Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

– My dad put it there.

– Why?

I picked up the cash.

– I don't know. To apologize for being a dick maybe.

She flipped the pages of the book.

– Well if that's how your family apologizes for being a dick, how much do Iget?

I folded the bills and put them in the breast pocket of my shirt.

– You get to stay here and study.

She closed the book, ran fingers over the cloth cover.

– Hey?

– Mmm.

She looked up at me.

– I'm sorry about that thing.

I looked around, trying to find the thing she was talking about.

– What, the tofu?

She shook her head, pointed at the bookshelf.

– No. That thing. The yearbook. I recognized the name of the school, of course, but I didn't, like, know you were there or anything. But Chev told me. I didn't mean to, like, stir shit up.

She put her fingers on the back of my hand.

– That sucked. I remember when it happened and it totally sucked. I cried all night. So. I'm sorry. You know.

I looked at her fingers on my hand.

– Stop touching me, you stupid plastic bitch.

She pulled her hand back.

I pointed at Chev's bedroom.

– Don't get too comfortable around here. Chev is just going to fuck you until he gets bored, and then stop calling you except for maybe once or twice over the next couple months when he's drunk and needs a booty call.

Her lips thinned, she started collecting her books.

I kept talking, walking to the door.

– And you'll tell your friends that's cool, you can use the hookup, but when you call him to get the same action, he won't even bother to answer. He'll see your name on his phone and put it right back in his pocket and say something about how it's some chick I was hooking up with and now she's strung out on the dick.

She shoved the books into a knapsack and stood.

I waved her down.

– No, no, you stay here, make yourself at home, I'm sure Chev will be back soon for a pit stop.

I went out the door, the copy of Anna Karenina hitting it just as I slammed it behind me.

I stood there, thought about going back in and apologizing. Thought about going back in and telling her some lies about how Chev told me she liked to be pissed on. Thought about staying right where I was and never moving again in my life.

But what's the point? Apologies don't make things better. And you can only hurt someone so much before they stop caring what you do to them. And if I stayed where I was, sooner or later the weird cat lady from down the hall would come out and ask me to help her get that mean calico from behind the dryer in the laundry room and I've been clawed enough by that rabid fucking feline.

So I went down the stairs and around the building and cut down the alley that ran east to Highland, taking the shortcut toward the shop, with a few choice words left in my vocabulary to be directed at my best friend.

In the alley, the homeless couple stood outside their tent, sorting recy-clables between the three barrels mounted on their cart.

– Cocksucker.

– Bitch.

– Fucking loser.

– Fucking whore.

Their matching Mohawks bobbing as they dipped in and out of the barrels, coming up with glass and plastic and aluminum.

The girl glanced at me.

– Hey hey, got any change today?

I put my head down and walked past, skirting the row of cars parked behind the apartments that shared the alley.

I heard her spit.

– Fuck you, asshole! We just live here! We're just alive! Just like you! You don't have to ignore us because we're homeless!

I turned and walked backward away from them.

– I'm not ignoring you because you're homeless. I'm ignoring you because you scream at each other in the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep. And also because I hate that Santa hat you wear every Christmas because you think it's gonna make people give you more money or something. I'm ignoring you not because I don't like homeless people, but because I don't like you, personally.

I bumped into something, smacking my head hard into whatever it was.

The homeless couple's eyes bugged.

I turned around and got shoved to the ground by a big motherfucker in a ski mask.

He kicked me in the ribs.

– Don't fuck with the guild, asshole.

I curled around the pain.

– What?

He got down on one knee and grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled my head from the ground and slapped my face back and forth.

– Don't! Fuck! With! The! Guild!

Snot and blood ran from my nose as I started to cry.

– OK! OK! OK! No guild fucking!

He took me by the throat and shook me.

– I'm fucking serious!

I choked.

– I know! I know! I know! I can tell by the way you're strangling me!

Two more guys in ski masks appeared behind him.

– Come on, man, let's go, people are watching.

The big one took his hand from my neck and looked at the gaping homeless couple.

– They're just fucking crackheads.

I rubbed my throat.

– Hey just because they're homeless doesn't mean they're crackheads. They could be junkies, asshole.

He grabbed a wad of hair.

– Still so funny, still making me forget to laugh.

I coughed up some bloody phlegm.

– Dingbang?

He made a fist.

– Bang, motherfucker!

The fist came at me.

– Just Bang!

BANG!

I remember a sideways view of Bang and his two buddies getting into a van with bright yellow paint splotched over a smoothly primered front and side. I remember the van hauling ass down the alley. And I remember the homeless couple coming over and squatting next to me, the girl pouring some water from a bottle onto a rag and wiping at the blood on my face.

– See, that's what being a dick gets you.

And I remember thinking she just could be right.

Then I took a little nap.

– I can stitch it up.

– No fucking way.

– Dude, seriously, I can totally stitch it up.

I slapped Chev's gloved hand from my face, knocking the needle and thread from his fingers.

He shook his head.

– Gonna have to re-sterilize that before I stitch you up.

I covered the gash in my forehead, left when Bang bounced my noggin off the asphalt.

– You are not stitching me up. You aren't even sewing buttons back on my shirt. You are coming nowhere near me or my skin with that needle, man.

He started stripping the black rubber gloves from his hands.

– Whatever. I don't know why you're being such a puss about it. I use needles on people all the time.

I threw my arms out.

– Asshole, you use them to punch holes in people's genitalia! You wield needles for the purpose of inflicting voluntary bodily mutilations! You don't close holes, man, you make them!

He stuffed the gloves in the waste box on the wall.

– Look at it however you want, man. Way I see it, skin is my metier, flesh my milieu. Modifying the body is my art.

I looked out the open service window at the customers sitting in the waiting room listening to us fight. I looked at him. I closed the shutters over the window.

– Are you high?

He giggled.

– Really high, man.

I put my head in my hands.

– You're high and you were going to stitch my wound?

He took an American Spirit from the pack on the desk and lit it. -Why not? I tattoo high all the time.

– Not the same, man. Not the same.

He blew smoke rings.

– Says you.

I lifted my head and stared at him. I opened my mouth, observed just how red his eyes were, and gave it up.

– Sure. Says me.

I stood up and made the room go sideways and Chev grabbed my arm and eased me back down.

– Whoa there, Hoss. Easy there.