~*~
“Will you take another?”
“Why not.” Tyler grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam and refilled the two shot glasses on the oak table.
“You’re doing this tomorrow?” Tyler asked.
“No – right after this,” said Johnny. Tyler gave a look of incredulity.
“Might as well do it while I still have a buzz.”
Johnny reached for his shot and picked it up. Tyler did the same and they drank them back in unison.
“Just because they drove by her house?”
“It’s probably a little more complicated than that,” replied Johnny.
“And since we’re on the subject – I need that gun.”
“Which gun?”
“My gun,” Johnny said smiling, never knowing when Tyler was busting his balls, a skill which Tyler exercised with restraint, what he considered to be in accordance with his own strange morality.
“Yeah it’s here,” said Tyler. “You got yer knife too?”
Johnny slapped a bowie knife onto the oak table still in its scabbard. Tyler grew a smile and rose up slowly, left the room. He came back in less than a minute with a lock-box that he dropped on the table next to Johnny’s knife.
“You got the key?”
Johnny had the key already in his hand and slid it across the table to Tyler.
“You open it,” Johnny said.
“No – it’s yers.”
“But you manage it for me. I have nothing to do with it other than what goes inside and what comes out.”
“Alright. Whatever.”
Tyler spun the box around and opened it.
“Okay…so you want the gun…what about any of the cash?”
“No, leave that. Just my gun.”
Tyler took out the piece and slid it across to Johnny, still in its holster.
“And this goes in,” said Johnny, handing a folded napkin to Tyler.
“Does it matter if I read it?” Tyler asked.
“You hafta if you’re gonna do what it says. But wait ‘til I leave.”
“Wanna do one more?”
“Why not.”
Tyler filled the shot glasses once more and when they were emptied Johnny stood up and left. When he had closed the door Tyler unfolded the napkin and read:
It all goes to Holliday Martin.
-J
~*~
They weren’t going to stop him from going inside but Johnny stabbed them anyway. He put the knife away as he got inside, not having a clue as to what he might be walking into after the bouncers. It was empty except for the bartender and the dancers. So Johnny went over to the bar and got a shot. Then he asked the bartender if Lok was in back, only getting a shrug for an answer.
“You might wanna leave,” Johnny said to the bartender. He then turned and started walking to the back.
There was a dark wooden door with a square window at the top that Johnny headed for. It surprised him that there wasn’t a goon with a newspaper sitting on guard with a folding chair. So he went right in. Lok was sitting at a card table with a cigarette burning in his mouth. There was a bald and chubby man flipping through channels on a television, resting on a leather couch.
“Don’t get up,” said Johnny. But the fat guy started to stand. Johnny reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun, forcing the fat guy to freeze.
“Sit down,” Johnny said, pointing to a seat at the card table with his gun. The fat guy moved to the chair and sat down. Lok kept his hands on the card table, seemingly at complete ease.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Lok said lightly, “This is pretty good – I love surprises.”
Johnny moved behind the pair and Lok followed him with his eyes.
“Don’t you love surprises?”
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Johnny answered as he smashed his gun into the fat guy’s temple. “Drag him to that corner,” he told Lok.
Lok, with some difficulty, dragged the unconscious man to the far corner, then slowly rose and faced Johnny.
“Go sit back down.”
Lok did as he was told but watched Johnny go over to the fat guy and put his gun back in his jacket. Johnny took out his knife and ran it along the fat guy’s throat, then stood and looked at Lok as hot thick blood ran from the blade to his hand.
“If you have a weapon, you’d better take it out now,” Johnny said as he moved closer to Lok.
As he pulled the knife out of Lok’s chest, he said, “As a matter of fact, I live to surprise people.”
Lok gasped once before his eyes rolled back into his head. Johnny let the body smack onto the tile floor. Then he went over to the circuit breaker and turned off all the power for the place. When he was outside, he looked up at the powerless neon “Smitty’s” sign above the door.
~*~
“I’m glad you decided to come,” Johnny said as he opened the doors for Holli. They did as the sign told them to and seated themselves, by a window, in the back.
“I was kinda pissed at first,” Holli said right before the waitress came over to them. “But it won’t change anything. And I’m actually excited now.”
“Good,” said Johnny.
“What can I getcha?” asked the waitress.
“Coffee for both of us, first,” Johnny answered. Then he pointed to Holli.
“Just a burger,” she said.
“Make it two.”
The waitress started to leave but Holli asked, “Can we smoke in here?”
“Yep,” she repied before bouncing away.
Holli took out her pack and lit up. The waitress came back with an ashtray and put it down on the table. Holli picked up the pack and held it out for Johnny.
“Naw, I quit,” he said.
“I should probably quit too. Where do you wanna go after this?”
“Maybe find a hotel, or motel. I’m fucking beat.”
“That sounds good,” she cooed, “I just wanna curl up in bed.”
She ashed her cigarette. “Maybe stop for a bottle of vodka.”
“I dunno,” Johnny replied apprehensively, “I think I’m gonna quit drinking too.”
“How long do you think that will last?”
“I dunno, probably not long.”
“That’s how I am with smoking.”
“But sometimes if you just try, it works out,” he said.
They fell silent for a moment. Holli broke the silence when she mused, “I hope the burger is good. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good burger.”
She looked at him straight, “But there is something I need to know.”
“Nope – there’s nothing else to know.”
She kept her eyes on him but halted whatever inquiry she was going to strike him with. She put out her cigarette and put the pack back in her purse.
“That’ll be the last pack I’ll ever buy…hopefully,” she said. The waitress came over and put down two identical burgers in front of them and went off. They each picked up their burger and took a bite.
“How is it?” Johnny asked.
“I’ve had better.”
~*~
Dog Night Dawn
By
Zachary J. George
The landlord told me I had a week to pay up or I was gone, and I believed her. I had no girlfriend, no floors, no hope, and no toilet seat. I had nothing except an oozing staph infection on my right thigh and a lady crazy enough to let me sleep with her sometimes.
I couldn’t believe Ariella was licking my face before the sun came up, but she always wanted sex in the morning before she put on her work suit and showed up to a world I knew nothing about.
I rolled over and said, “Ariella, stop.”
Then I realized it wasn’t her. A pit bull puppy yapped in my ear like he was proud of the puddles of diarrhea he’d scattered on the floor around my blanket. The whole room stunk.
I picked up my phone and called Ariella.
“Good boy,” she said. “I told you you’d get
up for work. How’s Chuck Taylor?”
“Who? Why aren’t you here? More important, where the hell did this pit bull come from?”
She laughed. “Chuck Taylor. You named him. You don’t remember?”
“No.”
Chuck looked retarded, staring at me with crossed eyes, shaking his mangy body so the circles where there was no fur seemed to create a pattern I could not follow. Where he did have fur, it was the color of brown and maroon crayons melted down and mixed. I tried to tell myself it was a dream. I pushed him away from my chest.
“You there?” Ariella asked.
I yawned.
“You kept saying how you wanted a dog,” she said.
“I was drunk.”
“You’re always drunk. You’ve been talking about dogs for weeks.”
“Talking. Not getting. Talking. I’ve been talking about going to Beirut. Jesus Christ!”
“You’re not going to find Him in Beirut.”
“What the hell’s going on?”
She told me that the night before I had told everybody at Markey’s Bar how my life might gain some semblance of stability if I only had something I could show concern. Plants didn’t help. A baby would be going overboard. So…I guess I settled on a dog. A girl across the bar lived next to an abandoned house where thugs sometimes met and kept a poor puppy that barked all night.
“I guess the guy’s some small-time rapper,” Ariella said. “You did a good deed. I tried to stop you. Then you kept asking, ‘Whose dog that is? Whose dog that is?’”
I didn’t care about my broken, drunken English for I was used to it, but what did bother me was the way this puppy looked at me like I was somehow an answer for all the bad things that had happened to him in his short time on earth.
“What am I supposed to do with a dog?”
“Chuck’s cute.”
“Chuck’s a pit bull,” I said, “and he’s going to grow. Big.”
Chuck pissed in a corner; his head turned toward me with no shame in his crossed eyes. That was the only way he seemed to be able to look. Maybe he already recognized his name.
I ran a bath, and, as I washed my pot and spoon in the tub I tried to remember what happened once we had stolen him. Whoever met at that house would not have a difficult trail to pin the abduction on me, especially if I really was bragging about my part in this emancipation.
Chuck looked hungry, so I boiled some rice noodles on the stove and poured cold water in the pot so he wouldn’t burn his tongue. He scarfed down the food like some kind of Tasmanian Devil.
I reset my alarm clock and let Chuck lie in my armpit.
~*~
On my way from Mid City to Uptown I drove with one hand, using the other to push Chuck away from the steering wheel. He tried to circle my feet like a cat doing figure eights. I kicked him, accidentally hit the brake, and came to a dead stop on the Broad Street Bridge above the interstate. Cars honked. I held Chuck against my hip for the rest of the ride.
I pulled around to the backyard where I was working with my boss, Jim. Before I could get out of the door, Chuck jumped over my lap and ran toward Jim’s floppy-eared basset hound. Otis growled.
“What the hell is that?” Jim yelled. Sawdust blew into his face. He cut the power.
“What’s wrong with that thing?”
I buckled up my tool belt.
“He’s all right. I rescued him.”
“He looks drunk.”
“He used to get beaten. I rescued him.”
“Otis,” Jim screamed. “Get over here.”
Otis waddled toward him, trailed by a butt-sniffing Chuck.
“You need to get him out of here,” Jim said. He started the saw back up.
Chuck licked sawdust off Jim’s leg. He kicked him away, and Chuck ran over to the Mexican guys who were working on the pool.
“Damn, that’s a pit bull?” one of them asked. He pulled a bandana from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. “Is pure breed?”
“Yeah, pure gangster,” I said.
The Mexican pet Chuck just above his crossed eyes, “You selling him?”
“How much?” I asked.
“I say fifty dollars,” he said.
“He’s not for fighting,” I said, trying to gauge this man, as if I might know what somebody who trained dogs to fight looked like.
He assured me that he just liked dogs—he needed protection—and I guess I trusted him.
“How about a hundred?” I asked.
“I only have fifty.”
“Keep him away from Otis,” I said.
“Is no problem,” he said, handing me the money.
I could feel his sweat on the bills he placed in my hand.
“Gracias,” I told him.
“No, gracias, you,” he said.
I watched Chuck squirm in his arms before settling down, lowering his head, and closing his eyes. I watched the man move his truck under a shade tree and put Chuck in the front seat; I watched Chuck paw at the window; I listened to his barks.
“Get your ass to work,” Jim yelled.
I loaded scrap wood into a wheelbarrow and carried it to the curb, and each time I returned to the backyard I saw Chuck, licking the driver’s side window and staring out with crossed eyes.
~*~
Thanks be to the Booze
By
Brian Quat
I had been drinking since two. It had been a Thursday for most people and it was a Thursday for me: two classes – three hours – that never transpire, while all the other assholes rot in uncomfortable wood.
“Let’s get a slice and a pint.”
Me and Brian go and get a slice and pints. We drove. Then we drove back with a nice buzz, at least for me: Brian’s fat; I’m thin. At the House we parked his car and stopped inside – to drag one or two of the assholes with us to Hildy’s Tavern.
“Rob, come with us, you cunt.”
“Nah, man.”
“Depressed cunt.”
“Yo, I’ll come in a little. Where you goin’? Hildy’s? Wait forty minutes.”
“No, Jon, meet us there in forty minutes.”
Jean – pronounced American-like Jon or John – was an ass hole for the next fifty minutes or so. Brian and I walked to Hildo’s (Hildy’s) and it was chilly. Brian’s brown corduroy, fuzzy jacket was covering his mass, I was shivering.
It wasn’t crowded inside but not empty. There was a fanatic-like daytime townie base for the bar, on top of that all the rich college assholes who surrounded it only a block away; there was always a figure in there. We sat at the bar; I eyed the hot dogs rotating in the hot box at the other end. I saw them a few days earlier when my whole class – it seemed – was crammed inside. There was only a single dog left, I was extremely hungry, partly from the booze, and contemplated – that night – ordering the last one with my drinks, but refrained because I really just wanted my drink, which took hours to get for one of the first times in the place, and I was also subject to a different sect of my Will that is itself dictated by the thoughts and wills of others. I did not order a dog then, a few days later also.
We ordered Yuenglings. The bar tendress asked if we were not from here. “We go to school right over there.” She explained that most people order Lagers, at least when they are from here.
“This is the first place I’ve lived since I’ve been able to drink legally. So I’m from here,” I said. Should I have ordered a Black and Tan anywhere would they give me Yuengling? But Lager is usual, and we drank as usual.
Jean stopped being an asshole and walked in, sat down with us at the bar, next to me. He ordered a Yuengling and grabbed my pack of cigs. I took one out too. Brian was not smoking anymore – had stopped – so he took drags from mine when I put it down. I talked in my usual drunken manner, when I have insightful conversations with intimate friends that really help me gain a perspective on my life but which I never remember. I think we ordered a pitcher, of Lager. We drank it down and I was full of beer
. We all waddled back home.
I forget what time it was, but it was still pretty early. I made it home, staggering inside to see table and chairs for a hundred men set up, covering all the open room. I met a few of my friends, at some point, and I know I talked to them. Then I made it up stairs and plunged into bed.
I was in my clothes and light, noise was about me. DeMeo standing in my doorway was asking me if I was coming to dinner.
“Do I have to dress up are you dressed up?”
He was wearing a tie.
“I think I’m going to skip it.”
A few times I heard laughing downstairs. I heard voices in the hallway, so did Seamus. He barked once or twice and I yelled at him, quietly though. I heard one of the voices say, laughing: “Is there someone in that room, dude can you hear someone in the room?”
I heard more laughing. I fell back asleep.
Eventually I made my way downstairs and saw all the empty chairs and dirty tables. Where there were people was now space. The leftover turkey and fixin’s were still on the bar, where they were during the Thanksgiving dinner earlier. I walked over to it and stuffed some food in my mouth. It wasn’t very good.
I kind of regretted missing the last Thanksgiving dinner in the fraternity house, and I had lost my drunk. I went back upstairs and took Seamus in the backyard to shit or piss. After I brought him back up to the third floor I went down to the second to see who was around and smoke some weed. Phil was in his room, Jean was in his down the hall. Jean was smoking a bowl. I walked into Jean’s room. We hit the bowl together and I was surprised Phil didn’t come in as well. Both of us walked down to Phil’s room. He was smoking a bowl. When it was done we all had a beer. We kept drinking until one by one we passed out.
~*~
Those Shoes!
By
Robert Neyland
At first Paul thought this was going to be just another birthday party. Oh yeah, they had to drive to his cousin Peters house eighty miles away in Baton Rouge, and yes, he and his three brothers and two sisters were definitely going to fight and argue at least seventy five miles of the way, but, at least Aunt Barbara always had really good birthday cakes.
Barbara was Joseph’s sister and lived off a massive insurance settlement when her husband had died prematurely. But other than that, it was just a birthday party. Until he saw those shoes!
It was an old YouTube video that Paul had seen. It was a performance of the Beatles on the old Ed Sullivan show that had captivated his imagination. At first, it was only the music, but as the music permeated his soul he noticed those shoes.