Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

How’d a guy end up that way, sleeping in an alley on cardboard? How could something like that happen?

Harry went past the bum, carefully up the rickety stairs that led to the second floor where Joey’s apartment was. There was a porch of sorts up there, and a bug-swarmed dim light by the entrance. The bulb was on and there was a knife-thin slit of light sliding out from under the door. Harry knocked.

“Who is it?” Joey said. The walls were so thin it sounded as if Joey were out on the landing with him.

Harry answered, and Joey let him in. There wasn’t much to the place, and like his joint, there wasn’t even a bed. Joey had a foldout couch he had quit folding out months ago. Now he just slept on the couch, same way Harry did. The air smelled funny. A mixture of boiled soup, alcohol, and jack-off juice. There was a kind of stink from the bathroom as well. Which was all the better reason not to go in there.

The lightbulb, a single job in the center of the room in a dusty glass cover, had a greasy quality to it, and it gave the room the feel of a cell.

Joey was in his skivvies. His short, skinny body looked even more emaciated than usual. His ribs poked at his skin as if they really belonged on the outside. His black hair was twisted up on top of his head in what looked like a midnight rooster’s comb.

Joey dropped down on the couch, scratched his balls, said, “What’s up?”

“Nothing, just thought I’d drop by.”

“Midnight?”

“Shit. Is it that late? I had no idea. Believe it or not, I thought it was, like, eight, nine maybe.”

“No, it’s fucking midnight.”

“Hey, I’ll go.”

“Naw. Couldn’t sleep anyway. Was trying to jack off, but I couldn’t imagine a pretty sheep. Sit down.”

There were two chairs and a table with sugar packets under one leg to balance it. Harry took one of the chairs and sat, cautiously.

“You didn’t come over here this time of night just to hang out, did you? Shit, you ain’t come here in a coon’s age. We’re always at your place, or the bar. Which reminds me, weren’t we supposed to meet there?”

“We didn’t say that.”

“You always get drunk on the night after school, sleep in the free day, work in the afternoon…. Hey, how’s the job?”

“For ten hours a week, it’s okay. I like bookstores. But I’d like more hours.”

“Well, I got more hours than you do, times four, and I don’t like it much. You build enough mobile homes, you sort of get so you see one parked somewhere, you want to get out and rub dog shit on it. I hate them sons a’ bitches. You saw how cheap they was made, you would too.”

“Yeah, well, I could use some hours.”

“You, you’ll get through college and make something of yourself. Me and the rest of the winos will keep making mobile homes. I’m looking to fucking retire there, and I’m only twenty-two years old. You know what kind of future that is?”

“You could take some college courses.”

“I’m about as good for school as you are for the women.”

“Things change.”

“You coming over here this time of night, looking like you look, kind of moony, I’m starting to think you might have got lucky and got you a piece,” Joey said. “Am I in the box on that one, or were you in the box?”

“Nothing like that…It’s not like that.”

“It’s always like that. You meet a girl, it’s always about the business, you know? There’s always the talk of love and romance and how we’re gonna plan our life, but you get down to it, it’s about the ol’ dunkin’ stick.”

“It’s not that way.”

“Is it a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s that way.”

Harry felt himself getting hot under the collar. “I just met her, and it is about romance. I think. I don’t know, really. It’s not like we’re going steady.”

“You stalkin’ someone?”

“No. Hell, no.”

“Lighten up, Harry. I’m kiddin’.”

Harry began to think: This is a mistake. Joey, he’s not the guy you open your heart to. Should know that by now.

“Who is it?” Joey asked.

“Her name is Talia. Talia McGuire.”

“No shit. That gal?”

“You know her?”

“Seen her. Know who she is…Do you know who she is?”

“I’ve had coffee with her.”

“You have, have you? Well, her old man, John McGuire, he’s, like, a big dog in the oil business. He’s got more money than a wild dog has fleas. Everybody wants to hump his leg. He owns the golf course where my old man works. He owns a mansion just back of the golf course, through the woods there. It’s huge.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Man, Talia McGuire. You must have been fuckin’ drunk when you met her, to think she’s got anything going for you. She’s a goddamn babe. I seen her wear a pair of pants tighter to her skin than a tattoo. When she walked, it looked like her thing was peelin’ a peach. There ain’t an ounce of fat on her, and all the meat that’s there, it’s sweet, dude. I’d give my left testicle to get a piece of that. So would you, but I wouldn’t be cuttin’ it off, buddy, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ none of that. That stuff, it’s for the fraternity dudes, guys with money and fast cars, not that turd-brown piece of shit you drive.”

“I’m not so bad.”

“Hey, you’re all right. I like you. You’ll go to college, get a job, do okay. Buy a fuckin’ Volvo. Do better than me. But Talia McGuire. Man, she’s outta your fuckin’ league, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Me and her, I might as well be on Mars, but even if you and her are on the same planet, you’re like, you know, Antarctica, and she’s here. Hear what I’m sayin’? No use jerkin’ you, and you endin’ up all disappointed and shit. She’s like some kind of goddess, and you’re like a fuckin’ goatherd. Hell, compared to her, you’re the Elephant Man. And she’s noted for fucking with people. It’s what she does.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Telling you what I’ve heard…She really had coffee with you?”

“Yes.”

“What were the circumstances? You were in the cafeteria, you were both drinking coffee at the same time, at different tables?”

Harry told him all about it. When he finished, Joey said, “There you are. She felt sorry for you. She was being nice. She knocked you down. Probably didn’t want you to sue. That would mean her daddy might have to shut down one of his about, oh, I don’t know, ten zillion-million oil wells.”

“Fuck you, Joey.”

“Hey, man.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. Doll like that, and you. Think about it. See what you come up with.”

Harry got up so quick the chair fell over.

“Don’t fuck the furniture up,” Joey said.

“Yeah, it’s so fine. Fuck you.”

“Well, fuck you. Get out of my shithole, be it ever so humble. Get the fuck out.”

Harry stomped out, and when he slammed the door the landing shook and the whole damn apartment vibrated and the light went out, and—

—there were all manner of flashes in his head, sounds, pictures, jump cuts of violence. Joey’s place was full of it, and the place was so flimsy, the slamming of the door activated it all, and it came rushing into his noggin like a flood.

The shotgun under the chin, the guy on the toilet, an explosion, brains and blood and a yellow light, a glimpse of that overlapped with a woman being slapped, a man with a young woman bent over a couch—a different couch than Joey’s—throwing the meat to her anus while she screamed—

A yell at a table, a man standing, grabbing up a plate of food, throwing it—

And the lights flicked inside his head like little atomic explosions, and the sounds grated and scratched and the screams all blended and the colors of violence ran together into a mural of darkness.