Malus Domestica (24 page)

He wrenched back the leg of his jeans expecting to find a white bone protruding from his brown skin, but there were only two puncture-wounds, beading raspberry blood.

Cold numbness and needles took over his left foot, prickling his toes, his heel. His calf was beginning to swell.

His tongue was too big for his mouth. His throat was closing up. He turned over on his back and goldfish-gawped at dry air, tears in his eyes. The boxing-glove pressing against the roof of his mouth tasted like batteries.

“Hep!”
he wheezed as loud as he could manage, his lips tingling, and fought for air. His shirt was ten sizes too small, constricting his lungs in belts of cotton.
“Huuuk—huuuuuk—”

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM,
somebody came running up the ramp into the Gravitron. A barbarian giant plastered the far wall in shadow, filling the doorway with his body, and in his thick hands was a mallet with a striker-head as big as a mailbox.

Pete lingered for about two seconds, taking in the scene, and then he charged across the Gravitron and brought the strength-test hammer down on the snake, smashing it so hard the table trampolined the reptile into the air. Someone—
a girl?
—screamed, but to Wayne it was the muffled keening of a kitten.

The ceiling fell slowly away piece by piece, unmasking an abyss of shimmering red stars.

Big old Pete, good old Pete, Petey-boy, the Incredible Pete, he demolished both table and snake, swearing at top volume, unleashing every swear and curse he knew, even as the blood-galaxy uncovered itself above his head. The huge hammer came down on the snake again and again,
fump!…fump!…fump!

The night sky glittered with rubies. Wayne couldn’t understand any of Pete’s shouting through the cotton in his ears, like an AM broadcast on a bad signal. His stomach churned, but he didn’t have the strength to turn over.

Silky foam seethed out between Wayne’s lips and ran across his cheeks. A force lifted the boy up—
Aliens,
he thought, as he rose toward that malevolent universe,
they’re taking me away into their purple spaceship, they’re gonna cut me up and do tests on me—
and then he was gone.

12

Sent at 9:36pm

B1GR3D:
hey

Received at 9:42pm

pizzam4n_1982:
what u want stepchild

B1GR3D:
nice pictures. U look good

pizzam4n_1982:
thanks

pizzam4n_1982:
you don’t look so bad yourself, ol man. I am diggin that red hair. Always wanted me a wild irish rose

B1GR3D:
old man? haha

B1GR3D:
what you doin

pizzam4n_1982:
gettin off work, u?

B1GR3D:
bored

B1GR3D:
i want sum of that goodlookin body

pizzam4n_1982:
boy you wouldnt know what to do with it

B1GR3D:
I bet I can figure it out. Why dont u swing by on the way home an let me hit it

pizzam4n_1982:
let u hit it? Lol

pizzam4n_1982:
oh ho ho you aint even gonna buy me dinner first. I see how it is

B1GR3D:
if you want dinner I got plenty of food here. hell I’ll cook u a steak if you want. damn good steak. Bake potato, whole 9 yards

pizzam4n_1982:
you know the way to a mans heart, don’t you?

B1GR3D:
I sure do.

❂

Black Velvet grumbled into the parking lot of Riverview Terrace Apartments, Joel Ellis behind the wheel, his cellphone clutched in one hand. The iPhone’s screen illuminated his face with B1GR3D’s address.
This redneck better be a good cook,
he thought, peering through the windshield at the apartment numbers, looking for Apt 427.
I ain’t fitna put myself in some stranger-danger for no cheap-ass meat.

Building Four was in the back of the complex, a brownstone bulwark against the dark woodline. The Monte Carlo eased into a slot, washing 424’s windows with bright yellow headlight, and the engine cut off. Joel got out and scanned the row of doorways.

Eyes peered through the blinds in 427’s window.

There you is.
He slipped his phone into his pocket, locked his car, and sauntered up the sidewalk. 427’s door opened and a man stepped out, considerably taller than he expected, with a slender neck and a jawline that could cut glass.

“Hey there,” said the man. He was dressed conservatively, in a flannel button-up with the sleeves rolled, and well-fit jeans.

“Sup, stepchild. You must be Big Red.”

B1GR3D smiled and gave a bashful chuckle. “That I am.”

This was always the hardest part, the awkward introductory phase, where they were still feeling out each other’s body language and weighing their own regrets and needs, trying to get comfortable and break the ice or find a reason to leave and forget it ever happened.

“Well, come on in.”

“Thank-yuh.” Joel stepped inside.

The tiny apartment was meticulously clean. Hanging on the walls were impressionistic paintings of wildlife posing dramatically in the forest—deer, foxes, mice, wolves. Large prints, from the look of it, no brushstrokes. Joel touched one of them. Thin cardboard. A ten-dollar Walmart poster, still shrinkwrapped. Other than a black sofa, there was only a desk with a bulky gray laptop on it and a flatscreen TV on a squat, altar-like entertainment center.

Joel sat on the sofa as Red went into the kitchen, and it crackled under his body. A slipcover encased the futon in clear protective plastic. The aluminum shafts that served as its legs stood on wooden medallions, like coasters.

To protect the carpet,
he supposed.

“This remind me of my grandmama,” he said, brushing his fingertips over it. He could see himself in the TV screen as clearly as if it were a mirror. “Every piece of furniture in her house was covered in plastic. The couch, the mattresses, there was even a floormat in the living room on top of the carpet.”

“I like a clean, healthy house,” said Red’s voice. “I grew up with filthy people, neatness suits me.”

Machinery whirred to life in another room. As Red returned with two glasses, a robot hockey-puck came humming out of a dark hallway and vacuumed the carpet in front of the couch. “Roomba,” said Joel, as Red handed him a drink. His new friend had the craggy hands of a workin’ man. “I always wanted one of those.”

“It’s handy.”

Joel sniffed the water-glass and took an exploratory sip. Whiskey, and it went down smoother than soda. Hardly any burn at all, with a vague maple undertone, so faint he wondered if the honey-color was playing tricks on his tongue. “Damn, that’s nice,” he said, holding the glass up so he could see through it.

“I got the steaks on out back.” Red walked away. Joel swirled the whiskey, washed it all down his throat, and followed him through the kitchen, pouring himself another couple of fingers on the way.

‘Out back’ was a concrete patio about the size of a walk-in closet, with two plastic lawn chairs and a huge grill. A lone lantern-style porch light brightened the scene, and a damp phantom of October breathed across the wet grass.

At the edge of Red’s tiny yard was a wilderness of pines, quiet and still and impenetrable in its darkness.

The grill was obviously where most of Red’s money went—a top-of-the-line charcoal-fired beast with wood-slat leaf tables on both sides. He opened the top and smoke billowed out, two levels of grills scissoring open like the trays in a tackle box.

On the bottom grill two porterhouse steaks, charred black and Satanic-red, sizzled angrily over a bed of glowing coals. Nestled between them were a pair of potatoes wrapped in tin foil.

Joel settled into one of the lawn chairs while Red used a pair of tongs to place spears of asparagus around the steaks, and four medallions of buttered Italian bread on the upper shelf. The aroma streaming out of the cooker was immense, an enveloping sauna of rich salt. Joel wanted to take off his shirt and bathe in the savory steam, absorb it like a sponge.

“That is outstanding.”

Red smiled over his shoulder and flipped the steaks.
Kssss.
“I used to be a cook, on a boat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. I used to live in Maine. Near the ocean. My father worked on fishin boats all my life and when I graduated high school, he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. But I wasn’t into that. Dangerous work. Boring. You lose fingers. Fall overboard. Break your legs.”

He tapped his head with the hinge of the tongs. “Not enough of a challenge up here.
But,
it was what my father wanted, and there wasn’t any convincing him otherwise. After I looked and looked for work at home, I finally had to admit to myself that I was going to have to take up the family business and catch fish for a living.”

Joel sipped his whiskey, listening raptly—or, at least, the best approximation he could manage.

“So, I hooked up with this crew goin out that season and went out to sea.” Red flipped the bread, piece by piece. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t cut out for it after all. Those guys really shit on me. But, here’s the funny part, I turned out to be a pretty good cook. So they stashed me in the galley and put me to work makin dinner. That was actually where I shined.”

“Ah.”
Sniff.
“So what you doing now?”

Red wagged the tongs at him reproachfully. “I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”

“If you told me, you’d have to kill me?”

It was a joke, but Joel’s face went cold anyway.

Red smirked, snorted through his nose. “Let’s just say I’m kind of a big shot around town, and if word got out that I’m, uhh—”

“Gay as a three-dollar football bat?”

“Well, heh. I actually swing both ways, but yeah. And you know how it is in these small-minded little quarterback-hero southern towns. My name wouldn’t make a very valuable currency anymore, put it that way.”

“Hmmph,
yeah. I catch what you pitchin.”

“Do
you?” Red went past him into the kitchen, squeezing his knee on the way by. “You’re a catcher, hmm?”

“Why, you tryin to score? Cause I’m lookin for a batter, baby. With a big ol bat.”

The former mess cook came back with plates and tonged the food onto them, then closed the grill lid and went back into the kitchen for a bottle of steak sauce and the rest of the whiskey.

Glorious, the steaks were absolutely glorious, worthy of being remembered in song, they didn’t even
need
the A-1. Joel and Red sat on the porch eating quietly, staring out at the twilight forest behind the building.

“So what do you do?” asked Red.

“I cook and run the register at Miguel’s Pizza up in the mountains. Up there at the bottom of the ridge from Rocktown.” Joel bit the end off of an asparagus spear. “You ever go rock climbin?”

“Nah. Never saw the appeal.”

“Yeh,” said Joel. The moon was an orange-wedge behind the trees. “Me neither.”

Taking out his phone, he checked to see what time it was. A quarter to eleven. Man, he never got sleepy this early, after work he was usually up until two, three in the morning. Joel put down his fork and screwed a fist into one eye.

“Tired?” asked Red.

“A little bit.”

“Maybe you should take a vacation day. Play hookey.” Red grinned. “You can play hookey here with me.”

“Hookey? You think I’m a hooker, hooker?”

Red laughed and sawed off a piece of steak. “You tell me.”

Joel’s good-natured snort turned into a yawn. He slumped in his chair, feeling more and more comfortable by the minute, until his plate was on top of his crotch and he was squinting at it, slowly cutting off bites and putting them into his mouth.

“Oh,” he said, dropping his fork with a clatter.

He tried to sit up, pushing with a heel, but his foot slid. Bracing himself with his elbows, he wriggled up a few inches and twisted to collect his fork up off the ground.

It was like trying to pick up a stuffed bear with a claw machine: loose, weak, fumbly. The fork seemed immaterial until he managed to put a finger on it. “Whassup here.” Tines scraped across the concrete.

“Having trouble, pizza-man?” asked Red.

“Yeah, shit, somethin wrong with me.”

The whiskey must have been a little more powerful than I gave it credit for,
Joel mused, wrapping a fist around the fork and picking it up.

Goddamn, but he was so exhausted. The kind of bone-tired exhausted when you got up early but you ain’t done nothin all day and you want to lay down at three in the afternoon and take a nap and sleep all day and not really eat anything and when you wake up you’re like
what year is it—

He deposited the fork on the plate in his lap and rubbed his eyes. His fingers felt like they belonged to someone else and his head was half-full of water, spinning and swaying as he tried to get a fix on Red’s face.

“I think…I think I drank too much.”

“Maybe. This stuff is smooth. It sneaks up on you. Hey, why were you calling me ‘stepchild’ earlier?”

Joel waggled a handful of fingers at his own head, then at Red’s, then at his own again. “Cause the hair. Red hair. You know—what they say, whip you like a red-headed stepchild.”

“I see. You want to whip me?”

“Kinda. Maybe. Maybe
you
can whip
me.”
Joel lifted his plate in both hands and shimmied upward in his chair, trying to sit up straight. The remains of his dinner slid off into the floor, his fork ringing across the concrete again in a mess of potato-mush and bits of asparagus. “Shit.”

“I’ll get it,” said Red, putting his plate on the grill and rising from his chair.

“I got it, I got it.” Leaning forward, Joel reached for the food to pick it up with his hand and put it back on the plate, but to his surprise the back yard, grass, rocks, and all, pivoted up and hit him in the face.

❂

“Ugh.” Joel opened his grainy eyes to find himself in some kind of…basement, or a garage or something, a grungy space full of junk.

For some reason, the room was upside down. Water dripped somewhere.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Everything was cloaked in shadow, except for a piss-yellow fluorescent bulb inside the upper half of a workbench. Tools and engine parts lined the walls and scattered across the floor, and at the far end of the room was a giant wooden cutout, a spray-painted portrait of that old Creature from the Black Lagoon.