Knockout (12 page)

“You're a natural,” Schneider cooed.

Schneider kept taking pictures, pausing occasionally to pose Mada in different positions or fluff her hair. Soon Mada got out
of the hammock and pulled the camera from Schneider's hands and kissed him. Schneider wrapped his arms around Mada and licked her nipple and her moan echoed around her hut.

In the way they touched each other, Lessig could tell that this coupling wasn't new, that their desire was not concocted through alcohol or loneliness. He could tell they had touched each other before, a bunch. He gripped his spear tighter, thought about bursting into the hut and pushing it up to Schneider's throat, making the two of them explain how this had happened. Lessig watched Mada pull down Schneider's pants. She pushed him down on her floor and straddled him. While he stood there, a sharp puffing sound came from the trees and Lessig felt a sharp pain in his arm. When he looked down, he saw a blow dart sticking out of his shoulder. Before he could scream for help, his legs buckled under him and he fell face first into the sand.

W
hen Lessig opened his eyes, it was morning. He was bound, his arms and legs hog-tied to a long pole. He was bouncing up a mountain trail being carried by two Kula warriors.

“Where are you taking me?” Lessig yelled, struggling against the ropes.

The two men stared forward, stone-faced. Off in the valley below, Lessig could see trees being felled by chainsaws, bulldozers scrapping the forest floor clean. He heard chanting up ahead and he was carried into a clearing. About a hundred warriors were kneeling down in front of a stone altar. There was an idol carved in the altar that looked like some strange combination of a parrot and a pig.

“Please,” he pleaded. “I can get money. I can get you anything you want.”

Lessig was held down and lashed to the altar. A priestess lit a bundle of palm leaves and circled around him, wafting the acrid smoke around his face. She mumbled as she pointed to the
construction below, mumbled as she held her hands up to the sky in prayer.

The math wasn't hard for Lessig to do. He was being sacrificed to a god who would try to keep the bulldozers at bay, who would try to stop roads from being grated and paved, power lines being snaked from pole to pole.

“I can help stop them,” Lessig screamed to the priestess as she walked back to her hut. “Me. Not your god.”

Lessig strained against the ropes, bucked his body up and down. The warriors started to chant, pounding their spears on the ground.

“I can help you,” he screamed as the Kula surrounded his body, his words echoing off the mountain top and then returning back to where he lay.

INSIDE WORK

T
here was a tiny man mowing my lawn. Mowing the lawn was my husband David's job and when he left I let it grow. David had been gone two months now and the grass was almost as high as the birdbath. At night, I sat on my porch and drank Mexican cough syrup and marked its progress. As I drank I imagined there were huge snakes inside that vast thicket—poisonous snakes writhing around in there with their poisonous snake babies. Now there was this little guy, cutting everything down.

“Did my husband send you?” I yelled.

The man was rail thin and about five feet tall. He wore a white tank top and black jeans. It looked like he had a teardrop tattoo below his left eye, but as I got closer to him I realized it was just a teardrop-shaped piece of dirt.

“Ma'am,” he said. “I sent myself.”

I watched him as he loaded the lawn mower into his truck. He was chewing on a red cocktail straw, really working it over.
I'd seen him around here before; he cut a few of my neighbor's lawns too.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“Ronnie,” he said.

“Ronnie, you're positive no one named David Hallberg hired you for this?”

“Lady,” he said. “I saw this mess and I cut it down. And now I'd like my twenty bucks.”

I pretended to cough, and then to soothe my pretend cough I took a long swallow off my bottle of cough syrup. I was doing what any sane person would do in my circumstances—I was drinking large amounts of cherry-flavored cough syrup and interrogating anyone who crossed my path for any information they had about David.

“Did David pay you to keep quiet?” I asked. “Was that part of your deal?”

I was at least a head taller than Ronnie and much thicker in my upper body. I felt a sudden urge to pick him up and shake him until he told me the truth, but I'd done this to a couple of people over the past week and it hadn't worked out well. Instead, I handed him the picture of David that I kept in my wallet for occasions such as this.

“Is this the man?” I asked.

Ronnie studied the picture, pushed it back at me.

“Lady,” he told me, “I don't know who this guy is.”

A
fter Ronnie left, I took a nap. When I woke, I scratched under my left boob and a ballpoint pen fell out. I lifted up my other tit to see if there was anything hidden under there and a cocktail napkin floated to the ground. I looked closer at the napkin. The phrase “A high tide lifts all boats!” was written on it. I immediately called my friend Liza.

“You don't know how that stuff got there?” she asked.

“I used to hide things under my tits for David,” I told her. “He was into that. Maybe I put that stuff under there and forgot it was there. Or maybe David snuck in here last night and put it under there for me to find.”

I remembered some of the gifts I'd hidden under my tits for David. One year, there was a gold watch. Another time, a bottle of cologne. Once on Cinco de Mayo, there was a chicken soft taco. The more I thought about the cocktail napkin now, the more it sounded like David. Maybe he was surprising me. Maybe he was announcing his return by hiding things in the cracks and crevasses of my body while I slept.

“Maybe you should cool it with the cough syrup,” Liza said.

Liza was my best friend. She was recently divorced. Usually it didn't bother me that she couldn't see all the possibility and wonder I saw in the world. Lately though, I couldn't understand why she was not seeing the things I saw so clearly, all these signs that David was afoot.

“He's not coming back,” she said. “You understand that, right?”

I remembered how David had slid out of our bed in the middle of the night, how he'd stuck a Post-it note to my forehead that said “Don't hold your breath.” For the last few weeks I'd thought he was gone for good, but now there was this cocktail napkin. Now it was obvious to me that David was orchestrating his return. It made total sense.

“Oh,” I told Liza. “He's definitely coming back.”

A
few days after he first cut my lawn, Ronnie returned to cut it again. He was in his tank top and black jeans again, pushing his mower across my yard. His truck was parked on the street in front of my house, the back of it filled with twigs and brush.

“You're on my route now,” he told me.

He was so damn skinny—there were not many spots on his body to hide anything fun or important.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means I come once or twice a week and clean up your yard,” he said.

I didn't know if I wanted this service, but sometimes when I called Liza she didn't return my phone calls. She wasn't the only one—lately a number of my friends were doing the same thing. Maybe it would be nice to know there would be someone that kept tabs on me.

“Can I stop being on your route when David returns?” I asked.

“Sure,” Ronnie said. “You just tell me when you want to stop being on my route and then I stop showing up.”

T
he next day, I decided to get back in shape. First, I'd walk around the block. Then slowly, day by day, I would venture out farther and farther with greater and greater speed. Soon I'd do a 10K fun run. When David returned, he would find an improved version of me—a toned, energetic runner.

After a couple of minutes of walking around my neighborhood my tit began to itch. I reached into my sports bra to scratch it and found some Chex Mix in there. Under my other boob I found a scrap of paper that had the words “Never apologize for anything you like!” written on it. As I sat down on the curb and washed the Chex Mix down with some cough syrup, I looked at the note more closely. It looked way more like David's writing than mine.

“He's getting closer,” I told Liza.

“He's the same distance he's always been,” Liza said.

A
few days later, I woke to the sound of a lawn mower and there was Ronnie again. I handed him his money.

“Do you do inside work?” I said.

There were a number of things in my house that had started to break since David had gone and I thought it would be nice to get them fixed before he returned.

“Inside work?” Ronnie asked.

“Like moving furniture. Like plumbing and painting. Inside work.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Then come back tomorrow at noon,” I told him.

The first thing I had Ronnie do was fix my clogged kitchen sink. Then I had him paint the kitchen cabinets. While he painted, I collected all of the items that I'd found under my breasts so far and lined them up on top of my dining room table. I inspected everything very carefully, picked up each one of the notes and held them up to the light, hoping they would provide some clues for when David would return.

Later that afternoon, Ronnie ran out of paint and I gave him fifty dollars to go to the hardware store. I didn't expect him to return. I expected him to take the fifty dollars and disappear on me just like David had. I was mistaken about Ronnie though. He returned in a half hour. And besides the paint, he was holding a bouquet of wildflowers.

“This is to say thank you for hiring me to do all this extra work,” he said. “I can really use the money right now.”

I found a vase and set the flowers on my dining room table. As I watched Ronnie work, I had another idea. Maybe if David was watching me from somewhere nearby, maybe I could use Ronnie to make him jealous.

While Ronnie was painting, I snuck up behind him and slid my arms around his chest. When he spun toward me, I put my lips on his and slipped my tongue into his mouth. My eyes were trained on the front door while I kissed him. I was waiting for David to burst through into the house and throttle Ronnie for
making out with his wife, but nothing happened. The only sound I heard was the keys on Ronnie's keychain jingling as he pulled away from me.

“That was very nice,” he said, “but I probably better get back to work.”

R
onnie was supposed to help clean out my basement the next day, but I didn't answer the door when he began to knock. That morning I'd found a note with the phrase “Taking care of yourself means telling yourself thank you!” underneath my right tit. There were also some M&M's and a Marlboro Light there. I had eaten the M&M's long ago, but had tucked the cigarette back under there for safekeeping.

“Your drunk self is trying to get a message to your sober self,” Liza told me. “Can't you see that?”

I watched as Ronnie cupped his hands over the window to see inside. I sat on my couch in a spot where he could see me, but I kept my eyes shut, stayed perfectly still.

“Ma'am?” Ronnie yelled as he pounded on my door. “Are you all right?”

I watched as he walked back to his truck. I thought he'd given up, but then he walked around to the side of my house. My dining room window was open and he took out a pocket knife and cut the window screen. Then he hoisted himself up and slid his body through the window and into my house. He stood up and brushed himself off and walked over to me. When he got near, I opened my eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need help?”

I did not answer him. I did not explain anything. I just took his hand and pulled his little body closer to mine. There was a nice breeze coming in through the open window and I pulled his shirt over his head and then I unbuckled his belt. I undressed
him very slowly and very deliberately. He did not argue, he did not say a word. When we were both naked, I wrapped my body around his tiny body; I surrounded him with my arms and legs. I took this little man, I took him and I pressed him into the spots in my body where I hid myself from myself.

THE PISS TEST PLACE

M
y metal band Hymenoptera broke up so I got a job at a piss test place. They didn't piss test us to work there so during my lunch break I usually got high by the dumpster. One day, right after lunch, a girl named Julie walked in.

“I need to pass a drug test to get a job at the laser light show,” she said.

I used to work at the laser light show, but I quit because I hated all the Pink Floyd and Zeppelin they played. Sometimes when I ran out of weed I still went there to get a contact high, but I always wore earplugs so I could get my contact high in peace.

“There's this thing about my test,” Julie said. “I'm gonna fail because last night someone spiked my hard lemonade.”

Since I started working here, I'd heard many tales of woe and roofied hard lemonades. It was difficult to tell who was telling the truth and who was lying. All I knew was I'd accidentally eaten some cocaine fudge at a party a few nights before and I knew how easily something like this could happen to a trusting soul.

“I was wondering,” Julie said, pulling out two twenties from her bra and sliding them across the counter, “if you could piss for me.”

Many people tried to bribe me since I started working here, but I hadn't taken any of their money because of my excellent scruples. In the last few days though, I'd heard some chatter about Hymenoptera reforming. If that happened I'd need some extra cash to unpawn my guitar and buy my amp back from my dealer.

“Okay,” I told Julie. “Follow me.”

Julie and I went into the employee bathroom. While I was summoning a stream I caught her peeking at my junk.

“It costs extra to see it,” I said.

“How much extra?” she asked.

I hadn't charged anyone to see my junk in the last few months so I didn't know the going rate. I figured inflation had probably doubled what I'd charged last time.

“How about three bucks,” I said.

“How about two?” Julie asked.

“You drive a hard bargain,” I said.

J
ulie looked like a lady who might enjoy a longer striptease instead of just a quick peekaboo so I did an enticing, erotic jig, pulling down my boxers a little with each hip shake until my dick just sort of flopped out.

“I gave you the three-dollar performance anyway,” I told her.

“I could tell,” Julie said.

I'd worked up quite a sweat doing my dance and now Julie walked over to me and wiped the sweat from my brow with her shirtsleeve. Then she kissed me on the lips.

I'd had sex at work with Ellen, the office accountant, a few times, but Ellen was older and mostly she wanted me to say complimentary things about her ass in her husband's raspy voice, so sex with Julie was way more enjoyable.

When we were finished, I filled up Julie's piss cup and handed it to her.

“You're a lifesaver,” she told me.

A
few days later, Hymenoptera got back together. I lugged my guitar and amp over to our practice space. At first everyone was excited to see each other, but that excitement was short lived. After we started to play, our lead singer forgot the lyrics to one of our songs and the drummer threw his drumstick and nailed the singer in the back of the head.

“What the fuck?” the singer yelled.

“You need to take this shit seriously,” the drummer said.

It took a while, but the bassist and I cooled the two of them down. We started practicing again. Midway through another song though, the singer quit singing and turned to face the drummer.

“I wasn't going to tell you this,” he said, “but last week I boned Sadie.”

Sadie was the drummer's girlfriend. He immediately jumped over his drum kit and began to choke the lead singer. The bassist and I started to load up our gear.

“That lasted way longer than I thought it would,” he told me.

T
he next day when I finished with my shift at the piss test place, Julie was waiting for me in the parking lot. She had a big black dog with her.

“Your piss was bad,” Julie said. “You cost me my job.”

I figured she'd brought the dog along to attack me, so as they got closer I threaded my keys between my fingers in case I needed to stab the dog in its face.

“I'm really sorry,” I said. “What can I do to make this right?”

Julie took the dog's leash and pressed it into my hand. “You can apologize to me by dog-sitting Rancho tonight.”

I stood there while Rancho sniffed me up and down. When he got to my bag that held my weed, he started to bark.

“He used to be a drug-sniffing dog,” Julie explained, “but he retired because he has seizures.”

When he finished barking at my weed, Rancho had one of these seizures. He flopped onto his back and his legs started to shake. His dog eyes rolled back into his dog head. Soon all the shaking stopped and he popped up off the ground like nothing had happened.

“See?” Julie told me. “No big deal.”

Soon Julie left and I walked back to my apartment with Rancho. Halfway there, Rancho started to bark at a garbage can. I rummaged around and found a Ziploc baggie with a joint inside. When I stopped by the frozen yogurt place, Rancho barked at my friend Carl, who had a handful of quaaludes in his pocket.

“That dog's a goldmine,” Carl told me. “Take him to the laser light show and pretend you're a cop and confiscate everyone's drugs.”

“Good idea,” I said.

S
oon Rancho and I were standing by the exit doors of the laser light show. Whenever Rancho barked at anyone I flipped out a fake police badge and told them to hand over their drugs. After ten minutes, I'd already scored two dime bags of weed and these really hairy-looking 'shrooms. While we waited for our next victim, Julie tapped me on the shoulder.

“This is how you dog-sit?” she asked.

I noticed Julie was wearing the uniform for the laser show, the white shirt, the red suspenders. She was wearing a nametag with her name on it. She'd gotten the job even with my bad piss.

“I thought you failed the test,” I said, flicking her suspender.

“I let the manager show me his junk and I got the job,” she explained.

While we stood there contemplating each other's lies and wondering which one had done the other person more harm, Rancho had one of his seizures. I quickly knelt down and stroked his cheek and held his paw until he came out of it. I guess Julie hadn't expected me to be such a competent dog-sitter or such a compassionate human being, because when I looked up at her she had tears in her eyes.

“This job is dumb,” she said. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

Before we left, Julie went and stole some money from the cash register and then she and Rancho and I bought some frozen pizzas. We ate those back at my place. For dessert we had some leftover cocaine fudge I had in my fridge. Julie and I ate the rest of the pan and then she and I went into my bedroom and I did my enticing, erotic jig for her again and then we had a marathon sex session and then we watched the sun come up while Rancho scratched his paws against the bedroom door and whined.