David Levien: Where the dead lay

“See you,” she said.

“Yeah-” he answered, as the closing door clipped off the word.

Vicky Schlegel put a plate of egg whites and whole grain toast down on the kitchen table and turned back to a pan sizzling on the stove behind her. The Smiley Morning Show played on the countertop radio. Outside, the dogs, smelling the food, were stirring in their run.

“Hold on, I’ve got your bacon about ready, hon.” She drew on her cigarette and appraised her youngest boy Kenny’s shirtless back as he salted his eggs. He was getting big from all the lifting, just like his brothers. He was already bigger than his father, Terry, but not bigger than Terry had been at that age. They’d met when he was a few years older, but she’d seen pictures.

“You know I can’t eat that fatty shit, Ma.”

“I know, I know. It’s turkey bacon,” Vicky said, shoveling the strips out of the pan with a spatula and moving away from the stove.

“Awesome.”

“You asked me once, that’s all it takes, dear,” she said and put the strips on his plate. He looked up and she saw the bruise purpling on his cheek.

“Kenny-bear, what happened to your face?”

“Training, Ma,” he shrugged. “It’s nothing. Gimme some character, right?”

She smiled, and then her eye fell on the nasty black tattoo on the left side of Kenny’s chest. “RTD,” in Gothic lettering. It was some rapper’s slogan-“Ready To Die.” The thought of it made her shudder. All three of her boys wore ink. It was the style now. Damn disgrace, she thought. “Spray paint on a Rembrandt,” was what she said when Kenny had come home with the lettering on his seventeenth birthday last year.

“You think I could get some OJ, Mrs. Schlegel?” the little blonde asked. Vicky turned toward the girl-Karen, was it? — and picked up her cigarettes. Three handsome boys like hers, all with the ladies’ man gene courtesy of their father, and it was a constant stream of chippies in the house for Vicky to deal with. She should’ve held the line when Charlie, her oldest, started asking if it’d “be cool if his girlfriend crashed on Friday nights.” She should’ve told him it certainly was not cool. And she would’ve if she had foreseen that the Fridays would turn into weekend-long “hangs.” By the time her middle boy, Dean, started dating, they had “guests” on weeknights, too. Then, when Kenny made it to high school three years ago, it became a regular flow of horny little things parading through the house. She couldn’t keep the names straight and didn’t even try anymore.

At one point a few years back Vicky had gone to her husband to put an end to it. “What should they do, go fuck in a car like the tar babies?” Terry had said. “Besides, you’re the one who says you’re too young to be a grandma.”

“C’mon, Terry,” she pleaded.

“Rubbers and a room, it’s the least we can do for ’em. Boys’ll be boys,” he said, and laughed. She had a suspicion he liked having the string of ripe little bouncies around. Now it seemed the house was perpetually running out of toilet paper and frozen pizzas, and the little wenches would’ve drummed her out of shampoo and makeup altogether if she didn’t put her foot down on that.

Now Vicky turned to the latest skank du jour at her kitchen table and gave her standard reply: “Oh, honey, listen, I’ll serve my boys till I die, but not their little twists. It’s just a rule I have. So get it yourself.” Vicky jutted her thumb toward the refrigerator and lit her cigarette. A short snort of laughter was the only evidence that Kenny had heard it.

The blonde’s nose wrinkled in hurt. “Jeez. Kenny, can we just do the picture now?”

“In a minute,” he said, taking a bite of his food. Then he piled the egg whites and turkey bacon on the whole grain toast.

The girl made a huffing noise and crossed her arms. Mrs. Schlegel just leaned against the counter and drank her coffee.

“All right,” Kenny said, folding the toast into a sandwich, “Let’s go, ya little hoodrat.”

He got up and led her out of the kitchen. “C’mon, Kenny-bear,” she said and snapped the waistband of his boxer shorts as they went.

“Get off,” he said, swatting at her, causing her to giggle.

Vicky Schlegel reached for the coffeepot and seethed.

Aurelio Santos jogs up Cumberland and slows to walk the last block. He crosses the parking area and be-bops toward his studio, quietly singing “Chuva, Suor e Cerveja.” His keys click and rattle as he spins the key ring around his finger, ready to let himself in. When he reaches the door and inserts the key, the bolt doesn’t turn, it is already open. Estranho, he thinks, sure he’d locked it the night before. He walks inside and is hit across the back of his head, a solid blow. The pain comes in a hot rush that makes him see white. He tries to keep his balance, reaching for the chair, but falls through it, crashing into the table next to it and knocking it over as he hits the ground. Knees to armpits. In a rush of instinct, he rolls to his back and curls into a tight ball, finding the position that’s second nature to him. He spins on his back to face his attacker. In the dim morning light he makes out a few others coming from behind the first one. One holds a large black shotgun. That’s what I was hit with, Aurelio registers, and then launches out a low sideways kick that lands on his attacker’s patella. The man goes down. Aurelio seizes the opportunity to kip up to his feet. But the blow to the back of his head has done damage and he doesn’t land solidly. He totters to the side, getting hold of the second man, but not for a clean throw. Instead, he lurches forward, knocking the man into the wall, caving it in. Then more white flashes through his eyes, as he is gun-butted in the back of the head for a second time. He feels himself falling, falling through darkness…

Behr’s feet pounded the pavement, rage shooting up through the soles of his shoes, as he hoofed it up Saddle Hill. He wore a weighted vest that added thirty pounds to the effort. The vest was a gift from Susan, who noticed the abrasions on his shoulders from the loaded backpack he used to wear when doing roadwork. It does sit better, Behr had to admit of the vest, though it wasn’t heavy enough for him to really get into the red zone. Nothing, he’d found, was as tough as extended jiu-jitsu sparring. The sets could go on for ten, twenty, thirty minutes without a break and demanded strength, cardio, and lactic acid recovery, especially when he rolled with Aurelio. Though Aurelio weighed south of two hundred pounds, the man had had a special relationship with gravity. He knew how to make himself heavy. When Aurelio established side control, Behr felt as if a car were parked on top of him.

He thought back to the beginning of his training almost a year and a half ago. Back then he felt as weak as a newborn kitten when on the mat with Aurelio. The strength disparity between them seemed like ten to one. It was disturbing. Especially since he knew he could easily out-lift his teacher when it came to weights. It was leverage that made the difference. As he learned the techniques, though, Behr felt the disparity in strength start to level out.

You try to stay up on your feet, but fights end up on the ground. It was a truth, and one he’d known for a long time, but it took him a long time to finally accept it. Between his hand-to-hand training at police academy, his work on patrol, and his time going hard at boxing, Muay Thai, and the like, Behr was aware that despite trying for precision with punches, kicks, and restraining holds, almost all real-world physical confrontations ended up on the floor. They weren’t tidy and organized like in the movies, but messy and savage and full of awkward moves, strange noises, and even odors.