celluloid cowboy
celluloid cowboy
scott c. rogers
Black Coffee Press
P.O. Box 836
Dearborn Heights, MI 48127
Copyright © 2008 by Scott C. Rogers
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ISBN 978-0-615-26110-2
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Jacket design and author photo by Thomas Michael.
Publisher’s Note: This a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
for bob
Detroit
Wednesday
She’s starting to bore me.
I light a smoke and let the haze float between us. She talks too much. And those fucking hands, Jesus. She’s got jazz hands. They’re all over the place as she sits there and jabbers. It’s all too confusing. A cigarette burning here. A finger pointing there. She looks like she’s trying to solve an invisible Rubik’s Cube. And then there’s an itch at the mouth or the loose strand of hair that must be corralled back into place. All this fucking movement?
Did I mention that she’s sad?
She’s a sad girl. Her eyes look heavy like a beaten dog. Her fingernails have been bitten down to stubs. They’re painted red with chips missing. And as I sit here, she just looks overwhelmingly sad, and I can’t help but wanna fuck her. You know what she reminds me of is one of those little dolls you see at the Salvation Army store stuck back in the toy department. Here’s this tiny thing, once so delicate and precious, now saturated with abandonment and malice.
In mid-sentence, she waves the bartender over and demands another of whatever the hell she’s drinking. I couldn’t make it out. Some kind of mixed drink, I don’t know. She turns to me and keeps talking. It all sounds filtered and distorted like we’re under water. I try reading her lips, but they make me dizzy. I just keep nodding and smiling. I try picturing her naked and in bed. I wonder what she’ll sound like. You never know. She looks like a wild cat. Most of the sad ones are.
Suddenly she starts laughing.
I have no idea what’s so fucking funny, but I start laughing too.
She’s got a big laugh and she can hardly keep from spilling her drink. She tries to take a sip and ends up spewing all over herself.
And this is how it begins, with us sitting there in this shithole of a bar cackling like two monkeys hyped up on speed. She pulls in real close and yells.
“You like my legs?” She pulls her skirt up to give me a better look.
“I am a leg man,” I say, placing my smoke in my mouth, reaching down and giving her legs a good feel. They’re extremely tight and well developed. “You work out?”
She giggles. “I was a dancer.”
I catch a glimpse of her panties. Canary yellow.
“But I had an accident.”
“Oh, really? What happened?”
“Motorcycle accident,” she says, between gulps of her drink. “I was seeing this guy, and he dumped his bike on the freeway.”
“Shit!” I look down at her legs, but it’s too dark to see if they’re gnarled.
“Yeah,” she says. “I can still do stuff though.” She slides off the stool and slips out of her heels and begins to stand on her tippy-toes.
“I did ballet for like twelve years.” She performs this little spin and ends up stumbling into my lap. I help her to her seat.
The laughing has started up again. She pulls her hair out of her face, and I notice the thick scar that runs down the left side of her neck.
“That’s a nice souvenir,” I say, rubbing my finger down the pink gash.
Her smile fades like a sunset. Fuck. I feel like an ass as I watch her head drop towards the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She pats me on the knee and fakes a smile.
And I’m just about to grab my smokes, take one more sip of my beer and excuse myself as the biggest asshole in the world and crawl out of here, when all of the sudden she leans in and gives me a kiss. Her kiss is hard and rushed, and my beer ends up between us, spilling all over my lap.
This really gets her laughter going. She’s hysterical as she grabs a few cocktail napkins and starts patting my jeans. She pats and rubs and then starts kissing me again. She says she only lives a street over and that we should head back to her place. I can clean my pants there.
Right. I follow her out and we meander through the snow packed parking lot.
“Would you like me to drive?” I ask, as we come up to my car.
“Nah, parking fucking sucks on my street,” she says, turning too fast and beginning to slip and fall. I grab a hold of her. “My place is just over there.” She points towards a darkened block.
I pat the hood of my Gremlin like Han Solo would the Millennium Falcon as I pass it. And as we walk I can hardly believe how beautiful the night is with the moon and the snow. It’s been snowing for days now, but at this moment it’s stopped for a refill. There’s a liquor store on the corner, and she suggests that we stop ’cause she’s nearly out of smokes. I follow her in like a lost puppy. And as we leave, she gets into this screaming match with the owner, making several distinct references to his ethnic origin by shouting the words “sand nigger” at the top of her lungs. I grab a Snickers as we exit.
Her flat is just around the corner from the liquor store. As we head up the narrow stairs, I can’t help but wonder how the hell women can walk in heels. I watch her ass, and I know she’s working it just for me. She opens the door and fumbles for the light. She drops her coat on the floor and says she lives with her sister. The place looks like an old woman lives here. The furniture and decorations are very dated and have a certain smell to them. She kicks off her heels and walks into the kitchen. I take my coat off and hang it on the back of the dinning room chair. There’s a bookshelf, and I move in and take a closer look. I find things there that bring a smile to my face, writers like Celine, Selby, Miller, not Arthur, but Henry.
She’s standing there in the kitchen door with two beers. I step over and take one.
“Those aren’t mine,” she says, moving into the living room. “They’re hers.”
I make a soft sigh, thinking of the books and head into the living room where she’s dancing to the music playing in her head. I take a seat in the big brown chair that I think my great aunt used to own, sip my beer and watch her dance. She stops and heads over to the stereo cabinet and puts on real music this time. I just pray to God that it’s not a boy band or Jessica Simpson or some shit. She turns and saunters over to me, takes my beer and places it down on the end table left from the Carter Administration, then pulls me up and leads me to the center of the room. We start to dance, and the music is Ani Difranco. I tell her I love Ani, and she replies that it’s her sister’s, and she thought it was something else. But she continues to dance and shake and twist and rub her body against mine.
And Jesus, I can’t shake the feeling of wanting to really fuck her.
After just one song we’re on the couch, she’s sitting on top of me staring down at my face.
“You have nice lips,” she says.
“Well, to be honest I’ve heard that before,” I say, kissing her. “See, I used to be a lip model for Chapstick back in the day.”
“Really?”
“Uh, no.”
She leans down and kisses me. She says that I have the softest lips she’s ever tasted. And then she bites her own as she says this. I stare up at her. She either wants to fuck me or gnaw my face off.
“You have nice breasts,” I smile.
She starts to giggle and before I can give her another compliment, she begins to maul me with kisses. Over and over she keeps saying my lips are the softest lips. How they make her crazy. She has blue eyes. I put both hands on the sides of her face and stop her for a moment and just stare deeply into them. I think this shocks her ’cause her whole body freezes.
“Nobody has ever looked at me like that,” she says, pulling back her hair and tucking it behind her ears.
And God, I love it when women do that. She leans back down and the kisses are even more powerful than before. I can feel a hand searching for my belt. and once found, struggling to undo it. She’s almost got me free when suddenly I hear-em
“GLORIA!!”
Alarmed, she nearly falls from my lap and turns towards the voice.
I glance over her shoulder and see nothing.
“GLORIA!”
Before she can finish her first scream, I struggle to stand, dropping her on the floor. And that’s when I discover where the voice is coming from. Just before us, over by the stereo cabinet, there is a midget standing with a samurai sword, and if I’m not mistaken, I think he’s Mexican.
“You fuckin’ my woman, Essa!!!???” he yells, wobbling forward. He starts to wield the sword to and fro. “ ’Cause I’ll kill you!!”
I lie and shake my head no.
He wobbles towards me. “You fuckin’ die, man.”
I’m struggling to pull up my pants ,when he makes a sudden lunge at me. I dive to the side as his sword comes slashing down past me. It splits open the couch cushion and the air is engulfed in a spray of stuffing and fiber. He steadies himself and takes another swipe at me. I move just in time for him to come smashing into the end table where he gets tangled up with the lamp.
She is screaming.
I’m screaming.
And the little fucker with the sword does a somersault over an end table that would get an 8.5 from the judges.
I just stand there in awe watching this tiny Mexican struggle to free himself from the lamp cord. She runs up to him and begins to beat him with a pillow. I stumble around looking for my shoe that somehow came off during the attack. I struggle to put it on. I’m stomping around trying to squish my foot down into it and head for the door.
I hear her scream, “Look out!” I jump just in time to see the little fucker slam into the bookshelf.
All I hear is her screaming.
The fucking door won’t budge. I dive into the kitchen. He wobbles after me, swearing in Spanish. She quickly follows still swinging her pillow. Fuck me. There is no way out of the kitchen. I’m pressed up against the stove. He is standing in the doorway with his sword pointed directly at me.
I turn and look for something I can use in my defense. The only object handy is a can of PAM. I smile and reach into my jeans and pull out my Zippo and stand there like Arthur with Excalibur.
Obviously, the midget is confused.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ slice and dice you, A-ho!” he yells, gripping and re-gripping his sword.
And as I stand there with my PAM and Zippo in hand, I realize that I’ve never seen a Mexican midget before and surely not one holding a samurai sword until this fateful night.
He wobbles forward.
“I always hated Webster!” I yell, jumping forward, unleashing a spray of PAM and flicking my Zippo.
There is a great fiery arch reaching across the kitchen.
Picture Richard Pryor running down the street on fire.
Picture Michael Jackson on a Pepsi sound stage, Jheri curlablaze.
Picture a small furry animal, perhaps a wolverine or badger, pissed and suddenly engulfed in flames.
There are screams.
There are yelps.
There’s a pretty good rendition of the Electric Slide.
And if someone decided to throw a yard gnome into the microwave, it no doubt would look like this. He runs in circles. She is beating him with the pillow. I rip down the curtains from the kitchen window, follow his engulfed little ass into the living room and finally tackle him. And as she’s busy applying Neosporin to his burns, I quickly make my exit.
I walk quickly back to the Gremlin. I’m just about to jump in and drive far, far away from this night, when I hear someone yell my name. I turn expecting to find an army of midgets with swords, but it’s only Wayne.
He comes strolling over. “Now where in the hell are you heading to in such a hurry?”
“I gotta split, man,” I say, getting into the Gremlin. “I’m missing David Letterman.”
“No you ain’t. You don’t have a TV, Billy boy.”
Shit. “Ah, right...”
“C’mon, I got two honeys in there...” he points back over his shoulder to the bar.
“Maybe next time.” I say, starting the engine and throwing her into gear. “I’m just going to call it a night, man.”
“Okay, Mi hijo.”
Thursday
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, a smoke dangling from my lips as I read Keats. I’ve found that mornings are the only time he’s clear to me. The coffee is slowly brewing, filling my small kitchen with a beautiful aroma. I can hear the lady downstairs moving about, thumping her way across her wooden floors, pissed because in an hour she’s gonna have to head to work. In the distance there is the sound of a car that is reluctant to start.
The coffee is done.
I place Keats down open-faced and scuff over in my gorilla slippers, open my cupboards and pull down the cup I stole from Denny’s. The coffee gushes into the cup. I open the fridge and pull out the cream. Fuck me. It’s about finished. There’s just enough left to turn the coffee from black to a monkey shit brown. I’ll let the sugar make up for it. I keep scooping and pouring. It’s a delicate process much like a Junkie free-basing.
There we go. I scuff back over to Keats and slip back into his warm pool of poetics. This morning the swim is going good. No cramps or near drownings. I sip and read. I can feel the coffee warming my belly as the caffeine begins to rush. Lou Reed is on the stereo. Street Hassle ─what a fucking brilliant song. It’s perfect for a winter morning such as this. And it’s moments like this when I realize that I don’t need a woman. Having to share this with someone would only ruin it. There’s a certain beauty in simplicity. And sometimes solitude is a grace that just can’t be compromised. I think it’s just best to be left the fuck alone.
But these are brave words since there’s no one sitting across from me right now. I have no female fast asleep in the other room or squatting to take a piss in my john. There are times when I do miss that. Like the way she made the bed feel or the pink razor in the medicine cabinet. And Jesus, those panties left in the middle of the floor, dropped out of necessity or impulse.
I take another sip and sigh.
I know she’s out there somewhere doing these things in another man’s life. Doing these things to another man. And I’m just about to lose myself in her smile when suddenly I hear a thump at my door. I get up and shuffle over, midway losing a gorilla. I stop for a second and readjust the beast. I look out the kitchen door window and see Wayne standing there brushing snow from his hair. He catches me looking and smiles this big goofy grin. I flip him off, undo the locks and let the stupid fucker in.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he yells, stomping in and shaking free from the snow like a wet dog. “I’m so fucking sick of this asswipe snow!”
I turn and shuffle back to the kitchen table.
“And another thing, I almost broke my neck climbing those damn stairs, man. You think you could live someplace where you actually have the stairs inside rather than outside?”
“Okay, Dad,” I mumble. “Wayne? What the fuck do you want?”
“My, look who’s a grumpy bear this morning!” he says, opening the cupboard and pulling down a cup I stole from Tim Hortons. “You mind?” He holds up the cup.
“Help yourself,” I answer, crossing a leg. One of the gorillas is staring directly at him.
He just looks at it. “Nice.”
“Wayne. It’s fucking 5:30 in the morning,” I light a smoke and toss the Zippo across the table. It slides and lands near Keats. “Please, for the love of God, tell me what the fuck you want!”
“Does your Mama know you speak like that?” he takes a swig of coffee.
I flip him off.
He gives me this stare like he’s gonna come across the kitchen and crush my skull.
“I found him.”
“Found who? I’m lost.”
“Him.”
And suddenly it hits me who the him he’s referring to is. About six or seven years ago, Wayne was a detective for the Detroit Police Department. This was way before I ever knew him, and basically the short of it is that he fucked with the wrong people. They raped and killed his wife, Vicki. He’s been a Ghost Rider ever since.
He puts the coffee cup down. “I fucking found him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s him.”
I don’t know what to say. I feel for the guy. I mean, what do you say to someone who’s been searching for the people who took everything he had away? After the killing, he quit the force, cashed in his 401K, sold the house and now resides in a dingy motel on Michigan Avenue. I’m pretty sure he’s addicted to heroin, and he drives a 1986 Buick that has only one door that opens. Like I said, he’s a doomed motherfucker.
“I need a favor, man.”
Fuck. I knew that was coming.
“I need your help.”
I rub my fingers along my temples and sigh. “Yeah, and exactly what did you have in mind?”
He walks over to the table, gets a smoke out of my pack and lights it.
“Get dressed,” he says.
So, twenty minutes later, I’m sitting here in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, in my 1975 AMC Gremlin, scanning through the radio stations while Wayne is inside getting God knows what. The snow is starting to fall again. I watch huge. heavy ass snowflakes fall against the windshield. The Gremlin’s heater is making this horrible sound. It sounds like a small animal being blended on high speed. Fuck, there are no good songs on. Most of the music today is just shit. I start back at the beginning of the dial and try again. I settle on 89X. The song is One by U2.
I reach for a smoke and light it. Looking into the rearview mirror I adjust my stocking hat by pulling it further down around my ears. Fuck, it’s cold. I glance up and see Wayne walking aimlessly through the aisles. He stops at the window. Holds up a magazine and starts pointing at it and then me. I can’t tell what it is, but it looks like there’s a chick in a bikini on the cover. Now he’s licking the cover and pointing at me and laughing.
The fucker is crazy.
And I’m cold. I wave for him to hurry.
Suddenly a beautiful woman walks out with a coffee and strolls right between us. I half expect the Gremlin to make a beep like Herbie the Love Bug, but instead Wayne is pounding on the window and I believe humping the magazine rack. She totally ignores him and slides into her red BMW parked next to me. I would’ve normally tagged her a Starbucks gal. She sure looks like she could throw down seven bucks for some burnt ass coffee. I can’t help but watch her as she checks herself in the mirror to see if she’s still beautiful. A woman like that just makes you hurt physically when you look at her. She’s the kind that can make you feel totally invisible. And well, as she backs out and pulls away, I’m happy to say she’s done her job. I really feel like shit now.
Wayne comes out with two coffees and what looks like a hot dog. He almost slips as he opens the door. “Motherfucker!” he snaps, handing me a cup. He sits down and places his cup between his legs and opens the styrofoam box and pulls out a hot dog covered with the works. “Breakfast of Champions,” he says, taking a chomp. “Okay amigo, let’s hit it.”
I throw the Gremlin into gear and back her out.
“You know the Home Depot on Michigan Avenue?” he asks, chewing.
“You got it, Chief,” I answer, a smoke dangling from my lips as I shift gears.
Wayne continues his breakfast, and I try not to think. In situations like these I’ve found it best to just unplug and leave everything to animal reaction. Because at this moment I have no idea what’s about to go down; all I know is that my nuts are in my throat.
Wayne launches into this huge ass Homer Simpson burp and then begins to laugh.
“Ah, that fucking stunk, man,” I yell, waving off the aroma.
“You think that one was bad? Here.” He proceeds to lift his leg and rip the most massive fart I’ve ever heard. I swear to God that from the sound of it, his ass just exploded and his colon and small intestines are lying on the floorboard of the Gremlin right now.
“Fuck yeah!” he yells, pounding his chest. “That was beauteous!”
“You fucking clabber ass!” I yell, rolling down the window. “Did you shit that dog back out or what?”
He just sits there and laughs. I’ve always loved his laugh. It’s one of those kind that...suddenly I hit a pothole which sends a tidal wave of coffee up in the air and crashing down onto his lap. He instantly becomes a spasm of rotating cuss words. He sounds and looks like Yosemite Sam as I swerve to miss another one. He turns and stares at me like I’ve lost my mind and now trying to run down small children and the elderly.
“What?” I motion towards the road.
“God damn it! Looks like I fucking pissed my pants,” he says, pointing down to the massive wet spot on his leg and crotch. “Dude, I think I singed a nut.”
I’m totally laughing my ass off as we pull into the parking lot of Home Depot.
“See that Escalade over there with those fucking hubcaps?”
“How could I miss it?”
“Just pull right up next to it.”
I pull the Gremlin up, and we sit there idling. My heater has started to scream again. We just sit as it howls like a banshee. I glance over and check out the Escalade. It has tinted windows, Spinner wheels and probably a killer sound system. Wayne unzips his jacket and pulls out a bottle of Nyquil. I watch him as he twists off the cap and downs a good amount and then passes it over to me. I take three quick shots and hand it back. He takes one more swig, puts the cap back on and throws it in the glovebox.
He slowly puts on a pair of black leather gloves. He turns to me. “Give me a smoke.”
I toss him my pack of Camels. He takes one out and lights it and takes a few long drags.
“Keep your gloves on and follow me.”
We get out and walk around to the back end of the Escalade. He pulls out a pair of keys and hits a button and the hatch suddenly pops open.
“Nice,” I say, motioning towards the little Spinner wheel key-chain.
“Fucking niggers.”
And then I see him.
Lying in the back of the Escalade is a dude duct-taped and very fucked up. He tries to lift his head. He’s mumbling something. Blood is everywhere. One eye looks the size of a cantaloupe. And I’m pretty sure he’s missing an ear. He has a leg folded up past his head. I can’t tell which one it is.
I look over at Wayne, and he slowly smiles.
“This is what happens when you only serve a few months for killing angels,” he says, leaning into the dude. “Do you understand? Do you understand that, motherfucker? She was an angel. What you’re about to feel is from God.”
I just stand back. The dude is whimpering and crying. He keeps trying to look my way like I’m going to help him or something. Wayne explodes into a series of punches. He grabs the dude’s head and starts slamming it back and forth. He stops and hawks a big lugee on him and then slams down the hatch.
“Yup, that’s him,” he says.
“Fuck, I sure hope so.”
“Meet me over at the Burger King on Oakwood in one hour, got it?”
“In an hour? Sure.” I slowly walk back to the Gremlin, open the door and start to sit, when he shouts out at me.
“Billy.”
I turn to him.
“She was five months pregnant.”
I just shake my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Friday
And I’m standing there trying to finish my piss, but Pancho is at the next urinal talking a bunch of shit about this chick he knows out in LA who is a porn star. Not that I’m into porn or anything, but I’ve never heard of her. He’s saying that his cousin does graphics or something for this company, and it just happens that one of their biggest clients is this porn studio. And he keeps going on and on, and I’m just pissing a lake. Pancho is one of those guys who likes to piss hands-free. He stands there with his legs kicked out to the side and his hands clasped together, gently resting on top of his head.
“I swear since last summer, man,” he says, weaving back and forth. “We met at this big party and have been e-mailing each other.”
“Pancho,” I say, finally emptied and shaking and zipping. “You don’t even own a computer, dude.”
He starts laughing. “I use the library, man.”
I walk over to the sink and wash my hands. “The library?”
“Yeah! You know, you can go there and use it for free.”
“You know the FBI monitors that, right?”
He’s quiet all of the sudden. “What do you mean?”
“They keep an eye on it like Big Brother and try to spot terrorist and kiddy-porn freaks.”
Again, this heavy silence. “Really?”
“Afraid so, Pancho,” I say, drying off my hands. “You are familiar with Home Land Security and that pussy Patriot Act, right?”
He comes up to me. “You shittin’ me?”
“No and fucking wash your hands.”
I take a seat back at the table and I see that George has ordered another pitcher. Larry is over at the jukebox most likely looking for something by Willie Nelson or Buck Owens. I begin to thump my new pack of Camels against the palm of my hand. George is moving his hand up and down and side to side. He looks like an animal on LSD.
“George? What are you doing?” I ask, thumping the pack. “Did you forget to take your blood pressure medicine again?”
He stops twitching and removes his glasses.
“No,” he says, holding up his glasses. “I got these new glasses and the damn things are trifocal and I swear to God, they’re near to driving me bonkers.”
“Did you say trifocal!” yells Pancho, taking a seat.
“Another word and I will beat your scrawny ass!” snaps George, lifting a big paw towards a cowering Pancho. “You fucking spic.”
“What?” asks Pancho.
“So what made you go and get new ones?” I ask, opening my smokes and pulling out a cigarette. I show it to Pancho. “Check out that artwork!”
“Nice, dude,” he says, looking at my pack job.
“Annual physical,” says George. “Couldn’t make out a fucking thing.”
George is a simple man. Since returning from Vietnam in 1968, he has worked at Ford. He’s divorced with three grown children, two of whom still live in the area and one died on 9-11 in the South Tower. For the most part George is an okay guy, he could loosen up a bit, but he’s alright.
He takes them off and tosses them across the table. “Fuck, I look like my old man in these.” He looks at me. “Are you laughing?”
“No, no,” I lie.
Pancho just sits quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself.
“Put ‘em back on for a second,” I say, motioning towards them. “You know who you looked like just then?”
He just stares at me. Somewhere in the back of my brain something is screaming “Run! Fucking run!” Slowly he reaches for them and cautiously puts them back on. If Chewbacca wore glasses, then there you go.
“Right there,” I say. He just keeps staring. “You look just like John Wayne.”
“Awe, bullshit!” he erupts.
“I’m fucking serious.”
“You really think?” he asks, starting to fall for it. “The Duke?”
“I swear on my mother’s left tit.”
Pancho looks at me. “Why her left one?”
“ ‘Cause she lost the other one to cancer.”
“Fuck,” says Pancho. “You mean you’re mama only gots one tit?”