Drawing Dead (3 page)
Authors: JJ DeCeglie
She handed me a drink, and asked me for a light. I didn’t say anything except for thanks and she went on talking.
What are you gonna do?
What can I do, but take a longer, harder suck on my cigar.
I drained the drink for effect. She spoke again, the smoke from her cigarette easing out her mouth with the words.
You could come home with me.
Now what good could that do?
She smiled, then took a deep draw and blew the smoke my way.
Couldn’t do any harm.
I stood up and threw the glass with a snap from my wrist into the brick wall across from me. Jimmy poked his head round the corner like I wanted him to and I told him he was overweight and should start a diet tomorrow. At least that was the sentiment.
He’s a real asshole.
So am I.
Yeah but you’re really, really good looking.
I told you didn’t I? She sidled up to me hip to hip and lifted her knee into between my thighs. Her skin was warm as something just out the oven and she smelled like mangoes and coconut. I kissed her hard and she responded with a hand up my shirt and the other with a fistful of my hair. I died some in that kiss. Just let myself descend in a rapid free-fall hurtling down into its pure drunken lusty chaos. We pulled apart and off the wall I’d pushed her toward in a trance.
You got a car, I asked.
Yeah.
Let’s go to your place, I said.
Yeah.
How many guys you know get laid on the biggest fuck-up of a night in their life?
I was long gone before Daisy woke in the morning. Escaped by cover of night. We’d drank some more when we got back to her place. Gin and juice baby. I left her naked atop the bed snoring, face first with one knee tucked up and that masterpiece ass of hers jammed slightly up and into the air, those dynamic breasts squashed out sidewards from beneath her beautiful ribs. The way I’d fucked her she wouldn’t be waking up before sunlight. I was pretty sure of that. I switched out the bedroom light and crept around the darkness of the house as best I could, the world was still spinning some, what with all the booze.
As is my common practice I almost broke my neck on three to four separate occasions. I cursed God on each occasion, spat in his mother’s milk. Dazzling Daisy just went on snoring all the same. I found the fridge and slammed as much water as I could hold. Went on to the toilet and vomited my vital organs out soon after. When that horror had past I realise I’m naked and have go back into the bedroom. Pretty much nearly snap my ankle on the way back. Tell God he’s a homeless vagrant again. I made it though and the moonlight through the window lit up Daisy’s back and butt like a homing beacon shaded indigo blue. She hadn’t move an inch since I’d climbed off her, and I knew she wouldn’t 'cause I’d fucked her that good you see. She’d be lucky if she could get out of bed in the morning. Even in the rotten state I was in I almost slid back onto the bed and added an afterward to what I’d already written. It didn’t bother me much that she was comatose. I’d shake her outta that as easy as I put her in it. The problem was that she disgusted me a little bit. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but she did. I stood there watching over her, half-mast and only needing a whiff to set sail. I ran a hand along her back and down her ass feeling the bristle of her magic at the base of the mountains. She passed wind and it startled me like an explosion had just gone off. A pall withered my heart, my blood turned sour. No, she was disgusting. I was too. I bundled up my clothes and eased on out, shut the bedroom door, shuffled down the hall and dressed in the kitchen.
I let myself out the back way and jumped the front fence. Daisy lived just north of the city and I was just south. If I walked it was gonna be about an hour or so. I figured I had about two hours of darkness left and this seemed important at the time. Plus I could use the exercise. After about twenty-five minutes hauling ass I’d just swept in sweating under the skyscrapers and thought well fuck this. I got the first cab I could and said take me as far a ten dollars will allow. He nodded and followed my directions. We skirted down through the empty streets of the city and then went left at the river. It got me to about five hundred metres from my place. He pulled up to a highway bus stop and I told him as I got out the car ‘Muchas Gracias motherfuckwit’. He was an African guy and I flung the tenner at him like so much shit and he just looked at me like I was crazy. A madman. And maybe I was. I know I laughed my balls off about it the whole walk home and I wasn’t and still ain't even entirely sure why.
I spent the next three days in a drunken stupor watching old Cagney gangster flicks and reading books by men who had been dead a very long time. I didn’t shave or shower. I threw in a couple of Bogart films too. Why the fuck not? That first morning after I had snuck away from Daisy I waited up until about ten and then went down and stocked up for what I knew was coming. The fix was in and I was just waiting for the result. I bought two cartons of cheap but very good Chinese beer. Two bottles of vodka. Enough juice to last me, and a bunch of potato and corn chips to fill in any gaps. Add to that a box of cheap cigars and some grapefruits. After this on the way back home I got a couple of hamburgers and a large fries and ate them at the place I bought’em. I was actually starving by then and the food went down a treat. I got a coffee when done and read the paper for awhile.
Guess what, people were murdering and raping one another.
Driving home at about midday it was a fresh sunny day and I’d be lying if I said I understood a damn about it. All I knew was that hell was what you made of it and that I could use a drink to ward off the restrained encroachment of my missing hangover.
When I got home I mixed a large beer and tomato juice and drank that sucker down in about a minute flat. I swore about what a mess the place was in and then went out the back and swore some more about all the leaves that had fallen. I smoked a cigar squinting in the sun awhile. When I started having visions of her tanning naked on that towel under that lemon tree I knew I was washed up. I spat the cigar in the dirt, heeled it inside and took a jolt of vodka.
Her smile in the sunshine and her spitting white wine in my mouth while we kissed.
How good she’d said the sunlight felt on her bare breasts and pink nipples and how good I knew it felt on my exposed balls and penis.
I took another jolt of vodka, a bigger one, and then chased it with a beer.
I could hear her voice in my ear I swear.
Whispering all the things she wanted me to do to her, all the things she hoped for after that too.
I grabbed the vodka bottle and went to bed. The fucking sun blazing through my shitty cotton curtains. It didn’t matter much. Just the one more jolt smacked me out like a light bulb.
I awoke to the sound of my mobile phone blaring like a siren. I grabbed for it and threw it firmly into the closest wall. It was night by then and getting out of bed seemed the equivalent to facing the blank barrier I imagined one found screaming in silence at the end of the universe. After an hour or so I got up confused and aggravated and put my phone back together. I took a long, long shower and never got dressed when I was done. I drank some more beer and read some Nietzsche and when that burnt out I threw on some Cagney and followed it with Bogie. I scratched my balls for a fair amount of time and watched my yard turn grey blue with the sun’s light creeping up over the hills in the east. The black shadows swinging slowly with its unavoidable rising solar angle.
Anytime I felt the creak in my bones or head of a hangover trying to play its hand I drank more and drank fast. Mornings seemed fine for beer and the afternoons and evenings just splendid for vodka. I pissed a lot. When I got hungry and needed more than corn chips I went down the street for burgers dressed like a bum and cowering at the freshness of the air. When I got sick of old time gangsters I threw on some Corbucci westerns and even a couple of old Romero and Fulci zombie flicks to pass the dread and muck of time. I watched Romero’s ‘Martin’ back to back. Love that fucking movie. I didn’t sleep for two days straight then. No matter how much I drank. The phone rang but I never answered it. The whole thing was ridiculous but then again what about life isn’t.
Think about how many times in your life you’ve wiped your ass…it’s pathetic, it’s repulsive, it’s just plain stupid.
The gig was up when I ran out of liquor. I drank the last two bottles of the beer naked on my back step smoking a cigar at about eight am of the third morning. The sun was already up and was making nice with me for once. I had some Schubert playing smooth on my record player and it eased all consequential out the door and was settling over me like a much needed anesthetic. I drained the last mouthful of beer and then upped myself and went immediately to the shower. When out I shaved and drank three cups of coffee with milk and sugar. I dressed like a human and got in the car and started the twenty-five minutes driving toward my office. I picked up some grub on the way, egg and sausage sandwich, two hash browns and one more coffee to smooth out any rough edges. To be honest I was a fucking mess. Fried as the eggs in my breakfast.
But something had clicked and I went with it as much as I had the other click which had told me to hole up and die alone. In hindsight it would be exactly where the goons collecting the money I owed would be looking for me, but I think the off chance that I might expire that morning actually cinched the subconscious deal. That and I had paid rent on the place for two and half days a week and I’d be fucked if I wasn’t gonna get my money’s worth. Oh and yeah, the fact that there was a full bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk. There are no coincidences where dealing with percentages.
You’re probably wondering what a drunken fatalistic asshole like myself requires an office for. You could argue that I don’t. Calling it an office is a stretch really. Sure there’s a desk and a filing cabinet and even a computer. It has four walls and a door too. And lucky me the window looks out onto the ocean so I can drown myself if I ever feel the need. At best I’d call it a shack. Like I said I have it for two and a half days a week. Sometimes I’m here more and sometimes less but most of the time when I’m here I’m drinking, reading, or eating lunch.
Still that doesn’t explain what I do though does it.
The office is mostly a front. I get it cheap through a friend and have stuck with it. The location is great, right on the harbour front, salt sweet smell in the air. I can sleep here if I get drunk in Fremantle too which I considered a real bonus. I do have my detective’s license. I can and have worked legit cases. You know the shit that wanders into these places. Divorce cases, insurance fraud, teenage kid gone missing, mostly some prick trying to shitcan another. Life ruining type stuff. And sure you occasionally get to lay one of the wives whose husband you’re trailing but the money is rubbish and the workload is worse. A lot of sitting in cars with your dick in your hand while your bowel slowly but surely impacts. I run a weekly ad in a local rag and get enough calls to pick and chose what I take and what I don’t. I mostly don’t.
Where the real money is and where I get most of mine is in illegal activity. And I have my fingers in many pies my friends. What I am is the guy you go to when you need something done. Need a large bet put down but can’t find a book that will take it, I’m your guy. Place to hide while you get together some scratch to pay the owe you should have never got so deep into anyway, I’m your guy. You come across a bunch of credit card numbers and you want to unload those digits for a price, you guessed it motherfucker, I’m your guy. Pretty much anything needed doing I can get it done. Really I don’t do a thing, but for the right price I’ll let you meet someone who does. On top o’that I hunt down schmucks like me who owe illegitimate bookies. Very regular gig and very good pay. You gotta wonder to yourself just how dumb a fuck can this guy be don’t ya?
Fuck you.
Fuck me.
So as I’ve established I don’t do much in the office but drink, eat and read. That particular morning I did all three. Firstly I’d smoked a cigar on the dock out front. I smoked it hard and fast because the bourbon was singing to me from the bottom drawer and my breakfast was getting cold on the front seat of my car. But what can I tell you, I like the ocean. It gets me and always has. I like how it smells, how it looks, how it just never stops and won’t for anyone no matter what the fuck was going on in the world. You had to respect that, and fear it. I had a real urge to play the horses while I was out there smoking.
Did anyone say ‘Degenerate’?
I flung the dead stub in the water and said take that you cold-hearted bitch.
