Cold Plate Special

by Rob Widdicombe

  Shred drove back just as fast as he had driven us there. “Don’t worry about your face-ache, man. Kenny has a whole box full of pain meds.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I’ve still got a ton of vodka left, too.”

  “Look—you should probably stop offering me drinks. I’m an alcoholic.”

  “A recovering alcoholic.”

  “That, too.”

  Shred’s lips tightened and his knuckles started going white on the steering wheel. “The only reason you’re an alcoholic is because of that pervert. That sonofabitch!”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “We could go get a shot right now if it wasn’t for that motherfucker.”

  “Heaven knows I could use one.”

  “It’s not your fault you’re all fucked up.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And I’m gonna help you, too, man.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “God, I hate pervert child molesters!” He hit the steering wheel as he screamed.

  “Yeah. Don’t we all.”

  We turned back into Oregon Hill and headed down the dilapidated NASCAR block. I saw the rock throwing gang, or at least some dudes who looked like them. I slumped down in the seat below dashboard level.

  “Hey, don’t do that. They can smell fear. Like dogs.”

  I sat back up a little. They were all out of sight by the time we parked, but I felt pretty paranoid getting out of the van. I could just hear them in my head—let’s get the college pussy again!

  Inside, Kenny was watching the news, plumes of fresh weed smoke hanging under the ceiling.

  “They fucked up your face, huh?” Kenny said with obvious glee.

  “Apparently,” I said.

  “Try having your leg broken in six places.”

  “I didn’t voluntarily jump out of an airplane.”

  I sat down and let the pain take over my head and face. Even my shoulders hurt. I was going to have to feel better soon if I was going to go find Motorcar. Damn those punks—I’d have been crushing Motorcar with a series of perfect steel cold zingers by now if they hadn’t attacked me.

  “Hey, Kenny,” I said. “Shred mentioned that you might, um…loan me one of those pain pills you got.”

  “Loan you one?”

  “Well, I mean let me have one, I guess.”

  He reached over and pulled a big blue pill out of his drug box. “Here.”

  “Thanks.”

  I stood up and put the pill in my pocket and went to take a pee. I was expecting Kenny to make a shitty comment about putting the pill in my pocket but he didn’t say anything. When I came out of the bathroom, I got my iced tea jar out of my back pack and went into the kitchen to stir some up. The pill went down like an aircraft carrier that refused to be sunk. After three straight glasses of chugged iced tea, it was still lodged in the center of my neck. I went back to the living room and sat down. I swallowed a couple of times and felt the pill begin to make its way down.

  Shred came down the hall and darted into the kitchen and started banging things around. Then he bolted back through the living room and halfway down the hall but then stopped and came back.

  “So, you gonna go see your friend tonight?” he said. “I’ll drive.”

  “I don’t know. I’m gonna see how I feel after this pain pill kicks in.”

  “You sure as hell ain’t goin’ anywhere tonight,” Kenny said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  Kenny looked at Shred and nodded. “Landmine.”

  “You gave him a blue landmine? Oh, jeez.”

  Shred put his hand on my shoulder. “So the perv gets to live another day. You can stay here as long as you need to get the job done.”

  “Thanks, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk about it here.”

  “Talk about what?” Kenny said.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What perv?”

  Shred looked at Kenny like he was about to tell him. But I shook my head and thankfully he didn’t.

  “What?” Kenny said again.

  Shred looked at my bandage. “Looks like it’s holding up. I’ll be right back.” And he left the house. I sat there and tried to pretend I was interested in what was on TV. Looked like a commercial for car insurance.

  “You’re not here for a job interview, are you?” Kenny said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You can tell me after that blue elephant kicks in.”

  “I thought it was a landmine.”

  “It’s a truth serum. You’ll tell me later.”

  We sat there. I kept expecting a throng of party people to come rushing in, but no one did. A show about inmates in the Missouri state prison system was coming on. Cheerful. Kenny shifted his leg on the pillow. “There you go, boy,” he told it.

  Inmates who are psychologically unfit to co-exist with the others in the general population are sent to live in the notorious Section E… That’s where I was. Section E. I should have known this whole Motorcar thing wasn’t going to be easy. I tried to think up a zinger. Nothing.

  Inmates who previously suffered from psychological instability are likely to have those tendencies exacerbated during incarceration.

  “No shit, Captain Genius-neck,” Kenny said to the TV.

  A psyche ward was bad enough, but a psyche ward inside a maximum security prison? Yikes. They were interviewing one guy who’d stabbed his own mother thirty-six times with a steak knife because her soul was apparently infested by hell demons. Imagine being cell-mates with that freak. I’d rather be attacked by an evil swirl of flying space robots, crushing my skull with their electronic death grip and swirling my carcass off to some distant…planet…somewhere. The pill was beginning to kick in. My face and head didn’t hurt anymore and the prison nut ward suddenly didn’t look so bad. It actually started to look like a kind of paradise. So clean and organized. The orange jumpsuits, so comfortable. At some point, I managed to stand up and make my way down the blurry hallway. I think I heard Kenny laughing at me but it could have just been the sound of my own insanity. Whatever it was, when I got to his room I collapsed on the bed and proceeded to dissolve into thirty-seven gazillion tiny invisible particles. For once I felt at peace, but I was only awake another fourteen seconds to enjoy it.

  15

  I woke up thinking about Carly. I thought I was over her, but it hit me like the proverbial ton’o’bricks. Maybe if I took care of this Motorcar thing, and it restored my sense of self-worth and self-esteem and all that, maybe that would really work like a glowing power force around me and I really could win her back. Then again, she was kind of an ice cold beeyotch. Her neck was so sexy, though. I wanted to eat it. I wanted to have enthusiastic make-up sex with her in the stairwell of her apartment. She could be dressed like Snow White and I would wear an orange prison jumpsuit. I started to beat off but it made my face hurt. I needed coffee. My head was bloated with fog. No more painkillers, that was for damn sure. No more blue aircraft carriers or whatever the hell that thing was. What I really needed was a shower. The odor rising off me was probably visible.

  Kenny was on the couch with his eyes half shut. Major surprise. The TV was on but muted. No sign of Shred. His studio door was open, but he wasn’t in there. I looked into his bedroom. Also Shredless. I started poking around in the kitchen, looking for the make-coffee-stuff. Why not make myself at home? It was my cousin’s place after all. My fucked-up eye was sort of my license to be there. I earned it. I found a bag of coffee grounds in the back of the fridge. It looked old but I didn’t care.

  Getting Shred’s old coffee maker bubbling and brewing felt like a major accomplishment. I took in the aroma. My injury felt weird, and it hurt, but the fog in my head started lifting and overall I felt pretty good. This was the perfect time to work on my Motorcar speech. I started thinking that maybe the rock throwing attack was a blessing in that I had more time to come up with a prime zinger. I stirred the sugar
into my coffee. Today was my day.

  You dirty sack of…

  You perv mother…

  Son of a…

  Then the TV sound came on. Threw me off completely. Not that I was getting anywhere. I touched my eye bandage. It felt pretty solid. The cut hurt but it could have been worse. I downed my coffee and poured another.

  You disgusting pervert bitch-ass…

  I heard a commotion down the hall. I stepped out into the living room to see what was up. Summer’s dogs, all three of them, were charging. She’d apparently let herself in. One of them jumped up on the couch to say hello to Kenny. He screamed, though I don’t see how he could feel pain. His blood had more painkillers running through it than most pharmacies had on their shelves.

  Summer looked very smiley and lively. She came right up to me and put her little hand on the side of my head in a very gentle, Nurse Nightingale sort of way.

  “You poor thing!”

  “So, you know about me getting hit with the rock?”

  “Hey,” Kenny said. “Where’s my sympathy?”

  “I’m sympathied-out on you. Besides, you did that to yourself. Jarvis got attacked.”

  “I was attacked. By the earth.”

  “You want a cup of coffee?” I asked her.

  “Sure.”

  “You never offered me any,” Kenny said. “And it’s my coffee. Cyclops.”

  Summer gave Kenny a dirty look. I liked that. I went back into the kitchen and started washing out some cups. Summer followed me.

  “I’m on my way to go thrift store shopping if you want to go.”

  “Um…sure, okay. I have to take a shower first, though.”

  She put her hand on my arm and smiled at me. I felt the double whammy of hand and smile. I wasn’t sure how a wild tattooed punker chick could be so nice. Summer was blowing my mind.

  “I don’t care about that,” she said. “It’s like ninety-something outside anyway.”

  Her hand was still on my arm. My stomach started gurgling. I tried to picture her as a normal person, with no tattoos or piercings, no Goth grrrl make-up, maybe wearing a smart gray business suit and some normal colored lipstick. A tingle shot down my legs.

  “Hey, Kenny,” I called. “What do you take in your coffee?”

  He didn’t answer, so I went out in the living room and asked him again.

  “Don’t want any.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “Don’t need your room service, thanks.”

  Summer and I sat in the living room and drank our coffees pretty fast. The dogs were spread out on the floor, panting from the heat. Kenny was watching some show about extreme motor biking at a very high volume. It was all vrooom, vrooom and no one said much.

  Out front, I half-expected flying projectiles to be criss-crossing through the air. But it was quiet. No white tee-shirts or wife-beaters anywhere nearby. We got into Summer’s giant car and one of her pooches immediately jumped into the front seat and started wagging its tail against my bandage. We started rolling along. I was still on the look-out for the Oregon Hillites. But it was only noon-ish. Maybe they weren’t awake yet, still groggy, nursing their meth hangovers.

  “Those little bitches,” Summer said. I guessed she sensed me looking around for them. “Sorry they did that to you. Not the best introduction to Richmond.”

  “They don’t bother you?”

  “They know better.”

  “And you’ve got the dogs for protection.”

  “I carry a corkscrew. It’s legal and it tears up your victim’s internal organs when you pull it out.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled.

  “Ever use it on anybody?”

  “Maybe.”

  I made a mental note to never piss her off. One visit to the hospital on this trip was enough. We pulled into the parking lot of the Vietnam Veterans Family Discount Outlet, and she asked me to help her roll up her windows just enough so the dogs couldn’t get out. It was hot but there was a good breeze and we parked near the building in some shade.

  I was never a big thrift store aficionado. Always bought new. There was a big Goodwill not too far from my apartment, but I’d never been. I just didn’t see the point of buying someone else’s skanked-out throwaways when you could drop a few extra bucks and buy something crisp and fresh. Something that hadn’t been sweat in already. But if Summer had wanted to go to a slaughterhouse, I probably would have been an enthusiastic tag-along. I was pretty psyched to have a cute girl paying attention to me, especially after having woken up thinking about Carly.

  The store was huge but the air inside was dense and humid, like the a/c system was ailing, if not totally broken. It smelled like an old grandmother’s musty basement, which made sense. That was where most of the crap probably came from. Summer led me straight back to the junky stuff, bypassing all the clothes, which I had thought was going to be her destination. It was a world unto itself back there: ancient alarm clocks, an Elvis mirror, candy dishes, ashtrays, candlesticks, a little ceramic Jesus, a small plate celebrating the existence of Butte, Montana. I was surrounded by an alternately sparkling and not-so-sparkling world of wonder. Summer started going through a bin of artwork, mostly bad prints of 19th Century masters in gaudy frames.

  “They look like they came out of a dead podiatrist’s office,” I said.

  Summer laughed. Making her laugh felt like some huge accomplishment. Her full smile was fully gorgeous. My stomach started flip-flopping around once again. I liked her, I really liked her, and I didn’t give a shit if she was a tattooed punker. I suddenly felt liberated in a way I’d never felt before. Alive, for the first time in forever. I decided to play it cool and walk over to another aisle. I watched her with my one available eye. I could see she was fascinated by a paint-by-numbers clown portrait from probably the 70s. I started looking around. I was checking out an ancient tin snack tray with a picture of pink roses on it when she called me over. The snack tray seemed appropriately tacky, so I brought it with me.

  “Tell me this isn’t to kill for,” she said, holding the clown painting in my face. It actually scared me a little bit, making me realize I may have had a long-repressed pathological fear of clowns to add to all my other stupid-ass problems.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  I showed her the tray.

  She made a hesitant face, as in: wrong.

  “No?”

  “It’s close. If they were yellow roses I’d get it. Not much of a pink fan.”

  I should have figured. Hates pink. Her enthusiasm for the whole junque aesthetic was starting to rub off. I’d just never taken the time before to appreciate all this cool, quirky stuff. It made me realize that I had absolutely nothing interesting in my apartment. Or in my life, for that matter. I had that Times Square ashtray, but it wasn’t an antique or anything, just touristy.

  “I’m going over to the shoes,” she said.

  “Okay. I’ll be over here in the…stuff.”

  She held her smile on me again for an extra bit and then took off with the clown portrait. I was in a daze, hungry, wanting more coffee, watching my new girlfriend walk to the shoe section. This is how it always happened for me—fast. I met someone and then after a couple of well-timed smiles thrown in my direction, I was a goner. I was in love, hopeless, a walking train wreck.

  Summer bought the clown painting and a pair of men’s brown wingtips. I asked her if she was going to wear them but she didn’t answer. They looked small enough to fit her.

  “Those don’t look giant enough to be clown shoes, but I believe you can make it work.”

  She smiled. I felt like I was on a roll. We got back to the car and she let the dogs out to run around the parking lot for a minute.

  “I’d say let’s go to another one, but it’s too hot for the dogs. I’m a bad dog mother.”

  “You’re a champion dog mother.”

  “Can I quote you on that?” />
  “Only on opposite Tuesdays.”

  “How’s your boo-boo?”

  “It hurts. The bandage is annoying.”

  “Aw, that sucks.”

  “Thanks for asking.”

  We got in the car and she fired up the mighty engine.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Starving.”

  “I’ve got some lentil salad at my house. It’s really good.”

  Lentils were those nasty little hippie beans. I liked that she was inviting me over, but the idea of lentil salad wasn’t doing it for me.

  “How would it be if…do you want to eat out instead? My treat.”

  “All right. Second Street okay? It’s a diner over by—”

  “Yeah. We ate there yesterday.”

  “I just have to drop off the dogs.”

  Summer explained that the dogs weren’t allowed in the diner anymore after one of them ate a customer’s open-faced roast beef sandwich right off their plate. I couldn’t believe they were ever allowed in there in the first place. She probably never asked permission. We headed back to Oregon Hill and I made a conscious decision not to look for the Hillites, but there they were, hanging out on the corner near Summer’s house, being unemployed and not in school. I was unemployed and not in school too, but at least I didn’t attack people with rocks. We pulled up in front of her house, which wasn’t that far from the gang. Great.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “Need any help?”

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  She smiled again. Sure did smile a lot for someone who looked like the picture of an angst-ridden punker artiste. Her morose lipstick made her teeth really white. She got the dogs and clown painting and shoes into the house and was back in the car pretty fast. Then she drove right by the white gangsters and came to a complete stop at the stop sign. She stared them down. There was nowhere for me to hide. It was a calm moment. I think they were afraid of her. As we pulled off, the whoops and hollers started. I didn’t hear them yell “college pussy” or anything, but I was pretty sure they knew it was me.