Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

by Todd Robinson

  The cops get my contact information and Social Security number. They drive me back to town. I catch a glimpse of Angelo in the parking lot. He’s sitting down and the cops are dusting the soles of his shoes.

  Benny’s murder makes the front page of the Sunday newspaper. According to the story, the police have no “immediate suspects” but are working on “a couple of leads.” It says Benny went to play paintball with “a few friends,” but the story mentions no one by name.

  There isn’t much to say about Benny himself. His dad moved away when he was young and his mom died in a wreck several years ago. The story says he is survived by a sister and an aunt who raised him.

  Monday passes and nothing happens. On Tuesday, I go to my 9:00 a.m. class. Afterwards, someone yells my name as I walk to the parking lot.

  I turn around as a girl runs towards me, her breasts bouncing in rhythm. She has dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. There is something familiar about her. She sticks out her hand.

  “Hi, I’m Beth.”

  “Hey. Harold.”

  “I know. We were in advanced bio together.”

  I look around the parking lot. “I’m not taking advanced bio here.”

  “No, no. Senior year at Trolley Tech.”

  Trolley Tech is what we call my high school because it’s in Trolley Township. Now I seem to remember someone who looked like Beth. She sat behind me. She might have been my lab partner, but her hair was different and she sure as hell didn’t have those knockers.

  I ask, “Eighth period? You were in Mr. Bower’s class?”

  She gives me a wide smile. “You remembered. You helped me out so much back then. I hoped you might be able to talk about what happened.”

  Oh, shit.

  Beth Weiss. Beth is Benny’s sister, the smart one who skipped a grade and caught up to the rest of us.

  “You look different, Beth. Your hair is longer.”

  Her hand touches her forehead. “I let it grow out. Listen, could we go for coffee somewhere? I’m all strung out over this weekend.”

  The student union building has a cafeteria. We get big coffees and grab a corner table near the window. Our knees touch as we sit down.

  Beth wants to be an accountant, but she doesn’t have enough money to attend a four-year school, so she’s getting her associate’s degree first. She lives with her aunt—a different one than Benny lived with—and she’s basically on her own.

  “You were always so smart,” I say, “always with your head in a book.”

  Her laugh sounds like tinkling music. “I took advanced bio against my better judgment. I got a B, but it took a lot of work. I decided being a doctor wasn’t for me.”

  “That’s not for everyone,” I agree.

  Beth stares into the swirls of her coffee. “Benny was into gambling. I assume you knew that much.”

  “Can’t say that I did.”

  “Well, he was. He always liked sports, but he let it get the best of him. He liked to gamble on football mostly.”

  My breath comes in short spurts. I bite down on my back teeth to keep calm. “He liked gambling on football?”

  She sips her coffee, gazes out the window. “He owed a lot of money. He wouldn’t tell me how much, but it was four figures. He came to me two weeks ago, wanting to borrow some. I blew him off. I said it would serve him right if he got beat up, because we’re poor and gambling is stupid.”

  I’m trying to think. Angelo runs a sports book. Sometimes he even carries his tip sheets into the bar. Fuck me. I should have seen it coming.

  “Is something wrong, Harold?”

  “This person Benny owed money to—did he say who it was?”

  A hand goes over her face. The tendons and cords stick out and the knuckles go white and the tears bleed through.

  “You know damn well who it was,” she says.

  “I do now.”

  “I don’t even want to say his name.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  Beth and I spend the next couple of days together. We eat lunch on campus and go out for dinner and beers. She drinks just enough to redden her cheeks and get her thinking out loud.

  “I told the police about Angelo,” she says. “They already suspect him. Do you think they’ll arrest him?”

  “For the one hundredth time, I don’t know. It may take a little time. They always want to be sure.”

  Her hand slides over mine. We’re at this coffee shop just off Market Square, trying to avoid the bars where we might see friends. Angelo knows half the people in town, and the fact that Beth and I are hanging out makes me hinky, but I can’t help it. Her eyes go straight through me and it feels so good.

  She squeezes my hand and talks in a small voice. “I’m scared. I can’t go on like this. This town is too small. At some point, I’m going to see him. What will I do then? How will I act?”

  She asks very good questions. The fact is, people can rehearse stuff like that, pretend they’ll behave a certain way, but they are clueless until the moment comes.

  Beth agreed to babysit on Saturday night, so I head to the bar and find my regular seat. I don’t care if anyone shows up or if I get hammered. I just want to think about Beth and how I can inch closer to her.

  Angelo arrives around midnight. He finds an empty seat at the other end of the bar and starts dropping whiskey shots into his beers. He smiles at no one in particular, acting like he has no worries in the world.

  I pay my tab and walk over to him. “Hey, Angelo.”

  “Hey.”

  “Long time no see. Hear anything more about Benny?”

  He fiddles with an empty shot glass. “It was muddy around where they found the body. They took prints of my shoes, the cops did. I been in twice for questioning. Got me a lawyer from Pittsburgh.”

  Angelo is lubed up. His eyes twitch from something other than beer.

  “There was another game in the general vicinity,” he continues. “Some other paintball dudes. One of those kids could have migrated over to our field. That’s what the cops said—‘migrated.’ Two of those kids from Aliquippa have juvenile assault records. Fucking niggers. Maybe Benny pissed them off. He can get like that—trash talking and whatnot. But they took my shoe prints and I got a lawyer from Pittsburgh.”

  “You said.”

  He orders another shot and beer. His hand slides towards the empty mug. “So, you been up to much? Haven’t seen you around.”

  “I figured you were busy.”

  He slowly shakes his head. “Harold, Harold, Harold. How is she, man? I mean, really? How is she?”

  “How is who?”

  “The Jewess.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “You been down to the coffee shop with her, holding hands and shit. She’s crying on your shoulder. Making goo-goo eyes. You slamming her yet?”

  I jam both fists into my pockets. “She goes to community college. We have a class together.”

  “But are you slamming her? Are you having hot Jew princess sex? Is she spreading her—”

  “She’s upset, Angelo. It was her brother. Wouldn’t you be upset if it was your brother? You’ve got that much of a heart, I assume.”

  He catches the hint of a challenge. He brings the empty mug to my chin and holds it there, ever so softly. “You’re not with her tonight. How come?”

  “She’s babysitting.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tap-tap-tap goes the mug against my jaw.

  I get out of there as fast as I can.

  Beth doesn’t answer her cell phone, doesn’t return a text. Of the two hospitals within driving distance, St. Gabe’s is the closest to her apartment. I call the main number and ask if someone has been admitted under the name of Beth Weiss.

  The phone clicks and there is the sound of breathing.

  “Hello?”

  “Beth. It’s Harold.”

  “I was going to call you. It’s okay, really….”

  I slam the phone and
get down there.

  Two guys with hockey masks dragged her into the alley behind her apartment building as she left for her babysitter’s job. They pulled down her pants and finger-blasted her, smacked her hard enough to raise a welt below the right eye, and broke a finger on general principle.

  The ER was going crazy that night because of a three-car wreck on Interstate 80. When Beth said she fell down the stairs, the doctor took her at her word. She tells me the real story as I hold her hand in the room.

  “You need to call the cops. This was a sexual assault. They can put those guys away for years.”

  “Thank you. I’m aware of what happened.” Her eyes turn dark and empty. “They know that I blabbed about Benny’s gambling debts. They have a friend on the police force, some white power guy. They said I should keep my mouth shut or they’ll come back and do worse. They said the same goes for my boyfriend.” She smiles weakly. “I guess that means I officially have a boyfriend.”

  “Congratulations. See what it’s gotten you?”

  We share a long, quiet moment. Beth gives me the look of someone who has an unspoken question.

  “We can’t trust the police,” I say.

  “What will we do?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  The planning takes a week or two. We talk over the phone and text each other, but we never meet face-to-face. Towards the end, we drive separately into Pittsburgh and hang out in a bar and stay in a Motel 6, going over the details. We fall asleep on the cheap bed, and in the morning I want her so bad that it hurts. But I know what those guys did, so I just kiss the top of her nose and tell her everything will be okay.

  I imagine the old light in her eyes has returned. It belongs to the type of woman whose future holds babies and big dogs, who scours the bushes for lost toys and smiles because the happiness is so wide that it hurts. It is a pure, clean look, and I need to look towards it every chance I get.

  Two weeks from the day that Benny died, we walk into the mountains, to the spot where Angelo always drinks beer late at night. Like everything else outside town, his drinking spot is old coal lands. I have seen it during the day, so I feel comfortable leading Beth up here at night. It is nothing but a small clearing with a shaft that runs into the ground. It was apparently dug years ago by bootleg miners who wanted to steal coal from the mining company. I say “apparently” because you never know how these stories get started. Anyway, it’s a good place to drink because you can toss an empty bottle into that shaft and never see it again. I’ve done it myself.

  Beth and I step on the flat rocks so we don’t make noise, but it doesn’t matter because Angelo’s headbanger music drowns out everything as we get closer.

  I have studied Angelo’s nightly drinking routine, sneaking up here after saying goodnight to Beth. I know when he arrives, when he leaves, how much he drinks. I didn’t tell Beth because she would have worried about me coming up here alone, but I figure this is on-the-job training. The best funerals are pre-planned.

  My heart hammers a beat to the angry music as we move through the fingers of white birch trees.

  The moon is high and full, the sky cloudless.

  Angelo’s shaven head is visible through a stand of mountain laurel. He sits cross-legged next to a cooler of beer, near the mine shaft. The boom box is next to him. CDs are spread among the sharp rocks.

  I have my paintball rifle and Beth has a can of pepper spray.

  Angelo nods his head to the music. The cobra on his neck twitches. Next to him Fat Norman, one of his skinhead friends, yells about mud-colored bitches and swarthy immigrants. He likes to get up and stretch, which he does right now.

  “Here we go,” I whisper. “Are you ready?”

  Beth holds the pepper spray like a time bomb. “I’m scared, Harold.”

  “We discussed this. Go, Beth!”

  “God forgive me.”

  She moves into the light. She wears tight track pants and a sports bra and her running shoes.

  She waves her hand like I told her. Norman eventually sees her standing backlit against the moon with those breasts and that ass curving into the night like nobody’s business.

  By now, Norman is so drunk that he can’t even speak. He tries to say something and it comes out sideways.

  Beth backs away and starts to disappear down the hill. Fat Norman lumbers after her, just like we planned. Beth ran track in high school and there’s no way Norman will ever catch her. She will lead him down the mountain and lose him. The pepper spray is just in case something goes wrong.

  Angelo says nothing as Norman disappears. That’s how it is when you’re drunk. You see things and simply accept them for what they are.

  I break cover and walk straight towards him. He takes a second to recognize me.

  “Harold,” he says. “What gives? Good to see you.”

  I move the barrel to his face and pull the trigger. I don’t even think about it. That’s what you do in paintball. You decide when to move and you just go.

  Angelo screams. It is a terrible, high-pitched noise, and he rolls on the ground, clutching his right eye. Rule number one in paintball is to always wear goggles.

  The next step requires me to push him into the mine shaft, but he rolls towards it and falls in on his own. He screams for a second or two; then comes a whoosh of breath and the tinkle of glass as he lands on a generation’s worth of broken bottles.

  I drop the boom box and the cooler down on top of him, and sprinkle the collection of CDs into the hole.

  Later, halfway down the slope, I come across the body of Fat Norman. His misshapen head rests against the hard ground. It’s as if his face has begun to melt into the earth. Part of it looks caved in. His arms are all twisted underneath him.

  Beth holds the pepper spray and a flat rock. Her eyes stare at nothing in particular. Her breath comes in spurts of excitement. “He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t moved. It’s fucking over.”

  “Beth…”

  “He’s chasing me, right? Then I stop and hide behind a tree. When he comes up, I’m out there with the pepper spray. It blinds him. He screams like a little kid. I can’t believe you didn’t hear it, Harold.”

  “I was dealing with my own screams.”

  “I let him roll around, let the pain sink in. He ended up on his back, hands over his eyes. I brought the rock down on his nose. He had talked about my nose, about how big it was, and I wanted to pound it back into his skull.”

  “He talked about your nose? When?”

  I knew the answer as soon as I said it. Fat Norman was one of the guys who dragged her behind the Dumpster.

  She is not listening. The string is finally unwinding and it’s got to come out.

  “I felt the cartilage break. It was like in advanced bio when we dissected that fetal pig. This guy has a pig nose too.”

  She goes on and on, but I’m not listening. I’m thinking about how to get Fat Norman up that slope and into that mine shaft, how to hide the drag marks, if there is blood on the ground. I’m thinking of the satisfaction of knowing that he will never be found.

  It’s true what morticians say: funerals are not for the dead. They are for the living.

  “You hit more than his nose, Beth. Are there, um, pieces of him elsewhere?”

  “I dunno. I dunno. All I know is this. When you hit someone and break a bone? That’s a totally different sound than when you get hit on the playground. It’s like cracking ice in a tray.”

  The police will assume Angelo skipped town to avoid arrest. It’s safe to say there won’t be any AMBER Alert for Fat Norman. And me? I’ll get rid of my paintball gear just in case. Angelo’s body has fluorescent paint from where I shot him, and if the police question me, I’ll just say Benny’s death left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want to play anymore.

  I reach out for Beth, my anchor of light in the falling darkness, but she is among the bushes now. Chattering about this and that, she scours the ground for lost pieces of the monster that we
must try to bury forever.

  The Switch

  Lyman Feero

  I wake up behind a desk. Some banal article about some equally inane fact is splashed across the monitor of the latest Intel-enhanced box wedged beneath my desk. Coffee rings make java Olympic symbols on the blotter. It’s one of those green leather-trimmed calendar blotters that all mahogany slabs have. Each day lined up like soldiers. Their blocks crammed with thin green lines so I can write down all the mundane crap that I have to do during the week. By the looks of things, I have my share, as there is more ink than blotter. The funny thing is—I’m really not quite sure this is my desk. I’m assuming it is since I’m sitting behind it.

  The desk is mahogany, sultry swirled mahogany, like the eyes of a lovely South Sea islander whose mother slept with one too many Frenchmen. The chair, however, is vinyl; the same stick-to-my-thighs vinyl that covered the chairs of my mother’s small, dingy, eat-in kitchen; the kind of vinyl that groans like flatulence if you move to stand up. Mom’s name was Betty, like Betty Crocker. Obviously, I’m midmanagement, as the seat is not leather. Nor is it some form of poly-blend stretched over the plastic frames that adorn the offices of the invisible mean-nothings. Flatulent chairs are reserved for the higher-paid peons. Leather is only attainable by those who do the pissing.

  I look at my watch and see that it’s ten o’clock. A woman by a long row of filing cabinets sits there staring blankly at me. Before I know why, I flip her the bird and she smiles back and blows me a kiss. I think I hate her, though I don’t know why. I don’t know much of anything at this moment. I feel hungry. Then someone throws the switch.

  I wake up and again and I’m behind a desk, or is it a table? It doesn’t matter because my wrists are cuffed and my ass squeaks on vinyl. I get the strange sensation of home. Some sweating greasy little prick tries to tower over me. His coffee cup leaves hidden marks in the workaday jungle of stains. I think that maybe he is compensating for his stature. He flips open a folder, shoves it at me. A horror show spills out across the table and an auburn-haired woman whom I didn’t even notice makes a retching sound beside me. Her cherry-red lips kiss the back of her hand. I touch the photos. The traitor between my legs twitches and I start to speak about Betty. She grabs my arm and advises me to stop talking. The silk of her blouse bulges right where it should, straining the middle button. I pray for a wardrobe failure. I close my mouth and think of her tits. She says something about a plea. Death penalty off the table. Waiting for that fucking button to pop may as well be waiting for death. Greasy Prick lobs a yellow legal pad at me with its blue confessional lines, little priests lined up down the page. A pen slides up to greet it. Button slides it toward my hand. Betty Button. I push the pen away and blow her a kiss and give Greasy the finger. I start planning my last meal. Then someone throws the switch.