Luke William Green

Your burps taste like iron, it’s funny.

It’s funny, like when you cough up red into a cocktail napkin and hand it to the bartender. It’s funny, like that time Kira fell down the staircase. It’s funny when you grin about it, big and red and stupid and shit eating. Constantly licking your teeth so they don’t go dry and stick to your lips.

The drunks at the Sequoia, they just face forward. Summoning their drivers license photos. Posing for their portraits. The Sequoia, with its improvised sanctity. Every table, hallowed with its own golden, flickering halo. The faces, the whiskey bottles. Everything candle-lit. Everything chiaroscuro.

Natalie, she leans over, whispering under sweet-toxic breath how she lost her first husband. Screwfaced and glaring, eyes sticky red as she gets into stories of how. How the estranged daughter living in Omaha won’t speak. How the child support. How the alimony. How the mortgage. How, when in doubt, give up.

The fake tits. The sagging stomachs. The regret. It’s enough to keep you drinking.

The bar fly. With her dank, toothless grin. Her meaty hands rubbing your slouched shoulders. Telling you, you’re such a good listener. What she can’t hear, what she pull from the silence, from the obvious, is not engaging in conversation isn’t the same thing as caring.

The faces of these women. All you can imagine anymore is what they would look like glistening sweaty, hovering above you. Remarking some filthy, forgettable smut under pained, labored breath.

Experience, one of those things you sometimes wish you had less of.

The vibrations, they rattlesnake up your pant leg. Someone radioing in from out of the ether. Fumbling for your phone in the dark. A howling, slippery germ brick you have no hope to master. You try to dismiss the call, and end up activating the speaker. It’s Kira. Shouting. Barking raving, muzzled hate through your pocket. Dumping breath and static into the receiver. Chanting rage. Grating her blackberry all over her face, lips. The little chicklet keypad depressing at random.

End call.

Natalie. Fuck. With her globby saggy potato face. With her inksplot eyes wrapped in pink cling film. Hemorrhaging little lightning bolt veins at you. Your broken nose. Kaya’s sobby little outburst. She puts two and two together.

“Were you… Who did that to your face?”
“I walked into a door.”

Natalie just stares into her glass. Watching the ice cubes go ahead and melt anyway. Whiskey changing shades, lightening up, till it’s gone.

“You buyin’ me a drink?”

“Can’t. Got a train to catch.”

“Where you goin’?”

“Vacation.”

Sobering up. Headache, beer shits and everything at Union Station. Benched, laid out next to some drifter. You’ve been watching him out of one eye as he’s neatly rolled a yellow bucket of Top into a pile of perfect white nails.

“You got a light?”

What do you care. Still horizontal, you fish a matchbook out of your jacket pocket and hand it to the face tattooed transient. He has, needled right into his face, a little slant crucifix. Right between the eyes. Creaking out a lazy pan/tilt to take in the cinema of this guy, he’s got cigarette ash and loose tobacco all over his beard. Clothes that look like they’ve been lived in. Like he was born in them.

“Hell, man. Waitin’ at the station! God-damn!”

The kid smells like what you’d imagine a bag of stirred shit smelled like.

“Got everything worth keepin’ shoved into this pack.”

He’s got one of those massive green, corpse dick looking army surplus duffels.

“That’s my whole life, material-wise, right there.”

“Yeah? That’s everything, huh?”

“Fuck it, man. Lettin’ go, that’s some zen shit right there.
Headin’ out to that great chasm in the desert. Gonna look down below and see what winks back.”

Fucking Amtrak. Your fingers tracing the crease of your ticket. 1 passenger. Superliner Roomette. Grand Canyon National Park. And this scummy bastard’s following you there.
If you could put the debris, the molecules of human waste floating off this guy under a microscope, watch them interact with their surroundings, and if they weren’t already–you’d block up your mucus membranes with toilet paper, stat. That means fast, like in the clinical sense.

“You e’er been to the gran’ canyon?”

“Have not. But sounds a though that’s where we’re headed.”

“You know that Dylan poem? One where he says he saw the face of god in the canyon at sundown? You know the one I’m talking about. Guthrie was dyin’ out in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah. Heavy.”

“Yeah, man, watching your hero dyin’ right there in front of you. Just witherin’ away on a hospital bed.”

“Guess so. I saw Dylan live. He sucked.”

“Well, shit. He’s getting’ old! His voice is shot!”

“You’re saying he had a voice to start with?”

“Forget all that, man. It’s about the words, man, the words. It ain’t about how pretty it sounds.”

You suppose, believing everything means something is a far greater evil than believing nothing means everything. But you just keep it to yourself.

This fuckin’ guy is hopeless. He finesses each quip of his sideways rhetorical nonsense with a full on face corkscrew. But he has friendly eyes. Bright. They go all crispy-greasy like crushed potato chips when he laughs. Makes you want to drink.

“See you in the bar car then?”

“Hey man, hey now. Just got one question. Does a fuckin’ alligator shit in the swamp? Hahah! Yeah brother! Hell yes they do! And that shit stinks, too! Hell, if you want to take a pull right now, I got some sour-mash tucked into my pack.”

Sour-mash just means Jack Daniels. A few strong pulls of drifter whiskey might just bevel your edges rough enough ‘till you’re good and varnished Jameson smooth in the bar car.

It’s by about Barstow you’ve tied on all three sheets, untied them, and thrown them to the Santa Anas. The rickety-rick of the bar car with its clinking bottles, the pint of Irish Catholic in your belly… You’re in full staccato. Cricket, the vagrant, your interim old-friend, has turned a dark shade of pomegranate. Poison-threshold drunk. He’s been ordering ice cubes with lime and the bartender just keeps bringing them.

“Hey, man.”

“Yep.”

“Hey. What are you doing out at the Gran Canyon’? I ne’er asked you. You on a spirit quest or summthin’?”

“Girl problems. Don’t feel bad for me, son.”

“Ho! Shit, man! You meetin’ a girl out there? She your wife? I ain’t never been married. Came close once or twice.”

“Dodged a bullet’s the term, Crick. Getting away from one.”

“Damn, you don’t need to say no more. Headin’ out to that big ol’ crater in the ground to go see what’s left of it, ain’t ya? Ain’t cha? Big ol’ Ro-Mantic hole. I know I’m right, you donn even need tah answer.”

“Reckon that’s that Tennessee clairvoyance, Crick.”

“Claire Voyant! The last girl I’d ever want to meet, cuz she know’s you’re moves, man. Before you’ve even made ‘em. There’s a joke about Claire. How’s it go? Wait. Wait. Don’t say nuthin’. I got it. I got it. Girl walks into a bar. Fine-ass girl, fine ass fox lookin’, we’re talkin’ a 10, man. A 10! An eleven! She takes a seat right at the front. Right in frontta the bartender. Wait. Wait. An she says, ‘My name’s Claire. Claire Voyant. An’ you’re gonna pour me a bourbon!’”

Cricket takes a pause. A long one. His shattered eyes searching for something. A decent punchline you’d gather.

“Is that it? Nice one. Great delivery.”

“Fuck, I can’t remember the rest. That isn’t even how it goes. You know any jokes?”

“What do you call a black man flying a plane?”

“I dunno, what?”

“A pilot you fucking racist. Crick, thanks for the whiskey. I’ve got to hit the head. See you tomorrow for the champagne brunch.”

“Hey man! Before you go! You know somethin’? You know about trains?”

You don’t answer. You just wait for Cricket to speak. Inebriated, in a slow motion detachment, you survey the rivers of dirt and sweat carved into the wrinkles of his forehead. You watch them quake and pulse to his slackened, alcohol thinned heartbeat.

“Cricket. WHAT?”

“Trains make chicks horny, bro.”

“I’ll have to remember that next time.”

“Think about it, man! All the rocking back and forth and whatnot. The rhythm of the tracks. Ricketytickitytickity.”

Morning arrives like falling bird shit. There’s blood all over your sheets, your pillow. Boots loose on your feet. Head’s a-pounding. Everything on the other side of the glass looks dead, dusty. The rails ahead just flail out all silver and twisty in defiance. You ratchet up. Snaking arms through your jacket for a smoke, and find a spot between cars to light up.

Alone, sober, sick. You remember. You’re lips then, twisted around a cigarette. The wet asphalt gems of the street. The sparkle of the sidewalk. Her wrinkled silk dress. San Francisco was a friendly town. Composing herself beneath an awning. Her slender arms above her head. The taxis didn’t notice. And neither did she.

As sudden as it is routine, you find yourself suffering from unbearable thirst. Flicking your cigarette, the wind catches it. You watch as it flies. A bright amber glow against the blue desert air, tracing a perfect arc before disappearing somewhere, a thousand yards ago.

No more memories. No more thoughts. No more anything. It’s time to dawdle forth.  Your lanky, swollen limbs throbbing, burning, ping ponging through the southwestern themed desolation of the coaches before catching range of the dining car. An empty coach save a sauria of elderly reptilian-looking women. Lipsticking their teacups. Buttering croissants. Trying to blend in.

You take a seat at the bar, make an effort not to notice them in periphery. You wonder what the hell happened to Cricket. Taking inventory of the menu, the thought passes.

“Bloody mary. Budweiser. Beans on toast… and a hard boiled egg. Tobasco.”

“Sir.”

“Yeah.”

“Sir are you alright? You’re bleeding.”

You haven’t looked in a mirror since… you don’t know.

“Napkin please. And a glass of water. I’m fine. It’s just this dry desert air.”

Wiping the dried blood from your face. Closing your eyes to a blue grey morning on the 25th floor. Kira’s hair in her eyes, flowing out in loose corkscrews across the pillow. The room service cart, table cloth draped over, blocking the hallway. The clouds outside, pressed up against the window.