Coin-Operated Machines (3 page)

A NIGHT TOGETHER

“Can’t you see I’m desperate for justice?”

“You can’t get justice from squashing a bug. 
Dead bugs don’t say they’re sorry.  Dead bugs don’t bring the dead back to life.  Dead bugs don’t make the pain any easier.”

“
To hell with you!  It makes me feel better scraping their crunchy bodies off my boots.  I’ll show those Dust Devils no mercy.  They ate my father, they ate my mother, they even ate Baxter, and there’s no replacing that Collie.  He was one of a kind."

“Get your head out of the clouds, Mary-Beth.  This is your life.  If you di
e, who gives the eulogy?  Me, Mary-Beth, I'd give the eulogy, and you know what’d I say?  She was the greatest woman I’ve known and loved, and she’s dead all over some fucking bugs.  Is it worth it, Mary-Beth, giving your life up for those bugs?”
“I’m the only one who knows how to stop them, Craig.  I’ve spent years with the insects, studying them, gaining their trust, helping them exist.”

“
So why did the government want them to flourish?”

“The Executive in Chief wanted a terrorist weapon that wouldn’t nuke the world.  Fallout’s a bitch, right?  Nuke the Middle East, and the breeze would blow back cancer in our faces.  But image a bug that wa
s commanded to kill terrorists?  They've given them mega-intelligence, mega-size, and the only shot we have of taking them out is giving them a bullet right between the eyes, and I’m the best shot in this stinkin’ part of town.”

Hannah
stood in Brock's living room clutching the handles of the two cap gun six shooters holstered at her hips.  She urged tears to well up in her eyes, her face brimming with believable emotion.  She wore a short red skirt, black fishnets, a blue and white checkered flannel top, and brown snakeskin boots with spurs from her old western movie called
Cactus Heart, Cactus Moon
. 

Finished with her dialogue,
Hannah tipped her hat to him, her eyes a blazing show of sexual heat.  Her mouth was drawn into a pout, her eyes languidly set.  She brought him in close.  Removing each other's clothes, they threw aside the movie script and began acting out a new scene altogether.

Brock watched Hannah strut about the room in her purple bra and panties.  She stayed dressed in her boot and spurs as she filled a cup with ice in the kitchen.  “How about some bubbly to cap off the good sex?”

“I
already capped off once.”

Hannah
playfully rolled her eyes.  “It’s always about a man’s cock.”

“That’s all there is, really.”  He eyed the table stocked with booze.  “Let’s get wild and crazy.”

Hannah kneeled down on the coffee table and announced the selections.  “Sparkling grape juice, sparking apple juice, or orange pop?”

“I’ll have a bit of sparkling grape juic
e. That’ll take the edge off.”

Hannah poured two wine flutes and sat next to him.  He was ready to
down his but he noticed she was eyeing him with the intent to say something else. 

He poised his glass next to hers.  “What’s on your mind?”

She lowered her glass, not ready to announce her toast just yet.  “I want you to think about things, Brock, because I have. You always blamed yourself for dragging me into this mess.  All the parties you invited me to, all the free drugs you offered me when we were younger, and yes, it was a bad thing, but we both made the mistakes, but the mistakes are ultimately mine to own.  I had a choice.  And when it came time to clean up my act, we did it together, and I’ve gotten to know you, and we’ve made an incredible journey together.
 
We've been through everything.  Three months in rehab.  Two years of sobriety.  You saw me at my worst moments, and I've seen you at your lowest.  After sobering up this long, everything became so much clearer to me.  I know what I want in life.  I want to act again, and I want you to be my husband.”

Brock opened his mouth,
but Hannah spoke first.  “Just think about it for awhile, okay?  I have this movie coming up, so there’s time to think it over.  I want you to really think it over."

He understood what she was saying and was grateful for the chance to really take it in.  Brock took her hand and kissed it, and then he raised his glass.  “To making good decisions, to being in control of our lives, and um, to
the washed up who somehow find their way back to a paycheck.”

Hannah raised hers proudly. 

They downed the bubbly into the late hours of the night.

* * *

It was one a.m., and
Hannah was asleep in his bed.  Brock spooned her.  “Are you sure staying here won't piss off your sister?  I could drive you home.  I know how much she hates me."

“
What, drive?  You'd blow a 2.0 on the sugar-lizer.  Besides, my sister's got a man, and I don't mess with that, do I?  The only thing you need to worry about is being my man, so you stay in this bed and let me worry about my sister."

Brock
whispered in her ear, “You’ve given me the greatest friendship in my life.  I have fallen in love with you.  It's the truth.  Whatever that means, I know it’s going to take us many places.”

Hannah enjoyed the words. 
“We can go on trips together. That’s what married people do."

“And we can share
the food on each other’s plates.”

He
cleared his mind before falling asleep. “You’ve given me a lot to think about it, cow poke.  Good things.  I think I’ll stick with my original plan when you go do your movie.  I'm going to write my book.  A memoir.”

“You’re not going to publish it, are you?”

"
No, this is only for me, though God knows someone would pay to publish it.  Once I write it out, I’ll read over it, and that’ll be it.  It’s therapeutic.  A woman from the Bingo club said writing things helped her deal with her obnoxious husband.  She said it was like yelling at the pages, and she could be as colorful with her language as she wanted to be and nobody’s feelings got hurt.”

“Are
you still going to all your clubs?”

Brock listed them off his fingers.  “Yeah,
the Bingo club, the book club, the support group, oh, and the movie club."

“Looking for work is my hobby,” Hannah said, her posture suddenly erect.  Brock knew she was picturing herself on a horse riding
with a rugged, well-built cowboy, into the sunset after a shootout outside of the saloon.  She had been in dozens of westerns in her heyday, from the late 60's to the early 80's.  “Acting and you are all I want, Brock."

Brock
brought her in close, kissing her lips.  “Listen, I want you to do something for me, and I'm serious.”

“Anything."

He whispered to her before going to sleep, “I want you to kill each and every one of those dust devils before they take over the world.”

Hannah drove home shortly after waking up the following morning, saying she had calls and preparations to make with her agent.  Her sister would be concerned if she didn't check in as well.  Brandy was a small claims court lawyer, and she had witnessed her sister's battle with drugs from the beginning to the present.   Brandy despised Brock, but if they were thinking about marrying each other, he was determined to grow on the woman.  He would prove himself redeemable, or in the very least, a changed man. 

Brock
thought about the prospect of marriage.  Fifty-two years old, and he hadn’t been married once.  His dad convinced him not to take that option when Brock was working full-time on his variety show backstage as a production assistant, and eventually climbing the ranks to be assistant director and producer, the jobs granted by a heaping dose of nepotism.  Gene would say to him, “You’re in the perfect position to tackle the most pussy ever in the history of pussy.  Why get married, like your old man?  Be smart, kiddo."

Brock
had followed the man's advice.  He dated on and off for years, meeting women at parties.  He went beyond his father's show to produce a number of mildly successful movies, including Hannah’s last feature,
Desert Shootout
in 1985 that bombed.  It wasn’t long after that his father died, and his world became that deplorable mansion and the longest track of cocaine history ever told. 

By marrying Hannah, he'd gain a sense of permanency.  He
was wiser now.  He had cleared the wreckage of his life.  Those comforting thoughts vanished once he returned to his room and sorted through the mail and discovered Angel's letter. 

HEAD ON A HOOK

Angel Richards was indeed a severed head suspended in the air with a meat hook jammed up into her neck.  The rusted and cold steel tip tickled the back of her throat. While the man with the golden axe went to work doing God knows what, she observed various tools hanging from the wall opposite her head.  Each item was suspended from rusty nails: hacksaws, pinch clamps, fifteen different hammers with various heads, a table saw with an enormous blade jutting out like the quelled spine of a metal beast, and many varieties of common tools, but there were also components of the collection that were unusual.  She was puzzled by the hinges, gears, pulleys, springs, and alien tools that had no obvious purpose. 

From the half of the room she wasn't hanging in, the man with the golden axe swung his weapon of choice, that golden killer, that vicious axe, over and over again.  The sound of bones breaking and blood flecking the wall repeated.  The man growled under his breath, "
Never wanted this.  They have me where they want me, don't they?  I do all the work.  I'm so sick of this work!
 
You started this, I didn't.  You're using me to keep this damn game going
."

Through a mouthful of blood, the victim, who she assumed had been dismantled limb from limb,
screamed: "
Ga-raaaaaaaaagh
!"

"Don't."  The axe man
twirled the axe in his hands, letting his arms rest a moment between swings.  "Stay calm.  I'll have you back together in no time.  I'm really good at it.  I'm the best.  I promise you I'll put you back together and you'll be better than ever."

It wasn't long before the victim went silent.   

Dead?

She didn't know. 

Angel wasn't certain if the axe man was addressing her.  "They always overreact.  Why can't they learn it's only temporary?  Telling them isn't enough.  Telling them is never enough."

The man dropped the axe onto the concrete floor.  Then he went to work pic
king up the dismembered pieces.  She heard the dripping of fast-flowing blood, then the plastic
thuck
of something being dropped into a bin until each body part was accounted for. 

Angel would've screamed if
she had lungs when the man with the golden axe's hands caressed her face with his cold and red hands. 

He spoke in a rasp, "
I'm going to fix you next
."

ANGEL'S LETTER

Brock,

I got your address from a friend, and I hope you don’t mind me writing you.  It’s been years, and I hear you’ve sobered up.  I struggle with it all the time
. I relapse a lot, but I’m convinced I can’t move forward without talking to you first.  Maybe if I learned how you did it, I could beat this too.  In any case, I need to see you, Brock.  Can you visit me?  I’ve included a map and directions to where I’m staying.  Come as soon as possible.  I promise we’ll have a serious talk.  We might argue.  No, we will argue, but I promise we’ll catch up on old times too.  I can’t believe it’s been two years since I last saw you. I don’t want my last memory of my brother to be at rehab.  The place I’m staying is scenic.  It's calming.  I’m on another sober kick.  Three weeks sober.  What amazes me, no matter where you are, somebody has a drug connection, even in the middle of nowhere where I’m at now.  I need help, Brock.  I’m ready to start over.  I know we’re not best friends, or even act like brother and sister, but maybe we could try to salvage something.  What do you say? 

Angel

* * *

It had been instinct to rip open the oversized manila envelope when Brock first saw it, especially when he caught Angel Richards’s name on it.  The letter left him standing by the table uncollected.  The mood went from sky high to slum low. 

It’s your fault she’s still a cokehead. 

You did this, and you left her.

No, she left you.
 

We failed each other.

Brock clutched his head and sat down, feeling dizzy.  His fault or not, her life was in turmoil.  Knowing that, his conflict wasn’t if he’d see her, it’d be what he would say to her when he finally arrived in Blue Hills, Virginia. 

Brock couldn’t sleep that night.  He lay in bed and images and memories would play out in his mind.  He tossed and turned long enough that he gave up on sleep and walked to the kitchen table with his brand new spiral notebook and began writing his thoughts down, the tell-all memoir only he would read. 

There’s no order to this confessional, so I’ll just start writing
, he thought. 

So he started
writing.

Poor Angel is in some
place in Virginia.  She wants me to meet up with her.  I’m so nervous.  I have to go.  I have a few things to take care of tomorrow but it'll be fine.  A road trip will get my mind off of my mind.  It’s better than doing a puzzle alone at the apartment. 

What can I bring to the table to help
Angel?  ‘Stay busy,’ wow, that revelation will knock her on her ass.  No, I’ll make her move in with me.  She can’t leave until she’s two months sober.  Then four months sober.  That's what I'll do.  Yeah right.  That won't work.

"
This isn’t going to be easy.  She’ll want to claw out my eyes.  All the shit I’ve done to her."

Brock couldn’t pin down his thoughts any longer.  It was already
three in the morning.  In a few hours, he would wake up, plot out his trip, and then figure out just how he was going to help his sister. 

Angel had gained sensation in her body again to an extent.  Her fingers would bend and straighten, then curl up again because of the razor sharp agony cycling through her defiled body.  Not defiled, she realized.  She was laying flat on a steel gurney as the man with the golden axe pivoted her body, flexing her limbs.  Testing them.  She kept hearing the squeak of hinges, springs loaded into tight crevices, ratchets turned, and nuts and bolts tightened and greased up...