Someone knocked on the door. Shane looked at it. He looked at it for a long time, until there was another knock. He got up, answered it.
Shane had moved to the apartment block a month before, hadn’t spoken to anyone else in the building save for one guy that lived a few doors down. They’d say hello when they passed each other in the hallway. He was at the door now, and he’d brought a friend.
“Hey,” he said. He wore a wide smile that showed off crooked and yellowed teeth. The friend said nothing. He didn’t smile. Looked like the strong silent type, with hooded eyes, severe features, a shaved head and hunched shoulders.
Shane nodded. “Hey.”
“How you doin today?”
“I’m fine.”
“You busy?” The guy looked beyond Shane, into his apartment. The television was on, it played an old black and white, but it was turned down low.
“No.”
The guy leaned into the doorframe, made himself comfortable. “Name’s Wilson, by the way.” He offered a hand and Shane took it, gave his own name. They shook. The other guy, the big guy, his hands were balled into fists. He didn’t offer a handshake and Shane wasn’t sure he’d blinked since the door had opened. “Hot out there.”
“That so?”
“That’s so. Hot in there?”
“It’s all right.”
“This side of the building, it’s west-facing. Give it a couple more hours, you’ll start burning up. How long you lived here now?”
“Month. Give or take.”
“Keep to yourself, don’t you?”
“Guess so.”
“You gonna invite us in?” Wilson brushed a greasy lock of hair back out of his face, slicked it to his scalp.
Shane stepped aside. “Sure.” He led them to the sitting area, turned the television off. The movie was ending. He hadn’t really been watching it. He sat on the chair and Wilson relaxed into the sofa. The big guy stayed standing, looked the room over with a curled lip like he disapproved of the décor.
“In case you was curious,” Wilson said, “my buddy here, the quiet guy, you may not have noticed him, his name’s Joe.”
Joe grunted acknowledgment.
“So tell me, Shane – young guy like yourself, on your own, what brought you here?”
“What d’you mean?”
“C’mon, man, this place is a dump. This building, it’s the kind of dump that fills its walls with lonely losers – present company excluded of course. But you don’t strike me as a lonely loser, you’ve still got some vitality about you. Let me guess, let me guess – you just had a break-up, right?”
“It that obvious?”
“It’s an educated guess. Cos the other kind of people that live here, they love drugs. And you don’t strike me as a user, either.”
“I don’t make a habit of it.”
“No, sir. Only fools do. So, the rent’s cheap and there’re always rooms available, I reckoned you had to get out of somewhere in a hurry – boom, it’s lady troubles. It’s always lady troubles.”
“That why you live here?”
“No, sir. Lady troubles have never been trouble for me. How long since you split?”
“Been a month. Right before I came here.”
“Why’d you split? She cheat?”
“No, nothing like that. Just guess when something’s over, it’s over, right?”
“Sure, that’s the way, just move on and don’t look back. But let me warn you, you stay here too long, you’re gonna end up like the losers. You hear me? You don’t want that, man. Don’t lose that spark you got, we all got it, but they, those guys, they just sit round with nothing but the walls for company and it just ebbs out of them. Get yourself back on that wagon, that pussy wagon, quick as you can, because nothing gets you over old pussy like new pussy. You got a car, right?”
Shane blinked. “Yeah.”
“Red Ford, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a sweet-lookin car, man.”
“Paint’s fading.”
“Paint don’t drive the car. Speakin of, Joe and I, we need a ride.”
“Well, like we said, I’m new here. I don’t have no bus timetable.”
Wilson laughed. “It’s barely gonna eat into your day, man. We just need a ride out to the motel by the interstate.”
“Why?”
“We gotta see a friend.”
“How much he owe you?”
“He owes us. Let’s leave it at that. Look, we’ll pay your fuel and give you fifty bucks for your time.”
Shane whistled through his teeth. “Jesus. He must owe a lot.”
“It ain’t always about money. You gonna drive?”
“Just to be clear, you ain’t offering me a job?”
“No, I ain’t offering you a job.”
“Cos I’d be flattered, but, it’s, I mean that kinda job, it ain’t for me.”
“We just need a ride, man.”
Shane looked at Joe. Joe was looking out the window. The sun shone there. Shane couldn’t remember when last he’d left the block for anything over than a trip to the grocery store. Then Joe turned, looked straight at him. Waited for him to answer the question. “Sure,” he said.
***
The air was hot. They drove with the windows down. Joe sat in the back, never spoke a word. Wilson rode up front. “Appreciate this, man.”
Shane felt the sun shining down on his arm where it hung over the side of the door, prickling the skin. Wilson gave directions. They drove for twenty minutes then, in the distance at the end of the road, Shane could see the motel sign.
“Pull in there,” Wilson said.
Shane parked the car. To their left there was a pool enclosed by a rusted chain fence. There was much detritus caught in its links. The pool itself wasn’t particularly big. It hadn’t been built to swim lengths, or even widths. Judging by the scummy surface, by the dead leaves, the used condoms and the swimming frog, the residents weren’t using it for much of anything.
Someone was next to the pool. A blonde in a one-piece bathing costume decorated with horizontal red and white stripes. A wide straw hat shaded her face and shoulders, and red-rimmed sunglasses covered her eyes so Shane couldn’t tell if she was looking back at him. She started to smile, and he guessed she was.
Wilson and Joe hadn’t noticed her. “Just wait here,” Wilson said, getting out the car. Joe followed him. “We won’t be long. Ten minutes, tops.”
“Sure,” Shane said. He watched them go up the steps to the walkway. They went halfway along then knocked on a door. A moment later it opened, and they went inside. Shane didn’t see the room’s occupant.
“Hey.”
He looked. It was the girl by the pool.
“Looks hot in there,” she said.
“Looks hotter out there,” he said.
Her legs were long, the left bent at the knee, her pink-painted toenails pointed in his direction. “I’m cool.”
“You’re half-naked.”
“Maybe that’s where you’re going wrong.”
Shane looked her over. She looked good. She looked out of place amongst all the trash, the dead bushes, and the filthy pool. She looked like she’d taken a wrong turn on her way to a photo-shoot.
Shane got out the car, went to the space in the fence where its gate should have been. “You planning on taking a dip in that thing?”
“God, no,” she said. “But this here’s the best place to catch the sun, and it’s such a beautiful day, ain’t it?”
“It’s certainly looking up.”
“And this is the only lounger in the place that ain’t been trashed or cut up.” She lay back, stretched her arms above her head then laced her fingers behind her neck. A smirk played at the corners of her mouth.
“You live here?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Your buddies there went up to see my boyfriend.”
“Oh. They friends of his?”
“Not really.”
“You know why they’re here to see him?”
“You don’t?”
“I barely know them. They just asked for a ride.”
“What d’you think they came out here for?”
“Money.”
She took one hand from behind her head, made her fingers into a gun and cocked them at him. “It’s money,” she said. “It’s always about money.”
Shane nodded, looked round, back to the room they had gone into. The door was closed. The curtains were drawn. He watched, like he expected them to step back out any moment. They didn’t. He turned back to the girl. “How long you think they’re gonna be?”
She shrugged. “Long as it takes them to finish measuring each other’s dicks. You know how it is. Y’all have gotta have a pissing contest first before you can just get down to business, right?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Sure you do. And that Wilson, he’s a big talker especially, ain’t he?”
“He sure talked more than Joe did.”
“He the big guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Never met him before. I’m guessing he’s supposed to be the muscle, supposed to scare my man.”
“Will he?”
“Hell no.”
“You see Wilson much?”
“Coupla times. He’s an asshole.”
“Seemed all right to me.”
“Then you really don’t know him.”
He looked the girl up and down, tried not to make it obvious but couldn’t help himself. He wished he was wearing shades. Her legs were long and toned, her arms likewise, and her blonde hair hung down over her shoulders. He framed her in his mind, Venus on a lounger next to a dirty motel pool.
She smiled. “What you thinking?”
“I think you got an idea.”
“I think maybe I do.”
She was flirting. He looked back up to the motel room, the door still closed and the curtains still drawn. He bit his lip. She seemed bored, and grateful for his company. Figured if he invited her to go for a ride, she was gonna say yes.
“Hey, you wanna –”
There was an explosion behind him like a crash of thunder, and the sound of glass breaking, the shards falling like rain. Shane flinched, ducked and turned, saw Joe thrown through the window. He stared as the door was flung open and Wilson leapt out, stumbled, fell out of view. He raised his head, tried to run, but a man had appeared in the doorway behind him, a big man with long hair round the side of his bald head, a handlebar moustache around his sneering mouth. He wore a wifebeater with sweat stains at the armpits, and he carried something in his hand.
Wilson tried to flee, but the man grabbed him by his hair, threw him into the railing. He wrenched his head back, pressed a knife to his neck. Wilson screamed. The man slit his throat and the scream got cut off, turned into a choking noise. Blood sprayed. Wilson slumped, hung over the railing.
Shane shook. His feet wouldn’t move. Behind him, the girl laughed. Her boyfriend, up on the railing, looked down, saw Shane. Shane’s legs came to life. He ran for his car, jumped behind the wheel. He gunned the engine, spun the wheels reversing and burned rubbed out of the parking lot. Behind him, through the open windows, he heard the girl’s laughter still.
by 
Paul Heatley
Latest posts by Paul Heatley (see all)
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Wow! Double wow!