Poison Shy (8 page)

I walked home in the rain and fog. Stopped at the liquor store and picked up a case of beer called
La Fin du Monde
— a brand to reflect my mood. At the corner of my street I slipped on a flattened juice box and fell. Bashed up my elbows trying to keep the beer from smashing. Inside, I picked Melanie's note out of my garbage and put it in my sock drawer. Peeled the bloody sheets off my bed, stuffed them in a duffel bag and threw it across the room. Masturbated to the thought of tying her down and fucking her on the doughnut counter, then indulged in a deep, manly cry under the comfortless spray of a cold shower.

That night was Halloween. I went downstairs to the laundromat to wash the blood out of my bedsheets. The place was full of costumed students with baskets full of salty, yellowed underwear. They all seemed to know each other, like they'd planned some kind of All Hallows' Eve laundry social. I could still hear them laughing and cracking beers after I'd gone back upstairs. It took a fair amount of restraint not to throw myself out the window when they launched into an a capella version of “Monster Mash.”

Fortunately they left after that — and that's when I started drinking.

While children roamed the streets begging candy from strangers, I sat flipping channels like a misanthropic shut-in. Sipped my beers with mechanical stillness, eyes glued to a reality show in which a band of white-trash strippers competed for the chance to date an over-the-hill rock star. I couldn't get enough. They were showing the whole season in a marathon session. I only left my spot on the couch three times: twice to pee, once to get my sheets out of the dryer. The stains had smudged and turned brown, but I didn't care. I didn't plan on seeing Melanie ever again. All I wanted to do was sit on my ass and drink until the sun came up. I kept the twelve-pack on the floor in front of me and used it as an ottoman. Each beer I cracked was warmer than its predecessor. The malty liquid sloshed in my belly whenever I scratched an itch or rubbed my eye.

I started to get drowsy. I fell asleep for a split second, then jerked awake to a parade of water-balloon breasts in stars-and-stripes bikinis. Outside, teenagers exploded pumpkins with cherry bombs, then ran away screaming.

I tortured myself with mental games: if they cut to commercial before the clock changes I'm going to die in my sleep. If I hear another pumpkin explosion in the next thirty seconds, a murderer is going to break into my apartment and slash my throat. If someone — anyone — presses my buzzer, even if it's just a prank, the world will end.

I fell asleep to these horrors. I can't say how long I was out, but I woke up to a spinning room. I took off my shirt and laid down on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor, the toilet bowl safely within puking distance. My TV was still on in the other room. The network was playing classical music over a blank screen while it waited for its morning programming.

Eventually I felt well enough to crawl to the couch, but just as I'd wrapped myself in a blanket and settled into the fetal position, my buzzer sounded.

I froze, then swallowed a mouthful of spicy vomit. I braced myself for an earthquake, for the sidewalk to split, for eruptions of lava and swarms of giant insects to sweep in and devour all of humankind.

But nothing happened. The world was intact — of course it was. What was happening to me? Was I becoming my mother? I tiptoed to the window and peeped through the curtains. There were no pranksters running down the street, no cars peeling away. The one place I couldn't see was directly in front of the door. Was someone still waiting? A murderer? A
ghost
? I felt like a lunatic out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Years of horror novels and zombie games had infected my brain.

I decided to go downstairs to check things out. I went to my closet and got the old T-ball bat I still had from when I was a kid. It was only about forty inches long, but it was painted blood red and had a killer nickname carved into the barrel:
Red Hot
. My own personal second amendment.

I held it in one hand like a club and slowly made my way down the stairs. I didn't expect to find anyone, but I was prepared to swing.

The door had no windows, no peephole. My plan was to turn the lock and pull it open with as close to a single motion as I could manage, then have a good chuckle at the expense of my own ridiculous paranoia.

I wiped my sweaty palm on my pants, gripped Red Hot, and turned the lock.

Melanie lay slumped on the concrete steps in a kitty-cat costume.

There was a puddle of bubblegum-pink vomit between her legs. She wore a low-cut ballet top and a see-through pair of black tights. A cat-ear headband hung around her neck like a collar. She looked up at me with squinty, mascara-caked eyes and mumbled something about a fight with Darcy and getting ditched. She said Darcy called her a dirty slut and splashed beer in her face. Stole her key and took off in a cab with some other friends. Told her to sleep at a bus station, where she belonged. She said she came here because she knew the way and didn't know where else to go. Her voice was as hoarse as a goblin's. I couldn't tell if she'd been crying or if she was just smashed.

I lifted her by the armpits and was surprised at how light she was, as though her bones were made of Styrofoam. She smelled strongly of sweet and spicy female body odour. I picked a dried leaf out of her hair as I followed her up the stairs, her pipecleaner cat's tail brushing my nose. Her black panties were visible through her stockings. I figured it was part of the outfit. Naughty pussycat: the most cliché party girl Halloween costume ever. I couldn't imagine her dressing up as anything else.

I sat her on my couch and brought her a glass of tap water. She gulped it down like a thirsty toddler, hiccupping twice. I brought her a blanket. Offered her something to eat. She shook her head and curled up with her fists under her chin, feet crossed at the ankles, painted-on whiskers smudged. She looked like a sad painting.

I sunk into my easy chair and watched her sleep, her nasal vibrations lulling me into a stupor, then drifted off myself.

The next morning I decided to make bacon and eggs. I heard her moan on her way to the bathroom. She peed with the door open and didn't flush, then shuffled into the kitchen looking haggard.

“Smells yummy.” She stuck her hand down the back of her tights and adjusted her panties. “Do I get any?”

I drained grease into the sink. “I made it for you. Toast?”

She shrugged. “Can you make me a bacon and egg sandwich?”

“If that's what you want.”

She helped herself to a mug of coffee and took a seat at the table. “Sorry about crashing. I don't even really know what happened.”

“You said Darcy ditched you. Told you to sleep on the street.”

“Yeah, I don't know. We fight a lot. It'll blow over.” She yawned and sipped her coffee. “Do you work today?”

I slammed the still-soft slices of bread back into my piece-of-shit toaster. “You said he stole your key.”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

I felt my face burning. “Darcy seems like a real asshole.”

“He's not that bad. He's got a temper, that's all. He puts up with a lot of my shit, too. I can dish it out just as bad as he can.” She smiled as if reminiscing.

“Why do you always defend him?” I picked some bacon slices out of the frying pan with my fingers and slapped them on her toast. “The guy acts like he's your pimp or something and you just take it.”

“He's my friend.”

“He treats you like shit.” I flipped the egg onto her sandwich and the yoke exploded; yellow goo speckled my countertop. “What's the deal with you guys? You say you're just roommates but I get the feeling he's fucking you. And fucking
with
you.”

She didn't respond. She just sat and looked at me.

I waited for my hands to stop shaking, then placed her sandwich on the table in front of her. “I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to get so worked up. But
God
. I just can't believe —”

“Fuck me.”

“What?”

She stood up. “Fuck me. Right now.”

I leaned in to kiss her. She grabbed the back of my neck and shoved her tongue in my mouth. We wobbled and crashed around the kitchen as we shook off our clothes with frantic, jerky limbs. I spun her around and pressed her against the fridge. Pulled down her tights. Unzipped my fly and stuck myself inside her. She arched her back and took me in deeper. I leaned forward and pressed her against the fridge, turned her head to the side, and stuck my fingers in her mouth. She looked back at me. “Uunnghh.” Ice cubes rattled with every thrust.

When it was over we collapsed together on the cold kitchen floor, our chests rising and falling in reverse unison. Melanie was the first to get up. She ran a hand through her messy hair, pulled up her pants, and sat back down at the table. Started eating her sandwich like it was a lazy Sunday morning. “Mmm,” she said.

I stood up and poured some coffee. “I better get dressed.”

“What are you doing later?” she asked with her mouth full.

Were Melanie Blaxley and I ever a couple? I can't say for sure. There were times I thought we were; then she'd do things to suggest otherwise, like introduce me as her “buddy,” give her phone number to strangers while I thought we were on a date, talk about guys in her classes that she “wouldn't mind fucking.” She'd told me about her no-relationship policy on our first date, so I guess I should have known better.

The bullshit with Darcy continued, though I guess I got used to him hanging around. He apologized for the penknife incident, but he was constantly making fun of me and was still a first-rate prick. The more I saw him with Melanie the less I saw him as competition. They were more like rival siblings or kissing cousins. Harmless.

About three weeks after Halloween I had my first legitimate conversation with Darcy. Melanie told me to meet her at The Bloody Paw for nachos. I'd spent the day collecting dead mice from the boiler room at Our Lady of Sorrows, Frayne's only Catholic school. Melanie said to come straight from work, but I went home briefly to shower and change out of my uniform. I suspected Darcy would be there and I was right. The two of them were sitting in one of the booths by the window. They had a pitcher of beer and were digging into an enormous chili-cheese platter.

“Better order your own,” Darcy said.

I took a seat at the edge of the booth and, when the waitress came around, ordered an Adios Motherfucker.

Melanie unleashed a roaring belch and patted her chest.

“Nice!” Darcy said, snapping his fingers gangsta-style.

Melanie winked.

Darcy exhaled through puffed cheeks. “This chili is making me sweat!” He shook off his hoodie and resumed his feast in a ratty wife-beater. I'd never noticed before: his upper body was covered in tattoos, everything from barbed-wire armbands and sailor's anchors to pornographic cartoon women with round breasts and jutting asses. Just below his throat was a small Mexican skull. On his left shoulder, in dark black ink, was the symbol for Anarchy, and on his right, a big green crucifix made of rose stems with blood dripping from the thorns. I tried not to stare.

“Got any smokes?” Melanie asked, fanning her mouth with a greasy napkin.

Darcy shrugged.

“I'll grab some,” Melanie said. She climbed out of the booth and almost kneed me in the groin in the process. “What brand do you want?”

“Whatever, fuck,” Darcy said.

I watched as he lifted his plate and swept nacho crumbs and cheese bits into his mouth with the side of his hand.

“Nice tats,” I said.

He nodded, licking his fingers. “You got any?”

“Me? No.”

He chuckled a bit. “Mel's blank too. She thinks tattoos clash with freckles. I say it depends on the design. Plus, there's nothing sexier than an inked-up ginger bitch, am I right?”

The waitress arrived with my drink. Darcy picked it up and took a sip without a word. I let it slide.

“The thing about tattoos,” he went on, “is that nobody takes them seriously. They're on your skin for
life
, know what I'm saying? Be aware! Some douchebag goes to Thailand and gets a few Asian symbols needled into his shoulder 'cause he thinks they look cool, only he doesn't realize he's advertising himself as a syphilitic ass-monkey. Serves him right. You gotta think about that shit. Look, right here.” He pulled down the neck of his tank top and exposed a question mark on his left bicep with the Mars astrological symbol for a dot. “I got this one as a representation of my bastardhood.”

I squinted. “What do you mean, ‘bastardhood'?”

“Bastardhood, idiot! I never knew my father. He's a mystery to me. I'm a motherfucking bastard, in all senses of the word.”

“What about those women? What are they, characters from your favourite Japanese animation?”

His eyes widened as he took another sip of my drink. “Holy shit,” he said, swallowing. “That's exactly what they are. They're hentai. You heard of it?”

I shook my head.

“You should check it out. It's all over the Internet. You strike me as the kind of guy who looks at porn. I bet you masturbate with strict regularity.”

I couldn't help but laugh. His verbal assaults were only offensive for so long. Once you got used to them they became funny in a way that made
him
the joke. I began to see why Melanie might want him around. He was like a clown whose role was merely to shock and amuse his friends. Perhaps that was his only way of making friends.

“What about the ones on your shoulders?” I asked.

He leaned forward, dropped his arms, and flexed his puny boy-muscles. “Christian Anarchy, baby,” he said. “It's what I'm
about
.”

“What's that? Some kind of Jesus-meets-Johnny-Rotten hybrid faith?”

“That's an ignorant way of putting it, but basically yes. Jesus was the first and only real anarchist the world has ever known. He said fuck the status quo and told things like they really were. Then the church came along and messed everything up. It's nothing but a goddamn beaurocracy between man and God, is what it is. Luke seventeen, twenty-one: ‘the kingdom of God is within you.'” He thumped his hand against his rib-ridged chest. “That's all I know, and all I
need
to know.”

“Interesting,” I said. “So you're a religious guy?”

He guzzled the rest of my drink. “In a matter of speaking. I don't believe in religion as a path to God. The way I see it, no path is required because He's already fucking there. He's
everywhere
. Jesus tried to tell people that, only they're too dumb to get it. They think it's gotta be complicated, but it isn't. It's the easiest thing in the world: pure . . . fucking . . . freedom. Governments and the church are nothing but smoke and mirrors. The individual's the only thing that's holy. Anything else is a golden calf.”

I have to admit I was impressed. I didn't expect a slimeball like Darcy to be so articulate about his beliefs, or so passionate about
anything
.

He turned and looked out the window, which made me look as well. Melanie was huddled under an awning, trying to light a cigarette despite the November wind.

Darcy stood up and slung on his hoodie. “Excuse me, but I need to increase my chances of developing lung cancer.”

I signalled to the waitress for the bill and she brought it over right away. I slapped down forty bucks to cover the nachos and drinks, none of which I'd actually consumed — my Christian deed for the day.

Outside, Melanie and Darcy were lighting up a second round of smokes, so I took a seat at the bar and picked through the dish of breath mints. As I was about to grab the sole red candy in a cluster of greens, a voice to my left said, “Brandon? No kidding!”

I turned and saw Bill. He was sitting alone at the end of the bar with his gut hanging over his belt like a flabby anaesthetized tongue.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

He wrapped his hand around the pint glass in front of him. “Having a beer, what else?”

“Do you come here often?”

“What, are you trying to pick me up or something?” he wheezed.

“Funny, it's just . . . This doesn't strike me as your kind of place.”

“Are you kidding me? I love this joint.” He spread out his arms. “I mean, come on. Look at all the beautiful pictures they got. That one there was donated by yours truly, I'm proud to say.” He nodded at a particularly gruesome close-up of a blood-caked paw that had been crudely severed from the limb of its former owner. It was small, like a cub's paw. It might well have been the shot that inspired the bar's name.

“Jesus.”

Bill crossed his arms and stuck out his chin as though admiring the showpiece in an art gallery. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

“Please tell me you're joking.”

“I'm a hunter, Brandon. It's in my blood. My dad, and his dad, and his dad, and so on — the Barbers are a hunting clan. Real men, from an earlier age.” He laughed at his own joke. “I guess you could say we hunt for a living, you and I. But squishing spiders just doesn't compare to blowing a hole in a grizzly's rib cage, know what I mean? That crunch of bone, that echo-y bear roar. Feeling its pain vibrate in your own body.”

I stared.

“You gotta experience it to know what I mean,” he said.

“You know this place is run by an environmentalist,” I said. “It's anti-hunting.”

“Viktor? Shit.” He looked from side to side and leaned in close. “Between you and me, Viktor don't care about animals. He's looking to make a buck and get laid in the process, same as the next guy. These university babes eat that bleeding-heart shit right up.”

“I guess.”

“Listen, I'll let you get back to your girl out there. See you back at work tomorrow. Those mice won't know what hit 'em. Whap!” He smacked his hands together loudly.

“Take it easy, Bill,” I said, and went outside in a haze.

“You okay?” Melanie asked as she stamped out her cigarette. “You look kind of pale.”

“I'll be all right. I can only take so much of this place.”

Darcy got in a cab to check out some new slasher film at the movieplex outside of town. He tried to convince Melanie to go but she said she needed to study for a test.