Every Shallow Cut (2 page)

My lips moved and a voice I didn’t recognize as my own said, “Oh yes.” I didn’t know to what it was referring. The mook had a bicycle chain wrapped around his knuckles. He was a kid, maybe twenty, wearing one of those knitted hats, baggy jeans, a wife-beater T. I thought he should be at home reading
Catcher in the Rye
or
Slaughterhouse-Five
or
On the Road
. He should be sending me emails about art and literature, and he should beg me to be his mentor. I’d critique his first fumbling steps into the writing world and we’d both suffer the vagaries of art together.

His heavy-lidded eyes held no spark. His face was scabbed over from picking at it so much because the meth had driven his nerves toward frenzy. He punched me in the centre of my chest and the pain fired up into my brain like a short fuse on a stick of sweating dynamite. I almost asked him to do it again.

I gripped his throat in my left hand and tightened my thumb down on his Adam’s apple. He made the same kind of sound that Church makes after eating too much chili con carne. I pressed harder. The mook folded in half and I kneed him in the face.

I rushed across my mother’s prints to the last punk, who was still trying to shake Churchill loose. I looked at my boy scrabbling for purchase on the cement and thought this was a lot like playing tug-of-war with him in our backyard at home. When we had a home. He looked happy. He looked like he could do this all day long.

The prick was reaching into his back pocket. I hesitated a second, wondering what he was going to pull. I’d written this same scene many times before. I knew the choreography as if we had practised and performed this ballet a thousand nights to raves across the world.

Church finally rolled free with a grunt. He flipped over hard and banged his chin on the curb and let out a yelp. For the first time I realized there were dozens of people lined up on both sides of the street watching. No one offered any help. I didn’t see anyone holding a cell phone to their ear calling the cops. It felt like they were all just waiting their turn in line to get at me. An old man at the curb, a girl on a bike. I thought, You next. Then you. Then you. Then you.

The knife finally came out. The prick snapped it open and I noted it was a four-inch blade. I’d written before about knives like this going between ribs and up into the heart. I wondered if he had the skill to do it to me in just the right way. Get up behind me, yank my chin aside, expose the floating ribs, then up and twist. I wondered if I should offer him a clear shot at my left side. I wondered if he even knew that the human heart is on the left side of a man’s chest.

He glanced down at his two buddies on the ground. His eyes shifted to my father’s coins and he wet his lips. So did I. His gaze finally struck my face and I saw him frown, a bit puzzled now, like he hadn’t seen me before, or I wasn’t the person he was expecting. The knife wagged back and forth. He wasn’t holding it right. He had it gripped in his fist, like he was going to draw it back over his head and plunge it down into a Thanksgiving turkey. I thought he should hand it over now and I’d show him how to grip it correctly. Hold it lightly across the second knuckles, low for easy slashing, stabbing, and perforation.

Deep creases of fear distorted his features. It was the kind of expression I’d woken up to in the bathroom mirror every day for the last ten years. The mortgage and my prostate and the coarse, grey hairs in my beard made me stare at myself in that same way. Curious, alarmed, stupid. Low print runs, shit sales, invasive editorial comments, the sneer of my wife, it all fucked my face up no differently than a couple of years of crank would have.

He wised up just a touch and decided to make a run for it. I angled myself in front of him. Church waddled over and sat behind me.

The prick said, “I’m a suicidal meth-head, bitch! I got nothing to lose!”

I cocked my chin and stared at him. He was in better shape than me and wore better clothing. I could see the bulge of a wallet in his front pocket. He might’ve stolen the cash but at least he had some. A gold chain with Z Loves M spelled out in diamonds hung from his neck. He had youth, gold, diamonds—he even had a girl.

Everything I owned was in the back seat of my car, packed into a couple of boxes and a rucksack. Church and I shared an old comforter for warmth. The pawn shop had everything else that my wife and the creditors hadn’t taken. All the CDs, DVDs, first editions of my valuable books, my comic book collection, my signed posters, everything that had made me who I was would be making other men into who they were. My wallet didn’t bulge. In it I had photos of my dead parents and my brother and me as kids, a driver’s license with an invalid address, and a library card.

A voice that might’ve been mine said, “Well, come on then.”

We circled each other and he made fitful hacking motions with the blade. I knew the correct way to defend myself was to take off my jacket and wrap it around my right arm. But there wasn’t going to be any point to that. He was either going to get lucky and chop me through the sternum or I was going to break his wrist and stomp his guts. I already had both images firmly embedded in my mind.

I saw myself with the knife jutting from my chest, my eyes rolling back into my head, my legs giving out as I fell. There wouldn’t be much blood. The knife would stop my heart almost instantly so there wouldn’t be any arterial spray arcing out into traffic onto passing windshields. They’d drag me off and bury me in whatever landfill this city’s potter’s field passed for. They’d toss Churchill in the pound where he’d growl at all the little girls who made faces at him. They’d consider him unadoptable and give him a hotshot two weeks later.

I saw me reaching out with my left hand, my weak hand, yet somehow full of power at this moment, grabbing hold of his wrist and squeezing. The tiny bones grinding together and forcing a cry from his mouth. He’d hang onto the blade for a couple of seconds and then it would clatter to the cement. I’d tug him forward until we were nose to nose and I’d hiss, “Oh, Z, you just don’t know what it means to have nothing to lose.” It wouldn’t be a good line. I wouldn’t snap it off the way my protagonists might in my novels. It would hang in the air for too long and then I’d twist my hip into his groin and I’d duck and pull him forward across my back. He’d somersault in the air and land with a crunch. Vertebrae in his lower back would pop so loudly that Churchill would back away from the sound. Z would start wailing in pain. I knew how much lower back pain hurt. When I carried all the extra weight I’d get out of bed groaning and have to take a handful of pain medication and muscle relaxants to start my day. Then I’d kick Z in the forehead just hard enough to put him out.

I looked down and there he was, bleeding from his scalp, unconscious but moaning like a lonely old man in his sleep. The mob around us began to move again.

I reached into his pocket and grabbed his bulging wallet. He was brazen enough to keep some packets of crystal stuffed in it. It seemed like no one else in the world held any fear of doing any fucking stupid or evil thing they felt like doing except for me. There was about eight hundred in cash. It would help keep me and Church going on the road to New York. I backed away and tossed his wallet on top of his chest. Then I turned and gathered up my things from the sidewalk.

I thought, Shit, I’m still not dead.

The guy in the nameless pawn shop took my father’s coins and the battered remnants of my mother’s prints from me. His shelves were stacked with the vestiges of my life. It was like walking into some alternate version of my house. Even a few literary awards I’d won over the years were tagged as paperweights and bookends.

In a display of mercy he waved me forward and offered to set my nose straight again. I swallowed a squeal while he placed his blunt hands on my face and cartilage crackled and snapped. He let me wash my face in his bathroom and then packed my nostrils with gauze and taped the bridge of my nose. When he was done he said, “Not so bad.”

In the shine of his glass counter top I saw that my nose looked like hamburger. I glanced down at Church and he did a nervous little dance and snorted at my knee as if to push me back to the home we’d once had.

The pawn shop owner offered me a pittance for the coins and prints, the same as he’d robbed me on all the rest of my shit, but it was no less than I’d get anywhere else in these times. I took it.

Church groaned. He was hungry. We started for the door and were almost there when I turned.

The walk back to the counter was the longest walk I’d ever taken.

Longer than the stumbling blind flight from my mother’s grave. Longer than the staggered half-jog from the bedroom following my wife as she carried her bags out to Sweetie’s well-polished black truck. Longer than the shattering retreat down the driveway when they hung the foreclosed sign on my front door.

Church began to whine. I looked down through the glass-top case. I pointed at one of the items.

The owner nodded.

“Good eye,” he said.

I’d done a lot of research for a novel of mine entitled The Bone Palace. I’d printed out pages of material and studied up.

He unlocked the case and brought out the Smith & Wesson .38. I handed him back most of the money he’d just paid me. He set the .38 in my hand. I’d never held a gun before. I knew better than to dry fire it. I snapped it open, cocked the hammer, checked the line of sight. I eased the hammer back down. I’d done my homework.

He said, “I’ll give you the cleaning equipment for free.”

“Throw in a box of ammo too,” I told him. “And a speed loader.”

The voice still didn’t sound like mine, but I knew I was going to have to start recognizing it from now on.

His face registered some surprise. “Speed loaders are illegal.”

“I know, but you’ve got them. I want one. Get it.”

His lips parted and he started to argue, but I flared at him and he shut his mouth. He handed me some paperwork to fill out. I shoved it aside. He stared down at it and took a breath. I took one too. It went on like that for a dozen heartbeats or so. Then he got the ammo and the loader and slapped them on the counter in front of me. I filled my pockets. I caught sight of my reflection in the glass. My eyes were so black they looked like they’d been gouged out with an ice pick.

With the Rockies in my rearview I drove east across Denver and pulled into the drive-through of a fast food joint. I ordered four burgers and fries and a large drink. It’s what I used to have for lunch every day when I was busy writing. No wonder I’d been so much fatter and softer and sleepy. No wonder my wife would have to climb up on top of me during sex because she didn’t want my weight bearing down on her. No wonder the minimum wage kids would practically laugh in my face whenever they saw my fat ass pull up again.

I rolled down the driver’s window and Churc-hill crawled over my lap and balanced himself against the driver’s door with his chin jutting. When we got up to the cashier she was afraid to take my money. Church looked that hungry. I asked her for a cup of ice. She said it would cost an extra dollar.

“But I don’t want another soda,” I told her, “I just want some ice.”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s what it costs.”

“But it’s just ice.”

“That’s what it costs.”

My busted nose was throbbing badly. My eyes had started to get puffy and were just going to get worse until I couldn’t drive. I had to get the swelling down.

“Do you have any aspirin in there?”

“Aspirin?”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t sell that.”

“I know you don’t sell that, I just wondered if you had any. For the employees maybe. In the first-aid kit.”

“You’re not an employee,” she said. It wasn’t snark, she was actually just reminding me.

“I’m aware of that.”

“We don’t have a first-aid kit. I have some in my purse, if you want them.”

“Please, that would be great.”

She vanished from the window for a moment and then returned. “I can’t find them.”

I smiled pleasantly at her. “Fine.”

I smiled pleasantly at everyone. I smiled pleasantly at the bank guy who stuck the foreclosure sign on my front door. I smiled pleasantly when Church was a puppy and caught parvo and the vet told me to have him put down. I smiled pleasantly at my editor when the publisher remaindered two thousand copies of my last novel and I found them stacked in the thrift store with pink stickers, going for a quarter each, and still not selling.