by Greg Barth
Lenny and I had several shots of rum each while working on the prep. We made small talk. Lenny had a brother out west that was moving some new stuff his way. His brother was some big fancy pants in Vegas that even shared a private jet with some card players out there.
“What’s good these days, Lenny,” I said.
“Weed’s really good,” he said. “Underrated, but it’s never been better. Shifting attitudes. Medical marijuana and all that. Nobody gives a shit about weed these days. The quality is spot on. Fucking Canadians? You wouldn’t believe it, but they’re all about the weed. All of them.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You want to come by sometime and sample some, let me know. You’ll like it.”
I put away more than my fair share of rum. I can hold it together when I’m shitfaced, so I never had problems drinking at work.
The rum made me nice and tipsy but also kind of sleepy. It was going to be a long night, so I bought some coke from Lenny.
When the customers started to arrive, I left Lenny at the bar and hit the ladies room to powder my nose. It was good coke and gave me an instant burst of energy.
I hit the tables, took drink orders, emptied ashtrays.
A cute guy alone at a corner table caught my eye. He had short, dark hair and wore a black leather jacket. He looked clean cut. Maybe early thirties. He made the part of me that hoped to be a mommy someday want to take him home and feed him chicken soup. He needed taking care of, and I had that maternal instinct too, same as most girls.
I made my way to his table.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I said.
He looked up at me. “Johnnie Walker Red,” he said.
Fucker had to be made out of money at the molecular level.
“Honey, we don’t carry anything that fancy,” I said. “Anything we have that would pass for Scotch, you wouldn’t want.”
“Good to know. I’ll take Maker’s Mark, or if you don’t have that, maybe you’ve got something in a bottle shaped like a crown?”
“I think I can find something like that.”
I went off to get his drink.
At the bar, Lenny poured for me, placed it on a tray, and said, “That guy’s new, huh?”
“He is.”
“See if he needs something.”
“Will do, Lenny.”
I carried his drink over to the table. He gave me cash and told me to keep the change. I sat down in the chair beside him and leaned in close. No such thing as personal space inside a titty bar.
Vixen was dancing and sauntered over to our side of the stage. Vixen was Caucasian, taller and heavier than me, large-breasted and wide-hipped. Her hair was dyed blue and she had it fixed in a short, punk style. She danced in front of us, throwing her head back and pinching her extra-long nipples between her fingers.
“Give me a dollar?” I said to the guy. He handed me a single. I got up from my chair and approached the stage. Vixen saw me coming and made her way over closer to me. She leaned over and kissed me full on the lips. We flicked our tongues together and I slipped the single between her breasts. “Thank you,” she mouthed soundlessly. She winked at me as she walked away.
I sat back down next to the guy. “She’s pretty, huh?” I said.
“Yeah she is,” he said, but I didn’t think he was remotely interested in her.
“She’s been here a while. Nice girl.”
“Now that’s an interesting tattoo,” he said, pointing at the swastika on my inner left forearm.
I held my arm out so he could get a better view. “You like it?”
“Well, no, actually. It’s a hateful image. You know the history of that, right? Millions died horribly under that symbol.”
“Oh, yeah, well I know. Are you Jewish? I have lots of Jewish friends if that helps put you at ease.”
“Okay. What do they think about it?”
“They don’t mention it much.”
“So, here’s the obvious question, why do you have it?”
“My dad put it there when I was little. I had no idea what it was for a long time. It was just my special mark. I have to say though, he got it right. The lines are straight and all. That takes some skill.”
“Your dad? What kind of father puts something like that on his child’s arm?”
“He was all into Hitler once. For a while. It was just his thing. Kind of…a history buff?”
“Well, if anyone can pull it off, it’s you. You wear it well.”
“Thank you. I have an eagle on my back left shoulder too.”
“Your dad again?”
I smiled. “No. And it’s not a Nazi eagle. It’s just a regular eagle. Like the kind they show on TV. I paid for that one. Professional. You from around here?”
“No. I’m just passing through.”
“You know, if there’s anything you need to make your stay here more pleasant, I can help you out.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“There’s not much I can’t get for you,” I said.
“Except Johnnie Walker Red.”
“Right. Except that. Anything else from chicken soup to you name it, I can probably help you out.”
“Can you score me some X?”
“That I can.”
He grinned. I told him the price and he took out his wallet. I got a look inside as he fished out the cash.
“And,” I said, “if you’re in the mood, say a little later, for an awesome…oral experience…I can hook you up with that too.”
“An oral experience?”
“Exactly. I mean, it’s not like it’s a school night or anything, right?”
“What’s that?” he said with a smile. “You going to give a lecture or something?”
“Starts at a hundred and eighty bucks,” I said.
“No, I meant…”
I laughed. “You’ll figure it out,” I said and went back to the bar to get his X.
I went behind the bar and took Lenny back to the sink. “He’s cute, but he’s kind of weird, Lenny,” I said.
“He good to go?” Lenny asked.
“Oh yeah.” I handed him the money. Well, most of it anyway. “Ecstasy.”
“Shit, let’s get more than that.”
“I’m working it,” I said.
“Say, Selena,” Lenny said. “You know those guys over by the end of the bar?”
I looked casually. A couple of big guys, dressed tough, sat on stools at the far end from us. One had dark hair with a receding hairline. The other guy was taller, bigger, and had a crew cut. Both were in dark shirts and had nasty scowls on their faces. They caught me looking at them, and I looked away.
“Never seen them before,” I said.
“They were asking about you.”
“Really? What did they say?”
“Yeah, really. Nothing specific. Asked who you were. What your name was. How long you worked here. That kind of thing.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Anything else?”
“No, but they gave off a weird vibe.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know. Just weird. Like they don’t have your best interests at heart. Are you into something I should know about?”
“I gotta hit the ladies, Lenny. Back in a few, and I’ll see what they want.”
I walked back to the dressing room that the dancers used behind the stage. I grabbed my purse, took a quick snort of coke to offset some of the effects of the booze, and slipped out the back door. I had parked out back of the building just in case I got lucky. The back lot afforded some privacy.
Two more goons were standing against the building by the back door. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew they were with the other guys at the bar. I slipped by them and made my way through the back parking lot to my car.
I got in the car and locked the door from inside. I cranked up the driver’s side window. Without thinking, I blew steadily into the interlock device for a full four seconds. Coke sometimes
made me think I was sober when I was not even on the same planet as the rest of you. It came back bad. Not only did I blow a violation, I was completely locked out. Either I had missed a service test, lost too many violation points, or the alcohol content in my breath had hit some new astronomical threshold in the device that made it think I should never be allowed to drive again or something. Either way, the car was not going to start for anybody for another 24 hours.
“It’s just fucking cough syrup,” I said as though the device could hear me and change its mind.
There was movement to my left. Somebody tried to open the door. Holy shit.
“Come on. Start goddamn you,” I said and blew into the device again. Nothing. “Shit.”
The driver’s side window exploded in a shower of glass that fell into my hair and onto my lap. My whole body jumped from coked up adrenaline and reflex. A large hand holding a slim, black, collapsible baton filled the smashed window.
I couldn’t make out the guy’s face. He was standing too close to the car.
“Get out,” he said.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” I said.
“Get the fuck out.”
“Fuck you.”
His fist came through the open window and clipped me hard on the left cheek. What the fuck! “Get out now.”
I chuckled out of sheer hysteria. “You don’t hit very good,” I said. “My dad used to hit a hell of a lot harder than that.”
The baton swung faster than I could block. It caught me across the bridge of the nose. I felt the bone crunch and smash flat. Jesus, I could taste the pain. Tears and blood streamed down my face. Blood dripped down my chin and onto my lap. I looked down at the pool of crimson collecting between my legs on the vinyl seat.
“Your daddy hit like that?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I just sat there in shock.
He had my attention.
But he wasn’t done.
The baton again. This time it hit my cheek bone and I felt the orbital bone crunch inward like an eggshell. It was as though that part of my face flattened. My eyes went blurry and it felt like my eyeball had slipped down to a strange position in the socket.
“Your daddy hit like that? Huh?”
“Oh god,” I said. “Oh fuck. I’ll get out. Please. Stop. Just stop.” I put my hands up to shield my face.
A hand reached inside and unlocked the door. The door opened and someone pulled me out of the car by the arm. Another man took me by the other arm and led me back to the building. I could barely stand, let alone take steps on my own. I tried to walk but I was mostly dragged across the lot toward the back wall of the club. The two men from inside the bar stood there. My vision was blurred, but I could make out their faces with some effort. I didn’t know any of them. They brought me to a stop next to the dumpster by the side of the back door.
Blood streamed down my face like from a running faucet. My chin trembled. My guts churned and turned to water. I just wanted to get away from them.
One of the men stepped forward. He was the guy that had been sitting at the bar with the receding, dark hair. He wore it slicked back. He had thick, strong arms and a muscular chest. He wore a tight-fitting, black t-shirt. He had a heavy watch on one wrist. “Where is it?” he said with a flat voice.
“What,” I said. “Where is what?”
“Don’t fucking play games with me, bitch. You think we’re fucking playing here?”
My mouth went dry from fear. “Is this about the money?” I said. “From this morning?”
He punched me in the stomach. I vomited all over both of us. I hadn’t eaten anything in two days, but I had drank plenty. It was like a sour rum fountain coming out of me.
“This is not about the money,” he said. He wiped his face. “You know what this is about.”
“I swear,” I said. “I don’t.”
He pulled out a baton of his own. “Hold her.”
“Please,” I said. “Please. I’ll do anything you want, just…please.”
Someone stretched my arm out. The baton came down hard right on the swastika tattoo. My arm exploded with pain, and I screamed. I was sure my arm was broken.
“Shut her the fuck up.”
A forearm came around my neck, the crook of the elbow clenched tight against my throat and cut off my air. My scream stopped. I felt my eyes bulge and my face flush. I was afraid my damaged eye was going to pop completely out of its socket.
“I’m going to ask you one last time, where the fuck is it?”
“What?” I choked.
“The data. The fucking data you stole.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Data? All I could croak out was, “No.”
He went berserk with the baton. The blows came in a fury, one after the other, striking my knees, legs, stomach, breasts, and elbows. My knees took the brunt of it but nothing was spared. He missed a few blows and struck my shins instead, but he was targeting the knees. My legs collapsed under me and the men could only hold me up on my knees. He then struck me over the top of the head repeatedly. The last blow he delivered was the most brutal of all. It was a hard, sidearm swing that caught me across the jaw.
I was conscious of only two things after being struck on the jaw. I’d swallowed several teeth, and I’d wet my pants.
“Put her down,” he said.
I dropped to the gravel parking lot like a corpse. My legs were bent at strange angles. My head struck the dirt and gravel hard.
“Get her pants off,” he said.
My jeans and underwear were pulled down to my knees, exposing pretty much the only parts of me that hadn’t been hit yet. The gravel was cold on my bare ass. I looked up and saw him coming at me. He pushed me onto my side with a boot to my hip, spreading my cheeks. He unbuckled his pants.
“You’re going to need reconstructive surgery on your asshole by the time I get done with you, you stupid cunt.”
It’s true what they say about sticks and stones. His cruel words felt like relief compared to the beating he had delivered.
He pushed harder against my bare hip with his foot and I felt my ass exposed to the cool night air.
He dropped his pants and readied himself with his hand.
I had seen bigger dicks before.
Mostly at the zoo.
Things got bad after that. I don’t want to tell you all that happened, but it was bad.
His last words to me were, “I’m going to let you live, because I still don’t have what I want. I’m going to check your car. I’m going to check your apartment. I’m even going to pay a visit to your white-trash family. If I don’t find what I’m after, I’m going to give you about six months to heal up. Then I’m coming back, and I’ll take you apart one joint at a time. You understand that? One joint at a time.”
I couldn’t respond. My body was convulsing, and my throat made a choking sound. I tried to whimper out a response, but I couldn’t. There was dust and grit in my eyes and my face was a throbbing, swelling mess. My ass felt like it had been ripped to shreds, then set on fire. My guts churned inside.
I heard their footsteps crunching in the gravel as they walked away, the sound getting fainter with each step.
I lay there in the silent dark for several minutes before I thought of the CD I had taken.
FOUR
It turned out that he wasn’t kidding about the asshole surgery. Assholes are fragile things, and I’m not an in-through-the-out-door kind of girl anyway; so we’re talking tender, virgin flesh here.
But that was the least of my reconstruction worries. When your orbital bone is entirely replaced by molded plastic, your eyeball reset into your skull, shattered nose reconstructed, your jaw wired shut, broken bones set and cast, screws and bolts inserted to hold things back in place all over your body, the last thing you think of is trauma to the humble asshole. But assholes are important too, and I got that attended to along with everything else.
I may not have thought much of it, but the good a
sshole doctors at the community hospital gave it their full attention.
This was a new experience in vulnerability for me. I had only been to a gynecologist once in my life, so I am not even used to having the mommy parts checked let alone the, you know…the other orifice next door. AKA the asshole.
I only saw the gynecologist the one time due to me missing my periods. My regular doctor could tell I wasn’t pregnant but not much beyond that. Turns out I was borderline anorexic which sometimes means irregular cycles. I know, right? All the more reason not to eat.
But this experience was entirely unique. Every few days a young asshole specialist would come into my room, have me lay on my tummy while he took a tour through the deep, dark canyon of Selena. He plumbed the depths with his penlight, all the while saying things like, “Yeah, this looks good. Real good. That’s just the way it should be.”
Nice to know. Thank you.
“Have you passed gas today?”
I lay there with my face to the pillow, relaxing as much as I could. Will there be a latex covered fingertip? Will there be a latex covered fingertip? I thought to myself over and over. Hel-looo latex covered fingertip!
He probed gently around the entire circumference of my, well, you know.
“Does this hurt?” he said.
I wanted to say, well, it’s not the most pleasant feeling, but the worst hurt is to my pride, but my jaw was wired shut.
So instead I said, “Mmm hmm.”
He got it.
“I’ll make sure they give you something for that.”
Bingo!
I started to like the guy. I mean, it’s nice to know that there’s something out there for the doctors that graduate at the bottom of their class, right? I hope he made a bundle, otherwise his job was just shitty and tragic.
A couple of unnecessary organs turned septic and had to be removed. Giblets, I guess, like those that come inside frozen turkeys. Nobody knows what to do with them so you just throw them away. They sucked them out of me through endoscopy while doing all of the other surgeries on my other parts.
Turns out that having kids wouldn’t be such a good idea for me after all this, so they took care of that too. All the baby tubes tied up nice and tight. Nice of them. Got my money’s worth. Not that I would ever be able to pay for any of this.
