Every Last Drop

  —By all means, man, proceed.

  I balance the razor on my finger, watch it jump slightly with every beat of my heart.

  —What I was gonna say, Phil, was, I’m gonna cut your nose off.

  He nods.

  —Yep, yep, got that part, got it. Gooo ooon.

  I flip the razor, catch it so it rests easy in my palm.

  —I’m gonna cut your nose off, I was saying. I’m gonna cut your nose off if you waste a single fucking second of my time, is what I was saying.

  I look from the blade to his face.

  —If that makes any difference in your reaction, Philip, that is what I was saying.

  His jaw tightens, clicks twice, he nods.

  —Yeah, yeah. Sure. That makes a difference. Um.

  He points at his nose.

  —Too late.

  I fold the razor.

  —No, man.

  I slip the razor into my pocket.

  —It’s not too late.

  He queases a smile.

  —Great, Joe, that’s great. You know I want nothin’ but to help an old buddy like you. Never want to waste a second of your time. Time being, you know.

  He rubs fingers against thumb, hopefully.

  —Time being money. You know what I mean.

  —Yeah, I know, Phil.

  I take my hand out of my pocket.

  —I just thought we’d do this one the old-fashioned way.

  He sees the brass knuckles on my fist.

  —Aw, Joe, we coulda worked it out like gentlemen.

  I give him a closer look at the knuckles.

  Much closer.

  He slams into the wall and drops in a jumble on the floor.

  I stand over him, using one of his old dirty wife beaters to wipe the blood from brass.

  —Shut up, Phil.

  I point at the crushed mass that used to be his nose.

  —Just feel lucky you still got that fucking thing.

  —I need to know how it stands.

  —Right, right.

  —There a bounty?

  —A? A what? A bounty? Jeezus, man, what do you? A bounty?

  I knock the brass knuckles on the side of the sink where he’s washing the blood from his face.

  —Stay focused, Phil.

  He flinches.

  —Yeah, focused.

  He looks in the mirror, sees the bib of blood spread over his shirt.

  —Oh for fuck! Maaan. That sucks.

  I clink the knuckles again.

  He snaps to.

  —Yeah, focused. Yeah, bounty. Yeah. Like I was sayin’? Fuck do you think, Joe? Stab Terry and all. You think there’s a bounty? Fuck yeah, there is.

  —How much?

  He pulls a baggie from his pocket, starts sorting through the pills inside.

  —Man, this’ll teach me to focus exclusively on the ups. I mean, fuck, I don’t got a single painkiller in here.

  He fingers a couple chalky white pills from the bag and pops them in his mouth.

  —Still, any port in a storm.

  I slap the back of his head and he coughs and the pills fly out of his mouth, bounce off the mirror and drop to the floor.

  He stares at the pills, one resting at the edge of the pube-clogged scum-grate in the middle of the room, the other rolled to the base of a toilet inside one of the doorless stalls.

  —Oh, that, that was utterly unnecessary. That was totally fucking flagrant.

  I put a finger beneath his chin, raise his eyes to mine.

  —Phil, perhaps I’m not communicating my urgency here.

  I fit my hand around his jaw.

  —It’s early in the morning and you’re burned out, distracted. I know. It’s hard for you to focus. But.

  I exert pressure, squeezing the hinges of his jaw.

  —If you pay attention, you’ll notice that I’m talking more than I usually do, giving you more chances than I usually have in the past to tell me what the fuck I want to know before I give you some new scars.

  His jaw creaks. Phil whimpers.

  —That might give you some idea of just how thin your ice is.

  I stiff-arm him into the wall, careful not to shatter his jaw. I don’t want to shatter it yet, not until he’s talked.

  —And just how bad things are going to get if you don’t focus immediately.

  I relax my hand and take it from his jaw.

  —How much, Phil, how much has Terry put on my head?

  He works his jaw up and down, listens to it click, rubs it.

  —Twelve pints.

  I look at him.

  —Again?

  —Twelve pints.

  —A blood bounty?

  He wipes some of his own blood from his face.

  —What I said.

  The door swings open and Phil’s next-door neighbor comes in wearing a stained bed sheet like a poorly wrapped toga. She walks past us, eyes all but closed, goes into a stall, hikes her sheet, sits and places her elbows on her knees with a yawn.

  I grab Phil’s shoulder and aim him at the door.

  —Come on.

  He looks back at his lost pills, straining against me.

  —Just a sec, man, just a sec, really, man, I can’t afford to let that shit go.

  I shove him at the door.

  —Yes, you can.

  He bangs out into the hallway and I follow him.

  —Twelve pints.

  He walks backward, trying to get a peek through the swinging bathroom door.

  —Man, that fucking chick is gonna snag my shit.

  —Anyone scooping that stuff off the floor is hard up enough to deserve it.

  He raises a hand.

  —Well there you go, man, you just described me.

  I give him another shove and he bounces off the door to his room.

  —Twelve pints is an interesting number, Phil.

  He gets the key from his blood-stippled high-waisted trousers.

  —Fascinating, I’m sure. But, like, you don’t understand what I got going here.

  He points at the bathroom.

  —That chick there gives it up for anything. Mean, I could probably lay off some NoDoz on her and come away with a hand job. Thing is, I’m not saying I wouldn’t eat the shit on the floor back in there myself, but with this deal I don’t have to. I can just give them to her and still get a hummer out of it.

  He sticks up both thumbs.

  —It’s win-win, man.

  He lowers his thumbs.

  —But if she sees them on the floor she’ll eat them just out of fucking curiosity. Man, I’ll be out the pills and the hummer.

  He points both thumbs down.

  —Lose-lose.

  —Hey, asshole.

  The girl stands in the open bathroom doorway.

  Phil points at himself.

  She nods.

  —Yeah, you. That stuff you gave me, that was like total bullshit, wasn’t it?

  He shakes his head.

  —What, huh? No, no, that was good stuff, I wouldn’t, you know.

  She puts her hands on her hips and the sheet falls off one shoulder, exposing a tit topped by a scabbing Betty Boop tattoo.

  —Yeah, like you said you wouldn’t cum in my mouth either.

  He shakes his head.

  —That was like I told you, like an accident, like I lost focus for a second at the point of impact and next thing I knew, BANG.

  She narrows her eyes.

  —Yeah, bang, my ass.

  Phil puts a leer on.

  —Hey, if that’s what you’re into.

  She makes a fist and starts down the hall.

  —Don’t even, you dick. Cumming in my mouth is one thing, but that shit you gave me was almost all baby laxative.

  Phil backs into his door.

  —Hey, no way.

  —Bullshit. I’ve had the runs all morning.

  —Look, this is the big city, you got to expect shit to be cut a little.

  The girl’s d
oor opens and a guy with too many gym muscles sticks his head out.

  —What the fuck, that the guy ripped you off?

  Phil raises a righteous finger.

  —Ripped off? I. Man, I never in my life. This shit is like a calling for me. I. Out of the kindness of my, I, I, like I barely have any shit for myself and I cut a deal with this girl, throw her a little help when she’s in need and now. I.

  He folds his arms.

  —I’m fucking insulted.

  Too Many Muscles comes fully out of the room, bare-assed, showing the rest of his muscles.

  —Fucking rip-off artist.

  Phil opens his mouth and I dig a thumb under his arm and turn him to his own door.

  —Open it.

  He looks at me.

  —Sure, sure, just no one likes being called a rip-off artist.

  —Open it.

  He opens the door.

  Too Many Muscles is trying to catch my eye so he can flex and make it clear that I shouldn’t fuck with him. The girl is shaking her fist in Phil’s face, her voice rising, telling him she better get some good X off him if he expects another blow job. The corridor is filled with smells of shit and smoke and sweat and fungus and incense and fast food and spilled cheap wine and puke and the residue of the last corpse that rotted unnoticed in its room for a week before it was found.

  It’s distracting.

  So distracting I don’t register for a beat that Phil never put his key in the knob I locked before we went to the bathroom to clean his nose. So distracting I don’t hear what I should hear, don’t smell what I should smell. So distracting that after I shove Phil into the room I stand frozen for a moment when the side of beef disguised as an arm comes out of the dark room and fists a gloved collection of bratwurst into the collar of my jacket.

  And then I am pulled inside by a force not unlike being roped to the back of an MTA bus as it pulls from Penn Station, and the door is slammed shut behind me on the suddenly retreating couple in the hall.

  —He’s still giving me that look, tell him again it wasn’t me.

  —I know it might be a little hard to believe, the situation being what it is, but he’s actually telling the truth, Joe.

  —See, it wasn’t me, man. I mean, just basic logic at work, man, I mean, do the math. Like, two and two does not make five, and for it to have been me, well, you’d like have to go back and make that apple not hit Galileo’s head and make two plus two equal like eleven. If you get me.

  —Newton.

  —No thanks. I’m not hungry. Like, the way he’s looking at me, I’m never likely to eat again the way it makes my stomach jump.

  Terry shakes his head.

  —No, the name you were, you know, searching for, it’s Newton.

  Phil scratches his head, careful not to disrupt his pompadour.

  —Name? What name? I don’t know any names, man, I don’t know a thing. I’m like barely involved in this shit. Innocent bystander.

  Terry taps my razor against my brass knuckles.

  —The man who got hit in the head with the apple, who invented, although discovered is a more accurate word, gravity, his name was Newton. Sir Isaac Newton.

  Phil holds up both hands in denial.

  —I’m telling you, Bird, I never heard of the guy. Like with Joe here, he just showed up. I’d known he was coming I woulda called you. I was gonna call you.

  He looks at me.

  —No offense, Joe, and not like there’s anything in it for me, but if I want to stick around these parts I got to do what’s smart.

  He raises a finger.

  —But I did not, in fact, make that call. Cuz why would I? For what? And when?

  He shows the raised finger to Terry.

  —And this Newton character? Never heard of him. He’s around, I’d never know it.

  Terry looks at the mass of shadow behind Phil. It comes away from the wall and taps him on the chest and Phil goes down hard into the corner of the room.

  The mass looms over him.

  —Siddown an’ shutit, Philip.

  Phil cowers.

  —Yeah, sure thing, Hurley. It’s shut.

  He covers his mouth with his hands.

  Hurley turns to Terry, rolls his neck.

  —Dat good enow, Terry?

  Terry sets my weapons on Phil’s narrow dresser.

  —Yeah, that’s fine, that’s fine. Just we all need to relax a little. Get a little less chatter in here, clear the air of static and confusion.

  He adjusts the set of his Lennon glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  —Like, for instance, Joe, while yeah, Phil is a nasty cockroach of a Renfield and would sell his, I don’t know, his soul, mother, anything like that, for a few bucks or a handful of black beauties, he didn’t have anything to do with this.

  He combs his soul patch with the nail of his index finger.

  —Truth is, you weren’t the victim of any kind of, I don’t know, betrayal or setup, you were really, when you get into it, the victim of your own nature.

  He places a hand on the inner thigh of his often-mended hemp jeans.

  —What I’m getting at here is that you, over the many years of our association and, if I’m opening up, which I am, over the many years of our friendship, you were given a lot of slack. Yards and yards. Part of that was in tribute to the bond between us.

  He points at the window where the gap of daylight has grown brighter.

  —You know they closed it? CBGB, they closed it. Outbreak of sudden hostilities between the guy who owned the place and his landlords. A homeless charity, of all things. Couldn’t be negotiated. They, there’s some some irony in this, the homeless charity people, they gave him the boot.

  He looks lost for a moment.

  —The Bowery without CBGB. What’s that? Like, and it’s not an overstatement at all, you know, like the end of an era.

  He looks at me.

  —Big landmark in our relationship, yeah? The Ramones. That gig. Man that was a great gig. One of their best. I was having an amazing night. Right till I went in the can and found you all opened up and bleeding on the floor. Tell you, till very recently, I don’t know, I always hoped I’d find the guy who did that and, don’t get me wrong, but thank him.

  He spreads the fingers of both hands across his chest and bows his head.

  —I know how that sounds. Believe me.

  He raises his head.

  —But the point isn’t to thank the guy for causing you pain, for infecting you, for sending you into this life and all the, you know, complications that come with it.

  He lowers his hands from the front of his East Village Organic Foods Co-op shirt.

  —The point would have been to thank him for dropping you in my way. For facilitating whatever, I don’t know, whatever energy it was that knew I needed someone like you at that time. I mean, man, over the years, we got some things done. Not always seamless, I’ll be first to cop to that, but we got some things done. So.

  He points at the window again.

  —For a long time I always had this vague kind of feeling that guy deserved some thanks from me.

  He touches that spot on his thigh again.

  —You know, until you got Hurley there shot to pieces and did your best to kill me.

  I light the smoke I’ve been paying attention to while he’s been talking.

  —Terry, let’s face it, when all that went down, I wasn’t at my best.

  I wave my hand, leaving a rising trail of smoke.

  —I’d been at my best, you’d be dead right now.

  A sharp light comes to the corner of his eye.

  —Well, that’s a point that could be debated. Isn’t it?

  I nod.

  —Sure. Feel like you maybe want to have Hurley step into the hall and we can debate it now?

  He runs a hand over his head and down the length of his ponytail.

  —No, Joe, that’s not going to be the way this happens.

  He comes and sit
s next to me on Phil’s sagging bed.

  —What I was getting at before, about how, I don’t know, Phil there didn’t have anything to do with us being here, about how that was your own fault, that wasn’t a minor point. See, the fact that you were, for all intents and purposes, sitting on death row when you made your break, that’s not exactly an extenuating circumstance. More like that’s further grounds speaking against you.

  I find a blue and white cardboard coffee cup on the floor and knock some ash into it. Not that I’m too worried about making a mess, just that I’d like to avoid burning the place down. Till I’m certain that’s my best option, anyway.

  —Yeah, I follow, Terry. Thing is, you were planning to put me in the sun. So I’m hard-pressed to see what you can do at this point that’s any worse.

  He takes his glasses off.

  —Worse, yeah, worse. Well, that’s part of the whole picture thing here. Like how the reason we know you’re here, that’s because you’re here. Which, I know sounds deliberately circular, but it’s really not.

  He taps my knee with one of the arms of his glasses.

  —The way you left us, that big bang you went out with, that required a great deal of effort on my part to, well, not so much to cover up, but to keep in perspective. That story had circulated too widely, it would have destabilized things. Not a situation we can afford in already unstable times. Yeah. So. When we took it to the street, the picture that was painted was very much of our making. But based on your own work.

  He folds and unfolds the arms of the glasses.

  —So, your failed attempt to infect your girlfriend, that was retouched a bit. That became a, I don’t know, a situation where you fed on her to save your own skin. The thing is.

  He puts the glasses on.

  —You have down here, or, you know, had, kind of a folk status. You may have been the security arm of the Society, but people felt like they could depend on you for a fair shake. Plus everyone likes a badass. Everyone likes telling stories about a badass. And everyone likes the idea that their badass is badder than everyone else’s badass. And people, turns out, had this idea that you were their local badass.

  He shrugs.

  —We needed to change that, whatever, that perception.

  He scratches his shoulder.

  —So we let it be known you’d iced and drank up your own girl. That we’d put you in custody. And that before your trial, you backstabbed a couple partisans and slipped out on your belly like a snake and ran north to the Coalition.