Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“My buddy says they call themselves the Brothers Vine or some stupid shit like that. Sounds like wrestling names to me. They could be wrestlers actually, I guess. Tatted up like crazy, too, but they don’t ride bikes. Any of this ringin’ bells?”

Astor leaned back on the bar. His skin looked transparent in the blue flicker of the television. The scars up and down his chest could have been rotten veins floating to the surface, like bodies in the water. Jamie sucked on another ice cube.

“Oh, I know they don’t ride bikes,” Astor said. “Brothers Vine. Tommy and Al. What did you do, exactly, to piss ’em off, eh?”

“So everyone seems to know these assholes but me?”

“They can be pricks, I’ll admit that. But they get things done.”

Elvira was finished with the bed. She leaned against one of the windows and looked outside. The sun was starting to emerge on the horizon. Little figures limped from corner to corner on the roads below. Elvira left the window and headed toward the bathroom. No one stopped her. On TV, Dorothy had fallen asleep within sight of the Emerald City, her red shoes matching her lips as she drifted off into another dream within a dream.

“Get shit done?” Jamie said. “It’s overkill if anything.”

“You ever watch a lot of these kids’ movies? I mean, like really watch ’em. They let me have a VCR in the hospital for a few months. Calmed me down at first, until I started paying attention.”

Astor turned his gaze away from the television screen.

“I know you looked at the scars. Don’t worry, it’s not like I fell into a meat grinder or nothing. This is just what happens with the cancer. Sometimes they gotta go inside and pull some pieces outta ya. I watched these movies after they cut me open. I watched them over and over. It helped with the chemo, too. All the stories work out in the end, but they don’t actually when you think about it. Even in Oz, those farmhands are looking in the window all creepy and leering. You know? If you were there, and you were there, and you were there, then who the fuck was the Lollipop Guild the whole damn time? The internal logistics alone can mangle your mind.”

“Cancer?” Jamie said. “Really did a number on you.” He eyed the rifle on the floor, but didn’t move from his position in the loveseat.

“Adrenal cancer, to be specific,” Astor said. “Adrenaline, right? The stuff that gets your heart pumping. Fight or flight, right? Actually something in your brain, I think — the fight-or-flight part. But the adrenaline contributes, and mine was all over the place. Adrenal glands going crazy. Up and down, side to side, fluctuating like a motherfucker. I was smashing coffee cups when there was too much milk. And your adrenal glands, they are inside you, inside the trunk, you know, like a tree. I had these tumors—”

“Like on the glands?” Jamie asked.

“Exactly. Benign. What a fucking word. I must have had them for years.

“Some of the other guys were jealous I had the VCR in there, but I had to watch them all leave while I stayed and they cut more and more out of me, because the hormone levels weren’t balancing out. The tumors were telling my body, go, go, go! Firing on all the wrong cylinders. They’d gone malignant on me. Each time they cut me open, I’d wonder what was going to be left over after. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t exactly be pleasant,” Jamie said.

“They still got me popping pills and going in for radiation. I swear my balls are going to fall off if they keep this shit up. All virility shot to hell. Now that’s a good word. Virile.”

“You got it,” Jamie said. “Like I said, when you’re right, you’re right.”

Astor swallowed, then poured another glass. The lines on his chest swayed in the blue glow.

“Well, I did wonder what would be left, what would be left of Astor Crane once the knife went inside, and what would come out?” Astor said. “You see that scar traveling around my belly button? They called that a ‘necessary’ procedure. The kids’ movies, they were supposed to be an escape. You can escape in a movie, right?”

“You wanna see something get blown up,” Jamie said. “Or something funny like Belushi.” Jamie was fumbling for words. He was out of ice cubes to distract his mouth.

“I watched The Wizard of Oz over and over,” Astor said. “I watched Robin Hood , I watched The Land Before Time , I watched the fucking NeverEnding Story , which was just false advertising, you know? Ugh, how many times the nurses made that fucking joke. I started picking up on some weird shit in those movies. The radiation has got me puking out my eyes.”

Astor gestured with his glass. Droplets splashed onto the screen. Elvira dropped something in the bathroom and slammed another cupboard shut. Astor ignored the noise, but Jamie shook himself and tried to stand.

“Maybe I should go check on her. Don’t want her to mess up your pills.”

“None of its mine — it’s the hotel’s stuff. Got my meds by the window, so who gives a shit?” Astor said. “What a piece of work she is though, eh?”

“This shit just landed in my lap. I didn’t even see any of it coming. Let me grab her.”

Astor Crane placed an idle hand over the Tin Man’s face. He was wearing heart-shaped slippers on his feet. His heels hung out the back of each fluffy organ.

“That is how it works. Just like the cancer,” he said. “Out of nowhere. Just like you stepping out of an elevator and swinging a gun in my face. Nobody is supposed to be ready for it. You don’t wake up in the morning and decide to pump adrenaline into your bloodstream for five hours straight. You don’t just decide that today is the day you’ll get run over by a truck. The truck is there and your eyes lock on the headlights like a deer…and then you go down. Or a raccoon. Or a house cat. Doesn’t matter. Splat. You don’t see it. You weren’t meant to, either. Just another dead dog on the road.”

“Or a fucking lion,” Jamie laughed. “You never know.”

Astor Crane grinned and massaged the thick scar tissue scaling his stomach. Flying monkeys tore apart the scarecrow on the screen. Straw and bits of felt fluttered in the air as the scarecrow shrieked without making a noise. With one heart-shaped slipper, Astor slammed his foot down onto Jamie’s right ankle.

“That happens too, doesn’t it, Jamie?”

Jamie shrieked — a sound he hadn’t heard before — and scrabbled at the floor for his rifle. Astor kicked the gun away with another heart-shaped foot. Tears filled Jamie’s eyes. He saw four blurred versions of Astor Crane toss the gun from one hand to the other and check its sight.

“My fucking foot—”

Astor Crane leaned in toward Jamie. His eyebrows were barely visible in the gloom. Little red hairs poked through transparent skin. The veins underneath were blue and his eyes were wet and pink. All the blood vessels were broken. Something yellow was dripping from the corners.

“I don’t know how you stumbled in, but that’s okay,” Astor said. “You can just walk out on that leg now. It’ll hurt, but you can do it. Grab your friend, too. I’m sure the cops will love to see you two walking down the street. That was the second break, wasn’t it?”

“I fuckin’ told you we could just leave,” Jamie said. “Oh Jesus, it’s snapped.”

“They’ll put a pin in it. Slap you back together. Good as new, like Robocop,” Astor said. “Who doesn’t want to be Robocop?”

Jamie tried to take a swing at Astor, but the smaller man danced away. He ran a hand over his chest scars and walked to the window. The line of prescription bottles had times drawn on their caps. Five thirty was dumped down his throat and then he began to talk again.