Марк Смит - Moist

“Gimme a minute.”

“Would you like a Value Meal?”

“I don’t know. Let me look.”

Where was the fucking fire? Martin studied the board. There was chicken, several different chicken things, and fish. A fish sandwich. Maybe just some fries. The voice came back.

“Sir, you’re holding up the line.”

Martin looked in his rearview and saw a couple of cars idling behind him. He ordered quickly, opting for some kind of ranch-chicken sandwich, fries, and a root beer. Why don’t they sell alcohol? He could use a stiff one right now.

He pulled forward, got his meal, and drove off. They were fast. How did they cook it so fast? Even a microwave wasn’t as fast as that.

Martin drove with one hand and reached into the hot bag with his other. As he pulled the sandwich out of the bag, the french fries spilled out all over the seat, the floor, and the arm. Oh, fuck, what next.

He devoured the sandwich.

A pot of vegetarian curry simmered on the stove. Don and Maura sat on the couch kissing. Maura broke from their embrace.

“I bought a gun today.”

It took a moment for Don to switch gears and actually register what she’d said.

“What?”

“I bought a gun. A Colt.”

“You don’t need a gun.”

“I want a gun.”

Don couldn’t argue with that. He’d spent years seeing the kind of damage, intentional and unintentional, that guns could produce, yet he still believed that people should have the right to keep and bear arms.

“Have you ever fired a handgun?”

Maura bit her lower lip and leaned toward him.

“I was hoping you’d show me.”

Don smiled. He’d seen other detectives with their wives and girlfriends at the range. He’d start the tongues wagging in the precinct when they got a load of Maura.

“Whenever you want.”

“I have to wait ten days.”

“That’s not too long.”

“Seems like a long time to me. What do they have to check?”

“They can check your record in a few minutes. The tenday thing is called a cooling-off period.”

Maura gave him a quizzical look. Don tried to explain the law.

“For example, if you get fired and you’re upset about it, they don’t want you to be able to just go out, buy a gun, and come back and kill your boss. That’s why it’s called cooling off.”

“But people do that all the time.”

“Right. But those people already had guns. They didn’t just go buy them that day.”

“But I’m not upset. I just want my gun.”

Don shrugged.

“You’ll get your gun. You just have to wait a few days.”

Maura sighed.

“It just doesn’t seem fair.”

Don wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

“Life’s not always fair.”

Nestled up against him, she reached around and stroked his back, her hand finding its way to his belt and the handgun clipped to it. Maura felt a surge in her already-surging loins as she touched the gun. With her other hand she unzipped his trousers and reached in. Don’s cock bolted out of his pants like a thoroughbred coming out of the gate.

Maura shifted, keeping one hand on his pistol and the other on his cock. She dropped to her knees and began sucking him.

It was Don’s lucky day.

Bob opened his eyes. Frida Kahlo stared back at him. What was bothering her? Bob realized that he had his shoes on and his pants were crumpled around his ankles. He could hear Felicia in the kitchen cracking ice trays and dropping cubes into tumblers. He pulled up his pants and smiled. He couldn’t believe how far he’d come in such a short time. It seemed like only yesterday he was bickering with Maura, working at a stupid job, spending all his time playing games on the computer. He had been a nerd. Even proud to be a nerd. Listening to nerd music, wearing nerd clothes, surfing the Internet, reading comic books from Japan.

He had been under the impression that he was cool. But when he thought about it… what had he been thinking?

If anyone had told him he’d find himself mixed up with dangerous gangsters, being interrogated by the cops, and making love to a smokin’ hot Latina, well… honestly, who’d believe that?

But Bob now believed that there was a rhyme and a reason to the universe. He had been transformed. He was a new man. There was a purpose to life. He just didn’t know what it was. Yet.

Felicia came in carrying a couple of cocktails.

“¿Y ahora?”

“What?”

Felicia nodded toward the icon of Frida Kahlo.

“What do you think of my patron saint now?”

Bob sipped his cocktail and thought about it.

“She’s only got one eyebrow.”

Felicia looked at the picture.

“So?”

Bob put his cocktail down and leaned forward. He kissed Felicia tenderly on the cheek.

“She may be a saint, but you’re a goddess.”

The TV was still yammering when Amado woke up from his dreams. He couldn’t tell if it was an American western dubbed into Spanish or an Italian western dubbed into Spanish. For all he knew it could be a Spanish western dubbed into Mexican. He was just glad it wasn’t the telenovela. It was getting weird. The telenovela was beginning to haunt his dreams. But then the telenovela itself was like a dream. It had a fractured reality. People didn’t really scheme and betray and seduce like that. Or did they?

Chingao. It was getting confusing. He pulled himself upright and clicked off the TV. He was thirsty. Dehydrated. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. He reached for the refrigerator and experienced a strange, floating pain. It didn’t hurt. It was more of a pang, really. The ache of reaching with something that wasn’t there anymore. Reaching and not reaching. Phantom sensations of touch. It was like his dreams. He had dreamed that he was the padre in the telenovela and that he’d fucked Gloria on the altar of the church. He could still smell her, still feel her warm body as it bucked and spasmed and knocked over the chalice, spilling wine and communion wafers all over the floor. It had seemed so real.

He opened the fridge and reached in for a chela. It took him a second before he realized that his arm was gone. The arm wrapped in plastic on a cookie sheet. The cookie sheet was still there. But the arm… se fue . He knew right away the who, what, where of the situation.

That pendejo Martin had taken his arm.

Martin sat in his car. He was parked on Santa Monica Boulevard, across the street from the West Hollywood police station, right smack in the middle of boys’ town. He watched as muscular gay men in tight T-shirts walked their dogs, chatted, held hands, or went in and out of bars. Martin fired up the last bit of his joint and sucked in the smoke. It was just another layer. There was a gay community, a gay economy, a network of gays who all supported each other in their gayness. The gay layer. He saw a couple holding hands as they walked into a bookstore. Dressed in leather, with big motorcycle boots, and heavy chains hanging off their pants, they represented a layer within the layer. The gay S&M layer. Martin realized that there were hundreds of millions of layers to the city. He smiled to himself. How come no one else ever noticed this?

Martin finished the last speck of the joint and flicked what remained out the window. He looked across the street at the police station.

And then it hit him.

He couldn’t just walk into the police station with the severed arm of a murderer. They’d arrest him.

Fuck.

He thought about running over and just, you know, tossing it in through the front door, but then he realized they’d have security cameras filming him. They’d eventually track him down, drag him in for questioning. And how do you explain that you just found a severed arm that was supposed to be in police custody?