Charlie Huston - Every Last Drop

A faucet scabbed with peeling lead paint juts from a wall at the back. I take

my jacket, the Le Tigre shirt, and a small box of detergent from a Laundromat vending machine, and go squat by it. I get the shirt damp and sprinkle some soap powder on it and start to work at the blood on the jacket. Not the first time I've done this.

Back outside, I pull the door closed and look at the City of Light Christian Center across the street. Is it ironic, me crashing across from a church? No, it is not fucking ironic. What it is is fucking business as usual in the Bronx. Churches are like hair salons up here. Cant go two blocks without passing at least one.

Pentecostal Church of Jerusalem II. Cherubim and Seraphim Church. Congregation of Hope Israel. Healing of the Heart Worship Center. Concillio de Iglesia Pentecostal Vision Para Hoy Inc.

Danger isn't that you'll burst into flames should you accidentally rub against one, danger is that all those fucking places are breeding grounds for superstition. Not just the usual shit about the virgin giving birth and her son growing up to get crucified and come back to life. These people, they believe in all kinds of crap.

Not least of all, some of them believe in vampires.

The fact they believe in the kind that can be chased off with garlic and by

invoking the name of the Lord is beside the point. Simple fact is, they believe.

I hit the corner of Rockwood and the Concourse at the big apartment building that looks like Charles Addams was a big inspiration in its design, and cross the Boulevard.

Believers are a problem.

Believers keep me moving from shithole to shithole up here. Mean, you slap a reputation for nocturnal habits on top of the white skin, and some of these churchy types get even more nosy than usual.

But the Bronx isn't the only place where believers make trouble.

That scene cooking over the river. That isn't about believers facing off for a dustup, I don't know what it is. Everyone putting their back in a corner, going into a big stare-down, waiting for someone to twitch and turn their eyes away. That happens, someone blinks, and the rest will be on their throat. Whittle themselves down till there's two left, circle, sniff and hit the floor with their teeth buried deep in each other's flesh.

Smells like a lot of dying getting ready to happen.

I think about Predo's little presentation on the Horde girl and everyone's reaction to her plans. Trying to pry the truth from the cracks between all his lies isn't worth the time. I've tried, and never come away with more than

bloody fingertips.

Only way to get to the heart of what Predo s up to is to pick up a knife and start digging under the skin till you hit a gusher.

One could ask, Why bother?

Why jump when the little prick comes calling with a setup that could be straight and narrow, but that just as clearly won't leave room to squeeze out at the end? Things so bad up here? So miserable just eking it out? Life lack some kind of meaning when it's lived this close to the bone? Willing to put your neck on the block just for a chance to live back in Manhattan? Mean to say, Joe, it's a great city and all, but the rents are out of fucking control!

And I could answer back, Mind your own fucking business.

Man have to have a reason to do something stupid?

Man got to be more than just bored and sick and tired of what he's got right now to decide to risk a pile of worthless crap on a crooked wheel?

So.

Figure I got a reason. Figure I got a couple reasons. Figure there's some people over there important to me. Figure there's two of them.

Figure one of them I got to kill.

The other. Well, figure that's a little more complicated. Figure the other is a

girl. That's always more complicated.

Figure a chance to get across the river with a little time to work with is all I've been breathing for. Get picky about who comes offering everything you've been dreaming about for over a year, and it'll slip away, never to be seen.

So it's a crooked deal. So I'm angling to get myself real fucking dead. So what?

I play this right, I may get to see my girl again. Fact that if she's alive, it could mean she's just waiting for a chance to kill me doesn't enter into the situation.

I like her anyway.

Besides, you got something better to die for?

Past the Morris Hair Salon and Spa, the svelte figure of a yellow neon woman standing in for the / in Morris, Bonner dead-ends in a cul-de-sac of weeded gardens. One yellow-brick tenement, a three-story town house of rotted wood shingle, a gray aluminum-sided row house with a rooster weathervane bolted above the porch, and another fucking Pentecostal church.

Juan 3:16 on a green sign.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever

believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Funny thing. Live in this life, do the things we do to stay alive. Know that if you do it enough you could go on living for a very long time, sometimes you think funny things.

Like that line about drinking His blood and eating His body.

Guy like me hears that and he could get ideas about what was really going on at the last supper. Not that I'm saying anything. Just that I like to give myself a good laugh every now and then.

Back of the church, behind chain-link, is a yard of high green weeds and low-hanging branches that screen the rear of a dingy white row house seated off the cul-de-sac. I go over the fence, through the brush and scratch at the red backdoor of the place.

Nothing happens. I scratch again. More nothing. So I knock. Same result. I pull my hand back to give the door a good banging and smell the gun oil on the barrel of the shotgun before it tickles my neck. -You wake my neighbors and I'm gonna be mad as hell.

I raise my hands.

— You use that thing and they'll wake the hell up all right. -They will. But they II be too scared to look out their windows.

— Good point.

She takes the gun away. -The hell you doing here, Joe?

I turn and show Esperanza my new scar. -Hoped you'd have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow.

— Thought you had a quiet night planned.

I settle into the ladder-back chair in the corner of her basement room. -So did I. Ran into a guy named Lament had other ideas.

She puts the.20 gauge on the floor next to her old army cot. -Lament. -Got in a tangle with some of his kids.

She pulls a drawer open on an old bureau. -You hurt any of them?

I point at my face.

— I look like I hurt any of them? Want to see where that crazy fucker bit my toe off?

She digs in the drawer. -No, I do not.

— Didn't think so. Between that, losing an eye, and my bad knee, I'm gonna be roadkill any night now.

She looks up from her search. -Kind of doubt that.

I light a smoke and drop the spent match in one of those ashtrays with a plaid beanbag base.

— Doubt all you like, but I'd have to contract dire leprosy to start losing parts any faster.

She takes a green and gold sweatband from the drawer and stretches it between her fingers. -Howd you get away? — Cut a deal.

She drops the sweatband back in the drawer and looks over. -Cutting deals Isn't Laments style. -What can I tell you, I cut a deal.

She scratches her upper thigh just under the hem of the flannel boxer shorts

she wore outside to threaten me. I'm assuming she was wearing them already and didn't put them on special for the occasion. -Guess its not unheard of.

She's washed her usually slicked hair and it hangs black and glossy to her jawline. -I cut a deal with him once.

There's an old Ewing poster above the cot, corners ripped by thumbtacks.

I stretch my leg, feel the gravel in my knee grind.

— Don't say. Didn't know you know the guy. Truth is, before tonight, I didn't know he existed.