Fuzzy Navel

11:49 P.M.
PHIN
ALEX HAS FOUND A RIFLE.

She’s fifty, maybe seventy-five yards from Phin. He can’t see her body in the dark, but he can pinpoint her muzzle flash. Phin watches her fire at the house. Watches one of the gunmen fall. Watches Alex take the guy apart, limb by limb. Deliberately. Cruelly.

It’s a sneak preview of what’s going to happen to him, to Jack, to everyone in the house.

Phin shuffles along the asphalt to the front of the truck, out of Alex’s direct line of sight. He can’t bend his arm at all. His elbow is busted, or something in it is torn.

The pain is bad.

He seriously considers digging into his pocket, taking out the pot he stole from that Wrigleyville banger, and eating as much as he can. Marijuana is a marvelously effective analgesic. Phin is an expert when it comes to analgesics. The past few years of his life have been dedicated to a singular purpose: the numbing of pain. Physical, mental, and emotional.

After his terminal diagnosis, Phin dropped out of society. He left his job, because it was meaningless to work when you’ve been given a death sentence. He left his fiancée, because he wanted to spare her the torture of watching him die.

Since he had no hope for the future, he began to live day by day.

Sort of like a dog.

That’s not a negative comparison. Dogs live in the moment. They don’t think. They don’t dwell on the future. They exist to meet their base needs. Eating. Sleeping. Breeding. Surviving. No worries. No regrets. Minimize effort, maximize pleasure.

Phin tried to do the same. He lost himself in drugs, liquor, and whores. When the money ran out, he robbed dealers, gangbangers, pimps, and criminals. That led to hiring himself out as a rent-a-thug, solving problems for people who didn’t want to go to the police.

It worked. He was able to blot out his pain.

Then he met Jack. She arrested him after a fight with a group of Latin Kings. Later, he and Jack ran into each other at a neighborhood bar, and began to play pool on a semi-regular basis.

Which would have been fine if it didn’t go any further. But, unfortunately, they became friends.

Phin didn’t expect it to happen. He didn’t want it to happen. Friendship involved responsibility. Phin’s only responsibility was to himself, to his indulgences. To avoiding pain.

Yet Jack calls, and he comes running.

Just like a dog.

Phin shivers. His bare chest is gooseflesh, cold to the touch. The smart thing to do is to eat the weed, run into the woods, and try to find a hospital, a bottle of tequila, a few grams of coke, and a clean hooker. Forget Jack. He owes her nothing. He isn’t going to be around long enough to regret the decision.

Run away, he tells himself.

But he doesn’t run. Instead, Phin stands, crawls onto the hood of the Bronco, and gets up to the windshield. He’s wearing gym shoes. The rubber soles aren’t hard enough.

But he knows something that is hard enough. Something that routinely cracks car windows.

Friendship sucks, he thinks.

Then he shuts his eyes, rears back, and slams his forehead into the glass.

It brings out more stars than the ones currently occupying the clear night sky, but he manages to crack the windshield – a spiderweb pattern the size of a dinner plate. He didn’t break through, but it’s a start.

He waits for the dizziness to pass, realizes it isn’t going to, then spins around on his butt and drives his heel against the crack. Again. And again. And again. And again.

The spiderweb gets larger. The window bends, indents. Then his foot busts through.

Phin continues to kick, widening the hole until he can slip inside, avoiding cutting himself on the glass while climbing into the front seat.

His head hurts. So does his arm. And the tumor on his pancreas feels like a piranha trying to eat its way out of his insides.

But when Phin touches the sniper rifle, he can’t help but smile.

“The truce is over, Alex,” he says.