No Dominion

I cover his hand with mine.

– I said, Where’d you get a speech like that?

He tries to tug his hand free of mine, but I keep it pinned to the table.

– Speech? Jeez, Joe, that’s no speech, that just the speed rapping, just the old oral diarrhea. Just, like, whatever garbage rolling around my head getting cleared out by the speed. You know that.

I press down on his hand.

– Who you been talking to, Phil?

He clenches his teeth.

– Talkin’ to?

– Phil, I’m gonna crush your hand. You’ll never cut another line again. Who you been listening to?

He’s grabbed onto my wrist with his free hand, trying to pry himself loose.

– Um, yeah, well, yeah, I could have been list’ning to someone, to this guy.

– What guy?

– Guy goes by, The Count.

I lift my hand. He snatches his back and massages it.

– Jeezus, Joe, didn’t have to do that. Could have broke the damn thing. Ain’t ya had enough fun whalin’ on me over the years? Ain’t enough enough?

– Where do I find this guy?

– Got me. I mean, really, got me. The guy ain’t like no friend of mine or nothin’, he’s just a guy who’s around who I crossed paths with a couple times.

– Set something up for me.

– Aw c’mon. That could take all night. I got things of my own to deal with, I got a high to maintain here and you already got me off my schedule. As it is I don’t know how I’m gonna score, gonna have to rely on the kindness of strangers or something to get by, and now you want me to invest my few remaining energies in taking care of your business? That ain’t right, Joe, you know that ain’t right.

I stand up and dig the last of my cash out of my pocket. After the drinks here and Niagara and the twenty for the doorman, there’s about forty left. I drop it in front of him.

– Score.

He scoops the money up.

– Sure thing, don’t gotta tell me twice.

– Score, and then get me my meet. I want it set up tonight.

– I don’t know, man, could be tough on short notice. Like I said, not like he’s a pal of mine or anything.

He’s looking sadly at the bills in his hand, rubbing them back and forth against one another.

– Forget it, Phil, that’s all there is. Get me the meet. I’ll talk to you later tonight.

He gives up, tucking the cash into his jeans.

– Sure thing, Joe. You got it. Just tell me where to meet you and I’ll be there.

– I’ll find you.

– Uh, sure, sure OK. Um, where ya gonna find me?

– You’ll be at Blackie’s, right?

– Sure.

– I’ll find you there.

I make my way out of the place, leaving behind the low fog-bank of cigarette smoke, the fake wood paneling and the aroma of puke that drifts from the can every time someone opens the door. Leaving behind Philip, hip deep in his element.

The Count.

There’s one born every minute. Or every couple years anyway. Seems there’s always someone coming down the pike calling themselves The Count, or Vlad or Vampirella or some shit. Some asshole geeked on the whole vampire scene and wanting to play the role to the hilt. Whatever, I’ll meet this guy and talk to him. Won’t be the first time I’ve grilled a dude in a red satin-lined cape. Sad to say, it won’t be the last.

It’s close to one. Blackie’s won’t open ’til the regular bars close at four. I wander past Doc’s. A sheet of plywood has replaced the window I sent The Spaz through last night. I think about going in to talk to the bartenders, see if they saw anything I didn’t, but it’s pretty packed. I’ll save it for later. I walk to the corner of 10th and A. Take a left and I can stop by my place and grab some more cash, dig into that emergency fund. I stand on the corner for a minute. But I’m just putting shit off. I know where I need to go now, and my money’s no good there anyway. I walk one more block down A, take a right on 9th, and cross over to Avenue C.

When I come through the front door of Hodown, Evie glances up at me from behind the bar and gives me a look. She’s weeded back there. I slip past the pedal steel, fiddle and harmonica trio jamming on the tiny stage, collecting empties from the tables. I take the bottles behind the bar, dump them in a plastic garbage can with a couple hundred others just like them, and start washing glasses. Evie nods at me as she shakes a martini. Fifteen minutes later the glassware situation is looking better, so I go back around to the fun side of the bar and take a seat.

Evie’s still serving the crowd. It’s not a bad bunch. This late at night in the middle of the week it’s mostly waiters and waitresses getting off their shifts at the ten thousand cafes and bistros that opened down here in the last decade. Or it’s regulars coming in to work on their liver disease and listen to the music. She pops open a Lone Star, slides it down the bar to me. A half hour later things settle down and she comes over.

She wipes her hands on the bar rag tucked into her studded belt, picks up my smokes from the bar and sticks one in her mouth.

– Got a light?

She hardly ever smokes.

– What happened today?

She picks up my Zippo and lights the Lucky herself.

– No big deal.

– Good. What’d the doctor say?

She looks at the band.

– You hear these guys before? Corpus Christi?

– Yeah. I heard them before. What’s the doc say?

She takes a drag, coughs on the smoke.

– Said. Cough! Said. Cough! S’cuse me.

She takes a sip of my beer and stops coughing.

– Doctor said my viral load was up. Said the HIV is showing again.

I try to touch her hand, but she moves it. She stares at the band, holding the smoldering cigarette unsmoked.

– OK. Then what’s next?

A guy at the other end of the bar tries to catch her eye. She doesn’t see him.

– Well, it’s the second test showing a load, so that means we have to test to see if I’ve developed a resistance to the Kaletra.

– And if you have?

– We try other drugs.

– So when do you get the resistance test?

The guy at the bar is waving his hand.

– I get the resistance test after I take the recommendation from my doctor to my insurance company and they say I can have it, and if it comes back inconclusive I have to get them to approve a different test, and if that’s inconclusive we start shooting in the dark, trying different meds, but since Combivir and Kaletra are the Health and Human Services-recommended treatments, I’ll have to get every new drug we try approved first, and that will take Jesus knows how long, and they all have a different set of side effects so, instead of just puking all the time, I might start putting on something charmingly known as back fat or losing my hair or, you know, experiencing sudden heart failure.

She hands me the cigarette.