John Jodzio - Knockout

The headphones in the van reek of barbeque sauce. While I listen to Kristoff gab with his wife, I can’t help but wonder what Autumn talks about with her new boyfriend, Randall. Randall’s a personal trainer, so maybe the two of them talk about his rock-hard abs. Or maybe after they have tantric sex they discuss the aerobic benefits of tantric sex. Or maybe they talk about sweet things, like how many kids they’re going to have or how goddamn long it took them to find each other and how sad and lonely they were before they met.

Before I left the motel this morning, I stuck Autumn’s panties in my jacket pocket. I pull them out and wipe my brow with them, just to see if Vic notices. He doesn’t notice the first couple of times, but the third time he catches me.

“Are those panties?” he asks.

“Huh?” I say. “What?”

“Lemme see those,” Vic says.

I push them back into my jacket pocket, but Vic wrestles them out.

“Whose are these?” he asks.

“I stole them,” I say.

“You stole them?”

“I stole them. Right out of the dryer at a laundromat.”

Vic stretches them taut and then flicks them out the window onto Kristoff’s lawn. I jump out of the van and scoop them up.

“What’s the matter with you?” Vic asks. “You steal a pair of panties and that’s the pair you steal?”

This morning Vic borrows a fan from Spiros. He unscrews the safety grate from the back of it. He sets the fan on high and flicks grasshoppers into it. My bulletproof vest is crumpled on the floor nearby, getting pelted with bug shreds.

“This can save your life,” Vic says, picking it up and tossing it at me. “Have some fucking respect.”

I brush it off. Out the window, I see the girl from the other morning sunning herself down by the pool. The last time I was here her hair was brown, but now it’s dark red. I do fifty push-ups, put on my swimsuit, and head down there.

“Here for your morning cry?” she asks after I walk through the gate.

“You here to wash off your men?” I ask.

I swim a couple laps while she sits in the sun. Before she goes, she sets a card by the side of the pool. It’s a coupon for Ari’s, two bucks off a beer or a buck off a mixed drink.

“If you come to see me dance,” she says, “then the next morning you could swim in both your tears and your glances.”

Igo into the bathroom at the ops center to wash the grease of my face. Grimace is in there already, standing in front of the mirror, pulling down the skin under his left eye. There’s fresh puke in the garbage can. This round is black and sludgy.

“You ever gonna get that checked out?” I ask.

“What for?” Grimace says. “I’ve always had a weak stomach.”

“That seems like more than a weak stomach,” I say.

“If you knew me,” Grimace tells me, “you’d know this is standard procedure.”

I glance inside the garbage can. What came out of Grimace looks like something that should not come out of a human being. It looks like something that might spill out of a chassis.

“Abrodabo called again today,” he tells me. “Sounded like he was calling from a golf course.”

Abrodabo is our supervisor. He was hands-off for the first few weeks of our operation, but he’s tightening the screws more lately, checking in hourly, pushing us hard to find dirt on Kristoff.

“What did you tell him?” I ask.

“I told him Kristoff’s a pro,” Grimace says. “I said we’d be lucky to get him for jaywalking.”

Foot Nose and I partner up today. We drive to Kristoff’s house and use the parabola mic to listen to him chat with his wife about her bunions.

“Are you going to get the surgery?” he asks.

“It’s gonna hurt,” she says. “And then there’s the limping. I’ll be limping around the whole summer. Who wants to be limping all summer?”

“You’re limping now,” Kristoff says. “Maybe this makes it better? Maybe after two months you don’t limp anymore for the rest of your life.”

When you get divorced you’re supposed to be able to throw yourself into your work. You’re supposed to be able to disappear into the long hours and forget what ails you. Unfortunately this job is too lonely, too introspective, too full of shitty fast food for me to do that at all.

“How much longer you think we’re stuck here?” Foot Nose asks.

There are rumors that Kromberg’s profits are down this quarter, scuttlebutt that our CEO just cashed in his stock options, chatter that the DEA won’t be renewing our contract. Vic and Foot Nose are paranoid, sure that we’re all about to get canned. Both of them are sending out feelers, but I can’t summon that kind of energy yet.

“I miss my girlfriend,” Foot Nose tells me. “I miss her titties.”

He opens his wallet and shows me a picture of her. It’s a grainy photo. She’s naked in it, these big floppy tits hanging down nearly past her stomach. Her tits are secondary to the sadness I see in her eyes. I’ve been duped again, that’s what she’s thinking.

“What do you want from me here?” I ask.

“You say she’s pretty,” Foot Nose says. “And then I say thanks.”

“Fine,” I say. “She’s a total knockout.”

“Isn’t she though?” Foot Nose says.

I rub the binocular calluses on my nose as I watch Kristoff massage his wife’s shoulders. He and his wife have made it through the tricky parts of marriage, the years when there are options, when temptations can pop up from anywhere. Foot Nose pokes me in the ribs.

“What now?” I ask.

“When I fall in love,” Foot Nose says, snatching the picture of his girlfriend out of my hand. “I stay in love.”

Iwake up choking on a grasshopper. It is midnight and I can’t get back to sleep. Instead of going for a swim, I walk over to Ari’s King of Clubs. I sit near the stage and drink whatever ten-dollar beer they set in front of me.

“Give it up for Eleanor,” the DJ yells and the girl from the pool struts out on the stage. She’s wearing a stars-and-stripes bikini. As she dances, her ponytail whips around. I set down a couple of bucks on the stage and she snatches them up. When her song ends, she sits down next to me.

“Eleanor’s not a stripper name,” I say.

“It’s my real name,” she tells me. “I make way more money than anyone with bullshit names like Chastity or Angel.”

I see Grimace over at the bar, sitting alone. In this light, his skin looks green and his teeth look gray. The girls, even the real hustlers, aren’t hounding him.

“You want a table dance?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say.

Autumn had a lot of curves, was thick in the right spots, but Eleanor is a piece of balsa, thin and flexible, her ass about as big as both of my palms spread. She grinds on me and the pain in my back disappears.

“Another one?” Eleanor asks when the song ends.

I hand her another twenty, point over at Grimace.

“Give that guy over there one,” I tell her.

Ifollow Kristoff alone today. He goes to the Asian buffet where he likes to eat lunch a couple of times a week. After the buffet, I follow him to the barbershop for his weekly haircut. Yesterday, Vic and I spent all afternoon watching him supervise the roofing crew that reshingled his house. I got a headache from the echo of the nail guns, had to lie down in the back of the van to sleep it off.

When I get back to the ops center, Grimace and Foot Nose are unhooking all our surveillance equipment, tossing everything into boxes.

“Corporate called,” Vic says. “We’re shuttered. DEA’s sick of paying us for nothing.”

I drink a beer while Vic and Foot Nose book flights home. I drink a couple more while Grimace packs up his car. Everyone is leaving immediately, but I’m going to wait until morning. Foot Nose is on the phone with his girlfriend, whispering and giggling. I think about calling Autumn, but I know I’ll need to get drunk first.