Josh Stallings: Out There Bad

MEXICO CITY — AUGUST 14TH 6:26 PM

Central slave market. Hunting. No leads to Russian girls yet. Yesterday a young man told me he could take me to a stable of Russian whores. He lied. He tried to rob me. I slit his throat. Left a tarot card on his chest. Left his body in the gutter. One more piece of trash to be picked up.

I travel light, everything I need fits in my coat. Russian military issue. The soldier who owned it won’t need it to keep warm anymore.

Down a fresh alley. Deeper into the labyrinth. Broken hollow-faced girls stare out of the shadows. Olive skin, brown eyes. Broken. I must keep on point. Solve what I came to solve. Fight for all and you will win none. Simple math. Men laugh. Men drink. Men step out of the way when they see me coming. They can smell death.

“Tell me where the Russian girls are?”

“Fuck if I know, maybe here, maybe there. How much money you got?” He is a middleman. He thinks he is in control because we are in his office. Outside a closed door are three armed men. He feels safe.

The razor is so fast his little finger is off before he can scream. My hand clamps down on his mouth. The blade rests against his throat. Blood is leaking from the stub on his hand. His eyes are huge. “Where are the Russian girls?”

He hesitates. A second finger is gone. He screams into my gloved hand.

“Where?” He nods. His eyes plead. I slowly pull my hand from his mouth. The blade rests on his throat.

“Norte, Baja maybe. Rumors. Don’t kill me.”

“No Russian girls here?”

“No, I swear, I only tell the truth. Please.”

I step behind him. I arc down. His throat gushes. His only sound is a gurgling moan. I hold his mouth closed. Then he is dead. I drop a tarot card on his body. His three men will die. They will have cards on their bodies.

LOS ANGELES — AUGUST 14TH 8:32 PM

“Moses, let me give you a lap dance, baby.” Caramel was a big-boned, light-skinned black girl, with mountains of frizzy sun-bleached hair. She wore thigh high Vampira boots and a black leather thong with a matching leather bra so small it barely covered her nipples. If I was any other man, I’d have had to wipe buckets of drool off my chin as she crawled on my lap. But I was me, the bouncer, doing time in titty daycare.

“Little boy, you know you want some of this candy, you know you got a sweet-tooth for Caramel.”

“I don’t do that anymore, baby girl,” I said.

“Ha!”

“Really.”

“Why not?” She reached over to stroke my lap. I didn’t pull away, no need insulting her… besides, I’m not a saint and her touch felt good. It was a slow night, two Mexican boys sat at the bar trying to get up the courage to move down to the stage. With no one at the stage to tip, the girls weren’t dancing. Instead, they sat on the leopard-print sofas, gossiping and getting drunk. Slow nights can be a lot more dangerous than busy ones. Bored, drunk strippers rip it up when the mood hits them wrong.

“That skinny bitch done broke your heart and turned you into a monk?” Caramel purred into my ear. “You used to be all into this fine ass.” I was starting to swell under her attention. “Come on, let me give you a down low nasty call-the-Vice-Squad dance.”

“Can’t. Want to, can’t.”

“I think the girls are right. You pitching for the other team?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, come on, Moses, you ain’t gay. Your point man is standing up ready for combat.”

“What’s the pot up to?”

“What are you talking about, baby?”

“You’re not tossing me a freebee ‘cause I’m cute. Sure isn’t my massive wealth. How much is the bet up to?” She looked at me, fighting to find a quick lie, but it wouldn’t come fast enough. “Fifty? A hundred?”

“Moses, it wasn’t like-”

“Bullshit. Nothing happens in here I don’t know about. Sadie or China is holding a bag full of your hard-earned cash. First girl to get me in the back room wins the pot. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Will you believe me?” She looked down at the table.

“No. You girls think I’m here to amuse you? Let’s see who can get Moses all hot and bothered, then laugh about it in the dressing room… Fuck it.” I stood up and walked away before she could tell me how damn sorry she was.

I banged out the back door and onto the landing of the steep steel stairs that led down thirty feet to the parking lot below. I leaned on the safety-rail, sucking in what stood for fresh air in August, in the city of broken angels. City of wild, damaged dreams and beautiful graffiti-splashed cement rivers. LA, where nothing is what it seems on the surface and everybody lies about what’s underneath. Guys here drive $174,000 German sports cars, then argue over a twenty dollar cover charge and tip a naked girl a buck to put her tits in his face. This city is morally mortgaged to the hilt and drowning in the vig. Three decades after the riots of ‘92 and they had learned nothing, nothing at all. Separation between rich and poor, wider than ever, a true feudal system where lowly serfs like me get by on what they toss down, or what we can scam off them through their need for vice.

“Hey, Cowboy.” Piper walked out onto the balcony. At near thirty, she was considered the old lady of Club Xtasy, but could out dance and out sell any of the eighteen year old shakers in the club. Flame red hair cascaded down, framing her face in its fire. She had a tall tight body topped off with a rack that would make a schoolboy give up his paper route money for one brief touch.

“You thinking of jumping?” She looked over the edge of the stairs, tilting her head in a brief nod.

“Over some stripper bullshit? I don’t think so.”

“It was just a joke, Mo. They’re bored.”

“Fuck them. Next time some freak has his hand up their ass, maybe I’ll look the other way. How’s that for a funny fucking joke.”

“You won’t.”

“Why the hell not, huh? One reason.”

“Didn’t say you shouldn’t. Said you won’t. You’re not wired that way. Which is one of the coolest things about you, big man. That and your fine ass.” She reached out, dancing her finger across the back of my jeans.

I jerked away. “What, you need the cash that bad? Here.” Pulling a hundred out of my pocket, I tossed it at her.

“Fuck you, Moses.” She let the bill fall. “Have a drink, get laid, whatever it takes. The way you are now, it’s getting really hard to care about you.” Her eyes were wet, but she’d never cry, she was a pro. She spun and clicked her way back into the club.

It had been fourteen months since the last time I had played Russian roulette, six months since my last dose of speed, three weeks since my last drink and ten minutes since my last deadly thought. Why? I hadn’t quit drinking and drugging and letting girls friction-fuck me out of some moral stance. I quit it because none of it was working anymore. All it did was make me feel sad and empty. Before Cass left me she taught me what it felt like to be touched by a woman who really wanted me, just for being me. I had known what it felt like to be loved, or the best approximation of love two children of the battle zone could muster. Maybe she came to me because I was a big man and could protect her, maybe it was gratitude for saving her life and taking out the punk who killed her sister, or maybe it was simply that her scars fit with mine. I didn’t care why, she was mine and I was hers. It didn’t last, it couldn’t, but for a time it had felt real and when she left me, I knew I was through settling for fake passion.

Before Cass, I could pretend that these strippers I kept safe might actually have wanted a sliced up, tattered old warhorse like me. The trouble is, once you know you’re telling yourself a lie, it stops working. My odometer was going to click over to forty-four in October, I guess it was time I started telling the truth, if only to myself.