The Unnoticeables (4 page)

Matt smiled up at me hopefully.

“… until I get back from the store with more beer,” I finished.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“You could always pay for your own beer,” Thing 1 said, sitting cross-legged on top of our wobbly avocado-green fridge. She took a gentle sip of her own drink, by way of demonstration.

“Do I look like a brother who's got money?” Matt asked, gesturing to his scuffed high-tops and torn jeans.

“You could just not drink,” Thing 2 offered from the living room.

We all stared at her like she'd opened her mouth and a bunch of snakes had come flying out.

“Life is a series of choices,” Wash explained to her, patiently; “
that
is not one of them.”

They were getting along pretty well, Wash and Thing 2. I say that because I've seen all of the signs—the subtle touches of the hand, the lingering smiles, the furtive glances, and the time I walked in on her jacking him off in the bathroom. I'm very observant.

“All right, beer run,” I said, and elbowed my way out of our crowded kitchen.

Thing 1, Matt, Randall, Safety Pins, Jezza, and Scuffed Flannel were all shoved in there like a bunch of cigarettes in a pack, even though the rest of the house was practically empty. Why does that always happen? Throw the most lavish party in the world—pool tables in the garage, jukeboxes in the living room, fucking fire dancers and talking elephants on the lawn—and go check the kitchen. It'll be standing room only.

Wash and Thing 2 were sitting across from one another on our broken, saggy couch, playing some kind of game. She laid down a card. Wash processed it for a long moment, then laid down his. He laid down a card, and she stared at it like it was a German cipher. She laid down a card.

“What are you playing?” I asked them, wordlessly yanking my leather jacket out from under Wash's ass.

“War,” Thing 2 muttered, utterly lost in concentration.

“You really are perfect for each other,” I said, swinging my jacket up and sliding my arms through it. It was like strapping into armor. I could take on anything.

Even a quick beer run to the corner store.

“Oi,” Jezza hollered from the kitchen, “pick up some for me and Liz.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Any preference? You in the mood for a nice, crisp pilsner? Maybe a saucy lager?”

“I could go for a nice pint of bitter,” Jezza answered seriously; “maybe something with autumnal overtones.”

“Right,” I replied, “so the cheapest crap I can find.”

“Righto,” Jezza confirmed, tossing me a wad of filthy bills.

“You good, Wash?” I asked, and he patted most of a six-pack at his feet, too enraptured with his game to spare so much as a glance.

I looked to Safety Pins but saw she still had half a bottle of Jack left. It was her latest affectation: straight Jack Daniel's, just like Janis. Even if she did make a face with every swig.

“How about you two?” I asked Thing 1. She generally spoke for both of the Things.

She shifted to check her pockets, and from her position atop the fridge—legs at eye level—I saw that her short shorts were riding up provocatively.

“I'm out, but I'm broke,” she said.

“I got your back,” I consoled her, “if I can get your back later.”

“It comes at too great a cost,” she answered, and rolled her eyes.

“You could come for less,” I said.

She tossed her empty can at me underhand. I headbutted it straight out of the air.

“I'll get you something anyway,” I said.

This was punk-rock courtship: Paying for somebody's drunk was like giving them flowers dipped in chocolate.

“I'm dry and broke, too,” Matt tried, hope glittering in his eyes.

“Oh, you can drink from my beers,” I said, making for the door, “but you know what you have to do.”

I heard the first faltering start to a long string of swears spill forth from Matt, but I was already out. I stepped from a kind of drunken postapocalypse into a New England bed-and-breakfast. The hallway for our floor couldn't be more out of character with the rest of the building. The lobby was fucking filthy. The main security door swung on broken hinges. The stairs squealed like every step was going to send you plummeting into the basement, and you'd have to dig a hole for our apartment to qualify as a shithole. But this hallway was always spotless. The carpet runners were carefully vacuumed, the pictures straightened on the walls, fresh-cut flowers in a little vase of clear water on the corner table every weekend.

Somebody on this floor took fastidious care of it, but I never saw who it was. I doubted it was the Somalian in 6, who I once saw take a shit directly into the storm drain out front. I doubted it was Andy, the unemployed writer type at the end of the hall. He dropped a bag of groceries down the stairs back when he moved in, and there's still a can of beans on the first-floor landing. Been there for a year and a half now. That left whoever lived in 7. I'd never seen the person, but based on the neat, rigidly spotless hallway, I assumed it was either a kindly old grandmother or a twisted Nazi serial killer. The Nazi would be less disturbing.

I thundered down our stairs, listening to them scream like stepped-on kittens, and took a huge flying leap through our front door, hurtling over the stoop and landing with a thump on the sidewalk. I touched down six inches from a pair of chicks who screamed a little with surprise.

“Watch it!” one said. She had clean, feathered hair and wore some kind of disco blouse.

“Take off your shirt,” I replied, “if only because it sucks.”

“Pig,” she responded.

I shrugged.

Fair enough.

I gave her an elegant bow and a quick fart and sprinted off toward Shop Shop, our corner store. The night was warm and thick, and I was buzzing with energy. I felt it in my limbs, in my fingertips. The air rushing by me was slightly cooler, so I ran faster. My legs felt good, stretching and rebounding like rubber, so I ran faster. My beat-up Chucks slapped the concrete like a drumbeat, so I ran faster. And faster.

I am a knife through the New York streets.

I looked up just in time to see that I was about to sprint right by Shop Shop. I managed to shoot my hand out at the last possible second and gripped the metal post between the two propped-open doors. The momentum almost ripped my arm from the socket. I pivoted around the pole, through the open doors, over my own feet, and into an unreasonably giant display of beef jerky.

It cascaded over me like a warm meat waterfall.

Alex sighed loudly from his gouged wooden stool behind the counter.

“Hey, Carey,” he said, barely glancing up from the tiny black-and-white TV that kept him company on the night shift.

“How's it going, Alex?” I said as casually as possible, taking to my feet and briefly skating on a thin layer of crushed beef.

“Good. If you pick that up now, I won't make you pay for the broken ones,” he said.

Did I mention the man's a saint?

I grabbed a few unwieldy armfuls of jerky and shoveled them back into the display, then heaved it upright and picked up the stragglers. I threw the torn packages—only a half dozen, not bad for a night's destruction—into the garbage can by the door.

“Iron City,” Alex said; “bottom shelf on the far left.”

Alex knows me well enough to remember that the only things I come in here to buy are Ruffles (when I'm high) and the cheapest possible beer with the highest alcohol content. He lets me know if, by some freak closeout or meteorological shift, that happens not to be Schlitz. I guess Iron City was on sale.

A fucking saint, I tell you.

I humped two cases up under my arms and made for the counter. A canned laugh track blared out from his little TV like a pack of lo-fi hyenas. I slid the cases onto the counter, and something caught my eye.

That's a week's worth of beer money, Carey.

I broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. I had two weeks of drinking money squirreled away at all times. It's my nest egg. I've never been without that padding. Could I live with being only one unlucky week away from sober?

“Something else?” Alex asked wearily, noticing I hadn't thrust a gob of cash at him and bolted for the doors like usual.

Fuck it.

“Yeah,” I answered, “I'll take eight of those.”

*   *   *

The disco bitches were gone by the time I wrestled my two cases and paper bag back to the apartment.

“… the BLACKS know, the BLACKS have always known!” muttered the raggedy man on the stoop.

Oh, cool, Sammy's out.

“What's up, Sammy Six?” I asked.

I set my burden down, tore open the case, and handed him a beer.

“Sixtimessixisthirtysixtimessixistwohundredsixteentimessixis…” His voice dropped low and the words blurred together into gibberish.

It was his thing: Some hobos hoarded. Some jerked off outside your window. Some peed on you if you were wearing red shoes. Sammy Six did math: He especially liked six, for some reason. All told, there were worse things to do. Besides, the guy's been around forever. When we first moved to the neighborhood, none of the other tenants would so much as look at us, but Sammy helped out. He showed me where the cheapest beer was, which alleys to avoid past midnight (only two were really dangerous; the rest mostly contained hobos fucking—which is still flagged as “to avoid” in my book), and he'd always share a brew with me. If I was buying, of course. All crazy hobo gibberish aside, he was something like a drunken mentor.

“Hey,” I said, shaking the can around in front of his face, “beer now, math later.”

“Hmm?” Sammy's eyes focused a little, and his voice lost some of the sleepy haze. “Oh, right. Thanks, Carey.”

He took the beer and cracked it open expertly: no foam at all, despite my long and clumsy walk from the store.

“What's the news?” I prodded him again.

“Ah, you know. Same shit, different toilet,” he answered, and we both laughed. “You?”

“Drinking, fighting, and fucking. Not necessarily in that order,” I answered, cracking open a beer of my own. Ice-cold beads of condensation ran down the sides. The bite from the first gulp was sweeter than any kiss I've ever had. But then again, people usually don't kiss me too sweetly.…

“You, uh … everybody's good?” Sammy asked again, his eyes taking on a conspiratorial shift.

“Yeah, why?” I pressed the can to my sweating forehead between sips.

“Nobody's gone? Nobody's gone away?”

“Sure. Some people left town. We guess. We don't really know. People disappear, you know?”

“It ain't that,” he said, and took a deep pull from his beer. He was quiet and thoughtful for a few minutes while we nursed our drinks. “There's something going on in this town. It's worse than you think. I've seen it before, it's…”

Sammy shook his head. Bumped his palm against his forehead.

“It's hard to think about,” he tried again. “Something buried in my head. You just watch yourself, okay? You come tell me if you boys see anything weird.”

There was something off with Sammy. You can usually bring him around to clarity for a minute or two, but this was the most coherent I'd ever heard him.

“Sure, man. Sure. Hey, are
you
all right, though?”

“They're all going away now,” he answered. “The blacks get them. But the blacks can't get the Six!”

There's the Sammy I remember.

I laughed. “I don't think the blacks want you, Sammy.”

I put the lip of my half-full beer between my teeth, hefted my cases again, and headed up the stairs.

“Oh, no,” Sammy called after me, “I'm not Six! The blacks know me! All the blacks know about old Sammy! They know about you too, Carey!”

“Harv a good one, Shammy!” I yelled around my beer, and gave him part of a wave with my shoulder as I turned the corner.

I kicked at our door loudly and for a long time before Matt answered.

“I BRING GIFTSH OF FRANKINSHENSHE AND MYRRH!” I hollered through my sloshing can.

Matt seized a case from under my arm and scampered off to the kitchen. I took the beer out of my teeth with my free hand and followed him.

“I'm not saying you
want
to”—Randall was in the middle of some kind of lecture—“I'm just saying if you
had
to: Would it be more preferable to fuck a talking dog, like Scooby-Doo, because he's closer to people?”

“Definitely,” Safety Pins answered without a second of thought.

I waited until the laughter died down, then tipped my paper bag upside down on the kitchen counter.

“The bloody hell is that?” Jezza asked, peering at the small brass rectangles.

“Lighters,” I said; “one for everybody.”

 

FIVE

2013. Los Angeles, California. Kaitlyn.

“Do you know how to make a zombie?” Carl asked me in between mouthfuls of the saddest, soggiest burrito I have ever seen.

“Depends.” I gave it a moment of thought before answering. “Are we talking classic shambling Romero zombies, or new-wave Boyle rage-virus zombies?”

“No, I mean literally—”

“Oh! Right. Like the Haitians? It's powdered puffer-fish toxin and brainwashing mostly, though the voodoo priests did bury the victims to make them think they'd risen from the dead.…”

“Jesus, Kaitlyn, the drink. A zombie is a drink.” Carl was pinching the fat in between his eyebrows. I guessed it was supposed to symbolize his running low on patience, but he never had any to start with.

“Completely, no,” I answered, seeing and fearing where this was going, “and I'm not licensed, and I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I'm on my period, and anything else that is going to get me out of covering Madison's bartending shift.”