Chapter 5 Moveable Beasts
The plan was to go east as fast as was humanly possible. Reservations were already made at the Sand Dune Inn, right off Highway A-1-A right along the eastern coast of Florida. And, amidst all the activity, my landlord had taken it upon himself to walk back to my apartment, knock and my door and hand me my eviction notice. It wasn’t a major loss. Better eviction than the local SWAT team.
I didn’t have much in the way of furniture and possessions; nothing that couldn’t be left
on premises. Hell, if he were evicting me it would be at his cost.What I did have I handled that instant by a call to a local moving company, Gus’ Moving in the yellow pages.
Their subhead, right underneath “Gus’ Moving” was “we don’t break stuff,
really.”
They were the obvious choice.
Fortunately they took Visa, but from the conversation I got the impression they would have just as easily traded crack or whores for their services.
Meanwhile there were still problems brewing in the bathroom. Someone was screaming, they were both screaming. It didn’t necessarily sound as if anyone were in pain, except for the occasional sound of someone dry-heaving.
I approached the bathroom door and found the carpet was soaked at least a
good two feet from the door. I looked down and still saw water seeping out from underneath the closed door. I no longer cared though.
There was a certain sense of liberation in being evicted. Whereas not even 12 hours ago I was skulking around like a thief in the night, I was now free. I’d been found out. I’d opened the door, challenged the landlord, and demanded my money back until he fixed my broken things and, as a result, was evicted. It felt pure. No, I didn’t care if the whole place burned down in
the wake of my departure.
But I had to get these fools out before I left, for their own good. Or did I? They had both proven themselves to be liabilities. Darren had said that until recently, about the time that rotten fucker Jeff showed up, I had been a good tenant.
I could just pack my belongings and leave them in my apartment to their own devices. There was still an ample amount of liquor in the place and God only knew what kind of drugs. It was entirely possible I could leave and they wouldn’t even notice my absence until the DEA showed up.
While that notion entertained me to no end, I couldn’t pin this deplorable, irresponsible behavior, or its aftermath, solely on him, or her. However, the thought of traveling anywhere with them, much less to Florida on an assignment, filled me with bottomless terror.
Some how, some way these heathens were coming with me. We’d more or less
gotten into this together. It only seemed logical that we rode it out to the very ugly end together.
As I sloshed my way towards the bathroom door, the dying strains of Rolling Stones singing Beast of Burden faded and turned into Springstein’s Born to Run. There was giggling and splashing, low murmurs and the random fart and dry heave.
My hand was on the doorknob when I heard Jeff talking, humming actually, talking in a slurred sing-song voice.
“He’s a disturbed man. He’s not all there but he means well,” I heard him say in a conspiratorial tone. “But Uncle Jeff is going to take care of you now, you hear me. That’s right. I’m going to take you to Puerto Rico, I’ll make you my heina baby. Don’t cry now, no sweet little Meg, my precious little angel.”
As the Springstein song broke into crescendo Jeff sang along, “Tramps like us baby we were born to run. That’s right honey we were born to run.”
I finally opened the door and walked in. The room was in total darkness with only two candles lit. Jeff was on the toilet shitting or maybe just sitting there. Meg was in the tub, half dressed, with the water still flowing from the faucet at full blast. Jeff was half leaned off the toilet seat rubbing Meg’s calf and thigh. She was hiccuping violently and still dry-heaving.
They were sharing a bowl of pot.
“Shut the fucking door man,” he said, slowly. “You’re fucking up the vibe man.”
Sweet Jesus, I thought. This was uglier than I could have possibly imagined, The Walton’s after a bad party weekend.
“We’ve been evicted,” I said lowly, not wanting to disrupt the sacred moment
too badly with all one fell swoop.
“You see,” Jeff said, as a greasy, flatulent movement ejected itself from his ass. “We were just discussing this. You are way too negative man.”
“Yeah,” Meg chimed in. “You’re so full of bad vibes you don’t even see it, you think it’s good, the way to be. You’re wrong though.”
“This trip is all about love now man. I love you, I love Meg, Meg loves me. She’s still not pleased with you. You betrayed her,” he said.
“Yeah asshole,” she said, splashing me. “You fucked me over. You’re bad. You’re evil. You’re negative.”
No scratch the Walton’s, this was far more hideous. This was worse than the Stepford Wives on PCP. At least one or two of their husbands made it away alive. No, this candle-light courtship was dreadful. I felt as if I had stepped into the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials. I was now the bad guy.
The urge to just slap them both into reality was overwhelming.
She was wrecking my life and I’d barely known her for 24 hours. Jeff wasn’t helping either. In the past week or two my life had slid to some sort of primordial depths. There seemed to be no escape from it.
I’d taken this leave of absence from the job for a multitude of reasons. One of the main was included me getting wasted at a holiday work function and attempting to run amok with the publishers daughter. Unflattering to say the least, but our publisher was a hooligan too. He understood drunken debauchery. He thrived on it. He was the master. I was but a peon. He’d
taught me well. As a result, he asked me to take a few weeks off.
“I like you Brett, you’re not fired but I’m still pissed. I haven’t even seen my daughter’s therapy bill yet, so I’m bound to get angrier. Do you have a hobby?” he’d asked me.
Fighting the urge to tell him, “None, just hitting on my bosses daughters when I get wasted and run amok at office parties,” I finally said I didn’t.
Despite the ugly scene, things had been boiling to a point anyway. After only a year of working for the paper I felt like a used, tossed away whore. The politicians, the public information officers, my managing editor had all taken shots at me.
One of the last things I covered before taking the leave had been a stinking, depressing murder trial of a local boy who received a guilty of not guilty for the murder of a passer-through from Arizona. The police knew the guy had done it, the victim’s family knew, the attorney’s with the district attorney’s office knew it. Where did they find these brain-dead jurors?
Along with the abuse/neglect case which ended in the death of a four-year-old girl, the last story I had written was one of a string of stories which had been written about eight years of litigation between sewer utility providers, the local water and sewer board and residents. That case too smacked of corruption at the highest levels, payoff’s kickbacks, bribery and a questionable murder/suicide which had taken place a few years earlier in Biloxi.
I was up to my ears in murder, death and sewerage, ready for a break. I’d accepted the leave just as much for personal reasons as I had to avoid an ass whipping by my publisher. And, as part of that leave, I had expected some rest. I had wanted to look into entering graduate school. I had wanted to just spend leisurely days by the pool, soaking in rays, sipping beers and
taking it easy. But that whole itinerary had changed once Jeff had shown up with his dying Buick and the desire to go to Florida to pick up his furniture.
“What are you talking about you dimwit?” I finally asked him. “I’m not negative. I was enjoying peace before you got here. I didn’t betray anyone. You’re the one who gave her the blitz like the steel curtain.”
“You sold her out to that asshole on the phone man. This woman has muscle on
her. She moves like a fucking cat. She can body slam any bitch,” he said, trying to slap his knee for effect but almost falling off the toilet seat in the process. “But she breaks just like a little girl. Me too. I’m far too sensitive for you. You’re rough man. You’re a rough man. You could have been a Nazi.”
As an afterthought, I grabbed the bong and took a hit of the shit myself and
placed it on the bathroom sink.
“Quit talking shit man, I’ve been evicted,” I said, exhaling as I finally reached over to turn the tub faucet off.
Meg suddenly rocked violently and Jeff jumped up from the toilet, grasping
my neck in his hand, and shoved me against the wall.
“I’m sorry man, this is peace, this is gentle peace, tough love. You can’t turn the water off, she might die, you dig man,” he said.
“Bullshit,” I gasped, trying to break his hand from my neck. His arm and grip were like a steel vise. “You’re choking me. She’s flooding the house, I can’t fucking breathe you asshole.”
He loosened his grip and sat back down on the toilet as I slumped down into
sitting position with my ass in the water.
“Come on an, we’re evicted, turn the water off,” I said. “This is beyond even you.”
“I said no,” he insisted and then whispered, “She’s got a heart murmur man. Her valve ain’t right. She did too much coke this morning. I think that’s all. She needs the flow, it makes her heart right.”
Jesus Christ, I thought. In a matter of minutes my bathroom had turned into Woodstock and Jeff was now a cardiovascular specialist. It was maddening. Time was working against us. The cops could only be a matter of minutes away. No, admittedly none of us were in any shape to travel, but we had to get out of my apartment.
nd then it clicked. An idea began to take shape. I stood up took another hit from the bong and geared myself for the performance.
Her heart’s acting up?” I asked, whispering back to him.
“Yes you mooly bastard, that’s why we need quiet. No negativity,” he said.
“You jack-ass, do you want her to die?” I asked him.
“What?” he asked, confused, his face suddenly panic-stricken and heartbroken
“I asked, do you want her to die?” I said, kneeling down besides the tub, as I performed an impromptu doctor examination on her.
“Stop that you bastard, get away from her,” he said. “No I don’t. What do you think I am, an animal like you, shut up man.”
He began to cry.
“I love her man,” he said. “We’re gonna go to Puerto Rico and get married underneath the banana trees. Just shush, she’s not going to die. She just needs rest.”
I gently took her wrist in my hand. She was asleep, or at least I hoped she was. However, as I adjusted my fingers I felt her pulse. She was alive and well, just crashed out hard.
“No you idiot, if we don’t get her back up to her apartment she will die,” I lied.
“Don’t say that man she can hear you,” he hissed. “Stop that man,” he reiterated, getting off the toilet again, backing against the wall furthest from me. “You’re a bad man. You’re fucking evil. She’s not dead. She’s okay.”
“Her pulse isn’t good,” I said, lying again.
“Oh sweet Jesus he said,” starting to cry again as he began to rhythmically beat his head backwards against the wall. “I can’t lose her, I love her. God I love you Meg, sweet pea, I’ll take my own life for you,” he said, drunkenly grasping for one of my Bic disposable razors.
“I’ll fucking slit my throat if she dies,” he said, wielding it in his hand like a savage beast, holding it to his throat.
“Put that damned thing down before you hurt somebody you idiot,” I hissed.
He started crying again, a hellish high-pitched whine that gurgled from the bowels of his throat.
“We have to call 911,” he stammered. “You’re not a doctor.”
“I was in pre-med before I was an English major,” I lied again, knowing that drastic times called for drastic actions.
This episode had seemed to stretch on for so long that I was sure they were both lost to me.
Jeff’s sudden leap to logic startled me. I found it astounding that he could make the connection between her “condition” and the need for medical attention.
“No you idiot, if you call 911 and she’s sees paramedics what do you think will happen? That’s right, her poor heart will go like that. Zip. We have to move her to her bed in her apartment.”
“Are you loco? We can’t do that,” he said, pushing the razor further against his throat.
“Drop that fucking razor man, are you crazy?” I yelled.
“Shhh,” he hissed. “No more yelling, you said so yourself, it’s bad for her
heart.”
“Just drop the fucking razor,” I said, lower.
He did and I told him 911 was no good, that we’d both go to jail, or worse. Once the poor fool composed himself some more I stressed the fact that we had to get her back to her own apartment.
“Wait a minute man, if she has a bad heart why are we going to move her
upstairs?” he asked.
A valid question. Damn, he could be a sharp one.
“She has a special heart bed and medicines and aroma candles,” I soothed him.
“If you’re lying to me I swear I’ll cut out your heart and eat it,” he said, arming himself with the Bic again. “I’ve never heard of any heart bed.”
The vibes were getting ugly. He had a murderous look in his eye.
“We have to get her up there. You said I had the negativity, it’s not me, it’s this apartment. It’s cursed.”
“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t want to hear these things.
“It’s true,” I told him. “This apartment is cursed. I did a search of public records. Everyone who has ever lived here came to an ugly end.”
He swatted his hand at me and said, “You have to quit talking, saying these
things.”
“It’s true, a warlock died here. He was a pedophile, a loose nut. They hung
him in town square,” I jabbered.
“It’s not true,” he said, once again dropping the razor and holding his
hands to his ears.
“Think about it, you show up and your car dies. I damn near lose my job. We
get twisted on drugs. She attacks us and then has heart problems. It’s all connected. It’s all part of the curse. The last woman that lived here killed her boyfriend with an axe. I hear voices at night, and not just yours. They’re evil voices, they tell me to do things.”
“We have to get of here,” he said, his eyes widening with fear and a genuine
look of uncertainty.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, you dumb bastard. That’s why I’m
evicted, that’s why her heart is bad now. We’ll all die if we don’t get out of here, up to her apartment.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this apartment was cursed?” he asked.
“The clerks office didn’t send me the fax until today,” I lied again. I was
becoming adept at it.
And with each toss, he took the nibble, willingly. Now, I thought, I knew why people took Communion. They wanted to understand, to be a part of the great mysticism. To be part of the food chain. People wanted forgiveness, they wanted absolution for their sins. And God only knew we’d chalked up enough of those to go around for an eternity. He was repentant now.
The great radiance of LOVE had shown its way into his, twisted, foggy conscience. And he was a better man for it. That is, when he wasn’t wielding a razor. But I knew him, I knew this man standing in front of me. I knew Jeff.
What was standing before me now, protecting the life of an foul-mouthed, troublesome woman he was now professing love for and wanted to marry underneath banana trees was not Jeff. It was the drugs and booze talking, pure and simple. I knew it wouldn’t last long.
Within eight hours of travel, yes we still had a journey to embark upon, he’d be trying to lose her at every gas station, rest area, and restaurant between here and the greater metropolitan Daytona Beach area.
And that was fine by me as well, just as long as I got some fucking sleep.I couldn’t not lie to him one more time.
“The man’s name, the warlock and arsonist,” I began.
“I thought he was a pedophile,” he said cutting me off.
“He was that too,” I said. “This is the worst part yet, his name was Jeff too, just like you.”
It was a very low blow. But he seemed to take it well.
“Good God, you’re right man,” he said, crying harder in true despair. “I’m sorry man, you’re not bad, you’re good. You are a very good and wise man.”
It took a good hour but finally we got her moved back up to her apartment. The going wasn’t easy. She was essentially comatose. Jeff wasn’t much better. Neither was I for that matter. He and I had been up for a few days.
After some careful navigation and almost letting her slip from our grasp on the stairwell, we got her upstairs, into her bed. I was exhausted when we laid her down, but Jeff looked like an anxious puppy. He had the film canister out again and was snorting coke.
I was a fool if I thought I could control these people, not to mention myself. As I stood there pondering this ugly truth, Jeff was fumbling through her CD collection, and fittingly enough selected Peter Gabriel’s No Self Control.
It was three in the afternoon. I was harried, wiped out. It had all been too much and I knew that within the next 12 hours or so we would be busy making our way to the sunshine state, open game for the Florida State Police.
I tried to prepare things, get ourselves ready for this trip. I lugged down all out gear and put it into our respective vehicles. I couldn’t turn my brain off. I had a road map open and was trying to ignore Jeff, who was still ambling about, snorting coke, downing beer and playing
music. As long as it kept him amused and he didn’t bother me.
But he did.
I was reading a road map of the Florida coastline when he plunged a butcher knife into the middle of what had once been Jacksonville.
“You psychopathic bastard, put the cutlery away,” I yelled, jerking it out, holding it.
He just laughed and ambled to the kitchen.
“Just keep reading your maps Columbus,” he slurred. “The map is not the fucking territory. What the fuck are you doing anyway? I know how to get to Orlando. That’s where we’re going, right? To get my furniture?”
He hadn’t absorbed a thing I had said earlier.
“I’ve been evicted man,” I said. “We’ve got an assignment in Daytona.”
He ambled out with another big-ass knife in his hand, slicing a lime.
“That rat bastard really kicked you out man?” he asked, suddenly plunging the knife into her wall violently. “That’s what I think of him and his country. Piss on him and his country. I should go down there and cut out his heart.”
He pulled the knife out and stabbed the wall a few more times. Just ignore him, I thought. Sooner or later he’ll pass out or stab himself.
“He doesn’t have a heart to cut out,” I said, trying to ignore the situation, not be freaked out by Jeff’s new interest in sharp objects. “I’m just trying to figure out how to get us there without being arrested.”
“Why would we be arrested man?” he called out from the kitchen.
He ambled back out again with a fifth of dark rum in his hand.
“Come on man, you look stressed, do a shot with me man,” he said. “I can’t
help but feel this is partly my fault. When I came here you were a respectable man. You had a job, a pad. Now we don’t have shit. I can’t believe you’re apartment was cursed. They should have told you when you signed the lease.”
“Quit that talk,” I said, taking a swig and handing it back to him. “We have Daytona now.”
He suddenly took an immense interest in Daytona.
“I used to live near there man,” he said. “The beaches rocked and the bitches ruled. The place was just teeming with fine pussy man. Never went to see the racetrack but I’d see it from the interstate every day on my way to work. Man, the fucked up thing about Florida is sinkholes. Worse than a fucking earthquake man, because you don’t even feel the shaking. The ground just opens up, swallows you whole.”
His voice took on an ominous fisherman tone, not unlike the character Quint
in Jaws, portrayed by Robert Shaw.
“It’s a bad fish with eyes of black right?” I asked.
“And she swallows you whole,” he said, slamming his fist onto the table for
effect, semi-recognizing the movie and character. “She chews you up and spits you out, legs, bones, poodles. The sinkhole doesn’t care. You just disappear. One minute you’re cruising the highway with your honey giving you head, the next you’re gone.”
Like a blast of lightning, I knew what Marlowe must have felt when he was traveling upriver to track down Kurtz; the enlightened ivory trader gone awry in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the five-star general, portrayed by Marlon Brando, from Apocalypse Now who had turned into a god in the jungles of Vietnam.
Only I wasn’t going upriver to take Kurtz out. I was bringing over two of his family members for conjugal visits. It terrified me to think that there was someone equally as mad, like Kurtz or worse, on the other end of this half-ass journey.
“So what is this assignment?” he asked. “The Daytona 500,” I said.
He chuckled.
“Man. You don’t know shit about race car driving,” he said.
“Yeah right, and you do?” I asked.
“I can’t keep up, they go round and round, it makes me dizzy, how the hell do you cover something like that?” he asked.
“They don’t care about the race results, they want the culture, the tail-gate parties, the naked groupies,” I said.
“Racing doesn’t have groupies, just a bunch of fucking gear-heads jonesing for harley manifolds,” he said. “The only women you’ll find there are biker bitches. We can’t go to the Daytona 500, we’ll be arrested for sure.”
“I’m not too thrilled about it either but have you watched NASCAR lately or WWF?” I asked. “Lots of good looking women on these shows. Besides, I’m not going to go get laid. This is in the name of reporting.”
“I hear you Cochise,” he said. “I shouldn’t even be saying these things. Not
with her like this in the bedroom.”
Up to this point. He’d almost been talking sense, like the Jeff I once knew
and trusted. I told him as much and he only lamented, standing up briefly, grabbing the
knife from the wall, only to sit down again on a loveseat, grabbing the fifth.
“What are you doing man?” I asked him. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re a non-believer,’ he said. “You lived in that fucking cursed house too long.”
Jesus, he would use my own lie against me until the day one of us died a hideous death. I shook my head and I waved him off but he persisted. He was determined to talk about this.
“Be a fucking man,” he demanded, stabbing the arm of the loveseat.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m plotting safe passage. I only asked you what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about love man,” he said. “Something you don’t know a fucking thing about. Look at you man, just going on with your maps, your assignment man. You wouldn’t know love if it fucked you up the ass man.”
I waved him off again but he persisted, shaking his head sullenly.
“Calm down you maniac,” I said. “I’ve been in love.”
“I don’t think you have been man,” he said.
“You’re right, I haven’t,” I said, calculating the difference in mileage from the panhandle to Daytona.
He hurled the half-full bottle of rum against the wall and yelled, “And that doesn’t bother you man, to know you’ve never been in love.”
“I told you I was in love once, remember Laura Boyle in ninth grade,” I said. “The neighborhood whore, I remember her. You fucked her? I fucked her too” he said.
“I loved her,” I said. I wanted him to shut up.
But it wasn’t working. He was chatty, conversational. Still stinking drunk and twisted, but conversational, bored. He was suddenly blown away, breathing out a huge sigh, reclining in the loveseat. But then he tensed up again.
“You didn’t love her like I love Meg,” he said.
“You don’t love Meg,” I said flatly.
But he rose from the chair and screamed “I’d take a bullet for that woman.”
He punched himself in his own chest.
“That’s right, I’d take a bullet for her, just like that,” he said, pounding himself in the chest again with his clenched fist. “You don’t think I know what this is about?”
I shrugged my shoulders, having no clue what point he was trying to make. I just wanted him to put the knife down.
“This is about being stabbed through the fucking heart,” pounding himself on
the chest again.
As loaded as he was he knew better to pound himself with his closed fist, rather than the one which was clutching the nine-inch metal blade. This was a good thing, I mused to myself. Maybe we wouldn’t all end up like the Tate and LaBianca murders.
He fell back into his chair and buried his head into his hands, one of which
was still holding the knife.
He slowly raised his head, looked at me and said, “You don’t know what it’s like to have your heart broken. To have a knife like this go through it. I might as well just stab myself now. That’s what she’s doing to it already.”
“That’s crazy talk,” I said.
“Is it? She doesn’t love me. You don’t think I know what happens when we wake up tomorrow? She calls me a fat pig and I tell her she needs Jenny Craig. The end of relationship. But today she spoke the truth. We spoke like real human beings today, she told me about her cock-sucker dad and her ex-husband. They’re pigs. Worse than me and you man. They don’t even smoke pot.”
“That is bad,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.
“My heart is shattering into tiny shards, it’s as if a million voices were crying out in agony,” he said as he doubling over, failing to note his last sentence was a quote from the movie Star Wars.
“Look,” I said, genuinely trying to be soothing. “If you really love her just go I there and go to bed with her. Don’t try to fuck her in her sleep, she’s liable to catch on. Just go lay down, please, go lay down. Hold her. She might not remember it tomorrow, she might not ever remember it, but at least you had that night.”
“That would kill me,” he said, reeling uneven still with the knife in his hand. He then began to slowly bang his head against the wall as he sank down to his ass on the floor.
When I was finally convinced he was asleep I took the knife out of his hand. He looked pathetic. Somehow, since we’d gotten to her apartment, he’d stripped himself down to boxers again. His belly dangled over his waistline shamelessly. He snored. He was drunk and obnoxious, even I slumber.
But I knew his pain, to some degree. I hadn’t been lying when I told him I had loved the neighborhood whore, Laura Boyle. I had and she had shit on me for some guy in high school with a 75 Pinto. But those wee the days of Gerald Ford for you. By the time he was president, everyone had forgotten he had served on the Warren Commission.
He grabbed a comforter and curled up in bed with Meg.
I cursed them both as they slept cozily. I rolled and smoked a joint myself first and watched TV.
