Aftertaste Read online

Galavance’s forcing her smile so hard that her cheeks hurt. “Yeah, totally. It’s going to be, like, awesome and a half.”

  Zilch kicks his legs and thrashes and finally rolls onto all fours, back arched, every hair on his body bristling. He had just had the strangest dreams of his life. He looks down at his arm—it’s lumpy but has healed significantly overnight and is usable again. His back aches and he can feel the dull buzzing of his nanobugs as they labor away at his mangled spinal cord. The sun cuts in through the open doorway, and he can hear the muffled sound of a radio going somewhere. No, not the radio, but a demonic cacophony of construction noise: the psht-tak of pneumatic nail-guns provide the percussion, while wailing belt sanders and circular saws duet on top of them.

  Brushing the mud from his cheek, he remembers Susanne. He feels drugged, almost hung over, and the flicker of seeing her, now very much gone, makes him draw the employee delivery module from his pocket. With a snap of the wrist the eight-inch needle telescopes out. He flicks the switch on the side, to ABORT, turns it around in both hands and prepares to stake it through his own heart.

  But he hesitates, knowing that to leave now, before the job is done, will mean another dead spot in his mind. The memories of his life with her—the moments he still has left—are already fragmented and incomplete, more like a reverse follow-the-dots drawing—he had a clear picture once, but now it’s just a vague outline. Entire weeks where they may or may not’ve been on vacation, or shared a shift at the catering company together, or taken a road trip somewhere over a long summer weekend. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s lost, just that there are important pieces missing; he can feel the raw edges of the beginning and end of certain memories, but with nothing in between, nothing to flesh them out and make them real.

  To abort now would mean another chunk gone.

  He collapses the needle and puts the module back in his pocket, for now.

  With the morning light blooming, he can see the inside of the house a lot better now. Dried muddy footprints on the floor, the pipe he tried to defend himself with now bent into a seven. The door connecting the house to the garage hangs open. The car that had been there the night before is gone. The goddamn thing can drive?

  Ducking under the plastic sheet draped across the front door, Zilch steps out onto the front porch. The water is higher today, lapping up against the steps. He goes to the front of the house, crouching to study the tire marks in the driveway.

  The pneumatic slap of the nail gun stops. The saw’s scream snuffs. A mob of alarmingly yellow hard hats, pit-stained T-shirts, and holey jeans, are staring at him from the half-finished one-story across the street. One—to call him a big fella would be an understatement—steps out of a pickup truck, the same one the creature had stolen the radio from the night before.

  “You lost?” he calls.

  Zilch can’t think to say anything. He stands up from the skidmarks in the driveway. “I’m a realtor or something. I mean, I definitely am a realtor.”

  “Bullshit.” The big guy and his group of lackeys set their tools aside and march across the street in muddy work boots. The big guy, clearly the leader, has a giant gleaming rodeo buckle that catches the sun, flashing Zilch’s eyes.

  “Whoa, guys,” Zilch says. “Wait a minute. What’s this all about?” He throws his hands out in surrender at the approaching mob, but none heeds his plea. They circle him.

  “Someone broke into my fuckin’ truck last night,” the big beefy guy says. “And since you’re the only piece of shit around here I don’t recognize, that means you jump to the top of the suspect list.”

  “Hey now, I was just here, sleeping off a bender. Dark side of realty. Saw no one was around, saw no locks on the doors, figured you guys wouldn’t mind.”

  “That right?” Beefy says, half-grinning. He points at the ground next to Zilch’s waterlogged loafers. Zilch looks. There lies a thin copper wires that looks a hell of a lot like it may’ve been keeping Beefy’s truck radio operational.

  “Wanna explain that, hoss?”

  “As a matter of fact, no, I don’t care to explain that, thank you very much,” Zilch says.

  Six sets of work-gloved hands grab him.

  The construction guys haul him like ants carrying a slice of bread, and by Beefy’s instruction they drop him on the hood of the now-radioless truck. A couple guys hold him in place while Beefy and another two go to the back and dig through the truck bed toolbox squeezed in next to the pump. Zilch hears the words “bungee cords” uttered.

  Might as well go for broke. “Look, fellas. Do any of you know anything about the Lizard Man?”

  One goateed guy chortles. “That’s South Carolina, bo.”

  “Ever hear of migration? I suppose not since evolution, clearly, skipped right past you guys. Okay, I’ll let you fellas in on a little secret, hear me out. That’s why I’m here. I’m after the Lizard Man. He’s the one who did that to your buddy’s truck.”

  “Yaw, ’kay, hoss. Tell it to yer buddy.”

  “What?”

  “That dumb sum’bitch who tried to make us believe that’s what fugged up mah car last week. Lizard Man. Gimme a break.”

  “Hold on, what did you say? Who saw it? Who’s my buddy?”

  The ropey-armed guy with the farmer’s tan continued. “Your buddy that says he had a video and he’d seent the Lizard Man, but when ’e went to show it to the po-leece—and me—wouldn’t ya know it, the video was gone. Someone musta hacked ’im and e-razed it off his phone, so he says.”

  “You keep saying my buddy,” Zilch says. “Who’s my buddy?”

  Goatee harrumphs. “Chev Bertrand. Figgered you were buddies, what with you sleepin’ it off in dat shit-shack he and his fat-ass friend beat us out on the gig for.” Goatee bobs his head toward the house marked 1330. “Then all they do is play them damn video games and smoke weed all day up in there, making the property value of every other house on the street go down ’fore any of ’em after even finished!”

  Zilch recalls what Galavance told him about her boyfriend. He cranes his head around to look over at 1330 Whispering Pines Lane. Jolby was building a house, isn’t that what she said?

  From the back of the truck, Beefy barks, “Why the fuck you talkin’ to him so damn much? Ain’t no point in it, Suity-Pants here’s ’bout to be scared so shitless he won’t even remember his own damn name.” Beefy guffaws, stepping back into view with a tangled mass of bungee cords, all in colors of coral snakes wearing a big chaw-stained smile on his bulldog face.

  His lackeys all chuckle as if they’d been paid to. But Zilch can tell by their semi-worried glances that none of them besides Beefy really wants this, but Zilch has seen it before: cruelty is most effective when it comes in mobs.

  As Beefy arranges the cords so that all of the hook ends are coming out of the top of his meat-slab fists, he asks Zilch, “You ever play Hood Ornament, pretty boy?”

  “No, but I bet I can guess how it goes.”

  “It’s real fun,” Beefy says and gives the bungee cords a twang pulling them tight. “Hold him.”

  Zilch lays his head back on the truck hood and allows them do what they will, Beefy’s barbwire bicep and big-ass belt buckle crew securing him to the pump truck’s hood. The bungee cords snap tight around Zilch’s wrists and ankles and it stings. Numbness settles in fast, blood being cut off as the cords are double and triple wrapped. He tries talking to the things inside him, his own microscopic construction crew: focus on the damage, not the pain receptors. Please. Sometimes this works, if his buggie-count is low and they’ve had to choose priorities.

  Once he’s belted across the waist, Beefy and his boys snicker and giggle at their handiwork, stepping back to admire Zilch mummified on the hood. Zilch was young and dumb(er) once. He remembers. Sure, this would seem like quite the knee-slapper if the person they were doing it to wasn’t him.

  Someone gets in the truck and Zilch cocks his head back, seeing Beef upside-down behind the wheel, still snickering, car
efully taking a pinch of snuff out of a tin. He crams it in and meets Zilch’s eyes and says through the windshield: “Hold on tight.”

  And half of Beefy’s head expands, like a puffed mass of pink bubblegum, then deflates back to normal. Some of that bufotoxin still in here, Zilch determines, rushing around his bloodstream again with his speeding heart rate.

  Under Zilch’s back, the pump truck’s engine shakes him, makes all of the world before his eyes vibrate. He takes a deep breath and tells himself not to be scared but the drugs are putting cryptic and fatalistic ornaments all over for him: skulls and crossbones burn into focus in the very air like mystical glyphs, like his own burning bushes foretelling bad shit en route. An anaconda swirling through the air, cruising like a tape worm touring a gut, comes over the heads of the hard hat crew and says to Zilch, peaceful-like: “Better listen to the man.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hold on.”

  The truck drops into gear and kicks some dirt, finding traction. The wind fills Zilch’s ears and the snake is scattered away, nearly colliding with Zilch on the hood. The hard hat guys all let out semi-scared laughs, but the one laughing loudest and most genuine of all is Beefy. He’s honking the horn—which is really fucking loud when you’re bungee corded to the hood—and swerving left and right, left and right. Zilch pries his fingers into the gap where the quarter-panel and the hood meet, and tries to not give Beefy the benefit of hearing him scream.

  He isn’t successful.

  Eventually the kitchen crew begins to arrive and Galavance is happy for it, even if it is some of the gossip-slinging high school chicks. At least now there’s someone else here with me and Patty, she thinks. It was getting awkward enough there for a while, you could cut the weirdo vibes with a plastic knife.

  Patty has the recipe card out for the stuffed peppers, and on a hotel pan sit eight of the halved vegetables. They try a bunch of combinations, from couscous and chopped garlic with a sprinkling of parmesan and a drizzle of extra-virgin, to a more Mediterranean-inspired mix of Kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese. But the sausage from Patty’s cooler always has to go in, which immediately ruins every combination they come up. Nonetheless Galavance is still starting to have genuine fun with this; it’s bringing back the mix-and-match cookies she used to make with her mother. A bit of this and a bit of that, just picking things at random her mother would set out for her. Sprinkles, raisins, walnuts, chocolate chips, and caramel? Why not!

  “This is fine for today,” Patty says as Galavance returns from the dry storage with a few more things for the next adventurous batch, “but I don’t think the bigwigs will sign off on adding artichokes and olives onto the order lists. Those things are expensive.”

  Galavance sets the jars and plastic bags of ingredients down and in earnest asks, “What do you think we should do? I mean … I don’t think we gotta change anything, but not everybody might not feel that way.” The lie bitters the back of her throat.

  “I think we need to look at this recipe—the one the Inspiration Team originally came up with—take it apart, and see where it doesn’t work. Let’s ask ourselves: what makes these things taste like fishy ka-ka?”

  “Ka-ka,” Galavance echoes thoughtfully, thumbing her chin. Again, she’s back in the kitchen with her mother, but this time she remembers that the sprinkle-smothered raisin walnut chocolate caramel cookies were like taste bud overload, something that only sounded good on paper. “What about the sausage? I think that’s what’s tripping us up. Does that have to go in?”

  “The sausage has to stay,” Patty says. “The ongoing order with the distributor is already signed by corporate, we can’t back out. They’ll be sending all sixty-two Frenchy’s locations this sausage for the next three years. It has to stay.”

  “But I think that might be the problem,” Galavance tries to delicately point out.

  Patty’s finger squeaks down the laminated recipe card to the handful of spices and herbs. She either doesn’t hear Galavance, or chooses not to. Corporate has nailed the sausage to a tree. And Patty, Frenchy’s most fervent follower, would follow that gospel until told otherwise.

  Galavance wonders if upon promotion to corporate they ask you to deposit your soul in a box or if it’s just forcibly yanked free without warning.

  “Well, back to the drawing board,” Patty says. “Any other ideas?”

  To Galavance this sounds more like: Well, girl, you best pull something outta yer ass right-quick or you can take it on the arches. Under her work-issue polo, a line of sweat creeps down Galavance’s side.

  “Had enough, asshole?” Beefy bellows over the engine noise, bringing the truck to a crawl.

  Zilch says nothing, because this is the third time he’s asked if he’s had enough. Every time, Zilch says yes, and Beefy suggests “One more again!” and hammers the accelerator for another round down dirt paths among the tobacco fields. It’s too early in the morning for this shit. Zilch sees flashes of the bufotoxin: more floating, laughing skulls, dancing devils, and other Old Testament imagery. Oh, and anaconda’s still there, yukking it up. Prick. But they also pass a woman standing on the edge of the street in bare feet on the roll-out lawn. Dark hair and in a billowing white dress—tossed by the breeze of Beefy’s fishtailing. Her hair momentarily covers her face but Zilch, for a brief second, sees her. Her gaze is full of pity, but tinged with anger and disappointment too.

  When they turn the corner back into the Whispering Pines of Picturesque Bay neighborhood and tool down toward the cul-de-sac, Susanne is ripped from view—and Zilch can see that there’s another altercation taking place, up ahead. A low-slung canary yellow car with a cartoonishly large whale tail is parked crookedly in front of 1330, as if the driver had leapt out before coming to a full-stop. Zilch spots the hard hat crew, all in white T-shirts and jeans—and another man. This one is tall, not only fat but legitimately big and bulky, with a head of blond spiked hair and wearing a gaudy, sequin-studded bowling shirt and a pair of either long shorts or short pants.

  Strapped to the hood of the pump truck and rolling up fast, Zilch can hear the argument. The big guy with the spiked hair is yelling at the others, who have formed a semicircle around him, like they’d done with Zilch, but even more aggressively: teeth bared and holding tools that are about to become makeshift weapons.

  “I didn’t do a goddamn thing to Ben’s truck, Darryl,” the big blond guy is shouting. “Don’t you think it’d be stupid as hell for me to steal the radio out of a truck I’m renting from someone? I just came down here to check on my fucking lot.”

  Beefy parks, leaving Zilch strapped to the hood.

  Beefy and the guy with the spiky neon-blond hair get into it, shouting pretty much the same thing over each other again and again. Spiky’s argument remains the same, while Beefy is simultaneously accusing Spiky of both stealing the radio out of the truck (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because if Beefy believed Spiky did it, why is Zilch tied to the hood?), and leaving it unlocked so it could be stolen in the night. And whichever Spiky actually did, he is very much going to be paying for it.

  Zilch listens, since he doesn’t really have much of a choice—he’s still bungeed down tight.

  Spiky says, “I’m fucking telling you, you guys, I locked that truck up good. I know you guys still think I’m full of shit, but—”

  Beefy groans. “Your fucking Lizard Man story again. Here we go.”

  “I don’t care what you say, Ben. The fucking thing is real,” Spiky shouts. “I seen it. I mean, I’m sorry about your truck, but …” While gesturing at the pump truck Beefy just pulled up in, he now notices Zilch strapped to the hood.

  As much as he can with bound wrist, Zilch waves. “Hello.”

  Beefy Ben, in Spiky’s pause, takes over the argument. “Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, okay. You seen it. Okay, sure. Doesn’t explain how my truck got all ripped up. Fuckin’ stereo’s missing—again, right after I replaced it last goddamn week.”

  “Whatev
er, Ben. Listen to me or don’t. I didn’t steal anything from you, man,” Spiky says, back to the argument. Zilch tries to remember what the one with the goatee said this guy’s name was. “But leave your trucks down here at night, unlocked, and see what happens.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, dumbass, I’m just tellin’ you that you should fuckin’ listen to me.”

  “I think that was a threat. I think you just threatened me, Chev.”

  Zilch snaps his swollen, blood-starved fingers. That’s his name.

  “Fuck you, Ben,” Chev says, a slight tremor to his voice.

  “Fuck you, Chev,” Ben says, with no tremor whatsoever, and shoves him.

  Chev swings, Beefy Ben ducks.

  They square up again, dancing from foot to foot—Beefy Ben in his work boots, Chev in his Birkenstocks.

  The young men are all screaming at each other, all in a tight pack with gnashing teeth, Chev in the middle. Forget a broken jaw, they’re going to kill him.

  Zilch needs to do something. Getting any information out of Chev after he gets his jaw broken is going to be difficult. A quick wriggle of his wrist—that he wouldn’t have dared while the truck was in motion—and Zilch slips a hand free. He undoes the other bands and slides down off the hood. No one notices, they’re all too preoccupied watching Beefy Ben and Chev repeatedly almost punch each other.

  Every single one of them outweighs Zilch by a hundred pounds at least, and besides—what’s he going to do? The last time he threw a punch was at Susanne’s sister’s wedding and he accidentally ended up punching the pastor instead of Susanne’s cousin, his actual target. The reception was an otherwise very quiet affair.

  “Guys? Could you maybe not murder him please?” Zilch says, hopping to look over the crowd’s shoulder. Beefy Ben is side-stepping every one of Chev’s slow throws, sinking jabs to Chev’s soft middle. “Fellas. Can we play nice?”

  Apparently not. Because the -ice of nice has barely left Zilch’s mouth when one of Ben’s buddies draws a utility knife, ratchets the blade out two inches, and angles the working man’s dagger toward Chev.