“I’ll take care of that.”
“Well, I’m not going to do it. It’s out of the question.”
“The boy’s out of control, and I can’t do it.”
“I ain’t doing it, period.”
Suddenly she put on the poker face and upped the ante from fifty to a hundred, and then a hundred and fifty and then three hundred and then six hundred dollars. Just as quickly as she offered, I refused each sum.
“Look, I’m not just a pacifist, I’m also a coward. I freeze up in violent situations, it’s a psychological thing. Some people can get instantly mad. I get quiet and terrified.” Before the farce could continue, I grabbed for the doorknob.
“Leave here and I’ll call the police,” she screamed.
“Good, have them do it.”
“I’ll call them on you! There is a law against stealing a car.”
“What?”
“Where’s my Mercedes?” She pulled her final trump. I shut the front door.
“The car’s old. I don’t need it. I don’t need the money. If you do this little deed, I’ll sign over the title to you. Do you understand? You’ll own it.”
To own a Mercedes Benz: it sounded wonderfully unreal. For the first time I realized how Glenn was capable of being a merciless businesswoman. A Mercedes Benz, one of the classic status symbols of wealth—a working Mercedes that could legally be my own. Where I came from, you were what you drove. Typically, for the wrong reason, I meekly accepted her offer. Before any reprieves of thought could occur, she raced over to her file cabinet, located the car’s title, opened a fountain pen, and dramatically signed on the dotted line, explaining, “I’ll mail this in just as soon as the job is done.”
As I climbed the steps, I came to realize the new low to which I was sinking—quid pro quo: thrashing a kid for a Mercedes. I envisioned Helmsley’s eyes glancing down on me sadly. I couldn’t believe it. I paused on the landing, but as I listened to that heavy metal music, I decided that he wasn’t exactly a kid and I wasn’t exactly an assassin.
I knocked on his door authoritatively and waited. I decided that I would give reason a chance before brutality. I knocked again and heard a giggle, and then a splashy sound and finally, “Oh, fuck.”
“Open this minute,” I yelled, and trying the knob, I opened the door.
Junior was on his knees, carefully searching the carpeted floor. Apparently he had dropped his bong and was looking for the small wire screen filled with grass.
“Man, you made me drop my shit.”
“That’s illegal you know.”
He laughed and kept searching for the screen, which was probably the same thing I would’ve done in his position. Locating the grass-packed mesh, he restored it to the bong and after lighting up and holding it in, he extended it toward me.
“Want a hit?” he creaked, not employing his smoke filled lungs.
“I’d like to talk,” I replied as I walked across the room and lowered the volume of the stereo. I then squatted on the floor next to him.
“Shoot,” he said, exhaling and then took another hit from the bong.
“Well, this is difficult to say, but I was informed that you were rather disrespectful to your mother.”
I waited for him to reply, but he only exhaled and inhaled another hit.
“Ideally, I’d like you to apologize to your mother.” He exhaled his lungful of smoke into my face and shook his head no with a big grin. I would’ve done the same thing.
“Get this through your head,” I replied sternly “You are going to apologize to her.”
“Look coach, why don’t you let her give you a blow job and calm down.” Then peacefully he started on another hit. When I heard the bubbles gurgling in his bong, I decided that there were no short cuts, I slapped the bong out of his hands.
“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!” he hollered at the top of his lungs and jumped to his feet looking at the dead bong.
“I want you to apologize to your mother.”
“Get the hell out of my house!” he yelled back. “My father bought this house! Get out and fuck off!” He started walking across the room to pick up his bong when I grabbed him by his thin neck and threw him on his bed. “Now listen to me. You are going to apologize, understand?”
“What the hell do you care?” he asked quickly, quelling his anger, which he might’ve realized was pointless.
“I love her,” I lied angrily. “I want you to apologize to her.”
“Well, that’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard, ‘cause she can’t love. You better get that straight, right off.”
“Just apologize to her. We’ll let it go at that.”
“No, I can’t,” he replied. “I’m not as much of a liar as you or her. So the both of you can just go fuck each other.”
The kid no longer reminded me of me. He was far more principled. I stood there a moment wondering whether he would apologize to her if I gave him a hundred dollars. But I didn’t think he’d accept it. Besides, I didn’t have a hundred dollars. After a silent moment, I decided that I still wanted the car and this kid’s pride, which stood in the way, was just too weak a thing. “Are you going to apologize?”
Mimicking me, he stood up, crossed his arms, inhaled, and replied with an assumed lisp, “For the last time, coach, no!” I couldn’t just hit him. I partly admired him. So I walked right up to him and shoved him onto the bed. He bounced off it and lunged at me. I had about fifty pounds on him, so I shoved him to the floor, pinned his arms around his back and held him there. “Are you going to apologize?”
“I’m gonna kill you,” he seethed with the little air he could muster. I didn’t want to hurt him but I had to break him.
“HELP!” he started screaming. I clenched his arms behind his back with one hand and with my other hand I gently covered his mouth so that he wouldn’t yell.
“I want you to nod yes when you’re ready to apologize,” I explained carefully as he squirmed.
He twisted and kicked and tried biting my hand. With the hand that I had used to gag him, I clamped tightly over his mouth. Desperately he tried breathing through his nose. Leisurely I got around to pinching his nostrils. Then I wheeled my body around so that I was fully on top of his collapsing and ethical lungs. I could see a drowning look in his eyes as his body writhed and twisted. As his smothered face turned redder and redder, I felt my
conscience shrivelling tightly until it was just a dry little pit inside of me. Time slowly passed, and I realized that there was no worse sound than gagged pain. Finally his head whipped up and down; he was ready to apologize. I helped him up to the edge of the bed where he caught his breath and stared despondently at the floor like someone who had just been violated. After a moment, I watched him calmly rise and tug off his shirt, then he opened the top drawer of his cabinet. I thought he was replacing his sweaty T-shirt, but then he suddenly turned around. His arm was over his head and a long knife was plunging down.
“You’re dead,” he said and dove dizzily at me. Snatching a pillow off his bed, I shoved it out and felt a stabbing deep in the cushion, which I think he did deliberately for effect. Before he could recoil, I grabbed his elbow and twisted it behind his back. The impaled pillow fell to the floor, and I kicked it across the room next to the bong. He looked up at me calmly, probably expecting me to be civilized about the whole thing. But in a single rehearsed football motion, I bowed low, grabbed him around the knees, hoisted him in the air then threw him headlong onto the floor. After the big bang, he curled up in the corner and started crying painfully. Yanking him out to the middle of the floor, I shoved him on his back, uncurled his arms and sat on his chest.
“Get the fuck off me!” he screamed. I hit him and hit him again and again and again, and soon I was frenzied and couldn’t stop. The screams and cries for pity, the begging and blood, all that background crap didn’t obstruct that lustful lava of cruelty that spewed out. I lost control and didn’t stop until my hands were moist and my arms trembled.
In complete exhaustion, he was cowering, trying to shove his head under the bed frame, holding his hands over his face. I pulled him out and saw his nose bleeding; both his eyes were swelling and I thought I broke his nose.
“Apologize, yes?”
“No. Fuck no!”
Taking several deep hard breaths, I jumped on him and swung him to the floor. He obeyed all force without resistance. I held his arms in a full nelson and rested my mouth just above his ear. Calmly, in a throaty whisper, I said, “When I’m done and out of here, you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to forgive yourself for what you let me do now…”
“ALL RIGHT! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He started screaming and flaying his arms and legs so convulsively that I thought he was having a convulsion. I jumped off him, terrified that I had done something irreversible. But when he rolled under the bed, I realized that he was even more petrified than I.
Grabbing the kid by his collar, I pulled him out, led him into the bathroom, and said, “Wash.” Now that the problem had been repaired, I was returning the goods nice and clean. All that remained were the red marks that by tomorrow would be swollen into blue and black bruises and then they would fade. I took some nice clothes out of his closet and put them on the bed. When he came out of the bathroom cleaned, I pointed at the attire and said, “Dress.” He moved clumsily and drunkenly. Holding his collar, as if I were walking a big dog, I took him downstairs to his inspector.
“Glenn,” I casually called out when we hit the bottom landing. “Your son would like to have a word with you.” I plopped him down on the sofa next to me.
“One second,” she called back from out of the kitchen, completely unaware of the pain and violence that had occurred.
While waiting for her, I took a cigarette from a crystal bowl sitting on an end table. Clipping it with my lips, I realized that the cigarettes in the jar were only part of the decor, like a bowl of wax fruit, offering only the illusion of generosity I smoked the stale tobacco nonetheless and exhaled the smoke over the kid. He sat
painfully straight, a pride to his trainer. Soon the mom entered and looked at her boy, “Yes?”
“Go ahead,” I prompted him.
“I’m sorry.”
“All right,” she replied curtly.
He rose to go but I quickly caught him. I wanted Glenn to get her money’s worth. “Sit down,” I told him. “What are you sorry for?”
“For being mean to my mother.”
“And now are things going to change around here?”
“I’m going to do as she says from now on.”
“Good boy. Now say good night to your mother and run along.”
“Good night, Mom.”
Glenn arose and gave her son a proper peck on the cheek. “I don’t like having to go through this. We’re going through tough times, both in our own way, and both have certain rules to obey. All I ask is to be treated with the same respect that I give you. Is that unreasonable?”
“No,” he shook his head expressionlessly Nothing she could ask would be too unreasonable after our reality session upstairs. I watched him return to his room and I couldn’t imagine what he would do once he got up there. When the Romans destroyed Carthage, leveled its buildings and enthralled its people, they founded a final form of peace. However, when Napoleon dictated terms at Tilsit, peace only lasted until one side was strong enough to overpower the other. I wasn’t sure which kind of peace this would be, but that wasn’t my job. The real bruises wouldn’t be fully visible until tomorrow, and by then I’d be long gone. I had earned a nice automobile, Glenn would have to worry about the rest. As soon as all was still and I was sitting across from Glenn, I stubbed the decayed cigarette and announced, “Now if you’ll just give me the title, I’ll be on my way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m getting the hell out of here. I did what I agreed to do and now I’m leaving.”
“Look, I insist that you at least have a drink.” While speaking, she arose and went behind the bar and poured some wine. Soft music was audible and the lighting was indirect. She had a drink and handed me one.
“It’s a Chardonnay from Sonoma Valley,” she said, and I watched her take a tiny sip. I downed the drink, went over to her rolltop desk and started searching for the signed title.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but I think she knew.
When I found it, I realized that she hadn’t signed my name to it, she had only gone through the motion.
“What the fuck is going on, Glenn?”
She snatched the title out of my hand, shoved it down into her bra, and childishly hid behind the sofa. I jumped over the sofa and pushed her up against the wall. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “I just want you to stay.”
“I didn’t tell you this, but a friend of mine, his name was Helmsley, he committed suicide the other day by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
She didn’t say a word, then she pulled the title out of her bra. Going to the desk, she signed it and handed it over to me. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars to spend the night. You can sleep in your own room.”
“You know that guy, Adolphe, who was cheating on you? I’m no better than him,” I replied. “I cheated on my girlfriend. Her name was Sarah and she threw me out of the house.” Silence, and then resignation. When she finally gave me the title, I grabbed my jacket and left the house.
At night
you have to wait forever for a train, so I took a cab over the bridge, up Church Street, and through West Broadway. Janus wasn’t home, so I went over to Ternevsky’s bar looking for a sufficient cure. Nothing was as potent as his ashtray, which was filled with Thai stick. I lit up and faded away.
The next morning, I had this strange and tender dream; it was actually more of a sensation. I was slipping through a warm, slimy ooze and although I could breathe I was entirely immersed. There was no claustrophobia. In fact, I felt as if I was speeding toward some strange liberation. I was
rising high and higher, fast and faster…. Laughter interrupted me: I was laughing and slowly pulling out of my subconscious state, the oozy warmth was part of me: I was ejaculating into Janus’s hand.
I slithered out of bed. As I dressed, she watched me with eyes so clear. “I honestly like you and I’m attracted to you. When I saw you this morning, you were tossing and turning; I just wanted to comfort you.”