The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death - Charlie Huston [36]
I touched my swollen lip. It hurt.
Chev moved away from the door.
—Cuz the thing is, man, it's not just you. I mean, I may be about the only friend you got left willing to put up with your shit, and I got to tell you, man, it ain't fucking easy. It is trying, man. It is hard work. And I appreciate you leaving some of Thea's cash this morning. And I think it's great you're doing some work for Po Sin. And if you can't be fucking civil to my friends, I can deal with it. But you have to cut me some slack on how I deal. Cuz like I'm saying, this is not just your thing.
He put a hand on my shoulder.
—OK?
I nodded. I looked at him. I tapped the middle of my forehead.
—You got something here.
He put a hand to his own forehead.
—Here?
I nodded again.
—Yeah, you got a big weeping vagina that's whining meeeeeeee, ooooooh meeeeeeee.
He took his hand from his forehead.
—Not cool, man.
I brushed his hand from my shoulder.
—Where's my fucking shirt?
He went to the deer antler coatrack in the corner and tossed me my shirt. I snagged it from the air and the hundreds I'd stuffed in the pocket slipped out and fluttered to the floor.
He looked at the cash.
—Been slingin' dope?
I fiddled with my shirt, picking at some dry blood on the collar.
—No.
He pointed at the money.
—Where'd that come from? Thought your note said Thea sent an ascending sequence.
—She did.
—Thought your note said it ended in nine.
—It did.
—That's like a grand there.
—Yeah.
—So where's it come from?
I didn't look up.
—L.L. gave it to me.
He didn't say anything. I looked up. He stared at me, the muscles under the MOM and DAD tattoos centered on either biceps tensed.
I pointed at the money.
—I didn't ask for it or anything, man. He just, he gave me a book and the money was in there. I. I just went to see him. I needed to. Chev, I haven't seen him in two years. I wanted to see if he was alive for fuck sake. I just. Shit, man.
—Get the fuck out of my shop. Pick up that money and get out.
I squatted and started collecting the money.
—I need to use the phone. I have to call Po Sin.
He crossed to the door.
—There's a payphone on the corner.
I stood, the money in my fist.
—I wasn't gonna spend it, Chev. I was gonna give it away. I didn't even know I had it. He put it in a book.
—Web.
—Yeah.
—I love you, man.
—I know.
He opened the door.
—But if you don't shut up and get out of here right now, I'm gonna love you a lot less, you son of a bitch.
I could have said something else. I could have said something so unbelievably dicky it would have made him laugh. I could have torn the money into little pieces and went and flushed them down the can. I could have done a lot of things. But it was kind of a delicate situation. And I don't have a good track record with doing the right thing in delicate situations.
So I just got the fuck out.
Cuz down to one friend in the world, you tend to get anxious about how long you can hang onto him before you fuck up and do that one last thing that can't be forgiven and you get left all alone for the rest of your life until you die on the toilet in a stinking SRO apartment and no one finds your corpse till it swells up and tumbles from the can and bursts open and even the maggots have had enough of you and move on.
Besides, he had a right to be pissed.
After all, my dad did kill his parents.
It was an accident.
Does that go without saying?
Does it matter?
Does it matter that he didn't actually take a gun from his pocket and shoot them in the face? Does it matter that they were all close friends? Does it matter that they had a standing Friday night date at the Palm in the Beverly Hills Hotel from years back, from well before my mom took off, from before Chev and me were even born? Does it matter that three of them drove drunk back up the Canyon every week, year after year, always in L.L.'s latest Mercedes, always, even in the rain, with the top