by Eric Westerlind
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<\/br>
\nWhen I turn the corner and get past the Music Mogul, I slow up.\u00a0 Our street doesn’t often have too many walkers this time of evening, especially when it’s all grey-dark and spitting\u2014but somebody turned on the people-switch\u2014probably ten, twelve folks just idling on the sidewalks.<\/p>\n
The apartment is up Gerard, so another right, but I walk past it.\u00a0 There’re even more people up our street, in tight groups of threes, all like the same size, same dark jackets.<\/p>\n
There are flashing lights too, police lights rolling off the buildings.\u00a0 Two squad cars are pulled up at my apartment building.\u00a0 None of the stand-arounds are drifting toward the lights.\u00a0 No crowd gathering.\u00a0 They look like survivors.<\/p>\n
I walk back around the block, the other direction.\u00a0 Amber can cover my groceries and we can take the pizza-rain-check and then maybe grab a coffee or something.<\/p>\n
My roommates aren\u2019t out on the corner so I walk in the front door, that little restaurant bell clattering more than ringing, the dust of the cold hugging me even inside.<\/p>\n
We’ve never eaten here before (\u2018Plaisante\u2019s\u2019 apparently, from a dangling wood sign); the first three months in the new apartment we stuck to street vendors, the grocery store.\u00a0 Twice, Macelroy’s over down Rue\u00a0 St. Germaine.<\/p>\n
Plaisante\u2019s is dark, not closed-dark, but low-lighting.\u00a0 A couple of booths hug the walls below the small windows, a square table in the center, and the pizza bar in back.\u00a0 The kitchen’s glow is a gaping mouth of fluorescence.\u00a0 I flex my fingers, knuckles pinkblue, shading my eyes at the same time.<\/p>\n
Nobody in here, no movement.<\/p>\n
I rock back out into the cold, sort-of dive out the door, rub my elbows, look down the street.<\/p>\n
A police car hauls past me, the same half-spit drizzle warps the lights it’s got running at pell-mell.<\/p>\n
Does sticking your fingers in your ears warm them up?\u00a0 Rotisserie-chicken style?\u00a0 I pass up the opportunity, instead slam them home into my parka’s pockets.<\/p>\n
“Pete.”\u00a0 I didn’t even hear the door open behind me, Alexander \u2018Priss\u2019 Risprisbur’s face sticking out from the darkness.\u00a0 “What’re you doing, man?\u00a0 Get in here.”<\/p>\n
I’m way cold all of a sudden, popping back into the restaurant.\u00a0 That cold when you’re expecting a car to be warm and it isn’t so you’re colder than you were outside.\u00a0 The lights are definitely brighter now and Amber’s definitely sitting over in that corner booth, albeit hugging the wall, hair draped over an eye.<\/p>\n
“We saw you come in and then like you just turned and walked out.”<\/p>\n
I walk behind Priss, shadowing his steps.<\/p>\n
“Amber suggested you might’ve been blinded by the lights.”<\/p>\n
Amber perks up at her name, definitely humming, and gets this horrified look on her face.<\/p>\n
“What is that?”<\/p>\n
Priss looks, I look.<\/p>\n
That\u2014my right hand is coated in black, this ooze black.\u00a0 I flip my hand over, muttering a handful of expletives.\u00a0 My palm is uncoated, just the backside.<\/p>\n
“Ink?”<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I\u2014”<\/p>\n
I pull the broken pen out of my pocket.<\/p>\n
Now my palm has ink on it.<\/p>\n
There are certain situations you just have to roll your head back and sigh at; when vitriol is useless.\u00a0 I do so.<\/p>\n
“Bathroom?”<\/p>\n
Both of them haven’t been, do the daisy-head look around, and I find it myself, just past the fluoro-maw.<\/p>\n
The bathroom’s as bright as the wrong kind of day and the mirror above the sink is that borderless square of glass they provide in old libraries, gas stations, and other joints where everyone is the nobody-particularly-interested-in-looking-at-themselves-today self.\u00a0 The ink sticks, glossy and still dry’ish.\u00a0 So much that I’m up on the edge of the sink with a boot on its lip, the sink, going at it with one hand and two fingers.<\/p>\n
Priss comes in.<\/p>\n
“Amber told me she’s in love with you.”<\/p>\n
Somebody farts in the stall and the ink mopes down my hand, mixing only slightly with the water.<\/p>\n
I try to make out whose feet are under the stall but it’s the second one so my angle, boot still on the sink’s lip, is like perfectly wrong.\u00a0 Another one of those moments where the expletive is useless, so the sigh.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know when she turned on this whole Alex-you’re-my-priest-and-gay-friend, but she’s been practically melting onto the table since we got here.”<\/p>\n
I can sort-of see the bottom of a definitely black boot.<\/p>\n
“And she says that she thinks you are the sweetest and so smart and she’s pretty much gunning for me to like her so I can make sure you are in-the-right way into her and what not.”<\/p>\n
“But Priss\u2014”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, you’re not, je sais<\/em>, but she’s been dropping all these comparisons to some New York ex who had like way less commitment issues and was less and worse and-”<\/p>\n The jungle roar of the toilet flushing.\u00a0 The stall door swings open.\u00a0 Of course: the stiff fart, black boots\u2014Officer Telp\u00e8re, accent grave for serious, the North African who’d had my number since he’d caught me bus-hopping fourteen’ish times in a day.<\/p>\n He’s got some very NA-French look on his face.\u00a0 It reads: consequences.<\/p>\n “I mean, I don’t really know what to even begin to tell her, man.\u00a0 She’s been begging me to talk to you; track your emotion is how she’s putting it.\u00a0 Sounds sort of new-agey to me, don’t know how you feel about new agey but\u2014”<\/p>\n Priss has his back to Telp\u00e8re, and he stops talking when Telp\u00e8re’s big mitt is on his shoulder.\u00a0 Priss turns, noble-like for a man who’s just been shoulder-grabbed by a man who audibly passed gas and then has not audibly commenced the post-stall washing of said hands, to face Telp\u00e8re.<\/p>\n “You can tell her the nothing…” he’s got this rapturous throat-swelling English, Telp\u00e8re does, wherein he tries to set his mouth even lower on his face than it already is, “…for your friend and his ink-stain comes for some talk.\u00a0 Some conversation at the station.”<\/p>\n We’ve tried to have this conversation at the station enough times.\u00a0 I hit the door at slightly lower than full-speed, past an Amber who has definitely been staring at the door with the same half-cocked smile waiting to full-cock and who scrambles admirably but can’t say much more than oh before I’m out the door and into the god-Fuck-its cold once more.<\/p>\n <\/br> But here I am.\u00a0 In a corner, shoulder braced against a building.\u00a0 I can see Plaisante’s door, see Telp\u00e8re come out, hands on his hips.\u00a0 I didn’t see his squad car before, down the street, lights off.\u00a0 He’s a huge guy with a stiff walk.\u00a0 Pretty much the only of Besan\u00e7on’s policemen willing to deal with my pauvre French-English sputterings, explain that one must obliterate all of your bus tickets because that’s how they know you’ve paid and all that.<\/p>\n Telp\u00e9re’s got two daughters.\u00a0 I saw them on his desk, pictures anyway.\u00a0 They had red hair, not from him.<\/p>\n Three folks skirt by my hidey-spot, scarves up to their eyes.\u00a0 They’re talking about the situation up Gerard, that’s all I can tell.\u00a0 Telp\u00e9re’s headed back to his car, peels back, lights on, heads up the street at a crawl.\u00a0 I tuck back as far as I can, but he turns up the street, past Music Mogul.<\/p>\n I’m not ready to go back in.\u00a0 I figure I can douse the hunger in other ways.\u00a0 I walk down the river, hood up, feeling at my tooth.\u00a0 Too much sugar, maybe.\u00a0 French honey is so much damn much gooder than its American cousin.\u00a0 However, it also leaves a much less gooder ache between my back molars.<\/p>\n The river’s shored up against these big old rock walls, runs right around centre ville, moat-style.\u00a0 It’s got a flat glassy reflection, except for some duck-v’s scooting around closer to the bridge, looking for crumbs.<\/p>\n I’ll walk it off.\u00a0 I’m sure stuff’ll have settled down in an hour’ish.\u00a0 Amber will be a bit of a nuisance, nothing new and nothing altogether unfixable.\u00a0 She’s cute enough, but so negative.\u00a0 All the time.<\/p>\n I run my hand along the wall, feeling at the bumps, the moss.\u00a0 The ink on my hand looks like a bog-monster or something, some deformity \u2013 stuff that back into my pocket.\u00a0 The ink in there has hardened into a little crust on the fabric of my pocket.\u00a0 I clench my hands.<\/p>\n C’mon.\u00a0 Not my night.<\/p>\n “Not your night, eh Pete?”\u00a0 Priss jogs up next to me, toothy grin on his face.<\/p>\n “Where’s Amber?”<\/p>\n “Back at the place.\u00a0 I told’er I was gonna go look for you.”<\/p>\n I scratch at my face with the non-ink hand.<\/p>\n “Can smell you from the Mogul.”<\/p>\n I have to turn to look at him, my hood blocking my peripheral vision.<\/p>\n “Here,” he holds up a slice of pizza, “Amber took the rest home but.”<\/p>\n “Is this your slice, Priss?”<\/p>\n “Nope, had my fill.\u00a0 Here.”<\/p>\n I take it and we cross the bridge, the pizza warm on my hands.\u00a0 Priss suggests Macelroys for a beer, and we make our way there, mutual feet sloshing in the growing puddles our only conversation.<\/p>\n <\/br> Priss sniffs at his beer, looks at me over the glass.<\/p>\n “What?”<\/p>\n “What what?”<\/p>\n “What’s wrong with your beer?”\u00a0 I settle into a gulp, the stuff is cold then warm.\u00a0 I pull back my hood.<\/p>\n Priss laughs, staring at my forehead.<\/p>\n “What?”<\/p>\n “Guilty as charged,” he says, puts a thumb up to his mouth, thinks twice, dips it in his beer, and reaches over.\u00a0 He scrubs at my temple, the finger all wet.\u00a0 A little bit of beer hangs in my eyebrow.<\/p>\n “Nope, not coming off.\u00a0 Though I wouldn’t go to the bathroom here,” he glances around, mock-surveying, “apparently, they’re hiding cops in stalls these days.”<\/p>\n I’m looking at his neck, at a long strand of black coming out past his collar.<\/p>\n “What, is it ink?”<\/p>\n He looks back at me, winks.<\/p>\n “Yeah, brother.\u00a0 The black smear is upon you.”\u00a0 He laughs, Priss has a good laugh, not practiced, like mine.<\/p>\n “So,” he leans across the table, “the Amber.”<\/p>\n I take another long gulp, close an eye, measure our relative beer levels.<\/p>\n “She doesn’t love me, man.\u00a0 She’s just lonely out here.\u00a0 She and her boyfriend broke up what, ten, twelve hours ago?”<\/p>\n The door swings open: Amber, soaked, hair in rivulets down her face.\u00a0 She’s hardly wearing appropriate rain-gear, just a long sleeve shirt and some pants.<\/p>\n Priss and I stand up, move toward her.\u00a0 The girl is shivering, big old wild-eyed shivers.\u00a0 She sees us and runs over, throws a hug around Priss, staring at me.\u00a0 Man, huge eyes, windows.<\/p>\n Priss is just sort-of thump-caressing her back, and I stare at her, stringy-haired waiter stopped mid-glass-polish.\u00a0 I’ve never been much of a comfort to those in need so I keep my mouth shut and wait for her to say something.<\/p>\n We stand like that for awhile, until Amber’s breathing is a bit slower.\u00a0 Priss gets her to sit down, pulls a chair from another table over for himself.\u00a0 The waiter comes over with a large towel and offers it to Priss who offers it to Amber.\u00a0 I try to remember what the word for towel is and draw a blank, opting instead for more silence, and a nod at the guy, who just keeps staring at Amber like he’s seeing something he’s seen before.<\/p>\n “There were police everywhere,” she starts, “there were police in the streets, all through the apartment complex.\u00a0 I got up to our floor; they had 330 all cordoned off but the door was open and I could see the floor in the room was coated, I could see, just coated in black ink.\u00a0 I couldn’t see anything beyond that, some people in the streets were talking on my way up about biting dogs or vicious dogs but I hadn’t been paying attention and I’d just gone right in and the police hadn’t stopped me but I went into our apartment, and that big cop from the pizza place was like there, up on our table, and all of our stuff was everywhere, so I shouted and Pete, I’m sorry, the pizza…” she dazes off weird-like, looking at me there, and I shake my head in a doesn’t-matter-keep-going and she holds out her arm and what I thought was one shirt is actually two, but one sleeve’s been ripped off.<\/p>\n “I ran and he grabbed me and it ripped right off,” she says, “and he’s an animal, I could see it there, his eyes were wild.\u00a0 He’s the dog, he’s a vicious dog.”\u00a0 She drops into a sob, but then she looks up at me, across the table.<\/p>\n Priss offers her some of his beer.<\/p>\n “I’ve gotta take a piss real quick.\u00a0 Be right back.”\u00a0 Priss looks up at me as I walk past him.\u00a0 I ask the bar-back, an older lady, la toilette? and she points at a stone spiral staircase in the back corner of the room.\u00a0 I knew that, I’m thinking, but I’m real nervous, hands are cold.\u00a0 Making a fool out of myself.<\/p>\n I almost fall down the stairs, catch my breath at the sink.\u00a0 Macelroy’s has got a nice big mirror in which to scrub at the ink fingerprints on my forehead.\u00a0 Priss knows, and I keep scrubbing.\u00a0 He knows about Telp\u00e8re.\u00a0 My forehead pinks up underneath the ink, but the stuff is not going away.<\/p>\n “Fuck!”<\/p>\n I splash some water on my hands and face.\u00a0 I’m lookin’ pretty ragged, that pub bathroom lighting isn’t good for the hollow cheeks.\u00a0 Something smells in here too, mildew.\u00a0 Snots in my nose though.\u00a0 I stand in front of the urinal, unzip.<\/p>\n “Couldn’t help it.”\u00a0 Priss stands, shoulder on the doorjam.\u00a0 “It’s been a month, Pete.”<\/p>\n I let my chin drop to my chest \u2013 gotta start drinking more water, piss is like greening up.<\/p>\n Priss approaches me, hand on the sink.\u00a0 Scratches at his neck.<\/p>\n “Dude, c’mon, I can’t\u2014”<\/p>\n I hold up my free hand, finish pissing.\u00a0 Sniff again\u2014 it isn’t mildew.<\/p>\n I turn and knock on the stall once, zip up my pants.\u00a0 Knock again.<\/p>\n “Oui?”<\/p>\n “Ouvre la porte.”<\/p>\n Silence.\u00a0 I give the door a solid kick, no lock.\u00a0 The waiter is up on the john, standing, pants definitely not in any position to be relieving any sort\u00a0 of internal build-ups \u2013 he’s even still buckled, which I finish doing while giving him the international get-the-fuck-out thumb.\u00a0 Dude is scared.<\/p>\n Priss continues once the waiter is back upstairs.<\/p>\n “The guy never came out of his room.\u00a0 I saw him once, maybe, taking out some soy sauce bottles.\u00a0 Middle-age guy, big belly.\u00a0 You ever see him?”<\/p>\n I shake my head.<\/p>\n “So I figure,” Priss has this face he gets, and always has gotten, whenever he’s done something that he’s rationalized to himself but knows is going to be tough to rationalize verbally, “we’ve waited for a month.\u00a0 If the shit’s going to settle\u2014”<\/p>\n “Priss.”\u00a0 I scratch at my jaw.\u00a0 “What’s with the ink?”<\/p>\n “That’s the thing,” he says, “dude’s got like hundreds of posters all over the wall.\u00a0 Big old black pictures of the transform.\u00a0 Plus buckets and buckets of ink.\u00a0 And he was waiting, Pete.\u00a0 Soon as I saw that stuff, I was headed out but he was waiting, sure as shit.\u00a0 Had a big old sword too. Samurai sword.<\/p>\n Priss is holding his hands out, body length.<\/p>\n “A hermit samurai?”<\/p>\n Priss chuckles at that.\u00a0 “Yeah,” he rubs at his chest, “funny, now.\u00a0 But the thing with the ink \u2013 by the time I got him off me I was coated.”\u00a0 He flashes his shirt down, the black ink coating what I can see of his chest, “The stuff was like gum in my fur.\u00a0 Didn’t come off in transform.”<\/p>\n “Pete, the guy was set up for a siege or something.\u00a0 I mean, food in bulk, water in bulk.\u00a0 Mounds of…”<\/p>\n “Hang on.”<\/p>\n “… I mean he was just waiting for us.\u00a0 I don’t\u2014”<\/p>\n “Priss, shut up for a second.\u00a0 I’m trying to think, man.”<\/p>\n He lapses into silence, rubs his chest.<\/p>\n “What’d you say the guy looked like?”<\/p>\n “Big belly.\u00a0 Middle aged.\u00a0 Covered in ink.”<\/p>\n “How big?”<\/p>\n “He laid me out even in form.”<\/p>\n “Black?”<\/p>\n “Not drastically.”<\/p>\n I wonder about relations for a moment.\u00a0 I think about our upstanding Telp\u00e8re, about the photos on his desk.<\/p>\n “Curly hair?”<\/p>\n “No, bald.”<\/p>\n Feels like were playing Guess Who.\u00a0 Is your samurai-slasher Maria?\u00a0 No, he had no hat, dummy.<\/p>\n My stomach grumbles.\u00a0 It has been awhile.<\/p>\n Amber screams upstairs.<\/p>\n We sprint up the stairs and she’s backed into a booth, good ole stalwart Telp\u00e8re sure enough, samurai sword in hand, is just dripping in Macelroy’s front door.\u00a0 The old-lady bar-back’s behind him and left of center, our mildewed ex-waiter has got some sort of blade in his hand.<\/p>\n “Wolf boys!”\u00a0 Telp\u00e8re’s got that consequence look on his face again.<\/p>\n They’re definitely blocking the door and the only theoretical other way out I can muck up is back down the bathroom, transform into sludge, flush-self, and rediscover human form in the Doubs, swim to the street and get the hell out of town.<\/p>\n But I can’t do any of that, so Telp\u00e8re looks very big in the doorway.<\/p>\n Priss boldly stands in front of me.\u00a0 Not sure what he means to do by that but Telp\u00e8re repeats himself, re-emphasizing the plural, re-emphasizing the wolf as well.<\/p>\n “You’ve got kids, man.”\u00a0 That’s all I can really say.\u00a0 “Go.”<\/p>\n A shooing motion feels a bit pathetic towards a guy with a samurai sword.<\/p>\n He advances slowly into the room, the restaurant staff shadowing him.<\/p>\n “I have a brother also, wolf-boys.”<\/p>\n Translation: had.\u00a0 A big bald brother, likely.\u00a0 Covered in ink.\u00a0 I shouldn’t glance at Amber, she’d probably have something snotty to say about lying to her all this time.\u00a0 Plus it\u2019s one more pair of window-eyes I’d have to ignore.<\/p>\n “Priss.”<\/p>\n He knows.\u00a0 “I know.”<\/p>\n No survivors.<\/p>\n He’s already half-way through his transform and I look at Amber, feel my jaws widening, my clothes begin parting at the seams.\u00a0 She’s shaking her head and I nod and keep nodding, like sorry baby, best way to tell you it can’t be is show you it can’t be.<\/p>\n At the crunch of impact, I whip around \u2013 Priss is dragging the waiter through the table-wear, the guy screeching, and in so many ways it feels good to howl right in the face of an oncoming swordsman.<\/p>\n He’s big, Telp\u00e8re.\u00a0 Big throat, big hamstring, neck like a hunk of lamb.\u00a0 I’m around him and on his back, take a rending bite from his shoulder.\u00a0 Bar-back had a knife too, though \u2013 she plants it in my leg.\u00a0 I send her scattering back across our table, hoping she lands on some glass, keep her down for a bit.<\/p>\n Telp\u00e8re drops his sword \u2013 sword, silly thing to be using in this day and age \u2013 and he’s definitely groping for a gun but that blood smell has got me moving and the waiter is for sure down, judging by the crunching and the spatter and Amber’s screaming, so I don’t wait for the big man to get it unholstered.<\/p>\n He’s only got one hand to block my lunge and he knows he made a mistake, using the sword first, some sort-of French heroics, and I flatten him against the bar and our weight takes us from there to the ground in a roll that dazes him and for a second looking down at him, and he up at me, I see the whole big thing \u2013 his eyes, his daughters on his desk, with their red hair and the sword, his brother and then the girl, no woman, a month ago and how her hood had stayed on her head even after we’d finished but that in the moonlight in retrospect I could imagine they’d had similar noses, her and the girls, and mouths and maybe hair.<\/p>\n Rules, though.\u00a0 No survivors.<\/p>\n <\/br> “I did Amber for you.”<\/p>\n My stomach growls, didn’t even get a chance to eat.<\/p>\n “I did Amber fo\u2014”<\/p>\n “I know.\u00a0 Thank you, Priss.”<\/p>\n “I knew you wouldn’t want to.”<\/p>\n He’s trying too hard to be perky.\u00a0 He’ll probably a\u2014<\/p>\n “So where too?”<\/p>\n I pull the hood tighter, point up the road into the grey with an ink-stained finger.<\/p>\n “Probably Morocco or something.”<\/p>\n “Chance we could stop for some grub before?” by Eric Westerlind When I turn the corner and get past the Music Mogul, I slow up.\u00a0 Our street doesn’t often have too many walkers this time of evening, especially when it’s all grey-dark and spitting\u2014but somebody turned on the … Continue reading
\nHiding in shadows has never really been my thing.\u00a0 I mean, I’ve tucked into trees before, or rather, behind trees, but usually in the daylight and usually for something summer-camp related.\u00a0 It’s very different trying to flatten the body into a corner comprised of nothing but the absence of something else, like light.<\/p>\n
\nThe pub is remarkably quiet for a Thursday; we find a corner booth, slide in, order some full-pints from the stringy haired waiter-type guy.<\/p>\n
\nWe step out of Macelroy’s, Priss and me, and splash into the puddles outside.\u00a0 This sky-drool keeps most folks inside; it should keep us in, too.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we’ve gotta move, again.\u00a0 I lead us up the road, headed east out of town, club-limbed trees hanging over us.\u00a0 Priss pulls his shirt closed, tries to anyway, hide the ink.<\/p>\n
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