Crazy, Crazy Nights
A shortish short story, split into 2 manageable parts. Here's part 1 of 2.
Her cool green eyes detached me from the starring role in my own movie. That blue hair, that bubblegum mouth … I should have left and got on with my life, bothered only by the next meal, TV show, wardrobe choice, but her brief and cruel glance snagged me. That flicker of interest dragged me from thoughts of shoplifting, incoming bills, and my almighty brother’s upcoming wedding.
I handed over the roll-ups and the green to pay for them. And that’s as long as her penetrative regard for me lasted. I’m a talker, but my tongue twisted out of shape, and I kept my mouth shut to reshape it for round two. I managed, “Thank you, lady,” as I left the convenience store, but my voice did no more than turn to thin steam and evaporate. That nose of hers wrinkled, and the way I jangled the doorbell on my exit straightened none of it. I fell in love, but it made me shake to speak its name, even to myself.
A man in a red wife-beater jolted me from dozy daydreams, smashing into my shoulder on his approach to the store. Sent me into a spin only a grab of the ice machine stilled. The flick-knife in my back pocket called, but I didn’t trust my thrust after the broken arm in prison, the perpetrator a sack of nuts similar in size to this jerkoff. This rude boy grabbed my good limb and checked my eyes as if he spent his unemployment benefits on medical school.
“You alright, man?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. No thanks to you. Should watch where you walk. Jesus.”
He released me, writing what he thought of me in the lines on his forehead. “You’re lucky you didn’t end up through the wall. I just wasn’t trying. Go home, have a drink, change your diaper.”
“Fuck you.”
The hairball goofed those front teeth on his lower lip and thumbed his Frank Zappa beard. “No. I’d rather fuck her.”
I followed his eyes to my blue-haired goddess and closed my mouth when I realized flies might nest there and trudged toward my Kia, the afternoon heat compounding my dizziness. Turned back and watched them through the window as they engaged in free-flowing conversation my kind of tongue disallowed. Didn’t much like the taste of my teeth when I licked them. A bottle of orange Gatorade would have sweetened the bitterness, but the big man intimidated me. So I stayed outside. Only one other car sat in the pothole-filled parking lot, and it must belong to him. I admitted no defeat in not returning to the store. That fine lady would sit there tomorrow, and the day after, and I would win her before better opportunities presented themselves. For now, that tall, wiry fucker of his mother would find the tires to his Camaro flatter than his pecker.
***
A pack of roll-ups lasts me a week. Last night I created ashes of a whole fresh packet. This morning I made my way back to the convenience store, full of daydreams and blueprints. Phone on speaker, my sibling on the other end. He dripped with corporate grease.
“Look, you know you’re my little Blilly.”
Already with the Blilly. Prison cured my liver of anything resembling a lily, but I’d long given up demanding he call me just plain old Billy.
I resisted the urge to throw the phone and him into traffic. “I’m your brother, alright, and I think it’s something that you put conditions on me attending your goddamn wedding.”
“Everybody knows you as the worst flirt in the world. You don’t come with a date on your arm, then you’re not allowed in. You’ll eat the bridesmaids and their mothers. Against their wishes, Blilly. I wouldn’t mind if you were a Lothario, and they fell willingly at your feet, but you get aggressive, and cause all kinds of …”
“What? Embarrassment?”
“Yeah, bro. Embarrassment gets to the heart of it. I can’t have that. At my wedding. And neither will Emma. You’ve got to stop falling in love at a woman’s slightest glance.”
Man, I wanted to see my aunts and uncles. Cousins Brett, LouAnne, and Wayne. Stick it in their mugs. Watch their judging faces melt into faces judged. Planned to show Mom, from wherever she is in the heavens, that I can commit to something, even though I doubt she’d approve of a woman with blue locks.
“Well, I’ve got myself a date, so you don’t need to worry about a thing.”
“See you Saturday, then.”
“I’ll be there, polishing your occasion.”
***
Yesterday, her emerald eyes, Caribbean-sea hair, and devil-may-care attitude twisted my jaw into caging coherent words. This time I clocked her ID-tag.
“Hi, Martine.”
She glanced up from People magazine, the delight of her name on a man’s lips snuffing at the sight of me.
I pointed at her chest. “Says Martine.”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“Who’d your mother name you after?”
She shook the magazine, done with my conversation, not an ounce of curiosity to warm the coals. Well … I think a little customer service wouldn’t go amiss.
“I’m interested. I know no Martines in this world.”
How did such dead eyes sparkle and light my soul? Would look amazing on my arm at a wedding, shading the unbending stick my brother intended to hitch himself to. She blinked once, shocking herself she could talk to the likes of me. But I have untold depths absolutely nobody has yet discovered. I reckon she’s the Lara Croft to do it.
“My daddy gave it me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Why the surprise?”
“Daddies name sons, mommas name daughters. Isn’t that how it is?”
“I’m not sure you know much about this kind of thing, mister, if anything at all. You got kids?”
“No. But my daddy wrote it on all the forms.”
“Your mom name your sister?”
“I’ve no sister, just a brother. He’s getting married at the weekend.”
“Sucker born every day.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s cynical. I think they’ll make a magical couple.”
I quit scratching my arms when I realized it made me look a flea-bitten monkey, so I shoved both hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels at the loss of direction. Normally, this kind of talk constituted enough courtship to ask a woman into the toilets for some tonsil sparring, pants down if lucky. But nine times out of ten, that shit never worked, as if women think different to men. And me.
The magazine remained her shield. “Martine McCutcheon.”
“That your full name? You got a middle moniker?”
She popped a stick of gum in her mouth, returned to her magazine. “He named me after Martine McCutcheon. Lady in Love, Actually. You should see it if you haven’t.”
Never heard of it. Thought about saying how I loved that movie. But if she tested me, my chances of showing her off to my brother on his big day would end this very minute. I got her talking. Jerked my head toward the back of the store. Realized I’d made the same gesture to skanks up for a quickie in the stalls. “I’m gonna grab my roll-ups.”
Clearing my throat felt like my anchor slipped. She said, “Go get ‘em.”
Now, what did that tone mean? Go get ‘em, cowboy? As if she saw in me a man she could one day call lover? Or did she dismiss me from her presence? Goddammit, my love radar’s fashioned from cheap chocolate. I gathered myself in the back of the store, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Grabbed the roll-ups and stuck my head in the refrigerator, rolling an orange Gatorade across my cheek. Somehow, I found my court sentencing less stressful.
I practiced.
That wedding I talked about. I haven’t filled the plus-one yet. You interested?
I know we’ve only just met, but I felt duty-bound to tell you - you’re my date to my brother’s big day. Saturday. Be there.
What better option has a girl like you got than to accompany me to my scumbag, too-good-for-the-world, sibling’s nuptials? I’ll pick you up. The Kia doesn’t look much, but it’s a hell of a ride.
I grabbed a giant Twix for luck when the bell above the door jingled. When I saw Frank Zappa through the chip stand, I jangled. My first instinct, to charge out there and show how my horns stood bigger than his, stunted at her enthusiastic, “Mitch, baby.”
“Sweet thing, give me your lips.” She puckered them, and that mullet-wearing douche leaned in and kissed long and hard, security cameras be damned. Made an airbed valve of my pecker as I watched them. They pulled apart with a sickening slurp, and it’s like she’d forgotten my presence.
He held her, arm’s length and deflated the atmosphere between them. “Listen, baby, that plan we had, we gotta cancel.”
“What? You said you were good to go.”
He put his hands in the air and tilted his head. Patience, woman, patience. I mean, what kind of way is that to act toward a proper lady? This scumbag didn’t deserve those lips. He should fall to his knees and clean her shoes until he sees his subservient face in them.
“That motherfucker I bumped into yesterday stole my happiness. I had to sell the tickets. At half the cost I bought them for. Goddammit, man, it hurts me.”
“You replaced your tires?”
“Yeah. I gotta get to work, Martine. Nine-hundred dollars.”
“What? How does it cost so much?”
“Can you believe it? He’s wiped me out until I grab him and dig my hands in his pockets.”
I withdrew to make sure not a glint of light showed his fists the path to my face. I reckoned I could take the motherfucker, but he had a few inches on me, and those arms looked like tautened wire that spring a hell of a punch.
“But I wanted to go, Mitch, it’s been keeping me going. I gotta say, I was looking forward to Gene Simmons in the flesh.”
Mitch’s jaw creaked left and right. Wheeled it back into motion at some bright thought. “Good news is, I gotta gig on Saturday night. We’re -”
“A gig will not make up for losing Kiss tickets. Goddamn, I’m sick of missing out. All my friends are doing stuff. Big things. Jeannine’s out in Texas next week. Tori’s in Mexico. Where am I? In this dump, waiting to see my boyfriend play at some local dive bar. It’s not fair.”
“Well, I’ll just put more hours in at the yard.”
“Yeah, I can work overtime here, too, but where’s it getting us?”
Nowhere, is what I thought, as I slid along the shelves to the store’s darker corners. Martine deserved better, but when I looked at my prospects, I’m not sure how she’d find them in me, either. The occasional weed sale rewarded nothing more than an occasional romp around Seaside Heights. Martine, she raised her sights high. And so she should, shining there behind the counter, electric blue. All abuzz.
She plunged into her magazine, done with her lover. “There’s always the thing you fantasize about.”
Mitch scrubbed the back of his knuckles on the counter’s edge and shook his head slow. “I don’t know, Martine. Cameras, Brian, my old man. Anything goes off, you might only see me behind bars. Who wants that?”
“I dunno. All I want is to explore the world. I’m working my ass off to get there, and just wondering if you’re keeping your end of the bargain.”
“There’s no bargain, baby. Love’s not conditional.”
“Well …”
“Hey, that Kia.” Zappa pressed against the window. “It was there yesterday. That motherfucker who did my tires … he’s here? Martine, you sharing your wares with him?”
She stood, reached across the counter, and slapped him. “You watch that tongue.” She turned to the shelves, forcing me to stumble and bury myself in a dozen packets of chips and a cheap jar of salsa. Mitch stomped around the aisle’s corner. Fire in his eyes, a tilt in his gaze. I needed a cape to keep him off. My efforts to sidestep and duck his swing succeeded, but he recovered and locked my head beneath a naked armpit. My lips smooched Paul Stanley’s on his Kiss vest. Should have pumped more iron in prison. Instead, I hid in the library and pretended Shakespeare’s greatest hits wrapped me in literature. My punches to his kidneys caused more laughter than hurt. He rode both with ease and increased the pressure on my neck until I thought he’d snapped the link to my lungs. The ghost pain from the old broken arm ached, but nothing more.
Martine charged after us, a hand over her mouth. “You? I forgot you were here.”
Mitch pushed me against the wall, where I dinged the corner of the fire alarm. The agony seared up my shoulder, preventing me from taking this spool of wire down.
“Martine, you talking crap?”
“I swear, it slipped my mind that he came back here. Roll-ups, right?”
Mitch scoffed. “You … always looking over the fence.”
“What’s that mean? I have eyes only for you.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. “You’ve got a filthy way of speaking to a woman. Mitch.”
“You’re gonna shove your hand deep into your pockets and give me my nine-hundred bucks. Like, now.”
“You’ll be waiting.”
He made one step forward, but hesitated, the frown a rutted potato field on his forehead. Doubt. He remembered how I slashed his tires. With my flick-knife. Wondered if he’d pop just the same.
I dove into lovely Martine’s deep green eyes for treasure. “I’d take you places, Martine. Places he can’t reach.”
“I don’t even know you. And after skulking in the back of my store like this, not sure I wanna.”
Mitch laughed the way you do when life serves lukewarm fries and you only realize once you’ve departed the drive-thru. “I’ve got your registration plate. I’m gonna discover where you live. And I’m gonna claim my recompense. Plus interest.”
“I’ll send what I owe by snail mail.”
“Martine, I love you. And I’ll find a means.” He pointed at me. “You get out of here. I wanna see you go.”
I smiled at Martine. She needed to understand that I had a plan. Even if I didn’t grasp what it entailed just yet.
She raised both eyebrows at my rooster walk to the exit and said, “I don’t know what’s amusing you, but you can leave the roll-ups on the counter, mister.”
***
I’m not one for giving up. Right until the hammer came down on my sentence, I reckoned I’d get away with it. Bit of a shock when the judge sent me down. I had to ally with some tire-necked motherfucker the size of a hippo, so nobody squished me with a rolled-up newspaper. But I waited out my time. Patient. Good behavior got me out of there early, with only a broken arm as a memento.
My brother didn’t sigh down the phone, but I sensed it loaded in his chest.
“So, who are you bringing to my big day?”
“Just Martine. You’ll love her.”
“If I see so much as a sliver of ink anywhere on her body, I’ll have security throw her into the gutter. Bad enough you look like you slept on a newspaper.”
All I saw when I stared at Martine? Her piercing green eyes and the neon hair. Did she sport tattoos? Couldn’t tell. I’d check when I surprised her.
“I’m asking a favor.”
Big bro unleashed that sigh and soaked me in my own sticky sweat. Jesus, he’s a handful.
“What do you want?”
“Kiss is playing at the Arena. I need tickets.”
“You still listening to that crap?”
“I’m listening to whatever Martine wants me to listen to.”
“Shit … who knew you’d accept someone else’s viewpoint? Well, now I’ve gotta meet this lady. How will you pay me back?”
I’d not thought of that. “Was hoping -”
“We’re sick of waiting for you to repay all the loans I’ve given you. I’ll grab the tickets, but you won’t have them until I see the green.”
We? “You’re gonna buy them and then sit on them if, on the off-chance, I don’t cover the cost?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cruel.”
“So you’ll not settle up?”
“I didn’t say that. Just the hypothesis … it’s cruel.”
“You learn that word in the slammer? Find me the money and I’ll hand over the tickets.”
“Then what do I need you for?”
“Tell me.”
“You know people. You can get ‘em cheaper.”
“That’s right.”
The traffic cop in the rearview did nothing for my foul mood.
***
The following morning, I parked beside the Dollar Store, making sure my new woman couldn’t see me, and rehearsed the walk. Martine wanted an action man, and that soon-to-be ex-boyfriend exposed his weakness. I swung the door open for the doorbell to jangle in rhythm with my big balls.
Martine sipped convenience store coffee and glanced up from her Us Weekly. I took her face to mean her beverage tasted bitter. “You can’t find roll-ups anywhere else, mister?”
I craned my neck at the camera. Regretted it. “Does that thing record audio?”
“Dunno. Never looked at the footage.”
“You never been robbed? Seems like an easy spot.”
She straightened on her stool. “You robbing?”
“Tell me about Brian.”
She rolled Us Weekly like a weapon. “My boss?” This Brian made her mad, it seemed.
“Aha.”
“Well, he comes in about nine-thirty every night. Does the numbers. Takes the cash. Looks at me as if he wants to wipe me from his shoe. And leaves.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Tonight, I might recommend he take extra care, what with unsavory characters hanging around and all that. And why wait anyway?”
I leaned toward her and twitched my nose. Like a little bunny rabbit. Thought she’d find it cute, but this one, she hides her emotions in magazines and coffee. Except yesterday, she yelped with excitement at that asshole of a boyfriend. Not anymore. She grasped his weakness. Time for him to move along.
“I’ve got tickets to the Kiss concert Sunday night. You wanna go?”
“With you?”
Surely my melon-slice grin charmed her. “Kiss. You love ‘em.”
“Not sure I like you eavesdropping on my personal conversations, mister.”
“You two were loud. What do you want me to do?”
“Announce your presence. You got the tickets on you?”
“Not on me. My brother has them.”
“I need to see them.”
“So, you’re up for it?”
She swiveled her stool and rustled Us Weekly. Taylor Swift stared back at me. Pretty woman, but not a patch on my beautiful Martine. She said, “You show me proof, and we’ll go from there.”
“How about you meet my sibling?”
“Now, why on Earth would I want to do that?”
“Because … you should. Well-to-do, fingers in all kinds of pies, and high in society.”
Not certain why her eyes rode me up and down that way, but I wagged my happy puppy tail.
“You slumming it?”
“My family asks the same. Seriously. Let me show you a good time.” That hesitation forced my hand. “Here.” I flashed Ticketmaster on my phone. Planted it on the counter so she could share the fun. Kiss. Two tickets. Three-hundred and fifty bucks putted a golf ball down my throat, where it stuck. Would send my debit card over two-hundred into the red. But Brian would pay me back. And I could sell the seats brother bought. I clicked, and those passes landed in my email. “There. You wanna come meet my kin?”
She twisted those lips left and right, rolled her tongue over those fine teeth. “Sure.”
“Saturday night. Do you have tattoos?”
*** I almost missed Brian’s arrival in the convenience store’s parking lot because the phone game I played in my clunker absorbed me. Masses of tiny digital enemies twirled my eyes, and I had to blink the store boss from double to the single man he is. Might have missed him for any other customer had he not stationed under the lamppost. His Tesla buzzed neon green under the cold white light.
One foot on the asphalt embarrassed my strategy, a plan as bad as that employed in the dumb video game. I’d parked across the county route so I wouldn’t stand conspicuous. I could cross the highway at leisure and have drivers mistake me for some poor sap without access to wheels. But my return might involve a hectic game of Frogger in the mad rush.
Traffic swished past in a never-ending race to get home, everybody shaking off the workday’s weight. Multiple trucks roiled the air, rattling screws loose as they hit potholes. I saw myself squished flat enough to invite a dollop of syrup. But Brian entered the store. How long would it take to gather the cash and leave? Did he stock-check? Did he count inside the building? Would he finish before I raced to the jug-handle and made a slingshot return? I couldn’t wait another day. He might change his pattern, and my grasping bank already flagged my withdrawal. They’d stamp it with a hefty overdraft fee, and no way could I spiral into my old ways.
“Damn it, Martine, look what you’re making me do.”
Deep breath, a scratch of the balls, and I marched across the road. Beeps, drivers’ hands in the air, yells out of open windows. Would the way I slouched minimize all my distinct details to passersby? The flick-knife in my pocket beat against my chest on every stride. What if this Brian carries a gun? Best to get up close and personal. Make sure he never has the chance to sling it my way.
Dusk made me nothing more than a blob in the strip plaza landscape. But the dash through traffic, the Kiss tickets, and Martine on my arm propelled me to the skies. Heightened everything so that even the lines defining the parking spaces buzzed with life.
Martine finished her shift earlier that day. Some old dude replaced her behind the counter, penciling words into a crossword puzzle. I skipped the main door and sauntered to the rear. Best place to plant a camera. But Brian must think himself small-time because I saw nothing on the lampposts, or above the entrance, by the dumpster, on the roof. Nada. It’s like Brian invited me to stick the blade beneath his chin.
I tested the back door’s handle. Unlocked. My old mask had seen better days, but I dragged it up to cover my lower face. A swimmer’s skullcap hid my hair. Inside smelled of stale chips and out-of-date Tasty Cakes. A hint of long-cooked sausage meat attached to every nostril hair and swung my senses. Shelves full of small convenience store crap, empty boxes, rat pellets - I made it through all to the little gray office bludgeoned by the hundred-watt strip light. Enough to kill the next viral strain. Brian sat at his Formica desk doing his numbers, rolls of cash and receipts everywhere. I scratched the burning itch beneath the skullcap.
Rolls and rolls and rolls. Damn, what kind of revenue did a small joint like this generate? The second he lifted his eyes from that sea of green, I lunged at him, knocking the poor man from his cracked leather chair. I sat on his chest, the blade at his throat. He said nothing, just stared at me as if he’d remember this moment at the police station lineup. Made my brain buzz as it recoiled at all the close shaves of prison life. The pecking order. The things you had to compromise to maintain your place in it. The dread of falling to the seabed, where bottom feeders found their sliver of power. It all sent electric shocks through my system and jerked my knife hand.
“Insurance,” Brian said.
Take it all, is what I read. I climbed off him, relieved I didn’t need to skewer the pig. I came to steal enough money to pay for the concert tickets, and if I stuck to that, I doubt Brian would pursue charges. But those rolls bowled me over. If I shoved them in a holdall and made off with them, then his insurance premium would boil over the cooking pot. He’d want comeback. My muscles recoiled at jail time. I couldn’t help it, I swear. My wrist slashed. Not at Brian, but at the constant attacks in the prison yard. The pain, the unrelenting anticipation of the next move against me, the sleepless nights. Brian just got in the way. My future shone bright. Martine. My brother’s respect. Who knows? I clambered off the body, avoiding the blood still pumping from my gurgling victim. His eyes pulsed, bulging at me. It hurt to see a man’s potential drain away, but I gotta think of myself. And my woman, she said he looked at her like he would shit on his shoe? That’s not right. Not my Martine. She’s candy. I blocked the bubbling from my ears as I crammed the cash into a bag. Backed out of the building, conscious of how I must resemble a stuffed chicken. In the back parking lot, a grizzled loser peered from the dumpster searching for morsels.
“Hey. You have any out-of-date stuff you don’t want?” His big, hairy face drooped as I came into focus. Eyes wandered over the skullcap, the mask, the bulges in my pockets. The loaded bag. “Seems you’ve a load you’d care to share, man. You wanna offload some of that in my direction?”
How could he point me out in a lineup? I’m indistinguishable from a child’s drawing of a Thanksgiving turkey. My build would give me away. Short. Skinny. The way he looked at me, I worried a tuft of my hair had escaped the skullcap. Generosity washed over me. I shoved a roll into his grasping palm and told him he saw nothing. He gawped at the cash and leered at the bulges. The greedy bastard wanted more. I reached inside a pocket, past the luxurious paper, and came out with the flick-knife. Intermingled his blood with that of the other. The homeless sack of shit gasped, fell to a knee, keeled over, and expired. Nobody would miss him, so I reckon I did him a favor he’d never need to repay. My sympathies rested with the store’s owner.
I ran across the road, my mind a tornado, red images, and drivers’ faces whirling, making me stagger, hands to my face at headlights steaming my way. They swerved, or I did, I’m unsure, but somehow this chicken made it to the other side. For a hot date with Martine.
Appreciate you all for reading. Part 2 out tomorrow.