Toxic Love

by Kristopher Triana

  Carmen leaned over the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and answered for her sister. “Chuck is Mom’s boyfriend. She asked us not to tell you but I guess the cat’s out of the bag now.” She pointed to Sox for emphasis.

  My chest drew tight. Who the fuck is Chuck? I hadn’t known Rachel had started dating. I realized then that I’d been holding out hope all this time, hope that somehow we would patch things up, that I would move back in and, after a few months of hard work and therapy, we would have a happy marriage again. The newsflash of this Chuck asshole pulled away a dream I hadn’t been fully aware I was having.

  I heard footfalls on the stairs and turned to see Rachel coming down. Her hair was perfect, brunette ribbons, the curls a new look, and she appeared to have lost weight since I’d last seen her. She looked incredible. If she’d heard us talking about her boyfriend, she didn’t show it.

  “I have to head out,” she said. “I’m running late as it is.”

  I almost asked her who Chuck was but decided against it. Rachel didn’t look at me as she walked to the closet and retrieved her coat.

  “You’ll have to take Fay to her skating lesson,” she said, “unless you’re canceling that too.”

  I put my hands on my hips, thinking Rachel, for God’s sake, I just wanted to see them, stop trying to turn everybody against me, will ya? But I didn’t say that. Instead I looked to Fay. She was too busy petting Sox to notice. The cat stared at me with evil, green eyes, its furry belly in the air.

  “I was supposed to see Jenny after school too,” Carmen said. “We were going to practice our lines for the play next week. So much for that, right, Dad?”

  They were all staring at me now, the three women I’d always loved looking at me like I was a home invader. Even Fay seemed annoyed by my presence. I’d disrupted their day, their lives. I wished I could explain to them why it was so important for me to see them. If they’d known I might be shot in the face tomorrow and tossed into a wood chipper, they may have been happier to see me today. Maybe. If these were my last hours, I wanted to spend them with the only people who truly mattered. I loved them all so much, even Rachel.

  But in the end, I just wanted them to be happy.

  “Okay,” I said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so spontaneous. I guess I just miss you all. I don’t think you can blame me for that.” They didn’t say anything. “Girls, you can go to school today if that’s what you prefer. Don’t worry, Rach, I’ll drive them.” I waited, but they still didn’t speak. “I’m sorry. This hasn’t been easy for me, and I know it sure as heck hasn’t been easy for you all either.” My voice quivered. “But I’m trying. Really, I’m trying as best I can.”

  As the tears reached my eyes, I noticed the wetness rising in all of theirs. Rachel looked away, holding the bridge of her nose. Carmen sniffed and reached for a paper towel, then turned her back so no one would see her dabbing at her running mascara. Abandoning the cat, Fay crossed the room and wrapped her arms around me, weeping.

  I wished she would never let go.

  ***

  “It’s going to be okay, you know.”

  I patted Carmen’s knee. We were driving to her school, having already dropped Fay off at Fillmore Elementary. Snow flurried on the other side of the windshield.

  “I know, Dad,” Carmen said. She stared out the window, not looking at me but talking to me, which was enough. She sniffled. “And I know I’ve been a brat. It’s just hard, like you said. I guess I’m no better at dealing with it than you are, huh?”

  “Well, you are your father’s daughter.”

  “It’s better than being Chuck’s daughter. That guy is a tool. If you think I’ve been giving you grief, you should see how I haze him.”

  I smiled. My eldest hated the new guy. I wondered how long he’d been around but didn’t ask. If Rachel had formed a relationship with him before we were separated, it was something the girls didn’t need to figure out. That would be a private hell for me alone.

  “Just try to take things easy on your mother, okay? She has a right to be happy too.”

  “I know. It’s just weird to see her with somebody else. They never kiss in front of me and Fay or anything, but we know they’re more than friends. I mean, she stays over his house sometimes even though he doesn’t at ours.”

  I cringed but was grateful Rachel was being respectful of the girls’ feelings. Who knew how long this Chuck thing would last. He was probably just a rebound. It wouldn’t be right to make the house into a revolving door for swinging dicks. Rachel understood that. She was a good mom.

  “So how do I get tickets to your big show?”

  Carmen smirked. “You basically just show up. It’s not like it’s Hamilton or something. You don’t have to worry about tickets.”

  “Okay. I’ll show up early then. I want to be front row center. Then one day you’ll remember me in your speech at the Academy Awards. And when you’re rich and famous you can buy me a new van to replace this piece of garbage.”

  “Oh, Dad,” she said, shaking her head, a warm smile on her face. “What I am gonna do with you?”

  ***

  The morning had started off like a Wes Craven movie and ended like a Hallmark special, and while there was still work to do yet with my relationship with daughters (and even my strange, new relationship with my ex) there had been a minor breakthrough. Instead of holding back my pain the way I had been, I had let it all out, exposing the raw wound of my heart. This candid reveal warmed each of them to me. I realized by doing the macho thing and keeping my tears a secret, I had inadvertently sent the message that I wasn’t upset at all, that my life was just as good, if not better, without my family. It had to be more than words. They needed to see me cry, witness my hurt. My daughters had to know they weren’t alone in their pain and that their dad longed for them the same way they did him. Grief bonds people together, even when the hard glue of their former happiness has started to crack and peel away.

  When I got back to my apartment it was almost a quarter past nine in the morning. I hadn’t eaten since last night’s burrito, and that had ended up on Lester, so I was hungry as well as exhausted. I went into the fridge and found a twenty-pack of McNuggets I’d only eaten half of. I stood there in the kitchen and ate them cold, washing them down with my last beer, trying not to think about how I’d fucked a dying woman’s bullet wounds.

  There wasn’t much to do now but wait. Eventually the Endrizzi family would send some gorilla in a leather coat to my apartment to cripple me with an ice pick until I told him what had happened. Hopefully then he’d just shoot me instead of killing me in some more elaborate, excruciating fashion. Or maybe they would buy my story. Maybe they wouldn’t come looking for me at all. Maybe this would all blow over if I just lied low for a while.

  Yeah, right, tell me another one, Ass-brook.

  I broke my New Year’s resolution and fished my bottle of Jim Beam out from under the kitchen sink where I’d stashed it (just in case company wants some, I’d told myself). I sat down in my recliner and turned on the TV, not watching it, just wanting the noise, and drank my nerves into submission just enough for a long nap filled with nightmares.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They came for me the next day.

  I first spotted them while I was on my way to the grocery store. It was a gray sedan with tinted, black windows that followed me down every turn, even when I pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store only to turn around and go right back into the street, confirming they were tailing me. So now they knew that I knew, but it didn’t stop them. I decided doing this in a public place would be safest, so I went into the parking lot of the Big Foods Grocery Mart, pulling into a spot as close to the store as I could get.

  The car slowed, passing me, and for a moment I thought my pursuers were going to drive off and come back for me at a more opportune time. Instead, the sedan turned around and parked in the spot directly in front of me. I looked to the passenger seat and fl
oorboards for something I could use as a weapon. I’d buried Lester’s guns with him and the others, having wanted to dispose of every bit of evidence there was. All I had on hand was the extra large screwdriver I used to pop the lids off the cans of chemicals. I took it in my right hand but stayed in the van with the motor running, daring them to make the first move, which they did.

  A heavyset man in a jogging suit came out of the car’s passenger side. I recognized him as the goombah from the first job Sage and I had done for Lester—Fat Tony or whatever the fuck his name was. The driver’s side door opened and a musclehead stepped out, ridiculously underdressed for the winter weather in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt small enough to fit Carmen. He must have been six foot three at the very least, and had a face like raw hamburger that had been sitting around too long. I couldn’t help but think he probably smelled the same. Goombah knocked on my window with one knuckle. He looked bored. I rolled the window only halfway down, as if the safety glass would protect me.

  “Hey, Mikey,” he said, still deadpan. “How are ya?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good, good. So, listen, I was thinkin’ maybe you’d wanna come for a ride with us, uh?”

  Musclehead stood between the grills of the two cars. If I popped gears into drive fast enough I could crush him between the fenders. I could also get shot.

  “Don’t worry about Abe,” Goombah said.

  I stared at the Musclehead. Abe?

  “He ain’t gonna do nothin’ till I tell him to,” said Goombah. “And right now, I ain’t got no reason to wanna do that, do I, Mikey?”

  “No.”

  “Hey, now that’s good. It’s nice when people can all get along, uh? Now come on into the car. The boss wants to talk to ya. Better to come see him without Abe havin’ to make you do it.”

  My throat was like sandpaper. “I don’t want to go for a ride.”

  Goombah shook his head. “That ain’t the kinda answer you wanna give right now. As it stands, the boss ain’t mad at ya. If he were, we’d a killed you already, uh? He just wants to talk to ya, Mikey, about all a this cleanup business. I think it could turn out pretty good for ya if you don’t insult him by not showin’ up.”

  I clenched the screwdriver, wondering what I could possibly do with it. No good plan of attack came to mind.

  “If I go with you,” I said, “will you promise to leave my family out of this?”

  Goombah cleared his throat. “Look pal, I’m tellin’ ya straight. The boss ain’t mad at ya. He just don’t like people sayin’ no to his invites. Now why don’t ya get in the fuckin’ car already, uh? It’s too goddamn cold for this shit.”

  ***

  I thought for sure they were going to drive me to some secluded place and put an end to this train wreck of a life once and for all. Perhaps they even knew where I’d dumped the bodies and were taking me there to dig up the grave so they could add me to the heap. I could only pray they just wanted to kill me instead of interrogate me. I didn’t think I could handle having sewing needles shoved under my fingernails and live rats shoved up my ass.

  Fuck it, I thought. As long as they leave Rachel and the girls alone, they can kick out every one of my teeth and set fire to my nutsack. Just leave my daughters be.

  When we entered an upscale neighborhood somewhere around Avon, I began to think they might not be killing me after all, and a ripple of tentative relief went through me. They really were taking me to see the boss. That meant there was a chance to talk to him, which meant there was also a chance, however slim, to get through this with my skin still attached to my body. I would just have to keep my story straight and believable.

  The goons had been quiet for most of the ride, letting Tom Jones serenade us through the gentle snow, but now Goombah turned around and put one arm over the seat.

  “See?” he said. “We didn’t take ya down to the docks and beat ya with one of them baseball bats with the barb wire on it, what like that guy in that there zombie show. If you was on the shitlist, youda been toast by now, uh? So relax, will ya?”

  The house was a sprawling mansion in the middle of enough acres to start a family farm. The house was modern but had an old world flair to it, making it seem like it belonged in the United Kingdom instead of here in the states, with its colonial architecture and the golden onions on top of its towers. You’d have thought it was a catholic church instead of some mobster’s happy home, except for the thick-looking black guy at the door with the Mohawk and beard. He looked like a more sensibly dressed Mr. T, his arms crossed and his face like granite.

  “That there’s Sandman,” Goombah said.

  I winced, thinking the name was racist but wasn’t sure how.

  “That was his nickname back when he was a prize fighter. They called him that cause he always put guys to sleep, uh?” Goombah chuckled again. “Sure surprised me when the boss wanted to hire a black guy. Never thought I’d see the day. I ain’t no bigot, they’s good people and alla that, but a black guy workin’ the door of this house?”

  Goombah and Abe got out, so I did too, and at the door the sentry immediately patted me down.

  Goombah said: “Ey, come on, Sandy, don’t ya think we done did that already? What am I, a fuckin’ hemorrhoid?”

  We went inside and my breath caught in my throat at the garish opulence of the main room. If Sage’s house had been chic, this was a decadent palace, a modern castle that made her place look like a urine-soaked cardboard box. It was the perfect combination of beautiful and gaudy, reeking of excess and covered in more gold plating than Donald Trump’s shitter. Everything looked rare and imported, as if the rugs were made of authentic Yeti hide and the tile of fine china. I had the feeling that if you opened up the furniture cushions there would be no filling other than small, unmarked dollar bills, and imagined the man who lived here as Al Pacino with a face covered in cocaine.

  “This way,” Goombah said, pointing toward the spiral staircase.

  Upstairs, we went down the hall to the great room. The double doors were open. There was a desk set in front of built-in bookshelves filled with old hardbacks. Probably signed first editions from long dead authors, I thought. Yours truly—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Sitting at the desk was a man who looked nothing like Al Pacino. He was stocky with olive skin, silver hair brushed across his head with a little Superman curl at the front. He didn’t have on a pin-striped suit with a carnation, but rather a polo shirt with a small alligator on the breast and a pair of khakis, as if he’d just come back from a round of golf. As we entered the room, he looked up at me with intense eyes.

  “Mr. Ashbrook,” he said. “How good of you to come.”

  Like I had a choice. I forced a smile. “Thanks for having me, sir.”

  “So you’re the one Jaworzyn brought on,” he said, “to take care of the spills.”

  I nodded. Best to not to speak and blurt out the wrong thing. I had to be cautious, give myself time to feel the man out.

  “And you cleaned up the warehouse last night.”

  He hadn’t said it like a question, but a statement. He already knew I’d been there. I had to make a conscious effort to keep breathing as my scrotum tightened around my testicles. No reason to lie to him. At least not yet.

  “I cleaned up a warehouse in Derby, right off the river, if that’s the one you mean.”

  “You know damn well which one I mean, Ashbrook.”

  Gulp.

  “I’ve been told that was a bad scene,” the boss said. “But the place is spotless now. You could eat off of that floor, isn’t that right, Ray?”

  He was talking to Goombah. The big man nodded. “Spic and span, boss. Just like Mikey here did at my place when we hadda take care of you-know-what.”

  The boss returned to me. “Tell me about last night, Ashbrook.”

  This was it. Either he was going to buy my line of bullshit or he wasn’t. Perhaps he knew the truth already and just wanted to see how much I would lie to him, so he could decide just how
much punishment I deserved. I wouldn’t know until I tried.

  “Well, Mr. Endrizzi—”

  The boss, Abe and Ray the Goombah all broke into laughter.

  “You think I’m an Endrizzi?” the boss said, grinning. “You flatter me, Ashbrook. You think one of the Endrizzis would waste their time talking to a two-center like you? No way. No, I’m high up but I’m not royalty. I just handle their accounts this side of New England.” Chuckling, he reached into the top desk drawer and I recoiled, expecting him to draw a firearm. Instead he took out a cigar and used a cutter to snip off the end. “Now, you were saying?”

  I breathed slowly. “Yeah, um, last night Lester says he’s got another job for me at this warehouse. So I follow him there and it’s a big mess, like you said.” I looked out the window as I spoke. “I get to work and he says he has to go out for a while. So I scrubbed the place up and down, working until the sun came up, and when I was finished, well, Les hadn’t come back yet.” I looked at the boss, waiting to see any change in his slack expression, some color come into his gray eyes, but he was as stoic as an old nun. “He’d never given me his number, so I packed up my gear and headed home.”

  There. I’d said it. There was no changing my story now. The boss lit his cigar and gazed at me through a veil of sweet-smelling smoke. He was quiet for a few seconds, causing sweat to form in every fold of my flesh. I wanted to scream. I wanted Ray to put a bullet in me and put me out of my misery. Anything was better than this.

  “So Lester never came back?” the boss asked.

  “No, sir.”

  I flinched when he slammed his fist on his desk.

  “Son of a bitch!” he said.

  I thought for sure he was going to tell Abe to feed me my own cock. Instead he looked to Ray.

  “Cazzo! Jaworzyn didn’t take care of that stronzino Dom Bianchi. Dom must’ve weaseled his way into Jaworzyn letting him go, putting him into Ciccarone’s pocket too! Now Jaworzyn’s disappeared on us, taking Dom with him, and they’re both working for Ciccarone. Guaran-fucking-tee it. They’ve probably told him everything by now! Fucking son of a bitch!”