Ken Bruen: Pimp

Getting sick of this kid big time, Max said, “Aye, laddy, why don’t you run along now, ye whore’s ghost? Good on yah, bollix, fook on a bike.” Throwing all the Irish he could think of at the kid, hoping some of it would stick.

But the smartass kid wouldn’t let up, went, “What’s the deal? Why would a guy go around pretending he’s Irish?” Then later, couple more drinks in him, went, “Wait, you look like somebody. Who do you look like? I know I’ve seen you before.”

Max went to take another order, but the kid kept giving him looks all night. Max was afraid the kid was seriously on to him, would blurt out the Max Fisher identity. Max had a flash of himself as Matt Damon, running through Europe, his cover blown. The image invigorated him, reminded him of the player he was — the Max Fisher he’d been repressing since Attica.

Besides, he was in the mood to hit somebody.

So later when the kid went to the bathroom to take a leak, Max followed him in and locked the door. Now he was back in Attica in his head, during the time when he ruled the joint. The fact that such a time never actually existed didn’t matter to Max. He saw himself as the kingpin telling his henchmen — that’s right, in his mind he’d had henchmen — to stand guard outside the bathroom while he beat some Aryan dude to a pulp. But he wasn’t fighting an Aryan now in a bathroom at Attica, he was fighting some waify wiseass in an Irish bar in Portlandia. And it wasn’t exactly a fight. When they got into the bathroom, Sage went, “What’s the problem, bruh?”

Bruh , not bro. What was the world coming to? Sometimes he couldn’t keep up, felt like the old man in Shawshank . He wanted to leave a note, The Max wuz here , and end the misery.

“ You’re my problem,” Max hissed, glaring like Dirty Harry.

In Max’s case, the glare was bigger than the bite — the bite was more like a nibble. He tried to connect with a hard right, but before he could cock his arm he slipped on the pissy floor, said, “Jesus,” then tried to cover and went, “Jaysus,” as he fell on his ass, hit his head on the back of the sink.

“You all right, bruh?”

Max looked at the dizzy image of Sage looming over him. The Max down for the count? This wasn’t right — this wasn’t right at all. Max felt tightness in his chest, went into one of his trances.

He’d been getting a lot of these episodes lately. He’d zone out and an interlude from his past would unfold. Now it was that truly fucked up time when he was an outlaw dope dealer, living off the grid like they said in Weeds .

Yep, The Max knew his TV — what else was there to do in freakin’ Portlandia? Way before Breaking Bad , Max was your citizen turned to the dark side. That time when he was dealing and had to meet with some serious badasses and dude, those dogs were mean, like in your face, biblical fucking stone-cold psychos. In one of his less bright moments, Max had felt it would up his cred to speak Spic. You gonna be down with the Hombres , you better sing coyote.

So he got all them Berlitz tapes hooked up, but did a tad too much meth and passed out, Senior Lopez still lecturing to him. The next day, when he did meet with one particular high roller, the lessons kicked in but the Spanish was high classical Castilian and for some reason stuck on odd directions so he kept rattling to the cartel guy, “Donde esta el Starbucks?” and “Mi aerodeslizador es lleno de anguilas,” or “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Worse, some weird stuff on concerts, as in “Hay algo mas cutre que hacer air guitar en un concerto?” Which he would find later meant, “Is there anything worse than going to a concert and playing air guitar?”

To see the expression on the face of a top cartel guy when you spat this shit in his face. Luckily he thought all gringos were crazy and let it slide.

At these times, recalling the glory days, Max would get all choked up thinking about Angela, his soul mate and partner in crime, the love of his life, his una flor linda . Or, English translation: treacherous cunt.

He’d loved her, yeah, but he was glad she was dead.

He saw her face before him now, her flowing hair, her intense stare, and then, as suddenly as it had come, Max snapped out of his vision. He saw Sage’s hand reaching down to him, and — not beyond a good sucker move — Max grabbed the hand, and pulled Sage down onto the pissy floor.

“The fuck, bruh?” Sage whined.

Max wrestled with him — okay, pulled his hair and scratched at him. After a few minutes of rolling around, grappling with the wasted hipster, Max noticed an extra-large Baggie that had fallen out of Sage’s coat pocket, bulging with some white substance. Max’s drug instincts kicked in, telling him it wasn’t Splenda.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s this?” Max asked.

“Hey, give that back, bruh,” Sage said, lunging.

Max pushed him away, then examined the contents more closely. Looked almost granular, flaky, like kosher salt. Wasn’t any drug he’d seen before, and he’d seen ’em.

“Let’s have a taste, shall we?” he said, more Brit for a moment than Irish, but fuck it. He poked a finger in the Baggie and put a pinch under his tongue.

Holy shit! The rush was harder and stronger than that green drink they once served to him at a Brazilian restaurant in midtown, but that drink must’ve been laced with something because when he left the place, after half a glass, he tripped over a pile of garbage, needed ten stitches for the gash on his forehead. This feeling was like that, but on crack. Not actual crack, because there wasn’t crack in this — Max Fisher knew his crack. But something. Was there hash in it? It was a high-low combo all right, like the perfect poker hand. It was hitting him from all directions at once — up, down, sideways. Was he imagining it or was his sphincter aroused? He didn’t know what it was, but he was hooked, like when he got his first blowjob, on his twenty-fourth birthday.

He wanted more; needed more.

“Come on, seriously, bruh,” Sage said.

Max, back to his prison persona, grabbed a fistful of Sage’s hair and twisted it, and in his best Bogie said, “Spill it, Sage.”

“All right, all right, okay, just quit pullin’ on my hair, bruh.”

Max squeezed tight.

Squealing in agony, Sage said, “P-P-PIMP.”

“Pimp?” Max said. “Your pimp gave it you? Are you some kind of hustler?”

“N-n-no, that’s what it’s called. It’s called PIMP, now can you let me the fuck go?”

Max didn’t, said, “Where’d you get it?”

“I made it.”

“Made it? What do you mean made it?”

“I invented it. It’s... it’s my own shit. Now can you please give it back?”

Shit, this kid was out of Breaking Bad . More importantly, Max was Walter White and this PIMP, holy Christ, this could be his ticket out of Portlandia, all the way back to the top.

Max stood up, accidentally grabbing onto the urinal’s flusher and some water and piss sprayed in his face. He didn’t care, though — nothing could bring him down from this high.

Still on the floor, Sage went, “H-hey, where you goin’ with my PIMP, bruh?”

“I had a rough upbringing,” Max said. “My father was killed when I was three, he was a mason and a chimney collapsed on his head.” Max didn’t know why he was saying this shit — maybe it was some side effect of the drug, making him chatty. He pulled himself together and went, “And my mother, my mother was distant, worked all the time, was never home, but she told me one thing I’ll never forget — always take candy from strangers.”