Neal. He showed up at my apartment. I let him in. He asked about you. I told him that you were a very nice guy and that I didn't have anything else to say to him and that it was time for him to stop texting me. He hit me."
"Did you call the police?"
Abigail shook her head. "He looked completely stunned by what he'd done. No way did he show up at my place intending to lay a hand on me. He apologized and cried and begged me to forgive him, and I made it very clear that he was never to contact me again, and if he did, he'd be lucky if all I did was call the police. He promised that I'd never see him again and left. End of story."
"How do you know that's the end?"
"Because he doesn't want me to cut off his balls. He knows it's not an empty threat. It's something that will literally happen, in reality, using a pair of scissors that I've already picked out."
"What's his last name?" I asked.
Abigail leaned back in her seat. "I'm not going to tell you that."
"I wouldn't do anything."
"I told you about this because you asked, and because I thought it was fair for you to know why the girl you're dating has a black eye. I'm not asking you to get involved. I'm telling you not to get involved. This isn't your problem and he's gone from my life."
"Okay. If he comes back and you want me to do anything, I will."
"He won't come back, and I wouldn't want you to do anything. I assure you, he'd press assault charges against you."
"I'd only talk to him," I insisted.
"If you talked to him, you'd want to punch him."
"I thought you said he could turn on the charm."
"With the ladies. He can also be a smarmy piece of crap. You wouldn't like him."
"Probably not."
"Anyway, it's over," said Abigail. "If you have any questions, ask away, but if not, I'd like to just forget that it happened."
"I don't have any questions."
"Great. How was your day?"
"The usual."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Mostly a good thing, I guess." Shit, I was being a dull conversationalist. I should've come up with some talking points before I got here, but I was too focused on her injury. Was now the right time to tell the truth about my father? Or should I wait until she was less emotionally fragile? She didn't seem emotionally fragile right now, but she couldn't possibly be in a good state of mind this soon after an ex-lover hit her.
"That's good," she said. We were both sucking at this conversation. It was only our second date, so we shouldn't be anywhere close to have exhausted all of the possibilities for subject matter.
"Do
you like cats?" I asked.
Abigail nodded. "I love cats."
"Do you have any?"
"One."
"What's his name?"
"Her name. Queenie."
"What color?"
"Gray."
"Cool."
"Do you have any cats?"
"No," I said. "My apartment doesn't allow pets."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah. Do you have any dogs?"
"No."
"Do you like dogs?"
"Yes."
"Me too."
"I never had dogs growing up, though," said Abigail. "We were always a cat family."
"We never had any pets."
"Nothing? Not even fish?"
"Not even sea monkeys. In fifth or sixth grade I wanted a snake but my parents wouldn't let me get one. I was mad for a while, and then I thought, 'I've got enough problems making friends—why should I be the weird kid who has a snake?'"
"I had a friend with a snake once. I thought it was the best pet ever until I watched him feed a mouse to it. That traumatized me for weeks."
"Yeah, I don't think I would have fed mice to my snake if my parents had let me get one. I'm not sure if you have to feed them live stuff or if you can just buy snake food. I didn't research it very much."
I needed to tell her. The longer I waited, the more awful this was going to be. We hadn't even kissed yet, so if she was completely freaked out, at least she wouldn't have the germs of a killer's son on her.
The server brought our meals. I was surprised to discover that the chicken-free chicken nuggets did indeed taste like the real thing. (By which I mean they tasted like chicken nuggets, which don't taste much like real chicken.) The texture was a bit off but they were good. I'd never tried hummus, which I'd assumed would be among the foulest substances I'd ever placed into my mouth. I'm not sure why. I didn't even really know what it was. But Abigail gave me some of hers, and it was quite tasty. I wasn't planning to rush out to my local hummus shop to fill up my refrigerator, but sure, I'd eat it again.
Though the arrival of our food gave me a brief reprieve, I felt like I really needed to make my confession soon. I'd wait until after we were done with the nuggets and hummus, so as not to spoil a fine meal, but I'd do it before we left the table.
