Think, think, think.
I’ll flip. I’ll tell the authorities it was Typewriter. He was the one who killed the little girl. They’ll make me some sort of deal for my cooperation. And I can give them the Albino, the biggest cook in Minnesota. Yeah. They’ll put me in witness protection and move me to Spokane or somewhere, someplace I can get a job pouring foundations or flipping burgers, and it’ll be okay.
I take a step back from the girl. Type kicks the actual
typewriter off the kid’s face. There’s nothing left. It’s my turn to vomit.
I think about all the things I’ve touched in the house, my DNA or whatever on every surface. I think about no jury believing me. I think about terms I’ve heard on TV,
conspiracy
and
accomplice
. There’s no way I’ll get a fucking deal. They’ll want to make a case out of both of us. They’ll use this murder to champion their antimeth campaign, and instead of the commercials of kids with picked faces it’ll be a black and white of this little girl, maybe one from her third-grade class, then a picture of the crime scene, then my mug shot. I’m fucked. I’m going to die in prison.
What do we do now? Typewriter asks.
You fucking killed her, I say.
Yeah, somebody had to.
I grab his T-shirt around the armpits. I shove him hard against the wall. She was a little girl, I yell.
No.
Look.
She was going to kill us.
A hallucination. A fucking hallucination.
Typewriter looks at the mess on the floor. He’s shaking his head and I push him again and then his shaking changes direction. He crumples onto his bed. He says, But the door?
Part of the trip.
We’re silent. What is there really to say?
Shit, my bad
? I think about calling the cops, maybe the volunteering of information might look good. I pull out my phone.
What are you doing? Typewriter asks.
I don’t know, I say.
No, no, stop.
I stop. My phone’s dead anyway.
We can take care of this. Like, we can fix this, he says.
We can’t.
Yes, bro, like we’ll clean it up … and … and … like leave town, you know, like Mexico. We’ll go to Mexico. Live on the beach. Fake names and shit.
I quit listening. I’m remembering terms like
temporary insanity
and
unfit for trial
.
Typewriter keeps telling me there’s no fucking way he’s going back to prison.
I need to think. To clear my head. To not be high. The room is starting to smell like my father’s halitosis. All I see is blood. And her socks. I’m picturing the little girl’s mother coming into her room, maybe suggesting a different pair because it’s so sunny, the little girl sticking out her tongue, telling her no, these are my favorite. By now the mother is probably wondering where her daughter is. Maybe it’s time for lunch? Maybe she’s out on the driveway, in front of a two-car garage, her hand shielding the sun, calling her name, her tone playful at first, now becoming frantic.
I smell booze. Typewriter is pouring a liter of vodka onto his sheets.
What the fuck are you—I start to say. I realize what he’s doing before I finish. I want to tell him no, this is a horrible idea. The cops aren’t fucking stupid and they’ll catch us and this is only going to make things worse. But then I think that
it doesn’t matter if we tell them or not, we’ll be guilty as Arabs at airports. The rest of my life will be spent getting one in the stink, one in the mouth, on a rotating basis.
And part of me knows this is one of those moments after which nothing will ever be the same. Like out-of-body or whatever-the-fuck. Like when you can see yourself crystal fucking clear. When you know one choice will result in hooded sweatshirts and downcast eyes and running from every set of flashing cherries and how your habit will take on astronomical fury because it needs to kill out the memory of who you were. The other choice will mean being turned into a monster, having every person in America hate you, think you’re evil, and death by anal fissure in prison.
I’ve had this feeling once before—the watching-yourself-fuck-up-your-life moment. It was with KK. We’d decided enough was enough with powerlessness and unmanageability and prayers to a god we knew didn’t exist. We bought a teener. We somehow waited until we got back to our apartment. We sat on our bed. Her pale legs looked blotchy against our blue down comforter, one we’d bought together at Target. We told each other it would only be this once. We said it was a special occasion. We said we’d only smoke it. We said I love you, smoke slipping from our lips.
You have a lighter? Typewriter asks.
I watch myself reach into the pocket of my jeans. I watch myself hand over the red Bic and then study the flames along the soiled sheets, amazed at how quickly they grow.
I wonder if this—the murder, the burning of the house—isn’t just a continuation of my relapse with KK.
The posters of DJs catch on fire. Then the mattress. Smoke rises. Typewriter motions for the door, or where it used to be. We jog down the stairs, and then into the basement. I climb in his ancient Civic. He opens the garage door. The sun is absolutely fucking blinding and we pull out into a neighborhood that doesn’t know we exist. I’m looking for the girl’s mom and praying I don’t see her. I glance back at the house. The faintest plumes of smoke slip out from the upstairs window. As we’re driving away, something in the front yard catches my eye. I press my face against the window. It’s the carcass of a rottweiler.
We drive down Summit Avenue. The houses are nice and then they’re not. I tell Typewriter to go five under the whole way. He tells me there aren’t any cars anyway. I haven’t noticed. But then I do. I look around Summit. It’s just Victorian mansions with rows of evergreens like please stay the fuck away, cars parked in driveways, empty streets.
I’m so spun.
I look at the dashboard clock. It’s a quarter past ten. Maybe everyone’s already at work? We’re down Summit Hill and onto West Seventh. This is my stomping ground. Has been for a year. Strip malls with laundromats and apartments above Chinese takeouts and narrow barrooms filled with smoke and televisions, none of them flat screens. I know what this area’s supposed to look like. Busy with people standing at
bus stops and girls standing on corners and brothers spitting balloons of dope out of their mouths. But it’s not. It’s empty.
I ask Typewriter if it’s a holiday or something. He doesn’t know. I check my shirt to see if it’s still covered in blood. It is. I flick off a nugget of skull. It sticks to the dash. Nothing makes sense. I keep telling myself I’ve spent the last hundred and sixty-eight hours smoking meth, that I’m beyond delusional, beyond sane, one more awake hour away from completely breaking the fuck down.
We turn onto Marshall. I see my boy Tibbs walking down Seventh. This makes me feel better. Like things are normal, okay. Type says, Bet Tibbs is holding, could hook it up with a teener for the road.
Not trying to flee yet, I say.
Huh?
Get to my apartment. Got a few Klonopin. I need to sleep, man, like my head is bad.
Feel you, Typewriter says.
We pull over at my sublet. I get out. Stretch. I wonder where the hell everyone is. Nobody’s waiting for the bus, nobody’s driving or honking, there’s no foot traffic over at the Groveland Tap. Typewriter scans the streets too. He looks at me. I shrug.
We go around back of the split-level and it’s nothing but red chipped paint and cracked sidewalks but Rebecca gave me the tiny-ass apartment for three fifty a month, so whatever. I open the door. The house splits inside the tiny foyer, one door to the two upstairs units, one door to my dungeon of an efficiency basement. The mildew stench from the walls is at an
all-time bad. I think about complaining to Rebecca but decide against it, having smoked July’s rent.
It’s a strange feeling inside my apartment—part relief, part dread—and I wonder if that’s what everyone feels coming home. Like, yeah, I see the one piece of furniture I own, my mattress covered in unwashed navy blue sheets, and I’m like, motherfucker, I missed you. But I see nothing but dust bunnies on the scratched wooden floors—and I’m like, motherfucker, this is it. This is my life.
What’s up with those benzos? Typewriter asks.
I walk to the bathroom next to the efficiency kitchen. It doesn’t have a door. I open the tiny medicine cabinet. A toothbrush that has gone unused for weeks sits next to an Advil bottle. I pour out its contents—four beautiful Klonopin. I think about swallowing them all, the four of them spreading through me like the warmest of quilts on a January night. I run the faucet. I want to sleep and forget what happened with the umbrella-socked demon. I glance up. Something is staring back at me. I nearly scream. It’s me. My eyes are the deepest of oceanic trenches.
Give it here, Type says.
I hand him two pills and swallow mine.
I think about how much time I spend trying to find a balance between artificial moods, the equilibrium of acceleration and deceleration.
I plug my cell phone into the charger. Typewriter lies on my bed.
Get the fuck out, I say.
Bro, where am I—
Not on my bed.
But there’s no other furniture.
Sorry, not all of us have a house from our mom.
Typewriter looks at me like I’ve spit in his mouth. I feel like a dick. I say, Listen, man, I’m sorry. We need to sleep and figure out what the fuck happened, you know, like what’s real, what isn’t.
He starts to get off the mattress. I tell him it’s fine, just don’t try any faggy shit. He calls me a faggot. I tell him that was a good comeback. I lie there and my heart still thunders and I’m willing the soluble shell of the Klonopin to break open and spill its contents into my bloodstream, for my eyes to become heavy. Typewriter curls at the foot of the bed like a wary dog. This reminds me of the rottweiler. The little girl. The giggles. The little fist coming through the door. The typewriter. The flames. I picture the police there, the fire department too, Typewriter’s childhood house alive in its death, flames reaching toward the telephone poles, the electric wires connecting everything. I should call KK. Tell her I might be going away for a while. How long until they come looking for Typewriter here? I strain my ears to hear Rebecca’s TV through the floorboards. I can’t hear anything. This is odd. That fat bitch has that thing blaring at all hours of the day. I yawn, and this makes me smile. They’re working, the Klonopin. I know that when I wake up, I’ll be terrified, either because of what we’ve done, or because of what drugs are turning me into.
I wake up, not ready to. Typewriter slaps at my feet.
What?
It was real, he says.
Huh?
He points to his shirt. It’s still covered in blood. I look down at myself and see the same thing and I’m thinking, fuck my ass, what did we do? I rip off my T-shirt and throw it on the floor. I look at my pants. Smears of the little girl stain the denim.
Bro, Type says.
We need to get out of the bloody clothes. Burn ’em or some shit, I say.
He understands then, stripping down.
There’s a pile of clothes in the corner, all dirty. I pull out a white T-shirt and a pair of green sweatpants and toss them to Typewriter. I dress in jeans and a navy blue shirt, musty with cooled sweat.
Then I’m packing what little I have in a trash bag. I stuff in some clothes, my phone charger, a jacket. I’m thinking about passports, about money, about Mexico or Canada, my parents, KK, about not using the one credit card I still have because they can track those things, about maybe ditching Typewriter because one person disappearing is easier than two. I pack my toothbrush, my unopened mail. Typewriter stands at the one excuse for a window, looking up through the basement metal grate. I feel a slight craving, just a hit to
get my head straight. I wonder if Typewriter still has a shard. I ask. He doesn’t respond.
Yes or no?
He shakes his head.
What the fuck does that mean?
Still nothing and I want to bash his head in because he can be such an idiot. So helpless. So desperate. Playing the whole poor-fucking-me-my-mom-died-of-cancer junkie thing. And he’s shady as hell. Always stealing people’s scraps, shorting bags. And here he is, facing murder, staring out my piss slit of a window like he can’t get enough of the sunset.
You gonna help? I ask.
Something’s not right.
I laugh. You kidding me right now?
Look, he says.
I decide right then and there to leave him. I’ll be better off without his constant bitching, his tendency to destroy everything he touches.
Help me pack up the bloody clothes.
Chase, look.
I’ll humor him until we get out of the city, until we stop for gas. I’ll leave him while he’s paying.
I walk over to the window and look up to the street level. There’s nothing. I ask him what he’s talking about. He points. I say, Yeah, so?
Nothing, he says.
That’s a good thing.
Not one person. Nobody. When’s the last time you saw Seventh empty?
We don’t have time for this, I say.
Serious. When? Never, bro.
I look back out. I half expect to see the little girl with umbrella socks and flakes of missing face. He’s right. There’s nobody walking around and I want to tell him that it’s probably because people are at work or maybe the Twins are playing, but even as I formulate these objections, I’m countering them—nobody works banker hours on West Seventh, not one pregnant teen is waiting at the bus stop, I can’t hear the motor of a single car—and I realize that something
is
wrong.
I tell Type to go check it out.
Not going out there.
Then pack this shit up while I do it.
He tells me no. He picks at the constant scab on the left side of his jaw. He whispers something. All I catch is
apocalypse
.
Just stay here, okay? Pack up those bloody clothes so we can get the fuck gone.
Chase.
Do it.
He nods. I walk outside. At this point, I’m still hoping it’s the drugs, maybe the Albino’s latest batch was cut with a PCP derivative, that we’re spun. I stand on the sidewalk and see not one person on the street. The Groveland Tap is empty. No cars. I walk around to the front of Seventh. I’m starting to shiver because it’s like that dream when you’re walking alone and you finally realize it—your solitary venture through this life—and skyscrapers are covered in vines and the road
is buckled open like a whore’s gap and it’s just you and your stupid footsteps, the sound of your rubber soles dragging on aged asphalt.