Cody took off his leather jacket. Tattoos, vascularity, and striations filled the night air. His black t-shirt and blue jeans, featureless and functional if worn by anyone else, became the unholy vestments of a man who dutifully served violence.
"You’re fighting him because he lied about me, right? Not because you believe him?" Cayley asked her boyfriend.
Ignoring the question, he shoved his jacket into her arms. He began to stretch and hop around, copying the pre-fight movements of a cage fighter. A crowd encircled us.
"This isn’t a showdown for the ages," I said.
Cody, who had been pacing back-and-forth, stopped. "I know."
"I mean, I won’t get any satisfaction from this. I didn’t train myself up through toil and discipline, conquering my limits in pursuit of a hard-won goal. My hatred and pain aren’t holding my inner peace hostage until I overcome whatever it is your size and rough-cut handsomeness represent. There’s no culmination of anything here. Cody, I did not have sex with your girlfriend. I was trying to provoke you into a fight because I perceived a rivalry between us. You embarrassed me in front of two women, but I’m over it. I defer to your wisdom as to what happens next."
Mike, from the circle, nodded his approval. Cody, from right in front of me, bound his raven splendor in a ponytail. The streamlined hairdo of a man who planned to fight.
"I’m sorry," I said. "Genuinely. And maybe you’re thinking, ‘he just wants a way out of this.’ True, I do want out. Fully admitted."
Cody, instead of producing then pulling on a pair of fingerless gloves like I thought he would, stopped pacing again.
"Cool. Yeah, okay. I don’t live to hurt people. If you didn’t fuck my girl, we don’t have to rumble," he said. Then he laughed. "That’s twice I’ve almost peeled your face off, bud."
"I know, bud. And my stuff happened only once."
I hit him. My knuckles turned his iron abs into Play-Doh, probably went in a little too far. Cody took a three-point stance, eventually sat down on the grass. I wrenched his ponytail. I whispered in the low volume of someone hiding from enemies. My lips touched his ear.
"Sometimes, I’ll talk to another person...and afterward...even if it was unremarkable, a lump of banality kicked away by memory’s combine, I’ll cry because of how empty I feel. The effort shakes everything from my spirit. Listening and formulating and cogently sending back a reply is an open pit mining operation on my brain. And for some reason...I’m convinced...that if God ever talked to me, I would do the same thing to him. Slit the bag on his almighty fortitude. What do you think? Do you think I’m right?"
I let go of his hair.
"Would God feel like shit after talking to you?"
I laughed. "Yeah. Sure."
Cody got up, rising like the mountain spawn of an earth deity. "God would kill himself after meeting you."
"What? Why?" I asked, laughing again.
"To spare himself the humiliation that a universe of wonder bears the cost of containing you."
"Wow. That’s fucking profound. Big body, big ideas."
Cody threw a looping right. I intercepted the attack with a chop on his forearm, busting the bones apart. When he reacted by swinging a left hook, I biffed the side of his head with an open hand, reaching him before he could reach me. He stumbled an absurd amount, feet fluttering like typewriter jibberish as he crashed into a wooden fence.
"Yo, Prophet, that’s enough," Mike said, leaving the circle to approach me. Per usual, he walked as if no one could stop him.
So I smacked him in the stomach with a quick jab. As he folded forward, I bashed his spine with a double-axehandle. The rest of the circle closed on me.
"Kill that fool."
"Fuck him up."
As punches--a gang of kamikaze gnats--crumbled on my skin, I looked for Cayley. She sat cross-legged on the grass, an elbow on her thigh securing the base for a mopey-head buttress.
I crushed a hand under my thumb. I caved-in ribs with a front kick. I threw a guy from a single underhook, watched his arm bend the wrong way upon landing. A gun came out. A fellow guest, communicating his displeasure at my one-versus-many success, pointed a snub nose revolver at me. He was a random white t-shirt and basketball shorts. A nothing, nobody face outwardly detesting a nothing, nobody existence. His bits-and-pieces beard and mustache were, tragically, the best effort of a mean-mugging wasteland.
When the bullet neared me, I slapped it from its trajectory, off to my left. Egyptian Mike, who had been recovering on all fours, collapsed after the tumbling projectile breached the top of his head. As I admired my own dexterity and timing, the fleet of an emptied cylinder--one, two, three, four--flew at my chest. In a motion that must have resembled flinching, I swatted the bullets down at Mike. One pierced his head again. Three others found his back. The gunfire scattered the house party’s outdoor faction.
"Who is taking me home?"
Cayley was on her feet, demanding an answer from the universe. I did not see her companion, the mound of steroids and chicken breast, anywhere.
"Greg! You owe me a ride for that shit you said. You’re taking me. For food."
"Alright. We’ll go."
The guy who had shot at me knelt over Mike. He moaned lamentations and disbelief as his culpability congealed in the minds around him.
"Hey, yo. Tee Jay shot Mike!"
"Call nine-one-one!"
"The gun malfunctioned or something. I was aiming for him."
He again pointed the gun at me, spasms ripping the composure off his face.
"You pulled that trigger. You are not, therefore, allowed to cry over any outcome," I said, turning away as drunk "justice-makers" tackled him out of his self-pity.
Cayley hugged my arm as we left the party. I thought about the shooter, how his pained expression poured saline in response to grief. I should have taunted Mick and Devin more when they were alive.
"Let’s get diner food," Cayley said, leaning to inspect her face in the rearview mirror.
"What about your boyfriend?"
"That bastard who believed you over me? You mean ex-boyfriend."
I drove us to an all-night diner, hoping--in the fashion of one who prays--that rowdy drunks no longer patronized such places. An empty establishment answered my plea; reflexively, I checked my pockets. The wish was intact, had not been wasted.
"Greg."
Our waiter knew my name.
"Paul. You work here?"
"No, I’m pretending. And the owners allow it."
The living composite of all brown-haired white guys held a couple menus.
"She’s cute. So was the other one."
Simultaneously, my pulse and temperature rose. Along with the amount of danger Paul was in.
"Ruth?" Cayley asked. "Yeah, she’s beautiful."
Paul, because he really worked there, led us to a booth, handed us the menus then raised a ready notepad and pen. As I perused my options, bacteria from the laminated tri-fold invaded the furrows on my fingertips, propagating in orgy-pile colonies. I set down the menu, made fists to crush any germs to death.
"Can I get mashed potatoes instead of French fries with the cheeseburger?"
"If I say no, will you force me to participate in a practice run of my own rape? I’m just kidding."
Paul stood alone. In his work-issue polo and apron, he risked whatever amount I decided.
"That’s edgy," Cayley said.
"Or referential," Paul said.
"Can I get mashed potatoes with the cheeseburger?"
Paul backed away from the table, hands up in surrender. "Sir, please calm down. Don’t throw me into outer space."
"What is he talking about?"
Paul lowered his arms. "Does eating food serve a necessary function for you? Does it power your flight?"
"This is dumb," Cayley commented.
"He can fly. And he threw a guy by humping him."
A mimed clarification accentuated the claim about humping. Normally, I would have accepted the credit for that particular feat--it was pretty awesome.
"I want the cheeseburger," Cayley announced.
"I’m not asking again about the mashed potatoes," I warned.
"Okay," Paul said, "two cheeseburgers, two with fries."
"And a lemonade."
"And for you, sir?"
"Orange juice. If you bring me fries--"
"I’ll eat them," Cayley said.
"Nice. I’ll be back with your drinks."
Paul took our menus then walked away. I could have punched him in half.
"Are you a demon?"
"Because I want your fries?"
"No. Mateo. Thought you were a demon."
"Mateo was on drugs. Drugs won the war on his brain. Do you believe in demons? You feed demons frozen waffles and take them for dinner?"
"My life has not completely dissuaded me on certain topics."
"Would you trust the word of a demon? I could be lying."
The drinks arrived.
"Hey," I said, stopping Paul, "what you did before was not funny. And later, you will receive the full brunt of my critique."
I amplified my threat by using a method called "staring." In two seconds, the cocksure finish on Paul’s face had cracked and curled and flaked away. Extrapolation about what I was capable of doing to him had cornered half his blood in his cheeks. He ran from the table.
"How do you know him? You really scared him."
"From work. And, actually, I think he sensed your demonic power."
"Oh, no. The innermost of me laid bare again. So, what happened with your girlfriend that day?"
I did not hear, only felt, the answer coming out. My heartbeat, a sledgehammer in its grip, banged my sternum with every crest. The resulting cacophony filled my head.
"I don’t fucking care."
"I asked what happened, not about your remaining level of concern."
"I don’t fucking care is what happened. And I wish we had onion rings to focus on."
"So...ex-girlfriend."
"Yeah."
"What made her special to you?"
"If someone pretty and smart likes me, that means I’m--"
"Desirable?"
"Normal. I hung a lot of value on that feeling."
"Feeling normal?"
"Yes. And also, it’s very vindicating when another group--"
I stopped myself.
"Another group?"
"I was about to inveigh quite needlessly about people whose relevance requires my effort."
After several minutes, someone other than Paul, presumably the cook, brought us our food, setting down white clamshell containers. He was old and heavyset, and I always wondered how people like him physically, economically, and emotionally survived.
"The other guy quit, I think. I’m gonna quit, too. Enjoy your food to-go. No charge."
The cook followed us out, turning off the lights then locking the door. The diner, the building itself, looked suddenly unusable, was occupied by shadows and silence. In its dark, I saw only a church for cockroaches. Or a spiderweb megalopolis. As the cook drove away in a car that resembled mine, a station wagon entered the parking lot.
A family got out. Two men wearing white, button-up shirts with blue slacks accompanied a woman who had been attired by Manifest Destiny--a pioneer with her bonnet and apron and yellow dress. A little kid ran ahead of them, his message of death unseen until he crossed under a light.
"Good Mood Dude." But the word "mood" has five or six "Os" like the cow is pronouncing it, mooing.
