Charlie Huston - Every Last Drop

And then I am pulled inside by a force not unlike being roped to the back of an MTA bus as it pulls from Penn Station, and the door is slammed shut behind me on the suddenly retreating couple in the hall.

— He's still giving me that look, tell him again it wasn't me.

— I know it might be a little hard to believe, the situation being what it is, but

he's actually telling the truth, Joe.

— See, it wasn't me, man. I mean, just basic logic at work, man, I mean, do the

math. Like, two and two does not make five, and for it to have been me, well,

you d like have to go back and make that apple not hit Galileo's head and

make two plus two equal like eleven. If you get me.

— Newton.

— No thanks. I'm not hungry. Like, the way he's looking at me, I'm never likely

to eat again the way it makes my stomach jump.

Terry shakes his head. -No, the name you were, you know, searching for, it's Newton.

Phil scratches his head, careful not to disrupt his pompadour. -Name? What name? I don't know any names, man, I don't know a thing. I'm like barely involved in this shit. Innocent bystander.

Terry taps my razor against my brass knuckles.

— The man who got hit in the head with the apple, who invented, although discovered is a more accurate word, gravity, his name was Newton. Sir Isaac Newton.

Phil holds up both hands in denial.

— I'm telling you, Bird, I never heard of the guy. Like with Joe here, he just showed up. I'd known he was coming I woulda called you. I was gonna call you.

He looks at me.

— No offense, Joe, and not like there's anything in it for me, but if I want to stick around these parts I got to do what's smart.

He raises a finger. -But I did not, in fact, make that call. Cuz why would I? For what? And when?

He shows the raised finger to Terry.

— And this Newton character? Never heard of him. He's around, I'd never know it.

Terry looks at the mass of shadow behind Phil. It comes away from the wall and taps him on the chest and Phil goes down hard into the corner of the

room.

The mass looms over him. -Siddown an' shutit, Philip.

Phil cowers. -Yeah, sure thing, Hurley. Its shut.

He covers his mouth with his hands.

Hurley turns to Terry, rolls his neck. -Dat good enow, Terry?

Terry sets my weapons on Phils narrow dresser.

— Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Just we all need to relax a little. Get a little less chatter in here, clear the air of static and confusion.

He adjusts the set of his Lennon glasses on the bridge of his nose. -Like, for instance, Joe, while yeah, Phil is a nasty cockroach of a Renfield and would sell his, I don't know, his soul, mother, anything like that, for a few bucks or a handful of black beauties, he didn't have anything to do with this.

He combs his soul patch with the nail of his index finger. -Truth is, you weren't the victim of any kind of, I don't know, betrayal or setup, you were really, when you get into it, the victim of your own nature.

He places a hand on the inner thigh of his often-mended hemp jeans. -What I'm getting at here is that you, over the many years of our association and, if I'm opening up, which I am, over the many years of our friendship, you were given a lot of slack. Yards and yards. Part of that was in tribute to the bond between us.

He points at the window where the gap of daylight has grown brighter. -You know they closed it? CBGB, they closed it. Outbreak of sudden hostilities between the guy who owned the place and his landlords. A homeless charity, of all things. Couldn't be negotiated. They, there's some some irony in this, the homeless charity people, they gave him the boot.

He looks lost for a moment.

— The Bowery without CBGB. What's that? Like, and it's not an overstatement at all, you know, like the end of an era.

He looks at me.

— Big landmark in our relationship, yeah? The Ramones. That gig. Man that was a great gig. One of their best. I was having an amazing night. Right till I went in the can and found you all opened up and bleeding on the floor. Tell you, till very recently, I don't know, I always hoped Id find the guy who did that and, don't get me wrong, but thank him.

He spreads the fingers of both hands across his chest and bows his head. -I know how that sounds. Believe me.

He raises his head.

— But the point isn't to thank the guy for causing you pain, for infecting you, for sending you into this life and all the, you know, complications that come with it.

He lowers his hands from the front of his East Village Organic Foods Co-op shirt.

— The point would have been to thank him for dropping you in my way. For facilitating whatever, I don't know, whatever energy it was that knew I needed someone like you at that time. I mean, man, over the years, we got some things done. Not always seamless, III be first to cop to that, but we got some things done. So.

He points at the window again.

— For a long time I always had this vague kind of feeling that guy deserved some thanks from me.

He touches that spot on his thigh again.

— You know, until you got Hurley there shot to pieces and did your best to kill me.

I light the smoke I've been paying attention to while he's been talking. -Terry, lets face it, when all that went down, I wasn't at my best.

I wave my hand, leaving a rising trail of smoke. -I'd been at my best, you d be dead right now.

A sharp light comes to the corner of his eye. -Well, that's a point that could be debated. Isn't it?

I nod.

— Sure. Feel like you maybe want to have Hurley step into the hall and we can debate it now?

He runs a hand over his head and down the length of his ponytail. -No, Joe, that's not going to be the way this happens.

He comes and sits next to me on Phils sagging bed.

— What I was getting at before, about how, I don't know, Phil there didn't have anything to do with us being here, about how that was your own fault, that wasn't a minor point. See, the fact that you were, for all intents and purposes, sitting on death row when you made your break, that's not exactly an extenuating circumstance. More like that's further grounds speaking against you.

I find a blue and white cardboard coffee cup on the floor and knock some ash into it. Not that I'm too worried about making a mess, just that I'd like to avoid burning the place down. Till I'm certain that's my best option, anyway. -Yeah, I follow, Terry. Thing is, you were planning to put me in the sun. So I'm hard-pressed to see what you can do at this point that's any worse.

He takes his glasses off.

— Worse, yeah, worse. Well, that's part of the whole picture thing here. Like how the reason we know you re here, that's because you're here. Which, I know sounds deliberately circular, but It's really not.

He taps my knee with one of the arms of his glasses.

— The way you left us, that big bang you went out with, that required a great deal of effort on my part to, well, not so much to cover up, but to keep in perspective. That story had circulated too widely, it would have destabilized things. Not a situation we can afford in already unstable times. Yeah. So. When we took it to the street, the picture that was painted was very much of our making. But based on your own work.

He folds and unfolds the arms of the glasses.

— So, your failed attempt to infect your girlfriend, that was retouched a bit. That became a, I don't know, a situation where you fed on her to save your

own skin. The thing is.

He puts the glasses on.

— You have down here, or, you know, had, kind of a folk status. You may have been the security arm of the Society, but people felt like they could depend on you for a fair shake. Plus everyone likes a badass. Everyone likes telling stories about a badass. And everyone likes the idea that their badass is badder than everyone else's badass. And people, turns out, had this idea that you were their local badass.