What Happened Next...

Christopher Meija was a rapist.

His first words out of the car were, “You’re drunk.” I hadn’t even had a chance to say anything. He was a hospice care giver who took advantage of the elderly. I bumped into his car at a light after helping Rebecca move.

His second set of words out of the car were, “I’m an EMT.”

In the front seat was his girlfriend. In his backseat was a confused elderly woman he had taken from her home.

His third set of words was, “I’m calling the cops.”

Christopher’s lesson that day was don’t call the cops when you’re in the middle of a crime. Meija was in the process of taking the woman back to his home so that he and his girlfriend could film themselves having sex with her in comfort.

Maybe his second lesson was don’t talk your girlfriend into raping the elderly. Or at least don’t let her anywhere near the cops after the fact.

Me, my lesson was never to admit to any wrong doing, whether it’s true or not.

Yes, I had one beer.

Rebecca and I… I thought we were still together. I guess I was wrong. I helped her move into her new place because I loved her. Because I wanted to be a part of her new life. At the very least because I thought we were friends.

I also thought one beer couldn’t hurt.

When we were done, she offered me a drink. I took her up on it. If she were sitting in a burning building, I would have sat with her. I would have done anything for another moment with her. So, yeah… I had a drink.

The cops showed up, I admitted to having had a drink. I passed the field sobriety tests with Meija and his girlfriend watching and scoffing at me. Over a fender bender. That caused no damage.

The cops held me until a special unit could arrive, one with a breathalyzer in the trunk of the car. I blew a .04. Turns out, though, a cop can arrest you for that, even though it’s half of what the legal limit. Because there was “an accident” involved, because Meija started to feign a neck injury, the officer arrested me.

Because there was “an accident” involved, I was charged with felonious drunk driving.

Meija talked about suing me.

But it was because of the accident that the arresting officers talked to the witnesses, including Meija’s girlfriend. Nervously, she mentioned the woman in the backseat was of no relation to either of them, contrary to what Meija was saying. They pressed her on it and she told them her family didn’t know she had been taken from her bed.

Within a month, Meija was arrested for raping the elderly in his care. He talked a lot more about suing me, then. I guess he was trying to use one attorney to pay for another.

I think about that fat, sack of crap sometimes, “I’m an EMT. You’re drunk. I’m calling the cops.”

My life wouldn’t be perfect if he had kept his mouth shut, allowed me to exchange insurance information and kept driving. Maybe I wouldn’t have been working so much because I had legal penalties to pay off. Maybe Rob wouldn’t have found me at work and through the wholly unlikely and unplanned events discovered the worst thing I have ever learned… that eating my flesh can reverse the Ratfanger’s Disease (Jesus, my life sounds so… unreal).

If he had just driven off, he might still be raping the elderly. I wouldn't have been arrested. I wouldn't have had to community service. I would be forced to take DUI classes. It’s hard to take comfort in the sacrifice, though.

Last Monday, and forgive me for how long it has been since I wrote last, since I began telling this story…

Last Monday, I walked into my DUI class, after dropping Charlie off at home. I was almost late. If I had been stuck in traffic even a minute longer, I would have been late. My group leader would have closed the door and not let me in. I would have had to pay a twenty-five dollar fine and had an extra session tacked onto my schedule.

But I was not late. I was just in time.

As part of our intro, we have to say our name, a class rule, and talk about our day. I felt very bad for Charlie. After all, she was the one who had gotten me a job, put me back on track to getting out of the Bronco, getting my life back after Rob attacked me at work and the store decided to appeal to protesters that I was a… “negative presence” that needed to be removed.

So, to tell the group about my day, I told them I found Charlie sitting on the edge of the hillside, drinking wine and watching the sunset. I told them all almost exactly what I told you. They asked if I had accepted a drink when she offered it to me. I said “yes”.

It was just a sip of wine.

But you’re not allowed to have even a drop of alcohol twenty-four before attending class.

My group leader locked the door, hit a button on the intercom.

She asked me if I had driven there.

I should have lied.

I should have lied.

I didn’t learn my lesson, standing there as Meija accused me of wrongdoing. I hadn’t learned it by the time I walked into class and told everyone a story I should have kept to myself. Or even immediately denied.

I had already told the class I’d given Charlie a ride home and that I was stuck in traffic on the way there. But I should have lied in that moment and started back-peddling.

“Stay with me, guys,” she said to the class. Within moments there were security guards outside the door. “The police will be here soon,” she said.

Not Mine

I showed up outside her second-floor apartment.

If I had told her I was coming, she would have told me not to.

The look on her face when she opened the door told me as much. But I knew that already.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing I said. “I had to.”

So let me revisit the point that I don’t want to share people’s names. She isn’t named “Rebecca”, but the person who used signed into the computer lab before me is, so… that name will have to do.

Rebecca… I don’t know how beautiful she is. In terms of the academic signs of beauty people look for, she might not go very far. I wasn’t always attracted to her. She was a bit broad for me. At first, anyway. But you’ve never seen such a smile, eyes that reflect and take in at once. I’ve had flesh torn from my body, but I’ve never known the pain of her indifference. It’s strange, almost an absent look, but it hurt so badly.

Standing there, her face a bit puffy and her hair back in a scrunchie, my insides began to drop. I stopped speaking because I could hear my voice trembling as the words bounced in my head.

“Come in,” she said, wandering into her studio, looking about, disoriented.

Her front door opened into the kitchen, a narrow passage between her oven and the sink. I hadn’t been there since the day I moved her in. The day I got my DUI, actually. “Am I interrupting?”

“No,” she said, changing direction and heading to her phone. “Let me just cancel something.”

From the kitchen I watched her text, stopping momentarily, her eyes widening. She brushed a few strands of hair from her face, let out a bluster of air and finished the text. “I’m sorry,” she said dropping the phone on to the mattress. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said coldly watching. She took wide steps the short distance across her living area, her eyes fixed on the carpet.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked sitting down on the couch. I couldn’t help but wonder who else had been sitting there since I disassembled and reassembled that couch. I remembered her kissing me as I struggled outside the front door with a makeshift-screwdriver, trying to make sure it would fit through that awkward door. “You’re my hero,” she’d said to me.

And I believed that kind of stuff then.

“Have a seat,” she said. She’d left enough room for me.

I sat on the floor.

“I’ve spent a lot of time… lately, just sort of not expecting the next moment to come. Ever since Rob–”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted in.

“No, that’s fine. It’s not your fault. Maybe it wasn’t even his. But the point is, since that happened, since all that Eat A. Dick stuff, I never really expect to live out the day. I turned myself in at one point, not long after those people burned my place down. I was depressed, I figured there was nothing left for me in the world, so I may as well give myself up. I went to the pharmaceutical company…”

Her lips were smashing together, her eyebrows wrenching upwards.

“It’s not important what happened. But they were going to kill me. And I got away. But since then I have just been waiting. And I don’t know what for. Because there’s only one thing in the world I want. I just don’t feel like I can have it.”

Her fingers clenched her running shorts in her fist.

Maybe it was too much, too quickly.

“Can I make you dinner?” I asked.

“What?” she exclaimed, releasing her grip on her shorts.

“Let me make you dinner. We can have that drink,” I said to her.

Her brow loosened and her lips pulled into a weak facsimile of that smile that used to warm me so much. “Okay,” she said.

It was good to be close to her again. It was good to feel her hands against mine as she handed me ingredients. We stood in the kitchen smiling about all the things happening in our lives, all the things that weren’t worth smiling about save for the fact that they gave us a reason to talk to one another again.

“I think I’m moving in a few months,” she said.

“Really? Where? Are you moving in with – I mean, are you getting a roommate?”

She looked at me in the corner of her eye. “I may transfer up to San Francisco.”

“That’s far,” I said to her. “I guess I thought you were going to say you were moving closer to the beach.”

“I am, actually. There’s a place I can go month-to-month until I move. You should come by and visit me,” she said, pouring olive oil into the boiling water. I tried to respond and just couldn’t, instead shaking some salt into my palm. Rubbing my hands together, I spread the salt around the pot. She shook her head, “I’ve never understood why you do that.”

“I don’t know, either,” I admitted. “My dad used to do that whenever he was adding salt to something. I thought it was dumb then and then one day… I was just standing in the kitchen with a pretty girl and she said she never understood why I do it. It never occurred to me that I actually do it before then. Or now.”

“It’s good to know some things don’t change.” She pulled a couple more beers out of the fridge. Since that night with Trevor, I don’t drink anything someone hands me. But I can never say “no” to blue eyes.

Her phone was buzzing in the next room. “Excuse me,” she said, brushing me with her shoulder as she walked out of the kitchen.

I stood there, wiping the extra salt from my hands onto to her floor. When I noticed how clean it was, I grabbed the broom from beside the refrigerator and swept the grains under the oven before she came back in. “Almost ready?” she asked, placing her phone face down on her dining table.

We sat there, knees occasionally finding their way to one another while we delighted in the mediocre pasta dish we’d thrown together. After two beers I thought it would be harder to keep myself from saying everything I had said to her in the car after my chess game last night. I had rehearsed everything I would say, everything I could say, rather than sleeping in the backseat last night.

But I didn’t. Being there was enough, I thought.

The phone began to buzz again. Rebecca looked over at the oven for the time. “Oh, I forgot my mom was supposed to call tonight. Do you mind if I take this?” I nodded and she picked up the phone. I never got to meet her mother, the matronly saint of the Midwest. Rebecca passed on the ‘hello’ I awkwardly waved and excused herself from their conversation. “I’m so sorry,” she set the phone back down. “How’s your dad, by the way?”

“He’s fine,” I said, covering my mouth with my napkin. Glancing over at the phone, face up now, the screen had shifted to half-light. Still, I could see a notification from a contact named “JESSE <3”. It read “Be there in 3 min. Keep him th…” I wiped my mouth and took a drink, wiping my hands on my lap.

She noticed my change. Then she grabbed her phone to see the message for herself.

After reading it, she seemed to just stare, cornered. “I’m sorry,” she said as I stood from the table.

“Does he have a key?” I asked. I’d parked the Bronco two blocks away.

“They’re expecting the door to be unlocked.” It was too far to expect I wouldn’t stumble upon this guy looking for me.

“How many?” I asked, moving her oven out a foot closer to the door. “It doesn’t matter,” I realized.

“What are you doing?” I drew closed the blinds above the sink.

Grabbing her broom, I leaned it against the fridge. “I’m sorry,” I told her as I snapped the wood with my foot just above the bristles. “I’m about to fuck up your kitchen.”

For a minute I stood there, until I wondered if there hadn’t been enough time to make for the Bronco. 

Looking back on it, it’s clear now I didn’t want to try to make for the car. I’m tired of telling you about how I ran away from people looking to exploit me.

Securing my grip near the broken base of the broom, spreading my knees to secure my stance, I gave my right arm a bit of a rotation.

It hurt. At least I didn’t have the gunshot wound was healing.

Through the blinds above the sink, I saw three, maybe four figures cross to the front door. Then nothing. They were probably doing some pep talk. Or a countdown.

I looked back at her, “I only came because…” It didn’t matter. The words didn’t come. My throat was empty. She looked away and the door flew open.

The door flew open and hit the oven, smacking a dark-haired gentleman in the head as he tried to charge. I assume this was Jesse.

Grabbing him with my left and pulling him onto my right shoulder, I yanked him into the doorway until it pinned his arms to his sides. Holding a fistful of his hair, I started pummeling him with broomstick.

Rebecca screamed.

Facing Jesse, with his face in the sink, I could see two guys beyond the door I drove the blue-painted wood down repeatedly.

I saw none of him. Even now, there’s a hole in memory, like I could see right through him to the sink, as though we wasn’t even there at all.

But there was blood spraying, I could see that, but not mine this time.

That was all that really registered with me. Not mine this time.

Rebecca came up and grabbed me by my bad shoulder. Throwing my weight back, I knocked her to the ground.

One of Jesse’s friends tried to shatter the window with his boot, sending broken pieces of glass against the blinds, raining down on Jesse. With a simple thrust, I sent the broom through the blinds, through what was left of the window and into the neck of the idiot trying to kick it in.

I kicked the oven against the wall.

Jesse’s weight pushed the door open, his body fell to the ground.

Over the body, between me and my escape, the third man stood. There was an unsteady switchblade in his right hand.

I went to lunge but felt a pull at the base of my shirt.

Rebecca was trying to hold me in place. I spun out of it, my shirt getting pulled over me, like a child in a wrestling match. For a moment I stood there, bare-chested, the third man staring at the scar tissue where my nipple used to be, blood spattered across my face.

He dropped the knife. He was never going to use it.

I hit him anyway. I’m tired of being threatened.

I hit him and I hit him, across his head, against his neck, into his knees. I wanted to cause pain. I not only wanted him to not get up any time soon, I wanted this moment to live inside of him, every time he looked to hear someone call his time, every time he stepped into a hug.

I wanted him to never forget he’d held a knife on me, even for a second.

When I was done with him, when he was flat on the ground like a pile of laundry, I turned to the smart-ass who tried to kick in the window. He was on his hands and knees trying to catch his breath. 

The rounded end of the broom must have hit his wind-pipe.

I punted his collar bone, hoping to see him fly to the end of the second floor walkway.

When that didn’t happen, I just kept kicking him until he was on his back.

As I left, Rebecca was on her feet. She didn’t try to stop me, hurt me, even swear me.

I avoided eye contact. The last memory I had of her was good enough for me.

My car wasn’t as far as I remembered. Apparently she’d told them what I drive.

They’d broken in the window, set fire to the cabin. With my jeans and soles of my shoes, I did my best to smother out the flames. But the cabin still smelled so badly it gave me a headache, and the backseat was only bit of foam and springs as I tried to sleep.

Nothing Weighs More than a Check

I stood outside the ATM last night punching the frame as hard as I could.

I stood there punching until security rolled up and I ran off.

Today I can’t close my left hand all the way.

Monday night I had been paid for the first time since I was fired from my old job. They cut me a check and told me to stay away. But Monday, my boss paid me in cash. Normally I spend less than three dollars at Taco Bell and eat my dinner in a dark parking lot somewhere. Monday night I went and I got a real burrito. Sure, I still slept in my car but at least I was full. I had breakfast the next day instead of a few handfuls of the trail mix I keep in the center console.

Tuesday I got paid, I took what was left from the day before and I deposited.

The ATM read I had a zero balance.

There was hardly any gas in the Bronco. I should have gotten gas first.

So I drove about a mile or two from where I work and slept there instead of the nice, private spot I usually hide in. There was barely enough gas to get there, anyway. Afterwards, money in my hand again, I put it all in the tank. And this is a Ford Bronco, mind you. All the money I made today took me to the halfway point in the gas tank.

Throughout the day, during any break I could take, I called my mother’s office to make an appointment with her. Apparently they don’t want me in the building. My mother’s receptionist told me she would meet at the Starbucks in Hillcrest. “Here’s the check,” was the first thing she said to me.

Yes, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, my mother has been helping me financially. “I got job, Mom.”

“Great, I’ll write you a new check for the right amount. How much do you have?”

“I don’t have anything.”

“When do you get paid next?”

“Tomorrow. I get paid every day.”

“So why don’t you have any money?”

“The state says I didn’t file my taxes in 2012. They said they sent me a few letters. Ever since my apartment I’ve had my mail going to your house since it’s so close.”

“I know. Martin checks the mail.”

“Well, what I mean is, nobody told me the tax board was looking for me. So they froze all my assets. Or just the one I have, I guess. They said they needed five hundred dollars from me.”

“But you’re working now." 

"Right, but I’m… I’m working now.” Mom isn’t a rigid person. I’ve seen her at parties, with her friends. With my sister. She’s still the person she used to be. Just not with me. “Do you want to sit for a bit?” I asked.

“It’s late, Andersen. I have to get home.”

“I was hoping I could ask you for a loan in a week or two, help me to get a security deposit somewhere.”

“Why don’t you just room with one of your friends?”

“My friends beat me up. They tried to turn me in.”

“Not all of your friends. Surely there’s someone who will let you stay with them.”

“It wouldn’t a lot that I’m asking, Mom. And I’ll pay you back.”

“Martin has already started to notice the amount I’ve been giving you. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to give you anymore.”

“But it’s your money. You make more money that he does.”

“When you’re married you make decisions together, Andersen. There’s no room for being selfish.”

“I love you, Mom. I’m grateful for everything you do for me. I just… I was hoping to get out of the car soon. It’s been so cold at night. Since I can’t stay with you I just thought it might be nice-“

“Why don’t you stay with your father?”

“I don’t want to watch my father die every day on top of everything else.”

“You need to be grateful for what I’m already doing for you, then.” She zipped her purse and turned away.

“Mom, what did I get out of it?” She stopped. I didn’t expect her to stop. I didn’t even mean to say what I said, it just burst out, a groaning exclamation like when someone knocks the wind out of you. If she hadn’t, I would have never said another word. “What did I get when you went back to school?”

“I was doing that for us.”

“What I get spending my childhood in after school care because you wouldn’t let my Dad take care of me.”

“He abandoned us. And he was sicker then than he is now.”

“What did I waiting for you to stop studying and come watch the movies you rented?”

“If you hadn’t dropped out of college maybe I’d explain it to you. You don’t know what it’s like-“

“You weren’t paying for college. I was. So what do you care?”

“You don’t have a future, Andersen. You don’t have a future and you blame everybody but yourself for that. You have anyone to blame but yourself.”

“It used to be just you and me, remember? Do you remember before Martin? Do you remember waking me up after I’d put myself to bed and saying you were doing it for us?”

“I was doing it for us. I was doing it so we could have a better life.”

“Like what? Like a house with my own room? I had that for four months before you got pregnant and had me sleep in the garage so the baby could have a nursery. So we could travel? We never went anywhere, not like the life you’ve given my sister. Not like the trips the three of you go on without me.”

She slapped me across the face. People looked. No one said anything. “I made sacrifices.”

“You married a man who hated that you had a son. And rather than let me go to live with my father, you just let him make it clear I wasn’t supposed to leave the garage.”

“You led a charmed life,” she told me. I don’t know if my face was read, but the skin burned and my eye watered from where I felt the band of her ring scrape across.

“You said that with a straight face,” I said.

She bit down on her lip, raised her eyebrows and looked down at the ground. “I’m glad you got a job,” she said and turned away.

Normally I try to be a little more detailed about the things that happen.

This was all I could really muster tonight.

I think I’m going to throw up.