Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

The delivery’s here, said Super-Gay. The deliveryman looked like a bike courier and brought coke with a receipt. We’re first, said Miguel, so the two of them went into the bathroom. Why, no one knew, maybe it was due to a general, vague fear. Felix and I were coke partners, Tuuli watched us. For each round Miguel and John left us two very neat lines on the toilet lid. After the first round my tar-paper fatigue was gone, after the second I was praising Bret Easton Ellis. By the window Felix and John talked about the gin and how Bombay Sapphire had to be drunk straight no matter what, at the very most on the rocks, and so on, the cloud and the light, the visual sensation, the bright sound of Miguel’s doorbell. Someone put on electronic music. A few people joined us in the kitchen, Felix switched to whisky, Miguel gave Lua still more beer and pulled him by the tail in a circle, Super-Gay ordered pizza, Felix sushi, Miguel: so what are we going to do now, foreign policy, all this is a reaction to fucked-up imperialism, this attack is only the beginning. Right, right. Lua vomited on the marble, the doorbell rang, people dropped by, deliverymen, messengers, couriers and DJs, writers, journalists, musicians.

The roller coaster is lying there like a slain dragon, Astroland is still empty. Kiki parks her Honda in the no-standing zone next to the Shore Hotel on Surf Avenue. At Nathan’s we buy hot dogs with onions and sauerkraut, hot dogs with chili, cheeseburgers, french fries with ketchup, soda for two. I carry the bag, Kiki her camera, Lua drags his leash behind him. Even Coney Island is full of flags now, they’re pinned to the padded coat of a Russian woman on Brighton Beach, they’re painted on the clam and beer stands, on the wheels of a Korean War veteran’s wheelchair, they billow over Astroland, they flutter blue and red and silvery over the boardwalk. Lua poses for Kiki next to the fishermen on the pier and in front of an army recruiting station. He looks boldly at the camera, we buy him cotton candy. A few more booths, then an empty, fenced-in lot with withered grass and paint stains, above it a garland of letters spelling Shoot the Freak shines into the sky. Painted in fairground-blue and carnival-yellow, the price is flaking off the walls, 3 for $1, as is the announcement Live Target! Paintball Freak! Moving Target! Shoot the Freak! Kiki says that after the war rhetoric of the last two weeks what she’d like most of all is to shoot at someone herself, but around noon the shooting galleries are closed. Kiki takes pictures of Lua and me amid the bright colors. In the can toss I win a bottle of sugary sparkling wine, the good French stuff, says the woman at the counter, you know? — We do, says Kiki. She pops the cork, and Lua drinks the Coney Island champagne from the soda cup.

Later we sit on the beach next to a playground made of plastic: climbing cube, a few ladders, a slide. The Atlantic lies flat on its back, Astroland holds still. For the first time in weeks Lua gets to run free, for the first time I see the two warships on the horizon. Kiki takes only small sips, she has to get back on the road later, she says. She doesn’t say where she’s going. The September sun is now slanting steeply over the beach, two old men with metal detectors stroll slowly from right to left, occasionally one of them finds a syringe, bottle cap, or coin. Lua plods along the beach and toward us on his three legs, he flops down on the sand between us and says he’s going to take his nap now. Kiki speaks of the beauty of this desolate area, of the decay that resides in places like this, she points to the apartment blocks of red brick behind the booths and carnival rides, one joyous sadness after another, she says, and photographs Lua and me at the bottom of the slide. Have you been together long? she asks, and I answer, yes, very long. And that I’ll tell her about Lua’s fourth leg and the Heckler & Koch that shot it off. There was still a lot to tell and explain, such as the blood on my T-shirt and my cigarettes. Such as why I’m here now and not with Tuuli and Felix, such as the child. When? Once I’ve put the last several days behind me, the good-bye first. Kiki packs up her camera and leans on me. Finish your story, Svensson!

Tuuli shut the bathroom door and turned the key. On the toilet lid there was only one line of cocaine. Last round, said Felix, as always. One of us gets the coke, one of us gets Tuuli. Things were what they were. I remember how Tuuli kneeled down between Felix and me on the tiles. Svensson? she asked me, and rummaged in the pockets of her too-large jeans. Yes, I said. She found a coin and showed it to us like a second in a duel. Felix? Tuuli nodded at Felix. I looked first into his face and then at myself in the mirror, our eyes were like dark winter puddles edged with ice. We raised our glasses. Eyes shut! said Tuuli, but I didn’t obey. We sat down on the floor, I leaned my head against the wall and looked at Tuuli. Behind a massive block of frosted glass at her back shimmered fluorescent lights, from hidden speakers came the same music as in the apartment, even here in the bathroom a small television was on. I took a sip of my gin and put the heavy glass on the toilet lid. Then Tuuli ran her hand over my eyes as if I were dead. In Miguel’s black-tiled bathroom I sat on the floor between the toilet and heated towel racks and suddenly no longer knew exactly who I was. For a few seconds I stopped being Dirk Svensson. I remember the clink of the tossed coin on the tiles and that I opened my eyes again even though it was prohibited. Tuuli put the coin back in her pocket and smiled at me. She swept up a few grains of coke with her index finger and stuck it in Felix’s mouth as if he were a baby. He licked it off with his eyes closed. I’d lost, maybe I’d won, that night it couldn’t be decided. I took the bill from the toilet lid and snorted the last line with my left nostril, then Tuuli leaned over the toilet and kissed me. Felix sat next to us with his eyes closed and drank his gin, smiling. Had he opened his eyes, maybe everything would have turned out differently. The bitter cocaine dripped into the back of my throat, and Tuuli’s tongue tasted numbly of smoke and juniper berries. Okay, I said, and ran my fingers over Tuuli’s pregnant belly under the PricewaterhouseCoopers T-shirt she was still wearing, my hands on her breasts, on the back of her neck, and suddenly the last several days and weeks and years and past and future contracted meaningfully and clearly in her lips. Tuuli took my hand, kissed it, and placed it back in my lap. Then someone pounded on the door, told us to open up, the taxi was here. Felix, still squeezing his eyes shut, let us guide him out of the apartment. On the way out I drained my gin and my nose began to bleed on Tuuli’s T-shirt.

The taxi crossed the bridge back to Williamsburg, the lights of the Manhattan Bridge shimmered in the dawn of September 14, on the riverbank below us the factories were asleep. Felix gave the taxi driver a tip and bought a flask of whisky from Corner Store Oscar with the change, I pulled the drunk dog home. Tuuli almost fell asleep walking. We gave Lua a shower with tepid water, we didn’t want to frighten him. I had surrendered control to the cocaine and opened another bottle of beer, Felix had unscrewed the flask. The muted television showed dancing women in Afghanistan or Iraq or Silvercup Studios on the river. Then Tuuli emerged freshly showered and naked from the bathroom. She tossed me the purple T-shirt, her naked belly and her breasts flickered in the light of the television. She lay down next to Felix. He laid his hands on her belly as if it belonged to him. Tuuli yawned and repeated that they were not alone but were three. She fell asleep immediately. I remember that at that moment I put down my beer and stood up, that I took Felix’s flask and Tuuli’s T-shirt, that I shut the door behind me and woke Lua. That I then walked down Lorimer Street and turned the next corner, past Settepani and the cardboard box huts under the BQE, first north, then west, later anywhere, away from Tuuli and Felix in my bed and surrounded by my books.