Nik Korpon

The following is an excerpt from my first novel, Stay God. These are the first two chapters.

Chapter 1
January: Now

There’s been a murder. Someone stabbed the sun. It’s dripping onto Baltimore, seeping through gauze clouds onto the cobblestone street, reflecting off wet tire tracks in pinpoint sparks like the ones that follow a two-by-four across the nose. It’s dimming, dying, falling in slow motion, but the city is oblivious. Couples in matching jackets and complementary scarves walk arm in arm down Thames and through Fell’s Point. They push strollers with babies double-wrapped in winter coats. Share hot chocolate and kiss the dot of whipped cream off their noses. Window-shop the poster place next-door, looking for the perfect thing for the TV room. Happy lives, happily self-contained, in their happy little oblivious universes.

I watch the scene, staring at the reflection on the back window of The Daily Grind. The City Paper I’m not reading is gutted open across the blonde wood table. My right hand quivers. I need a bump, and I don’t like that I need a bump. I’m sorry, Mary. I tried.

From my pocket, I pull my stash, held in a plastic container shaped and colored like a giant Tylenol, slap it twice in my hand then palm it. Scratch my chin on my right shoulder and scan the room—no one’s watching—then bloat my chest like a sneeze is coming and put my hands to my face. Sniff, sniff, hold. Feel it absorb into my blood and tune in the static in my head. Make a fake sneeze with my mouth—so no one suspects anything—and slide it back in my jeans. The synthetic taste of chewed aspirin, snot and white drips down my throat. My hand stops quivering and I can feel the inside of my legs and the blood flowing through every vein in my body.

Steam swirls in tiny tornados from my coffee. I scan whatever page of the City Paper is open just to give my brain something to do besides think think think think think. About Mary. About The Twins. Where she is, why she won’t call back, what Bruce Campbell is doing right now how hard they can hit a rib before it breaks and punctures a lung whether the Sonny Chiba DVD Christian ordered for me has come in yet whose hand is on my shoulder I bolt to my feet. My coffee spills Rorschach over the table. The chair scrapes back across the floor, hands curling as I turn. My eyes are CD size and the light from outside hurts.

‘Damon, hi. Jesus, are you okay?’ a girl says, her hands palms-out-defensive by her shoulders. She’s fake-tanned too much; her skin, the color of cantaloupe flesh.

‘Oh. Yeah. Hi. What’s up—’ Kelly? Wren? What the fuck is her name? ‘—man? Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. Too much coffee, you know?’

She nods her head tentatively. I steal a glimpse over her shoulder, check the room. Four students sit glued to their laptops and dead to the world; the wrinkled couple in the corner plays cribbage; the girl behind the counter thumbs coins from the tip jar into her palm while her co-worker stares out the window and over the Baltimore harbor.

‘Just making sure,’ she smiles, her need convincing her brain that I’m not a threat. Her bone fingers, with polished nails the color of old scabs, run over the cuts covering my forearm. She doesn’t seem to notice, or doesn’t care. I already know what she’s about to ask me. ‘I wanted to make sure my boy is okay.’

‘I’m fine.’ I know her name and can’t think of it, but she’s a leech anyway, so it doesn’t matter. ‘Just drinking coffee,’ gesturing to my brown and wet table. A shark swims mouth-open after a fat man in the French Roast Rorschach.

‘Are you going back to your store anytime soon?’ she coos. Her tongue traces the edge of her lips, black high-heels slide over the floor closer to me. ‘Or now if you have… you know.’ Her fingers on my ribs now, kneading, like a preview of what could come. Yes, I know, you conniving soulless woman. I finger my stash in my pocket, try not to smile.

My lips part to say Sorry the store’s closed when the front door opens. Two Twin figures, like bags of garbage stuffed into expensive trench coats, walk into the shop. I pull the girl—Alicia is her name though I don’t know why I remember it now—in front of me, bend my knees to sink behind her. Close my eyes, push on my eye sockets with my palms, this isn’t happening, you’ve seen this before, you’re okay, then peel my lids open.

A rainbow of stars floats through the coffee shop and the two are gone. They’re gone. Just students and old people and bored minimum-wage workers. Alicia has pulled her body even closer. She smiles down at me. I can almost see her brain cranking through her irises. She thinks she has me. Straightening my legs, her hand is on my thigh, her fingers in my jean pocket but I could be watching her and someone else and imagining it as me.

The front door is still closed.

Then the Twins are at the counter, ordering orange mocha frappacinos. I collapse on the chair, pull Alicia down on my lap and sink my face into her neck. Acrid vanilla paints her skin. She moans with her head tossed back, rubs her thigh against my stomach and I peek up and watch the Twins. Close my eyes and count to three and hope to God that I’m hallucinating again.

The room seeps through the slits in my eyelids. Thin slices of light, filling in the line drawings in my head with color, depth. Filling in concrete details, and I’m not hallucinating; I’m fucked.

‘Get up,’ I say to Alicia, throwing my arm around her shoulders and pulling her head close to shield myself. As I grab my jacket, I can hear her smiling and feel her hand in my back pocket but try to ignore it. ‘Keep walking and don’t move your head unless I move it for you.’

‘I like this,’ she purrs. ‘It’s sexy. This whole hostage thing. When we get back to the store, I’m going to—’

‘Shut the fuck up.’ I peer past her profile and check the counter. One of the Twins hits the arm of the other and puts his hand out for money. There’s a bulge in his trench coat, shaped like a ‘Y’ and I’m sure it’s the hedge-clippers and wonder if they’re the same pair. Everything looks Hitchcock; the door slides farther and farther away, the seven steps to the street will take fifteen years.

Alicia’s hormones buzz in my ear. ‘My god, Damon,’ she breathes. ‘You are getting me so…’

They turn towards us. Their eyes catch mine and I whisper oh fuck.

I sweep my foot under Alicia’s, knock her to the ground in front of the door. ‘I’m sorry, Alicia.’ Lean my shoulder into the door and barrel onto Thames. I glance behind and there’s no one there, but I can still feel their breath.

*

‘Get the fuck out of the way!’ My feet smack with dull slaps on the concrete. A pruned Asian woman carrying two bags of blizzard-backup food pauses right in front of me as she tries to figure out what I’m screaming. She figures it out too late and the bags explode into the sky. Cans of peaches and water chestnuts rain down onto the sidewalk. A deluge of dried noodles and dates. They barely miss me, spinning on the ball of my foot. The cartilage in my knee pops and cracks. My palm scrapes the ground and soaks up little pebbles, anything to keep me from kissing the concrete. To keep the distance between the Twins and me as far as possible. A man shaped like a bowling pin screams derogatory epithets about every woman in my family, says I was born in a test tube. I’d stop and argue with him but I don’t feel like dying.

The crowd in front of me pricks their ears to all the yelling and turns to gawk. They step back to avoid a collision or my elbow in their neck, and my legs can finally stretch out to a full stride. A few breaths up the sidewalk, two boys with greasy faces and mustaches like crumbled Oreos leave their skateboards at their feet, a mangy dog meanders without a leash, and a suited man finds it a good time to fix his right leg cuff.

I can almost feel Them twisting a corkscrew into my breastplate.

I hop over the skateboards, just missing the dog, and turn back to check the crowd for Them, then step on a lump and I’m looking at the waning January sky, papers floating over me like legal-sized snowflakes.

‘You prick!’ The Suit scurries to gather his business proposals, vetoed with my size nine stamp. I scramble to my feet and check behind again, the sidewalk gawkers congealing back together, hiding me. Every step catches fire in my soles and pushes needles into my temples. White clouds form in front of my mouth. Christian’s whiskey sloshes in my stomach. ‘It’ll help,’ he’d said. ‘It’s been a rough couple of days.’

Four blocks of sprinting, checking, heaving, choking, swallowing hard and trying not to vomit and I’m at Shakespeare Street. Using the light pole like a fulcrum, I wing myself around the corner. My foot slides across gravel and a broken bottle. The first alley slumbers desolate, quiet. Perfect. Fences keep it from spilling into the tiny backyards. I slam into the first door in the fence. Locked. Push on the next one. Locked. The mouth of the alley yawns, wide and empty. My ears prickle. Footsteps. They sound monolithic but could be from any of the million people in Fell’s today. The next door, locked; I yank on the handle and almost rip it out of the wood. The footsteps are louder. Four steps backwards and I take a breath, about to throw myself into the door to break it down and hide, but if the door is broken down they’ll know where I am. Sidestep to the next one, put my weight into it and it swings open. I dip inside and slam the door and it’s black, a vacuum. The doorway to another parallel world, hopefully one where I’d never met her. I’m going to evaporate, be erased, disappear into nothingness and that might not be such a bad idea. My eyes adjust after a few seconds and it’s not a black hole or time portal; it’s a storage shed. I stand on the push lawnmower, breathe, try to relax.

‘You’re cool. You’re cool. It’s okay. You’ll be fine. They’re not there.’

I’m talking to myself. Standing, shaking, breathing hard. Faint Christmas music that’s playing too late drips through the door.

A metallic scraping, like rusted hedge-clippers. They’ve snuck up without any noise and are poised outside the shed, ready to aerate my chest. Once they’ve finished the rest of their coffee and dabbed the corner of their lips with a monogrammed silk handkerchief, they’ll kick the door open and drag me face-down across the alley, an Italian-leather loafer on the back of my skull to make sure I’m chewing mouthfuls of concrete.

There’s pressure around my neck and my fingertips are cold. The dying sun bleeds through a splinter crack in the middle of the door. I check the walls in what little light there is for something to grab, to swing and slice or gouge. Nothing. No trowels. No spades. No tiny scraping-things that look like three fingered skeleton hands. Not even a bulb planter. The pressure is gone. I look down and realize my fingers were spinning Christian’s grandpa’s wedding band around its metal chain. Put it against my lips—‘Please’—then tuck it back inside my shirt and bend my knees to peer through the crack. Drag my hand across my forehead and wipe the sweat and pieces of dirt on my jeans. A rat scratches past the splinter of outside. I have to wait.

A minute, two minutes, twenty minutes. Everything seems eternal in a black space in a back alley.

The footsteps slink quiet, bulls with slippers. I squint my eyes to concentrate, hear better. They sound
about twenty feet away. Light on their feet, trying to be sneaky.

My lungs take every molecule of oxygen from every shallow breath.

The footsteps disappear. I’m just hearing things; it’s all imagination. A relieved sigh, and I kiss the ring. Thanks, Grandpa.

Then they’re closer.

I perch my hand on my back pocket to steady myself, to keep from slipping and making a noise. There’s a lump in my pocket. The lump is my switchblade. It takes 30 or 48 or 132 seconds to open the blade without the lock clicking and giving me away. Shift again, gentle, silent, and scour the sliver of alley between the door and its frame. My eyes narrow, look for a gun, a broken wine bottle. A rusted pair of hedge-clippers or flathead screwdriver.

Tinted glass shimmers in the sunlight.

Fuck.

The footsteps are slower, sound a few feet away. Just imagine they’re Paul. Imagine Paul’s face on their bodies. I’m going to destroy them. A steeling breath, then I kick through the door, my arm cocked at jugular height and ready to slash.

A bum in an army-issued trench coat that used to be black twelve layers of dirt ago drops his wine bottle with a damp shatter. He curls back, slurs, ‘Moddlefcker, don’ hur me,’ through a bird’s nest beard and the mechanic-stained hands protecting his face.

Snap my head left and right looking for Them. Alleyway. Trash cans. Recycling bins. Cardboard boxes too big for recycling bins. No Twins. I drop my arm and take a step back, collapsing with relief on the door that’s leaning jagged against the shed. The bum looks through his fingers then lowers his hands, stumbling half a step.

‘Shit,’ I exhale. ‘I’m really sorry man.’ Dig into my jeans and pull out whatever’s in the pocket, hand $13 and a Cody to the bum for the inconvenience.

While he examines his take, I creep to the edge of the street and peek around the corner, switchblade still in hand. Just in case.

They’re not there.

‘Hanks, mifter,’ the bum hiccups, then lurches down the alley.

I close the switchblade, look around the corner again to double-check and walk head-down hurried along Shakespeare to South Bethel, then veer right towards the corner at Aliceanna and stand for a minute, surveying the faces. A middle-aged woman with cat’s-eye glasses and pink Chucks. Two bike messengers resting on their crossbars, smoking. A herd of seven hipsters streaming out of a café.

Gone. The Twins have evaporated.

Turn around and run as fast as I can to 734 South Bethel, pulling out the key before I get to the building, then stab the lock, throw the door open, slam it shut. The deadbolt clicks then I vault up the steps, stab another lock and seal myself inside Christian’s apartment. The tattered couch creaks as I let myself collapse. An iceberg of foam floats on the back cushion.

‘Jesus Christ.’ I grab the pack of Casamirs, shove one in my mouth, light it and check that the cuts on my arms aren’t bleeding.

‘Alright. Alright.’ I’m talking to myself again. ‘Alright alright alright.’ Talking to an empty room with amber-colored walls. I’m telling Bela Lugosi, Robert Englund and Leatherface that I’m okay. They stay quiet in their poster frames. From the cover of Changes, David Bowie gives me a look that says you have it all under control. I nod my head. ‘Thanks, Dave.’ My voice echoes off the hardwood floor and into the linoleum kitchen.

‘Alright, I need to rest. I need to think.’ Take a drag. Feel the smoke fill my chest and nicotine soak into my blood. The giant Tylenol in my pocket. I’d forgotten about that. I think I deserve it. Smack it against my palm—no one’s here to see—and take a long snort. Hold my breath, let it drip down my throat, rampage through my veins. Exhale—long, slow and centered.

‘I need a pen. And some water.’ In the kitchen, I grab a glass from the draining rack and fill it. The cold water feels good on my hands; I want to fill a glass and dump it down the back of my neck then over my face. Over and over.

The hands of the Beetlejuice clock on the wall point north and south. Christian won’t be home for another two hours. I sit on the couch again, grab a pen from the wooden corner table and a receipt from Muyung’s Dry Cleaners then stub out my cigarette in the glass ashtray I bought Christian for his birthday. It says ‘Jesus Hates It When You Smoke’ in a banner underneath the stylized face of Christ.

‘Alright,’ I say to the room. ‘What do I know?’

I think about everything that’s happened, and make a list on the back of the receipt.

Chapter 2
August: Then

‘You are out of your mind,’ I said.

‘I’m telling you, it could happen,’ Christian said.

‘No way. No. Way.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, why? Wolverine could never beat Freddy. First off, Freddy controls everyone’s perception. Second, yeah, Wolverine has his quick healing…’ I focused on the scale sitting on the metal desk in a mess of paraphernalia, squinted my left eye at the notch between .5 and .6 grams. ‘Sorry, what was I saying?’ I tapped the metal plate against a small tin funnel. The white powder slid down into a plastic bag the size of an infant’s eyeball.

‘Perception.’

‘Right, okay. So, Freddy controls perception. Wolverine is stronger no doubt, but even though he can heal himself quickly, Freddy cut off his finger in the first Nightmare and it grew back in a second, so he has the obvious advantage.’

‘How do self-mutilation and a missing finger make him a better fighter?’

‘Because he can do whatever he wants.’ I scooped more powder onto the scale. ‘If Wolverine gets hurt, he has to wait to heal himself. Yeah, it’ll be quicker than a non-mutant, but it still takes time. Freddy’s missing finger grew back in an instant.’

‘But Freddy’s finger was in the dream world. He got killed when Nancy pulled him into the real world, so that means he’s vulnerable. Point, Wolverine.’ Christian nodded smugly.

‘From what I can recall, I’ve never seen mutants walking around Baltimore, so that would mean we’re still talking hypothetically. So game, set, match, Krueger.’

Mary leaned against the reinforced-metal doorframe that separated the main area of our store from the back office. Her rosewood-colored hair, pulled back from her jaw into a small ponytail. She crossed her arms, standing like she was bored of listening to Christian and I argue, over the plaid shirt that clung to her curves with both hands and made her eyes sparkle like oceans of sapphire. Every thirty seconds or so she peeked her head through the curtain we’d hung over the doorway—so no one could see into the office—and checked the front of the store.

‘But that’s assuming Wolverine falls asleep.’ Christian pinched the tip of a Casamir cigarette between his lips and pulled it out of the pack. Printed in black and white on the side of his Zippo was Ronald Reagan with KISS paint. He scratched the toe of his right Van on his left calf, then the left Van on his right calf. His hair, the same auburn as his Vans.

‘You’re saying mutants don’t sleep? Bullshit. What do you think happens after Scott bangs Jean Grey? Go fight crime? Don’t think so.’ I dropped the bag into a row labeled ‘Single’ inside a small red toolbox and threw a knot of bags rubber-banded together to Christian. ‘Can you separate some more of these for me?’

‘What do you think, Mary?’ Christian said in a cloud of smoke. He wiped ash off his t-shirt, leaving a grey scrape over the black.

‘I think you’re both Chatty Cathys, and you should worry about getting this packaged and not who would win in some theoretical fight which, I might add, could never and would never happen because they’re owned by different studios.’

Christian tipped his phantom hat in Mary’s direction. I ignored her. Scooped and scraped, then squinted, and slid. Lather, rinse, repeat.

‘And regardless, Vincent Price was a better villain than either of them. He’s the gentleman’s villain.’ The brass bells over the front door clanked and she stepped through the doorway.

‘Whoa!’ I was appalled. ‘You cannot make a statement like that and just walk away. Completely different things.’

‘Wolverine isn’t a villain,’ Christian chimed. Mary poked her head through the curtain.

‘There’s someone in,’ and walked to the counter, muttering, ‘All that talent…’

‘And Freddy’s a tragic anti-hero,’ I shouted towards the vacant doorway, ignoring her muttering.

‘That, my friend, is a stretch.’ He readjusted his posture like a marionette doll might, pulled on the right leg of his jeans, then left. ‘Aren’t you done yet?’

‘This should last for at least a few days, but it’s been busier than usual, and I doubt we’ll get our full shipment.’

Mary reappeared. ‘I’ve got a guy looking for a CD.’

I looked into the yellowed TV monitor sitting on the edge of the desk and brushed away a patch of dust to get a better look at the wet stalk of a man standing at the counter. He brushed off his sweatshirt and drummed his fingers on the plexiglass over the jewelry display.

‘Does he want Depeche Mode or Duran Duran? Full-length or single?’

Mary turned to the Stalk.

‘What band?’

He sputtered. ‘Uh, Duran Duran.’

‘Which record?’

‘Notorious.’

I took a bag of white from the ‘Full-length’ row and handed it to Christian, who put it inside an empty CD case and handed it to Mary. I watched her hips sway on the TV as she walked through the door, then took the Stalk’s fifty dollars and opened the register, put it in the slot to the far left. The Stalk turned and double-timed it back into the summer rain.

‘So,’ I called to the front, ‘Vincent Price?’

She peeked around the corner. ‘At least he has all of his fingers,’ then disappeared as I scooped and scraped.

‘She’s right, you know,’ Christian said. He dropped a small pile of bags on the desk.

‘What do you mean?’ without looking up.

‘Vincent Price is a better villain.’

I smiled, squinted and slid. ‘Yeah, I know. I just can’t let her know.’

Christian laughed. ‘Crotchety old man.’

‘Fuck off. I’m not old,’ touching the back of my head without thinking. ‘This isn’t a bald spot. It’s from the way I slept.’

‘And it gave you those greys, too, right?’

‘You can’t get grey hair when you’re twenty-nine. That’s a scientific fact.’ I tossed a one-gram bag into the Full-length row. ‘Don’t you have your own store where you can bother people?’

‘If my landlord hasn’t sold the building since I’ve been at lunch,’ he said. ‘I told Matt to sit by the door with a shotgun, just in case.’

‘That bad?’

‘He finally figured out what the place is worth. Gave me six-months notice and an option to buy, though it’s almost twice what I’m paying now.’

‘Can you swing it?’

‘Selling six-dollar records?’

By my foot sat the larger bag of white, now the size a four-fingered fist. Three toolboxes under the desk: one red box for the white, two blues for the brown. Two grey boxes laid under my chair on the gunmetal carpet, like you’d see in real estate offices. Inside of the boxes were rows labeled Cody, Adam and Cameron, piled with handfuls of Vicodin, Adderall and Diazepam.

‘Anyway, what’s happening tonight?’ Christian stubbed out his cigarette in the mouth of an ashtray shaped liked George Lucas’ head.

‘Get a pint and see who’s playing at the bars down here, maybe?’ I lit a cigarette and tossed the pack onto the desk. It landed on a pile of mail. I noticed a periwinkle blue envelope sitting second from the top and inspected it. Addressed in calligraphy, it was sent to Mary and me, but to our home address. The return address was Megan’s, Mary’s recently married former college roommate. Megan’s wedding was about eight months ago, and the envelope was the same size as an invitation—probably to her baby shower—so I slid it into the drawer to open later. More headaches and complications I didn’t feel like dealing with.

Part of our problem: we didn’t have any back-up plans. Hobbs and his Cockroaches were it. The business wouldn’t have been that hard to run if everyone followed procedure. Thursday, we called Hobbs with our order. Sunday, one of the Cockroaches should slither in, exchange a suitcase of product for a VHS case of money, then scurry out. His part was pretty hard to fuck up, but they carried the fate of our store inside those suitcases we rarely saw.

Once they delivered the shipment, we’d portion, package, and sort. After the product went into its own special box, we went to the safe.

Open the floor safe across from the desk. Remove the rolls of coins, DVDs, the salt-and-pepper composition book and $200 or so inside. Look in the corners for the cutaway notches. Look close, they’re hard to see. They’re supposed to be.

Take a flathead screwdriver and gently, to avoid making any visible scratches, pry up the false bottom. Slide out the sheet of black metal, again gently, and remove the duct-taped concrete blocks underneath. Stack the blocks at least three feet away from the safe. I wrapped them in tape to keep concrete dust from getting on the carpet where there shouldn’t be concrete dust.

Once it’s hollow, rub the surrounding carpet eighteen to twenty inches from the footprint of the safe. Push with some pressure; it’s supposed to be hard to find. Scrape with the fingernails and it’s easier.

After finding the seam, lift the safe. Lift with the legs, the arms, the back; it doesn’t matter. It’s a prop safe from a movie set—looks real, sounds real, feels real—that we bolted to a wooden floor panel. Wedge the metal bar into the notch in the top left corner to keep the floor panel up.

‘Do you know who’s playing?’ Christian asked.

‘Brent said The Garnet Hearts are playing at Full Moon Saloon. The Perfects are at that bar up the street from Hollywood Diner, I think.’

‘What are they like?’

‘The bastard child of Einsturzende Neubauten, Joy Division and,’ trying to think of the right band to describe them, ‘I don’t know, The Stooges? But dance-y.’

‘The Stooges?’

‘No, not really. But every band should try to sound something like The Stooges.’

Put the stacks of bills in double-layered plastic bags then place them on the left in descending order, front to back: $100, 50, 20. Any ten-dollar bills, staple together and put inside the safe. Check the packaging around the bills for holes. When they built Baltimore, most buildings had dirt basements. As the city grew, they laid concrete over the dirt. No foundations, just concrete on dirt. When rain deluges the city, basements can leak. If basements leak, the $100,000 contained within could soak up said rain, and the stacks of $50 bills could buy luxury termite condos. I covered the sides of our storage pit with concrete and waterproofing, but get paranoid regardless.

Place toolboxes on the right in order of use: red, blue, grey. Each box also has a layer of weather stripping around the lip of the lid to keep it watertight, but as with the bills, put them inside a plastic bag and check that there are no holes. Extra protection.

‘Cool,’ Christian said. ‘I can’t go to Full Moon, though.’

‘Why not?’ I scooped, scraped, squinted, and slid.

‘Remember last time? The guy and the window?’

After the stock is organized, remove the metal bar, ease down the floor panel, replace the blocks, lay the black sheet metal, put the extra money and composition book in the safe and smooth the carpet seamless. Do this every night after closing. In case of an emergency, look for the cigarette burn directly under the handle of the desk drawer, pull back the carpet and remove the piece of plywood. Up to four toolboxes will fit in that storage pit. Perfect in case anyone unwanted drops in. Lather, rinse, repeat.

‘But you didn’t throw him through it.’

‘Yeah, he was drunk, I pushed him, he fell through it. Either way, I don’t want to go back. They might put something in my drink.’ He rubbed his right thumb with his left, then his left with his right.

‘Let’s go to Laughton’s then. The girl with the nose ring that you dig bartends there.’ I scratched the tattoo on my forearm: a ‘K’ inside a shield, the size of a roll of film, from when I was fifteen. Amazing that it hadn’t disintegrated yet.

The other part of the problem: we were almost giving away pills. Med school kids used to be big business. All of the medical malpractice cases—they shouldn’t have been any surprise. End of term time, those kids would chew Adams like they were M&M’s and wash them down with a double tall latte.

Then they discovered white.

It had become a sepia world. Everything was brown and white.

‘Yeah, she’s cute. Good idea. I’m out, Jet Black is calling my name.’ Christian picked up his canary Ben Sherman jacket, the one that barely reached his waist, and walked towards the front. ‘While I still have a store to head back to, that is.’

‘Call me if you’re chained out.’ I packaged three Duran Duran CDs—two Hungry like the Wolf singles and a Notorious full-length—then leaned back in the chair and watched the TV screen. Mary pushed the hand-sweeper over the carpet, starting by the register. Christian talked to her for a few minutes while she swept before covering himself for the rain. She organized two boxes of records at the end of the display counter, then put the sweeper into the corner and leaned against the front window, looking out at the street.

I wouldn’t have been able to run the place without her. She kept my loose ends knotted.

She propped up all the bikes.

Squared off the vacuum cleaners and weed whackers.

Arranged the DVDs inside the plexiglass case into rows by genre, then from A Bronx Tale to Zulu.

Alphabetized the records at the end of the counter. Sometimes, if she was annoying me, I’d slide The Best of Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin IV in front of Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits.

She boxed the jewelry from left to right. The ones on the left— the high school graduation rings, the sweet-sixteen heart pendants traded for a white night—turned your skin into moss, and the ones on the right—the aborted-wedding and broken-promise rings—turned your finger into a Zircon disco ball.

We were the unassuming alchemists. We’d take a fistful of unwanted sentimentals, spread our fingers, and out dropped a night of being someone important, all in an eyeball-sized bag.

I dropped the bag of white on the desk, snuck up to the window and slid my arms around her waist. She jumped, then smiled and nestled herself into my chest, pulled my arms tighter around her. My stomach squished against her back, fingers nooked in between her bottom ribs. I matched my breathing to hers.

Outside, the sky spat rain onto Broadway. We watched people scuttle towards Broadway Market and its awnings. Wrinkled men held umbrellas for shrunken women. Blondes in business casual grappled a lipstick smudged coffee cup with one hand, the other with yesterday’s Baltimore Sun paper hovering over their coif. Waist-high neighborhood kids ran through the run-off gutter streams. When it storms during the summer in Baltimore, the air is wet cotton. You can feel every molecule of carbon, oxygen and smog.

Raindrops smacked the front window. Part of the neon in our sign had burned out. Instead of STAY GOLD, it read STAY GO_D. I’d just read The Outsiders for the hundredth time as I was opening the store and thought it sounded like a good name for a junk shop.

Ten minutes later, the spit lightened to a mist and I grabbed my James Dean jacket from the back. Mary had bought it for me three years ago, when we went as the posthumous James Dean and Natalie Wood to Brent’s Halloween party.

‘Beef or chicken?’ I asked. She sat on the wooden stool behind the jewelry counter with Love in the Time of Cholera split open.

‘Chicken. I’m supposed to be on a diet.’

‘Mary,’ I frowned. ‘Seriously.’

‘Chicken, please. I’m supposed to be on a diet.’

I shook my head. ‘Whatever you say. I’ll be back in a few, beautiful.’ I kissed the back of her neck, snuck in a bite that made her laugh, then hurried down to the Taco Truck.

*

I was about to open the foil of my chicken taco when a pale piece of a Barcode I recognized shuffled through the door. His scuffed combat boots squished waffle-prints across the carpet. Part of my small intestine knotted with guilt. Every job had its disadvantages. Ours was no different.

He had worked at The Daily Grind last summer and every time I went to get coffee for Mary and me, the Barcode and I would talk about horror movies. He tracked down a Beta copy of The Re-animator for me once, because someone had stolen mine, so I gave him a bag of green to say thanks. The pudge of his cheeks had creased in a smile. Now, the bags under his eyes were as dark as the greasy chin-length hair that cut stark lines against his vampiric teenage face.

He gazed glass-eyed at the DVDs for a minute, first standing a few feet from a guy and his kid in matching Orioles jerseys pointing at Playstation games, then walked to the counter where I was sitting. He mumbled something and slid a stack of records across the counter. The kid bartered with his dad for two games, then just one, then three and he would eat all of his broccoli for a week. I watched them for a moment, then flipped through the Barcode’s vinyl, checking for scratches and albums that would sell— Motörhead, Jawbreaker, a Jane’s Addiction import. He had good taste, and probably still liked most of these bands.

‘Can I trade it for a CD?’ fell from his lips. He saw my taco sitting on the counter and shifted his gaze to his boots. His eyes were as bland and soulless as our eggshell-colored walls. I flipped the album sleeve over in my hands, tapped it on the counter, inhaled, exhaled.

‘Which one?’

‘Depeche Mode,’ barely audible through his hand. He spoke into his fingertips like they might be microphones. Through the slivers of his hair, I saw his eyes peek up, then drop back to the floor as they met mine. He mumbled to himself. I could hear his soles rubbing against the carpet.

I held up five albums. ‘This will get you a single.’ He nodded. I sighed, ‘Give me a minute,’ then walked into the back and took a Master and Servant single from the blue toolbox in the office. Mary reclined in the chair with her feet on the desk, an iced tea next to her fashionable cowboy boots. Printed on the side of the plastic cup was Che Guevera, eating a taco and giving the ‘thumbs up’ sign. She made a sad I’m sorry face, said, ‘It’s not your fault, sweetie. It’s not our problem,’ with a piece of saffron rice stuck to her bottom lip. I asked her to help the guy and his kid, then hid the bag inside an empty CD case. She kissed my cheek as we went through the door.

‘Here you go,’ I said to the Barcode, handing him the CD cover-down, just so another customer wouldn’t realize that Synchronicity wasn’t a Depeche Mode album. ‘There are other CDs, you know.’

He looked at me like he was looking through me.

‘You don’t always have to listen to Depeche Mode,’ glancing up at the Oriole and his kid then adding, ‘or Joy Division. Try something less morose.’ He probably didn’t even know what morose meant.

He nodded, sort of, and turned around. Mary laid two Playstation games and her book next to my hand and rubbed her fingers on the small of my back. The clink of her pewter skull and heart bracelet tied another hangman’s knot in my intestines. Hobbs had bought that bracelet for her; he thought she’d appreciate the juxtaposition of love and death. I rubbed the ring on my necklace to try to calm myself, then rang up the Oriole and over his shoulder, watched the Barcode slink out the front door. Mary took the rubber band from her hair and said she would watch the front for a while.

In the office, I opened the desk drawer looking for some relief, and instead found the periwinkle blue envelope. I pushed it and all of its connotations—idealized but futile marriages, screaming brats, general malaise—to the back of the drawer and grabbed a pill.

One Cameron, chewed, washed down with some of Mary’s iced tea.

*

The brass bells over the front door clanked and I looked up from my Gameboy into the TV screen. A Sallie came in from the jaundiced night, pushing a cotton candy-colored bike half the size of an upright vacuum cleaner. Mary finished reading a paragraph before she lifted her head towards him. His high-tops had been white at one point, around the same time that horror movies were still original and scary, and his cooking-oil stained shirt was a size too big, even for his swollen frame. The flag of El Salvador flapped across his chest.

‘Damon,’ she called to the back. ‘It’s for you.’

The Sallie wheeled the bike to the counter and propped it up on the kickstand. I hit pause on my chess game and set it on the desk, slid the suitcase the Cockroaches had delivered—this afternoon, two days—late into the corner and went to the front. Three moves from checkmate and I stopped playing for this?

‘¿Sí?’ Why bother telling anyone anything?

‘Necesito vender este.’ He looked down at the bike. His skin was ruddy and pocked like a potato.

I fanned my fingers, raised my eyebrows. ‘¿Y?’

‘¿Y qué? Necesito vender este. Quiero comprar un collar del oro.’ The Sallie bobbed from his right foot to his left.

‘You want to buy a gold necklace? ¿De quien bici es ese?’ Thieving bastard. That wasn’t his bike.

He glanced at the bike, at his shoes, at me. ‘Es mio,’ sputtered out.

‘You are going to tell me that you ride a pink bike?’

He thought, then, ‘Sí.’

‘That pink bike?’ pointing at it.

‘Sí.’

‘Ride it around the store.’ Mary looked at me as I started to breathe deeper and bit the inside of my bottom lip.

‘¿Qué?’ the Sallie said.

‘I said, ride it around the store. If it is your bike. ¿Comprende?’

Sallie stood silent. ‘No puedo. My foot hurt.’

‘Look, I’ve told you and all your little friends before.’ I paused. ‘Nothing. From. Kids. Okay?’

Sallie stared at me like he didn’t understand English. His girlfriend was probably American. He looked early 30s, so she was probably 19. His wife was probably late 20s, at home with their kids.

‘Nada de niños,’ raising my voice. The Sallie faltered back a step.

‘¿Por qué?’ he squeaked.

‘¡Miré! You bring in another bike you stole from some fucking kid and you’ll walk out with that rim as un collar.’ I stepped forward. Sallie faltered back, tipping the bike to the side. Mary snickered as he dragged the bike over the floor, trying to get it on its wheels while still watching me.

‘Lo siento. Lo siento.’ He backed into the door, opening it and dragging the bike at the same time.

‘Give that bike back to whoever you took it from and tell your girlfriend she needs to find a man with a job.’ The door slammed, bells clanked. I walked back to the counter and took a cigarette from the pack sitting by Mary’s elbow.

‘You’re so hot when you’re bilingual,’ she said, running her hand over my chest. ‘My little chicano Clint Eastwood.’

‘Silencio, mujer.’ I stifled a smile, lit the cigarette. ‘They can try to sell that shit somewhere else.’

‘Aww, they’re just trying to do something nice for their girlfriend,’ Mary cooed with a wicked smile. When she smiled, when she really smiled, her eyes disappeared as her cheeks swelled. It embarrassed her, but I thought it was painfully cute.

‘I don’t care about their girlfriend.’

She brushed her lips over my cheek, light as a breath. ‘You’re such a romantic.’

‘Hopeless.’ We sat quiet, me holding Mary’s waist, Mary resting her head on my shoulder. The streetlights glinted in the raindrops on the window, a thousand sodium-yellow bugs splattered on our storefront.

‘So how do you like the book?’ looking around for an ashtray.

‘I dig it.’

‘Good, thought you would.’ I knocked some ash into a soda can. ‘I read him in one of my Lit classes a while back.’

‘You did Lit?’

‘Haven’t we talked about this?’

‘I can’t keep them straight. You did a million things anyway, so fuck off.’ Then quieter, as if I wouldn’t notice, ‘Can do a million things.’

‘Lit before film,’ I said. ‘But after painting, I think. And before dropping out.’

‘Of course,’ she said with a pained smile. She leaned forward.

‘If you liked that book, I’ve got a couple other things you might want.’

‘Oh, do you?’ she purred.

‘Yeah, sure. They’re not exactly like Garcia Marquez, but, maybe, Vargas Llosa or Cleven…’ I peered down at her hand. The corners of her mouth curled up like the sides of her rosewood flapper hair.

‘Yes, you do have something I’d like.’ She stood. I tried not to laugh.

‘Have you been reading porn poetry or something?’

‘Something like that.’

She gave me a squeeze then sauntered towards the back of the store with her thumb in the waistband of her midnight jeans and flashed a seashell hip. I locked the store and followed her into the back, closed the door, closed my eyes.