David Putnam - The Disposables

She pulled down my pants and underwear quick, took hold, softly took hold, pulled me along to tub’s edge. Both of us over and into the water jets.

“Marie.” Her name came out in a rush.

I pulled her sopping top over her head and unhooked her bra. Her breasts released and moved against my arms. I buried my face in her neck and kissed her deeply. She groaned, renewed her grip, squeezing harder, tugging. With her new handle, she pulled me closer and pulled some more. She stood topless, water sluicing between her breasts, fabulous breasts; I was pantless, our clothes going hot and wet under the spray. I found her mouth with my tongue. At the same time she let go with one hand and worked the buttons of my shirt. My hands ineffectually tried to release the wet button to her pants. Her breasts pressed hard up against my stomach, her legs pushing me up against the Formica, pinning me against the wall. I was too caught up in her, her feel, her smell, her touch. I wasn’t going to last, the hot water worked as a catalyst to heighten all sensation. I put my head back. “Marie.” Warm water spattered my mouth.

My body convulsed.

She froze. “Bruno?”

“I love you, baby.”

She giggled.

We sat on the bed naked, Indian-style while she rebandaged my hands after she’d given them a thorough cleaning. She could only shake her head and wonder why infection hadn’t set in. Said as much. I wasn’t entirely sure myself.

The whole time I read hesitation in her eyes. She had something to say.

When she finished, I laid her back on the bed, and put my mouth on hers when she tried to talk. The next session went longer and slower with sweat, little nips with cautious teeth, kisses, and long, damp licks.

The entire time the executioner’s ax hung poised over us. We both felt it. At any moment it could swing down on us in a slow arc, end it all. We’d never see each other again. Thrown down hard into the slammer. The possibility remained very distinct, thus the lovemaking all the sweeter, but a little desperate. We reveled in every stolen minute. We finished up with her on top. She dropped down, rested her cheek on my chest, her head turned away, and though I couldn’t see her, I knew she gnawed on her knuckle-a nervous tic. She said, “Are we really going to do it tomorrow? Are we really finally going to go through with it? Leave here and never come back?”

“Don’t be scared.”

She nodded, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.” Her voice quiet, childlike.

She hesitated. I waited for it.

“What’s it like inside?”

There it was, a big ugly beast. It had sat on my subconscious feasting on my guilt, the possibility that we could fail in this mission, and she would suffer immensely for my folly.

I closed my eyes. My voice lowered, in a cracked whisper said, “I won’t make it better than it is. We’re talking about a small, ever-so-tiny concrete room with walls that collapse on you every night, snatch your breath away, bury you under tons and tons of invisible weight until you scream. That’s the best part. Then you have the food, bland starch, pale, washed-out pastel colors that salt can’t flavor. And there’s an odor about the place that reeks wherever you go and penetrates your clothes and skin, sour sweat, mixed with fear and hate. But still that’s not the worst. The worst is the people. These people are put there for a reason-”

Marie’s fingers involuntarily dug into my chest as she braced for it.

“These people are the worst society has to offer: the malcontents, the predators, the sociopaths, and psychopaths, all churning together in one ungodly collage of putrefying corruption. But there are those few who are not absolutely corrupt when they first get there. Folks with four drunk driving arrests in five years, paperhangers with a yen for gambling, all family men, victims thrown into a sewer of humanity that will eventually eat them. You try every day to stay the same, not change and turn into one of them. It’s impossible. You change or you don’t make it out.”

What I didn’t tell her was about the nightmares that come every night to those who crossed the line of their own convictions, took the law into their own hands, and executed a fellow member of society; a man you executed who was tried and released by a biased judicial system that thrived on technicalities; a system that in the end let a man who killed twice, once with an overdose of heroin, a daughter and again a small child, a grandbaby shaken and thrown down on a hard concrete floor, while his twin brother watched, a killer the judicial system failed and let go.

Derek Sams.

He came to me every night and sat on the end of my bunk across my legs, cowboy-style. Stared at me with those glowing red eyes, the kind of eyes you sometimes see in photos. This might not be as bad if he’d just say something, anything. He’d sit there and stare. Oh, those stares. His weight on my legs, made my flesh and blood go numb from the pressure. When I did sleep, I saw it all play out again and again. Deputy Mack had been right in his description to Chantal, the way I used my experience to hunt him down, caught him in a friend’s apartment, a hideout up in the high desert, Lancaster. He wept and pissed his pants. He was on the floor in front of me on hands and knees, his friends watching, not calling 911, predators themselves who understood the rules of the jungle, anxious for me to do it. Their eyes alive with the excitement of it, their breath that came in short little gasps.

I let Derek Sams look down the barrel of my gun for a long time, let him see his future, something I later regretted, again and again, as he stared at me deep into the night. At the time, all I saw was the poor broken body of Alfred and how Alonzo, Alfred’s twin, was destined for the same treatment if I didn’t intervene. The law was broken when it came to child custody. I pulled the trigger without remorse. I gave Derek Sams a third eye to help him see his way to hell.

The description of prison caused gooseflesh to rise on Marie’s back, ripple under my hand as she shivered and shook.

“I’m sorry, babe. I shouldn’t have been so candid.”

She kept her head on my chest. Her hand came up to softly stroke my cheek. “Ssh, it’s okay. I had to know.”

We lay there a while, as she thought of incarceration, and I thought about what a heel I was for risking her world.

“Don’t,” she said, “Don’t even think about it.” She’d tuned into my thoughts.

We were on the same wavelength, something that will always amaze me. She read me no matter how hard I tried to conceal my thoughts. If only I’d met her a long time ago. But then she probably would’ve turned and ran away screaming had she met the old me, the cocky, brazen BMF, the Brutal Mother Fucker, that had inhabited my soul.

That night we’d met in the hospital, shot by my own brethren, broken in heart and soul, exposed emotionally, she stepped right in, took hold of the controls, and she’d never let go.

She said, “I made my own choice.” She balled her fist and gently pounded on my chest, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try and take all this on yourself.”

I put my hand over her mouth and held it there.

She pulled it down. Her eyes softened. “Seven kids are a lot of kids.”

Just like that she’d shifted gears, knew it was time to look at the silver lining, get us back on track, facing forward.

“They’re great kids,” I said.

She nodded as her vivacious, big browns glowed with excitement.

I couldn’t help but smile and said nothing.

She said, “You remember what we talked about?”

I knew what she was going to say, but pretended I didn’t. “We’ve talked about a lot of things. You’re going to have to give me a hint.”