Gun Church

whatever it or this was. What I didn’t know was the extent of her involvement. She had warned me about Jim, after all, and I wasn’t looking to hurt her anymore than I had already.

“These days I’m about as sharp as a bowling ball. Too old. Too many drugs. It catches up to you.” I took a deep breath, a long pause and said, “So, you’ve been reading GunChurch?”

I didn’t think the question was particularly amusing, but Jim apparently found it quite wry and witty. “Yep,” he said, still sort of chuckling. “Started reading it after I borrowed your car that weekend. What a great book. It’s inspirational and-hold it!” He tugged the steering wheel hard right and we skidded to a stop, my head nearly slamming into the dashboard. “Got to belt yourself in there, Kip. I can’t afford to lose you now.”

I held my tongue, asking instead about the unexpected stop.

“Look.” He pointed at a red neon sign, Maggie’s Joint, above a bar.

It took me a second to time travel, to picture the place without the red neon, when its facade was very different, and I was a much, much younger man. “The Hunt Club,” I whispered almost involuntarily.

He seemed surprised. “You remember?”

“This was my life, Jim. I’m not likely to forget this place. Most of the stories I told you up in the woods started with me here.”

“You, Bart Meyers, and Nutly, right? Bet you couldn’t measure how much pussy you got here over the years,” he said.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

I kept forgetting about just how much Jim loved hearing those stories of the Kipster’s exploits and how much he loved my books. I’d had so little respect for myself for so long, I found it difficult to fathom his fanboy obsession. Fanboy! Fuck me, so that was it, I thought. Maybe that’s what this had all been about, Jim’s obsession and Renee’s hurt and anger at my abandoning her. Maybe Jim was just as angry as Renee at being abandoned, maybe angrier. It was easy for me to forget sometimes just how young and naive Jim and Renee actually were. Weak with relief, I felt I could breathe again, finally.

“Come on,” I said, slapping Jim’s shoulder, “let me buy you a drink.”

You’d have thought he’d just won the lottery, and he was out of the truck like a shot.

Forty-Four

eBay

Maggie’s Joint was pretty empty and pretty much what I expected: an Upper West Side bar dressed up, no doubt at great expense, to look like a shithole dive in Sheepshead Bay. You’ve got to love Manhattan. No wonder everyone was moving to Brooklyn.

“Barstool or a booth?” I asked Jim.

He was so wide-eyed, he didn’t answer. I found us a booth by the retro jukebox. Jim ordered a Bud because he didn’t know any better. The barmaid nodded her approval of his low-rent chic. I ordered a Laphroaig neat, to blur the lines between Kant Huxley and me. I figured to play into Jim’s obsession, hoping it would make it easier for him to explain himself to me. I waited for Jim to settle down a little and for our drinks to be delivered before asking him about what he and Renee had been up to.

“I guess you’re pretty upset at me about my basing some of the book on you guys,” I said.

He looked at me like he didn’t quite understand what I was saying. “Why would I be upset about that? It’s more than I could have hoped for when I started this whole thing, Kip.”

And with that, the grip I thought I had on the situation slid right out of my hands. I inhaled my scotch and twirled my index finger at the barmaid for another round. Jim, following my lead, polished off his Bud in a gulp.

“I’m sorry, but you just lost me. What did you mean when you said it was more than you could have hoped for?”

“Man, Kip, you weren’t fooling before about being slow on the uptake.”

“Apparently not.”

Our second round arrived and I told the barmaid to keep the drinks coming.

“Okay,” I said, “we’ve established I’m missing something here, but what?”

He ignored the question, answering one I hadn’t asked. “I liked it better when the book was called Gun Queer. That came from me. How could you change it without asking?”

My stomach clenched at the subtle malevolence of his tone and the proprietary nature of his question. As the seconds passed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to cling to the notion that whatever Jim and Renee were up to was fairly innocent and innocuous. There was nothing innocuous in Jim’s voice, nothing innocent about his expression.

“Changing it wasn’t my decision. It was about marketing. Writing is art. Well, at least sometimes. Publishing is a business. In that battle, business almost always wins.”

“You shouldn’t have let them change it.” Jim sucked down his second beer and waved at the waitress for another. He seemed disinclined to continue chatting until he got his third beer, so I finished my drink as well. The barmaid was catching on, bringing over two Buds and my third scotch. Jim made short work of the third can and started on number four.

“You know, Kip, I get the feeling you don’t appreciate what I did for you.”

“But I do. Being with you guys, the chapel, it changed my life. I had this book I wanted to write forever, but I never got past the first line. Without you guys, I’d still be at the first line. That’s why I dedicated the-”

He cut me off. “It wasn’t easy for me to give her to you like that.”

“What? Give who to me?”

“Renee,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly.

“What do you mean, Jim?”

He chugged his fourth beer, his expression turning dour. “Brixton’s not like here. There aren’t so many beautiful girls everywhere. Anyway, it’s different for a guy like you. Girls, they can’t help themselves with you. I’ve seen it for myself. They get all flustered around you. It’s not like that for me. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get Renee to even talk to me? I practically had to beg her and I don’t like begging.”

“No, I bet you don’t.”

“Fucking A.” He was really feeling the beers now. “The Colonel used to want me to beg him to stop hitting me, but I wouldn’t, not once, no sir. But I gave her to you and now she won’t have me back.”

“What do you mean you gave her to me?” I signaled to the waitress for another round.

“You still don’t see it?”

“Don’t be surprised. The last few months have been more than a little disorienting for me.”

He smiled, but it was a maudlin smile I didn’t know he had in his repertoire. “She thinks I don’t know about the trip she made to your apartment in Brooklyn the day of the snowstorm and the package she left for you, but she can’t fool me.” His smile drooped into drunken self-pity. I knew that look only too well. I’d seen it in bathroom mirrors a thousand times. “I know how much she loves you. She’d do anything for you, even risk her life by defying me.”

I didn’t want to go there. The more Jim said, the less I understood. I was having trouble getting my head around any of it. I was light-headed, blood rushing in my ears, and the scotch wasn’t helping. I tried to get him to focus on details, so I could latch on to something, anything.

“How did Renee get that chapter? I destroyed all the copies.”

His face turned to stone. Christ, he was all over the place, emotionally. That made two of us. “Renee didn’t get shit.” He slammed his palm on the table, the few people in the bar turning to look. “The only thing she did was steal it from me. I got that chapter. Me! That’s how this all started. Without that chapter … ”

The waitress brought our drinks. Jim grabbed the can from her hand and not gently. Out of his line of sight, I waved my hand at the waitress to stop bringing drinks. She nodded that she understood and left, rubbing her hand as she went.