Though the ride in was a veritable nightmare, I stayed true to my gameplan, Bill Burr’s voice repeating bob and weave, bob and weave like a mantra in my head, except Nan wasn’t throwing punches. She sat staring out the window into an unlit landscape, moon hidden behind thick clouds. Going over to her side of the train car felt like the only natural thing to do—but it would spell my own doom. I’d slip, sure as shits, try to patch it all up, nestle myself into her bosom to be cradled. Maybe she knew this. Maybe she was waiting for me to creep on over, to crack and plead for my very existence. She’d only done me like this once prior, when she caught me texting with an ex, Natalia, in a tone too explicit for comfort. That’s the problem. My baseline is fine tuned. She got the map and guidebook to my circuit scheme, knows it by heart, instantly recognizing when I skip a key or tweak a note. She knows all my crevices, dark places. So when I’ve done fucked up, no matter the scale, she always knows, and when it’s real bad, according to history, she resorts to silence. It’s the worst treatment you could ask for. Punch me in the face, twist my nipples, anything to numb the thundering angst, anything but a roasting in my own thoughts.
In the stew of thought I started digging. It didn’t make no sense, why the voice within didn’t allow no objections, no alternatives but the course currently dragging me along. Nan was my Eldorado, these things you know by heart. The perfect alignment of stars, time, parallell universes, colliding and rocking the status quo so far out of order that we could achieve anything we wanted, reach any height. And for Teddy it was all in jeopardy. The echo of why mayn, just go over to her mayn, just cancel on him mayn found no solace, no pity. It was firmly decided. Strap myself to the seat, lace my lips shut. These were the last things I wanted to do, visibly inflicting hurt on the golden ticket out of normality. Couldn’t blame it on the boredom, nor the restless triggerhappy nincompoop ready to fire off drama just to stir shit up. This was a drive, not a choice. And the head kept spinning, until it struck me somewhere on the outskirts of Schwedalia. I’d been smothering myself ever since I met her. Hitching a ride on her life-wagon, leaving me and mine behind. In the duo of me and her I’d found paradise, but the garden of Eden is no gated community no more. The entry came with a fee, a forced enrollment into her squads and friendly clicks, people that weren’t my people by choice. Nan was the only choice I made, if you assume I had any willpower innit, but the rest of it, however much pleasure I took in partaking, wasn’t a route laid down by my own two feet. I was being led along on foreign waters, and someone inside me didn’t seem to enjoy it all too much. Nan being the extrovert, we were always bouncing from one place to the next, and in between touching homebase I’d been holding my breath. Playing the part. Dragging the mask along, and now it was becoming too heavy. Shit. This was my Rubicon. Teddy has always been mine by choice, the first of his kind. Nan the second. I was living someone else's life, and the ruins of old self had been embodied into one shattered man pleading for help. And with that realization, I started to relax.
We rolled in through the gaping tunnel, taking the MCity line underground to the central station before heading further into town, to the Church of Saint Johannes, where we both would’ve gone off. Where she would get off. I stood up, waited for her to turn around, to say that it was ok, that it wasn’t ok. Walked over to the door, fixed on her, just a millisecond of her gaze to sentence my future. Nothing. The machine hissed, doors slid sideways, footsteps extended. The distance to the platform couldn’t have been more than a decimeter, yet it felt like I was stepping out into freefall, into total darkness. Rounding the door, I looked at her through the window. Not a tremble nor shudder. She remained completely still as people populated seats around her. Doors closed, train in motion. Running after it felt silly. Even if she turned to watch, the damage was already done. I looked around as the sound of the train powering away grew louder and louder, then faded, spotting nothing resembling Teddy. He’d been a smart boyo not meeting up on the platform, parading my betrayal and displaying in plain sight what I’d tossed her aside for. A good boyo indeed.
As I was shuttled back to sea level on the longest of escalators, I had to pinch my arm to refocus on the task at hand. There was only one variant of me leading the way to victory in the unity ahead, and I’d do no good to either of them if clad in the shrouds of a mope, burning the candle at both ends. Walking through the entrance hall he materialized, slouching around in circles staring at his feet. I snuck up full stealth, jammed a finger between his ribs, tensed my throat and said “What’s in the backpack” as dark as I could. He jumped a foot.
“T’fucks wrong with you. Is just rotten, God daym.”
One dash to close the distance, put one palm dead center on his ribcage, snaked around his back with the other and pushed towards me. There was indeed a beating heart, jolted into high gear.
“Get off it,” he bellowed and grinned, pushing me off him. “Daym. Where you wanna go?”
“Beats me,” I said with a broad smile. “My place is burnt to shit, and I ain’t going near your sister’s. Let’s go take a dip, to the beach! A promenade will do us all good.”
“It’s freezing, man,” but I was already moving towards the portside exit, maneuvering between packs of loud rednecks swarming in from the peripheral municipalities, dressed up in the height of trash-fash, moosed up in checkered shirts, cotton dresses slicked to bodies, thonglines outlined, seeking the big times in MCity, clutching Xidé or Spendrups Gold in jittery claws. It took a distance before I realized Teddy wasn’t following. He was stuck still in the same spot, hands in pouch, looking all morose. I gestured for the boy, he shook his head in decline, reciprocated the move. I had to oblige. The station’s newly waxed marble carried me like ice as I skated back to him.
“What’s the matter Teddy-boyo? How can I be of service?”
“We’re not walking,” he replied, shuffling his feet.
“Why not? Dock-side stroll. Maybe we’ll find a sailor’s cook to sook.”
“Bus.”
“Sure,” I said, laughed. “Whatever moves. Hand us a beer will’ya.”
So we cracked an Albanian lager, the kind you can’t find on the shelf, smuggled in from the Homeland, the Old Country, 12 percent or somewhere in the region, and timed a bus headed for the outskirts, meandering between dead grain storages and crumbled ship yards, boardwalks and skyscrapers, until the tar black sea swallowed the seaside excess and its lego block apartment complexes. The vast emptiness contrasted by million dollar villas on the other side of the road and their owners hidden from sight, the made who’d never sucked the bitter, vomit inducing juice of an Albanian eagle.
When we got off at the mini-golf, we were giggling hard at something, swerving into the night, leaving street lamps and pavement behind. It was always paradoxically warmer here, down by the sea, less windy, and this night the shallow waters around our stretch of sand didn’t produce so much as a hint of waves. The anomalous opposite of Pisstown sitting stoicly on the South coast, bearing the brunt of the continental winds slowly grinding it to dust. Sand smooth as silk, nestling into every crack. We were rising. Teddy uplifted, jovial even, was a sight to behold and I didn’t wanna go digging yet. But I had to. Soon. It was my duty as caretaker of the boyo’s soul.
“You remember lil’ Gregor?” he asked, cracking another horror can.
“The little rat? Chiquito rata?”
“Yeah, so I was on leave. This was a few weeks ago. I was on leave and strolled around with this character from psych. Name was Herman or Nicholas—something like that. We’re just aimlessly walking on benzo and he stops at this doorway. Says he gotta go see a guy about a thing, and I didn’t wanna stand out there in the middle of February, fluttering all by myself right?”
“Sure don’t. Might contract all sorts of nasties.”
“So he knows the code, and up we go to the top floor – climbing a hundred steps – and he starts knocking all furious on this door.”
“Yeah? This way. Pier 9. I wanna dip my toes.”
“And we’re standing there for like ten minutes but he won’t give up. He’s just hammering and hammering, totally ignoring me. Finally this drained junky opens and just stands there. I mean you should’a seen her. She looked like an after-after-meth mugshot.”
“What a life.”
“Herman pushes her, tumbles like a mitten. Storms the place, going from room to room yelling ‘You piece of shit! I’ll fucking kill you!’ until he doesn’t. Goes all silent. Now I have to go in there.”
“What happened to the fiend?”
“She passed out or something. Don’t remember. So there’s shit all over the floor. The most random collection of absolute trash, like shredded tracksuits, circuit boards, stuffed animals—and this film covering every inch of the walls. Something like motor oil, and the place had a metallic smell. Some proper horror-flick shit. So I peek into the rooms. It’s the same havoc all over. Then I look into the last one. A baseball bat comes flying right at me. Missed by an inch, hits the wall by some act of God, and I’m like ‘Oh shit you’re on your own’, skip over all the junk towards the door, tearing down towers and stacks as I go. Now the junky bitch is standing there with a knife repeating ‘You shouldna dun dat to mee,’ over and over. ‘Shouldna dun dat’ and ‘Imma killya’, frothing and grunting.”
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“Holy fucking shit,” I said, actually rivetted.
“Yeah. I run into the kitchen to find a weapon, and this is not, like, thought out or something. Lizard-brain mode. Adrenaline rush through the roof and I’m sure I’m gonna die. Now guess who pokes his fucking head through the door if not Gregor the Rat.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ll kill myself this instant if I am. And the look on his face. I’ll never forget it. You know what he says?”
“What he say?”
“He says ‘I’m sorry for chasing you with the tire iron Teddy.’”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“And I said ‘Yeah?’ And get this, he breaks out in tears like ‘I’m sorry Ted! I dunno why I did all that shit. I’m sorry Ted! Sorry Teddy sorry sorry sorry!’ So I’m still like need to get the fuck out of here, but he drags me into the room and Herman is laying there in a pile of clothes all bloody and passed out. Greggy-boy preps a needle ‘for old times sake,’ tries to make amends, and all the while he’s just rambling about how much he liked me when we were kids and that he wasn’t really trying to hit me with the tire iron back then. I gracefully decline the spoonful, says I gotta be somewhere and try to leave but the junky bitch is still standing there like a watchdog, foaming and mumbling. So I go back, says to Gregor that he needs to move her. You’re never gonna guess what he did.”
“What he do?”
“He whistled. Like a dog-calling whistle.”
“She come?”
“Sure did! She comes whaltsing in like she been out shopping or summin’, careful not to step on dear Nico. I’m just about to vacate, and he says to me, as he’s pushing the needle in: ‘You still look like you did when we was kids Teddy. Don’t you ever change.’”
“Jesus christ. What a novelty! How did old Herman take it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? You left him there?”
“Of course I fucking left him there! He didn’t come back to the ward.”
“So he died?”
“Chopped up and turned into a circuit board.”
Old Gregorian was a staple character on the Pisstown scene, a scrawny little kid not too far off Teddy in build and infamy. There were lots of them, growing up, but none of them carried the same rassmatass as Theodore. Degens and lowlifes, no-goods and would-be losers that I through my vocation had kept up a bond to in some shape or form. When I wasn’t the Man, it was Gregory, and if he wasn’t it then it was Ekky or Polanski or Jocky the Freak or Midge the Midget and the list goes on. I once heard that Pisstown had the highest rate for drug-using adolescents per capita, attributed to by the ferry landing and the hoard of Polish and Bulgarian lorries rolling into the dockyards daily. A theory, sure, what you’d expect from a bureaucrats deep reflection on the matter. But the Poles were only really good for a bottle of vodka, whiskey if you were unlucky, and there were people who’d made some serious mulah stealing bikes from the Pisstown trainstation, hauling them over to the docks and trading them for drank. Bicycles was the only currency they accepted, the lorry drivers, that and ass.
The ocean was all coals, still, occasionally gulping as if to remind us of its treacherous intent. We hadn’t spotted a soul since the bus, which didn’t strike me as odd seeing that it was late May and still cold as fuck according to norm. Newly fitted planks, smelling like varnish and pine, creaked as they carried us away from shore, out into the serenity. The red eagled cans had suppressed my Tramadol shivers, making me warm and tingly. We sat down at the end. I cracked another. It was time.
“This is nice I tell ya. Just the spot,” I said, kicking my shoes off.
“It’s freezing, and he says it’s nice. What’re you on?”
“Some shit. And you? Staying off it?”
“I am.”
“But you hangin’ with your sister? No? Imagine the day she’ll go straight.”
“Yeah.”
“Well fuck that then. Why did you call? Like, I don’t mind hangin’ but I got this itch.”
He looked down at his feet and I’d been containing an urge for a few weeks now that wasn’t willing to sit down. Had to seize the moment so to speak. I got up, started peeling off layer after layer with dual intention. I knew it would make him react, crack the mold.
“You’re not well. Put your clothes back on Max.”
“Tell me what happened Teddy-boy-o.”
“I didn’t sign up for a peep show! Alright! You got some weird fucking methods.”
“This ain’t about you Theodore. You feeling lonely?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it. It’s embarrassing.”
“More embarrassing than this?” I was stark naked, walking around in circles, hips swinging, rump wagging, regret oozing up the spine like an emergency override when an icy breeze grazed me. But there was no glory in backing down. I had to do it. It was the only way.
“I’ll jump,” I said, dead serious.
“You’ll go into shock. I’m not saving you.”
“Is it a girl?”
Teddy swigged hard from the can, moaned vehemently and I could feel him surrender through the pitch black. My body shone like a reflex, absorbing the city lights. The whitest of white. A hue only attainable by gingers and albinos.
“Oh Teddy boy-o-boy. He’s in love!” And with that conclusion I raced to the edge of the pier, jumped headfirst into the void. Teddy shouted something when I was airborne but it didn’t matter. I was an idiot. It was one of the worst ideas I’d ever had and I squealed right before breaking surface. At first it felt like stepping into a cold shower, body instinctively pulling away to save you from a catastrophic end. Then there was nothing. Blank. Complete silence. In that moment I felt pure calm, as if the water was a portal to a mental dimension. All that monkey chatter drowned out, making room for the purity of nothingness. I thought imagine if this is the end. Then it was just cold as fuck. Like the worst place on earth cold.
“Hoooly fucking shit! Ohly shit!”
“He jumps in the water, eight degrees in the air. Surprise surprise! It’s cold.”
I took a few strokes but it wasn’t getting better. Speaking was near impossible with my limbs stiffening. Though the freedom of unsheathed skin, it was simple, so innocently simple. Until it wasn’t. I got up in a panic and frantically leapt around.
“Looooveli,” I gasped between the thrusts and gawks. “J-j-just daym. Tell me about the girl. Is it serious?”
“Serious?” He scoffed. “It’s retarded. Null.”
“Who is she?”
“Just a girl. Emily. Knows Emma and I think she’s been trying to set us up.”
“A match made in heaven if it was set up by your sister. C’mon, give us the details.”
“There’s nothing to tell! There were people over, at Emma’s, and she was there with some ripped nazi looking fucker. The ubermensch type. It was… erm. Clear – that they were an item.”
Despite his outlook this was a good thing. Teddy-boy was capable of emotional courage. Who could’ve guessed it? It messed up my development scheme, timelines offset, but this was not the hour to bicker.
“Bah! That’s nothing,” I said, pacing around instead of jumping, feeling my blood pushing its way back through sludgy veins, stoking the fire.
“It doesn’t feel like nothing. We’ve gone out for coffee. Coffee Max! I’ve never done that with anyone.”
“Take your clothes off.”
“Stop fucking around. I’m serious.”
“So am I. You, my good sir, needs a reboot. I know the feels Teddy. It feels fucking rotten. Like you’re the meekest worm in the wormhole. Like you wanna implode and never reassemble. But it’s part of it. Part of the misery, the joy, the full experience. You can’t see the grail until you’ve waded through morasses. So get nekkid and fogetabbad’er.”
“I told her I liked her,” he said, audibly sinking.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Fuck her! And fuck nazi Pieter. He’s a listless cunt who’ll die forgotten. Not you Teddy boy-o, not for you. Now stop being such a bitch and strip.”
“No?”
“What are ya? A fag or something? Concealing a boner? Spring to action,” I said, grabbing my flacid penis, swinging it against the imagined rabble around us. “I’ll rub you if you’re not a piece of clothing short within ten seconds.”
“I’m not a dumb fucker like you.”
“Can you hear that Teddy? It’s my cock swatting away your divinity.”
He started laughing, like heartedly laughing. Like he did when we were kids, a bellowing roar of sudden demonic possession, back when we didn’t care about anything, when we were the plague of the world. When we were all we had. And then he started squirming.
“Only if you promise to save me,” he said, muffled by the shirt going over his head. I studied his exposed spine, jagged ridge of needle vertebrae trying to poke a hole through his skin, smiling to myself out of sight.
“Sure Theodore, I’ll go under right alongside you.”