The Outcast Hours Page 14

  Yeah, no problem. I have this app on my phone, it shows me where to go.

  We all have that app on our phone, it’s the map feature. Then again what kind of question was “find the place OK?” That one’s on you, Matty-boy. Do you come out this way much? Slightly better, I mean no one’s going to mistake me for Baudelaire, but—

  Sometimes! Not a lot. I’m kind of a homebody, you know? It’s like, you take all the effort to get dressed up, and go to meet someone, and then the whole time you just want to be back inside.

  Totally. Like, one time I went out on a random date with a girl on a Wednesday night and regretted it as soon as I saw her. That was nasty, quit being a jerk. You agreed to come along, the least you can do is be decent company for ninety minutes. How long have you been in the city? An hour.

  A while, since I left—

  —Michigan?—

  Minnesota after high school. I grew up with my grandparents. My grandmother. Well, my grandfather first too, but then after he went missing it was just—

  —Close. I knew it was one of those boring states in the middle.

  —with her gone, I just figured, what’s stopping me, you know? What’s stopping me?

  That’s great. How do you like the city?

  I like some things. All the strangers roaming about, endless packs of them, these different threads intertwining and severing. Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming, I guess—

  She’s not terrible looking, really, she’s just not quite my type. Well, whatever, you’ve got that second date with the lawyer on Wednesday, what was her name, not Lindsay but something that made you think of Lindsay? Kelly, maybe.

  —you feel like you want something real, you know? Something lasting. Something that will never go away.

  Totally. Stephanie, her name was Stephanie. That’s not that much like Lindsay, really. Just that last bit.

  Gosh, I’ve really been going on! Tell me about yourself, Matt, your bio said you were an editor?

  Yeah, for Shrewsbury. Associate editor, technically, but that barely counts as a lie. Genre stuff. Sci-fi, horror that kind of thing.

  I don’t really read much horror.

  Am I being negged? Too scary?

  No, I don’t get scared really. They just seem silly to me. Sparkly vampires, or sexy werewolves, or killer clowns torturing and eating children. Silly stuff.

  Huh. I don’t really like cookies, but I don’t make a point of mentioning it when I meet a baker.Did she tell me what her job was yet? I don’t think so. Keep it vague either way. What’s your story?

  I’m a pharmacologist.

  Do you like it?

  Yeah, I love it, I always wanted to be a pharmacologist. Well, not a pharmacologist, exactly, but something with medicine.

  Sure. It must be great to be able to help people like that.

  Mostly I just always loved the idea of figuring out how things work, you know? What makes things go. Actually, funny story, when I was eleven, there was this tabby that used to—

  Shit, did I refrigerate the curry? Probably… not, no, probably not. That’s ok, it’s just a couple of hours, and curry is fine, sits in the container getting thicker. I should get some bread or something on the way home, maybe a six pack. Nice way to polish off the evening.

  —but it turned out she was the neighbor’s, and not a stray at all!

  Wow.

  Yeah. So, after that we had to move back to Michigan.

  Weird.

  Do you want another beer?

  What, trying to get me drunk?

  She laughs so loud the bartender looks over.

  No, I’m OK. Anyway, I think the guy should pay for drinks on the first date. Call it an asshole tax.

  What do you mean, an asshole tax?

  Well, it’s kind of a weird thing, meeting a stranger for a first date, right? But for a guy, it’s just funny weird, like the worst that happens is you don’t click, have a little awkward banter, and then you head home. But a girl… My shrug is meant to indicate the gamut of harassment, abuse, rape, murder, the sordid rubric familiar to all woman in human society.

  When she isn’t smiling, her face looks very hard. I guess I don’t go on so many dates as you do.

  I really read this wrong. Good thing I don’t actually like her. Still, never feels good to make an error, even if it’s in your weekend kickball league. I’ve been single a while.

  She brightens up some, those aforementioned apple cheeks. I guess you have to open up a lot of frogs!

  Kiss a lot of frogs.

  What?

  It’s “kiss a lot of frogs”.

  Is it?

  Yeah, you open oysters to get pearls. You kiss frogs to… turn them into princes, I guess.

  Right. Can you excuse me a minute?

  Sure, take your time.

  Walking off she’s got a nicer ass than I’d have credited her. Her glass is still a third full, best to start winding this down when she comes back. You kinda need to lay the groundwork for an appropriate exit, smiling meaninglessly and fidget about a bit.

  Louise, 28. If Louise is 28 then I am a hundred and forty-five. Wait, no, if Louise is 28 then I’m 10? Because she’s pretending to be younger than she is. Whatever, Louise is not 28. Swipe left.

  Suvi, 32. Does it make me racist that I kind of have a thing for Indian woman? But then again, you’d be racist if you didn’t like them either. Catch-22. Swipe right.

  Alana, 23, either Alana’s a bot or she’s just a woman much too good-looking to go on a date with me. Swipe right, because we live in hope.

  Hey!

  Hey.

  The bathrooms are through a fake bookcase!

  Yeah, it’s cute.

  I heard there’s this place in Williamsburg where they have cats! You can go, and drink coffee or beer I guess, and just play with the cats all you want, you know?

  The cat bar?

  You’ve been?

  No, I’m just… aware that such things exist.

  Wine snorts out of her nose. Ten points. You’re hysterical!

  Actually I’m only very, very funny. With that last splash of Chablis we’ve reached the end of our date, though she seems unaware of it, staring up like a lamb to slaughter. At least make it quick, one sharp move, like a Band-Aid. Hey, this was a lot of fun, thanks so much for coming.

  Rising as I said it and she joins me on her feet. No problem!

  Good, going easy, I mean I’ve been on the other end of this plenty and there’s nothing to do really but smile till you get out of range and then start thinking of all the things you didn’t like about them. Outside feels like an armpit, have to crank up the a/c as soon as I get home. Awkward bit here where we decide between shoulder hug and sweaty handshake—

  Do you want to come back to my place?

  An unexpected development. For her likewise, I gather, a spur of the moment offer, the cliff overtaken, nothing left but to enjoy the fall.

  For like… another drink?

  Gosh, that’s really… Not a great idea, I don’t like you so much really and anyway sex with a stranger is always the same cocktail of pointlessness, the only reason to do it is to prove you can, and that’s a bad reason to do something. And they have a way of thinking this means something, even when they do it after one drink on a Wednesday night. My apartment isn’t far from here. I am an asshole.

  I don’t go home with strange men. We can go to my place though.

  Why is your place any safer? Whatever, being a single woman means taking your life in your hands every time you grab a drink, all the fucking animals in this city. Imagine, having to be afraid all the time, wherever you went, that someone was going to hurt you. Whatever makes you comfortable. Where do you live?

  East Flatbush.

  I thought you said you lived in Bed-Stuy?

  Did I?

  Didn’t she? While I’m thinking she wiggles her way under my arm and stares the way they do when they want you to kiss them, and I recall that I’ll be dead one da
y and won’t be able to go back to a strange woman’s apartment and touch her vagina.

  Sure.

  She tastes like white wine and lip gloss. Pedestrians separate around us, our affection an impediment. She barely comes up to my chest. I hold her with one hand and with the other I beckon down a yellow cab.

  Hi.

  Hello.

  Good evening.

  Hi.

  Just start get on Eastern Parkway and head east, I’ll direct you.

  Who the hell lives in East Flatbush? I mean, lots of people, obviously, but not white girls with post-graduate degrees. This is a bad idea, it’s going to take fucking forever to get back home. She uses too much tongue when she kisses. What is it she smells like? A bump in the road grinds our teeth together and I pull away.

  How did you end up living all the way out here?

  The rent is cheap.

  It’s pretty cheap in Mogadishu too, to from what I hear. Shuttered brownstone, shuttered brownstone, body shop with the signs all in Spanish, shuttered brownstone. Live forever in this city and never know it, two miles from your apartment you might as well be on the moon. A man wheels an overloaded shopping cart against a green light. The driver honks to little effect. Never any troubles with the… neighbors? That was a nice euphemism, good on you.

  Not really. Well, when I first moved in, there were a couple of kids down the block who used to say things when I walked past.

  Say things?

  You know, the usual stuff, Bruja and diablesa, but then one night I found one of them—

  There’s this big brown spot right in the middle of her smile.Jesus, that was a shitty thing to think. What’s wrong with you? Why are you in this cab? How old are you going to be before you stop acting like this? Another notch on the bed post? Asshole. Asshole. You are such an asshole.

  —and after that, they’ve all pretty much taken to avoiding me. Stop here.

  The driver stops abruptly enough to throw me into the monitor they have set in the divider, some C-list celebrity informing me of tomorrow’s weather.

  Here?

  The driver is skeptical, and I don’t blame him. Here is nowhere, a faceless block on a narrow street.

  That’s right.

  Driver shrugs. Twenty-seven fifty.

  Erin reaches for her purse before I can feint towards my wallet. You got the drinks.

  Only half of what it cost us to get all the way out to wherever we are, but I won’t quibble if she won’t. Outside it smells like hot trash. Everywhere smells like hot trash in August, the city awash in fruit rinds and soiled clothes and used hygiene products.

  You live here?

  Just through the back.

  What is up with this girl? Looks like a pre-school teacher but she lives next to a crack house. Through a back alley with a lot of scrap metal and glass. Going for a light, I discover my phone is dead. I hope she has a plug to borrow, that’ll be a fun post-coital conversation. Three sets of locks on her door to get in, not that I can blame her, if I lived out here I’d want a pit bull and alarms. I wouldn’t live out here.

  This is me! Make yourself at home.

  Thanks. Yeah, it’s… really nice. Compared to the outside, at least, but that’s a low bar. Barely anything in there; a sagging couch, a place where a TV should be but isn’t, a well-stocked kitchen. She locks the door behind us. How long have you been here?

  Since I came to the city.

  How many years is that, again? I should have listened closer. However long it should have been enough to get some shit in here besides a Harry Potter poster and half a dozen of those thick candles that you buy at the mall for your aunt as a Christmas gift and have names like Vanilla Sun or Strawberry Bliss. She’d left them lit but they weren’t quite covering the smell, the other smell, whatever that is. Can I get you something to drink?

  Sure. Big, though, upside of living in the ghetto is cheap rent, I suppose, but who needs a second bedroom if it’s just you? And who would go to the trouble of padlocking it?

  Do you like rosé?

  Very strongly no, but by tradition the nightcap is any intoxicant that can be found in a cabinet. Sounds good.

  She pulls an open bottle from the fridge and pours us both a glass.

  Here you go.

  Thanks.

  Bottom’s up!

  God, rosé is absolutely fucking vile. Who drinks this piss? Erin doesn’t drink hers, licking her lips and staring at me.

  You’ve got great hair.

  Thanks. You’ve got… a really lovely jawline.

  Fucking Christ, someone should stab you in the chest with a butcher knife. What are you doing here, man? Stop thinking that way, stop thinking that way, the time to bail on this was back at the bar or before the bar really, but certainly not right now, not with her staring up at me with that kind of desperation that demands a response. I down the rest of my drink and grab her and push her against the counter, her short legs wrapped tight around me.

  I need you.

  Yeah?

  I need you so bad.

  You could make a fortune doing like, sex talk banalities fridge magnets. Probably someone already did already. Why hello, there, little Matt, nice to see you make an appearance. All the fucking trouble you make for me, you’d think you were my child and not merely its potential author. She’s so much shorter than me that it makes kissing her an awkward exercise. I have to bend down from the waist almost.

  Take me to the bedroom, I want to feel your strength.

  What Harlequin paperback did she take that from? Focus, focus, you’re enjoying yourself, she’s enjoying herself, keep the mood light. If she was a bit smaller I’d dead lift her across the doorway, hammy as hell but it plays, but she’s got some thick on her, and if I struggle getting her off the ground it’ll be bad for all of us. Plus, it’s dark and I might trip. Plus, my hands feel weird, quaky, kind of, and so I settle on following her into the room that isn’t padlocked.

  Do you have a light in here?

  No.

  There’s nothing in her room but the bed and a table beside it, inside of which are a couple of condoms or a small bottle of lube or one of those vibrators they sell at yuppie sex shops that look like Swedish cooking tools or maybe, maybe, a few feet of rope which Erin has never been quite brave enough to try using. I’m on the bed looking up at her, all of a sudden.She takes off her shirt and then her bra and her body seems to deflate, distend, makes me think of mayo being slathered over bread or a corpse left too long in the water. Did I eat today? Yes, right the half of the curry that isn’t in my fridge, don’t know why I’m getting buzzed on two drinks if I ate dinner. Don’t know why I left my house.

  I never do this.

  But how many times have you said that to someone? Me neither.

  I mean, I really never do this. Usually I have to know a guy for weeks before I bring him home. It’s a big thing, for me, taking a man home.

  I kiss her quiet, the last thing I need is to listen to her hopes for the future, so long as I don’t hear them I can’t be held responsible for not meeting them. Jesus you’re such a fucking idiot, travel halfway across the city to sleep with a girl you don’t want anything to do with. How long is it going to take to get back, can’t be many Ubers hovering around here in the back asshole of New York? Shit, your phone is out of battery, forgot about that, and also she said she lived in Bed-Stuy, I know she said she lived in Bed-Stuy. Her jeans go and that first pleasant scent of her sex comes in. Never understood that locker room nonsense about how pussy smells weird, it’s like a mouse saying cheese smells weird. Do you have any condoms?

  Don’t worry about it.

  I guess she must be on something, everyone’s on something these days, everyone’s got HPV also but it seems too late to be worrying about that all of a sudden, too late to stop and my hands feel slow and stupid, she has to help me get my pants off, down around my ankles without me quite realizing how and then she’s on top of me, the warm wetness—

  Oh go
sh, oh gosh, oh gosh, oh my gosh—

  A screamer and I bet a squirter too but just as well, as least it lets you know you’ve done your job, all we owe anyone these days, that and the first round of drinks, I stretch my hand on the small of her back but find I can’t hold it.

  I knew you were special from your picture—

  An even rhythm as she rides me—

  —a man, a real man—

  Digging her nails into my neck, hard, harder than I like

  —not like all the boys in this city—

  I don’t like it so rough like that, but I can’t seem to push her away

  —give it to me, give it to me oh gosh oh gosh—

  She comes in a second soprano, exultations echoing off the wall. She has thick thighs, ripe thighs, coiling tight around me, too tight—

  —finish in me, baby, finish in me—

  Hands aren’t working at all now, my hands or my arms or my toes or my legs or my knees only my eyes blinking and my heart beating and my cock which is—

  —that part goes inside me and the rest goes into your room.

  Something in that wine how didn’t I—

  —don’t struggle, baby, don’t struggle, I’ll take care of you—

  The smell is me oh god the smell is me or me soon like the other how many others

  —finish baby, finish for me—

  I listen to her I don’t want to listen to her but I can’t stop a small death followed by the long one hahah I don’t want to die I don’t want to die—

  Good boy. You’re such a good boy.

  She opens the bedside table but inside aren’t condoms or lube or a vibrator that looks like a Swedish kitchen tool inside is a knife a great big knife with a little curve at the end to use for—

  It’s almost over. Don’t fight.

  The knife comes down but I can’t feel it I can’t feel it I can’t feel anything oh god these things don’t really happen

  MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS

  M. Suddain

  I want to tell you about Berezov the chemist, and about what happened when a man called Vanzant arrived in town to open a second drug store.