Vanity Kills, page 7
Iris puts her contouring brush down and hugs the near-stranger tightly. Angie squeezes her eyes, blinking tears into Iris’s blonde hair and then wiping them away apologetically as she retreats. She sniffles. “I’m sorry.”
“No! Don’t be.”
“So,” she sniffles hard again and turns back to the mirror, brushing eyeshadow onto her reddened eyes, “the doctors gave me an emergency C-section and we had her cremated. I healed up. Thought everything was hunky-dory, and then after we had some therapy and time to process and grieve, Mack and I started trying to get pregnant again. So we are fucking and fucking and just going at it like goddamned rabbits. Nothing. Nada. So we go to the doctor and he runs some tests. Comes back a little while later and says that I am, quote, ‘unlikely to bear children ever again.’”
“Oh no!”
“Mack couldn’t handle it. Said he always wanted a family and that me being barren was a fucking deal-breaker.” She shakes her head and presses her palm to her forehead, hard enough to leave a white pressure streak when she pulls it away. “We were married, for God’s sake,” she scoffs. “It wasn’t in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, but only if you can calve out children, you know?”
“He didn’t want to adopt?”
“He didn’t want to adopt. He didn’t want to surrogate. He didn’t want to keep trying. He filed the divorce papers and conveniently, two weeks later, moved in with some little young thing that works at the gym where he trains. Bitch has wide hips and an underbite. Hideous little thing. But he probably doesn’t care. Just wants a goddamned incubator.”
“I swear, I will never understand men.”
“No shit. Same. Serves me right. He was trash anyway. I met him at a trashy little bar. He bought me some Cuervo. We had a WILD, long night back at his place. Girl,” she holds a hand out for emphasis, “I can fuuuuuuuck on some tequila. You get a little ‘a that gold in me and I turn into an animal.”
Mick rolls up outside of the bathroom in the empty corridor. He’s not there with the intention of eavesdropping. Instead, he’s a man on a mission, sitting patiently in the darkened hall waiting for the women to vacate.
Angie leans in to pencil in her thin eyebrows so they’re bolder, more striking. “I see you talking to that Jack guy a lot.”
“Yeah, he’s nice.”
“Someone’s gotta say it so it might as well be me, but you could do so much better than some Freddy Kreuger-lookin’ dude. ‘Specially with that body.”
“Nah, it’s not like that,” she lies. She has no intention of involving an unfamiliar person in her private business. “We’re just hanging out. Passing the time in this place. He’s... interesting. Little bit mysterious.”
“How’d he get all,” Angie motions to her face, “extra crispy like that?”
The crass joke makes Iris want to storm out but she plays it cool. In the hall, the comment makes Mick grind his molars.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, if you just wanna get laid, that man’d be easy pickin’s.” She sighs loudly, the sound rife with frustration. She leans her face toward the glass to swipe on a thick coating of mascara. “I’m climbin’ the walls, too. Been a dry spell since Mack. It’s been months.”
“I think Mick has a bit of a crush on you.”
Mick listens closer, nearly pressing his ear to the crack in the door.
“The wheelchair dude?” Her tone is incredulous but after a pause, she shrugs. “Yeah, he’s cute. Too bad he’s crippled as fuck. If not, he’d be fire. Always had a thing for Cajun boys. I don’t even know how that would work. Like, physically.” She smacks her lips together, dumps her makeup back in her bag, and starts to exit.
Mick shoots backwards down the hall, rolling quickly, so as not to get caught.
“What do you think?” She shows off her face from every angle.
“I think you look beautiful.” She smiles.
“You look cute, too. I’d do you. Hell, I’m getting horny enough–”
Iris holds a hand up to halt Angie. “Flattered. But, unfortunately, I’m straight.”
Angie winks, flashing a glimpse of the earthy, brown tones on her lid. “So is spaghetti ‘til it's wet, girl.”
She elbows Iris and leaves, her humored chuckle trailing close behind. Iris catches a glimpse of herself in the countertop mirror, magnified. Flaws and all. She touches the bandage over her scar, almost as if she can feel the words burning through the gauze and tape. Her smile dwindles and she packs up the little makeup she has and leaves the bathroom, too.
Mick rolls out slowly from the darkened bedroom door frame at the end of the hall. As the girls turn the corner into the main living space, both totally oblivious to his presence, he rolls into the bathroom and searches all the cabinets and drawers within his limited reach until he finds what he was lurking around for:
Bingo.
Two stray bobby pins.
23
Mick’s voice is full of life as he loudly exclaims, “ Eddie! My man!”
Eddie pops his bony body off the dated, cushy couch and holds his arm way out for a hard, stinging low-five. “There you are. Been wanderin’ ‘round like an idiot askin’ all these fools where I can find some ugly, handicapped numb-nuts ‘round here.” Eddie’s southern twang is just as thick as Mick’s. “The description musta worked cuz they all pointed me ta’ you.”
Mick wheels quickly up to Eddie and they slap hands with a resounding thwack.
“So... this is the place, huh? Swanky!”
“Bruh... You should see what dey’s payin’ us to sit on our ass all day.”
“What’s new about that? You sit on your ass all day.”
Mick flips Eddie off and smiles. “But I don’ get paid to do it.”
“Got you a little present.” Eddie suddenly springs to life, pulls a fat joint out of his pocket. Mick takes it with a smile.
“Oh, you beautiful soul.” He places it between his lips to free up his hands and speaks around it, swinging his head to instruct Eddie to follow. “C’mon. I need your help wit’ somethin’.”
As always, Eddie follows blindly with a cheerful expression splattered across his sinewy, pale face.
Eddie is peeking through a cracked door, eyeing the hallway. He whispers. “Would you hurry up? You know I hate bein’ lookout!” He scoffs angrily. “Hated this shit when we was kids. Hate it more now. Why I always gotta be lookout, huh?”
“Its hard to lean in the chair, bitch. Stop whining. Jus’ chill.” Mick has a stripped bobby pin jammed inside the lock on the medicinal safe and he’s fumbling with a second. “I got this. Jack locks himself outta his apartment at least once a week. You think that motherfucker’s got locksmith money? No. He comes to ol’ Mick on bended knee.”
“‘Dis kinda shit makes me fuckin’ itchy.”
“Stop being a drama queen. You on the rag? Starting to sound like a little bitch.” He jiggles both pins, rattling the safe audibly. “I almost....”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie is not amused.
“Oh!” Mick whips out one of the pins and points it at Eddie, punctuating what he’s saying by jabbing it at him. “’Fore I forget, I need you to get me a bottle of tequila.”
“Ew, shit’s nasty. Since when do you drink that swill? You’ a die-hard bourbon fan, bruh.”
Eddie picks the drippings off a melted candle near the door, no longer looking through the crack.
“It’s not for me.”
“Oh. Top shelf?”
“Fuck no!” Mick’s insulted. Eddie knows his painfully-cheap self better than that. “Bottom shelf. Like, so bottom it's on the floor. We’re talkin’ large quantity, in-the-plastic-bottle-cheap. Put it on my tab.”
“Everything’s always on your tab. When you gon’ pay that tab, son?”
The lock clicks. The small desk-safe creaks open.
“Jackpot!” Mick grins from ear-to-ear.
Eddie peers over his shoulder at the metal container’s contents.
Mick plucks out bottles of labeled pills. He holds up a bottle of painkillers, tosses them to Eddie. It's loud, like a maraca.
“Shhh! Keep it down. You wanna get caught?”
Mick scoffs, his voice casual as he does a hushed, verbal inventory. “We got pain killers. Looks like… vikes. What do those go for?”
“Vicodin’s about five bucks a pop. Oxys, on the other hand, I can move that hillbilly heroin for $15 a pill.
“What about these? They’re muscle relaxers.”
“Shit, these only go for, like, $3.”
Mick hands him a handful of muscle relaxers anyway. Eddie looks confused. “Three dollars is three dollars, innit? Can you move ’em?”
Eddie rolls his eyes, sullen. “Of course.”
“Maybe I can get more. Maybe I could fake somethin’ and see if Kevorkian can write me a script.”
“See if you can get any Addys or Rids. I got one rich-bitch uptown, Kelly. She’ll buy five damn bottles of Ritalin in one shot. This cunt needs uppers like I need a hole in the head, but her cash spends the same as everyone else’s. Plus, ain’t hard to fake ADHD.” Eddie reaches in and grabs one of the trial bottles. “The hell’s a placebo?”
“Dafuq they teach you in school, dummy? You ain’t neva’ heard’a no placebo before? Dey sugar pills.”
Eddie stares at him, hard, trying to understand.
Mick rolls his neck, frustrated. “One patient is getting the fuckin’ sugar pills. Everyone else is getting the real drug.”
Eddie’s thin face turns sour. “That’s bullshit.”
“Why’s that bullshit?”
“That means one of you’s here wastin’ time!”
“Yeah, and getting paid for the privilege!”
“But if that shit really works, that means someone just got all cut up for no reason.” He points to Mick’s bandaged knees below the line of his shorts.
His legs are frail and pale, atrophied from a lack of use. He squints, still trying to follow the logic.
“That means they get all new scars and they get to watch everyone else heal in front of ’em. That’s kinda fucked up. I mean, what if it’s you?”
Mick wants to object but realizes Eddie has a point.
“Fuck.”
“Or what if it’s Jack? You know that motherfucker never gon’ get laid looking like a deep-fried chicken nugget.”
“Well, when you put it like that… yeah, it sounds kinda shitty. But what ’da fuck am I supposed to do about it, Ed?
“We’re standing here, ain’t we? Unsupervised.” Eddie rubs his hands together playfully. “How about a little prescription roulette? We mix all the pills up. Divvy ‘em back into the bottles. Then all y’all got the same random chance at gettin’ the real ones.”
“Sometimes, Eddie,” Mick shakes his head, beard brushing against his death metal t-shirt with a squirrelly age-cracked logo almost no one can read. “I can’t tell if you’re a genius or a moron.”
Eddie stares at him innocently.
“But I see your point. Fuck it.” Mick shrugs and grabs both bottles.
Eddie holds out the bottom of his t-shirt and looks around. Mick dumps the contents of both bottles onto the belly of his shirt, swirls them against the American flag, and starts shoving the mixed lot back into bottles.
He drops one. It goes bouncing across the floor. After a second of half-assed looking, they divert their focus back to the bottles. Mick doesn’t care to hunt the stray down.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
Footsteps down the hall.
“Shit!” Mick whispers.
The men are in a full scramble now, jittery and shaking. Eddie replaces the caps and shoves the bottles back into the vault.
As Mick closes up the safe, jostling the door to make sure the locking mechanism closes, Eddie whispers proudly…
“We’ done a good thing.”
24
DAY THREE OF TRIAL
Patient Journal Entry provided by the St. James Parish Police Department.
Evidence Item #SJPD-11288C
Criminal Case #: 7-23-mu-187462-OB
Translated to digital transcript by Mary J. Stearns
Subject Name: Fisher REDACTED
Date: 6/30/REDACTED
Written Journal Entry: This place is boring af. Can we please get some video games or magazines? Or what about some more gym equipment beyond the exercise bike? I’m already turning into veal in here.
Had a headache for a bit this morning but then I drank some coffee and it went away. Think it was just from a lack of caffeine.
Time Symptom Started: Morning
Time Symptom Cleared: About 20 minutes after I drank some (terrible) coffee. (Can we get some better coffee, btw? This store-brand stuff tastes like dirty dishwater.)
Location on Body: Head (duh)
Severity: Mildly annoying. Like this journal.
25
Alan sits in a plastic chaise lounge chair on the unkempt edge of the boggy Blind River. A turtle suns on a floating log in the water nearby, staring at him with a frowning, cranky face, much like his own. He closes his eyes beneath his dark sunglasses, feeling the heat of the day caress his face like a mobster’s blowtorch. He tries to remember why he’s doing the trial at all.
After all, he likes his scars.
It’s others who don’t. It’s always been others.
He recalls vividly the judgemental stares he’d get during job interviews for shitty food service jobs viewing him as a poor investment of time. Or the students in his high-school A&P class glancing from the flayed body in the morgue on the field trip, back to his forearms, no doubt noting similarities between his pale, carved flesh and the cadaver’s. He remembers shaking his ex’s father’s hand the first time Alan met him and watching the old man’s eyes lock onto his wormy traces of agony, deciding then-and-there that he wasn’t good enough for his baby girl.
It didn’t matter though. Fuck ‘em. That relationship didn’t last long. None ever seemed to span more than a couple of months. Either Alan would get bored or the woman would get sick of his ever-present scowl.
Afterward, he’d always be right back where he started, feeling the cold rush of excitement as he dismantled his handle from the razor’s blades and buzzing at the excuse to ease the numbness with bloodshed.
The turtle dives into the murky swamp, alarmed by the presence of another. Alan hears the rustle of the tall grass behind him, and the squeak of folding lawn chairs, accompanied by the low rumble of conversation approaching.
He turns to look, grimace prepped-and-ready to greet the newcomers, and his eyes lock on the duo trudging over. Angie waves and the colorful towels draped over her arms flutter in the breeze-less air. But he can only see Chase behind her, making reluctant eye-contact with Alan as he approaches.
“Hope you don’t mind some company. It’s such a nice day we thought we’d get a little sun on the dock,” Angie says, but doesn’t actually care about the response. It doesn’t matter anyway. Alan’s eyes hold fast to Chase’s toned, brown form. Sweat is already forming on his pecs and starting to race down his rippled abdomen like a seductive finger, stopping at the line of his blue swim trunks that rest just below the clean patch of gauze taped over his appendix incision.
Alan returns his gaze to the floating stump and Chase breezes past with a folding chair, setting it on the dock and motioning for Angie to sit.
Alan tries his best to keep from glancing at Chase, who sits on the edge of the dock on a folded towel with his feet in the water, staring out at the small schools of fish below. He’s right in Alan’s field of vision, pulling his attention every few seconds. His darting eyes flit behind the dark shield of his glasses until, finally, he sighs deeply and trudges back toward the patient house in an angry huff.
“What the hell is that dude’s problem?” Angie asks, watching Alan make his way back across the grass.
But Chase just watches him leave with a quiet grace.
26
Mick finishes doodling something on a piece of paper with a permanent marker he found in the kitchen. The crude drawing depicts a man in a wheelchair, wearing a t-shirt with a Nine-Inch Nails logo on it, playing cards with another male stick figure sitting on the bed nearby. He smiles, thinking about how comical it is going to be when Walsh looks at his video feed to see the drawing taped in front of the overhead camera in his room.
But for now, it goes on the wall. He scotch tapes it with pride, right to the satin finish of the new latex paint-job on the walls, among the others depicting the wheelchair man in various, humorous situations, ready to swap out at a moments notice, offering him both privacy and the simple satisfaction of an innocent prank.
Wheeling himself back, he eyes all of his creations, born out of the hours of boredom, taped to the lower half of the walls as high as he can reach from the chair like an art gallery for little people. The top half of the room is bare, a gentle, frustrating reminder that although he was once 6-foot-four, now he can’t tape something up over five feet high.
He caps the marker and lobs it onto his desk. It rolls off onto the floor and he sighs, knowing he can make Ed fish it out for him later at some point.
He rolls toward his bed, eyeing the handle of the revolver sticking out of the open side flap. He smiles, lifting it carefully to double check that the safety is still on after having been jostled in his bag. His old, trusty .38. Don’t leave home without it, he thinks with a snicker. He holds it toward the window, arms extended, and watches a large bird fly through the treetops outside through the sights.
“Pow.” He makes the sound quietly with his lips, as if whispering to the bird like Clint Eastwood, eyes squinted. He spins it on his gloved finger and pretends to holster it in the void next to his wheel.
27
DAY SEVEN OF THE TRIAL
Patient Journal Entry provided by the St. James Parish Police Department.
Evidence Item #SJPD-11288C
