I caught a cone of suction, felt myself twist and spin as I was drawn up. And then…
The heaviness was gone, the sense of floating returned. I was back in my body. Struggling to stay calm I rotated back toward the front of my head until color and life flooded back into my field of vision.
“No, no, lassies first.” Grandpa was saying as he extended a hand, waving Summer toward the bathroom. “But try not to steal anything while you’re in there.”
“Shut up, you prick,” Mick interjected.
Summer glared at Grandpa. “If you were in your own body I’d break your neck.” From the first syllable I knew it was Lorena.
“My own body is rotting in a grave,” Grandpa said. “So is yours.” He cupped his hands to his chest, forming imaginary breasts. “You won’t have these to help you this time around.” He spit on the carpet at her feet. “I knew it was your idea to steal my strip. You can’t trust a spic.”
Mick swung an arm around Grandpa’s neck and put him in a headlock. He pulled us down the hallway. “Take your piss before I gag you.” Grandpa struggled to break free, but Mick twisted his neck. My view spun crazily. “If you weren’t wearing Finn’s pants I’d leave you to piss in them.” He shoved Grandpa into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Grandpa struggled to unzip my jeans with his quavering hands, then relieved himself with a grunt and an urgent stream.
They’d come back because Grandpa had to pee. I was alive because of Jack Daniel’s.
Grandpa glanced at my watch. “It’s only a matter of time, laddie. More me and less you every day. Only a matter of time.” The croak in his voice was getting even less pronounced, and he now fell at the midpoint between a beast from hell and someone with a bad cold. He broke into a mutter of Irish music, a snappy “Dum de diddle dum dum” as he zipped my fly. “Need to put on some real pants,” he muttered as he opened the door.
Mick was waiting at the door with the rope.
Grandpa eyed it. “You think you can get that on me when I’m ready for you, eh?”
Mick lunged for Grandpa’s wrist. As if in slow motion I watched Grandpa lift my clenched fist and punch Mick in the eye. Mick slammed into the wall, dropped to his hands and knees.
Lorena leapt at Grandpa, wrapped her arm around his neck from behind and squeezed. Grandpa reared back, threw his shoulders; Lorena’s head hit the wall. Her grip relaxed and Grandpa headed for the door. Behind us, Lorena shouted for him to wait.
Grandpa strode out to the parking lot and hopped into the Maserati. “It’s good to have legs that work,” he said as he fumbled the key into the ignition. “Everything is harder from a wheelchair.” His head lurched forward, then backward as he sped out of the parking space. “You just can’t get away from people when you want some peace and quiet.”
I couldn’t believe how cavalier he was about pounding someone’s head into a wall. He was talking as if nothing had happened.
“I could never get any peace and quiet when I was alive. Between Frenchie trying to control my every move right down to when I bent my pinkie, and the rest of you blaring the TV and yammering back and forth like chimps, I never got a moment’s peace.” He wheezed mocking laughter. “I’m the selfish one?” He barely slowed taking the turn. “So why did you keep hanging around after you grew up? I didn’t ask you to come by, but there you were every couple of days, coming to butter me up, ready to pick my bones as soon as I hit the ground.”
Why did I keep coming around? I guess I thought that’s what families did. They ate meals together once in a while, exchanged gifts at Christmas. Silly me.
“You think I was going to hand over my life’s work to a sissy like you? Still hanging by your mother’s apron strings when you were shaving? Letting that Mexican pay your bills while you brought in nothing, drawing your crap cartoons. For God’s sake, make your way like a man! Don’t whine and complain and wait for women to wipe your nose for you.”
Grandpa peeled through Toy Shop Village and up to my apartment in a cloud of road dust. Three news vans were waiting.
“Ah, shit. I don’t need them hanging around.” He jerked the Maserati into park while it was still moving, went around to the trunk, pulled up the carpet and retrieved the crow bar.
He turned to the closest news team. “Get out,” he said, brandishing the tire iron. “This is private property. Get off it before I spill your brains.”
A cameraman held out his hands. “Relax—”
“Now, God damn it!”
Grandpa watched as they pulled out, breathing like a bull after his charge. “That’s how you handle them.”
Satisfied they were gone, he headed inside. “I told you I wanted you off my property. But did you listen? You’re nothing but a leech, just like your God damned father.” He turned on a burner, grabbed a grocery list off the refrigerator and held the tip of it to the burner until the tip burst into flame.
“You want to play, Finnegan? Let’s play.”
The flame crept toward his hand as he carried the burning paper to my studio, to the stacks of papers piled on my desk—the contracts and financial statements that had been rolling in as a result of
He wouldn’t, I thought. He wouldn’t light my desk on fire inside his own building. He held the burning paper to the edge of a document leaning off the desk. The flames crept across the page and lit others.
There was a
He found lighter fluid under the sink. I’d barbecued in the drive-in lot exactly once, so it was almost full. He sprayed a trail from the kitchen right into my study, then dropped the canister and headed outside.
Everything I owned was in that apartment. All of my photos, everything I’d ever drawn. He’d just torched my life.
Summer and Mick were waiting outside by Mick’s car, surrounded by newspeople and cameras. There was a black welt under Mick’s eye that looked like it wasn’t nearly finished swelling. They pushed their way over to Grandpa. “Is it you, Finn, or still the old man?” Gilly was back. He looked at Grandpa’s hands, frowning in concentration.
Grandpa peered up at the apartment. “Me and Finnegan are playing a little game. Aren’t we, Finnegan?”
Inside, I screamed and raged and swore I’d get him for this.
A roar erupted inside the apartment. A window shattered. Flames leapt out the broken window and climbed the stucco wall.
Summer pulled my phone out of her pocket, opened it. It was hard to believe no one in the news crews had bothered to call, but she was right to make sure. Who knew what they would do?
Grandpa swatted the phone from her hand. “Let it burn. It’s mine, I can burn it if I want.” He turned his face toward the flames. “You want to play, Finnegan? I told you to get the hell off my property. Now you’re off. How do you like that?”
CHAPTER 30
Grandpa was driving back to his house from Murphy’s Pub when I finally regained control, six hours after he’d burned my apartment. He’d downed five drinks at Murphy’s, and as I headed back toward Mick’s place in the Maserati I felt like I was driving on a ship at sea rather than a level road.
The traffic going the other way—out of town on Route 85—was crawling. Every day more people were fleeing. I couldn’t blame them—every day more hitchers walked the streets of Atlanta, seeking out friends and loved ones who didn’t recognize them, returning to their old haunts (pun intended), and generally scaring the shit out of everyone who was not afflicted. No doubt about it, Atlanta was getting weird, and if I wasn’t afflicted I would pack up my stuff (if I wasn’t afflicted I would still have stuff to pack) and join the bumper-to-bumper traffic fleeing this giant morgue.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” I said aloud. “Lousy drunk.
