Eighteen

I want the legs.

MEGAN ABBOTT, “POLICY,” IN Damn Near Dead (2006, ED. DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI)

Angela was not a happy bunny. They’d moved from the hotel to a basement apartment on Sixth Street, right under a restaurant called Taste of India. When she’d dreamed of coming back to New York, this was not where she’d imagined being. Yeah, yeah, all New York apartments were small, but come on, you couldn’t swing a frigging cat in this place, least not a live one. The ceiling was brown, either from nicotine, mildew, shite, or curry. She prayed it was curry. There was a constant pong of Eastern spice in the fetid air so the curry theory made some sense.

They had, count ’em, three rooms. You think, how bad is three? Well, one was a bathroom, then there was the so-called living room/kitchen-i.e., a hotplate and a kettle and barely enough room to walk-and the bedroom was the size of some closets, with one of those fold-up beds. Can you say cramped? And with Slide on top of her in every sense, she was on the verge of a scream every damn second. And worse, like they said at McDonald’s, he was lovin’ it.

They’d found the apartment, a sublet, on Craigslist. The rent was medieval, and that was before utilities. It didn’t help the situation that Angela was beginning to have serious doubts about Slide.

The books he brought home-what was the deal with those creepo volumes anyway? The Stranger Beside Me Dahmer: An Intimate Portrait Gacy, in his Own Words The Green River Killer Inside the Mind of Serial Killers

Not exactly light reading. And he didn’t just read them, he fecking studied them, Told her he was going to write a screenplay someday. Yeah, like she believed that shite. Her last New York boyfriend, Dillon, had told her he was a poet and he’d turned out to be a ruthless killer, not to mention a right bastard. And Slide, the shifty fook, could hardly write his name. Besides, what was she supposed to do, support some writer and his hopeless art? She’d had enough of writers and their constant whining. She wanted a guy who’d hit paydirt.

Speaking of which, when she was doing laundry one day she’d found a wad of cash in Slide’s jeans, hundreds of dollars. When she’d confronted him about it he’d said he’d gotten real lucky at the OTB. And that fancy watch-he couldn’t even figure out how to use it, but would he part with it? Would he fuck. He said a guy gave it to him when he’d given him some action on his forecast for the playoffs. Yeah, like he knew baseball from hurling.

And the guns: He was collecting them, already he had a Glock, a Colt, and, most worrying, what looked like a small bazooka. He said he’d got them at a stall in the East Village and they were only replicas-yeah, right. Angela knew all about fakes, just check out her tits.

But why would he want such firepower? Then, as she had her first margarita of the day-and sure, it was only a little after two in the afternoon, but a girl needed all the support she could get-she suddenly stood still, the frozen margarita frozen in her hand.

Al-Qaeda.

Jesus wept-he had the dark looks, had begun growing his beard, and was always wearing those shades. Then she gulped the drink, another horrific thought hitting her:

Airplanes.

How many times had he made her watch Airplane! on their little TV? God, one time, riding her, he’d even hollered, “We have clearance, Clarence.”

And as she began to mix a fresh batch of the margs, she remembered the time he’d taken her from behind, and roared, “Incoming, ground control to Major Tom.”

Sweet mother of God, and don’t forget his attempts to blend in, to sound American. Didn’t they, those sleeper agents, try to, like, assemble? No, that wasn’t it, fook…assimilate. Didn’t they try to do that? And above them, the Indian restaurant, that fucking stink that permeated everything-Slide never complained; he seemed to love it. Them terrorist types, weren’t they like hot on spices and shite?

Angela looked at the pitcher of margaritas. Whoa, hey, who’d been sipping from it? It was, like, way down. She’d had, tops, three, if even that, and it wasn’t like she’d used that much tequila. In fact, if anything, she’d given herself a priest’s ration-that is, mean and measured.

She sighed, thinking, What the fuck? It wasn’t every day you discovered you were harboring a terrorist. Homeland Security would probably pay serious bucks to grab this sleeper agent.

As she tried to come up with a way to turn Slide in for cash, maybe become a national hero along the way, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a large roach emerge from under the table. It was sauntering, like, with attitude. Frigging cocksucker, strolling across the puke-colored floor like he lived there. Well, yeah, he did, but not for much fucking longer.

She grabbed the mini bazooka, got it to her shoulder and said, “So, let’s see if this baby is just a replica.”

It wasn’t. She blew a small hole in the wall and she missed the roach. The fookin thing scuttled away under the bed.

Her ears were ringing from the blast and she gasped, “It was fucking loaded.” Then added, “I’m fucking loaded,” and began to laugh-a high-pitched, hysterical giggling. The smell of cordite was overwhelming and she could hear pounding on the ceiling. What were the Indians going to do, spill some goddamn curry over this? They’d probably put curry on the roach too and call it lamb roachala.

She turned on the radio-Dixie Chicks coming in loud and sassy. Then there was lots of banging on the door. Angela opened it and a small Indian woman, concern writ large on her expressive face, asked, “What happened?”

Angela said, “The hot plate, it, like, blew.”

The woman was trying to peer inside, but Angela had blocked better and bigger folk than this. Then the woman pointed and said, “Your eyes.”

Angela reached up and realized her eyebrows were gone. She covered, going, “But don’t worry, the roach is okay,” and closed the door.

She was high on tequila, adrenaline and sheer firepower. She thought, No wonder guys went ape over this stuff. Christ, it was better than coke.

She laid the bazooka down on the counter, went in search of the other weapons, and said, “Lock ’n’ fucking load.” But to her shattered hearing it sounded like, “Rock n roll”

Axl Rose would have understood.

Later, after she’d passed out and caught a few z’s, Angela went to look for cigs. She’d been smoking Kools Menthol, what the Irish called the pillow-biter’s cig of choice. There were crushed empties all over the floor, but she figured, let Slide clean up. Right. Fucking A.

She went to the tiny cupboard, and pulled out the drawer that Slide kept his undies in. She rooted around and hello, the fuck was this? Wads of notes, Franklins. Jesus, he’d been holding out on her, the dirty bastard. And, whoa, what was this? Some kind of list?

In his very distinctive script-walloped into him by the Christian Brothers, or so he claimed-it read: THINGS TO DO Beat the serial record Load up on weapons Dump the bitch after

She paused, wondering, Did he mean her? And after what? A terrorist attack? Fuck on a bike.

Further: Learn American Hit the gym Get vitamins Get hooked up Don’t let it slide

That was it. She had no idea what the last two things meant, and vitamins? What was up with that?

She closed the drawer with his white Y-fronts-and white they were, the screwball soaked them in bleach like some Magdalen Martyr. Then she counted the bills, thinking, Holy shit, where did he get all this anyway, his pal Osama? Wasn’t that guy, like, loaded?

The idea of turning Slide over to the Feds had vanished. She skimmed a few bills, figuring, what was he gonna do, call the cops? Her hair needed a cut and color and she had to get her nails done. Then maybe she’d hit the Village, buy some decent clothes. And if she could, she’d have something done about her legs. Oh yeah, and she’d get some frigging eyebrows since hers were, like, blown.

She pulled a chair in front of the hole in the wall. It didn’t do much to cover it up and she shuddered, imagining what might crawl out of there next.

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