Andrew Sullivan - Waste

So she picked up the teal bowling ball. There was that man there in their suite, it was their suite and it used to have a waterbed and Ted Moon was supposed to leave messages underneath the mattress. Come and find me. I am ready , but of course he wasn’t ready, never would be. There were no postcards from Ted. And the man out there wouldn’t stop talking. He thought he could just talk and talk and talk, but Elvira had some things to say too.

Yes, she did. Something about family, and a son he had left behind and a life he could have had. And Ted Moon didn’t care, this man didn’t care, he kept talking, and he was wearing stupid slippers, Ted was always wearing stupid slippers too, she had just never noticed that before.

There was a teal bowling ball in her hand and Elvira remembered how to roll like she had in the big leagues. The ball flew out of Elvira’s hand and nothing stood in its way. There was no alley, just pure air.

All twelve pounds caught Astor Crane in the left temple and his skinny body tumbled down into the plush red carpet. His finger pulled at the trigger, a muscle reflex pulsing from a confused and damaged brain trying to evaluate a situation far out of its control. Astor’s lips tried to sputter something about flying luck dragons, and then they stopped altogether. There was no bullet in the rifle. Only one was ever in the chamber, and it was the same bullet now embedded in the drywall where Al Vine’s head had been.

Jamie tried to spring up from the loveseat, but his foot caused him to crash down onto the floor beside Astor. The skinny body convulsed a little, but there was no movement in its blue eyes. A torn bit of scalp revealed the damage to his head. The teal bowling ball rolled away into the corner, its three eyes refusing to gaze back.

“Moses, that’s you, right?” Jamie said. “Moses?”

“Yeah, it’s — ugh — me. Is he out?” Moses asked. “Is he down?”

The two boys were still lying by the door. Tommy Vine didn’t move. His lips were stuck open and he didn’t blink when the television flickered. Occasionally, he tugged at his brother’s beard and moaned, but the sound got trapped halfway up his throat. It was more like a gurgle — a clogged drain trying to swallow.

“He’s down, he’s down,” Jamie said. “There won’t be any more of him, all right? He’s out.”

“Like knocked out?”

“Like fucking dead, Moses,” Jamie said. “Can you move at all?”

“We can kind of roll around, but they taped the hands pretty good,” Moses said from the floor. “B. has been trying to break it out, but he’s kinda given up. They thrashed us pretty good on the ride up in the service elevator.”

Jamie crawled across the carpet and grabbed a piece of glass from one of the broken bottles near the bar. Moving on all fours, he dragged his right foot behind him. The pain was pointed and insistent, but it was tiny. It was something he could swallow by himself. Jamie didn’t need the Lorax to help him now. The glass in his hand was sharp. As he neared the boys by the door, Jamie got a look at the hallway. The elevator doors remained shut. Jamie began to saw at the tape binding the two boys. He was careful to avoid slicing through their pale wrists.

“Where did you find her?” Moses asked. “We were looking everywhere…”

He looked at Jamie while he shook out the static blood in his arms.

“What do you mean, where did I find her?” Jamie asked. “You mean Elvira? She was hidin’ in the bathroom where the big hairy dudes were living. Too much to explain. You know her?”

“Yeah I know her,” Moses said. “I recognize her, um, from the motel.”

Elvira did not check on the body splayed out on the floor; she knew it wasn’t Ted. Ted didn’t have a collapsed left temple and didn’t leak all over the nice red carpet. Everything else was blurry. While Moses shook out the needles in his fingers, Elvira started with what she knew best to reorient herself. The big toe always came first. This was a fact she could trust no matter where she was. This little piggy went to market.

Astor Crane watched her from the floor but did not see a thing.

“She live there or something? They had her locked up in the bathroom, and the first thing she does when we get here is run right into the bathroom,” Jamie said. “Look, I don’t wanna hustle anybody out of here, but I can’t crawl out by myself exactly, you know?”

Jamie was working on B. Rex now. The smaller boy wasn’t talking. He smelled like ammonia and the tattoo on his neck looked infected. The small numbers bled around the edges.

“You just — you wanna go?” Moses asked.

“Yes, and fucking now,” Jamie said. “Someone is gonna come up here eventually. Maybe to flip the sheets or something, and I don’t want to be seen with two dead men and a third — is he dead? Has he even moved? Hello? Buddy! Fucker! Beardo! Hello!”

“He’s been like that since the other guy got his face blasted,” Moses said.

“Well, good, the things they did to my friends,” Jamie said. “They deserved this shit. All right, now shake it out. Shake it out hard. Your wrists look like they’re purple.”

“They are purple,” B. Rex mumbled.

“Well, rub them or something. Don’t just stare at them.”

Jamie Garrison pulled himself up on the back of the loveseat. His right foot flopped back and forth when he kicked out his leg. He had seen worse in the warehouse. He’d tell the doctor Brock had backed over his foot with a truck. Crushed all the little bones and snapped the ankle. They would put him back together. Rebuild him. Astor had that right at least.

“Look, I can kind of hop,” Jamie said. “Moses, you grab one side of me. And little dude, you wanna grab Elvira from the bed there? And don’t touch the body. Just leave him. He isn’t going anywhere now.”

B. Rex nodded, but Moses grabbed him. B. Rex didn’t meet his eyes.

“Just go with Jamie. Take the elevator and go. Don’t say anything, just go, and then don’t say anything to anyone,” Moses said. “You weren’t with us at all. Not me and Logan. You got the car stalled or something stupid. You can drive him home or to his car, right, J?”

“You going to meet us down there or what?” Jamie said.

Moses watched his mother move from one foot to the next, pointing with her finger.

“You’re just going to slow us down anyway, Jamie,” Moses said. “Look at your foot. So you go first, and I’ll stay here with her until I can figure out how to get her to move.”

“Just grab her and then we can go,” Jamie said.

“You wanna try moving her by yourself? With your foot, J?”

Jamie pulled out the keys and dropped them into B. Rex’s hand.

“Moses, we can get her to come,” Jamie said. “I don’t want you staying here and then doing whatever. Don’t take it out on that bearded guy, if that’s what you’re thinking. You don’t need that on your back any more than you need these other two fuckers.”

“Just go, J,” Moses said.

Elvira lay back on the bed and began to roll around in the satin sheets. Jamie thrust out an arm and B. Rex ducked under it. He could barely carry Jamie’s weight. Moses watched them shuffle down the hall toward the elevator doors. Every other step, B. Rex had to reach out and grab the wall.

The elevator opened. Both figures stumbled inside. Moses closed the door to the honeymoon suite.

Moses Moon didn’t touch his mother. He sat in the purple loveseat and poked at Astor Crane’s body with the rifle. The television was still muted. Everyone on that screen was probably dead by now. They all fit in with the rest of the suite. Even the chandelier was made of tiny fake crystal hearts that lit up and spun around above the bed. Moses traced the trail of fluid leaking from Astor’s brain with the end of the barrel. It worked its way around the ashtray islands overflowing on the floor. The carpet absorbed it all.