One of his hands rested on the rim of the glass, the other against the bar. A bottle of vodka reclaimed its slot, and a liquor city skyline took shape, sprawled see-through, crystalline. See through walls. Bottles made to look like women in evaporating dresses. Smoke clouds slowly moped from patron to patron along the bar. An active pint of Guinness appeared before him and darkened as it sat. It was still settling, still in the process of being built.
A tall, unshaven man took up the seat next to his, black dust ground in to both his cracked and craggy hands. Before the man could light a cigarette, a saffron pint stood under his nose. Two olives, which appeared more testicular than anything else, rolled on the bottom of the glass. He tapped on the rim. Thom tried to avoid staring.
–In Ireland, they call that stuff The Devil’s Milk.
Thom turned slowly, checking to see if he was, indeed, being addressed.
–What?
–I said, in Ireland, they call that The Devil’s Milk.
He pointed with his cigarette. A highway of veins ran along his arms.
–Really? I didn’t know that, I’ve never been. I’ve heard it was called The Wine of the Country there. I thought that was, uh…clever.
–No, they don’t call it that.
The jukebox flared. Thom leaned in closer, studiously, trying to establish a proper speaking distance.
–So…you must be Irish then, Thom asked.
–Toward the end of the day.
The man looked in hard at Thom.
–Are you Irish?
A roll of grey smoke wrapped around his words as he tapped on the rim of his glass. Dark lines embedded under the man’s nails hung in the air like ten little crescent moons.
–Sadly, no, Thom replied.
–Sad? Don’t be sad about it for chrissakes. You’re the lucky one. You’ve actually got the luck of not being Irish.
Rebuked slightly, Thom tried to conjure a line but came up a bit lame. He turned a three-quarters view and addressed the glass the stranger was tapping. He clutched the pack of cigarettes in his hand. It really had been forever.
–So what’s with your drink there? Why do you drink that?
–With olives?
–Yeah.
–That’s how my old man used to take it. A P-B-R-tini, he’d call it.
Smoke carried a laugh out of his mouth. He tapped on his glass again. One of the olives floated to the surface.
–That’s why I…I follow in my father’s footsteps, too.
Thom folded the lid of his pack backward and withdrew a cigarette. A flash of fire itched through him. It really had been forever. His body was governed by another mind. The stranger nodded. With haste, he picked up the lighter.
–May I?
–Yeah, go nuts.
A nearly naked woman, no bikini, slung a Berretta as black and smooth as obsidian over her shoulder. Wavy threads of smoke drifted from the end of the barrel. Red high heels and it was all just stupid, Bettie Page, scissoring, and shiny. It lit on the first try.
At first he couldn’t speak, the kind of rush the dead get coughing drowned up water out of their lungs. He wanted to hold the smoke inside forever, steal it from the world. His head scraped the sky.
–Thanks.
The man nodded and tapped again as the second olive rose to the surface. He pointed at Thom’s drink.
–You know where some great milk’s poured?
Shaking no, he didn’t say anything. Nothing could compete. Thom kept drawing in smoke.
–The old uh, the old ah… Pubic Louse. Just past the car wash. Bigger pints. Cleaner taps.
Suddenly the man brought the glass down to the bar.
–Good luck following in your father’s footsteps.
He stood and bled into the crowd. A five flickered under his empty glass, and two soggy olives rolled around the bottom like decapitated heads.
Thom sat quietly, waiting, losing track of the time, lighting one stick off another.
*
He was fairly happy sitting across from her. His head was clear.
–They call this the uh, The Devil’s Milk in Ireland.
She pulled her hair away from her face and gathered it together; she patted and re-patted the crown of her head. Her shoulder-length hair seemed to approve and even endorse her head’s movements, wreathing in robust concurrence with each nod and sway, but offering an extra ripple, a flicker. Her fading red tresses tapped against her shoulders almost audibly, as a paint brush might when fleshing out a canvas. Really, her hair was more brown than red now, browner than it had ever been. At least she didn’t have hair on her face. Thom peeled back the paper lid on his pack of cigarettes, performing a strange calculus on the size of the bites she pulled from her glistening Cobb salad.
–I didn’t know that.
–Neither did I until tonight. This chimney sweep or something just told me that.
The cut of her thin white linen shirt hinted at the descent of her chest. The full, gentle dip downward. From across the room, a stranger, a complete unknown, some Benny Hill compulsive molester could snatch a view of her ceaseless cleavage and seal it away in his cerebral vault.
–Say, Thom...
She jerked a slab of chicken off of her fork.
–What’s with the smoking?
He took a huge drag and imagined passing out.
–You smoke.
–Yes, right, but you don’t anymore. And couldn’t you wait until I finished eating?
Tips. He brought the tip of his cigarette into his mouth, varnishing it with his lips. Tits.
–Sammie, I see your…your top…the full…
He muted his voice.
–Breasts.
Quickly Samantha cut the show short and brought together the fabric of her blouse, uniting the two opposing sides with a single plastic button.
–Right. Ah, my tip-makers.
Had Thom simply lit his cigarette, Samantha would have gone about her business, talking, and leaning, using her hands a lot, unaware they were, ah, dining in Cleaveland.
Her face seemed to inflate.
–Oh, did you bring the wine?
Thom smiled and his cigarette rolled to the side of his tacky lips and hung on with a Stevie Wonder jerk-wisp before falling to the floor. Her blouse ran from her chest downward, where it met a black cotton skirt.
Samantha’s skirt was neither too long nor too short. It revealed her knees, which was a treat, as they were smart knees. You couldn’t argue with them: two apples you could pull off of her legs halfway down and slightly pale from an air-conditioned summer, but round and not too big. The skirt, however, did not climb her increasingly corpulent thighs. It couldn’t, as she kept close tabs on it, tugging lightly on the smooth black fabric now and again, carefully ensuring it remained stationary, just shy of her soft round knees, like the flirt of a low, sinking fastball.
Retrieving his cigarette from the floor, Thom noticed the skirt, its obvious softness, and wondered briefly what it would be like to wear it against his own bare flesh. All air and freedom down there. He briefly coaxed the fantasy across his mind, whispering to it a few times as it sat resolved on the far end of his brain. It was like trying to call the television across the room to come sit on your lap.
He quickly became distracted by the fading horizon of her inner thighs as they seemed to take on an eerie grey hue, merging and blurring into the unpronounceable seat of her femininity. All the available light in the room was positioned now in the race for her private oblivion. She’s wearing my panties. Crotchless. My crotchless gift. His head, nodding with enjoyment, climbed out from the cool trenches of the table and into the startlingly well-lit pub. She sat on a keyhole, surrounded by the dark.
He should propose to her, he thought while deciding on another drink, someday, today even, or maybe tomorrow. It was decadent to be flip with dates, though the time was probably right. He’d buried the ring deep in the sock drawer, deep and inert in a roll of socks for years now, but took it out one afternoon last month and watched as it twisted rainbows around the bedroom under the fading fall sun.
He’d strung it on a chain and started wearing it to work recently, which he didn’t think was particularly odd, though it didn’t exactly feel normal, either. He wore a chain and cross as well, and that didn’t feel particularly normal. He’d always hidden the ring from sight and slipped it back in the drawer each night and nobody ever saw it. Freed from kneeling, his chain spilled out, split light and scattered around the room. He restored it behind his shirt, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
–No, I forgot. I’m sorry.
–Damn it, I knew I should have grabbed it, but you said…
Samantha’s shoes were the crown jewel. The finishing touch. They made the outfit. Black. Assertive heel. Leather. Not trashy. Not like something in a special order catalogue. But curious. Extra straps and buckles that seemed to serve no reasonable function.
–Look, I’m sorry. I spaced it. Forgive me.
She dropped her fork on her plate. All of the air in her lungs spilled out as she crossed her arms. Thom’s eyes wandered to the floor, to her feet. Her ankles looked like two eggs waiting to be broken. Her feet could slide in and out of her shoes with ease and this she did, in and out, slowly, resting one foot outside, on top of the corresponding shoe and slowly, ever so, crossing the other leg over it, so her foot could bob back and forth. Up and down. Slow, slow. And she was like this now, he noticed, barefoot, bobbing. Samantha could rock her ankles independently of her torso. No one could tell she was preoccupied. No one smoking or drinking in the pub knew that the back of her left knee was sliding along its sister, using the accumulated mist of perspiration as a glide to rock away and then return without failure. Just couldn’t tell.
This slow movement incited a riot in Thom’s brain, this hidden bobbing, this clever rocking, and an assiduous army of thoughts trampled through the landscape of his mind, pillaging Thom’s appeal to order and plundering his known inhibitions. In the wake of all this plowing and trampling, he was left with a crop of foreign and unspeakable ideas. Possessive ideas. Secretly, he began to remove his shoe. He kept up with the conversation, not falling into hackneyed the‐jig‐is‐up-type disconnection insolvencies, like, “What,” or “Come again.” No, no…
Not drawing attention to the secret activity with the eyes, his shoe touched down on the floor soundlessly. The air that met his bare, moist foot was colder than he expected. The sock followed the shoe to the floor like a shadow. Thom angled his foot. This was it. This was the moment; the all of unrolling. Thom filled the space between his big toe and its brother toe with Samantha’s big toe and her sister toe. They had never touched that way before. Who had, really?
Sam’s bobbing ceased. Her gaze rose off of the floor and her eyelashes, eating away at the earth, began to flutter wildly and stretched over the length of the entire table.
The waitress approached with the check.
–Would you like another Guinness, sir?
–No thanks, but a bottle of your finest wine to go please…in a doggy style bag. Excuse me, doggy bag.
Samantha squawked out a laugh, revealing a rare glimpse of her slightly crooked bottom teeth. Her toes tightened around Thom’s.
Everyone felt a little awkward and everyone laughed.
A smile opened across the waitress’ face but was easily eclipsed by Samantha’s. Thom lit two cigarettes and passed one across the table.
–To us then.
She nodded and smiled again, pulling the cigarette from his fingers.
–To us then.
Elephants on a chain of smoke, engaged, tusks and dusk, held trunk to tail, they smoked after dinner together.
The triturated remains of his dinner slid toward him. He was able to identify the chunks and reconstitute the meal that had been carefully fragmented inside his body and later strewn across the asphalt. Each piece that had docked between his fingers could be counted, and as the peptic tide ran under his hand and under his freshly skinned palms, the ground beneath him began to ooze. It all seemed to be sliding away and back in, sinking beneath his chest, beneath his bones, and stretching away from him into the beyond. It felt like water, the world, wet and sloppy, and the shore seemed to push farther and farther, infinitely into the blackness until the night was an ever-darkening sea without a shore.
Thom pushed at the ground but failed to rise. His face met a puddle of slop. He rose again but slapped back down. Lumps entered his nose and the glossy rose interstices of his cold ear. It was warm. Like mashed potatoes. Fucking F.
Gagging, he pushed himself up and away from the spot, heaved himself from the street and onto the curb. Can’t stand, rise stand. Can’t stand.
You.
You.
You.
He wiped the contents of his stomach off his face and ear—it was cooling and felt cakey now. Women. Everyday. Eat it too. It felt like a piece had remained. Sure enough, it had. He popped it from his ear and watched as it fell to the sidewalk and bounced out of sight. More mashed potatoes splat out of his mouth. He could see his breath, sinewy, as it rose from his nose and loomed into the fibrous stretches of shadows curling over the air, into the steel wool of the evening. A strand of semi-clear drool leaked from his lips down to a widening puddle on the ground.
The headlamps of a rusting black truck cut into the street, and Thom fell slowly back to the ground as if his leg had been swiftly amputated from his body. Voices from inside the truck’s cabin leaked into the cold night air. He rose quickly and started to limp away.
Hitch selection. Witch erection. Which direction.
The truck cut in, stertorous, panthery as it crawled behind him and then rolled in a stride matching his pace as he walked. Thom tried to look straight ahead, but he got sucked in and all he could see were the passengers’ eyes, raw and spinning, inside the cab.
–What’s goin’ on?
The voice hacked into his ear like an axe through a wet log. Headlights bleached out the moon. Buildings swayed. You can see through walls. Sidewalks rose and thundered back to the ground. Tangy remnants of mucus and vomit gave way to the tin taste of blood. Ponies at a washing wall.
–Hey, hey there, bud. Tough night there?
This voice was louder. Other voices fluttered in the background of the cab.
–Nonna man, I don’t…I don’t know.
–Why don’t you let me give you a ride?
–Na, na, that’s fine. I ’ive right up the road ear.
–You don’t look like you live here.
A cigarette stump fell from the cab to the street.
–Naw. No, I’m…good.
–Suit yourself bud, but there’s a pig standin’ up the block here, just waitin’ to pop a stewed prune.
In the enveloping whirr of the engine, Thom blinked and saw 5,000 glass phalluses busily thrusting and twisting and turning under the safety of the hood. He saw thousands of white dresses falling to the ground like dropped handkerchiefs. The truck slid as he staggered. He reached for his keys, for the pocketknife on his keys. He patted. No keys. Every pocket. Every pocket. Patted and re-patted. Pants, shirt, jacket. Then again. Nothing.
–G’night.
In an effort to hide the ring of fat that orbited his stomach, Thom positioned himself in a three-quarters view and tried to muster a nod, heaving it in the truck’s direction. No one’s afraid of anyone, they’re afraid of the life lurking inside. Above, the cloud cover broke apart and he could see the outlines in the moonlight now, could make out the shapes of some of the men. Smaller than they sounded. The head of a man on what looked like the torso of a boy. He could take him, or at least kick his balls through his mouth. Sluggishly, he lifted up his leg and returned it to the earth.
–I’m leaving this area now, son.
–What did you say?
–I’m leaving now.
–Where you going?
The truck door creaked open as the passenger, wearing a huge grin that hung from his face like a jump rope, touched his boots to the ground.
The driver mumbled to shut the door now, and the passenger’s feet lifted from the asphalt. The truck door creaked to a close.
–Later, sweetheart.
The truck purred away on the street. Thom twisted around as though a book were balanced on his head. He rubbed the sides of the buildings with his hands and followed them down an alley. His lips retracted, and a small smile took shape. Leaving the area, son.
He exhaled enough to level a house, coughed, focused on the ground, and forced his legs to follow an unswerving path between the brick buildings, piloted by the glowing moon fixed overhead.
Steadiness was the key. Long smooth steps. Paintbrushes. The feet were paintbrushes and the sidewalk was the canvas. Grace. Clarity. Cha-cha-cha. His strides became easier. The ground softened. A rhythm developed, and Thom’s legs moved effortlessly through the air. His pace increased, and he found himself running from all the unfamiliar buildings, then houses, toward home.
With each step, the cars improved. Eviscerated carcasses turned into rusted-wrecks. Rusted-wrecks into running wrecks. The wrecks into economy. Economy into mid-size.
Glorious mid-size.
That was it. That was the apex, wasn’t it?
All at once, it seemed clear there would never be a full-size car to lure a cone-globed girl to his king-size bed to be levitated on his kong-size cock. He knew that. These were simple impossibilities. But mid-size. That was achievable. That was a possibility. Mid-size was just purrrrrrr—
Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrchase.
He ran on and on until the whirring returned to his ears. Two headlights rolled around a corner, pulling on the large black truck like the nose ring of a bull as it plodded his way. His legs sliced faster. Brakes squeaked behind him, and Thom turned to see the truck reverse direction. His leg muscles tightened. The truck approached, and the sound of a churning motor panted against his neck. His pace quickened, and the truck matched. He turned his head, tried to avoid eye contact. The door unhinged with a shriek, and a large flushed face materialized from the darkness of the cab. Stubble covered his mouth and chin, going piebald along his jaws. His nose was crooked, like it had never healed quite right. Then audible thuds came from the other side of the truck. Disfigured beer cans bossed by the crisp October breeze rolled in the bed of the truck. A shiver came over Thom in the darkness. In the unlit corner of a city suspended between too late and too early, four shitkicking men threw their cigarettes to the ground in unison and galloped toward him.
The passenger reached him first, got a hold of his hair, and yanked him backward to the street. The other three caught up and crashed against his chest and stomach with their huge fingers. Thom’s body fell lower and lower with each repeated blow, a feint at first, trying to possum a stiff pounding. But then a shatter of iron fists all landed at once, and he could no longer hold anything inside his body. His eyes hung low and began to flutter, closing one by one.