The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (2 page)

—Give me a hand here.

—Just a sec, I wanna finish this.

—A sec my ass, get the fuck over here and give me a hand.

I got up and walked across the shop, the copy of
Fangoria
folded open to an article about a new wave of bootleg Eastern European ultrahorror DVDs.

—Put that down and hold this.

I lowered the magazine, looked at the girl lying frozen on the table, her shirt pulled up, one tit untucked from her bra, tension in every muscle of her body, a thin stream of tears running from her eyes, flipped him off and took hold of the Glover Bulldog clamp locked on the tip of the girl's nipple, stretching it taut for the needle.

The girl banged her heel on the table.

—Don't pull on it, don't pull on it.

—I'm not pulling on it.

She squirmed.

—You're sooo pulling.

—I am not, you're moving.

I looked at Chev.

—Did I pull on it or did she move?

Chev turned from his kit, a large needle between the fingers of his left hand.

—Just hold it steady, both of you.

The girl froze.

I looked back in my magazine and read about a scene in a movie called
Amputee
where a guy has his eyes gouged out and his toes are amputated by the bad guy and sewn into his empty eye sockets.

—I'm holding steady.

The clamp vibrated slightly as Chev ran the needle through the girl's nipple and she jerked.

I peeked at her over the top of the magazine.

—Not too bad, huh?

Part of a smile crossed her face and she shook her head.

—No, not too bad.

I nodded.

—Yeah, here comes the bit that really sucks.

Chev twisted the jewelry into the hole he'd just put in her nipple, and gripped the ends of the open hoop of surgical steel with two pairs of needle-nose pliers, torqued until they lined up, popped a tiny bead between them and pinched them together so they held it tight. The girl's mouth flew open and she made a long whining noise and a little urine stained the crotch of her way too fucking expensive for their own good jeans.

I looked at the photo spread in the magazine.

—See, hurts like a motherfucker.

Chev took the clamp from my fingers.

—Asshole. Get the fuck away.

—What? I was helping, you said I should come over here and help.

He released the clamp and the girl's nipple snapped back.

—Just get out of here, will you? Go get me some smokes.

I twisted the magazine into a tube and stuffed it in my back pocket.

—Give me some cash.

Chev looked up from the blood he was swabbing off the girl's tit.

—No.

—Fine, I'll tell them we're not using money anymore, that we've moved beyond outdated concepts like commerce and that they should just give me your American Spirits because it's a goodwill society now.

He placed a gauze pad over the girl's nipple and had her hold it there while he taped the corners down.

—I gave you money for breakfast this morning and you never gave me the change. Use that in lieu of goodwill and go buy my smokes.

—Thought the change was a tip.

—It wasn't. Go. Get out.

He took a card full of cleaning instructions from his work table and handed it to the girl and started telling her how to care for the piercing, blotting her eyes for her with a Kleenex.

—You're gonna want to take the bandage off in a couple hours, in the shower with water running over it so it doesn't stick to the dry blood. Then you gotta clean it, rotate the jewelry under the water.

She made a face and he stroked her hair and she leaned her head against his hand.

—It'll be cool. It'll hurt, but not bad. The hard part is over.

I leaned against the wall by the door.

—Until mom sees it and you have to explain why the hell you let some creepy tattoo artist poke a hole in your tit.

Chev stepped away from the girl.

—Go be useful. Now.

I slid my shades over my eyes.

—I am useful. I serve a constant reminder that you're not as cool as you think you are and that you used to run home early from school every day so you wouldn't miss
Star Trek
and it wasn't till you shaved your head and got inked and opened this shop that chicks like her would even look at you.

—Now, out, the fuck out!

I pushed the door open.

—And you have the whole original series on deluxe DVD and an autographed William Shatner picture that you got at a convention when you were fifteen and had chronic acne.

The door swung shut behind me as I walked into the sunlight, whatever Chev was saying to me muffled and lost.

I didn't need to hear it. I'd heard it all before. Anything Chev has to say to me, I've heard it. Most of it starts with
asshole
and ends with
such a dick.

I dug in my pocket and found the six odd bucks left over from the breakfast run I'd done over to the Denny's on Sunset. I'd planned on using it for some tacos later.

—Crap.

I stuffed the money back in my pocket and headed out.

Mostly Chev is cool. Until a chick he thinks is hot comes around. Really, it's not any different from our whole lives. Only difference is, back when we were kids, Chev turned into a worse stuttering dork around hot chicks than he already was and tried to make up for it by being a dick toward me. He doesn't get nervous anymore, mostly, but he still acts like a dick toward me. Which, sure, sometimes I deserve it, but mostly he's just trying to be cooler than he is. So who's the dick?

I walked up Mansfield, cut east and made for the big red Las Palmas Market. I could have just gone up Melrose from the shop and gotten the smokes from the gas station at La Brea, but everything's cheaper at the
Market. Save some money on Chev's smokes and there'd be enough for a soda and some gum. Chev can't ask for change I don't have.

Well, he can, but I can't give it to him. So that gets us both off the hook.

Coming back to Melrose with the smokes, I saw the girl coming out of the shop, Chev holding the door open, thumbing the digits of her phone number into his cell. I stood there and watched him watch her ass as she walked to the 2008 Z her mommy and daddy bought for her. She climbed in and waved and pulled into traffic and Chev held up his phone.
I'll call.

I waved at her as I crossed the street and she punched it and almost ran me over.

Chev laughed and I walked past him and into the shop.

—Jailbait.

He let the door swing shut and caught the pack of smokes I tossed him.

—Asshole.

—Total jailbait.

He stripped the cellophane from the pack.

—Just turned eighteen. Her folks gave her the car as a birthday present.

—Bull. They gave her that car as a bribe to keep her from dropping out of high school and going up to the valley to become a porn star.

—Dude, she's eighteen. I carded her when she came in.

—Fake.

He dropped into one of the two old barber chairs customers sit in for easy arm and leg pieces.

—I know a fake when I see one. She's eighteen. Legit. And smokin' hot.

I unwrapped a piece of gum and stuck it in my mouth.

—She's a spoiled piece of high-maintenance ass that thinks it'll be cool to fuck a tattoo rocker because she's already taken it in the ass from every rich boy in Beverly Hills and variety is the spice of life and her family's money makes her life boring so she has to slum with losers like us.

He lit up and blew smoke at me.

—Losers like me, Web. Losers like
me.

I took the magazine from my pocket and opened it back up.

—Well I hope you enjoy the fatal case of cockrot you're gonna get if you nail that chick.

—Jealous.

—Gonna be like this movie
Corrosion.

—Bitter.

—Your flesh being eaten away.

—Cynical.

—Consumed by the billions of infected sperm monkeys that have been pumped into her by the Beverly Hills High football team since she was thirteen.

—Hostile.

—Excoriated to a nubbin with a shriveled sack hanging off it.

—Excoriated?

—Look it up.

—I know what it means.

—No you don't.

—Pretentious.

I threw the magazine at him.

—I am not fucking pretentious.

He caught the magazine and rolled it tight and counted points off his fingers with it.

—Jealous, bitter, cynical, hostile and pretentious.

I got up and grabbed at the magazine.

—And I'm not jealous, not of a rag like that.

He jerked the magazine away.

—Excoriate my ass.

—You wouldn't say that if you knew what it means.

I slapped the cigarette from his mouth into his lap and he jumped from the chair, whacking at the embers on his crotch with the magazine.

I shoved him.

—Cool it, that's a new issue.

He swatted the top of my head with it.

—You are such a dick.

—Fuck you.

I grabbed him around the middle and pushed him back into the chair and he smacked me across the ear with the magazine.

—Dick.

The string of bells hanging from the door jangled.

—Interrupting something intimate?

Chev shoved me away and got out of the chair and tossed my magazine on the couch against the wall.

I adjusted the tail of my shirt.

—Just trying to keep the romance in the relationship, man.

Po Sin stood in the doorway, using every bit of his huge roundness to blot out the sunlight behind him.

—Couple that's been together as long as you two, guess you must have to resort to the rough stuff. Me and the missus, we can mostly get by with a little dirty talk and Kama Sutra Oil.

I fell onto the couch, put my feet up on the arm and opened my magazine.

—Yeah, but you guys are pretty much newlyweds compared to us. I mean, me and Chev, we've been together like over twenty years, like since we were five or so. You guys been married how long?

—Hardly thirteen years, man. Like yesterday.

Chev lit a fresh cigarette.

—Don't listen to that fag, Po Sin, he's always creeping in my room at night, but he never gets any.

I turned a page.

—True, he is a bit of a tease.

Po Sin nodded and moved from the door, came to the middle of the shop and occupied it.

—Well, that's enough fagging around for me. You got your canister?

Chev started cleaning up the paper towels and bloody swabs from the nipple piercing, and jerked his head at me.

—Go get the can.

—Fuck you. 'M I your slave?

He stuffed the garbage into a red biohazard bag and pulled the sealed plastic magazine from the sharps disposal on the wall.

—You're my burden. You're my cross. My goddamned albatross and you haven't paid rent in two months and I fed you this morning, again, and you abused another one of my clients today and you can get off your ass and go get the can or get the fuck out and go look for a job.

I threw the magazine on the couch and pushed myself up and made for the back of the store.

—Your wife rag like this, Po Sin?

He shook his head.

—My lady, she beams messages to me through her eyes. She don't got to rag on me.

—Lucky man.

—So says you.

I went in the back of the shop and got the red biowaste canister and brought it out front. Chev handed me the bag he was holding. I went to drop it in the canister and a wad of bloody paper towels fell on the floor. I bent to pick them up.

—Not with your bare hands, not with your bare hands.

I looked at Po Sin.

—It's no big deal, it's just dry blood.

I grabbed the wad and dropped it in the canister with the rest of the waste.

He pulled at the waistband of his navy blue Dickies.

—Could have been a needle in the middle of that.

I slid him the canister.

—There wasn't.

—And you never know what's growing in blood. Living in it.

I showed him my hands.

—Too late now.

He looked at Chev and Chev shrugged. He shook his head and lifted the canister and considered.

—Ten pounds.

Chev shook his head.

—Eight, man, at the most.

Po Sin set the canister down.

—Got a scale handy?

—A scale? It look like I got a scale around here?

—Well, in the absence of a scale, I'm the expert. And the expert says this is ten pounds of biohazardous waste and at two bucks a pound you owe me twenty bucks.

Chev picked up the canister.

—Telling you, this is eight, tops. Sixteen bucks.

Po Sin adjusted his tiny oval wirerims with his thick stubby fingers.

—Chev, do we have a contract?

Chev scratched the stubble on the side of his head.

—No.

—So, I don't charge you a weekly rate, then, for picking this shit up, I don't charge you the same forty-nine fifty a week minimum I charge everyone else on my route. Is that right?

Chev looked at the ceiling.

—Yeah.

—I charge you a pound rate that I usually charge only to people that bring their own shit by and drop it off themselves, right?

Chev reached for the big leather wallet attached to his belt by a dangling steel chain.

—OK, OK.

—I mean, if I'm not doing you a solid here, if you'd rather do business in the manner of most of my clients, we can draw up a contract and I'll be here rain or shine on my appointed rounds every week and you can pay the pickup rate whether you have waste or not.

Chev opened the wallet and started pulling out bills.

—Got it. My bad.

—If you'd prefer that over, say busting my balls for the sake of four bucks, I can go out to the van and get the paperwork right now. That suit you?

Chev held out two tens.

—No, man, no, here, here it is, it's cool, my bad.

Po Sin reached out and pinched the bills between his thumb and forefinger and tugged them from Chev's hand.

—Why thank you for your prompt and courteous payment.

Chev stuffed the wallet back in his pocket and pointed at the koi tattooed on Po Sin's forearm.