Blood Sports (17 page)

“Hey,” the guy in the van says to Eyepatch. “What can I do you for?”

Eyepatch swings his head and focuses his venom on the guy in the van. Eyepatch shuffles out of line and grabs your arm, holding it tight.

“You set me up,” he says.

Eyepatch has a bruise gone green showing under the eye patch. He has a shaved head which shows other bruises going yellow and green. You’re sure he has the wrong person. You’d remember the dragon tattoo. It’s large, vermilion with yellow eyes. Shake your head. He watches you for a long time and then lets you go.

“Where’s your sick fuck of a cousin?” he says.

A car honks. Duck.

“See! See, he dropped it again!” The guy in the van is ecstatic to have caught you in the act. “You bullshitter!”

Pick up the sleeping bag. Hold it tight. The floor of the crash church will be hard without it. “I’m sure there was a Lorraine.” Think about it. “I’m almost sure there was a Lorraine. She was nice, but she took everything. I think she was real. She must have been real. I don’t know why I’d make up a wo –” Realize you are babbling. Bite your lips shut.

Eyepatch stares at you and stares at you. You can’t move when he’s staring at you.

“Don’t get hung up on what’s real or not real,” Eyepatch says. “That’s just another straitjacket.”

A man stops beside Eyepatch. They are the same height, the same weight, and have the same beer-coloured eyes in the same face. They are like before-and-after pictures: before the eye patch and after; before the leg cast and after. No-Eyepatch has the same tattoo, but on the other side of his neck.

“This him, Willy?” No-Eyepatch says.

Willy shakes his head.

No-Eyepatch says to you, “Do you know this kid named Tom? Tom Bauer?”

Wonder if they’re real. Ask, “Are you real?” just in case you are standing on the sidewalk staring back at nothing.

“Are you a schitz?” No-Eyepatch says. He turns to Willy. “Do you know this guy?”

“I thought I was Tom,” you say.

“You’re not the Tom we’re looking for,” Willy says.

“If you were the other Tom, I’d kick your ass to Kingdom Come,” No-Eyepatch says. “No one sets up my bro and gets away with it.”

Crawl back up the drainpipe. Move backward in the logic of dream time. Crawl back through the window. Look up then down the street as you back into your bedroom in your mother’s apartment. Your hands draw blood from the curtains. Your feet pick up blood from the carpet as you creep through the hallway. The shadowy figure of a man in all black examines something through the front-door peephole while someone pounds on the other side of the door. Back into the bathroom where another man in a black ski mask lies on the floor, one arm stretched over his head, the
other over his chest. Your hands steady as you place them on his neck and find no pulse. His burly chest rises suddenly. His bright blue eyes flutter open. Blood runs off your feet. Blood streams back into his face, back into a hole where his brains show through.

The lid of the toilet tank flies from the floor into your hands. The centrifugal force of your fear spins you. The bits of hair and skull on the lid leap to the man in the black ski mask, who slides up the wall, his face snapping forward. Knight him again, closing the rip in the mask that will hide his brown hair. Each time the tank hits him, he stands straighter. He tucks his snub-nose six-shooter back in his waistband. Replace the tank lid slowly, sitting down. Water streams from the floor back to your hair, back up your nose, you suck it in in great gasps. The other masked man jogs back into the bathroom.

“I’ll go check it out,” he says. “Watch him, Rusty.”

But he grips you, pressing a semi-automatic to your forehead, his attention caught by pounding on the front door.

“Bauer! Bauer, you motherfucking set me up!” Willy Baker screams from the hallway. “Bauer!”

They lift you off the toilet. Water streams back into the bathtub, off your shirt, off your face as they grip your arms and press you into the overflowing bathtub.

The pounding is distant and steady like a heartbeat. It kicks you out of sleep so you’re sitting, shoving the blankets back.

Shout, “Mom! Mom, wake up! Mom!”

“Shut up, you fucking doorknob.”

Mom is hard to wake. She might not hear them kicking in your front door. Go wake her up. Run around the apartment trying to find her.

Shake her hard. “Get up, get up. I hear something.”

There’s a man in your mother’s bed. Sometimes they sleep over.

“Where’s Mom?” you ask him.

“Get this freak off me!” the man says.

The room is full of beds. Men flinch from the lights as they go on.

“I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” a large man in blue overalls says. “You can’t go around screaming –”

They’re coming down the hallway. You hear them marching down the hallway. Run for the bedroom window and crawl out. Run. Run down the street and hide.

4.

Open one eye.

“Tom?” the voice says again.

The tree above you nods, agreeing with the breeze. The sky is army-blanket grey. The grass itches your cheek. The clouds have rolled in, and you are hearing voices.

A girl squats down beside you, her knees showing through her ripped jeans. She has long, reddish-blond hair falling around her shoulders in big curls. She takes off her sunglasses. Her eyes are dark blue.

If you’re going to start seeing things, pretty girls are always a bonus, even if they look at you sourly.

“Do you remember me?” the girl says.

Shake your head.

“What do you remember?”

Men in black ski masks. Water running. Dreams. Streets. Nothing that makes sense. “Nothing.”

“This way,” she says.

She makes move-along gestures like a traffic cop.

“A traffic cop, huh?” she says.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“No, I’m psychic,” she says.

“Oh.”

“What’re you on?” she says. “Are you stoned?”

Stop. If you go up to Lorraine’s room, she’s going to roll you. When she found you lost on the street, she acted all friendly but she took everything, even your shoes.

“I’m Paulina,” the girl says. “I don’t know who this cunt Lorraine is. I’m bringing you to your apartment.”

“I don’t know,” you say. They haven’t exactly been combing the woods for you. Doubt they want you back.

“Big old mama’s boy like you? Shit yeah, she wants you back.”

The girl leans against the driver’s door, one hand on the steering wheel, the other supporting her head. She glances at you. The rain makes patterns on the windshield.

“This is your street. Anything look familiar?” she says.

Shake your head.

“Maybe something will come back when you get to your place,” she says. She sits up, alert. The car has turned a corner, and there’s an apartment building at the other end of the street. Half of it is still brown with white trim, although the black shadow of flames has been burned around the windows. The other half
rests at a lazy tilt, the walls burned down to struts and supports, a cobweb of black wood bending in on itself. She stops the car in front of the lobby doors, which have been boarded shut and crisscrossed with yellow tape that flaps in the wind.

“Crap,” the girl says.

The girl parks her car in front of the only house on a block filled with boxy warehouses. The downstairs windows are boarded up.

“This way,” she says. She walks around the side of the house. Follow her up steep, creaking fire-escape stairs. The stairs shudder as you walk.

The room has a single bed on a rusty white frame. Beside the bed is the kitchen, a cocktail fridge, a sink, and a hot plate. The bathroom is separated by a shower curtain, and the counter is a dresser. The kitchen window has a view of an empty parking lot.

Repeat her name. She gets annoyed if you call her Lorraine. She is not Lorraine, although Lorraine seemed nice and offered you a towel just like the girl is doing right now. She pulls back the flowery shower curtain separating the bathroom from the living area. The shower is a grey stall with a blue shower curtain.

“Scrub everything,” she says.

The nurse at the Emergency admissions desk has a toy train on her desk. Stop staring. It’s hard, because you remember something: the blue train with the sunny face is Thomas the Tank Engine, and the fat conductor thinks Thomas is really useful. The nurse picks up the toy.