Toxic Love

by Kristopher Triana

  My regular weekend with them had fallen just after the holiday, but Rachel insisted on keeping the girls with her because they were going up to Utica to visit her parents and were staying through till Sunday night. As with everything else, I folded to my wife’s wishes, Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown once again.

  When Sage left for the night, I forced myself to call.

  “Hello, Mike.” Rachel’s words were flat but there was no anger in them. She sounded tired and I wondered if she’d gotten home late, making up the work that had piled up over the holiday weekend. “What’s going on?”

  “Hi, Rach. Got a minute?”

  “I’m just getting dinner on the stove, but yeah, I can chat.” I heard something sizzling and the thought of Rachel’s sesame chicken made my junk-food-weary gut grumble with despair. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m doing fine. I just wanted to talk about the girls.”

  Silence for a second, then “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “How’re they handling all this? I mean, you see them more than I do now, you must get a better idea of how they’re feeling.”

  Rachel sighed. “They’re about as good as can be expected. They’re resentful toward both of us, especially you. I’m not trying to turn them against you, Mike, I promise you that. They just miss having you here, and your absence turns into anger toward you—at least in Carmen’s case. With Fay it’s not so much anger as it is, I don’t know, disappointment, I guess.”

  The muscles in my neck flexed involuntarily. “Well, I’m not too happy about this living arrangement either.”

  Rachel’s tone darkened. “We’ve already been over this, Michael.”

  The use of my full name told me not to push things. I didn’t want more turbulence. “I’m just saying I want to see them. I let you have them for my weekend so they could see Fred and Barbara. I think I deserve a make-up for that. Give them to me this coming weekend. I think that’s only fair.”

  Talking about them like a shared automobile made me rub the bridge of my nose in self-disgust, but I knew Rachel was reasonable enough to agree. She delayed her response, making her grant of my request seem like a favor, something I would owe her for.

  “Fine. It’ll be good for the girls. But you’ve got work to do with them. They’re not going to turn around on all of this easily—or soon. Teen girls hold grudges like you wouldn’t believe.”

  I had to laugh, but it was a bitter, sardonic one, more huff than chuckle. “Oh, I know. It’s something they never grow out of.”

  “Fine. I have to go, Michael. I don’t want the girls to eat too late.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for the chat.” I did my best to not sound snarky. “And thanks for the weekend.”

  “It’s fine.”

  But nothing was.

  Rachel failed to tell me that Carmen had play rehearsal on Saturday and Fay had ice skating lessons on Sunday afternoon. This made me more chauffeur than father, and limited the time I had with both of them together. The weather had cleared up, the abundant sunshine making the weekend unseasonably warm. I had wanted to take them hiking so we could spend some time outside before the brutality of a New England winter came down upon us. We’d used to go camping in a special, secluded spot I knew in the mountains, and the girls had really enjoyed it when they were little. Going there now would have given us plenty of time to talk in a serene setting. Instead I got to spend time with them separately, taking Fay to a Pixar movie she wanted to see, and Carmen to Target so she could get some new sweaters. At least with Carmen we didn’t just sit in silence while staring at a screen, though that would have been easier than the conversation we had on the drive to pick up Fay from the skating rink.

  “You know how much I love you, right?”

  My daughter shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “What do you mean you guess so?”

  “Just what I said. Gosh!”

  “There’s no reason for you to get snippy with me, I’m just trying to tell you how much I care about you.” It was warm in the car and I was just about to roll up my sleeves when I realized I had to keep them down so Carmen wouldn’t see all of the cuts and scar tissue. “I want you to understand that I didn’t leave you and your sister; your mother and I just separated.”

  “Yeah, well, you still left us.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I was tempted to tell her the truth, that Rachel had forced me out of the house, but I couldn’t bear the idea of trying to turn the girls against their mother. It was too cheap of a move, too low of a blow. Even if I sometimes felt like Rachel was badmouthing me to Carmen and Fay—despite her insistence that nothing could be further from the truth—I couldn’t bring myself to stoop to such rottenness. “Your mother and I agree that us living together isn’t going to work anymore. We felt it was better for us to live apart than for you two to have to see us fighting all the time.”

  Carmen huffed and rustled the plastic bags of clothes I’d bought her with the crumbs of my final check from Ryker. “Whatever.”

  I pulled onto a side street and parked the van. Fay could wait a few minutes.

  “All right, Carmen. This attitude of yours has to change. I know you’re unhappy about what’s happened between your mother and me. I’m not happy about it either. Neither is Mom or Fay. It sucks for all of us, not just you. But the only way we’re going to make it through this is if we work together to understand each other’s feelings and—”

  I didn’t get to finish. Carmen got out of the van and stormed down the sidewalk, leaving the door wide open and the bag from Target in the street. I called her name but she ignored me, so I shut off the engine, hopped out and ran after her. She was walking quickly but didn’t break into a run as I pursued. When I grabbed her shoulder, she spun around and started batting my chest with her fists.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Honey, calm down.”

  “No! I hate you! I fucking hate you!”

  My mouth fell open. Carmen had never used obscene language before and had never said anything remotely this hurtful. She was a totally different girl from the one she’d been while I was still living at home. It left me too surprised to say anything. I struggled to keep tears from my eyes.

  “You don’t understand my feelings!” she cried. “You don’t understand anything!”

  She wasn’t as successful as I was at not crying. The tears came fast and once they’d started they didn’t stop until I’d gotten her back to the van. We drove in silence and when we got to the skating rink I went inside alone. Fay was in a good mood, excited by the progress she was making, but when she got back to the van, one look at Carmen’s pink, puffy face changed that. She asked if she could go home instead of coming back to my apartment, even though it was only three in the afternoon. I asked Carmen if she wanted to go home also but she didn’t reply. I dropped her off too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next morning my cable was out. I hadn’t paid the bill in months. Hell, it was a miracle I even had electricity. I started drinking right around noon. I’d applied to several job postings but hadn’t heard back about a single one. I was getting paranoid, wondering if Ryker was badmouthing me when potential employers called for a reference. He’d never been one for caution when it came to employee relations. I thought about calling and disguising my voice to impersonate such an employer, to see what he said, but was feeling too apathetic and hopeless to bother. All I really wanted to do was drink. In my current mood, even seeing Sage sounded like too much work. I almost didn’t pick up when she called.

  “I think I have something for you,” she said. “Actually, it would be for both of us.”

  I thought she meant something sexual, a new toy or outfit. “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Can you meet me tonight at my house?”

  My ears perked up and I put down my beer. Sage never invited me over to her place; we always had our fun in mine. This was a new step, a big one.


  “Shit yeah, I can. What time?”

  ***

  At ten o’clock I arrived at her house. It was a glorious, two-story home in a gated community—white pillars; cherry oak front door; no signs of wood rot or dirt; chandeliers shining in the windows, revealing high ceilings. I pulled into the circular driveway. Sage’s BMW was nowhere in sight. I figured it was in the garage. What was in the driveway was an old model Trans Am, black with shimmering rims. Getting out of my van, I whistled at the impeccable condition of the thirty-year-old hot rod, hoping this was the surprise Sage had mentioned. The thought of getting a blowjob from her while I was driving this beauty at ninety miles an hour made my cuts tingle and my balls draw tight. I patted the hood and went to the front door, hands in my pockets against the cold that had returned with gusto, a reminder that December was not far off. I hit the doorbell with my elbow and heard it chime.

  I’d expected Sage to answer the door in a French maid outfit or leather dominatrix gear. It seemed appropriate for our first night in her fancy digs. Instead she wore loose jeans, a hooded sweater and only minimal makeup. Her hair was in a lazy bun. She looked ready for binge-watching, not a fuck fest.

  “Hey,” she said, only offering me her cheek when I leaned in to kiss her. “Come in.”

  If the outside of the house was impressive, then the interior was mind blowing—Italian furniture, marble floors, antique vases and authentic paintings on the walls. I almost expected a white tiger to be waltzing around as an exotic pet or shirtless young men holding fans and grapes. Instead there was a lanky, blond-haired man in an Ed Hardy shirt sitting on the leather couch, smoking a clove. He turned to look at me and his eyes were so dark that at first I thought he was wearing eyeshadow. His face was sunken with high cheekbones that gave him a mean, skeletal appearance. He reminded me of the rapist cop from Pulp Fiction.

  “Mike, this is my cousin, Lester.”

  The drug dealer, I remembered, the pimp who’d entrapped his own dad with teenage pussy in an effort to extort money from him. I nodded a hello. Lester raised two fingers and bounced them off his skull in an apathetic salute, smoke pouring from his nostrils like dry ice.

  “I wanted you two to meet,” Sage said. “He has a great idea. Come sit down.”

  I sat in the loveseat across from Lester. Sage sat down beside me, putting her hand on my thigh. I winced slightly, the wounds beneath my jeans oozing a little.

  “So you’re sure this guy’s cool?” Lester asked.

  Sage rolled her eyes. “For the last time, Les—yeah, Mike is cool. I wouldn’t bring him in on this if he weren’t. You know that.”

  Lester took one more drag before snuffing out his clove in the ashtray. In it, I noticed a few pot roaches. I wondered if Sage partook. Not that I would have minded. Personally, I didn’t enjoy pot—hallucinogens, even mild ones like weed, tended to send me to dark places—but I didn’t look down on people who smoked it. Sage had never mentioned any drug use to me, nor offered any dope during our torrid humps. I’d never seen her smoke anything harder than a Newport, like the one she lit up now.

  “Sage tells me you were one of them crime scene cleanup guys,” Lester said.

  “Yeah. I was.”

  He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Was ya any good?”

  Sage huffed. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Les. He’s a professional.”

  “Yeah, but ya said he got canned.”

  “We both got canned.”

  “And ya still haven’t told me why.”

  “It doesn’t matter why, dingleberry.”

  “Ay, come on, I just wanna make sure yous two know what you’re doin’.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” I cut in. “So does your cousin.”

  Lester smirked and nodded. I ascertained he was the kind of guy who liked men who asserted themselves. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s say ya do. What’re ya willing to wipe up?”

  I leaned back and Sage took my hand, pumped it twice.

  “Depends,” I told him.

  “We’ve done it all,” Sage interjected. “Dead bodies, blood and guts, shit and piss—you name it.”

  Lester laughed with his mouth closed, humming. “See, me—I don’t even like pickin’ up my dog’s shit with a bag. Makes me sick, so I just leave it wherever it falls. I figure hey, it’s natural. Ain’t the end a the world if some dumb fuck steps in it. Serves him right for not looking where he’s goin’, am I right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You got a dog, Mike?”

  “No.”

  He went tsk-tsk. “Don’t know if I can trust a guy who don’t like dogs.”

  “Didn’t say I didn’t like dogs.” Carmen was allergic, so after Cooper died Rachel and I had not gotten another one. “I just don’t have one right now.”

  “Just get to the fucking point, Lester,” Sage said in a huff of smoke.

  Her cousin made a temple with his fingers. “Okay, so it’s like this, see. I know some guys who could use a good cleanup service every now an then. With you two being pros, ya could do a real thorough job, the kind that wouldn’t leave a trace, ya dig?” He waited for me to agree. I nodded with sweat pooling at the small of my back. “See, these guys, they’ll pay real good money, long as ya don’t ask no questions and can keep your mouths shut. Think ya can do that?”

  “Of course, Les,” Sage said.

  “Whaddabout you, Mr. Mike?”

  I glanced at Sage. Her smile was mischievous, eyebrows wiggling. I had no doubts as to why she wanted this. My cutting had been enough to hold her over, but it was no match for the bliss she’d known while writhing in the stinking gore of strangers. I wanted to satisfy her every desire, but this was one hell of a request. Aside from the indecent public behavior I’d engaged in with Sage, the most illegal thing I’d ever done was park in a handicapped space when I had diarrhea and had to run into a McDonald’s bathroom to keep from shitting my pants (a pain I knew all too well). I was no criminal. Now I was being asked to coerce with them, to clean up after their felonies—battery, rape, and most likely murder. Probably murder most of all, it being the messiest. And if I were to clean up a murder, wouldn’t that make me an accessory? Was this something I could really go through with?

  “I know you can use the money,” Sage said, reminding me of this hard fact.

  I rubbed my chin.

  “If you’re available right now,” Lester said, “I can take you guys to a job that’ll bring about a thousand bucks each.”

  The figure stunned me. “What happened?”

  “No questions, ‘member? It’s a house of a friend a mine. Real nice place but nobody’s a fan of the new decoration of blood all over the walls and carpet. He wants it clean, and I mean clean. Can’t have a drop left, ya get me?”

  “Yeah, I get you.”

  I looked at Sage again. Her eyes were as bright as the cherry of her cigarette. When Lester’s phone buzzed he checked a message, and in the moment he wasn’t looking Sage’s hand went to my crotch and I was lost to her again, lost and willing to do anything.

  ***

  Lester had understated the amount of work, most likely in an effort to downplay the extremity of the violence that had taken place in this McMansion. The living room was a sea of tepid gore. It looked as if a two-hundred-pound man had been dismembered with a chainsaw and his limbs had been worked like pumps, turning the veins into squirt guns to douse the whole fucking room. Blood dripped from the walls and one corner of the ceiling. I recognized the small, popcorn-like shapes on the carpet as brain matter. Most shocking of all was the half of a human jaw slung over the brick that separated the fireplace from the floor. It was a good thing Ryker hadn’t sent anyone to pick up the HAZMAT suits yet. They were still in my van along with all of the cleaning supplies, making this dark turn of events seem almost predestined, inescapable.

  The owner of the house was a fat goombah in a jogging suit, a caricature of an Italian Mafioso, who didn’t seem remotely nervous ab
out the carnage in his living room. He was eating a donut when we arrived just before midnight. He never gave his name. I was glad not to know it.

  “Think you can save my carpet?” Goombah asked.

  It looked expensive and totally ruined. It had once been white and now, at best, it would be pink and would forever reek like raw sewage or the nasal burn of heavy bleach.

  “We’ll need to work alone,” Sage said.

  Goombah looked to Lester. “What’s she talkin’ about, uh?”

  “Sage, ya didn’t say nothin’ about that.” Lester rolled his shoulders, sucking his teeth. “Why ya gotta work alone?”

  “You don’t wanna breathe in the shit we’re going to use,” I jumped in. “It’s highly toxic. So is all of this human waste. We’ve only got two HAZMAT suits and this is going to take a while. We’ll need the house to ourselves.”

  I was looking at Lester and his “friend” but kept Sage in the corner of my eye. She was rubbing her hands, a compulsion that always gave away her horniness. The goombah finished his donut as he weighed all of this in his big, fat head. He turned to Lester.

  “You’re vouching for these two, right Jaworzyn?”

  Lester had reservations, no doubt, but his desire for a finder’s fee must’ve been worth the risk. “Yeah, man. S’all good. These two’ll make this here place look like the Ritz Carlton up there in Boston. Ain’t nobody gonna know shit.”

  Goombah shrugged comically. “Alright. If you’re willin’ to be held responsible, hey, what the hell, uh? This night can’t get any worse, uh?”

  Sage helped me unload the van and Lester told her to call him when the job was done. The goombah said he was going to his brother’s restaurant and locked the doors to his bedroom and study before leaving. “You ain’t got no business in there.” He gave me the number to the restaurant instead of giving me his cell phone number and said when we wrapped up to call and ask for Vinnie Rags, and give the guy the message of “all clear”. He drove off in a Lincoln town car he barely fit into, and once we were alone in the house Sage kicked out of her sneakers and immediately began to strip.