serrated kitchen knife shrink-wrapped to a piece of cardboard and he rings it up.
– Thirty-seven, eighty-nine.
I dig the crumpled bills from my pocket and give him two twenties and he gives me the change.
– You OK?
I pick up the bag.
– I’m gonna be.
– You live around here?
– I live around.
– You need a ride, there’s a car service up the street.
– Thanks.
I go out.
– Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?
I pull the 40 out of the bag and show it to Chester and tilt my head up the street and he follows me away from the storefront. I hand him the 40 and watch while he unscrews the cap, gives the mouth of the bottle a wipe with the greasy XXL sweatshirt that hangs off his skin and bones, puts it to his mouth and watercoolers half of it.
I put one of my beers down my throat.
Chester swirls the beer at the bottom of his bottle.
– Lookin’ fera rock?
I nod.
He tilts his head back, goes at the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing, drops the empty on a littered patch of dirt at the foot of a sick tree and skips toward the corner.
– C’mon.
I follow him onto Orange Street and in the middle of the block I punch him in the back of the neck just at the base of the skull and his head snaps forward and he takes another step and then his feet stop moving and I fist a wad of his sweatshirt before he can face-plant on the pavement and drag him to an iron fence and hoist him up and throw him over into the small churchyard it encloses.
I drop the plastic bag between the bars and climb over and jump to the ground, the holes in my body bitching at me. I grab Chester and my bag and drag them into the darkness at the foot of a statue of someone who was probably really important once, but now he’s just dead.
I crack a beer and take a sip and set it aside and get the kitchen knife from the bag and tear it from the plastic and cardboard and thumb the serrated edge. It’s dull. Sharp enough for bread, but little else. I pull up the sleeve of Chester’s shirt and spill a little beer on his wrist and mop it away with the paper napkins the clerk tossed in the bag. I open the sewing kit and thread a needle and set it close by.
And I pick up the knife and put it to his skin and cut quick and deep, the blade sharp enough for this.
My mouth is over the wound, and Chester’s diseased and ravaged blood is pumping into me and the Vyrus goes into it and feeds on it and I don’t feel the cold anymore and I don’t feel my wounds and the hairs on my stomach and chest stand up and my eyes roll up in my head and I almost laugh at myself for buying the sewing kit.
He’s not empty when I’m done. Not for lack of trying. But after I start gagging up blood for the third time I drop his arm and find more of the napkins and wipe my mouth and rinse my face with beer.
I look at Chester. There’s still blood in there, but none of it’s coming out, his heart having stopped pumping after the first three or four pints ran down my gullet.
I pick up the knife and hack his arm with it a couple times, creating something that might look enough like stress cuts to make the cops shrug and say
I squat there and drink another beer and smoke and try and remember if there was a video camera in the deli. If there was, I should go back and make the clerk show me where the recorder is and take the tapes and kill him. But I don’t think there was.
I collect my empties and butts and the sewing kit and stand and look at Chester again and put my foot on his chest and pump it a few times to force more blood from his wound so there will be some pooled on the grass when he’s found.
It looks like shit. Looks like a shit kill by an asshole who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Fuck do I care? I’m a new fucking man.
The holes in my body are sealed tight and they flush warm and tingle as they heal. I can smell the crisp night in every detail. I can see the stars that were invisible before. I can hear the tics and fleas that infest Chester’s clothes start to suck at the blood I’ve left for them. I can feel the vibrations of the cars climbing the ramp to the bridge blocks away.
I leap to the top of the fence and perch there.
I’m a monster in the city at night. And I can do what I fucking please.
It’s Brooklyn. Burn it to the ground and see if anyone pisses on the fire.
Two drivers and the dispatcher at the car service sit behind a Plexiglas partition playing dominoes on a card table with a crooked leg, filling the office with smoke.
The dispatcher looks at me and the mess I am and shakes his head.
– No cars.
I go in my pocket and come out with more of the Society’s cash and put four twenties on the counter and slide them under the partition.
He shakes his head again.
One of the drivers calls domino and slaps down and they total their points and the other driver curses and looks at my money.
– Where?
I tell him and he takes the eighty bucks and gives sixty to the guy who just skunked him and pulls on a parka and the dispatcher buzzes him out of the booth and we walk into the cold and he unlocks his Lincoln.
I start to get in and he holds up a hand and gets a blanket from the trunk, spreads it across the backseat so I don’t get blood on his cracked and faded leather.
I get in and pull a beer from the bag and put a fresh smoke in my mouth.
He turns in his seat and looks at me.
– No smoking. No drinking.
I hand him my last twenty and a beer and he pockets the money and opens the beer and drives.
He drops me off next to the Field and I walk across it drinking my last beer and toss the empty can at the bottom of the fence and jump it and hit to the ground on the other side and weave through the headstones.
I find the freshly dug graves of Chaim and Selig and Fletcher and Elias and whatever parts of the Strongman that made it into the ground here. I have to dig with my hands, but the dirt is loose and I’m strong and it doesn’t take long. I get to the corpse I want and I take his long knife and his little axe. I brush dirt from them and test their edges and find them honed.
Cypress Ave. cuts through the cemetery. I walk along it and settle into some bushes at the base of a tree where I can see the end of 57th Street and the lighted upper windows at the rear of the house with the small temple in its backyard, and the young man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat walking back and forth next to the fence that separates it from the cemetery.
I think about Lydia and what a pain in my ass she is.
I think about Predo and Terry and the way it feels when they jerk my strings and my arms and legs jump and I dance dance dance to their tune.
I think about Daniel and things he’s said to me over the years about what Enclave is and what they want and how I’m one of them.
I think about Rebbe Moishe and what he had to say about love.
I think about love and what you sacrifice for it and what you do to keep it in your life.
I think about Evie.
