The Good Neighbor (13 page)

“Nope,” said Colt. “Why not?” “Because he’s dead.”

“Whoa. Bummer. I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t notice he wasn’t at our wedding? Or my mother, for that matter?”

“Your wedding was a long time ago, dude. I was what, sixteen?

So you’re like an orphan?”

“At my age you’re not called an orphan. You just don’t have par ents anymore.”

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“Right. But did they die when you were young?” “Yes,” said Colt. “You could say that.”

“That’s too bad, man.”

Colt didn’t answer. They stood in awkward silence for a few moments. Michael sighed.

“Well, unless we’re gonna sing ‘Kumbaya,’ I’m gonna get turned on,” he said. From somewhere within the folds of his pon cho, he produced a thick, bent joint. He wet one end and lit the other, inhaling deeply; then he offered it to Colt, who waved it away.

“How long you been smoking that stuff, anyway?” he asked. “Thirteen years,” Michael said, exhaling a cloud of smoke in the

direction of the fire. “More or less. I think.” “That long? Jesus.”

“It was the thing to do, back when I started.” “It was the thing to do when you were
twelve
?”

Michael shrugged and took another toke. “What can I say? I ran with an advanced crowd.”

“Advanced, my ass. Your brains probably look like a marshmal low by now. You ever think about what that stuff does to you?”

“You mean to tell me you’ve never taken drugs? Not once?” Michael asked. “Not even coke? I thought all you financial types spent your lunch hour doing lines in the executive washroom. It’s in all the movies.”

Colt guffawed. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve done coke. Kid stuff.” “Kid stuff?”

“It’s what all the junior types do. To make themselves feel like big shots.” He shook his head. “It was the eighties,” he said. “What can I say? I only did it a few times.”

“Well, then, you’ve got no room to lecture me. Besides, pot helps me think.”

“How can smoking pot help you think?” Michael shrugged. “It focuses me,” he said.

Colt snorted. “Please,” he said. “That stuff slows you down, if

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anything. You have to think in terms of survival. You think you could defend yourself if you were stoned?”

Michael looked around. “Defend myself against what?” he asked, laughing.

“Saber-toothed tigers. Woolly mammoths. Enemy attack. You wanna get ahead, you have to think like a caveman. Survival of the fittest.”

“Man, you
are
a caveman. We’re not under attack, dude. We’re like right here in your living room.”

“Yeah, but I’m talking about
survival of the fittest
.”

Colt began dancing around Michael, throwing punches at his face, pulling them at the last second.

“Cut it out,” said Michael nervously.

“You think our species got ahead because everyone sat around getting messed up all the time? You have to be ready. You never know when someone’s gonna try and steal your woman. Oh, wait, I forgot. You don’t have a woman. There was just . . . Yolanda. Yolanda with the hairy armpits.”

“Quit it, man,” said Michael, stepping back from him. “She did not have hairy armpits! And you’re harshing my buzz!”

“Come on. Seriously. You ever box?” “No, and I’m not starting tonight!”

“I boxed a little in college. I could show you a few things. Throw some with me. Come on, tough guy. Let me have one. Move around like this.”

Colt shuffled his feet rapidly and hit Michael lightly in the stomach a couple of times. They were only butterfly blows, but Michael wasn’t ready for them, and he was startled. “Jesus,” he said, a note of anger sounding in his voice. “Knock that shit off, will you?”

“That’s it. Get mad. Get pissed off.” Colt kept moving around him, landing a couple more light blows. But Michael refused to engage him. He stared steadfastly ahead at some invisible point on the wall, gritting his teeth with each punch. “You gotta get mad if

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you wanna be a killer. You gotta get mad if you wanna be a killer. You gotta get mad if you wanna be a killer.”

“
I don’t wanna be a killer
!” Michael shouted. “Hit me!” said Colt.

Michael, breathing hard, swung suddenly and wildly at Colt, a haymaker punch that he ducked easily, almost without trying.

“You’re telegraphing,” said Colt. “I saw that punch coming be fore you even threw it. You gotta be sneaky, like this.”

He came up from underneath and stuck his fist somewhere in Michael’s poncho, a little harder this time. The air came out of his brother-in-law in a gentle
whuff
.

“You asshole,” said Michael. “That hurt!” “That’s it! Get mad!”

“I don’t wanna get mad!” Michael said, his voice high with panic now. “I wanna mellow out!”

“Here,” said Colt, “I’ll give you an easy one. Now get out of the way.”

He sent a slow punch at Michael’s face, but even at half-speed it was too fast for the pudgy younger man, and it caught him squarely on the nose. Blood spurted out from under Colt’s knuck les as Michael dropped to his knees, as if answering a call to prayer.

“Oh, fuck!” he said into his hands. “My nose!” Oops, thought Colt.

In his head, he heard his father ’s voice:
Way to go, Coltie boy. Way to show him who’s boss.

❚ ❚ ❚

It took Colt several minutes to locate a roll of paper towels amid the chaos of the move. He brought them back into the living room, eyeing his brother-in-law with a mixture of disdain and re gret. Michael was lying in front of the fire now, hands over his face.

The Good Neighbor 97

“Here,” said Colt, handing him the paper towels. “Take these.

We don’t have any ice yet. Fridge hasn’t been on long enough.” Michael grudgingly took the towels and held them to his nose. “Tilt your head back and breathe through your mouth.”

“I know how to get rid of a bloody nose,” said Michael. “I’ve had plenty of practice, thanks to pricks like you. Jesus Christ, man, what’s the matter with you?”

“C’mon, we were just messing around, right?” said Colt. “You know I wasn’t really trying to hurt you. Right?”

“Coulda fooled me,” Michael snuffled. He sat up and spit bloody mucus into the fire. Then he lay down again, closing his eyes.

“Appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything to Francie about it.

I really am sorry.” Michael sighed.

“Is it broken?” Colt asked. “I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“Why did you have to hit me at
all
?”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Colt. “Look, if it makes you feel better, you can have a free shot at me. Go ahead. I won’t duck. Take a poke.”

“Fuck you,” said Michael.

Colt ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “It was just a game,” he said.

“Some game.”

Yeah, some game
, came the voice again.
Is that how I raised you? To hurt people for fun? Oh, yeah, you’re a big man, all right.

Oh, shut up, Colt thought.
Where do you get off? You didn’t raise me at all.

❚ ❚ ❚

He left Michael lying on the floor and went back into the kitchen, where he paced back and forth between the counter and the op

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posite wall. It had been months since his father ’s voice had trou bled him last, and he had dared to hope he was rid of it once and for all; but sheer willpower had never been enough to banish it completely.

You didn’t have to hit him. You just wanted to, to show him how big and strong you are. Look at you, almost forty years old and still acting like a teenager! You might as well still be in high school!

“Shut up!” Colt said, hands to his head. “He had it coming. He needed a little shake-up. I didn’t really hurt him.”

No, you didn’t really hurt him. That’s why there’s blood all over your hands.

Colt looked down, and saw that there was indeed a large, amor phous smear of Michael’s blood on the back of his right hand, from where he had punched him. He went to the sink and scrubbed it off under a stream of freezing water. He felt his tem ples; blood had caked there, too, where his hair was going gray. He must have been running his hands through his hair, something he did when he was worried. He wet his fingers and rubbed it away. Then he went to the mirror in the bathroom, checking to make sure it was all gone.

“There,” he said to his reflection. “You happy? Now shut the fuck up. I don’t need any input from you.”

The voice fell silent.

Colt went back into the kitchen and leaned on the sink, rocking back and forth on the balls of his toes. He watched the snow swirl downward, the flakes as round and thick as quarters. He could see himself faintly in the glass, and he bared his teeth at himself in a mirthless grin.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he said.

9
‌

The Chicken of Despair

P
arking between two antiquated pickup trucks in the supermar ket parking lot, Francie dashed through the automatic doors just

ahead of a blast of cold air that made her long skirt swirl around her legs dramatically, something that always gave her the deli cious sensation of being a suicidal poet on the brink of despair. It was the whole reason she wore long skirts in the first place—most poets wore them, she imagined. Also, there was just something immensely perfect about the way a long skirt felt. You were ex posed and protected at the same time.

The temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees since they’d left the city that morning. Snowflakes had begun to fall in earnest, batting against cars and buildings and falling fractured to the earth. She imagined she could hear them colliding, like moths. A mousy-haired girl at the cash register looked up in alarm from her cuticles as Francie made her Gothic entrance, as if anyone who would brave weather like this was someone to fear.

“We gotta close in five minutes,” said the girl. “We’re all gettin’ sent home early ’cause of the storm.”

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“I’ll be quick, then,” said Francie. She smiled, to show that she didn’t take the store’s closing personally. The girl stared at her. Still smiling, Francie disentangled the last in a long line of carts and began whipping up and down the aisles, composing a dinner in her head as she went. She grabbed some red peppers, a giant pack of drumsticks, a bag of salad mix, carrots. Something about the weather had trickled deep into her, and she felt dark and de lightful. Big action on the horizon. In the car, on the way here, the eastern sky was so heavy and murderous that it seemed to absorb light from the rest of the world, sucking brightness into itself like a ravenous black hole. It was beautiful. Francie knew it would be months before she adjusted to the lack of buildings, to the imme diacy of the sky. She looked forward to this opening of herself. She was a winter blossom. She felt as though she’d been uncaged. Her heart fluttered free above the rice-and-foreign-food aisle like the dove released from the Ark, looking for that first hint of land. She was Francie Hart, and she lived in the country now. She could re ally say that.

At the end of the aisle, she came up against a pharmacy counter. Next to the oversized bargain tubs of vitamin C and the herbal medications, a rack of condoms greeted her with polite au dacity, a phalanx of furled penises awaiting the call to action. A kind-looking older man, with a fringe of white hair that ran in a perfect circle from the top of his head to his chin, was doing what looked like closing-up things behind the counter. A pharmacist. He looked Amish, though Francie knew that was impossible. Amish people couldn’t work in pharmacies. Their religion forbade it. Mennonites could, though, the less strict ones anyway. Maybe that was what he was. A Mennonite pharmacist. Good heavens. What more surprises did this new country life hold?

Francie stopped. Had she found her prescription, she could have had it filled right now. But she still didn’t know where it was. She was going to have to go back into the city and see her doctor again.

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Wait. She wasn’t going to take them anymore, remember? Oh, right.

That.

No, actually the more she thought about that idea, the more in sane it seemed. Remember how bad things were before? she asked herself.
Before
you went on them? Is that how you want them to be again?

This line of thought quelled her mood, and suddenly she was keenly aware that it was cold in the supermarket. Over the piped- in music that sounded as though it was filtered through aluminum foil, she could hear the wind tearing at the roof in fits and starts.

“Excuse me,” Francie said timidly. “I wonder if you could help me?” “We’re closing,” said the Mennonite-looking man, but he didn’t ignore her. He simply stood there, smiling, and Francie felt en

couraged to go on.

“I really just had a question,” she said. “I . . . well, do you have any sort of a computer database thingie where you could type in my name and maybe get a copy of my prescription? I used to go to a place in New York, but I lost the actual paper and I don’t know where it is. I was sure I’d put it in my purse, but when I looked later it wasn’t there, and it wasn’t in the boxes with all my important papers either, and I . . . “ She trailed off, aware that she was babbling.