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

– Bitter.

– Your flesh being eaten away.

– Cynical.

– Consumed by the billions of infected sperm monkeys that have been

pumped into her by the Beverly Hills High football team since she was thirteen.

– Hostile.

– Excoriated to a nubbin with a shriveled sack hanging off it.

– Excoriated?

– Look it up.

– I know what it means.

– No you don't.

– Pretentious.

I threw the magazine at him.

– I am not fucking pretentious.

He caught the magazine and rolled it tight and counted points off his fingers with it.

– Jealous, bitter, cynical, hostile and pretentious.

I got up and grabbed at the magazine.

– And I'm not jealous, not of a rag like that.

He jerked the magazine away.

– Excoriate my ass.

– You wouldn't say that if you knew what it means.

I slapped the cigarette from his mouth into his lap and he jumped from the chair, whacking at the embers on his crotch with the magazine.

I shoved him.

– Cool it, that's a new issue.

He swatted the top of my head with it.

– You are such a dick.

– Fuck you.

I grabbed him around the middle and pushed him back into the chair and he smacked me across the ear with the magazine.

– Dick.

The string of bells hanging from the door jangled.

– Interrupting something intimate?

Chev shoved me away and got out of the chair and tossed my magazine on the couch against the wall.

I adjusted the tail of my shirt.

– Just trying to keep the romance in the relationship, man.

Po Sin stood in the doorway, using every bit of his huge roundness to blot out the sunlight behind him.

– Couple that's been together as long as you two, guess you must have to resort to the rough stuff. Me and the missus, we can mostly get by with a little dirty talk and Kama Sutra Oil.

I fell onto the couch, put my feet up on the arm and opened my magazine.

– Yeah, but you guys are pretty much newlyweds compared to us. I mean, me and Chev, we've been together like over twenty years, like since we were five or so. You guys been married how long?

– Hardly thirteen years, man. Like yesterday.

Chev lit a fresh cigarette.

– Don't listen to that fag, Po Sin, he's always creeping in my room at night, but he never gets any.

I turned a page.

– True, he is a bit of a tease.

Po Sin nodded and moved from the door, came to the middle of the shop and occupied it.

– Well, that's enough fagging around for me. You got your canister?

Chev started cleaning up the paper towels and bloody swabs from the nipple piercing, and jerked his head at me.

– Go get the can.

– Fuck you. ‘M I your slave?

He stuffed the garbage into a red biohazard bag and pulled the sealed plastic magazine from the sharps disposal on the wall.

– You're my burden. You're my cross. My goddamned albatross and you haven't paid rent in two months and I fed you this morning, again, and you abused another one of my clients today and you can get off your ass and go get the can or get the fuck out and go look for a job.

I threw the magazine on the couch and pushed myself up and made for the back of the store.

– Your wife rag like this, Po Sin?

He shook his head.

– My lady, she beams messages to me through her eyes. She don't got to rag on me.

– Lucky man.

– So says you.

I went in the back of the shop and got the red biowaste canister and brought it out front. Chev handed me the bag he was holding. I went to drop it in the canister and a wad of bloody paper towels fell on the floor. I bent to pick them up.

– Not with your bare hands, not with your bare hands.

I looked at Po Sin.

– It's no big deal, it's just dry blood.

I grabbed the wad and dropped it in the canister with the rest of the waste.

He pulled at the waistband of his navy blue Dickies.

– Could have been a needle in the middle of that.

I slid him the canister.

– There wasn't.

– And you never know what's growing in blood. Living in it.

I showed him my hands.

– Too late now.

He looked at Chev and Chev shrugged. He shook his head and lifted the canister and considered.

– Ten pounds.

Chev shook his head.

– Eight, man, at the most.

Po Sin set the canister down.

– Got a scale handy?

– A scale? It look like I got a scale around here?

– Well, in the absence of a scale, I'm the expert. And the expert says this is ten pounds of biohazardous waste and at two bucks a pound you owe me twenty bucks.

Chev picked up the canister.

– Telling you, this is eight, tops. Sixteen bucks.

Po Sin adjusted his tiny oval wirerims with his thick stubby fingers.

– Chev, do we have a contract?

Chev scratched the stubble on the side of his head.

– No.

– So, I don't charge you a weekly rate, then, for picking this shit up, I don't charge you the same forty-nine fifty a week minimum I charge everyone else on my route. Is that right?

Chev looked at the ceiling. -Yeah.

– I charge you a pound rate that I usually charge only to people that bring their own shit by and drop it off themselves, right?

Chev reached for the big leather wallet attached to his belt by a dangling steel chain.

– OK, OK.

– I mean, if I'm not doing you a solid here, if you'd rather do business in the manner of most of my clients, we can draw up a contract and I'll be here rain or shine on my appointed rounds every week and you can pay the pickup rate whether you have waste or not.

Chev opened the wallet and started pulling out bills.

– Got it. My bad.

– If you'd prefer that over, say, busting my balls for the sake of four bucks, I can go out to the van and get the paperwork right now. That suit you?

Chev held out two tens.

– No, man, no, here, here it is, it's cool, my bad.

Po Sin reached out and pinched the bills between his thumb and forefinger and tugged them from Chev's hand.

– Why thank you for your prompt and courteous payment.

Chev stuffed the wallet back in his pocket and pointed at the koi tattooed on Po Sin's forearm.

– Shit, man, not I like don't hit you with a discount on your ink.

Po Sin tucked the money into the breast pocket of his unbuttoned Clean Team Trauma work shirt.

– True. And it's also not like I ever beef with you about what you charge when I get the bro rate.

Chev nodded his head, put out his hand.

– No, man, you're right, I was out of line.

Po Sin folded his hand around Chev's.

– It's cool, just the ways and means of business. Four bucks is just four bucks, but, then again, it's four bucks. If you get me.

Chev looked at the number on the face of his vibrating cell.

– Yeah, don't got to tell me. Small business owners of the world unite.

He hooked a thumb at me where I'd sprawled back on the couch with my magazine.

– Wish you could teach some economics to the freeloader over there.

I didn't look away from the magazine.

– Indentured servant is more like it.

He ignored me, answering the phone and flipping open the appointment book on the counter at the front of the shop.

– Yeah, what did you want?

He rolled his eyes.

– A dolphin? In the small of your back?

He stuck a finger in his open mouth.

– Yeah, no problem. How about tomorrow afternoon?

Po Sin came over and peeked at my magazine.

– That guy got toes for eyes? -Yeah. Cool, huh?

– He a monster?

– Nah, just a guy gets all fucked up by a psycho.

– What you see in that shit, man?

– I don't know.