He Used to Be Great

With the deepest regret and dismay,
We observe a celebrity's death.
He succumbed to the pressures which weigh
On depressives by stopping his breath.
We'll remember the laughter he brought,
We'll remember the lessons he taught
By examples not always his own
And the movies by which he is known.

There's a lesson to learn from the mess
Of this talented actor's demise;
It's that nothing compares to the stress
Of maintaining the perfect disguise.
When he strangled himself with his belt,
Did he doubt that the agony felt
By his children and friends would be less
Than the torments of fame and success?

Mush

Never let it be said that Micah "Grover" Groves failed to hook a brother up. Well, except for that one time but it's hard to hold a grudge against a half ton man when he buzzes H2SO4 at 22:30 on a gloomy Tuesday. "Dude," he whispers breathlessly, "uncle Gordon just came down the thirteen steps and he's loaded."
"I'll be there as soon as I can," I say back while looking around frantically for pants. "Have you called? anyone else?"
"He'll only see you. Grab what you can and get here before he starts getting preachy."
"Right-o, man. Quick like a bunny."
I need cash.
For a guy who only pulls in 75 buck a day, it's amazing how much money I can scratch up in a jiffy. There's $500 jump money in the sock under my bed, a handful of crumpled twenties in my suit coat pocket from the last time I hit the rippers, $245 towards Tyler's rent for next month and maybe another $140 in my bank account. I'll be counting over a grand to Groovy Uncle Gordon for his wares well before the witching hour.
Where the fuck are my pants?
There's a gaggle of local miscreants strung out in front of the bank waiting for the Midnight Welfare deposits. It's only 22:47 by my watch and I wonder how an enterprising young half stud might benefit from the poor downtrodden downtown scumbags.
"Anyone wanna order some 'shrooms?" I ask the crowd at large.
"How much?" comes the desultory reply.
"As much as you want?" I play the question game as well as anyone else.
"At what price?" This from a roughscrabble little punk wearing a Hurley windbreaker and ripped jeans I know as Creeper.
I'm trying to figure what he's good for while performing mental arithmetic. "Buck twenty an ounce, straight up."
He considers the offer for a second and nods. "Gimme five," he says offering me a business card with his cellphone number printed under "C-Note".
"Don't answer the text unless your check comes in Creeper," I tell him matter of exactly. "Price goes up to a buck fifty come sunrise."
He's trying to tell me his name's C-note but I'm too busy huckstering for orders to pay him any mind. I blow a few minds by withdrawing cash before midnight and head to Grover's with 10 ounces on spec and my thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket.
There's a light burning over the side door and Groovy's old beater parked out front when I arrive. Grover's ma sits at the kitchen table with an untouched cup of tea cooling in front of her when I startle her with the door. "I might have known that you'd be here for my fungus headed brother," she spits.
"Nice to see you too, Mrs Groves," I say before heading downstairs.
There's an earthy smell mixing in with the ever present chronic funk of Grover's basement abode that gets my mouth watering. The big man's in his spot against the wall entertaining a rigid old gent in dirt stained overalls. Uncle Gordon greets me with a wan smile before sipping at the Creemore Springs tall can he's clutching like an escape lever. Story goes that Grover's Uncle Gordon used to work at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa doing hush hush type stuff with psylocibin until he tested a new strain of mushroom on his own system and got hustled off to the Royal Victoria Laughing Academy. That was 1969. He was released about 15 years after his incident, found 1984 to be worse than Orwell had prophesied and cashed out of society to spend his time pursuing the good work in a mountain retreat up the Laurentians somewhere. Three's a crowd with this old cat and I know it's only a matter of time before he starts to bugging.
"Gentlemen," I venture by way of greeting, "it's a pleasure to see you this evening."
Grover snickers at the assumed formality and starts his chins to jiggling. Uncle Gordon shoots him a dirty look and offers me a Creemore. "Good evening to you as well, Mr One-nut. I remember you as a most reverential customer."
Try remembering my real name sometime, you dry fart. "Just wanting to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," I say instead. "What have you on offer for the masses?"
Groovy reaches into the old khaki duffel on the couch next to him and starts removing shrink wrapped bundles of what I have no doubt is finest mush. "The good golds came through real nice and tune right in to His voice," he says grooving into his expert role. "They're reasonably priced to go." And I'm salivating to know what that price might be but he's still going on. "The purple caps are dearer but guaranteed to help you see your god. And then there are my own personal favourites and buttons of my own design." With trembling hands he removes a smaller shrink wrapped bundle of long stemmed fungi with white spotted red caps. "These here are my Sanctum Sanctorum - first incarnation of touching God himself."
I have to fight back the urge to reach out and grab them and they look like little Smurf Houses. Maybe Groovy can see the strain playing on my face because he hands the bundle over into my trembling grasp. "They're beautiful, Mr Groves," I whisper reverently.
"Indeed they are and not for sale I'm afraid." Grover and I both gasp a little at that. "I brought them to show off and share a bit of holiness. You can keep those Mr One-nut and there's another for nephew." He allows a moment of silence to pass and starts talking turkey. "How much money did you bring?"
We settle up quickly and I thank my lucky stars Grover called. I'm walking out with two pounds of gold caps and four ounces of the purples for my thousand bucks. Grover negotiates for 10 times worth with Uncle Gord starting to fidget. The old guy has stops to make yet towards the south lands and wants to get it over and done with. "My research is reaching a critical stage and I have specimen dishes to check," he repeats while Grover's weighing out his purchase.
I down the last of my beer in a gulp and check my watch. Yes, the Welfare Express should have pulled in by now and I have people to see. "Gentlemen, thank you for your time but I have obligations to meet."
"Your patronage is appreciated, Mr One-nut," Gord mumbles around his last tall can. "With your support I can continue on my way towards Enlightenment."
"Any time, Groovy," I say shaking his hand. "Gimme a head start on sales, would you please?" I ask Grover over my shoulder. I'm nearly to the top of the stairs before he answers and it sounds something like "Good luck with that."
Mrs Groves has either turned in or crawled off to die so I don't need to trade pleasantries again. I text Creeper on the move and he answers right away with an attached photo showing an ATM receipt for a $600 withdrawal. I tell him to meet on the corner by my house in 45 minutes to give me a chance to get home and weigh his order. Two more texts to another four wasters waiting in the same dive and I've got the spec sales arranged by the time I hit the downtown core. The atmosphere is somewhat subdued considering that half the scruffs in North Bay just got paid by the government to be idiots for another month. Turning up Ferguson I can see an easy $1200 sales day going up in smoke because no druggy in any frame of mind is coming up my street tonight.
There's a half dozen blazing cop cars parked around the house and spooks with black suits and earpieces diverting passers by. For a second I'm sure Groovy Gordon's new zooms have transmitted a mutant contact high but no, there's an actual helicopter landed at the intersection of Second and Ferguson. The rigamarole in front of Tyler's house is centred around a local police sergeant and the chief spook. They're arguing hardcore and the minions are in disarray so no one's watching the door. My heart's hammering so fast that I don't hear Tyler trying to get my attention until he pings me with a teaspoon. "You've got company waiting."
It's dawned on me already that Creeper didn't beat me home dragging a triple murder charge behind him. There's only one person I know who can cause so much commotion in less than two hours elapsed time and she's waiting in my doorway. "What the fuck are you drawing heat on me for?"
Miss Manon Champlain, Heiress Apparent to the nation's largest shipping fortune and rising star of the international fashion scene gives me the finger and spits at my feet. "That's what I think of your shitty drug dealing life, Ronnie."
"Your little show's costing me all my ready cash," I say on my way past her into my room noting the rank refuse of my bachelor life with more than a little shame. Christ, there are overflowing ashtrays on every flat surface and it looks like every piece of dirty clothing has been used to wipe up dick sneezes. Well, fuck her for barging in on my shitty drug dealing life unannounced. "And you haven't told me what the fuck you're doing here to begin with."
She's flipping through her handbag with familiar huff and I know she's counting money. "So how much do I owe you for showing up unannounced?" Her green eyes are striking sparks off of mine and I can't remember when I've ever seen her this angry. "In a helicopter,Ronald, in case you hadn't noticed."
I can handle this two ways. First, I can take all of her ready cash for some imagined insult and send her packing. Second, I can salvage the situation and chill out with the most important woman in my life while zooming on Smurf Houses. "Judging from the ruckus outside my house, you went through a lot to be here." She stops what she's doing and nods briefly causing her hair to bounce around my face and my heart skips a beat. "So why don't I stop being a complete prick, bid you welcome and enjoy your company for as long as you'll let me."
She has choices now too and I have no fucking idea of knowing which way she's gonna land on this one. Mademoiselle Champlain is dressed casually (for her) but her handbag alone is worth more than my night's projected sales and it kills me a little that I know. Her forest green leather jacket matches her eyes and she's wearing a pair of russet slacks that compliments the low lights in her hair. As always her skin is flawless leaving me to wonder how many species had to die for whatever product she uses.
Manon's on her crackberry telling some poor schmuck where to go and how to do it. My basement shudders as the helicopter spins into life and maybe I hear a gunshot or two over the rising whine but I'd rather mind my own business. When she releases the call I hold my breath.
"So, really, how much did my unannounced arrival set you back?" she asks with a note of concern.
"I'm not taking any of your money, Non-non." She still hates that nickname and she still hits. "Ow! We've fucking talked about that!"
She is characteristically unfazed. "Answer the fucking question, Ronald."
My shoulder's still smarting. "Say fucking please!"
"Please fucking tell me how much cock sucking money it cost you for me being here."
The answer serves up a nice helping of anticlimax. "$1200." She waits. "If everyone actually showed up." Still waiting. "Which was unlikely considering the calibre of company I keep, right?"
As ever, Mam'selle Champlain remains a picture of grace and tact - not. "How does a waster like you come up with that kind of night? You swore to never sell hard stuff."
"Bite shit! I'm trying to unload a measly two pounds of Groovy Shrooms before Grover's network saturates the whole town so I hustled the Welfare Express."
Her face takes on the resemblance of a shaken etch-a-sketch which is to say blank. "I understood maybe half of what you just said but I'm hearing that you bought a shitload of mushrooms."
It takes a few minutes to explain Uncle Gordon and his crusade to meet god through hallucinogenic fungi and a few more to explain the incredible deal I just scored off of the old guy. She's a wee bit leary of the Smurf Houses but Non-non's always been open minded and she has enough repressed Catholic guilt to be curious about what it might be like to be high enough to see God.
"Are they safe?" She'll always be that girl despite the low calibre of company she keeps.
"I've not tried them but Groovy must have and he was none the worse for wear." That I seemed to notice. A brief internal debate over whether or not to tell her about acquired tolerance to poisons and whatnot results in my juggling the bag from hand to hand and saying, " Are you in or what? All of the cool kids are doing it."
She doesn't hesitate and I know that it's because she has misplaced faith in my judgement and sense of self preservation. "Sure. How do we do this?"
Tyler's got this deal called a tea ball that'll hold the Smurf Houses in place when I boil them and I scare up a couple of green tea bags and a half cup of sugar. The carnival's over outside and the other residents are starting to come out of their rooms to see what all the fuss was about. They are fated to remain oblivious as I'm sure as hell not gonna compromise her safety by telling my housemates what the deal is. Any of them would be able to figure that the kind of money one could get from candid party photos of Manon could keep one in modest comfort for years.
I left Tyler examining the mushrooms and he's gazing at them with an uncommon curiosity. "I've never seen you with anything like this before. You've usually got that yellowish blue moldy crap."
"These are special grown by an expert.". I don't even give Tyler the opportunity to know about what these things might do to his head before I make my offer. "Manon and I were gonna get fucked up if you wanna join."
He smiles his little lazy grin at me and shrugs. "What the hell."
Too cool. "So go keep Mam'selle company while I make tea."
Tyler's not too sure about the arrangement and tries a compromise. "But I always make the tea."
"And how many times have you brewed experimental psychedelic mushrooms?"
His honesty doesn't hesitate. "I've never done it."
"Then go chat up the pretty girl while the resident expert gets to a little rubba bubble boiling trouble." He does an abrupt about face like he's marching off to a firing squad instead of keeping company with Canada's most eligible bachelorette. It's easy for me to forget that my buddy's not the most socialized individual on earth.
I'll be honest, my first time working with any new drug gives me big time heeby-jeebies and I can't bring myself to break up the Smurf Houses to fit in the tea ball. So, I abandon the notion and set water to boil opting to brew them whole instead. When the water's reached a rolling boil I lay three of the long stemmed shrooms in and watch. Almost immediately the water turns a dusky shade of pink and five minutes later a deep red. I've never seen any reaction like this and it gives me pause for about a second before I add the traditional half cup of sugar and opt against the teabags. Reducing the heat enough to calm the water lets me see that the Houses are still basically intact if somewhat swollen. I plate them all on a saucer, sprinkle them with sugar, pot the tea, tray it all up with three cups and carry it all carefully downstairs.
In the maybe fifteen minutes since I've been gone Tyler has effectively hidden my shame by dumping all of the ashtrays and stowing the spunked on clothes away behind the bedsheet serving as my closet door. He and Manon are smiling at each other like conspirators and I know that they've been talking about me. "Did she tell you?" is my first question to Tyler because I know he wouldn't have forgotten to ask.
"She wanted to see you is all," he says reaching for the tea tray.
"True?" I ask directly into her eyes.
"As simple as that," she says.
Fuck me. "Well, that makes some kind of sense." Tyler's pouring the concoction into the cups provided and pretending that the dull red tea isn't bothering him.
Manon never did have the best imagination. "I don't know about this, Ronald."
Figured as much. "Well then, allow me to be your own little Altogether Morris." And before they can say a word in protest or otherwise I've taken my first sip of Smurf House tea. Immediately my mouth starts to tingling which sensation flows all the way down into my stomach which starts to quiver in protest. For a moment I'm sure that it's all gonna sick up but no, it's just my tummy vibrating.
Tyler and Manon haven't taken their eyes off of me and anxiety is playing across both of their faces like special needs kids. Manon, as ever, simply has to know. "And?"
"Finest cuppa' zoom zoom I've ever had." Neither moves. "Seriously guys, get yourselves on the outside of that."
It's getting hard to watch them both at the same time but Manon raises her glass by the stem with her pinky extended while Tyler raises his as if the cup didn't have one. I'm watching closely to see if they have the same reaction that I did but the tingling is proving to be a better distraction than frolicking puppies. So I ask. "And?"
Tyler's regular lazy grin is twitching a bit. "It tastes like putrefied ass?" Manon giggles and nods but Tyler needs to elaborate. "No, like actual putrefied donkey meat. I had to eat some once on the steppes."
"Was it this sweet?" is all Manon offers before her second sip and swallow.
Tyler and I are both impressed. "You're an uncommon woman, Mademoiselle," Tyler says with a big shit eating grin. "Why can't you stay with this one, Ronnie?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, brother." It's a safe answer and brief considering that Tyler's on his feet and out of my room before I've finished giving it.
"Door," he says from the stairs.
"Old habits," I tell Manon's confusion and she accepts with a nod and another sip of tea. Meanwhile, Tyler's last question is bouncing through my head with the brain smashing abandon of a .22 calibre bullet. Sitting near her and smelling her is enough to make me want the old jet set days back when we were together and happy and having sex twice a day. The mere memory is enough to start the creature stir and curl around scar tissue.
"You're drooling, Ronald," she advises me with a giggle.
"Et tu est tres jollie." We're close enough to kiss and her lips part when she leans closer.
Tyler's announcement pushes us apart like invisible hands. "A Mr C-Note to see you, Ronnie."
Creeper has changed into cleaner club clothes since waiting outside the bank and he's wearing enough of some musky nonsense to cut through the subterranean murk in my room. He's looking uneasy in his oversized Hurley hoodie, eyes darting from person to person in the room until settling on Manon. "Everything cool?" he asks with assumed charm.
"What the fuck are you talking to her for, Creeper?" I ask to snap his eyes back to me. "She's got nothing for you so let me see your money."
Creeper looks back at Manon. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
"Sorry," she says with a voice that would frost glass, " but I've already seen the world's smallest penis."
Creeper's reaching for his pocket and Tyler's up in a flash with the punks free hand twisted back into an unnatural angle that makes the kid's face drain like he was dosed with liquid plummer. "It's only my roll," he gasps. "Please let me go."
Tyler releases his grip and whispers a few words into Creeper's ear that makes the kid swallow and nod. Manon's sipping away at her tea and looking off into space so I whip out my scale and get to weighing. "You want that in one bag or separately by ounce, Creeper?"
"One's fine ," he says with a glance in Tyler's direction who nods.
Five ounces takes a bite out of the bag but his six hundred bucks feels good in my hand. Creeper tucks his parcel inside his hoodie and seems to see the table set up for the first time. "Y'all getting fucked up on mushroom kool aid?"
Manon smiles after draining her cup and fills it from the pot. The highlights in her hair are doing a colour spectrum shift and I'm really starting to dig the Smurf Houses. She fills the cup again and hands it to the piece of downtown trash. "Take it to go," she tells him icily.
His leer is back in place, a cheap smarmy facade on his rundown house of a face. He tosses the whole cup back like a shot of cheap tequila and drops the cup. "Enjoy your evening, Miss Champlain."
She's outraged and beautiful but doesn't manage more than a squeak before he's gone. The rhythm of his retreating footsteps helped remeber that music is a good thing and would really go down good right now. Tyler hands me a Smurf House. "Don't worry about it, Manon. In five minutes he won't remember his own name."
I'm starting to trip over the thoughts tumbling around in my head and feeling a vibration resonating from my friend and landlord that syncs with the one in my belly. The mushroom in my hand pulses with it's own stored energy and its potential hits me hard in the backbrain, reverbating down my spinal column to flow through my hips.
Where's the fucking music gone to?
Manon's fumbling with the remotes on my coffee table and I show her which one works the music by instinct. She presses the play button and it's something classic rockish with a country influence about taking someone back to the point of his birth and in a moment I'm transported back to another grungy basement looking down a perforated drain cover as a great tower of living flesh above me spasms and screams through childbirth.
I hate this track.
"Give it here." I tell Manon with an expectant hand out for the remote.
"No, this is Grand Funk Railroad and it's sending me back to Memere." Sure enough there are tears in her eyes and it must be nice to remember being brought up in splendour on the St Lawrence River but I was born on a laundry room floor.
She makes me sit through the whole song but then it's "All the Young Dudes" and we both know it enough to dare break out into the first chorus. After that it's singing what we know of the rest to each other while making up the missing bits from nonsense and flashing laughter.
Tyler goes to answer the door again and I have time to notice that I've crushed the boiled mushroom into a goo in my hand.
Without thinking I place a slow soft slap on Manon's cheek and rub a good bit of goo down her face onto her neck. She actually nuzzles my hand in space, takes my hand and hers and licks the palm licking goo. There's another Smurf House in her hand and she crushes it against the chest I don't remember baring and we're smearing ourselves with tingly mushroom guts. Blue and green tracers follow my hands over her body and she's a live flame on my lap when our lips meet and the sweetness on her tongue is still my favourite poison. We bite each others lips and feel each others pain and nothing matters so long as she's with me here in the Smurf Houses.
Here comes the son.

Burnt

Grover's dry for the first time in over a decade of slinging weed. Apparently his connection rolled over a guardrail into a rock cut coming up from the Big Smoke - not an impossible feat when the whore in your car's smoking crack and your pole simultaneous like. Fucking idiot had provisions for half the dealers in town besides Grover's ten pound sack of cheeb. Now he's resting peacefully under police guard in hospital. A lot of people want to finish what the rock cut started. Fuck sakes.
"The whore was unscathed," Grover adds.
"Tell someone who gives a shit," I snap back. "That stupid irresponsible prick jobber's making me do something fundamentally unsavoury."
"Theodore?" he ventures cautiously.
"Motherfucking Theodore," I spit and consider my meager supply of Grover's good dope. "You're not gonna have anything soonish, are you?"
"Afraid not brother," he says. "The wheels are in spin but not til tomorrow after lunch probably."
Fuck. "Shit, then I've gotta pay court to King Theo of the Ghetto."
Grover's trying not to laugh too hard. "Weaver, just hit up a local grower and..."
"Local grower like fuck. I'm too used to top stuff, man, so don't even start. Theodore's the only other schmuck in town can compete with your shit and you know it as well as I do." He's still all achuckle and it's starting to piss me off. "I could live without the laugh track, thank you." Grover breaks out into great bellowing belly laughter and I have to hold the droid a foot away from my face - I mean consider the belly it's issuing from. "Lemme know if you get back on your feet or see them."
Boop.
Deep breath and centre, Weaver. You can do this. H2SO4 still has Theodore's number on file and I'm invited to enjoy a ringback while I wait for my call to be connected. The Bobby Fuller Four are telling me about their legal issues before a woman's voice answers. "Allo?"
"Je cherche, Theo." My horrible French and rotten attitude aren't contributing to this being a good conversation.
"Un instant," she says before dropping the phone in my ear and shouting, "Theo!"
There's a harsh muttered conversation before his voice comes on the line, "Qu'est ce que fuck?"
"Theodore, it's Ronnie. You got any hay to cut?" The code's an old one and it's been ten years since I last called him but I still can't help but feel he leaves me hanging on the line on purpose.
"No doubt," he says eventually. "You remember where I am with all this time?"
"No worries there. See ya in a bit." He hangs up first but I'm too busy dreading the pending visit to care.
With a half hour bus ride ahead of me, there's plenty of time to rehash old history. Fucking Theodore, the guy's a useless tool like a toothless saw but still de facto King of the Ghetto. He's a thief and a drug addict who holds court with crack whores and junkies with a house full of kids - the ones who still draw baby bonus anyway. The shit I know about this guy could have him rotting down some hole in Penatanguishine for the rest of his unnatural life and now I've gotta kiss his scabby ass for a decent toke.
Way to be, One Nut.
I pull the bus cord two stops ahead of Theodore's so I can case the place before going in. There's some bad blood between me and a few of the King's Court and no sense stirring old shit. The ghetto hasn't changed except that the raggedy shoeless kids have cellphones and iPods now. My presence sends more than a few of the urchins scuttling home to tattle that there's a stranger in town. Drapes part and close at my passing and I'm sure that Theodore knows Ronnie's back. Approaching his unit I see little faces pressed up against the front window and wave. They flinch back like kittens in a pet store and I just pounded the glass - poor buggers.
Just to piss him off I make with a cop knock and wait for the sounds of frantic paraphernalia hiding. The door opens to a middle aged woman in scrubs and a fly away bun. She smiles a nightmare of yellow teeth at me and greets me warmly, "Long time no see, Ronnie. How's life treating you."
Loads better than you, I say to myself after recognizing the voice. "Shabbily, Chantal. How are the kids?" She gets a kiss on each cheek and my best shit eating grin. "Your man ready for me?"
"All school age and out of my hair until afyer 3." She steps aside to usher me in and it's like stepping back into the past. The mingled smells of narcotic smoke and disinfectant, the same shag carpet worn to a fade along the main traffic areas, incessant strident drone of evangelical television and scattering of broken cheap plastic toys around the pile of visiting shoes. But I can also smell the right kind of weed burning so I manage my distaste and remove my footwear per standing orders.
"Who's there, fuck!" The King's bellowing from his throne in the living room.
"S'Ronnie."
Like he didn't already know. "S'up, Man?" I call from the landing unshod and therefore supposedly supplicant. "The Network didn't advise you ahead of time?". He's overly proud of his forewarning system and fancies himself a halfassed Sherlock Holmes with his own band of Baker Street Irregulars. Any of them would sell him out for a dime bag.
"Maybe not, eh?" he mumbles as I come up into view. "S'been 10 years plus, man."
"Seems like only yesterday." And I mean it - nothing's changed except the video game system. Even the cronies in attendance are the same and I never hoped to see Raymond Narce or Denny Gagner again. "How's by you boys?" I ask with the sort of forced bonhomie I usually associate with bad television.
They don't answer but they're almost certainly too stoned to respond so I don't take it to heart. Theo even surprises me by picking up the conversational slack. "Everything's sweet all over," he says with a leer that makes my skin crawl. "Chantal got her Practical Nursing ticket. She can write now."
"Congratulations Chantal!" There's no mistaking the genuine feeling in my voice. Chantal's been talking about upgrading since before I fell out of this tragic scene. She allows herself a quick smile as I lift her off the ground in a hug. But Theo's some pissed when I put her down and not because I was just handling his woman but because I didn't congratulate him on his ticket to sweet scrips. He doesn't care if his wife of 15 years commits everywhich fraud in the book or that she could do time for it. As far as Theo is concerned he has a live in pharmacy. "It must have been a grand day of celebrations."
I venture it as a likely guess and don't miss far from the mark for Raymond to interject. "Theo got so pissed drunk he set the couch on fire trying to smoke a pill." The lanky goof proceeds to stand up and lift the tiger print duvet to show a burnt crater in the cushion. The court's getting giddy with the memory. "Said he wanted to set fire to the world."
A familiar refrain that. "How is Giselle?"
I realize my mistake an instant too late and sense a rising shit storm behind Theo's eyes. His lackeys' eyes (three between the two not counting Gagner's glass one) go wide at the name considering that the wee crack whore in question has been missing and presumed dead for a decade. "Shit, I mean Jeanette."
Chantal considers the question as carefully as any primary caregiver would. "She has her good and bad days but hasn't been out of bed for..." She breaks her flow of words to allow puzzlement playing some across her face. "Well, since the last time you were here."
"She's lucky to be alive," Theo says in a matter of tone and straight in my direction.
What a crock of shit. "Look, all I want is to trade some cash for some pot and hit the road." Theo smiles at his imagined victory and moves to get up off of his throne. "I really do appreciate the help."
He's frozen mid rise and I'm resigning myself to another round of bullshit until I track his eyes locked on something behind me. I turn to see a burned corpse staggering gauze wrapped from the back bedroom holding an ounce bag of weed ahead of her like a lantern lighting the way. I'm stricken by the awesome burning intensity of her eyes and the terrible purpose thrown from them like sparks. "I weighed it out myself." She enunciates every syllable with care and I nod dumb understanding like a Weaver brand bobble head. "Buck eighty," she adds holding out her other hand for payment - the one with the missing fingers.
"Thanks, kiddo." My hand finds money in my pocket and gives it over into the fried claw of a free hand. She passes the dope over without incident. "Primo stuff?" I ask when all I want is for her to go away so I can stop looking at her.
"Compassion club grade AAA." Her eyes have shifted over my shoulder to Theo. "Daddy got me a script card after you left."
Fuck me sideways but I gotta get out of this place. I turn to offer a hasty goodbye and Theo's still frozen mid rise but his face is apoplectic with rage. "She's supposed to be sleeping," he gurgles with a glare for Chantal. "She's supposed to be medicated."
His wife stares speechless at her patient with mixed pride and fear. Theo finally decides to lunge to his feet and rushes around the couch. "Jeanette" reels away from his clutching fingers, trips over her bandages and topples to the floor. Everyone sitting leaps up standing and everyone standing moves towards the fallen woman.
"Fuck!" Raymond yells when he's got a good look at the action. "She's doing the bacon!"
And yes, she's seizing alright, arms flapping like burnt chicken wings. Chantal's voice is rising to a keening scream even while she's clearing obstructions to make a clear path for administering care. Theo's trying to pull Chantal away screaming incoherent nonsense about tickets and scripts.
The twitching body rests so suddenly that I think her mortal coil has shuffled off forever but I should only be so lucky. "Love you, Ronnie."
Not bad as far as sentiments go but I'd rather they weren't her last words. Chantal's on her vitals but I don't need to hear the verdict to know she's gone. Silence reigns for a moment before Theo shouts, "Fucking useless bitch!" I think he's yelling at Chantal before he kicks the corpse in the head. "Worthless slut! You're my fucking ticket!"
The lackeys have their mouths open like stoned goldfish and Chantal's so locked in grief that she can only croon French at her "daughter's" corpse, straightening bandages and stroking what little remains of her hair. I feel bound by my lost faith to mourn with her and offer comfort but for fuck sakes I've got what I came for and I really don't want to be around when the authorities come around as they most assuredly will. What a mess.
"Well, it's been a slice," I remark on the way towards retrieving my shoes.
"The fuck you think you're going, shit wad?" Theodore's voice is trying to be menacing but he's scared so shitless that it comes out like a squeaky fart which fails to impress me.
"Go fuck yourself," I tell him point blank. "My staying's not gonna help matters any and I'll stomp your cock to a worse wreck than mime if you try stopping me."
He doesn't know whether to shit or go blind, as the saying goes, so I finish strapping my shoes on while he thinks about it. By the time I'm ready to strut he's got his wasted minions at his back as if the sight of three wasted wretches will inspire me to some sort of submissive posture.
No chance. "Have fun in fraud hell, Theodore. I hope you burn like she did."
Exit Weaver.
Fortune smiles on me as the bus stops just as I finish a much deserved cigarette. From out the ghetto comes a general outcry as news spreads of death in the court of the King. I've got the long bus ride home to hypothesize on Theo's fate. I suppose it all depends on how far the investigation goes. Frig, a simple blood test will be enough to show that the deceased is not Jeanette. Maybe that discovery will lead the authorities to question her father how he's managed to collect her disability cheques and fill her scripts for the last ten years if the woman in the back bedroom was not the affected person. Maybe they'll put Theodore in a drab, secure room with no windows and ask him enough of the right questions until he tells them how a thirteen year old girl chose suicide rather than live with the burns she suffered at her father's hands when he decided to burn the evidence of incest away one dumb stoned day. And maybe then he'll spill about the desperate crack whore who volunteered for kerosene and a match to take the dead girl's place. Chantal had to have known despite the massive rails of crushed E's she used back in the day. I hope only Theo takes the fall but air doubt it as much as Giselle's dying words. Hell, she loved anyone with a twenty to spare.
At least that's what I'll keep telling myself while remaining safe in the knowledge that Theo is well and truly burnt.

To My Miscarried Child: or The Only Document Found on my Body if not for the Dog Walking Couple

I have tried to forget but you're stuck in my head
'Cause the thought of you waiting alone doesn't fit
With the model contrived from the parenting kit
I acquired despite beatings and lies I've been fed.
What I'd pay for a day, for a hug or a kiss
Or the chance to approve or deny a request
Of you, fondest of wishes, salvation disguised
As a flaxen haired cherub with fire in his eyes.
And your mother is coping, she's doing her best
To adapt to your death and rekindle the bliss
We ignited while making a life in her bed
But her passions are dampened and life is for shit.
So be patient and wait, it'll take just a bit
And we'll meet in that space between living and dead.

The Basement Dweller

Carissa won't even look at me anymore and I don't know why. I stayed with her for 3 days after the shower to clean up and make sure she wouldn't sink again. Her couch was sent to live at the dump and I had a new one delivered from Rebuilt. She sat on my lap in the meantime and wouldn't move, fell asleep two hours after my legs did and only woke when the delivery arrived. I left her snoring softly on the new to her sofa. Now she won't even look at me. If I open my mouth to speak when we pass in the hallway she starts crying.
"I can't live here anymore."
Brad Logan doesn't say anything right away. He's got the best seat in the house and smokes with his yellowed arthritic claws clutched against his chest just sort of staring off in the distance. For a second I figure he's had a stroke but then he blinks himself back to reality and considers the anguish etched on my face. "You paid six months," he says. "Haven't been here a month yet so there's no rush to bugger off. But I won't be able to give you any refund on that pretty lighter."
I'd thought so and hoped no but there it is. He's started into a wracking fit of coughing and crushing his butt into the ash tray not looking at me when I regain my powers of speech. "That's fine by me. Just do me a favour and credit Carissa the difference."
The fit passes of into wheezing and he nods after a moment's hesitation extending his hand. Now it's my turn to hesitate having no desire to feel his fingers crack like dry twigs in my grip. "Shake it, Ronnie. We all know what you did for Miss 'Rissa. I'm in no less pain than you." The conviction in his voice forces my hand into his. He winces not in pain but embarrassment when I offer him a limp fish and bears down on me with a vicelike grip. You're a good man, Mr Weaver."
"Don't let that get around Mr Logan."
"By their deeds shall ye know them," he says with a bit of a smirk and draws his hand to his chest. "Best of luck to you, son."
"Thank you sir."
And with that he's shuffling out my door lighting another cigarette. Minutes long as days slide past as I try wrapping my head around what just happened.
I don't have a chance to lock the door before H2SO4 sounds an incoming call alarm. "What now?" I ask myself. No one who actually knows me would call my phone. It's basically a text message system on steroids and after my time at Talk2Me I have no inclination to speak into a telephone. But the caller ID I recognize and wouldn't you know it's someone I'm willing to break the rules for.
"What's crackalacking, Tyler?" I say with as much genuine feeling as my routed soul can muster.
Tyler took my old house off of me when I went on what I thought would be permanent vacation with Manon. Truth be told, I haven't spoken to him since I took off but there's more than a little solace in knowing that he's on the other end of the call. "Heard you were in a bit of a bother living wise," he says like he'd been sitting in on the conversation with Brad Logan.
"How the hairy fuck do you know? I just found out myself."
Tyler's laugh would be contagious if I weren't already so sick at heart. "Your landlords' father's an old friend. He called. Did you really give him a platinum Dunhill for six months rent and credit a girl the rest?"
"The man talks too much but the answer is yes, I did."
The laugh again but I join with him this time. " How about you come by and have a brew with me?"
"Done, I'll be there in five. Want me to bring?"
I'm expecting a negative response but he surprises me. "Yes please. See you soonish."
It's actually less than a five minute walk to the old house from Keystone but it's closer to ten before I get there after stuffing my pockets with H2SO4, dope and cigarettes. Tyler's watching me from the front porch, waves when he sees me and raises a beer. There's something different about him and I have to get closer to notice he's filled out a bit. It takes me another moment to realize he's wearing a loincloth sitting in full lotus under the sun and lilac bushes in full view of the Ferguson Street traffic.
"Christ God, Tyler!" I yell from twenty yards away. "What have you been up to!"
"Taking a lesson from the Book of Weaver!" he yells back. "Beers under the lilac tree!" I reach out to shake his hand and he pulls me into a hug instead. We clutch and pound each others backs like we've been separated by miles instead of two blocks. Passers by give us the eyes and for once in my life I don't feel like telling them off.
When enough time has passed he holds me at arms length to take a long look at my face. "Girl trouble," he says after a moment's past. "Not Manon though."
I nod and he waves me towards a table set up by the front window. He's done a lot of work since I left him to it. The bricks have been scrubbed from peak to foundation and all of the trim's been painted an old copper green. Window boxes boast sprays of beautiful blossoms that look side to side in the wan summer breeze. To look at him curl up into the patio chair it's easy to imagine it all coming to him during some misguided meditation. The thought makes me chuckle.
Tyler smiles back and offers me a cold one from the cooler by his feet. Easing down across the table from him brings back a lot of memories and none have ever included Tyler drinking alcohol. "Great day for a cold one," I say as we touch bottles.
"I'll have to take your word on that," Tyler says before taking a sip and wincing. "I only started drinking day before yesterday. Think maybe I'm an alcoholic yet?"
I have to replay that last bit in my head a few times and watch his eyes crinkle around their edges to tell that he's kidding. "Let me know the first time you wake up somewhere you didn't fall asleep and we'll talk about it then."
He nods sagely to my superior wisdom in this regard and takes another swig out of his beer. "I got a new tenant last month, Russian kid from a Siberian shithole called Archangel. Won't pay his rent and thinks he can walk all over me because he's supposed to be connected. So, now I drink."
I'm spinning one while he talks and he's watching my hands play their perfect roll trick. "Sucks dude, but not all tenants are like you."
"Agreed, I was a model tenant." I light the joint, puff puff pass and Tyler takes a long hit. His eyes widen a tad and I think he's about to lose his lunch in a coughing fit. "Good stuff," he says on the exhale before taking another hoot and passing it back.
"What else can I do besides introducing you to some more bad habits?" I ask.
He thinks about it for a second or two with the same far away look on his face as I can see him assuming gazing across the Mongolian steppes as a kid. "I thought about kicking his ass for a while but he's got a hand gun and didn't want to wind up ventilated. And I don't know how to reason with him, I see the guys who slaughtered my people every time this fucking guy opens his mouth to speak. He's always got that gun close by."
Tyler's probably the best guy I know and when he plucks the offered joint back I spot a tiny frustration tear creep down his cheek.
"What room's he in and what does he owe you?" I ask softly.
"He's in your old basement room and owes $350. I realize it's not much but..."
"It doesn't matter how much he owes, he owes and that's that." I don't even wait for him to get up before I'm at the front door. Down the hall to the kitchen, down the stares and I have to marvel at what Tyler's done to the basement. Shit, it looks like a featured design in some glossy architectural digest. "Buddy should be kissing your ass letting him live down here so cheap," I say to myself before pounding on my old door.
"Fuck you!"
"Open up, Boris!" I yell back. "Rent's due!"
"Fuck you! I know people!"
Funny thing about being an alcohol and drug abuser is you can sometimes misplace your keys - imagine that. Sure enough, my old spare's still tucked up under the drop ceiling tile by the door and it slides into the lock like a greased up cock. Deep breath and I enter like I still own the place.
He's spread wide on a couch against the far wall with his dick in hand. There's a snub nose .38 on the coffee table in front of him but he doesn't have time to get to it. By the time I have it to hand his eyes are bugged out and wild looking. I don't point it at him - I don't play guns anymore - but he doesn't know that I won't shoot him. "$350 now or get the fuck out. I'm giving you this one time chance to make right by Tyler."
"Who the fuck are you?" he asks. His accent's thicker than his cock (not saying much) but reminds me of a Rocky and Bullwinkle villain.
"Call me One-nut. Pay or pack up, you've got 10 minutes." His eyes go from mine to his gun in my hand and I smile, "Make that 5 minutes. "
"I have no money," he manages after a moment.
"Then get out, it's that simple here in the True North Strong and Free." I don't know if he just doesn't believe me or doesn't get the National Anthem reference but he's giving me a look like I'm spouting Aramaic at him. "Get dressed and get out, you're evicted."
"I know people," he sputters. " You can't just..."
There's just no talking to some assholes. "Your people aren't here, it's just you and me. Bring them by sometime and maybe I'll quake a bit for show but you're done here." I still won't point the gun at him but let my hand twitch a bit as if it's itching to burp the little darling and spit up a round of lead between his eyes.
"Let me pack. Half a day and..."
"Get dressed, get out and thank your fucking stars I'm letting you." He wants to argue but not against Smith and Wesson. He grabs up his tangled pant waist from around his ankles, belts himself and casts about for a shirt.
"Take the one on the couch," I tell him.
"It's stained," he protests but fuck him.
"One minute left...wear it or go topless."
When I escort him upstairs Tyler's at the kitchen table waiting. Boris doesn't give him a glance but Tyler just nods at the gun in my hand and watches me lead him out the front door.
"I see you soon," the Russian dickhole hisses from between clenched teeth.
"Bring your friends," I tell him with a smile. "Maybe they'll lend you a new gun. Or you could buy this one off of me for $350." He doesn't take me up on the offer, he he just leaves with a backward glance that speaks of things to come.
Tyler's still at the kitchen table when I'm done with a pot of green tea to hand. I take the chair across from him while admiring the improvements he's made in here and accept the cup he offers me. "That was the dumbest stunt I've ever seen you pull," he tells me when I'be taken my first sip.
Still, I manage to sputter a bit when I say, "You got what you wanted so what's the difference?"
"He could have killed you," Tyler reminds me.
"I used my spare key and caught him spanking off. He never touched the gun."
"You couldn't have known that. He might have been pointing it at the door waiting." Tyler has always had this way of talking to me like I shouldn't be allowed out without a helmet and I can hear it now. "You just walked into a room with an armed man why?"
I want to give him a flip answer but it's all just too fresh to deny. "To be doing something useful again, helping you and basically not giving a shit about whatever the fuck happens to me anymore, I suppose."
Tyler nods, sips his tea and drops the offer like a penny off the CN tower, "So, you'll take the room."
I can't believe what I'm hearing at first but he's got this shit eating grin on and it sinks in. "Sounds like a plan."
Tyler just nods. "Welcome home, brother."

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The Born Again Buoy Scout

In all of the Junky Corners, there is no one quite like Carissa. When she's "on" she's like the Discovery Channel and a new book rolled into one, entertaining and much anticipated. In the weeks I've lived in the buiilding we've spent most of our free time together and it would be more if she didn't have to work nights. Standard practise so far involves her coming home between 7 and 8 in the morning to wake and bake me for some themed Netflix watching before she crashes out at around 14:30.

We haven't touched each other yet - intimately in any case. Sure, there are playful nudges when the TV says something funny and she held me close once without knowing why when I started missing Non-non really bad on her birthday but that's it. Okay, fine, we tried to once but there was hesitation on her part and I balked. And it's not that I didn't want to, far from it in fact. Carissa ranks as the coolest chick I know and dishing out some just desserts on her would be bliss but there's a darkness in her that will rear up sometimes and threaten to blot her out completely.

I saw it rise during a recent screening of "Legends of the Fall" during a Frontier Day themed session and watched her settle into a black tar funk that would sink a mastodon. It scared me so I ran and left my remaining testicle behind. She's cool but that darkness isn't for me - not when I'm just starting to see the light at the end of the Chunnel. It still doesn't mean that I don't want her. Every knock on my door is her until I open it.

Maybe I should stop answering.

It's noon on a Friday five days after running scared when a soft tap tap gets me off my bed and out of an Umbrella Academy novel. I'm hoping it's her even while knowing it's not her knock. And no, it's not my fallen angel but Twitchy the Homosexual Junky scratching his tracks outside my door."Got an extra smoke, man?" He asks through chattering teeth and sweat.

"Sure, just a sec." I turn my back to fetch my pack and he follows right behind without asking.

"I'll smoke it with you," he says, making himself comfortable at the foot of my bed and batting his eyelashes like a strength enhanced major league hitter. "Now that you and Missa Carissa broke up we can spend more time together."

That notion is about as appealing as flaying my foreskin with a Brillo pad and I say as much. "And don't ask me what a Brillo pad is," I say in response to the blank stare he gives back, "just trust that it wouldn't be pleasant. Now, take your smoke and get out."

He's never been ejected so soon and doesn't know how to react but there's a race going on behind his eyes that he knows he can't win with me. "Could you spare a pack til payday?"

Twitchy doesn't work a job unless felating the occasional octogenarian counts as that kind of job. Nope, Twitchy's an artist insofar as he draws a mental disability pension check every month minus his rent and he's about as reliable as a Lybian alarm clock. "You already owe me a pack, man," I tell him fishing a fat clip out of a clean ashtray. "What happened last payday?"

"Aw, you know how it is, I needed to fill a few prescriptions." He's parked himself in the best seat in the house. "Can I have this pillow."

"No, here." He takes the clip and doesn't comment, just pats his hips for a lighter except that he's not wearing pants, just boxers. "And get out." It's the first time I've ever ordered him out and he's not sure how to process. "Get on your feet," I tell him and wait until he does. "Now put one in front of the other until your over my threshold and close the door behind you."

He does what he's told with the clip dangling off his lip and I'm satisfied to be shut of him."Have you talked to Carissa lately?"

There's an extra mincey tone in his voice he knows pisses me off - the one he uses when he asks if he caj see why they call me One Nut."She hasn't been by, no," I tell him flatly. Twitchy really is not the person I want to be having this conversation with.

"She hasn't left her room in days. You were the last one in or out," he says just before shutting the door behind him.Fucker. I've been trying not to think of her sitting in the black tar funk doing nothing but blank staring at a bad DVDs top menu and this junky sperm burper (not that there's anything wrong with that) brings it all back into focus. There's a part of me wants to leave her be and forget she ever knocked on my door but I can feel my better angel getting ready to kick some ass if I don't gird up the old loins and check on her.

If the door's locked I'm fucked.

It's not and opens onto a scene that might as well be straight off my childhood horror reel. I know this layout all too well; the neglected disarray of scattered magazines and a toppled vase, the smell of an unflushed toilet coupled with sun ripened garbage complete with a hovering veil of red eyed fruit flies. The vase bothers me and I stand it back up where it belongs. Carissa's on the couch where I left her, pretty much exactly as I left her except for the new stains which smash the unflushed toilet theory to smithereens. Sitting in her own piss and shit she's still staring at the television only her hair's been chopped down to stubble and it's scorched in places. I'm also prepared to bet from the remains of her hair that she used the paring knife pressed against her wrist to do the deed.How far gone is she? And I shout, "Carissa!" to check her reaction. Not so much as a twitch.

"Shmiggle-dee piggle-dee alakazoo!" Her eyes narrow in what experience has taught me is annoyance - paydirt. "Nice to see that I'm not dealing with full on catatonia," I say on my way to the bathroom with her eyes following me the whole time.

"Leave me alone," she croaks.

"Nawp," I tell her without hesitation. "Call me crazy but I'm of the opinion that you might be in a bad way." There's a clean glass next to the sink and the water comes cold right out of the tap. But when I bring it back to her she purses her lips in refusal so I just put the glass down on her handmade coffee table. "You'll drink it when you're ready."

Without a word she sends the glass flying with a kick I'd never have expected from anyone in her condition. It shatters against the wall to bring a pounding from Twitchy in the next room. There are plastic cups and straws left over from a hen party months ago and I repeat the process. "You need to drink something, Carissa."

"Leave me alone," she croaks again.

"Again, nawp." I'm seriously considering physically restraining her and really don't want to - she played soccer through high-school and she's still a solid athlete. Probably why she isn't dead yet. "Do you honestly expect me to leave you sitting here like this? Now drink something."

She wants to tell me off but she's too dry and her voice won't come. Instead, she mouths something colorful at me and I laugh. "Take some water and then at least you could tell me off."

She nearly spills the glass in her haste to get the straw into her mouth, takes two long swallows and tries again. "What the fuck do you care?"

"I like you too much and have invested too much time in getting to know you to let you sink out of sight. Happy?" She's already shaking her head but I'm not done. "Carissa, I have no idea why you're so sad but I'm not going anywhere until I know you're floating again...and not in your own mess."

She's not buying it so I do the only other thing I can think of and sit down on the couch close enough to put my arm around her. She tries pulling away from my arm but her time without food or water has left her weak as a drowned kitten and I hold her against my chest. When she starts crying and clutching me back I hold her tighter. I can imagine the picture we'd make right now, clinging to each other like little kids in a pile of fecal matter and ammonia. I'm just too relieved that she's releasing to care.

I don't think I've ever told you faithful readers about my sisters but I have five and they're all younger than me. When they were little and upset I used to cuddle them and sing silly songs to make them laugh. There's something about sitting here with fecal stink in my nose and tears soaking through my shirt that takes me back to those days. Before I know it, I'm singing "You are My Sunshine" to the top of Carissa'a head and planting tiny kisses there after every chorus. Time stops to matter as her tears continue and I think she's finally fallen asleep like the kids used to do when she stops. No such luck.

"Do you know 'The Eensy Weensy Spider'?" she asks into my chest.

I don't bother answering except to start singing the song. And my voice hasn't been any good since I stopped singing to what passed as god but she doesn't complain as I make three quick rounds through - she even joins me on the last one.

The last "again" has barely faded from the room when she pushes herself away from me, tries to take her feet and sits right back down on the mess. A whole new scent experience is released by the movement which is enough to make me stand up to and offer my hand. "You need a shower worse than anyone I've ever met."

"I can't get up," she admits and her eyes start filling with tears again.

"So take my hand and let me help you," I tell her and she does. Once I have her off of the couch it's only a few steps to the bathroom and I can feel her trembling against me. "Lean into me," I tell her and she does so I can support more of her weight. We make it to the bathroom without incident and she stays leaning against me while I get the water running. "Do you need help undressing?"

She shoots me a 'what the fuck are you on' look out of what's probably habit and then nods. I starts with her pants because they need coming off and i try to ignore the tearing sound as the poop pasted fabric separates from her skin. There's the start of a nasty case of diaper rash forming on the general area and I make a note to fetch some talc and antiseptic spray. Shirt and bra come off next and I must be some kind of serious perv to note that she's got pretty much the best pair of breasts I've ever seen live.

"Okay, in you go...be with you in a second." I ignore the next questioning look, being too busy stripping myself to notice, and climb into the stall with her. She's got the usual female complement of lotions, soaps and gels in her shower but there's a bar of Ivory and a washcloth and that's all I need. Washing her's about as much fun as bathing a corpse but the soap and water do the trick. I consider washing what's left of her hair but she shakes her head and I don't wanna push my luck. Clean towels on the rack outside the stall dry us and I have her laid down in bed clean and naked within twenty minutes of undressing.

Eyes closed, lips parted, I can't help running my fingers over her scalp and sighing. "Carissa," I tell her, "you don't tear down curtains of hair, you take down curtains of hair."

She opens her eyes, finds mine and answers, "It all depends on how bad you want to see out the window."

What can I say to that? Sometimes you just need to look out the window.

Me Equals Emm See Scared

Albert Einstein, the father of relativity, once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Now, I didn’t throw any quotes up around that line because I know it’s not verbatim but, fuck sakes, the book it’s in is sitting in a box at the other place and I’m just trying to illustrate a point here. See, his words have been ricocheting inside my skull since quarter past seven Thursday night when I quit my job without having a safety net - again. Even now, sitting here with my laptop warming my nuts, I can feel the familiar stirrings of panic churning espresso and bile into a bubbling brew that threatens to burst my guts and paint the walls of my cell bloody. I’m trying to keep my matter at rest but I don’t know how to keep my brain from squaring the speed of light into a mind bending oblivion.

In all honesty, I believe that I must be severely fucked in the head to keep doing this to myself. Around about every five years since I was sixteen I follow the same steps: Someone will try to make me do something that goes against what passes for my moral code, offer me an ultimatum and I fold their bluffing hand by up and quitting on them - bosses, friends, wife or whomever. And every time it happens I imagine myself pulling off some miraculous save to maintain my "standard of living" but (woe unto this poor besotted husk) all for shit. I’ve starved and shivered in filthy traps, mooched and malingered my way onto couches and laps, slung dope and thrown hands to make ends meet but nothing good comes from despair and I’m left worse off than I was - every fucking time, brothers and sisters, every goddamned fucking time. I am the living embodiment of Mr. Einstein’s definition.

Now, I’m not looking for sympathy or head patting - no “there there Air” shit or whatnot - because I don’t deserve it - this is my mess. But I do wanna’ make something perfectly clear: I never meant to hurt anyone else with the chain of causality which has led to this resulting resignation. I got high on what I thought was freedom, spread my shit down thick, irrigated with liquor and cropped up a big old field of pipe dreams that saw me treat the workplace as my own personal pretty girl preserve. Through action and inaction I have managed to achieve both bliss and botheration on an unprecedented scale where every 2.55 centimetres translates into light years of humiliation and regrets. I shit you not, brothers and sisters, but this faithless servant leader has had enough of all the old excuses.

What I need is a good ass kicking to drive the sense of decorum I lost when I started drinking back into me. I need the priesthood holding Mormon Boy Scout back and don’t have clue fucking one where that kid might be. Hiding under some mouldering bed of lies in my back brain is my best guess - he just won’t come when I call, even when I invoke the three given names. Maybe he doesn’t think he deserves any head patting either. Maybe he fears some lurking duplicity’s waiting to snatch him back to the same name-brand of hell we grew up in? Can’t say as I blame him - poor kid.

So what next? Let’s follow the pattern forward a bit, shall we, oh my brothers and sisters. I’ll take a few days off, it being Friday and all, and tell myself to start looking for work on Monday. Odds are that in the meantime I’ll find someone willing to front me a beer or two in exchange for this weary tale of woe-begotten expectations come to shit and I’ll wind up going on a tear worthy of the Old Gods’ waking up to notice. Sunday might see me feeling well enough to choke down cigarettes I can’t afford while I try to navigate the uncharted seas of wretched excess by the light of fading childhood constellations that inevitably lead me to recall transgression upon trespass upon dumbfuckery. Some decent hearted woman or other will inevitably find me handsome sad enough to suffer my attentions until whiskey-dick sends her laughing back to whatever tattooed stunt cock calls her Babyluv. I’ll update my resume, sweat through my good clothes and watch potential employers scribble 110 (where a simple \ turns the number into "no") in the upper right corner until I bow to necessity and fit myself into another polyester uniformed niche pouring coffee or flipping beef patties for pennies. It’s so familiar that it’s almost comforting.

Fuck me running, not this again. Thanks for the insight Mr. Einstein and thanks for nothing. I always hated your moustache.

Frying Pans and Fires

The classified add on kijiji.ca shows a bright clean "bachelor suite" with it's own facilities for 5 bills a month available immediately. My Android files an automatic response to the poster's account and I'm motorvating my ass downtown. Two days in the scum hole turned into two months shacked up there with with What's-her-tits (Wanda, her name's Wanda) and I'm in great need of getting the fuck out from under her calculating gaze and salon nails. We've already gone through the 25K I had saved and the Rolex went for better than three grand on EBay but the last of it's folding change in my pocket. Everything's either gone up our noses or through our lungs and I've been tripping so hard lately that it's a wonder I can still find my balance.

Tran's blazing a fat joint outside the office and throws me a chin when I walk by. He's the connection around here and has been more than happy to take my money for all the candy and pot I've been doing. He smiles and touches the side of his nose in an unspoken question. I shake my head and he throws me another chin. Yeah buddy, I think to myself, keep right on believing I'll throw any more money at you so long as I get those chins, you plaguey junked out scumlord. Tonight he's surrounded by a heavy rich smoke of blended hashish and opium that smells like spring break in Katmandu and I know it's only generous donations from the Ronald MacDonald Weaver Degeneration Fund keeping him on such a Himalayan high. Yeah, well, fuck that Mr Tambourine Man jazz, I don't wanna' listen to that song anymore.

The add gives a Sutherland Street address I don't recognize aside from knowing that it's closer to downtown than the arena. Five minutes from the hotel I hit Suth and start navigating by the house numbers. The descending order takes me downtown past St Michael's and the Cooking Pot towards the city's slow beating heart. Down-and-outers camping on street corners supplicate themselves for the silver in my pocket and raise their eyebrows questioningly at the prospect of more than dimes and nickels. But I have eyes only for the numbers and unless there's a big digit drop off soon I know where I'm headed. Sure enough, it's the nold Keystone bar - scene of more debauchery and shame than I care to recount.

The sign stenciled on the steel and reinforced glass door reads: Keystone Apartments, 227 Sutherland Street, North Bay, Ontario...For Inquiries please call 705-845-9449. I get the Android working on that straight away and wait while the connection is made after more rings than I've been taught are polite. The recorded message playing in my ears is an actual live voice introducing the speaker "...reached the voicemail of Brad Logan...I'm occupied for the moment but please leave me your demographics and I will return your call." There's a pause before the beep that makes me think his mailbox is bursting bites at capacity but I do what I've been told.

"Good evening Mr Logan, name's Ronnie Weaver and I'm calling in reference to the add I saw online about your available bachelor unit. I'm very interested in..."

"Evening Mr Weaver, Brad Logan here...I was just reading your email."

"Yessir, I am really anxious to arrange a viewing."

He rattles an old man's coughing laugh at me and asks, "Where are you now, son?"

"Right outside the building."

"Just a moment then." He breaks the connection to leave me waiting on the ass end of town wondering when the world went and got itself on crack. But a moment later there's a light on over the next door up from the stencil and a wirey old man in overalls and fuzzy slippers comes padding out to scan the street. "Mr Weaver?"

"Ronnie," I say advancing with my hand out until I notice the twisted nicotine stained claws he's trying to pass as his own. So I let mine fall back to my side and try to counterfeit a reassuring smile. "Thanks for this."

"I was awake," he says propping the door with his shoulder. "Come on up."

The front hallway smells of cleaning solvents and grief and he leads me up the short rise stairs to a steel reinforced fire door to the second floor. "Place is coming along since my boys took over for me but I'll warn you that there are some bad elements roaming about."

I don't know if he's trying to scare me or what but it's not working. "I've lived in way worse, sir, believe you me."

"If you say so." He's fumbling at a ring of keys on his belt with those crab claw hands and it's all I can do to stop from talking them away and finding the right one myself. But he's got the look of a man who shuns help from strangers so I wait while he completes the manouver on his own. With the key fit into the lock he turns it clockwise, winces and the door opens to more cleaning smells and new paint. "Here we are."

It's just like the add but smaller than I'd expected. He's watching me look the place over so I smile a bit and nod. "Exactly as advertised," I tell him. "I like it very much. Let's talk turkey - what do you say to me taking it over."

"Money talks and bullshit walks," he says matter of factly. "Why don't you cross my palms with some gelters?"

Aw fuck...the $35 in my pocket won't do shit all for this guy but I feel something else in there while I'm counting the bills from memory - the platinum Dunhill. "Thing is that I'm short for a while but I will give you this as a deposit."

I hand him the lighter and his eyes go big when he feels it in his hand. He doesn't have any trouble making it work, smiles and looks me straight in the eye. "This'll square you for six months in advance, son. How's that work for you?"

"Done," I say and offer my hand again.

He slaps it lightly with his own, winces and smiles. "You're coming down off a high high horse, Ronnie, I can tell that much. But I'll tell you that if you're looking to escape evil influence, this ain't the place. Not too late to take your pretty lighter back."

"No sir, I'm here to stay. Thanks a lot for this."

"Don't thank me until you've been here a week or more. I'll write you a receipt for the six months and slip it under the door. Fair?"

"Fair as a summer day."

He smiles and tips an imaginary hat at me before shuffling off to wherever he sleeps and I'm left to survey my new domain. Fridge, toaster oven, microwave, flat screen TV (with cable, lordy lordy)and a bed make up the furnishings but it's all I need. For the first time since catching Manon blowing the Milanese stunt cock I feel like I'm on firm ground again.

As if on queue, my Android beeps it's incoming text tone and of course it's her. "I miss you and forgive you" the message reads.

"Fuck you and your forgiveness" I type back, not caring if she's across the Pond or across the hall. "This wasn't my idea"

The bed's sprung in the middle so that I'm hammocked in when I sit but it's the least of my worries. I've been fielding this type of text for the last two months and it's always the same. "I forgive you" "I miss you" "I want you" like it'll make everything better. She's funny that way, making me think that I did something wrong by catching her playing another guy's skin flute.

"Hey, Lonnie! Lonnie! I'm sick man!"

The voice is coming from right below my wondow and for a sec I think it's calling me but another voice answers through the wall in the room next door. "Frig off, Reuben. Come back with my money and we'll deal."

"But I'm sick man." There's no curtain on the window but my room's dark so that the only thing they'd see is my shadow at the window. Reuben's standing on the sidewalk outside the building scratching at his right arm like he's got a bad case of the heeby-jeebies and looking every inch a burnt out, full on junky. He does look sick but it's not the kind of sick you take chicken soup and Nyquil for. "Can't you front me a rocket til I get my checque?"

"I've sent more rockets up your arm than NASA sends to God, Reuben. Fuck off before I get my gun."

That's got me taking two steps back from the window before the words are out and I half expect to see Reuben fly back with two in the chest but there's only the sound of broken hearted sobs from outside. I take another quick peek but he's out of sight and "Lonnie" closes his window with an audible click. Great, I move out of the scum hole into a shooting gallery. Well done, Weaver, a $10,000 dollar lighter for a cell next to a wanna-be pharmacist.

Ten minutes later I'm spinning a spliff, and starting to feel better about this whole deal, another voice calling Lonnie from outside. There's no back talk this time, only the metallic jingle of keys hitting the sidewalk. Perfect, so much for a secure building. Soon there's a knock on the door next door and I can hear it open to a brief exchange as the caller is admitted to Lonnie's den of shit.

But it's not like I have many options. Tyler got the house when I moved in with Non-non and even though he'd take me in without hesitation it's just not my place any more. Sure, I've got acquaintances who'd let me ride a couch for a few weeks but that kind of deal stinks more often than not. Absently, my fingers probe my watch pocket for the lighter I know isn't there anymore. Can't even christen the new place.

Another knock. For a second I think it's Lonnie's door but the sound's repeated and I can tell it's mine. Who the hell? There's no peep hole so I open the door a crack to come face to face with a busty young thing with big blue eyes and a smile that'd strip years of malaise off of the tiredest old soul.

"Help you?" I ask holding the joint out of sight.

"I heard Brad bring you in. My name's Carissa - I live next door."

"Hello, Carissa from next door. Wanna' come in and burn one with me? Do you have a lighter?"

Her smile gets even bigger when she pulls a nifty three burner Nibo from deep out of her pocket and I can feel the stirring in my pants that lets me know trouble's on the way. "Don't mind if I do, handsome. Thanks." She slips past me trailing a sweet scent of vanilla and fruit that has me slavering before I close the door. Like I was ever one to learn from my mistakes.

Here we go again.

Flophouse Blues

I've squatted over jakes holes that smelled better than this room. It's like an old onion based cheese and a piss soaked sewer rat died smoking three bags of brown-tips after having nasty anal sex on the windowside bed. There's a no smoking sign on the door but everyone knows that neither rats nor cheeses read. I swear, this place makes the house I grew up in smell like a sixteen year old girly girl's room. Maybe the nicely toasted Korean gentleman in the office will give me my $60 back if I throw a fit about the management's no cleaning policy.

Yeah, right, and maybe then my right nut will grow back.

Of course the sun's shining bright and clear on this the day of my most heinous abandonment and it's warmer enough to leave the door open a while - maybe air some of the stank out. A trillion galaxies of dust motes dance in the light as my entrance stirs current into the stinking void. The saddest part is that this fits a little too well with how my life has gone from Ritz to shits in less than a week of hell.

"You staying long?"

I'm wound so tight that the question springs me a good foot into the stale air. She's standing backlit in the doorway and with the sun shining through the thin fabric of her sundress to outline a figure drawn straight from an X rated day dream by Art Wetherell. Against my will, the creature stirs.

"Hard to tell right now," I tell her big brown eyes. "Only paid for two nights' worth."

"Sucks." She says it like a curse and self advertisement - maybe I'm hearing things. "Tran kicks in a fat discount if you stay more than a week."

I don't know if I'll be cohesive in a week. "Cash is kinda' scarce right now." This is a lie. Even after paying my way to and from Milan (well, the Milano-Linate airport) I'm flush to the tune of twenty-five grand not to mention the solid gold Rolex, platinum Dunhill lighter and diamond cufflinks stuffed into the bottom of my pack. My pension and living large on the arm of Manon Champlain sees to shit like that. "I'm flying by the seat of my pants basically." This is true, unfortunately.

"Nice pants too." She says it to my crotch and receives a twitch in reply.

"Tailored," I reply like it matters. "Can I help you with something?"

"I'm sure that you could help me in a lot of ways but I really just want to beg a shower off of you."

"A shower?" She wilts a little at my uncertainty but I smile to dispel any doubt. "Be my guest."

"Oh, you're the best. Just gimme a sec to grab my things, I'll be right back." She leaves a wake of immitation perfume (it bothers me that I know the difference) in her haste that does little to improve the atmosphere. My cellphone pulses twice in my pocket heralding an incoming text and I jump like a scalded cat.

It's her, fuck me gently. "We need to talk" she says.

"Fat fucking chance" is what she gets back and I know the profanity's just driving her.

What's-her-tits is back before I can pocket the phone and the eyes she gives me have calculation in them sure as Texas Instrument. "Won't be a tick more than three minutes and fifty-seven seconds," she assures me and she's passed by before I can register the way too shorty plush robe. But she looks over her shoulder in time to catch me staring at the bottom half of her ass and tips me a wink that moans. Christ Jesus God fuck! What have I walked into?

The next incoming text doesn't quite scare the crap out of me but the seat of my tailored denims flap like a torn sail in high wind. "Grow up" she says.

I barely notice the shrieking from the bathroom but my backbrain figures Mammary Mary just got a shot of cold water.

"Go suck another cock" flies back to her across the Atlantic and makes me wonder what kind of time lag I'm looking at on an international 4G network.

The pin-up in this scum hole's bathroom is singing while she showers and her wacky time estimate suddenly makes sense. She's belting out one of my secret favourites: Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" is exactly as long as she promised. And she's got a pair of lungs to match her rack.

Sitting against my better judgement raises another cosmic dust storm which is less disturbing than the distinctly soggy mattress. Maybe it would help if I put my head between my legs like they show in the first class seatbacks but the reply pulse still makes me want to puke. "I don't know what you think was happening but..." it goes on but I delete it out of hand. She's not gonna' talk her way out of this one.

"Eat shit and die." It's a juvenile response but it'll buy me some time. Honestly, I didn't think she'd notice I wasn't there.

"FROZEN IN TIME WITHOUT YOUR TOUCH, WITHOUT YOUR LOVE, DARLING..." Two and a half minutes in means a minute and a half before the girl washing ersatz Chanel from between her tits comes waltzing out to...

"Gimme' a break," I tell the swirling dust. Manon's next text is a sequel to the one before and it's just as easily deleted. "All a misunderstanding...he's no one...an old friend..." Fuck her. Who does she think she's trying to kid?

"Save your breath for cooling your porridge or see how long you can hold it before passing out, matters not to me...you made your decision" Yeah, chew on that gibberish a while, Princess.

Shower candy holds the last "Life" long enough so's I notice her voice give in a wracking cough at the end. The water stops right away and she recovers her voice to beg a towel. "I don't wanna' get my robe wet or it goes see through."

"Help yourself. I'm too young for a heart attack." Smoothe, Weaver...that was pure butter flavoured Pam slickness that was. But she gives me a real life LOL and I figure this could go one of two ways - better or worse (like I'm capable of telling the difference between them now).

The bathroom door opens with a cloud of steam and now there's a towel wrapped around her head and she's glistening from the steam and smells clean. After 40 hours of non-stop travel and too much coffee all I should be doing is counting sheep and not between her pillows. "Better?"

There's a hardness in her eyes that stops her smile just short of being radiant but it's real. "Much, thank you."

"I was gonna' burn one if you're inclined to join me." I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean but she takes it as sit next to the strange man on the bed and press your breasts around his arm.

"Don't mind if I do." Her breath wasn't cleaned in the shower so I choose a mint wrapped blunt from my inside breast pocket and light it with the complimentary Burger King matches. "Wonder where Tran got the matches?" she asksabsently. "There hasn't been a Burger King in this town for years."

It's like she's plucking the thought right out of my head and I choke on the draw trying to light the gather. She plucks it expertly out from between my fingers and takes a foot long hoot off the thing while I recover. "This shit's pretty good," she says around her exhale.

"Oughta' be," I tell her, "friend of a friend grew it at the agricultural research centre in Ottawa - ten years in the making." Again, like it matters.

She takes another long haul before handing it back in my general direction. "Does your phone do music?" she asks dreamily.

"Sure does." In two seconds we've got "Living Dead Girl" blaring out as loud as it can go.

"Yeah," she mutters, "that's it. My doctor said I shouldn't mix pot with my cyroquil but what the hell."

She's on her feet before I can puff and starts into a routine I can only assume is the product of lots of weekend shifts on a pole but, fuck a duck, I don't care. She's really quite good at interpreting the howling guitars in a visual display and her robe comes off before the towel. An hour ago I was on the Sudbury Express watching the city come into view over Thibeault Hill and now I've got an eye full of...

"What's your name?" I ask too loudly.

She smiles and flings her hair while her hips gyrate on an imaginary cock. "What does it matter?"

"Cool by me."

All pretence vanishes when she straddles my legs to grind away like it's her job. Then my phone buzzes again.

"And that picture you saw was taken over a year ago before we started steady"

My in room service already has my belt undone before I've finished reading and there's a moment of horror when I realize that she doesn't know what to expect down there. But then she wraps the little monster with her lips and starts to rooting and before I can think about it too much I snap a quick head shot and compose my reply: "Yeah, what's the time stamp on this picture?"

Now I get to wait for the reply that never comes - great, fuck my life.

"Did you want something?" she mumbles.

"Just keep going." It's good advice - I'll take it.

Ichiban Twisted Dialogue

A gentrified man knocks on a pocked steel door in a malodorous alley. The door is opened by a twitching bag of bones in stained boxers and wife-beater...

"Hey Straightlace, come on in. How's shit?"

"Are you holding?"

"Sure thing. How many you want?"

"Four should do."

"You don't sound so sure of yourself, there, Straightlace."

"I'm on a budget these days."

"No worries, I've got what you need. Ever since you folks legalized it there's never a short supply. More and more folks ploughing and cropping every day. Eh, get it?"

"Yes, amusing...but how do I know that what you have is any better than old Titty-bar Akmar downn at the Slick Lips."

"Don't even say that fat prick's name. Akmar's a whore who'd peddle his own personal for a bit of profit. Me, I got primo shit all the way from a grower in sunny California."

"How much?"

"What? Like, how much do I got?"

"No. How much?"

"Oh, for you Straightlace I've got a special rate - ten per plus five on the deal, straight up."

"That's your so-called special rate?"

"Yeah well, you don't really qualify for the pretty-girl discount (the ladies are starting to partake more and more) and for Joe Schmoe off the road it's fifteen per. Deal?"

"It's good?"

"What the fuck have I been telling you all these years? Speaky English? What, do you want a preview or something?"

"Well, you know, Akmar always..."

"Mention that shit peddler again and the price is twenty per 'cause you're pissing me off. Follow me if you want."

"Where too?"

"Storage. When I started dealing in quantities I had to set up a strong room. Some of these punks today will try anything for a taste."

"Whatever. How much farther?"

"Left at the foot of the stairs then the first door on the right. Here we are."

"Wow...look at them all."

"See, I told you. Go ahead and touch if you want."

"A little young, wouldn't you say?"

"And what? You want me to pull out my magic aging machine and give 'em what for? Don't be simple. Look, clean...and see the red hair, those tight little buds. Beautiful."

"Mmmmm...yes, okay. Akmar's got nothing but black anyway."

"What the fuck do you think I've been saying? Man's got, like, twenty wives andonly sells his own."

"And these are clones?"

"Dude, I'll never tell. So, how many do you want?"

"Forget the budget. I want all of them, all ten here."

"And what do you know? Ten's how old they are too. It's best to get them before their teens. You can make them pretty much any way you want them if you get them before their teens."

"Not to worry. We go through them pretty quickly at work."

"And how are things down at the Ministry?"

"You know, same old same old."

"Yeah, I gotcha'. The daily grind and all that."

"Sometimes a twice daily grind."

"Woof! You old dog you. Down boy! Wait 'til you get 'em paid for. Virgins don't grow on trees you know."

The Dynamic Do-Over

You learn a lot about a person by spending a night in the same room with them. The person; one Manon Melanie Marie Champlain, is currently snuggled up so close to me that I can feel her clit throbbing against my leg and smell myself on her breath. The room; the master bedroom in her suite at the Coach House is in disarray and spattered with a myriad of fluids bodily and otherwise while the message light casts a blinking red eye overall. And I‘ve learned that Manon is able to divine more consecutive orgasms out of me than I’ve managed since I was sixteen. In a perfect world, this is all that I would have learned.

Fuck my luck.

See, she’s sleeping with her hand on my ass and I’ve been needing to crack a mean shit since just after we started into the flavoured lubricant. By now my bowels have been brewing through four hours and another five rounds of vigorous sex (read akin to Dutch porn on meth) I really need to go before I leave the recipe for a proper case of pinkeye on her dominant hand. So, I kiss the top of her head and pull the covers up so that she won’t miss my warmth while I’m gone trying the while to wiggle out of sheets made sticky with wet spots like sun warmed puddles after a summer storm. She stirs and mumbles a bit before pulling the down filled duvet up to her chin while I get my legs working again. It’s a good twenty feet to the bathroom and every step of it is an exercise in semi-viscous fluid retention so I quick step it hoping not to lay any runny eggs along the way.

It’s the kind of shit that makes me treat the toilet like a rape victim - poor thing never saw me coming and will be changed forever. There’s a porcelain hard plug of digestive enzyme parched pot roast to pass first and it pings off the bowl before the load floods out. Ten minutes in and I’ve dropped two protested flushes down her already but she doesn’t know what more to expect when I pause for breath and the effort. Around the time my arse hole starts heating up is the time I take a look around to find the swamp haze of my monster shit playing in front of my eyes like heat shine on the Hershey highway. I can’t reach the venting fan switch from my seat and I’m nowhere near ready to leave it yet.

I’m also in Manon’s bathroom and within reach of the vanity. Sure enough, it’s got three drawer’s down the left side and I know the bottom one’s where she always keeps a few personal items - like air freshener to cover the smell of pipe seshes. There’s no lock and the drawer slides easily but it’s not a micro shot bottle of lilac Oust that catches my eye first but the industrial black rubber foot long model cock still glistening with…

W T F?

By the time I’m wiped and off the toilet the ceiling vent’s howling aginst my funk and the hunt for clothes begins. A nightmare memory of my armour being sent down for laundering floods my head and I know how the toilet felt. Manon’s robe’s lying crumpled and fuzzy on the floor by my feet and it’s big enough to cover my shame but I still have no wish to parade down to the lobby desk looking like a late cut from “Shorty Robes and Hairy Lobes.” Ah, but there’s a phone in the bathroom with it’s idiot eye winking red to remind me that I have a direct line to the lobby - so I press “0” for assistance.

“Front desk, Ashley speaking. How…”

“Hi Ashley, sorry to interrupt but I was hoping you could have the laundry for this room sent up right away, please.” The rubber stunt cock’s poking out of the drawer so that it doesn’t close when I kick it violently with respectable volume.

Maybe it’s the gunshot report of the drawer or the near panic in my voice but Ashley sounds a little shaken. “I’m afraid that the laundry service won’t be open for another seven hours, sir….it’s one in the morning. I realize that Miss Champlain put a rush on the service and we tried calling several times and even knocked but…”

“But we were otherwise engaged, yes, I understand. Thank you, I’ll call again at a more appropriate time.” My mind’s racing faster than my pulse as I try thinking my way away from the glistening evidence of my own inadequacy in the bottom left drawer. “How would I make an outgoing call?”

“Just dial ‘9’ to get an outside line, sir,” Ashley replies with renewed professionalism in the face of a customer’s unexpected understanding. “Is there anything else that I might be able to help with.”

“Nope,” is all she gets before I kill the connection and jab 9 for an outside line. Time to call in the cavalry but doesn’t it just figure that I can’t remember my own fucking phone number. The dial tone in my ear shifts to the fast busy hey-your-phone’s-off-the-cradle whine before it hits me and slam the prongs for another try. One ring, two, three and sure enough…

“Ronnie’s line, Tyler speaking.”

“It’s me man, I need a huge favour.”

(About Tyler, since you’ve never met; he was born in a yurt on the steppes somewhere over in butt-fuck Mongolia - I shit you not. His folks were both regarded field anthropologists with yens for Genghis Khan. They weren’t expecting the possibility of Tyler (something to do with a botched veterinary vasectomy) and his arrival was a joy for his parents and their hosts. Tyler could ride a horse before he could walk and rode rough with the scions of a world changing man. He can still remember parts of the good old days but mostly dwells on one night.

Best anyone can figure it, the band ran afoul of smugglers and there was a firefight. Tyler can remember his dad going down early and his mom screaming curses with a shotgun blazing from each hand. She died on top of him and no one bothered checking under the madwoman. When he crawled out from under cover Tyler found himself alone on the vast steppes with only darkness and carrion birds for company.

Since then he’s kinda’ developed a fear of open spaces - duh, ya think? Best Tyler can figure is that he clung to a horse that found water and people. Through various charitable organisation he was granted means to reach Tibet where he lived in a Buddhist Monastery where he “trained kung-fu and meditated upon the meaninglessness of life” - his words. When he left for reasons he’s never offered all he had were the robes on his back and a pair of antique eyeglasses to correct farsightedness. How he ever managed to find himself here is his story to tell but now he spends most of his time in my kitchen where he drinks tea and answers my phone. Sometimes, I think he’s a butler who would rather tidy up after me than go outside and find a real job.)

Tyler listen’s carefully to my predicament and the accompanying request, considers for only a moment before agreeing and I hang up feeling both relieved and worse for asking. But he’s knocking softly at the door where I’ve been waiting in fifteen minutes. I open enough for him to pass through the bundled garments he’s grabbed and signal two minutes. I dress quickly in the bathroom, try to ignore the warm slumbering woman lying in bed for me and join Tyler in the hallway within the promised two minutes.

“Wanna’ grab a beer seeing as you’re out anyway?” I ask him.

Tyler squints behind his antique glasses and nods a second later. So it’s back to the Breach where I hope to drink enough to forget the blacksnake nesting in my dream girl’s bottom left drawer.

* * * * * *
My next conscious thought comes out in a choked yell against a mind crushing clanging just beyond my protective womb of drunken oblivion, “Cut that fucking racket!”

The reply comes cutting back in the maniacal hate that squeals a particular brand of bacon. Fuck me, I’m in the Pig Pen. The fact’s enough to trigger a few basic instincts that fire up enough endorphin to get me staggering up before he can finish, “On your feet, One-nut!”

The world’s aspin around me and it takes a few seconds for my sodden brain to register the fact that I’ve suffered a head injury in the not too distant past. My traitor brain realizes it has no reasonable explanation for why I should be standing and translates the message to my rising gorge. Vomit jets from my mouth in an arc that connects me with the stunned pig in a rich fragrant stream of half digested liquor and chicken. There’s more but the jet torques out and the rest soaks my shirt front while I lock eyes with an arsehole.

“Better get some club soda on that before it sets, Bacon.”

(About Officer Brian “Fryin’” Bacon: the pig hates me for no good reason other than I piss him off. Yes, I used to cause a lot of hell downtown and, yes, I’m not shy about voicing my opinion of his profession but if he ever tells you that I knocked him cold with a pipe wrench you can tell him he’s a fucking liar. That was all a case of mistaken identities as there are lots of Rotten Ronnie look alikes in this damn town. To whoever did knock this donut fed Kojak wannabe’s head in, kudos. If I’d done it there would have been cause for a real brassy funeral. Areshole.)

One hand moves towards the truncheon he wears on his hip and he’d fly at me in a second but a voice calls out from the corridor behind him that makes me cringe behind a bilious mask. “Is there an issue, Officer Bacon?” (I know - right? It’s his real name.) “Monsieur Archembault assured that Mr. Weaver’s release would be immediate.”

“Lawyer bullshit. He’s heaved guts over me and the whole place and…”

“And it won’t be the last time, I’m sure.” Manon’s voice has got that cool mean tone in it for which her mother is internationally renowned and right now I would rather have the bars between us, thank you very much. Instead Bacon waves impatiently to someone behind the scenes and my cell door cycles open without anyone touching it.

“Step out.”

Grin. “I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to say that, Non-non.” But I step to regardless and the pig scowls. “I could put a towel to use about now. So could you, for that matter.”

“I’d give you a mop…” Bacon spits and leaves the unspoken “up the ass” implied by a brief pursing of lips.

“A warm towel and the laundered garments please, Officer Bacon.” Manon doesn’t even look at the pig when she talks. “See that we’re not disturbed and tend to yourself as well.”

“I’d actually prefer a female officer be present.” I blurt before the pig can protest. He’s so far away from wanting to do me any favours that I’d cross oceans of time before smelling Bacon.

He takes a glance at the daggers Manon‘s shooting me with her eyes and pulls a cylinder off of his belt. “Only if Ma’amselle consents to hold my pepper spray,” he says with a conspirator’s smug satisfaction. “You’re friend here’s got a temper. Four big guys all by himself.”

“I do. And he does. Thank you, Officer. I’d also like Mr. Weaver’s property prepared while we wait. ” She accepts the non-descript still without looking at the pig who gives me one last longing look before doing my lady’s bidding. I hear him grunt something to his buddy and their laughter stops behind a closed door. She hasn’t taken her eyes off of me since entering the room nor smiled but when she speaks to me her voice isn‘t so much angry as sad. “Are you fucking stupid?”

My head crack wants to widen when the questions hits. “Right now or generally speaking?”

She’s not amused. “Answer my question with a question again and I’ll mace you.”

“Bacon said pepper spray.”

“Seriously, Ronald.” And she’s so serious that she’s shaking. “How the hell did you go from lying in bed next to me to a jail cell? And what you left in the toilet…” (Fuck)

Alright, she wants serious. “You really don’t want me to tell you, trust me.”

A tear escapes the corner of her eye and runs like hell down her cheek. “If you don’t tell me you’ll never see me again.”

There‘s a card that I never hoped she‘d play but it‘s on the table. Time to put it all in. “Right-o then, you wanna’ play that way - the bottom left drawer of your vanity.” It takes a second but I can see the pieces fall together behind her damp eyes. “Yup,I was looking for Oust and found your glistening foot long dildo instead, the presence of which made me flee your vicinity tout suite. The thought of you needing to use that after our first time together hit me kinda‘ hard. My fucking head hurts less than that did, truth be told.”

“Ronnie, I…”

“Save it. My head wants to split in half, I’m sick and you don’t need to explain anything to me that I don’t already know, thanks very much.” She’s not saying anything and the hand holding the pepper spray’s still at her side so why not put the other foot in my mouth. “I understand why I’m not enough for you, Non-non, but seeing exactly how not enough just...” My own confined tears want to make a break for freedom and she sees the chin alarm go off.

“Ronnie, you don’t have a god damn clue. Last night was awesome and you don’t have anything to worry about.”

She’s trying to sound sincere but I don’t want to hear it. “What do you care?”

“You can stand here in a police station, dripping vomit, bleeding from the head with all charges dropped, looking me in the eye and ask that?” Seems the answering questions with questions rule only applies to me. “You have no idea what you did.”

She’s got me there and making some sense of my current situation is a lot better than what we might still have to talk about. “Last thing I remember is Tyler and I ordering hot wings and tequila shots. There was a group of guys in the booth behind me being a little loud but that’s all. What do you know?”

“Tyler told me that you drank like a fish fighting for life to beat last call until one of those guys said something that set you off. Witness reports verify that you got up and asked them to watch their mouths but that one sounded off right before you smashed a pint glass across his cheek. Tyler lost sight of you in the scrum and jumped in to even the odds. Did you know that he’s got the good kung-fu?”

“Yeah, he learned some during his stint in Tibet.” Fucking guy - I’m glad he’s on my team.

“Well, he managed the others while you dealt with yours rather harshly.”

She wants to tell me what I did but a raised hand stops her tongue. “I don’t need to know, Manon. What happened to Tyler.”

“Tyler scampered before the police arrived and came to the hotel. If he hadn’t I never would have known what happened to you.” She looks like she might start crying again but covers it with annoyance. “Where’s that cop with the towel already?”

Bacon returns as if on queue with a damp threadbare towel and a garment bag. He passes both to Manon who gives me the towel and I take a moment to hide behind it and wipe my face. There’s a curtained alcove in the cellblock and Bacon motions me towards it while I feed him a shit eating grin. Behind cover I decide my shirt’s worst off and change it right away because Bacon and Manon have started exchanging a few words and I don’t want to miss much. By the time I’m back he’s looking fundamentally pissed off. “I can guess at what you spent to make this mess go away, Ma’amselle Champlain, but if ever I learn you did anything illegal we won’t hesitate to bring you in.”

He’s picked the wrong morning to piss her off, boy howdy. I’ve only ever seen Manon lose her shit twice before and I’m anxiously awaiting World War III but she holds it back. “Officer Bacon, there was no one in that restaurant who remembers seeing Mr. Weaver suffer a head injury.” He wants to jump in on his own defence but Manon won’t have it. “No doubt you’ll claim that it could have happened in the fight but the supposed victim of assault himself denies inflicting that injury. So, before you launch an investigation into my activities I’d consider your own conduct and the investigation and Internal Review Body might conduct when I have brutality charges filed.”

Bacon’s face has darkened to the point of explosion during her speech and there’s a vein on his forehead keeping time to an accelerated heart rate. “Every word you’ve said has been recorded,” he whispers. “Miss Rich Bitch with your fancy lawyers and flunkies panting to lick your ass…” He stops once he realizes what he’s been saying.

“Actually,” Manon says clearly, “this rich bitch’s fancy lawyer will insure that any recordings are erased as a matter of fact. Now, if you’ll show us the way out I‘ll see to my friend‘s medical needs.”

Bacon doesn’t know whether to eat more shit or sputter defiance and settles for silence. Scowling, he leads us down the corridor to a metal door that opens at his knock. He points towards another door marked exit and the property clerk waiting for me with an large manila envelope and an itemized list of it’s contents down to the condom in my wallet. No one stops us leaving and we step out into a bright winter morning with our breath frosting the air.

“Was the guy I beat down black?” I ask knowing full well that I’m taking a conversational trip into my own private hell.

“Yes,” she says without looking at me.

“I figured he must have been.” Neither of us moves so I fish around in the envelope for cigarettes.

“Did what you found really make such a big impression on you?” she asks while I’m not looking.

“A bigger impression than I ever could on you,” I say, pretending not to have found my smokes.

“Ronnie,” she coaxes and I don’t look at her. “Ronald Weaver, look at me, please.” I do, but not before finally lighting a smoke and taking a deep drag. “You found my back-up plan - that’s all.”

“Your back-up plan is twelve inches long, Manon.”

“It’s a toy, Ronne - grow up.”

“You’re not making sense.”

Still, she levels me with a stare that makes me feel I just fell off the short bus without a helmet. “It means that I came to town with every intention of fucking your brains out. I brought Armand along in case you didn’t check your messages.”

“It has a name?”

“Ronnie, I only brought a toy in case I couldn’t get the real thing. I knew exactly where I wanted this weekend to take us.” My eyes must not be saying I buy it because she elaborates, “Carole used to always brag about how good you were in bed, especially with your tongue, and I’ve never been able to put those stories out of mind.”

“Bullshit,” pops out of my mouth before I can stop it.

She ignores it and takes steps in close enough to hold me. Chin resting on my chest, looking up at me with those emerald green eyes, Manon smiles. “I remember one in particular she told about the time you went down and made her squirt on her parent’s bed. And when she proved too slick for traction afterwards she let you take the back door.”

“Is nothing sacred?” I mutter to her shoulder since I can’t seem to meet her eyes.

“Not when women have cause to brag about their men.” I grunt, still not looking at her and she grunts back to draw my attention. “You maybe want to head back and give me some more bragging rights.” By now I’m poking her like a horny sixteen year-old at a school dance and it’s all the answer she’s getting because Manon’s helping to teach me another important lesson about my penis as the world shuts down around me.

Respectable erections and massive head injuries don’t mix well.