Rap, rap, rap. The television flickers silently with a film I have never seen while my wife toes silently downstairs. Rap rap. The door rattles and opens and I hear hushed chatter and then he enters. “Long time poker,” Freddy grins to me over the couch, and then the three of us hear our eldest son rustle under his bed covers.
“Sshh,” my wife says and holds her finger up to his lips in a manner that only past lovers can sanction. “Come in,” she says, once satisfied with his demeanor.
“Brian. Susan.” Freddy steps over the threshold and past us into the living room. He attempts to make himself comfortable on our couch but soon gives up to fidget in the corner.
“It’s late, man.” I haven’t seen him in years and the thoughts of him coming back and I don’t like how they look. He doesn’t seem to care either way. But he gives me the floor to which I can’t refuse.
“Susan, can you excuse us?” Uncertainty tugs me into doors meant to remain closed.
“Excuse me?” She is flipping through her memory book too. I search her eyes, but she is looking at him instead. She relents and goes upstairs, dodging the parts of the stairs that creak. Freddy and I find ourselves face to face five years later, sniffing each other like wolves from a former litter.
“I never liked your hair poker. It always reminded me of an old lady. And this house,” he shakes his head, “isn’t the good one.” He smiles without humor and puts both hands on his hips to show me his shoulders are still as broad as a truck.
“What do you want, Freddy?” I can’t believe he found me. He has put on forty pounds since I’ve last seen him, which resides in his stomach and jowls—which haven’t touched a razor in a week or so.
“I need your help tonight.” Our history dictates that his visit couldn’t be anything else. “It’s a small job shouldn’t take longer than the night.” He rakes his hand through his hair and stares at my family photographs with contempt. “And then we’re even.”
“How even?” He rubs his hands together and separates them as if brushing our history from them.
My wife’s adjustment upstairs resounds with disappointment. The midnight caller has been a long-held fear that constituted our relationship. We never expected another foundational element to test it. That had been a mistake. I tread carefully, thinking about the good years with our toddlers, Steve and Barry. The trips to Spain and Greece, our Christmas’ with her family, that kind of stuff. And the extent of my promises to myself and others. Does my obligation to him override mine to my family just because it predates it by a couple years? Susan is shaking her head in disgust either way. “I can’t believe you. We have some money. We could just pay him”. We both know it doesn’t work like that. My mouth catches the side of her face, and then I exit our home, not considering writing Freddy a check.
A guy named Bruce twitches next to me, and the driver calls himself C, but I feel like he is lying to me, which returns that uneasiness that I used to think was my edge. “So Danny, that guy this is all about” Freddy’s head swivels to the back to make sure I am listening to him. He is sweating already. It’s just like old times.” You know our friend. He’s at this party where this Jimmy cat hangs out. It’s not a rave or anything, but it’s not a birthday party, either. And then someone hands him something, and he is getting on one like we used to.” Bruce grunts and nods at the points so I assume he had been the source. I don’t ask because I couldn’t stand the sight of him the first time I saw him, and further attention would intensify that.
“…out of nowhere, Danny realizes that this is the Jimmy who owes him some money. Not a lot mind you. But enough that you wouldn’t forget the details about it” He winks at me, and all I can think is that no one loans a raver money not to buy drugs or to play cards.
“…he is peaking so he doesn’t want to fuck his high up. But he had locked eyes with Jimmy and understood that Jimmy had recognized him. Jimmy’s not moving on him but Danny sees the guys with him knows what’s up. To head it off, Danny asks him outside to talk. But in the alleyway, and we don’t know how or when but a brick materializes in Jimmy’s hand and he cracks Danny right over his fucking head. Almost killed him.” He looks over to Bruce.
“That’s how it happen. I was about the grab the cocksucker but his man pulled a burner on me. Said I could steal him but that’s it.” They exchange a sewn-up look containing information not meant for me, and Freddy returns forward, mumbling something to C. The whole story sounds like a lie to me.
“Three minutes away.” C retrieves a handgun he had sandwiched between himself and the seat for the entire ride. He passes it to me over his shoulder.
“I am sure you have used one before.” C states.
“Of course.” I release the clip, hold it to the window to check for bullets, and then stuff the magazine back into the grip. I slide the barrel back and flick off the safety like the gun master taught me at the ranges. I try to act confident, but all I can think is that none of this will go well.
“Ready?” C asks. The car pulls to the curb, and Freddy, C, and Bruce tug black masks over their heads. Bruce hands me a mask that I pull over my skull and tuck under my shirt.
“Let’s go,” Freddy says. The four of us jog a block southwards and down some concrete steps until we reach the top of the intersection next to a large water tower. The wind feels laced with razor wire that shreds every ounce of warmth from me. There is a white three-story house that Freddy points to, and the four of us run into the alleyway shared with what looks like a fraternity home. Freddy reaches out and palms the door handle, and wriggles it open.
We file in after Freddy and to an empty well-lit kitchen. No peep is heard throughout the house. My .357 Taurus is pointing at everything, just like a video game, but I can find only a grateful dead poster and an empty lazy boy to point at. Fleeting footsteps spin me around to see Freddy and C disappear down a hallway dimly lit. Bruce takes off upstairs, and I follow with reluctance. We check the bathroom, find no one, and then split up to check the bedrooms at the end of the hall. My gun enters first, and I go down to one knee in case I have to shoot someone. I scan left to right, waiting for someone to shoot, but the room is empty. Then I hear pop, pop, and then another pop seconds later, pulling the pair downstairs.
Bruce and I are in the doorway, looking over a blonde-haired hippie guy dead in his chair. C is beside him with his brains coming out of a hole in his head; he doesn’t look alive to me, either. Freddy has his Colt .45 pointing at the ground, and a black school bag slung over his shoulder. When he turns to us, the eeriest thought presents itself to me, and I wonder if I will make it out of there alive. My hand tightens around the butt as my finger curls around the trigger. But he only says, “Let’s go,” and pushes himself through Bruce and me to the exit. Bruce gives me a look I cannot decipher, and we follow him to the car. Soon the three of us are driving on back roads, seemingly in the direction we came. Nobody is talking. Freddy doesn’t mention anything that had transpired to me even after he lets Bruce out by a trailer park. Then he lets me out, and I somehow make it inside. Then I am looking at Freddy’s car idling at the stop sign at the corner of my house–my father’s old shotgun in my hand–the exhaust from his tailpipe feels like my breath. He waits for dawn to drive away, leaving me uncertain about my future.
A month goes by, and no cop or criminal contacts me about what happened. The story had passed through the weekend’s news cycle in a typical fashion and never rears itself again. I don’t leave the house and spend my days peering out the window, waiting for Freddy or some kind of end to come.
“You need to call the cops,” Susan insists again.
“No, no, no,” I keep repeating, so she doesn’t press me for more details; the bags under her eyes tell me she is beyond impatient. She enters the sunroom to watch her Chinese language videos, hoping to speak fluently one day. Moments later, she saunters back through the living room, conversing in the language with some imagined human. And then she says, “the boys are at their auntie’s house.”; she hasn’t left the kids alone with me since that night. I nod, waiting for her to break the ice between us, but we both choose ourselves. I don’t know what a confession would even look like at this point and fool’s logic tells me that it is better for everyone if I remain silent. Yet, every cabinet opening and closing seems like another missed opportunity to clear the air, which is thickening to a choke point.
“I am going to Debbie’s for scrabble night.”
“Weren’t you just there?” I can see the face on the back of her head tighten. I wonder when they started and how much longer I have in the house.
“That was last week. We get together every week now,” Susan’s skin flushes, and at that moment, I can tell Susan is mustering the courage to kick me out of the house: She wants to say to me that I am despicable and that I blew it and that whatever I owed Freddy could have been paid with a check that night. She doesn’t, though. She just looks at me with an air of disappointment. Her reddening diminishes and her skin returns to that cream color every photographer from Russia to California wants to photograph. Then she shrugs and says, “Can you just go to the market and pick up some groceries for the boys?”
I am totally lost in the market. I am like a tee baller needing the coach to point me toward first base. The cart in front of me has two gallons of milk thirty minutes past arrival but nothing else resembling groceries. The fruit and vegetable stand contains every leafy green in season and many apple varieties that I recognize my boys eat. The thoughts from that night infiltrate everything I do, so I drift through the stands lifting and inspecting apples as if that’s all there is to do.
And it’s in the forgetting that I realize the guy staring over the fruit stand at me had been following me around the store. He’s wearing a windbreaker and a pair of jeans that says he’s not from around here. His hair is thick as a broom and is brushed away from the temples revealing his greying roots. “He just wants to talk,” he says, taking the milk from my cart to the self-checkout and purchasing it. He then hands it back to me. “Follow me, Brian.”
We take the first exit off the highway and onto a street whose name has mostly peeled off, leaving only the letters Go remaining on the sign. The sign tells me things I already knew, and I wish I didn’t park inside his car near the dumpster—undoubtedly my new home. I exit and am careful not to lock my car if I have to run, drawing a chuckle from him. I close the building’s door behind us.
The bowling alley is low-lit and contains a pervasive emptiness that is total. The only lights shine above each bowling pin lane and a bar where the bartender sets up for the day, but I couldn’t pay him to look at me. “Would you like a drink?” the handler asks.
“Diet Coke.”
“Like a soda?” he snarks; dignity makes me turn my head away. We shuffle down the empty aisle you see run parallel to every bowling alley across America and through the doors. An older man wearing a blue button-up sits by himself. For some reason, I pictured either Freddy or Bruce hanging up while the other standing there. But it is only him holding one of the bowling pins. He gestures for me to sit down next to him, so I do so.
“60,000 dollars isn’t a lot of money when you’re talking the street value.” He adjusts his seat but never removes his eyes from me. His language sounds familiar. “But there’s no definitive way to calculate the cost of a bad move. At least not in terms of money.” I am not entirely keen on his elucidation, but I understand that my life will be different afterward. That month of waiting had only prolonged the inevitable. It’s one of those things you never allow yourself to fully see in an attempt to cheat fate, which it never does.
“Your worth, about what, 25 grand? Maybe 30 tops.”
I nod affirmative and run a query on everyone who owes me, which comes back null. I am a ghost stuck between worlds, I realize. “I can—.” He shakes me off.
“Let’s just say you know someone who could loan you the rest of the money. And then you bring the money here to me. What does that do for me? Do you see? It doesn’t do much in more ways than one.” I look over my shoulder to see if the handler is creeping behind, but I don’t see him anywhere. The middle age man laughs. “You’re not hearing me.”
Then he paints a picture of the next fifty years that shows me these kinds of backrooms making decisions of various magnitudes. But only if I play along now. His eyes tell me I am beginning to understand. Then the handler magically appears with my diet soft drink. “Thank you,” I say.
“My name is Chenko.” The old man extends his hand to me. We start walking.” People around here call me Ivan the Terrible.”
“I am Brian. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir.”
“Hey, Brian. I’m Paul. It is nice to meet you.” The handler shakes my hand and, for that moment, basks in the resolution of an agreed direction. “Think of this as debt riddance plus one.” I don’t ask them about the other two.
Ivan shakes my hand once more and pats me on the back. “This is like anything else. Like any business in America. You start on the bottom and work your way up.” He gives me a meaningful look coupled with closed lips and then slips back into the bowling alley like he knows I won’t see him for a while, if ever. The door locks Paul and me in the parking lot, noting each other.
“You will be like me.” Paul turns and points to his clothes and then his Mercedes. “But we won’t ever be Ivan. That’s just this world” Paul slaps me on the arm after shaking it again as if we both agreed I surrendered to his fate. The only thing I am thinking is what’s next for me. “Take your milk home and put it in the refrigerator; we will take it from there.”
I take the wrong exit and make a giant circle back to the highway that takes us ten minutes out of the way. His impatience wiggles the cable between us that remains tight until I am home looking at the pictures of Steve and Barry on the mantle. The argyle throw I use to cover myself on the couch is stripped of its essence, and my cat patches rubs against my leg like I am alive. Even the greasy microwave handle presents itself sullenly for a goodbye. Upon exiting and seeing Paul parked on the street, habit draws my attention to the house to see the curtain close on my bedroom window. I pause to witness it again, but nothing happens.
“Can you believe this?” Paul says, “It’s like this storm cloud is following us around.” I remember my cards perfectly: A pair of nine red and a nine clover on the flop. The five and Ace of Spades didn’t help me, but I checked Chin’s raise betraying nothing but a patient call. Then the five of clubs fall, and I have my full boat. I check again. He doesn’t know what I have, I think. He has two pairs, aces and fives, and a flush draw. Then the river produces Queen of Spades. The dark lady is enough for him to suck in my remaining chips. And then he shows me his pocket fives, and the only thing I remember is crawling into the front seat of my Trans Am and dying. Freddy had been chasing me ever since.
We park in a cut mouth at the top of “Happy Valley Mobile Court.” A trailer park sunk into the rural landscape’s pines that contains the county’s highest and lowest points. Paul had slipped on a bulletproof vest that bulged from his coat and those yellow-tinted glasses that make everything appear brighter. “You got any opioids?” he laughs as we begin walking down the trailer court road. “Depressing, isn’t it?” I nod and then wave to an old lady washing dishes in front of the sink window. We stop suddenly behind a couple of pine trees.
“You see the brown trailer with the white trim over there?”
“Yeah”
“Our guy is in there.” He pauses for a moment and searches my face for something he doesn’t find. “We aren’t talking to him.”
“He doesn’t expect us?” I ask reflexively, and it feels appropriately hollow.
“It would be a first if he didn’t.” As if noticing my hesitation, he says, “You got balls, Brian, but this is the only way.” There is another way I think and feel the .45 in my hand, but he sees my thought too and smiles to let me know he does. Then I wonder if he gets me here in the rain like some dog if I twitch unexpectedly?
I hear him reaching into his jacket as I rap on the white door, thin enough to belong on a camper. I can run, but there is no way Paul is missing from this distance. Instead, I burst in and started squeezing the trigger like a sucker blinded by the dark.
Just clicks, so I run.
“Where are you going?” Paul laughs as I scramble down the hall for windows that aren’t boarded up. His hysterics allow me time to run into the bathroom. There is a small book-sized vent above the shower but nothing else resembling a way out. I feel the floor buckle as he ambles toward me. “This is already history,” Paul says, “Your wife is on her way to identify the bodies.” The ring of his truth fails to persuade me, and I muster the will to survive. He is on top of me, and the bathroom walls have entombed me inside. Then I feel the floor buckle again, look at the toilet, and, from some divine instinct, yank it up with everything I got. The breaking wood and linoleum draw his gunshot as if my idea materializes as a reality to him. It shatters the porcelain lid. “You piece of shit,” he shouts and fires again. He kicks at the door, and it bust opens just from that once. The toilet is heavy enough that he must force himself past it, and he hovers over the hole that I scamper through to the trailer’s dirt.
The ground is wet and cold on my hands and knees. Paul fires one shot from frustration, but he doesn’t pursue me. I punch through the skirting, sprint into the woods, and end up near where we had parked. He walks past me like I am a tree and calls someone, has a brief discussion, and then drives away. Sirens sound in the distance; I don’t know if they are inspecting the trailer because I jog down the highway into the wet night.
I enter a motel lobby and try to leave when I see idling lights in the car parking lot. “Is there a back exit?” I ask the clerk, who merely points to a door behind him as if this is a common occurrence. The car circles around, and I dart into the woods until the car disappears.
Walking into the blueing morning sky, cold and waterlogged, I find a Denny’s, and I order eggs, pancakes, and bacon and gobble them up. Then an Uber takes me twenty miles out of town, where I walk an additional three miles before purchasing a hotel for the week. Watching pro wrestling, I work up the courage to accept that Freddy’s double cross cost us our lives. I feel gutted at my foolishness and know I must part with my family before something happens to me.
I skulk around my home until it becomes clear that no one is watching it from the outside. The police have either come and gone, or the bad guys figure I am long gone by now, or they have decided not to give a shit for the moment. I supposed someone could be inside, but I didn’t have the energy for misfortune and knock on my door more from exhaustion than bravery.
“Hey,” Susan answers the door. She seems surprised to see me and lets me in before I ask if anyone is there. I had pictured the house feeling different or foreign like it did when I left it, but it feels warm and homespun with love and affection. It breaks my resolve completely.
“I totally fucked up.” I blurt, unsure if I will cry or not or to the extent of for whom it would be about. My wife’s eyes are filled with sorrow and wisdom. “I barely survived myself. Freddy’s probably dead” There is no point in saying more, but I think she has a good idea by now.
“Of course he is, Brian.” She wraps her arms around me, stifling my cry.
“What the hell am I going to do?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t,” Susuan says, shaking her head. “You’re alive though.” She pours me a cup of coffee.
“I should have paid Freddy.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” We both know this is goodbye. I wish I had better words for her, but all the apologies rushing forth sound cheap and rehearsed. Upstairs to my bag severs our life together. I am stalling, and she knows it. “Just take the mountaineering pack,” she says, stuffing the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into the side pouches.
Exiting our home, I kiss her like I am the hero. “Is this forever?” I ask her.
“Forever right now.” She hugs me goodbye, and then I return to the drizzle of my recent events.
[ Image Credit : Photo by Maxim Berg on Unsplash ]
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