The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

– So, yeah, he's the asshole then?

She twisted her hand free and went into the bathroom.

– He's the guy I told you about.

She closed the door behind her.

He looked at me.

– Yeah, you're the asshole alright.

I held up a hand.

– Hey look, if you're gonna insist, I can only accept the title. But seriously, don't sell yourself short. You got the asshole thing locked up if you want it.

He came down the room in a loose strut I imagine had been meticulously assembled from endless repeat viewings of Tom Cruise's greatest hits.

– Yeah, I can tell by the way you're talking. You're the one fucked with her today. Made jokes about her dad killing himself. You're the asshole alright.

The toilet flushed, Soledad yelled over it.

– He didn't make jokes!

The dude looked at the closed door.

– You said he made jokes.

He looked at me.

– Asshole. Fucking go in someone's home, there's been a tragedy, go in and try to make money off that. Fucking vulture. Fucking ghoul. Who does that, who comes up with that for a job? That your dream job, man? Cleaning up dead people? Other kids were hoping to grow up to be movie stars and you were having fantasies about scooping people's guts off the floor?

I shifted, crushing a few more almonds.

– Truth is, mostly I had fantasies about doing your mom.

He slipped a lozenge of perforated steel from his back pocket, flicked his wrist and thumb in an elaborate show of coordination, and displayed the open butterfly knife resting on his palm.

– Say what, asshole?

Say nothing, actually. Except say that maybe he was right and I was the asshole in the room. Certainly being an asshole was how I came to be there in the first place.

JEALOUS, BITTER, CYNICAL, HOSTILE AND PRETENTIOUS

Chev was getting in my ass.

– Give me a hand here.

– Just a sec, I wanna finish this.

– A sec my ass, get the fuck over here and give me a hand.

I got up and walked across the shop, the copy of Fangoria folded open to an article about a new wave of bootleg Eastern European ultrahorror DVDs.

– Put that down and hold this.

I lowered the magazine, looked at the girl lying frozen on the table, her shirt pulled up, one tit untucked from her bra, tension in every muscle of her body a thin stream of tears running from her eyes, flipped him off and took hold of the Glover Bulldog clamp locked on the tip of the girl's nipple, stretching it taut for the needle.

The girl banged her heel on the table.

– Don't pull on it, don't pull on it.

– I'm not pulling on it.

She squirmed.

– You're sooo pulling.

– I am not, you're moving.

I looked at Chev.

– Did I pull on it or did she move?

Chev turned from his kit, a large needle between the fingers of his left hand.

– Just hold it steady, both of you.

The girl froze.

I looked back in my magazine and read about a scene in a movie called Amputee where a guy has his eyes gouged out and his toes are amputated by the bad guy and sewn into his empty eye sockets.

– I'm holding steady.

The clamp vibrated slightly as Chev ran the needle through the girl's nipple and she jerked.

I peeked at her over the top of the magazine.

– Not too bad, huh?

Part of a smile crossed her face and she shook her head.

– No, not too bad.

I nodded.

– Yeah, here comes the bit that really sucks.

Chev twisted the jewelry into the hole he'd just put in her nipple, and gripped the ends of the open hoop of surgical steel with two pairs of needle-nose pliers, torqued until they lined up, popped a tiny bead between them and pinched them together so they held it tight. The girl's mouth flew open and she made a long whining noise and a little urine stained the crotch of her way too fucking expensive for their own good jeans.

I looked at the photo spread in the magazine.

– See, hurts like a motherfucker.

Chev took the clamp from my fingers.

– Asshole. Get the fuck away.

– What? I was helping, you said I should come over here and help.

He released the clamp and the girl's nipple snapped back.

– Just get out of here, will you? Go get me some smokes.

I twisted the magazine into a tube and stuffed it in my back pocket.

– Give me some cash.

Chev looked up from the blood he was swabbing off the girl's tit.

– No.

– Fine, I'll tell them we're not using money anymore, that we've moved beyond outdated concepts like commerce and that they should just give me your American Spirits because it's a goodwill society now.

He placed a gauze pad over the girl's nipple and had her hold it there while he taped the corners down.

– I gave you money for breakfast this morning and you never gave me the change. Use that in lieu of goodwill and go buy my smokes.

– Thought the change was a tip.

– It wasn't. Go. Get out.

He took a card full of cleaning instructions from his work table and handed it to the girl and started telling her how to care for the piercing, blotting her eyes for her with a Kleenex.

– You're gonna want to take the bandage off in a couple hours, in the shower with water running over it so it doesn't stick to the dry blood. Then you gotta clean it, rotate the jewelry under the water.

She made a face and he stroked her hair and she leaned her head against his hand.

– It'll be cool. It'll hurt, but not bad. The hard part is over.

I leaned against the wall by the door.

– Until mom sees it and you have to explain why the hell you let some creepy tattoo artist poke a hole in your tit.

Chev stepped away from the girl.

– Go be useful. Now.