Black Gum (4 page)

VESTMENTS

We ate a couple rolls each and met up with Shane at Last Call. Machine gun music in the jukebox. Rednecks and metal kids and women in glitter.

Charlie pointed at a woman in a halter top. “Big titties,” he said.

“Big titties,” we echoed.

Shane’s pupils were huge. He said, “Picture me like this. Picture me reaching enlightenment.”

“Like, dying?” Charlie bounced in place in his chair.

“Nah, like, picture me as this old ass monk. In all the vestments.”

“The fuck is a ‘vestment?’”

“Like a robe and I’m bald and shit.”

We pictured it. A woman in short-shorts walked by. Charlie said, “Shelf booty.”

“Shelf booty,” we echoed.

“I guarantee you that I could meet the Buddha. He could come down and talk to me and there’d be gold light and shit and me and him would go out into a garden and I’d feel at peace with fucking everything. I guarantee you this: even if that was the case, if a hoodrat nigga like you came to me with some of this shit, I would ingest it post haste and run slamdancing down the halls of my monastery.”

Charlie said, “I have no idea what the fuck you just said. But I am higher than a motherfucker.”

“Me too,” Shane said. “Me too.”

A woman in a sweater and mom jeans leaned over the bar. We all tilted our heads.

Charlie took a sip of beer. “I’d hit it.”

“I’d hit it,” we echoed.

MALKUTH

We invited everyone we knew to the crib that night and it was off the fucking chain in that motherfucker I am telling you right now. Shane decided that his gums needed a touch up and everyone stood around geeking and some of them had the red Solo cups with the Sprite and shit in them and they were seeing the people in the shadows worming their way through the spackle in the ceiling. That sound, that sound was something else, that sound makes me gag to this day, the needle hitting bare pink gum and flooding over. I wonder how much fucking ink he swallowed in those sessions, I wonder how toxic it was, and I wonder if that was why he was the way he was. A kid with long hair and an acoustic guitar sat on the arm of the couch and played songs for the girls until his gun slipped from the back of his jeans and he retrieved it and took one of the girls back to the room. A big son of a bitch that I’d never seen before talked shit in the kitchen and stood on his head and poured beer into his face and everyone laughed and carried on. Kenny was there, too, fucking Kenny. We fucked with that kid throughout high school, we were fucking merciless, we’d be out on the soccer field that no one used for soccer by the turnaround where the kid with the beamer took his girlfriends and we’d put Kenny in a shopping cart because Kenny didn’t have a family that cared about him, he had a dad and his dad was a real piece of shit but Kenny was small and sad and so we pushed him in this shopping cart right into an open port-a-john that tipped over and spilled everywhere and he was covered in it and we fucking laughed. That night we were digging into the speed and beer, I love the way a half-empty box of Coors feels when you reach into it when it’s sitting there on the floor and you can feel the cold air still in it like whatever the opposite of a tomb is, and then it’s even colder when you get the beer itself. But that night the boy with the long hair and the gun took the girl out of the room and the girl he was with discovered that while they were busy Kenny stole the girl’s purse and so Shane decided we needed to do something about this. He called up Kenny’s friend Damon who gave him up right away, told us he’d be at this hotel room holed up. We went into Charlie’s room and he opened his drawer and lifted up the snake coil of fake ass chains and yelled “I got chains on chains nigga!” and then beneath those was a pile of bandanas, a hodgepodge, ICP and Peanuts and a blue paisley one and one from Chili’s and one from Disney World. It’s at that point that Shane took me aside to the guest room and he told me that he had a spell that would protect me and I was so gone there was three of him. He drew a pentagram on the wall and did a chant and I only remember the word “Malkuth” and then he slapped me on the shoulder and said, “heathens” and suddenly I saw the pentagram on the wall and it was on fire but it gave no heat. I said, “heathens” and I felt the last little bit of who I was fall asleep. And five of us, Shane and Charlie and the new me and the acoustic man and the big son of a bitch, we piled into the big boy’s truck and off we headed. We slapped on the bandanas and banged on the hotel door but he wouldn’t answer and we had a bat and the door opened quick and the purse dropped out and we grabbed it and piled back in the truck and tore off. We got the girl her purse back but it was missing the wallet and the phone. Shane and I ran out into the field out there and we didn’t have any shirts and we shouted “heathens” and the moon wasn’t even full that night.

MORNING AGAIN

Later that night when it was morning again I got a text message from my wife. My eyes were shaking so hard my temples hurt but I pursed my lips and stared.

It said, “I hope you are doing well. I miss you. I worry about you. Do you remember when we were younger and I was leaving? We stood by the van until it got so late. I just want you to know that you’ll always be my soulmate. I love you.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I put my phone under the bed and tried to sleep.

The room turned blue with the dawn.

HARD

IN THE

PAINT

When I woke up, Shane was exercising in front of the TV. One of those Wii fitness games. He held the controllers at his side and pretended to jump rope.

I still had my Peanuts bandana tied around my face.

Charlie was in the kitchen cooking breakfast.

The game dinged and told Shane he did a good job.

Charlie came out of the kitchen with a skillet and picked up a plate off the end table and licked it clean. He slid the eggs from the skillet onto the plate and handed them to Shane.

The tattooed man sat down across from me and held out the plate. “Eggs?”

I thought I might throw up. I shook my head.

“Gotta have some protein.”

From the kitchen: “I’ve got some protein for you in my nuts.”

Shane frowned. “Don’t be gross.” He looked at me and chewed slowly. Finally: “You don’t do this much, do you?”

“What?”

“Go hard in the paint. We go hard in the paint. You don’t go very hard in the paint, do you?”

“Recently, yeah. But no, I guess not.”

“The thing about going hard in the paint--”

From the kitchen: “Quit fucking saying that.”

“You need to hydrate.”

Charlie brought some water. “He’s right. Drink.”

I drank it.

Shane said, “Eat an egg.”

“No thanks.”

“One egg.”

“I’ll fucking puke.”

To Charlie: “Hey, do you still have that whey stuff?”

From the kitchen: “Yeah.”

“Mix this man a smoothie.”

Charlie brought me a glass of water mixed with whey powder. Chunks floating in it. I closed my eyes and drank the whole thing and focused on not gagging.

Shane finished his eggs and set the plate down. He leaned forward and looked at me.

I said, “What?”

“The cops would have come by now, if they were going to at all.”

I felt sick again.

“You don’t have to worry. Why would they call? They stole from us.”

The two of us sat in silence for a long time. Charlie in the kitchen. Shane just staring at me.

“Jesus Christ. What?”

“I’m only just learning this, so I’m having trouble figuring it out.”

“Figuring what out?”

“Your aura.”

From the kitchen: “Your aura is gay.”

“Don’t be rude.”

“You have the aura of a gay man.”

“I’m serious. I can’t tell if you’re a dark red. If you’re a dark red, that means you’re a sexual being.”

Charlie started doing the dishes. Over the sound of the faucet: “Please stop hitting on my friend.”

“How did you meet my cousin?”

I felt uncomfortable. He didn’t blink.

“From school,” I said. “We’ve known each other since school.”

“I’ve never seen you here.”

Over the sound of the faucet: “He’s been married and shit.”

“Is he a deeply sexual person?”

A pause. “He’s a dude.”

Shane made a noise and leaned back in his chair. “It might be more of a clouded red. That means you’re a deeply angry person. Like, anger that you almost can’t control.”

Charlie said, “Not bad,” and I said “That’s true.”

“But…there’s also a little bit of dark blue. Navy blue. You don’t know what the future holds. You want to control the present moment. You’ve lost that control. It’s like a blue going into a red, like a…”

Charlie: “Like a Fruit Roll-Up.”

Shane snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Like a fucking Fruit Roll-Up.”

I said, “Are you a fortune teller? Is that what you do?”

Shook his head. “I don’t know the future. If I knew the future, I would already be living in it. What do you do?”

“Nothing, now.”

“What did you do?”

“I worked in the mall.”

He nodded.

I said, “What color is Charlie’s aura?”

Shane said, “Charlie’s aura is pink.”

Charlie shut the faucet off. “You’re gay.”

“He’s gifted. But it can grow dark. Deceitful.”

“What’s your aura?”

“I’m indigo. I can see the other worlds.”

“Like the future, then.”

“No, just other worlds. Sometimes they’re ahead of us, sometimes they’re behind. Like, for example. Me and a buddy had a trunk full of hydro and we were coming in from California. I had this vision. Came to me clear. It was Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door. I brought them in and gave them tea. So I tell my buddy, we have to dress like Jehovah’s Witnesses. He thought I was nuts. But we did, and on the way here, it was really snowy, icy, and we drove our car into a ditch. The cops came by and saw us there and saw that we were godly, and they helped us out of the ditch. Never searched the car.”

“That sounds like telling the future to me.”

“If I knew the future I’d know that we would crash and if I knew that I’d already be crashing. It’s not knowing the future. It’s reading the messages.”

Charlie sat down and picked up a bong and packed the bowl. “Don’t listen to him.”

“You were married.”

I got quiet.

“Now you’re not?”

“I’m still married.”

Shane reached for the bong. Charlie gave it to him, still holding the smoke in his lungs. “You know what you’re telling me?”

My brain wasn’t moving quickly enough. I just shrugged.

Shane inhaled. Let it out. “You should go back to your wife and apologize for whatever you’ve done.”

“I didn’t--“

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s what you
should
do.”

The room was quiet. The videogame asked us if we were ready to jog in place.

“I don’t know you,” I said.

“That’s true,” he passed me the bong. “But, I think I know you. I know what you should do. But you’re not there yet. And besides. You’re a fucking heathen now. You don’t work?”

“No.”

Shane got up and came back with a duffle bag. I coughed out the smoke. He unzipped the bag and brought out a giant mason jar full of weed on the coffee table. A Ziploc fat with sheets of acid. Another pregnant with ecstasy.

“This is what I do.”

I looked at the table, then back to him.

“Do you want to sell some drugs?”

I glanced over at Charlie. Engrossed in his phone. Back to Shane. “Sure,” I said.

He smiled at me. “How do my gums look?”

“Ugly, man. Evil shit.”

GIFT CARD

We bought white t-shirts from Walmart and cut them with a pocket knife and put them on. We bought fake blood from Party America and poured it over our heads.

Shane put the weed and the pills and the sheets in a backpack and cut open a blue bag of MDMC and dumped it onto a cutting board. He emptied Niacin pills in the sink, the tiny beads clinking in the tin. Scooped the white powder into the capsules and capped them off and licked his fingers. He tore off little strips of paper towels and sprinkled the speed onto them and balled them up and we parachuted them. I downed mine with a beer and nearly gagged.

He gave me ten pills and Charlie twenty. We put them in our pockets.

“Shit hasn’t been tested yet, it’s still an RC. So they’re not technically illegal. But when we put them in the pills like that, it’s kind of illegal.” He paused. “It’s a gray area. But it’s less dangerous than all that shit,” pointing at the backpack, “so I’ll start you off with a low risk.”

The speed took hold and I listened and I grit my teeth.

“They get one for twenty or they can get two for thirty.”

“What about three?”

“Three is fifty.”

“Okay.”

“Anything over one, the last is half. No more than that.”

Shane was DJing at the Last Call. He set up his mixers in the booth and arranged the songs he was going to play. I stood in there with Charlie and looked out at the kids arriving, all of them in zombie makeup and ripped shirts.

Shane said, “You look nervous as a chinaman in a dick-measuring contest.”

I said, “I’m not nervous.”

He said, “Low risk. Don’t worry.”

I said, “I’m not.”

When we got back to Charlie’s, we dumped our earnings on the small pool table in the corner. We picked through the money and divvied it up.

Shane held up a Walmart gift card. “Fuck is this?”

I told him, “It’s got $25 on it.”

“Does it?”

“I think so.”

He handed it to me. “Cash, man. Cash.”