There was no exploration and no deviating from this formula. When a place simultaneously makes you want to vomit and scares the shit out of you, it tends to happen.
When it was definite that I was lost, I turned around and figured out that I wasn’t completely alone. There were some guys behind me enjoying the night air too…. Excellent. I’d just ask them for directions. So I called out:
“Buenos noches, caballeros, ayuda me, por favor, con los direciones. No se ir a mi apartamento.”
They didn’t say anything, just kept walking closer to me, and that’s about when I started to get scared. I started to back away but they just got closer. The beer goggles kept me from really gauging their distance to me until one of them sank his fist into my gut, and I stupidly thought to myself: Yup, they’re too close. I was dragged, gagging for air, into a nearby alleyway, where I guess the beat-down of the century was supposed to take place. I got hit a second time and one of the guys kicked me on the way down, where one guy, the linguist of the group, leaned down and said:
“Stay the fuck away from Gloria, maricon.”
I would have laughed if I could have gotten air. Gloria was fat, ugly, and I had already drunk-fucked her once for which I was given the parting gift of a lifelong STD—plus the bonus for playing, a gang beating. I really could have laughed, but it would just have dissolved into tears. Luckily, I was spared having to think about this. They started the beating in earnest.
But just as soon as it began it seemed like it was over. I looked up for my aggressors and saw somebody taking out of all of them. I saw steel flash in the streetlamp and this short, stocky guy was alternating between kicking, punching, and slamming what looked like an ice pick into anything soft enough. Sheer aggression won the day. Pretty soon, the two that were able were running away; the rest looked like they were either dead or wished they were. Then strong arms were lifting me to my feet and a shoulder snugged itself under mine. I was slowly half dragged, half carried home, where I was tucked into bed like I wished my father had, and I passed out gratefully.
When I woke up the next morning, my legs, arms, head, and torso each resonated with pain like the brass tubes on a pipe organ. I could hear somebody puttering around in the front of the apartment near the front door and living room. I lay there for a minute, trying to put together exactly what happened. I remembered the beating. I remembered being helped home by that guy, who during the moment was just a shadow. So with Captain fuckin’ Nemo playing, like, an aria or something on my body I got up and walked out into the other room.
And nearly shit myself.
What could only have been my benefactor from last night was standing in the kitchen wielding a frying pan like an ex-con version of Martha Stewart. Okay, fine…you know what I mean, an exer-con Martha Stewart. Whatever. That’s not the point. The point is that he was wearing this little dandelion-yellow apron that he had to have brought with him. And, yup—that’s all he was fucking wearing. Plus he was flexing his butt cheeks in time with the Enrique Iglesias track pumping on the stereo.
Oooookay.
He turned around and looked at me and I felt naked. I mean, more naked. Fuck. Anyway, he was looking at me in approval.
“Me gusta tus huevos, y pinga.”
“What!”
“Do you want some brekfas’? I said.”
I stared.
“Are you the guy who saved my ass last night out there?”
“Sí.”
“And you brought me back here?”
“Sí.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
He ignored this one and put a plate with eggs and beans on the table and gestured at it with his hand. Not knowing what else to do, I sat down and started eating. All fuckin’ around aside, it was really good. The cross-dressing, Mexican ex-con Martha Stewart had a gift. He stared at me with a disturbing fondness and ruffled my hair and touched my cheek before turning around to go back to the kitchen counter to fetch a carafe of orange juice.
I sat there eating, the place on my cheek feeling hot and violated. He returned, putting a handful of pills on the table for me, I suppose—three of which were white and recognizable as generic Vicodin, the rest were little and blue. Those I didn’t recognize.
“For dee paing and dee possible infection, que no?”
I swept up the pills, swallowed them down with OJ, and kept eating. It was about the best fucking meal I’d had since I got here. You know, for Mexico? The Mexican food sucks mammoth shit. But this guy could fucking burn, man. It was righteous. He could cook and he could fight.
Then I remembered the butt-flexing in time with ol’ Enrique “I’m so straight I’m queer” Iglesias and my blood ran cold. I looked up at him, he still had his back to me and he was dancing around. He was the ugliest motherfucker I’d ever seen. He was all lumpy and his ass looked like two pit bulls fighting in a sack and one has managed to claw halfway free and the other’s dead. He was covered in bad tattoos—knives, la Virgin de Guadalupe, prayerful hands on one arm, but there was a razor blade pressed between the fingers. Nice.
At no time during this ridiculous exchange did I stop and say, “Wait a fucking minute. Cut. Hold the phone.” I gotta put that up to shock…or maybe I was hypnotized by the butt-flexing. But this was outta hand. My brain was having a rough time connecting Tammy Faye Bakker over there and the display I had witnessed the previous night with those hired thugs. I was officially having a hard time with this. So when he put down a plate of chicharron to go with the eggs and beans and everything else, I figured freaking out could wait until after breakfast. But then I saw him sit across from me with what looked like a salad. I had to ask.
“Dude, you just made all this good food. What’s with the salad?”
“I watching my figure, I want to look cute.”
Well, that’s when I snapped.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You look like a Sailor Jerry ad, for fuck’s sake!”
Then I witnessed what must truly be the most disturbing thing ever. Somebody who looked like a cross between RuPaul, Carlos Mencia, and Ron Jeremy…pouting.
Fucking pouting, for Christ’s sake.
“Look, man, I’m sorry about that. I’m just a little on edge.”
The pout faded, replaced by ice-cold eyes and a stone-hard thousand-yard stare. My nuts shrank up inside me and lodged in my throat like an extra set of tonsils. Desperately, I tried a different tack.
“The food’s really good. Thanks, really. I don’t think my mother or last girlfriend could cook like this. Where’d you learn?”
“En la carcel.”
“La carcel, what’s that? Like a cooking school here or something?”
“In jyail.”
Jyaii, jyail, what the fuck was jyail? Then I looked at him again a little closer. Oh, fuck, he meant jail!
I just stared at him stupidly, trying to figure out what the fuck I was gonna do, when he held up a finger and flounced happily over to a bag in the corner and got some papers out of it. He came back to the table and shoved my breakfast out of the way, from which I had just rescued my coffee cup before it all went crashing to the floor. He stared at the mess in confusion from his little “Fag-Hulk smash” moment but soon recovered and pointed at the papers in front of me triumphantly.
I looked down and saw one of the comic books I had recently worked on. The Chorizo Largo one, and then under that I saw this handwritten letter that looked really familiar…there were some Is dotted with hearts and…oh, sweet blue-blistering fuck. I had found my secret admirer.
“I jor beegeest fang, I love jew,” he said, his eyes gone all wet.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t so fond of them myself, but whatever.” What the hell had this got to do with the Jews? Or fangs?
“Que?”
“The Jews, they’re okay, I guess.” Me, still not getting it.
“No, I love joo.”
“Oh…” Oh, he meant “you.” Oh, fuck.
He started moving toward me
. I looked down in horror to see that his apron was tenting, rapidly transitioning from pup to four-person. Oh God, I’d rather the beat-down in the alleyway. This sucked, I came all this way to avoid prison and a convict was gonna fuck me anyway.
Then this cat did something that I really didn’t expect, not that I was sitting at home one day expecting a tattoo-covered Mexican convict with an identity crisis and a love of cartoon porn to save my life and then fall in love with me, but you know what I mean. I was revising my position by the nanosecond. Back on track now, he grabbed my hand and led me back to the bedroom.
“Look, man. Can we talk about this, please? This really isn’t my thing. What do you want? An autograph? Money? What!” Desperately trying to bargain my way out of it. All he did was grunt and pull harder.
When we got into my bedroom he pulled a knife out from Christ knows where (and believe me, the options were limited and nothing nice). He showed it to me and said, his voice thick with what could only be excitement: “Jew, jew don’ go no place.”
Then he got on the bed on all fours and arched his back like an overaffectionate house cat. My “weird” threshold was gaining by the minute.
“I wan’ jew to fock me.”
“Wha?”
“Fock me.”
Oh no….
“Joo betta, o’ I keel jew.”
My mind rather inappropriately muttered: Yeah, joo an’ ’itler, tambien. “I’m not gay!”
“Yo no soy un maricon. Yo soy una princessa, una chiquita bonita.”
“Uhhh…”
“YO SOY UNA PRINCESSA!” he says, slamming the hand holding the knife into my mattress repeatedly like a homicidal little girl. This was bad.
“I ga’ jew dee leetle blue peels. Dee Biagara.”
I was getting better with the accent. Biagara = Viagra. Shit. “So, jew fuck. I mean, you said those were for pain!”
“Sí, it aches so bad, señor, por favor, ayuda me, con mi dolor! Ayuda me, capitan!” he said, wiggling his hips.
So I had to make some quick decisions. Clearly, we could establish that he was crazy, could kill me, and probably would kill me. He also thought he was a pretty princess and he wanted me to fuck him. Or he was gonna kill me. Well, at least it wasn’t me getting plugged. I picked up the comic book, one of mine, and held it up at arm’s length so that I was looking at it, and not him. Then I reached down with my other hand and unzipped. Time to save my life. This was gonna be awful.
“Un momento, caballero.” I heard a thump and saw a little jar of off-brand Vaseline.
Okay…deep breath. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.
I found myself thinking of the little Mexican chick with the breasts—the first naked girl I drew in Mexico.
When I was ready, I could tell he really had slipped me a shitload of Viagra. He looked over his shoulder and disappointment was plain in his eyes.
“Un pocito pequeño. Pero, it will do.”
“Hey, fuck you!”
“Sí, ahora.”
So I did, God help me.
After it was over and I tamped down my sense of nausea, he rolled over and said, “Oye, my turn now. Fleep over.”
Have I mentioned I hate Mexico City?
Markers
Albert Tucher
“You’re going to owe me big time,” Diana said.
“I already owe you,” said Detective Tillotson. “By the time you collect on all my markers, you’ll be retired. Or I will.”
He walked her down the corridor, past a series of open doors. Even blindfolded, she would have known she was in a hospital. Each room sent that disinfectant-and-dirty-diaper odor out to meet them. He stopped by the only closed door and took a photograph from his breast pocket.
“This is all he had on him. No ID. We haven’t matched his fingerprints to anything yet.”
He turned the photo around to show her. “Can you do this with your hair?”
“Sure. But the nose is a problem. Maybe I had it done, but most nose jobs go the other way. Smaller, not bigger.”
“He won’t be able to tell,” said Tillotson. “Only one eye is open, and the docs think his optic nerve is damaged. He’ll only see your coloring and your general shape. Close enough.”
She made a face. “Somebody did a job on him.”
“Get ready. It’s not pretty.”
She went back down the hall to the unisex visitors’ bathroom. Diana watched herself in the mirror as she tied her dark blond hair at the back of her neck. Her regular clients preferred her hair long and loose, but it didn’t matter. This job was still hooking—being what a man wanted her to be.
She didn’t mind this man, as cops went. He had called on her for help several times. It was tactful of Tillotson to pretend that he owed her, but when a cop asked, she didn’t consider saying no. He could make it impossible for her to work.
She found him where she had left him. “Why am I doing this?”
“He’s not talking. Maybe you can get something out of him.”
“Talking I don’t mind. Just be around in case he gets physical.”
“He won’t. Believe me, he can’t.”
He looked at his watch. “The docs say five minutes.”
She opened the door and entered the room. Tillotson swung the door closed behind her, but he left an inch of space for listening.
The man wouldn’t have passed for human anywhere but in a hospital bed. If she had seen him shrink-wrapped in a supermarket, she would have complained to the meat manager.
She knew which eye wouldn’t open. Someone had worked the entire left side of his face into a bulging purple mass. The right side looked better, but only in comparison. The eye was bruised, but it probably had some leeway to open.
He looked asleep. She hoped that he was. It would make things easier for him, and Tillotson might excuse her from her task.
Yeah, right, she thought.
She made herself take the man’s hand.
His right eye flickered. The lids parted painfully. She felt a stinging behind her own eyes.
Tears. When had she cried last? She blinked several times and told herself to concentrate on the job.
His weakness wouldn’t allow him to turn his head. She leaned over to let him see her. His swollen and shredded lips moved, and something raspy happened in his throat. Diana looked around the room. On a wheeled cart sat a water bottle. A bent plastic straw stuck out of its lid. She tried to free her right hand, but he gripped it with surprising strength. Unwilling to wrestle with him, she stretched and just reached the straw with two fingers of her left hand. She rested the bottle on the bed, changed her grip, and gently inserted the straw between his lips.
She watched to make sure that he didn’t drown himself, but he lacked the strength to take that much water. She pulled the bottle away, waited for him to swallow, and gave him the straw again.
He lay still. Diana thought she had lost him to exhaustion, but then he spoke in a thread of a voice. “I knew you would come.”
She thought about saying something vague but decided to keep quiet. Her voice might spoil the illusion.
“It was worth it. I’d do it again. Whatever it takes.”
Diana thought she understood. She fought the urge to pull her hand away. She had to make sure she was right.
“I can do anything, knowing you’ll be there,” he said. “I knew you didn’t mean those things you said. I knew you would love me sooner or later.”
This time she did jerk her hand away from him. She turned and ran for the door. It opened to meet her, and Tillotson caught her before she collided with him.
“Whoa,” he said. “What happened? Did you get anything?”
She nodded and paused to calm herself.
“I got enough,” she said.
He gave her a skeptical look.
“What I wish you would do,” she said, “is go in there and lean on his chest until he stops breathing. Save the world a lot of trouble.”
In three years this wa
s the first time she had shocked him.
“But what I think you’ll do is go through the local restraining orders and see if anybody is missing a stalker. That woman in the picture you have is getting a breather. From him. And I have a feeling it’s not going to last. And you’re probably going to end up arresting her father, or her boyfriend, or her brother, while he walks.”
Tillotson nodded toward the room. “Sounds like you know something about this kind of thing.”
“I picked up a stalker a while back. Occupational hazard. No matter what I did, he just took it as a test that he had to pass. Pass enough of them, and we would live happily ever after. The problem was, if he saw me with anybody else, it took him about a tenth of a second to go all psycho on me.”
“Is he still a problem?”
“No,” said Diana. “Not for a couple of years.”
She met Tillotson’s eyes. “Since then I have another client who gets freebies for as long as he wants them.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
She shrugged.
“Thanks for coming out,” he said.
She left him alone with his problem.
Two days later she opened the Newark Star-Ledger. She was about to skip to the Olympic news from Barcelona, when she noticed a story about a man who had died in Morristown Memorial Hospital. The man had a name now, but it meant nothing to her. The doctors suspected a blood clot resulting from injuries that he had suffered in a severe beating. They would have to conduct an autopsy.
Police were questioning a young woman and her two brothers.
She called Tillotson at his office. He was in. He sounded as if he wanted to be somewhere else.
“They’re not talking,” he said. “At all. Not many suspects are that smart.”
In other words, she thought, I can keep hoping.
“I owe you,” he said.
“Not this time.”
Bullets and Fire
Joe R. Lansdale
I had hit the little girl pretty hard, knocking her out and maybe breaking something, messing her nose up for sure. But for me, it was worth it.
Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll Page 6
