huddle – a world of shit stink, gooey mold, damp walls, and brown puddles. Drac stood in front of the basin, rolling his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, his hair greasy enough to lubricate a diesel engine. A muscle in his jaw flexed, and cockroaches scurried for cover, darting in different directions. I choked on the rotting air and blinked tears out of my eyes. Drac clicked the door shut behind us and blew a cloud of almost refreshing smoke in my face. His cigarette glowed hot as he took another drag, glaring at each of us in turn and studying our faces.
The warm, muggy, cramped hellhole of a bathroom shrank around us. Raj dug his hands into his pockets. “Look, we don’t want trouble, but no workski, no payski, right?”
Drac’s fist struck like lightning, slamming into Raj’s nose with steroid-assisted force. Raj fell against the wall and collapsed to the floor, his hands over his face and blood spilling through his fingers onto the tiles. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Oh jeez!” Gordie gasped and wheezed. “We’ll leave now. We’re very sorry.” He turned to the door on his crutches, and Drac stepped in his way, arms folded.
My chest tightened with a rising claustrophobia. We were insects caught in a tarantula web, and I was the idiot insect who talked his friends into it.
Drac held his cigarette in his mouth and pulled a strip of black cloth from his pocket, the kind boxers use to protect their hands. He wrapped it around his right hand and pulled it tight. “Stupid Americans.” He continued winding the material between his fingers and brought it back onto his wrist, securing it in place with a Velcro tab. “Kyle Swindon father my business associate.” He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it between two fingers. “Two year ago Kyle come to me. I teach him to fight like Russian.”
The sweat on my back went cold. Gordie’s left eye twitched, like his senses understood, but didn’t want to tell his brain.
Drac wrinkled his forehead as he dragged his cigarette. “They friend to me when I leave motherland.” He gazed up at the dirty light bulb. “They my family in America.”
On the floor, Raj lay sprawled next to the toilet, pinching his nose with his head back and spluttering on the blood in his throat. A cockroach crawled onto his shoe.
There was a right thing to do in this situation, but I sure as hell didn’t know what it was. I wiped the sweat from my brow. “We didn’t want to hurt Kyle. We were just–”
Drac raised his cloth-wrapped fist, took another drag of his cigarette, and flicked the butt into the toilet. A buzz came from his pocket. He glanced at his phone and a half-smile grew from the corner of his mouth. He pocketed the phone, and his face tightened. “You have two choice.” He tapped Gordie’s chin with his fist, barely making contact, and Gordie recoiled against the basin. He lowered his voice. “You pay one thousand dollar tomorrow,” he said, turning to me and raising his pointer finger, “or I fark you up.”
Tears leaked from Gordie’s eyes. “What? We don’t have any money.”
Drac leaned into his face. “You have four hundred dollar yesterday. You get one thousand dollar tomorrow, no?”
Gordie stammered, “No, we can’t get–”
I squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll get the money. Just let us go.”
Drac’s hand shot out and gripped my throat, and he curled his upper lip tight against his crooked yellow teeth. “If no pay, I hunt you like dog and rip stomach through throat.” His breath stank like an ashtray’s asshole.
Prying at his hand with my fingers only made him tighten his grip, choking my breath. He shoved his palm hard and slammed my head against the wall. A sharp pain went through my throat and the back of my head. I coughed and fought to breathe. We’d been slow to catch on, but it was dawning on me that this was going to be a one-way conversation.
A single drop of water dripped from the faucet and made an impossibly loud plop as it landed in the basin. Drac dug his hand into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Examining my student ID, he said, “Maddox, if you no pay, I come find you.” He held out his palm to Gordie, and his expression tightened. Gordie removed his wallet from his jeans and placed it in Drac’s hand, his trembling fingers hovering over it.
Drac crouched and lifted Raj’s wallet from his pocket. Straightening, he pressed his finger to my forehead. “One thousand dollar.” He turned and pressed his finger to Gordie’s forehead. “Tomorrow.” He stepped aside. “Get out.”
Tears formed in Gordie’s eyes, and his lower lip pouted like a scolded child. A lifetime of shrink therapy wasn’t going to fix him.
“Now!” Drac slammed his fist against the wall.
Gordie stumbled against the basin on his crutches, and Drac stuffed our wallets into his pockets, swung open the door, and strutted out of the room.
On the floor, Raj lay flat on his back, holding his nose with his hand. I lifted him off the tiles, his jacket sodden with blood and his jeans soaked in stinking bathroom fluid. If he wasn’t such a good friend, I’d have left him there just to avoid touching him. We shuffled out of the bathroom as he pinched his nose and moaned nasally. Gordie followed on his crutches, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
Standing at the table again, Drac poured another shot of vodka. The old man sat slumped in a chair, hunched over a half-empty whiskey glass. With my eyes fixed on the exit, I continued past the boxing ring, not yet having fully processed what just happened. There’d be time for that once we were somewhere else.
At the front of the gym, I reached for the door, and Drac boomed, “Don’ be late.”
With a clang of bells on the door, we stepped out into the wintry late-afternoon air. Raj leaned against the gym’s window, pinching his nose with a hand covered in semi-dried blood.
Gordie took deep breaths and held them till he gasped. “Flipping… freaking… frigging… effing… fricking… frakking… fecking–”
I put my hand on his back. “Gordie, just say it.”
He gasped for breath. “Fuh… fucking fuck!” He hurled his crutches onto the sidewalk, balancing on one foot, and grabbed fistfuls of his hair. I didn’t know Gordie knew how to get mad. Apparently he did.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We can–”
He put his weight on his plaster cast and wobbled, lifting his arms to steady himself. Losing balance, he spun on his heel, tipped sideways, and landed ass-first on the curb and rolled facedown into the gutter. With his nose pressed to the concrete and his glasses on the street next to him, he lay still and let out an agonized moan.
When the entire Inca Empire was wiped off the face of the planet, I imagined them looking less defeated than Gordie did right now. I walked to the curb and crouched next to him, glancing back at Raj.
Avoiding my gaze, Gordie lifted his face from the concrete. “Please… just leave me alone.” He wiped his eyes and reached for his glasses. With them hanging crooked on his face, he dragged himself up onto the curb and hugged his knees.
Raj flicked the dripping blood off his fingers, snorted, and squeezed his nose.
I walked over to him and examined the damage. “Is it broken?”
He shook his head and winced. “I bleed easily.”
“Nice thinking, Raj.” Gordie rubbed his brow. “Let’s pay a Muay Thai instructor to protect us from a Muay Thai fighter who trains in the same area.”
I zipped my jacket higher against the cold. “We were stupid, but also Kyle and Drac never would’ve met if it wasn’t for Kyle’s dirty cop of an old man working with scum like Drac.”
“Everyone says Kyle’s old man’s crooked,” Raj said, “but I had no idea it was like that.”
“There’s a reason he lives in a big house in Oakland County.”
Gordie rested his chin on his knees and gazed at me with red eyes. “Why does everything always have to suck? We’re so screwed. Kyle’s going to kill us if Fink doesn’t get out of hospital and kill us first. And if they don’t, Drac will kill us, and if by some miracle he doesn’t, I’ll go to jail for shooting Fink and you’ll go to jail fo
r stealing the guitar and a security guard’s gun. Don’t you see? We’re so screwed. There’s just no point anymore.” He wrinkled his brow and rested his cheek on his knees. “I just want to be alone. Please… leave me alone.”
I’d want to be left alone too if I had a friend like me. When they tried to beat up Gordie in the cafeteria last month, I should have let them. Defending him, and everything I’d done since had made Gordie’s life a nightmare.
Raj let go of his nose and sniffed loudly, wiping the blood with his sleeve. “You’re right. We’re screwed – for real this time.” He looked at me. “What’s your amazing plan for getting that cash to Drac tomorrow?”
“No more plans. We get out of Detroit while we can. The bus to Chicago leaves the Greyhound station on Howard. Let’s get on it tomorrow. We can crash at my cousin’s place in West Ridge and figure it out from there.”
Gordie lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Oh… no, no, no!” Raj recoiled and stumbled against the wall.
I followed his stare. On the next block, Kyle and Bundy were marching along the sidewalk toward us.
“But how did they…?” Raj clasped his hands over his head.
I could barely find the breath to speak. “Drac. He phoned Kyle – told him where to find us.” It didn’t make sense though. Why would he demand more cash and set Kyle onto us at the same time? For kicks? I scanned the street for somewhere to escape. The only
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