The Least of My Scars Read online

  What the dad did was sit there and cry into his hands.

  I choked him with his own tie.

  Don’t let anybody ever tell you life’s fair.

  Not as long as I’m in it.

  Six days later, shaky, so alone, nobody at my door, I’m crouching in the lefthand apartment at dawn.

  This is when the ghost comes, with vegetables.

  I’ve seen him once before, but that was from a hole I’d fingered in the wall behind my headboard. He never knew, and I plugged it back up, made promises to myself. If you’re not supposed to bite the hand, then it’s definitely bad news to force it down into the disposal, right?

  But it’s been nearly a week.

  Yesterday I fell asleep in the sun chair and when I woke the index finger on my right hand was trembling, like it had been doing something especially secret. There wasn’t anything crusted in it though, and it smelled the same, didn’t taste any different. Unless my mouth had been in on it too.

  After that, I was up all night.

  I finally even got desperate enough to go to the other apartment, pet Riley in the dark. Then, as apology, I took a wire brush to the back room, and scoured all three sinks in the kitchen, and adjusted the toilet until the tank was holding the absolute maximum amount of water possible, so that the first time the flange lets those long brass bolts shift in its rusted hold even a hair, half a hair, there’s going to be a leak.

  Now I need to see somebody, though. Talk to them.

  Otherwise I might fade into the wallpaper.

  If it’s been like this before, then I don’t know about it. I mean, okay, if it’s ever been like this since I moved into the Chessire Arms, got locked up here, starting punching numbers for Singer.

  Before that, sure, weeks like these, they were the only way I knew weeks could be, really. What made it worse was that I had to pretend that nothing was ever wrong. I remember I had a circuit back then, though, of people I’d talk to, people I needed: Don at the tire place, Laney, two doors down with the dry cleaner, and all the way up the block, people who would pass the time of day when I needed them to. Let me know in their indirect ways that I was still here, that things were cool, level, hunky-dorey.

  Carwash Mark, he was the anchor for a while, even, until he jacked his hand up in the works, got on workman’s comp.

  Finally I had to just go see him.

  I didn’t really know what I was doing then, but things worked out in the end. So long as nobody ever looks in that plastic cocoon behind the insulation in the attic.

  Maybe I’ll tell the Vegetable Ghost about it, confess about Carwash Mark, just lay it all out there, wait for a shrug, telling me one guy at a carwash couldn’t have mattered. Or, not a shrug, but a nod, like that’s what the Vegetable Ghost would have done himself. That he appreciates me, admires what I’m capable of.

  In a frantic, neat line at the top of the whiteboard, above all the exotic dummy vegetables I know I’m just going to harvest seeds from, not even eat, is a line of G’s. Fifteen of them, five threes, not something I’d waste if I wasn’t serious.

  And broccoli is spelled right, and artichoke, and I even wrote a persimmon on there, though I can’t really think what one might look like, or if they’re in season.

  For me, as far as Singer’s concerned, they will be.

  Like I’d know the difference between that and a mango that wasn’t ripe, yeah.

  Fucking island fruit. It would just make me feel more marooned.

  At ten past seven, the door of the lefthand apartment finally creaks the littlest bit.

  No knock, no bell, no Is anybody home?

  This should be nightmare fuel for me, yeah, a door opening with no advance warning. But I’ve got other fish to fry. They’re gasping in my head right now. If I were a junky, I’d check into some methadone clinic. Except they don’t have wards for what I need.

  Or, they do, but I’d have to sneak into one afterhours, hide a nurse or three down some laundry chute, then walk down the hall, dragging a scalpel on the thick-painted handrail, so that those little curls of enamel paint crashing into the sterile tile would be the first sign that I was on the floor, that the night was about to begin, ladies and gentlemen.

  You don’t walk away from that kind of fun, though.

  All you get to do then is break into a cabinet, shoot up one of everything there, then walk out the front doors, see if you’re bulletproof now or not.

  It’s stupid, I mean.

  Better this way.

  Crouching in the space where the dishwasher used to be, watching the door open faster now, your heart stopping all at once when, instead of a loafer, a shin in pleated slacks, what you see is the dull foot of some great machine, come special for you.

  Heart, beat.

  Breathe. Let it all wash out.

  An instant later the rest of that machine: one wheel, ten inches high, solid rubber. Aluminum frame, canted back thirty-two proper degrees.

  Not a machine, a dolly, a handtruck, a dull silver keg.

  Behind it, a guy in a uniform shirt that matches the label on the keg.

  This is Singer’s cover.

  The label on the keg is Something-Something & Sons Grease Solutions. Restaurant lard, used, to-be-reclaimed.

  Except that keg, when he tilts it forward I can see it’s more of a coozie, like an insulator for a beer.

  The thirty-gallon drums slide right in. I can tell because the lip of one (they’re always stay-away green) is peeking out right now.

  For a few moments then it’s completely silent. I can tell that every bit of the Vegetable Ghost’s attention is focused next door, on my place. And then he breathes out through his teeth. This must happen every morning. I almost smile, but he’s wound up enough he might hear my cheek muscles creak.

  And then he sees the fifteen G’s on the whiteboard.

  Do they mean anything to him? Does he understand that it means one girl, now, fast, and not fifteen?

  As for the rest of the list, instead of writing it down he pops the top off the drum on his dolly.

  It’s a produce market in there.

  All the normal stuff I usually list, he sets it in the refrigerator, in the proper places. The persimmon he has to call about, though. When the digits on his cell beep, he studies my place again, waiting for me to hear.

  My index fingers taps once on the floor, on its own, calling out to him, telling him to run maybe. The sound dies before it makes it to him.

  “Persimmon?” he whispers into the phone, then that he’s already ten minutes behind. That he’s got to—

  I reach around, thumb his phone off for him.

  This is the moment he’s been waiting for for three years.

  For maybe twenty seconds I just stand there, my chest almost to his back, my breath on his shoulder.

  The reason he’s not turning around is that I’m the boogey man. As long as he doesn’t see me, I don’t have to exist. Or, as long as I don’t have a face, I don’t have to erase it from his memory. Sponge it up off the floor.

  “They’re grown exclusively in the Canary Islands,” I whisper right into his ear. “The persimmons.”

  He nods, believes this harder than he’s ever believed anything.

  “And they’re not delivered in unhygienic containers,” I add, telling the complete and inarguable truth now. “Are we clear on that?”

  He nods a little mouse nod.

  “And forget the girl,” I tell him. “I’ll trade you for her.”

  Now I’m the one who can hear everything: he’s closing his eyes, tensing his neck, the muscles all along his spine contracting, in anticipation.

  Six days. Nobody should have to go that long.

  “Tell me your mother’s maiden name,” I hiss.

  He makes a noise that’s not a croak, not a whimper, but takes a bit from both.

  I have to say it again, louder, before he can swallow his tears.

  “T-T-Ta—” he starts, but I push him forward, in
to the wall, tell him to write it. First, middle, last.

  When he’s too wound up to risk erasing any of my letters, I hock a wad a spit onto the board, reach forward with the heel of my hand, swirl that weird non-ink all around.

  “Now,” I tell him.

  Instead of using the marker, like he tries at first, he just writes the name with the pad of his traitorous index finger, because the white board’s all black already.

  TAWNY MAINE GRIMES.

  I laugh through my nose, a real laugh. It even spills out my mouth some.

  “Bullshit,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder. It nearly kills him, I’m pretty sure. “That can’t—” I go on. “I used to bang this one old . . . I never knew her middle name was Maines, though. That from your granddad’s side?”

  He nods, can’t stop.

  His mother. Like we’re even from the same world.

  I could have told him I was his accidental dad, even, and he would have been nodding, would have even written me twenty-two Father’s Day cards right then and there, I know. Or however old he is.

  Not was, yeah. Is.

  I take one loud step back, and when he realizes what he’s being given here, the son of Tawny Maine Grimes lowers his head, angles it the opposite way, and follows his dolly to the door.

  “Not even going to check?” I call after him. It’s not a question.

  He stops, nods, then turns the long way around, knocks twice on the lid of the drum he’d already left six days ago. A hollow sound.

  “Restaurant grease,” I say to him then.

  He says it into the emptiness of his chest: “I don’t know anything, mister.”

  “I know you don’t,” I tell him, and then he’s gone, off into the day.

  My six—no: seventh.

  I rest.

  To keep myself from playing with the help anymore, I give myself a project.

  First the Vegetable Ghost next door has to deliver some supplies, though. One of the items, Singer had to overnight from a medical catalogue.

  I can tell from the sound, too, that that there’s at least four shuffling feet now: two hands for the dolly, two extra eyes for me. Probably four or five guns between them, and a lot of nervous laughter down on the street, afterwards. A few cigarettes sucked down to nothing. A will they should have already written.

  Lifestyles of the dumb and luckless, yeah.

  That could never be me.

  They don’t have my kind of discipline. Could never sit in their kitchen the rest of the day with a human skull (‘For Pedagogical Purposes Only’) on the corner of the counter, and mold clay onto the cheeks, mound it onto the chin. Roll snakes thick in the middle and delicate at the ends, to fold into lips.

  Doing this with a real leftover skull would be asking for it. No, officer, I don’t know where Kid—I mean Jason Pease—went. I didn’t even know that was his name. Last seen here? I don’t know. I think he said he was going to Indonesia or somewhere. Jakarta, Madripool. Wanted to test out his new quicksand boots.

  Hey too, any chance you could you help me with my disposal right quick, here? Something seems to be stuck in it.

  No thanks. I’m no suicide.

  I do wonder about my retirement, though. I mean, dry spells like this—nine days now—you start to wonder.

  It’s got to go down one of a few ways.

  The most obvious, and poetic I guess, would be to move somebody else in. Just a clean transition. All it would require is somebody standing on the other side of the door, a new toothbrush in his pocket, his shotgun already pumped, vest strapped tight. I’d be numero unamo for the replacement, job number one.

  The second way, to have somebody sneak in while I was asleep, it would never work. First, I’ve jacked with all the locks, made them my own, and second, the two cutaway doors and the trapdoor down—I’ve never been up, even though it opens onto the roof, supposedly, a vacation I haven’t taken yet—they’re all rigged for noise. On top of all that, I don’t keep regular hours, so could very well be awake at three in the morning, when the knob on my door starts to turn.

  I don’t know.

  Singer could gas me out, or torch the place for insurance. Send some crew over to blitz the place, swiss cheese the walls while the mouse inside scurries around from corner to corner.

  And that’s the happy ending.

  The sad ending, I don’t even like to consider it. But it’s what he’s maybe already doing: putting me out to pasture. Directing all his traffic elsewhere, to some other Chessire Arms. My groceries will keep coming, but my sustenance will have dried the fuck right up, so that, after a while, I’ll have no choice but to go back to the streets, live like an animal.

  Again: no thanks.

  Aside from all that, he could always just tip somebody off, get my place raided, have me paraded across the national news, my face in a six-pack with Dahmer and Lucas and Bundy and the rest of the clown brigade.

  I’m not smiling for that camera, though.

  If you’ve gone nationwide, then you should be ashamed.

  To live on that screen is to die the moment the jackoff on the couch looks away.

  To really live is to waver at the edge of an open-eyed dream, so that everybody’s always jerking their head around, sure you’re there.

  And they’re right.

  But sometimes you just let them keep walking, too. Give them their sorry little lives. Like they deserve them, like they’ve earned them.

  And sometimes you just reach into the belly of a dusty beast, plant their face against the table.

  Kid Hoodie.

  His cigarettes taste like campfire dirt.

  I sit in the chair he bought it in. Trying to get in his head’s the idea. I wake his nearly-dead phone up and scroll the numbers and names, put my crusty old sweat jacket on and shrug the hood up over my head, try to stretch my legs long and careless beside the table. I sanitize the ear buds five times then plug them into his cute little player, can’t get his music to roll.

  It does feel different, though, to have a hood on, have these wires trailing up to the sides of my head. Like life support. Like I’m somewhere else, even in a crowd. My own moving little room, one big window to watch from. And with the cigarettes, I don’t even have to breathe anybody else’s air.

  All you’d need now would be a pair of black sunglasses and bam, every security guard in the bank’s talking about you on their handheld, every cruiser on the street’s radioing you in, moms with strollers are turning into stores they don’t care about and counting to fifty with their eyes closed.

  Dumb shit.

  I pull the ear buds down onto my chest, peel the hood and sit back down on the stool, stare into the cave eyes of the skull I’ve molded a face onto.

  A fucking kindergartner could do better.

  The only thing even making him look even a little human is that the skull’s anatomical.

  But nothing’s easy starting out.

  Carwash Mark? I carried him all over three counties for two months, burying him, unburying him, wrapping him, washing him, cutting him up more. Sure that everybody knew what I was doing. That they could smell it on me, see it in the way I kept looking away. That there was some concerned citizen tabulating all my gas purchases, drawing lines on a map with them, and keeping track of what I bought, and what I bought more of, to try to throw him off.

  Things improved, though.

  After a while a calmness can kind of rise up over you like a cold fog. It hardens your skin, clears your eyes, steadies your hand.

  But don’t ever let yourself start thinking that you’re above everybody on the street, either. That they’re bugs, you’re the big shoe walking wherever you want.

  Some of those bugs’ll have guns and badges, I mean.

  Or worse: long black limos, and that same calm sureness you have. Times ten. And the muscle to back it up. To bury you, not in a hole, but a five-story building over in the dicey part of town.

  Don’t think like that, though.
<
br />   You can’t.

  The door down at the street’s broke, maybe. All these luckless-ass people bunched up there, waiting to come see me. Meet their unmaker.

  There will be more. There has to. That’s the deal.

  I tap the edge of Kid Hoodie’s phone on the table and say it each time it hits: they’re coming, they’re coming.

  Maybe the big man’s just on vacation, down in the Caymans or something.

  It makes sense that he wouldn’t let anybody else be passing this address out. That’d be like letting somebody else hold your main gun, then turning around to try to pick a penny up from the hardwood floor, right after you’ve been cutting your fingernails.

  I laugh a little at myself. How stupid I’ve been. How spoiled.

  Before all this, nine days was nothing, would just make the next sweeter, more perfect. Anything closer than about five or six weeks would be dumb anyway, unless I was in motion, a traveling man. Then all bets were off, everything was opportunity. Like when you’re a kid at the circus: none of the rules of the real world apply. Eat all the candy you can, until it makes you sick. And then eat some more.

  I cringe at some of the stuff I’ve done, yeah. Not the doing it, but the chances I was taking, right out there in the open.

  That’s what a bad enough habit’ll do to you. Get you stupid, thinking so wrong you can’t even tell until years later.

  Then too, if I’d been thinking right, I never would have snatched my yoga instructor from the street that day. Never ended up here.

  Things work out.

  Like this. The obvious answer to why nobody’s at my door for nearly two weeks, it’s what I was saying: Singer split town for some rest and regeneration, or to avoid some heat coming down, or to have a sit-down with some potential business partners. And when he left, of course he’s not going to have called me. No contact, right? Right. All he had to do was leave the support system in place so I wouldn’t starve, and the disposal cover too, even though nobody’s getting disposed of.

  Things’ll pick back up here directly.

  Retirement, yeah.

  Guys like me, they don’t get retired, not so long as they’re producing. Reducing, really. If they do retire, ever, then it’s just that they woke up one day the same way a butterfly must, with no clue it was ever a caterpillar. And they walk away into the crowd. Or, they find a Riley and then step into the crowd, holding her hand. Disappear, and never talk about it again.