Rough Trade

by Todd Robinson

  “Peachy.” He reached into his pocket and tossed me his car keys. “Go get Miss Kitty, will ya? I don’t feel like walking a block with no shoe on.”

  I lifted my chin toward Byron. “You done with him?”

  “Yeah. I’ve had my fun. I am gonna take his shoes, though.”

  “Fair enough.” I walked outside, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, I saw blood splattered in the snow. I was glad none of it was ours this time. I kicked some fresh powder over it with the side of my boot.

  ***

  We debated which trunk to stuff Byron into. While Junior didn’t like the thought of bloodying up Miss Kitty’s boot, we’d be able to get him in and out of the Buick much easier than the Neon he was driving.

  Byron stirred a bit and groaned as we deposited him into Miss Kitty’s smelly trunk. Junior popped him again on the jaw. Byron groaned and went limp once more.

  Across the street, I saw curtains move behind the window of one of the tenements. A hand that looked like it was holding a phone. “C’mon, man,” I said. “Natives are starting to get nosy.”

  Junior slammed the lid down heavily and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  I followed Miss Kitty onto the Mass Pike heading east. Junior hadn’t told me where we were going and I hadn’t asked. It seemed like he had a plan. Either way, I was glad to be in a car that had a working goddamn heating system. Off the Pike, we got onto I-95 North, then US-1A heading into Revere. Then I got the clue. We got off the parkway and I followed Junior onto Revere Beach Road.

  He pulled over and stopped. I turned into the spot behind him. The beach was empty, and the ocean looked murderously bitter. I got all New England nostalgic when I looked at the Atlantic in the winter. It was then that I sensed in my bones the freezing death that claimed generation after generation of fishing boats coming down from Gloucester and New Bedford. It ain’t all foliage and clam chowder.

  My mother and I lived for a couple years in a tiny apartment out in Gloucester, one of the many that she, my sister, and I resided in during our short-stay existence. I was always fascinated by the memorials, the names of those the sea had claimed. I could stare at the statue of the Man at the Wheel for hours.

  As the memory of my own lost family surfaced, I had an epiphany, a little one. When I was a kid, I used to love the statues in Boston too. The Aquarium dolphins, all the pieces in the public garden. All of a sudden, I realized why I did. Something inside of me wanted to feel what the stability, the permanence of a statue felt like within a life that was nothing but transitory. The constant movement of the ocean reminded me of the beauty of constant movement as well. The statues reminded me of my mother. The ocean reminded me of my sister. Both were just memories now.

  The old familiar sadness washed over me as I closed my eyes and inhaled the cold, cold, salty breeze and allowed myself to feel the emotions I normally buried.

  But my wistful New Englander musings disappeared right quick as I remembered we still had a shoeless bleeding guy in Miss Kitty’s trunk.

  Junior shut the engine on Miss Kitty and emerged from the car, baseball bat in hand. He walked over to my driver’s side window. “Kill the engine and pop the hood.”

  I did so, curious as to where this was going. I wasn’t about to join him outside yet, since I planned on enjoying the toasty interior as long as I could before returning to the icebox of Junior’s car.

  Although I couldn’t see what Junior was up to under the hood, I heard the sounds of his angry tinkering through the vents. A minute later, Junior slammed the hood down, the Neon’s car battery in his hands. Calmly, he walked the short length of beach down to the break of water, and shot-put the battery into the ocean. He waved me out of the car. I lifted my collar over my neck and grudgingly joined him. For good measure, he ripped the passenger-side mirror off. It resisted for a second, but came apart from the car, a short tangle of wires protruding from the base.

  “Fuckin’ technology,” said Junior. “Electric mirror’s gonna cost him three hundo more to fix than if he had a regular goddamn mirror.”

  I was feeling a little bad about leaving Byron on a frozen beach with a busted car, but we were close enough to civilization where he wouldn’t freeze to death as long as he was willing to sacrifice a little dignity.

  And I still wasn’t entirely sure about how wrong he was in the situation with Ginny and her roommate. Sure, he could have been less of a dick about it…but that was where my guilt ended.

  Fuck him. He was being a dick.

  “Shall we let our prisoner out?”

  “Sure.” He handed the bat to me and pulled out his cell. “You want the honors?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I wanna take a video of this jackhole.”

  “Why?”

  Junior shrugged. “It’ll make me happy?”

  “Think that it might not be in our best interests to document the crime we’re committing?”

  “Are we?”

  “Are we what?”

  “Committing a crime?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Really? I mean, the guy is a douche and a bully.”

  “Still doesn’t make it legal to beat him up, kidnap him, and wreck his car.”

  “Huh.” Junior seemed genuinely surprised that our excursion might be looked at differently from a legal standpoint. “Can I just keep the video for a day? I’ll delete it tomorrow. Promise.’ Junior held up crossed fingers.

  “You’re showing me crossed fingers, moron.”

  “What? No. This is scout’s honor.”

  “No. You’re telling me that…fuck it. Let’s get this over with. I’m fucking cold. No video.”

  Junior shut off the camera on his phone, grumbling about the lack of fun inherent in my personality. He handed me the bat and twisted the key in the trunk lock. The lid popped open a crack and Byron’s arm snaked across the opening. Junior yelped and jumped back, clutching his hip, cell phone spinning out of his grip. “Sonofabitch cut me!” He pointed at the blindly swiping hand. Somehow, inside the trunk, Byron had gotten his hands on a box cutter, which would explain both how he got loose and how he injured Junior.

  “That your box cutter?”

  Junior glared at me. “The fuck you waiting for, Boo? A goddamn invitation?”

  In my surprise, I’d forgotten the bat in my hands. Byron was halfway out of the trunk, his own phone in his other hand, videotaping us.

  I swung the bat down as Byron was stepping out. The bat collided with the trunk, slamming it down on Byron’s head, instead of knocking the cutter from his grip as I’d hoped. He did drop his recording device, however.

  “My car!” Junior screamed at me, more pissed at the damage to Miss Kitty than the gash on his thigh. He grabbed my arms to prevent a second assault on his beloved.

  In the meantime, a stunned and bleeding Byron rolled out of the trunk, onto the sand-and-snow-blown street. He was still slashing at the air with the box cutter as he grabbed his phone. “Fuck you!” he shrieked, holding the phone in a shaking hand, waving the box cutter with the other. “I’m taping you sonsabitches. You come near me again, and…and…”

  Twin smears of thick white powder streaked down his upper lip and across his cheek. Guess he’d also had a bit of blow on him, which he’d decided to partake in during his downtime in the trunk.

  Junior and I stopped wrestling with the bat and stared at him.

  “Who said we wanted to come near you again?” I asked. “You just—”

  Byron took the beginning of my sentence to mean something else entirely. “Fuck you! You’re not killing me! Fuck you!”

  “The fuck are you talking about?” Junior said, as much to the air as to either Byron or me.

  “I know who you work for, you bastards.” Byron’s breaths were deep and ragged in his panic. His bloodshot eyes bulged from the sockets, either from pure fear or the blow, or both. He had enough powder on his face to blast off the entire defensive line of the ’77 Br
uins. Between the coke and the crusted blood, he looked like the world’s looniest Kabuki dancer. “You’re not killing me!”

  “We’re not—”

  “My shit is inside the house you threw me out of, you dumb pricks!”

  “Look, man,” I said. “We don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Leave the girls alone.”

  Byron’s face twisted up into a mask of cocaine-infused confusion. “What girls?”

  “Whaddaya mean, ‘what girls’?” Junior asked.

  We all fell silent, the wind and trickling waves the lone sounds as we looked back and forth to each other, hoping somebody could fill the humongous gaps in our broadly differing narratives.

  “I—” was all I got out.

  Byron turned and sprinted down the beach, screaming the whole way. Junior and I stood there, silent and stunned as we watched Byron’s lopsided escape. After all, he did only have one of Junior’s shoes on.

  As he further distanced himself, I asked Junior, “You took the time to put your shoe on him?”

  “I took his. Seemed fair.”

  “Seems odd that you made the effort to put one shoe on him though. How they fitting you?”

  Junior shrugged and wiggled the brown boot on his left foot. “Not too bad. I think they’d be tight if I had socks on. Think the asshole got the message?”

  I cupped my hands around a cigarette and lit it in the strong beach gusts. Who says I have no life skills? “Hey,” I yelled toward the nearly disappeared Byron as I puffed on the filter. “Leave Dana and Ginny alone. Hey!”

  I didn’t think he could hear me with the wind and distance, but I figured I had to say something in order to feel I’d done my due diligence.

  I watched the frantic dot in the distance run down the beach fifty more yards before he cut a quick left and darted between the rows of houses. I gave it another minute, then stubbed out my butt in the sand.

  Junior and I stood there listening to the ocean for a few more moments before either of us spoke again.

  Junior cleared his throat. “Well, that was fuckin’ weird.”

  ***

  “Owww!” Junior winced as he dabbed at his wound with a wet napkin. It was a shallow cut, but long and painful-looking. His cries would have been embarrassing, had the diner had anyone but us and the waitress to hear it. Nevertheless, the elderly waitress in the hairnet stared at us unhappily. Probably because Junior’s pants were halfway off so he could clean the cut on his hip, just above the thigh.

  “Couldn’t you do that in the bathroom?”

  “In a diner? No friggin’ way. You know how many germs there are in a diner bathroom?”

  The waitress narrowed her eyes. The cook added his glare to the mix over his fry station.

  “He’s kidding,” I said with a smile. “You have a wonderful and clean establishment.” I would have added a wave, but my hands were stuck to the table. “You mind keeping it down?” I whispered to Junior. “I’d rather not get my burger with spit in it.” I smiled at the cook again. The way the place looked, spit might very well have been what they cleaned the table with.

  “Hey, you keep quiet. You’re not the one who got pig-stuck. Another three inches and he would have cut my hog off.”

  “Well, maybe if you’d taken that goddamn box cutter out of your trunk…”

  Junior aped the tonality of my sentence in a whiny singsong, using only the word “myenh.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Speaking of changing the subject, what the hell do you think Byron was talking about?”

  Junior shrugged. “He knew we were working for the girls. So what?”

  I tried to tap my fork in thought on the table, but it was stuck too. “I dunno. He really thought we were going to kill him. Why would he think that?”

  “Well, gee. Maybe because we beat the crap out of him, dumped him in my trunk, and drove him out to the beach?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And maybe he was a little bit coked off his nut too.”

  “True.”

  “It has been known to make a person paranoid.”

  “Also true. I can’t help but feel that he thought we were somebody else.”

  “Who?” Junior dabbed the cut again. “Fuckin’ ow!”

  I didn’t look, but felt the staff’s glares again. “Damned if I know.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. Jackass like him has to have all sorts looking to kick his ass. We did what we wanted to do. I don’t think he’ll be bugging the girls again.”

  “I would be surprised if he did.”

  The waitress came over with our burgers. She dropped the hard plastic plates on the table from enough height to make her point about how much she valued our business. “Enjoy,” she said. I didn’t feel like she meant it.

  I checked my burger for loogies.

  My beeper sounded. “Lemme use your cell. It’s Ginny.”

  Junior rolled his eyes, taking a huge bite out of his burger. “You gotta get a phone, man.”

  “I have a phone.” After the escapades that had nearly killed us last summer, Twitch had made the whole crew run-packs, which included burner phones we were under strict instructions to keep charged.

  Just in case.

  Along with the phones that had all of our phone numbers programmed in them, the run-packs came complete with homemade lead-knuckled sap gloves—Twitch’s very own design—CharlieCards, a change of clothes, protein bars, and an empty money belt that he suggested we put twenty bucks a week in. Mine had eleven dollars.

  “You need to carry that shit, not leave it in the closet,” Junior said, splattering his burger with ketchup.

  “You gonna let me use your phone or not?” My Luddite ways were a constant source of griping for Junior. I wasn’t paranoid, I’d just seen Terminator too many times to live without suspicion that technology might try to kill me someday.

  Fine. I’m paranoid.

  Junior took his iPhone out of his pocket, grimacing. “Still got goddamn sand in it.” He blew a couple of grains off the screen and out of the headphone jack, then slid it across the table.

  I slid my finger across the screen. “What’s your passcode?”

  “I don’t have a passcode.”

  “Then why is this phone asking me for a passcode?”

  Junior grabbed the phone out of my hands. “Goddammit.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t my phone.”

  “Well, hell. Byron must have picked up your phone after you two clowns decided to play Candid Camera with each other.”

  “Fuuuuuck.”

  I shook my head and walked over to the glaring waitress. “I’m sorry. Do you have a payphone anywhere?”

  With a completely straight face, she said, “Yeah. Go out front. There’s a time machine. Set it for 1989…”

  I actually had to hand it to her. That was a solid response. I would have asked to use the diner’s phone, but I didn’t think my ego could handle another razor slice from Flo’s stiletto tongue.

  I walked back to the table.

  Junior popped a pickle slice into his mouth. “Think I should call my phone? Arrange a swap?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure he’ll be real enthusiastic about that exchange.”

  “Well, his shit’s still at Ginny’s. I’m sure he still wants it. We call, tell him that he ponies up the money, we give him back his stuff.”

  “He did seem pretty desperate. He thinks somebody, namely us, is going to kill him for it.”

  Junior’s face dropped. “Aw, crap. You think he doubled back?”

  “If he did, we just gave him enough time to arm himself with something more than a box cutter.”

  “Let’s move.”

  We each tossed a twenty on the table and hauled ass out to the parking lot.

  Fourteen Years Ago

  I didn’t see the shot coming. Hell, I didn’t even remember getting hit, so I couldn’t say until later what it was that clobbered me. I was getting in the shower
; then my next memory was of waking up, water running up my nose, choking, weight between my shoulder blades and on my hips. I heard the giggling of Zach Bingham’s two cronies as they sat on my back, pinning me down on the slick tiles stinking of mildew.

  The cronies, two recent additions to The Home, joined up right quick with the guy who was clearly the biggest threat. Once he got himself a crew, Zach saw an opportunity to take a shot at us.

  And he was taking it right then and there.

  I held my head up and saw Junior through the thick steam, also down, propped up on one elbow as he struggled to hang on to consciousness. A wide gash across his hairline bled openly down his face, swirling in the waters from the community shower at St. Gabe’s.

  Emerging from the steam behind Junior—Zach. The giant was naked, and sporting a proportional erection.

  Which meant it was pretty goddamn huge. And it was pointing right at Junior’s butthole.

  Junior’s head wobbled woozily on his neck as he tried to pull himself away.

  “Junior…JUNIOR!” I yelled.

  Zach looked at me with those predator’s eyes. “I want quiet,” was all he said. Immediately, one of the cronies stuffed a washcloth into my mouth. I gagged as the wet terrycloth hit the back of my throat.

  “Ain’t gonna happen, Zach,” Junior said, his words as glazed as his expression. But if Zach wanted to do what it seriously appeared he wanted to do, well, Junior would have to come to terms real fast with being a sausage casing.

  Zach replied to Junior’s defiance by tugging firmly on his own balls once, twice, then positioning himself behind my friend, pushing Junior’s legs wide with his own knees.

  Junior whipped a weak elbow into Zach’s chest. Zach grabbed a handful of Junior’s red hair and slammed his face into the tile.

  I heard something crack loudly. I hoped it was the cheap tile, and not my best friend’s skull.

  Junior went limp. Zach smiled and spit into his palm.

  Chapter Nine

  We hauled ass back to JP, Junior bitching the entire time about his missing iPhone. Odds were, even with the time we’d taken to eat and get back to Ginny’s, Byron wouldn’t have been able to get back to her place, outside of calling a cab. Even then, cabs didn’t normally roll the streets of Revere, so he’d have a good wait before a gypsy cab could get him. And even then, I’d have laid odds that any cabbie worth his salt would get one look at the blood-and-cocaine covered Byron and keep on driving.