"You handled that like a bitch."
"I’m just playing around," Lucy revealed, setting her tray on top of the bin. "But she can’t be coming around with that crazy talk. You gotta let her know, you know?"
"Yeah."
We strolled the food court. I welcomed any distraction, would have butt dropped a hornet’s nest to chase off the shame squatting in my thoughts.
"Mike told me how you guys met."
"Oh. What do you remember? What does he remember?"
"You were walking down our street."
"Yeah, I grew up on that street."
"And--are you sure you want me to tell it?"
"No, but go ahead, please."
...and with each step, I proclaimed, "Everything is tiny." Looking at the ground, "Everything is tiny." Mike, noticing this, followed me, seeking to evaluate the unfamiliar force roaming his neighborhood. If he’d asked me what I was doing, I’m not sure how I could have answered. Let’s say you remember a house, okay? The image is in your mind. The dormers, the height, the shape. But when you visit the house in real life, it looks different than how you remember. Predictably, sensibly, this new information replaces the old, and you accept the inaccuracy of your previous recollection. Or maybe--fucking maybe--the house in real life is wrong. Your memory is actually right. So, you project the memory over the falsehood, shoot it from your eyes, but reality cannot be overwritten like a malleable mind-image. It pushes back. There’s pankration. A vicious back-and-forth--elbows, knees, headbutts--between the prank of the physical world and your insistence. Whenever the truth, your infallible account, begins to overpower reality, there’s crumpling and fractals, warping and parallax, and just one step can cross the road. And although the Sun is big--bigger than ever--and close enough to brush its butt on your nose, everything else, everything, is tiny.
"Hey," Mike said. After getting my attention, he grabbed his dick through his jeans. "Not this, bro."
We laughed.
"I never saw you here before," Mike said.
"Okay."
"I mean, what’s a young guy looking for?"
"I lived on this street. Until five years ago. I haven’t been here since."
"What made you come back?"
"I feel brave today."
"Nice. Brave enough to drink a beer with us?"
Mike pointed behind him, at a porch and three guys who, even from that distance, I could tell were devoted to the craft of lazing.
"Yes."
"You passed out outside," Lucy explained, "and that’s how I first saw you."
"Dang. I don’t remember the first time I saw you."
We left the food court, entering the skylight domain of clothing stores, kids who would have been latchkey but for the grace of mall hours, and women who looked at me like I should be executed--garden shear castration bled-out--for looking at them.
"What is your biggest pet peeve?" Lucy asked.
My search for an answer led to a blank, white room. My grievances, spidery globs of melted shadow, scurried across the floor to a single archway cutout. They jammed themselves in the opening, piled in front of it. Their squealing was ten-thousand rats on fire.
"That’s a hundred-way tie," I said.
"Well, for me, it’s when people ask if they can eat or drink something of mine, and already they’re opening it before I give an answer."
"That’s annoying. Do you ever say ‘no’ to them?"
A breath in. A sigh. Frustration with herself, with the jerk who implied that she’s part of the problem. "No."
We continued walking. The shoppers split like amoebas, absorbing empty space to further propagate themselves. I mourned Mr. Mad Iron.
"Okay, I think I’ve narrowed it. My biggest pet peeve. Would have to be. People claiming they never get angry about ‘things they can’t control.’ Always in a superior tone when that gets said. Anyway, these liars want me to believe that if they in-person, during-commission-of-the-act saw their babysitter sneak a brown recluse into their baby’s diaper, they’d simply quote Seneca then...I don’t know...go for a swim. That if a drunk driver hit their son with a car then dragged him hundreds of feet on the pavement before leaving him to die all torn open and bleeding and smashed apart on the inside, they’d go, ‘aw shucks, outta my control, ain’t ever nothin’ good come from anger.’ Fuck that. These are the same people who, if they didn’t think about themselves a certain way, would headbutt every mirror they saw until blood-brain fucking porridge leaked out their nostrils. They don’t buy a lawn mower. They invest in one. They don’t drink coffee. They have a coffee ritual. They don’t melt processed American cheese food on top of junk drawer saltines in a microwave, they quarter every slice in a food prep regimen--"
"Hey. Hey hey. Prophet. You’re yelling. That’s stressful."
Strangers, probably the type I described, stared at me, tried pooling their disdain to crush me in it. I kept moving, each step another kick in the eye of the giant energy squid they had sicced on me.
"I don’t know. I’ve got dozens more in there, subconsciously rehearsed and growing in vitriol."
Lucy pondered that. "More of what I’ve seen you do makes sense now."
I questioned her, surprising myself with how indignant my voice sounded. "Oh, am I that easily figured out?"
Lucy laughed. "Yes. Why, you think you’re not?"
#
"Hey, Prophet," Mike said."Hey."
"You wanna place an order? What’s up?"
"I came to...be sober and enjoy the company."
Mike stood in the doorway, ever the imposing figure, ready to throw an elephant off his porch if necessary. He wore a football jersey and cargo pants that could hide a bazooka.
"Nah, it’s like, we’re not really doing company."
I could hear the party, the voices and laughter behind him. See the cars parked on the street.
"Okay?"
"I’ll, uh, catch you later."
He shut the door. I banged on it. He answered again, eyebrows heavy with the sight of me.
"I said I’ll catch you later. And don’t say--ha ha ha--it’s later."
"Do you have a problem with something I did?"
Music and more laughter from inside the house taunted my outsider status. Mike really seemed to puzzle over what he should do next. "Hey, Lucy. Come talk to this fool."
Lucy joined Mike, lightly pushing him to guide him outside. We all stood on the porch.
"Tell him," Mike said.
I thought about running. From the conversation I had started. But the fear and shame of creating a microcosm of my own behavior stayed me. Which was the real microcosm.
"So...you don’t buy anymore. And if you don’t buy, you can’t socialize here."
"What? I thought we were--"
"No, Prophet. I acted like your friend because I felt bad for you. Told the boys ‘be nice.’ Undercharged a few times. Told everyone that Prophet’s my guy. But you didn’t know. Or you knew, and it was okay, because you needed a place to fuckin’ exist."
"Everybody in there right now is a buyer?"
"No, but that changes nothing about who you are to me. Which is a customer. And a customer can’t be with my sister."
A blue whale swam through the non-existence of Mike’s logic. "But if I no longer buy anything, how can I be a customer?"
"Then you’re just a bum who adds nothing to my accounts. You ain’t that clever. And the two of you? I just don’t approve."
"Wait," I said, talking to Lucy, "Mike’s your brother?"
She gave a look, made a half-unfurling gesture to say "obviously."
"In your kitchen, that one morning, you gave a solemn speech about ‘if I need anything, tell Papa Mike the Fixer.’ So that was a lie?"
"Not when you brought money. Plus, you said all that shit about your family--"
"That. Is not a thing you get to minimize," I warned, suppressing a slow, vertical hover. "Was that deliberately frameless? You scrape all the humanity off my secret pain like you’re a bully from junior high?"
"Greg. Think about who you are and how you spend your time. Should I be thrilled if you and Lucy go on a date? Also, I’ve sold to you. That’s two different categories of No Fuckin’ Way, understand? You wanna buy, cool. If not, you gotta leave. Your personal code or whatever you think is right and fair is irrelevant. On this porch and in my fuckin’ house."
Lucy had already gone back inside.
I pulled ten bills from my pocket, handed them to Mike.
"Pills. All of it for pills."
He counted the money. Smiled.
"Come in, dog. No grudges. I’ll get you setup."
I followed him through the door. He told me to wait in the living room, the Guaranteed Bane of all Future Real Estate ladies.
"And here we have ten or so...what are they? Sense-numbing ne’er-do-wells who, if left alone in the quiet, risk contemplating life. They appear at night. No. No. They come with the house..."
A sandwich bag filled with diazepam rested in my hand. It was precious, had been exchanged for an amount of mail room suffering.
"Might you include a beer with my purchase?"
"Yeah, I might."
We went to the kitchen, to the refrigerator. I set my pills on the counter, pinched up several with my fingers, swallowed them via the can of beer Mike handed me. Then kept doing that with different sets of "several" till the mama bird had only emptiness to transfer.
"Yo, Prophet. No dumbass overdosing allowed. You need to leave."
Egyptian Mike had watched the entire disappearing act. That was the most I’d ever heard him enunciate.
"You let me sleep here before."
He shoved me--no moment of bartering with himself could I detect. Because he thought I was trying to kill myself in his house. Because if a rule meant nothing to him, it would mean nothing to the world. Because we weren’t really friends. I skittered along with his effort, my overcommitment to the ruse bumping three guys behind me, spilling their drinks. They were officially embroiled.
Smash, smash, smash. Two highball glasses to the face. One on the scalp. And three men who saw no problem with blinding, scarring, or disfiguring someone over replaceable liquid.
I covered my face with my hands then dropped to the floor, screaming.
"No fighting. And why did you break my shit? Get out."
Mike gripped the inside of my arm to stand me up. I obliged.
"Bro, you’re going to the E.R., that pill shit was no good."
Viewed through my fingers, my trio of attackers leaned close to one another, scheming obviously with their spiky hair and button-up "going out" shirts.
I lowered my hands to reveal myself. The pristine, unmarred surface.
"He told you to get out," I reminded.
"I told you to get--" Mike stopped, really noticing the glass’s non-effect.
Guy 1, Guy 2, Guy 3. Guaranteed benzodiazepene rapists. The same sneer replicated across each of them as they decided to, en masse, grab me. I selected my counter from a daydream.
It started as a punch, traveled partway as one, but at the end, the digits uncurled, causing a staggered battering ram formation to deracinate, rip-free, almost every goddamn tooth in Guy 1’s mouth. After his head bounced off the cupboard, he fell to his knees in prostration to pain, gurgling through double-cupped hands as he choked on blood and teeth and defeat. The commissures had torn open quite a ways, but not all the way to Glasgow.
"I need to wash my hand," I announced, heading for the kitchen sink.
Guy 2 punched the side of my head. Guy 3 punched the back of it. They continued this activity--punching my head--with slight variation as I helped myself to soap and running water. To micellar creation amid the chaos.
"I like the scent," I told Mike, "but have no idea how much it resembles real acacia."
They started cracking him. I mean, he destroyed that one dude’s mouth. So, they’re winding up and throwing big shots, like full force losing their balance on the momentum, and he’s washing his fuckin’ hands like all anyone did was put a breeze on him. Because he really is a prophet, God gave him stupid, crazy power, and that never should’ve happened. It feels like...a punishment on the world. Because, trust me, that fool, he is not a person whose tolerance for anything should be the infinity sign. I need him to leave my house, but I think God left him here like when people abandon their dog at the pound. Somebody has to claim him.
When The Guys tried wrestling me, I wiped my hands on their shirts. Rumpled their fancy collars in my grip. Bashed their faces together a single time, no clash cymbals ever produced a more divine sound. Satisfied with the amount of blood and facial derangement sagging from my hands, I threw each man to the floor, onto the broken glass.
"Oh, how sweet. How very, very sweet. The irony. That the glass you shattered for the sole purpose of hurting me now hurts you, the ones who originally wanted to hurt me. Ah, yes. Irony."
Before my taunt could reach its conclusion, my audience, the pile of ruined shirts, nights, noses, and mouths, had scrambled off the floor. Three startled fawns ran from the kitchen.
"If these pills don’t work, do I get a refund?"
"Greg!"
Cayley, arms in the air, smiling. Dolphin shorts and a tank top running at me.
"Glass," I warned, pointing. "And teeth."
Her shoes crunched on the linoleum as she hugged me.
"I can’t believe you’re here," she said.
"Neither can I," another voice said.
Cody, whose presence alternated from sequoia to landslide depending on his level of ambulation, had entered the kitchen, establishing his dominion. He thought he was allowed to talk about me.
"Where’s your dustpan and broom? I’ll get the floor."
"There’s a brush thing that snaps together under the sink."
I crouched, sweeping the glass into the dustpan. Cayley and Mike both moved to accommodate the brush. Cody’s boots, sleek and polished with the black blood of Erebus, did not budge. After working around them, I stood up, dumped the glass, put the cleaning tools back.
"Mike, may I borrow your back yard?"
Mike shook his head, slumped a few millimeters into resignation.
"Yeah, sure. For what?"
"Hey, Cody."
"Hey what."
"We totally fucked," I said, gesturing to indicate me and Cayley. "We lied about it because we’re goddamn liars."
He looked at her. A tic in his facial topography, faint enough to be imagined, meant he believed me. I went to the dining room, walked out the back door.
