What we reckon, p.8
What We Reckon, page 8
“I thought you were different,” Jack said through clenched teeth. “I thought you were not like the others.”
No matter how angry Matlin was, Jack kept his wary eyes upon the twins, grinning like hyenas. Shimmering from the oils applied to their pecs, their abs, those arms…looks on their faces like they’d spent more than a week in the desert and now stood at the front end of the buffet line at Golden Corral. They stared a hole in his stomach, so he promptly crumpled to his knees and vomited pills and jerky into the gutter.
“I expected more from you.” Matlin carved half-moons into the pavement around the mess with his tiny, sneakered feet. “You disgust me.”
“What did I do?” Jack panted, still on his knees.
“You must think we’re idiots.” Behind them, sirens sliced the night. “You think I would let you get away with this?”
“Please…I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
Sheila could not be bothered with any of it. She’d lost the rhythm. She reckoned it was somewhere beneath her fingernails, the way she studied them. The proceedings—Jack on the floor, Matlin losing his shit—held no interest for her whatsoever.
“Boys…” Matlin snapped his fingers. “Let’s check him for a wire.”
“A what?”
Before he could further protest, the twins clutched him at the elbows. They went to work ripping the buttons from his shirt.
“Wait…”
No dice. Soon, his hairy chest was bare and the autumn evening blew chilly kisses along his back, his midsection.
“No wire, Ben,” said one of the beefcakes.
“Nothing here,” said the other.
“I’m not convinced.” Matlin’s face crumpled to a frown. “Let’s get those pants off him.”
All of Jack’s world became pectorals and cocoa butter. Hot phlegm wretched from his insides. He scuffled, but he could do no good as he was pinwheeled. Telescoped. Crisped. He could be made of Styrofoam or tissue paper. There would be no one to mourn him. His marker would be a fake ID found in an alleyway. Stain caked on the back wall of a discotheque.
He wondered who would take care of Summer.
The beefcakes manhandled open his britches, then yanked them off his legs.
“All of it,” growled Matlin.
One of them held him flat against the cracked concrete while the other wrested free his skivvies. Sheila took a peek at what she might be missing, then returned her attention to her cellphone. A smooth hand grabbed hold of his nethers at the base. Another slipped a sneaky finger between his cheeks and, once finished with him, awaited further instruction.
“He’s clean, Ben.”
“Nothing so far as I can tell.”
That wouldn’t cut it for Matlin. He stepped half in shadow and grumbled from somewhere deep.
“Check him again.”
This time, the beefcakes were far more thorough. Jack struggled, sure. It would do no good, but he at least wanted to be able to say he struggled.
“Be sure to check everywhere, boys,” said Matlin. “This one is very slippery. There may be no depths to which he would not stoop.”
Sheila held up her phone and snapped a photo of the tableau. She returned with a smirk to fingering her screen.
“I will make you beg me for mercy,” said Matlin. “I will make you crawl on your hands and knees.”
“I ain’t no cop!” Jack shouted into the abdominals of his attackers. “I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t no police!”
“I’d rather not hear another word from this piece of shit,” Matlin said as he turned his back. “Perhaps you boys might find something to stick into his mouth.”
“Not a problem, Ben.”
“We’ll take care of him for you.”
Jack had never been closer in all his life to another man as he was in that moment.
Yet never in his life had he felt more alone.
“BEN, WHAT in great Gloria Gaynor are you doing to that poor man?”
Matlin backed off him from the front. In the other direction, Jack felt air pass between him and the beefcakes for the first time.
“Tell me, please, that things are not how they appear.” Beef stood at the side entrance clad complete with wig, evening gown, the whole nine yards. She held a little Derringer pointed toward the air like an afterthought. “Tell me this is all a horrible misunderstanding.”
“This guy is lying,” Matlin panted. “I’m about to prove it.”
“Lying about what, Benjamin?”
Jack did his best to shimmy free from between the beefcakes, but they kept him put.
“I ain’t lying Mister…uh, Miss…I mean—Dammit, I ain’t lying.” Jack added, “By all things holy, I swear I ain’t a cop.”
Beef rolled his eyes and slapped Matlin’s shoulder. “Bengie, you and I both know good and well this here boy could not be an officer of the law.”
“I know no such thing!” Matlin stomped his feet like a petulant child. “I don’t know the first thing about this guy except everything he’s told me so far has been a lie!”
“He’s taken far too much E to be a policeman.” Beef took Matlin’s cheeks into his cupped palms. “This happens every time, Bengie. You always think these boys are cops and they never, ever are.”
“This one was supposed to be different!”
“You are such a sweet, sweet darling.”
Matlin sagged, but Beef kept him upright. Behind them, Jack felt the beefcakes lighten their grip. Jack remained where he was, but began the nervous business of collecting his pants.
“You know these boys can be so mean,” whispered Beef. “However, that does not make them police.”
If Matlin understood, he did not let on.
“And you certainly cannot do those things I saw you doing,” Beef said, more stern. “Especially not behind my nightclub.”
Said Matlin, “This one was supposed to be different.”
Beef answered, “They are all the same.” He kissed the little man on the nose. “There’s only one person you can trust in this mean old world, Bengie. That’s your good aunt Beef.”
Beef released Matlin’s cheeks. The little man did not sink to the ground, but rather remained before him with his shoulders slumped until finally he straightened them, smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt, then turned to face Jack.
“Business here is done,” he said. “If you’re not in the car within five minutes, you can walk back to Lufkin for all I care.”
The last bit he said over his shoulder. Jack took advantage of what little time he had. He found Sheila leaning against the side of the nightclub. She finished her cigarette and dropped it to the ground where she let it smolder, rather than toe it smushed.
“Listen,” Jack said, “I ain’t got much time. If you tell me not to get inside that car with him, then I won’t. You say the word—that’s all you’ve got to do—and I’ll stay with you. I don’t have much to my name, but I know how to get what I need and I swear to God on high you will remember this moment for the rest of your life as when you finally began to make better of yourself.”
Sheila arched an eyebrow. “You’re kidding me, right?”
The air let out of Jack’s sails. He considered points on the compass long ignored, or perhaps never considered.
Instead, he and Matlin spent the entire distance from Houston to Lufkin in silence.
Jackie came back to the Light House trailer from Houston and said to hell with it—to hell with all of it—he was settling down. No more. Never again. He’d seen the light. He’d stayed too long. He was the old guy at the party.
Summer asked him what was the matter.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Jack stopped what he was doing: putting away his wallet, his cigarette lighter, a handful of pocket change. He looked Summer square in the eye, to let her know he meant business. “I don’t ever want to talk about it.”
Summer gave him his space. Jack could get a wee grumpy if she remained in his face after he’d started to sputter. However, she would prefer no chance of miscommunication.
“What do you mean, you’re done with all of it.”
“The whole kit and caboodle.” Jack pointed toward the loose board hiding the King James Version at the bottom of the steps. He pointed to the tray on the coffee table which had been reduced to stems and seeds. He pointed at the aspirin bottle filled with Valium. “I’m through with it. I want nothing more to do with it. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again: it is over. I’m going clean. I don’t want to so much as touch the shit. No more pot dealers. No more coke dealers. No more trips out of town to buy quantity and shitting my pants the whole way back because what we got in the trunk could make things federal. I’m settling down.”
Summer portioned her words piecemeal. “You’re settling down how?”
“I’ll tell you how.” Jack raised a finger to the air, as if teaching a class. “I’m going to ask Lindsay to be my steady lady. I’m going to start a life with her. Not a transient life full of fake identifications and idiot marks, but a real life. One where we go to a church we don’t believe and make friends with folks we don’t like and laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. Like normal people do.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about what happened in Houston?”
Jack cut a glance at her, but said nothing. He crawled into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Summer watched as he drank it to the last drop.
“What about the rest of that kilo?” asked Summer. “What about all the marijuana? We’ve still got more than a pound.”
“It’s yours,” said Jack. “I hereby renounce any and all claims to the contraband purchased before this moment in time.” He checked his watch against the clock on the microwave. “You’re selling it all anyway. I want nothing more to do with it.”
“I think you need to sit down.”
Jack put a finger to his chin. “However, I am a bit low on funds, so if you could front me a hundred bucks until my first paycheck…”
“Paycheck?” Summer dropped her head into her hands and collapsed against the wood-paneled wall. “How the hell are you going to get a paycheck?”
“I’m going to get a job.”
Now, she’d heard it all. She looked him over—twitchy, sweaty, beady-eyed, and scared to all Armageddon—and couldn’t imagine a single white employer who’d take him. She thought hard about what skills he might possibly have. Sure, he may have thought he hung the moon, but last she checked, that got no man a job.
“I’m going to wait tables,” he said. “Or tend bar. I could do that, tend a bar. I’m real good at getting people fucked up so it’s high time I try it legal-like. Folks in need of a good time, look no further.”
“The decrease in pay will likely leave you rankled.”
“That’s what you think,” said Jack. “Bartenders make good money. And they don’t have to worry about going to jail or friends who will stab you in the back or…”
His eyes went somewhere far away.
Summer snapped her fingers until he drew focus on her.
“You should sleep and revisit this subject when you are sober.”
“I am sober.” His frisbee pupils told another tale. “Last time I snorted any E was hours ago and I took an Adderall to snap me awake.”
He’d never make it a week out there.
Summer had to agree. How long would Lindsay stay with him after she saw him fall into one of his fits? He’d go dipping into the cash register behind any bar he worked, so that plan was bound to fail as well. Summer knew he could do anything he set his mind to, but not anything.
He wouldn’t last a day.
Jack squeezed up the stairs, then back down and took a seat on the blue beanbag. He’d brought with him a picture frame, the one formerly holding the picture of Keith Richards he had cut from a magazine. With shaking hands, he removed the picture and carefully set it aside. He replaced it with a printed screenshot of Lindsay. It was a selfie. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin within his hands while admiring the hell out of it.
Perhaps it’s best if we let him try.
SUMMER WISHED him well, but on the inside, wished he’d go fuck himself. She dialed Crunch and asked loud enough for Jack to hear if he’d come pick her up. Said she wanted to spend time with her real friends. Said she wanted to go somewhere to feel safe. Said she’d wait for him out front of the trailer, because she could no longer stand the air on the inside.
No sooner had she stepped into the moonlight and the stars and the last of the cicadas than did Lindsay come traipsing up the walk. She carried with her a bottle of wine which she held like a holy relic.
“Jack is making his special chicken,” Lindsay said. “I brought a Chardonnay because it goes well, but also because Jack said he likes a good Chardonnay.”
“Does he now?” snapped Summer. “Ain’t he full of surprises?”
Lindsay smiled, probably thinking she had one over on Summer. Probably thinking she knew Jackie better than anyone else, if for no other reason than because they’d swapped saliva and seminal fluids and god only knew what else. Probably thinking Summer wasn’t nothing but unwashed, surly shit.
But Lindsay was an idiot. Summer knew more than what he liked—swinging out over the creek in a tire, the Carolina chickadee, minor league baseball games, macaroni and cheese from a box, coffee with lots of cream and sugar, old sit-coms from the 1980s, fresh peaches, driving at night, the Pixies, that one time in Mississippi when they ate fried alligator tail and listened to an old-timey blues band and he got drunk and said, “Stormy, this is the best night in the entire world,” History Channel, bourbon, air-conditioning, classic rock, smoking from a pipe instead of a joint or a bong, being in control, thumb tacks instead of push pins, mayonnaise instead of mustard, boxer briefs instead of choosing one of the two, quiet in the mornings, shirts with collars…not a one of them being a bottle of bullshit Chardonnay—she knew his name. Not off the top of her head, but she knew it, and it for damn sure wasn’t Jack Jordan. Lindsay could stick his every appendage into her grimy little slit and would never know a fraction of what Summer could tell her.
Summer put a hand to Lindsay, at about the love handle. Felt the girl flinch.
“I don’t care what he says,” said Summer, “you should feel free to eat as much as you want. Don’t listen to how the media believes women should look. I bet you’re so much happier now—so much freer—since you no longer worry about your body image.”
Lindsay recoiled, as if slapped. She covered her midsection with her bony, bulimic arms.
“Us girls got to stick together,” Summer told her with a wink. “Don’t let the men tell us where to find happiness. Am I right, girl?”
“I…I, uh—”
“But if you ever did want a, you know—” she sniffled her nose two times hard “—then I’ll hook you up. Friend prices.”
Lindsay opened her mouth. She closed it.
“Enjoy your dinner.”
Summer waded down the switchback to wait for Crunch, closer to the highway, rather than do what she wanted, which was stomp out of the shadows and back into the Light House trailer. To throw a finger to his face and accuse him of bullshittery. For him to claim something so clearly devious as an affinity for Chardonnay—the smell of leather, paperback pulp novels, girls in sweaters, girls in yoga pants, girls with pigtails, driving ten miles over the speed limit, talk radio at night, winter as opposed to summer, rain as opposed to shine, not standing in line, the Rolling Stones, drinks with lots of ice, dirty jokes—only told her he was taking this to another level. This time, he might actually be serious.
No matter how much dope she and Crunch and Mike D and Crazy Carter smoked, no matter how many YouTube videos they sat around and laughed at, no matter how many times they listened to Summer’s extensive collection of bootlegged Grateful Dead cassette tapes…no matter how much coke or pills or booze…she could not shake it from her head.
He’s back there right now. He’s cooking that goddamn chicken dish, which is the only thing he knows how to cook. The one I taught him to make. The one he only makes for girls and sits about, listlessly bragging his statistics on how many times he’s cooked it versus how many times it’s gotten him laid. That stupid little girl will put that food in her stupid little mouth, then put her stupid little mouth on my Jackie. And soon they will be rutting away on the couch or, god forbid, the carpet, and next thing you know they will have a stupid little baby and move to a home closer to the school.
“There’s still a way to stop this,” Summer said aloud, and only one of the boys so much as cocked an eyebrow.
“Stop what?” asked Crunch.
“I need to borrow your car,” she told him. He lay supine on the run-ragged carpet of Dealer’s apartment and only stared at the popcorn ceiling as Summer rummaged the keys from his pocket. “I’ll bring it back torreckly.”
It’s so easy to forget Jack can’t read minds. It’s all a parlor trick. He’s anticipating basic human emotion and calculating the reactions. But just in case…just in case, think only about something else. Think about anything else… How about that time in New Orleans when we went out for drinks and the band came back to the house and we threw a party so big and they let him sing a song in the microphone and he said over and over it was the best party he’d ever been to and wouldn’t you believe, we threw it together? Remember how fun it was to watch him smile. Think about that, instead of the other, because what happens if you’re wrong and he really can read minds?
Summer found herself not back at the Light House trailer with Jack, but instead at the Circle K, and behind the counter was that old Muslim son of a bitch who never was any fun to run into after a night out. Bastard used his position behind the counter to cast judgment upon folks out for a good time, and some nights she could deal with it.
Not this one.
“Give me three packs of those things back yonder,” she said as she pointed a finger behind the counter. “That stuff they call Ivory Wave.”
The Muslim frowned. “Do you know what that is?”
