“Yeah, charming, that’s my goddamned middle name.”

“I hear you, honey,” Brett said. “When they were passing out ass, I thought they said class, and I asked for a lot of it. And I got it.”

“It looks all right to me,” Charlie said.

“I’m not complaining,” Brett said. “It sure beats being bony when you fall on it.”

I said, “I’ve got another week or two on this place, Charlie. You can stay here. I’m stayin’ at Brett’s, so you’d have it to yourself. I can leave the coffee, any of this food you want. Though the rotten stuff might not be too appetizing.”

“No. That’s all right. Well, just the coffee.”

“Not a problem.”

I gave him my spare key.

“I can start tonight?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve spent my last night here.”

22

As I grow older, my belief in a higher power has not only disintegrated, it’s become negative. As my lawyer friend Veil once said, “If there’s a God, let him explain babies with AIDS.”

I think about the silliness of it. This whole God thing. Two teams praying before a football game. Not to get injured is all right, but they’re also praying to win. As if the Wildcats are more in God’s favor to win a fuckin’ football game than the Beavers.

How does God judge that? Best-looking cheerleaders? Quarterback with the best hairdo? Linebacker with the biggest dick? What’s the criteria on that?

In other words, what the hell was God’s plan for doing what he did to me and mine?

So, here’s what happened. I’m trucking along happy-like. Living with Brett. Playing house. Eating good. Going to work at the chicken plant. Not exactly the life of a high roller, but like the GED, the Good Enough Diploma that’s almost a high school diploma, I had a Good Enough Life, which was almost like a real one.

One morning after I got off work, I drove over to my place to tell Charlie if he needed a few days more, he had them. Until the end of the month actually. On that date, the landlord, a real shithead of a guy, was going to level the apartment and put the property up for sale.

I drove over there. Charlie’s car was in the yard. I parked next to it, started up the stairs. When I reached the top I saw the door was splintered at the frame. The door itself hung slightly open.

I felt a cold chill get hold of the short hairs on my neck and shake them. I felt a tightening in my stomach, a shrinking of my testicles.

I still had on my guard outfit, including gun, so I pulled the revolver, a. 38, and went on up, thinking, Good God, don’t let that motherfucker I fought at the chicken plant be up here. Anything but that.

I don’t know exactly why that came to mind, but that was my first thought. He had escaped, was looking for me, had gnawed a hole through the jail bars with his goddamn teeth, and now he was waiting to leap on my head, bite my skull, and suck out my brain.

I eased up to the door frame, listened. Off in the distance I heard a kid yell and a dog bark. I gingerly pushed the door completely open.

Inside the apartment the only sound was a drip from the sink.

I slipped inside. It was a little dark. The blinds were drawn, but it wasn’t a place a person could hide, unless he was a leprechaun or the Invisible Man. I pointed the revolver around just for the hell of it. I called Charlie’s name.

He didn’t answer.

I was reminded of something else.

The hotel room in Mexico. The bed with Beatrice on it.

All of a sudden the apartment seemed like a place I’d never been and didn’t want to be. The ceiling was too low, the walls too close. I thought the floor might tilt up and drop me off the edge of the world.

I called Charlie’s name again, this time real loud. Just for good luck I cocked back the hammer on the. 38.

As I moved inside my feet bogged in something wet on the carpet. I lifted them. They were sticky. The carpet was like the carpet of an old theater gummy with spilled soft drinks and smashed candies.

The carpet only partially covered the living room. The rest was wooden floor, and parts of it were coated in something congealed. It had seeped out from behind the couch. My nostrils quivered with the stench of it; sort of road kill meets dried copper baking slowly in a smutty oven.

I put one knee on the couch and leaned over and looked down.

There was a burst of blackness that struck me in the face, sent me stumbling back, swatting.

Flies.

I took a breath, put a knee on the couch, and looked over again. Now I knew why Charlie hadn’t answered. You can’t yell loud enough for someone in that state to hear.

Charlie lay behind the couch. He wore only jockey shorts. His throat had been cut. But before that he had been worked on. He was missing some teeth. His nose and cheeks had been cut on, as if whittled. He wore an expression that seemed to say, “Oh, shit.” His hands were tied behind his back with strips of one of my sheets or maybe a pillowcase.

The flies were settling on him again.

I couldn’t help myself. I let out a little bark of pain and fear and bounced off the couch.

I wiped my feet on a dry part of the carpet. I was trembling so bad I thought I was literally going to shake my gun belt off.

I started to back out of the doorway, but I gathered up my courage. It was like trying to gather up ten pounds of yarn and poke it in a two-pound basket. But I did it. I went to the bedroom. Opened the door and yelled. I don’t know why I yelled. To scare whoever might be in there. To encourage myself. Hard to say.

The bed was blood-drenched. The stench in there was strong enough to grow legs and dance up the wall. There was a bloody handprint on the wall. As if someone had leaned there, tired from his work. Or maybe Charlie broke free, pushed his attacker back, forcing him to put out a hand to keep from falling.

But whoever it had been was fast enough to catch up with a wounded man. And he had. And he had cut Charlie’s throat.

As for the handprint, it was huge.

A little suitcase sat on its side by my chair. On the chair were Charlie’s clothes, a Hawaiian shirt draped over the back of it. The shirt pictured a bursting sunset against a blue-green sea, bordered by palm trees and a strip of beach. On the seat of the chair, on top of his gray slacks, was his porkpie hat. Beside the chair, his Dr. Scholl’s shoes with black and red clocked socks sticking out of them like tired tongues.

I eased the rest of the way into the room and looked around. I even bent down and looked under the bed. Lots of cobwebs. I opened the closet door.

Empty, except for a dead beetle.

I took a deep breath. I checked out the bathroom.

I pulled back the shower curtain.

Nothing.

I holstered my gun, went to the front room, picked up the phone, called Leonard first. I don’t know why, but things go wrong, I call him. It’s a wonder I don’t call him when I have a hangnail. When I explained, he said, “Goddamn. Godalmightydamn. Charlie? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re absolutely sure.”

“He’s behind the goddamn couch, Leonard. He’s cut up. It’s him. I’d let you talk to him, but he’s dead. Dead, goddamn it.”

“Easy. I’m coming over… You all right, Hap?”

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