A Good and Useful Hurt (7 page)

Wes Ogden played baseball most nights with his son, but sometimes it was soccer or street hockey, and when he woke he felt like he really had seen Josh.
He looked at the tattoo after one of those nights, the black ink still so foreign on his arm, and the baseball seemed different to him. It was just a crude outline of a baseball, true, but Josh had been gone before he got it poked into his arm.

Would his son grow in his dreams? Almost a horrible thought, but if the older Josh were real, why should that be horrible? It was all real in his mind, like no dream he’d ever experienced, and when Wes woke up one morning with a grass stain on his knee from where he’d fallen playing soccer, he just looked at it and smiled.

There was still pain in Wes, still sadness, and he didn’t expect either of those things to go away—part of him wanted to always be bitter. Still, something like waking with a grass stain on his knee was exactly the kind of thing that would have made the old, pre-tattoo Wes Ogden seek psychiatric help. The new Wes just stared at this other sort of tattoo and smiled. He’d fallen playing with Josh, and as long as this other version of his only son stayed with him, he felt like he could probably keep on living, and maybe, someday, even let the sadness of a dead wife and son become part of living, and not part of dying.

Deb moved into Mike’s small apartment above the studio after they’d been dating for about eight weeks.
She was going to be sharing the rent and bills with him, it would be more convenient for both, and it had been some time since they’d not shared a bed, anyway.

She’d asked to hang the burlesque pictures in the living room above the small television, her sole addition to the already covered walls in the living space. Mike had decorated as he saw fit, and his paintings adorned almost all of the wall space in the apartment. It was an explosion of art and made the walls almost loom in and fade out as the perspectives of the paintings shifted.

While Deb was out in the living room hanging the four pieces, Mike retreated to the kitchen to draw at the table. It had taken Deb better than three hours to get the wall marked to her liking, and Mike had withdrawn to maintain sanity.

“I’m done. You can come back in now.”

Mike went in to see the pictures and found them hung just as he would have hung them, only perhaps a bit slower.

“They look good.”

“Good answer. You want to watch a movie?”

“I’d love to, but I need to get this finished.”

“Alright.”

The piece he was working on was going to be covering a new client’s lower leg. It was to be a tall ship in the moments before a giant squid dragged it down. It wasn’t exactly giving Mike fits, but there were a number of little details the customer wanted incorporated that presented challenges.

The ship was to be of French make, and Mike had photocopies of ancient sketches to copy the number of portholes and masts from. The ropes that hung from the sails needed to be rendered accurately, as did the anchor and everything else that was to be visible. The ship was one thing, the squid another. Where the ship was to be presented with precise historical realism, the squid was to be an amalgamation of a real squid and some sort of steam-punk revisionist beastie.

Mike had drawn the squid in quick thumbnail sketches but had been unhappy with all of them. Now, with his tattered copy of
Watchmen
held open with a stone next to him, he felt he had a reference he could work with.

The version in Alan Moore’s graphic novel wasn’t perfect, either—it too was more squid than he needed—but it did start to bridge the gap of fantasy and reality. Mike had earlier tried to use some old wood cuttings and sea monster sketches off of maps, but the creatures weren’t nearly squid enough. With the new reference next to him, he began to draw. Thin, weak lines at first, which thickened as certainty came to him, bold lines that foretold the form that was now on the paper.

The squid took shape under wispy apertures, uncertainty birthing something that could never exist. A squid with thicker than normal arms, enormous bright green suckers covering them. The monster’s parrot-like beak looked large enough to devour one of the sailors in a single bite. The squid’s head itself was huge, the point of it sharper than an actual animal’s. The water under the ship Mike imagined, and subsequently drew, as murky, mottled with blood and broken lifeboats. The last detail, for him the one that settled the matter of the squid, was a legion of its progeny in the water and on the boat, attacking and devouring the sailors.

When he was ready to combine the sketch of the squid with that of the boat, he took a break. Hunger pangs roiled his stomach, and he called to the living room.

“You hungry?”

“I think so.”

“We’ve got leftover Thai.”

“Nuke it up.”

Mike took one last look at the squid and smiled.
Not too bad.

Before Deb, Mike had never eaten Thai food. He’d never eaten Indian food, or Japanese, or Ethiopian, either. His diet had consisted mainly of sandwiches, hamburgers, and on an ethnic day, Chinese food from the awful buffet a few doors from the shop. Had Mike been told that a myriad of other, better cuisine surrounded him like a wall he would have laughed in disbelief.

Sushi had been first. He’d refused and Deb had said please, and he’d followed her in. They sat at the counter where a Japanese woman gave them towels and a sushi chef waited for their order. Mike had been trying to figure out the menu when Deb said something to the man in Japanese. He’d nodded and shouted a curt response before setting to work. Troubled, Mike asked, “What just happened?”

“I told him what we wanted.”

“How could you know what I want to eat when I don’t even know yet?”

Two steaming cups of sake appeared before them along with a carafe of the drink. Deb gently lifted her cup and took a sip. “Yum. Try it, it’s good. I told him to make us what he would eat if he were a customer here. It’s a compliment to the chef, and it will guarantee we’ll get good stuff.”

A plate with a sushi roll chopped into eight pieces appeared before him. Mike was trying to figure out his chopsticks, so he didn’t see Deb slide it in front of him. He poked one of the sticks at it. “What’s in there?”

The rolls were dusted in some sort of breading and a small lump of what looked like green play-dough sat next to a little tub of soy sauce on the plate. The woman who’d seated them returned with a pair of small bowls that were filled with lemon water. Mike watched Deb wash her hands and did the same.

“Don’t worry about the chopsticks. Just pick them up and eat.”

Deb placed a small piece of the wasabi on a roll, dunked it briefly in the soy sauce, and popped it in her mouth. Mike took a deep breath, mimicked the motion, and ate.

The green stuff, wasabi, was strong, a deep horseradish that was both spicy and not. The fish—he assumed it was fish—wasn’t tough, but it did have a thickness to it that reminded him of well-prepared rare beef. There was a small taste of avocado, but mostly the flavor was of the presumed fish, fish that tasted nothing like fish at all.

“Do you like it?”

“I think so. What kind of fish is it?”

“Tuna. It’s got a little avocado in it, too.”

Mike ate another roll after sipping at the sake. “It’s good. I can’t believe it. Sushi is good.”

“Well, it can’t be as popular as it’s been for so long just because it’s weird.”

“I suppose not. Is the drink sake?”

“Yes.”

“I definitely like that.”

He refilled his small cup as another plate was passed to them, this with two shrimp, butterflied and laid atop small, ice-cube-sized bricks of rice. Deb nodded at Mike and picked up a shrimp, slid it into her mouth, and tore off the tail as it got to her teeth. Mike mimicked her, chewed, swallowed, and said, “Was that raw shrimp?”

“It’s called sweet shrimp, and yes.”

“I already said it, but I can’t believe I’m enjoying this stuff. That was even better than the tuna.”

The next was a pair of salmon chunks, served nigiri style like the shrimp.

“That was good, but not as good as the first two.”

“You better be careful with the sake. I didn’t bring a wheel-barrow.”

“I can’t help it, it’s good.”

The next three courses were octopus served nigiri style, eel in a roll that was covered in a dark sauce, and then a spicy roll filled with deep-fried soft-shell crab. Mike ate like a man possessed, and Deb didn’t do too bad either.

The other restaurants followed in swift succession. Aware now that he had been missing out for years, the next two weeks were a gastrointestinal grand tour of the best ethnic cuisine the city had to offer. The only menu that Mike balked at was Ethiopian. Some of it was good, but with most of it all he could taste was the spongy injara bread. The Thai he’d liked almost as much as sushi, and his favorite dish that he’d had so far was just a simple red curry, coconut milk with spices and shrimp. On the night of the squid, that was precisely what he was reheating.

Deb admired the new version of the squid drawing.

“I like it.”

“You don’t think I went overboard? He said he wanted the squid weird.”

“I think it’s fine. That thing is mean looking.”

“I know, it’s awesome. I’m actually kind of excited to do it in a couple days. Hopefully he’ll dig it too.”

“It’s unusual for you to get excited to go to work?”

“Everything just seems the same there. Like we’re just little pawns doomed to do the same things over and over again.”

“No way, not me. I love work. I like the little excitements, like when you wonder what you’re going to do if the customer really doesn’t stop bleeding. On the outside you’re telling them everything will be fine, but on the inside you’re just outside of panicking. Doesn’t happen too often, but holy crap, what a rush when it does.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just can’t imagine not being terrified if someone in my chair wouldn’t stop bleeding. Did you and Becky get any new clues as to what in the hell is going on with Lamar?”

“That well is dry, I told you that. You’re his friend, and you need to get it out of him.”

“That doesn’t seem very friendly.”

“Are you done working? I want to get to bed.”

Mike gave the sketch one more look and set down his pencil. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

The girl had blonde hair, perky tits, a taut ass, and a tattoo on her wrist.
The tattoo was how he’d first spotted her, weeks before. He’d seen a pretty girl with a bandage on her wrist talking on a cell phone in front of a tattoo shop. And then, maddeningly, he’d lost her.

But now he’d found her again. And no matter what, it was time. He wouldn’t lose her again.

Phil watched her while he pretended to read a book in front of Starbucks. He wanted to mount, fuck, and kill her right here, in front of Starbucks, in front of everyone, but of course he knew that was impossible. Instead, he acted bored and blended in, a sheep, just like all the rest of them, but also a wolf.

The girl across the patio drank the still steaming cup of coffee in just a couple of short gulps, checked the time on a cell phone, and walked to a bike lassoed with chain to a telephone pole. Phil, acting as bored as possible, checked his watch absentmindedly and dog-eared a page in the book. He walked to his truck, an eight-year-old Ford, the kind of vehicle that in Michigan was more than invisible. The girl rode off, headed north, and now it was time to take a risk.

If he followed her immediately, someone was going to remember the tall guy from the coffee shop who drove off like a creep after the bitch with the nice tits left. On the other hand, if Phil got too cute, she’d be gone. He fired up the truck, and when he reached the first intersection, where she had gone straight, he took a left.

Phil had played this game before, but never knowing so little about a victim. He always did research. The last bad death had enlivened him, though; he wanted this bitch, and he didn’t care about the risk. He took a right immediately following the left, spun another right at the next intersection, and then a left at the light back to the main drag. Phil craned his neck, looking for her. Unless she lived right over here or had gone in one of the other shops, she was going to be his. She appeared out of nowhere in front of a van, less than ten car lengths ahead of him. He let the truck keep pace with her, the wheel humming in his hands, nervous energy making his feet bounce off of the gas, brake, and clutch. He felt good for the first time in a long time, stalking this cunt like a hunter on safari. He was going to make up for last time, and any other time that hadn’t been perfect.

She biked for about five miles, never noticing the silver pickup truck behind her, the anonymity of the vehicle helped by Phil’s willingness to slow down or speed up at random intervals, as well as to allow other vehicles to pass in front of him. When she finally held her arm out and turned left into a neighborhood full of old houses turned to apartments, Phil knew the hunt was almost over.

The girl stopped the bicycle after two more right turns and about another mile of riding. Phil watched her chain the bike to a rack in front of the house—the slot she chose had a number 4 sign over it. He drove around the block, shut off the truck, and grabbed his tool kit from behind the passenger seat.

The kit had a baseball cap—Go Tigers—a pair of benign aviator sunglasses, a bandanna, and a short length of hemp rope with a four-inch-long piece of half-inch-thick dowel rod on either side. He put on the hat and glasses, stuffed the bandanna and homemade garrote in his back pocket, and left the truck.

The walk to the house was calming in a bizarre way. Normally even for someone as used to this as Phil, such a walk would be harrowing, especially in daylight, and most especially to a house where he knew nothing of the interior layout or occupants, save for one. This was different, though. The failure in the last taking had invigorated him to the sport itself and not just the endgame. Truth told, he couldn’t wait to take his measure against the house and its mysteries. He knew with no doubt that he would walk in and accomplish the task at hand, but leaving remained an open question. Could he control her, and the situation? Phil found not caring about success, and just about the conquest, beyond invigorating.

He gave a quick look around and opened the front door. There was no one in sight, and no sounds of occupancy. According to the mailboxes, the building was divided into four apartments, so Phil ignored the bottom floor and went up a bent staircase that was divided by a landing. The house was well kept, dark wood for both the stairs and floors, all maintained even since the days when only a single family would have lived here, and not a pack of borderline-transient college students.

Phil passed a door with a 3 on it and crossed the hall to the wooden door bearing a brass 4. He knocked twice, and when the door started to open, he slammed his considerable weight into it as hard as he was able. As the door flew open, he fell upon her, his right hand cupping her mouth and pinching closed her nostrils, his left controlling her flailing body. With an easy kick, Phil closed the door behind them and set to work. It turned out much better than the last one.