Chapter 1
James is in no hurry to get home. He pulls out of the Wal-Mart parking lot to abandoned streets, a single streetlight illuminating the quiet intersection of Route 4 and the shopping center’s entrance. The catty-cornered Five Guys is darkened save for the red fluorescent strip that outlines the frame of the two-tier roof. It’s a boring ride really, even when it isn’t 2:00 in the morning. Normally, it’s 7:00 and his graveyard shift of unloading pallets at Wal-Mart is over. The lights no longer blink yellow and cars and school buses are sprinkled throughout the 20-minute ride home. A straight shot really: right down Route 4; left into the Colonial Apartments; straight to bed.
Tonight, a tractor-trailer ran off the road on the Jersey Turnpike so both his shift and his paycheck are axed in half. His shifts are otherwise very predictable. He punches in at 11:00. He works through the night and punches out at 7:00. Nobody really talks to him in those eight hours and James doesn’t really care. An ex-con with a felony hanging over his head in his first month on the job isn’t exactly a chatterbox, regardless of the time of day.
That goddamn felony.
When you’re 17, the prospect of something staying with you the rest of your life doesn’t really hold any weight.
When you’re 21 and can only get a job unloading pallets of Purina at Wal-Mart for the graveyard shift, shit becomes a little bit heavier.
So that’s what he thinks about on his solemn drive home. His ’92 Volvo whines like it’s equally pissed and a low static crumbles from the radio, creating a demonic melody to ponder the last four years of his life.
Or the whole damn thing for that matter.
Stay in school kids.
Or don’t. Fuck it. Who cares.
Just don’t listen to idiots. Which in a way makes James an idiot and for that, he doesn’t offer his advice to too many people.
Fucking Billy Hanlon.
It was around this time of year, late autumn when the nights are crisp and all the fags rant about how much they love the seasons. James hates the seasons. At least he hates the fall.
Four years ago, right after Halloween, Billy Hanlon thought he had cornered the market on the local ecstasy game. Had a nice little racket going too as James recalls; a couple of junior girls to distribute the pills to an array of social cliques in his former high school, as well as the emerging market of neighboring Wilson High. At 20 bucks a pop, 25 when they had the blue dolphins that were laced with heroin and not coke, he was turning a nice profit, especially since Billy was getting them for dirt-cheap from his cousin Vince in Providence.
Yep, Billy Hanlon thought he was the man all right. And to cement his status, he called upon James Rodriguez to provide the muscle. It’s ironic because James wasn’t big; he still isn’t. He just possessed the perfect amount of not-give-a-fuck to seem dangerous. J-Rod he called him. He doesn’t call him anything now and James doesn’t have anybody call him J-Rod anymore.
Funny thing about high schoolers: they don’t have any code, despite the rap music and the “stop snitching” mottos etched into the wall of every bathroom stall in the school. Nope, when they get busted by the school resource officer for having two X pills in their locker, they can be quite helpful.
James’ trip down memory lane is stopped by a red light. It’s after 2:00 in the morning and all 10 traffic lights he passes through are blinking yellow except one.
And he gets it.
Every. Fucking. Time.
He sees it turn yellow from a football field away.
James sits and shifts his gaze from the shuttered auto body shop, over to the debunked Tim Horton’s across the street. In the plaza across from that are a bankrupt bank and a Henny Penny, which might as well be shut down because every time he drives by it and his stomach is rumbling the son of a bitch is dark. Who would have thought a gas station hot dog could be such a tease.
His stomach grumbles right on cue and he wishes Michelle was home to make him something to eat. Even a Hot Pocket tastes better when she slides it in and out of the microwave. Speaking of which, he’d like to slide something in and out of her hot pocket too…
But she’s bartending tonight and will be until about 3:00 and then with her drive back from across the bridge, he’ll be passed out long before any kind of hot pocket action will go down.
Eventually, the light changes and he spurts ahead. More whining, same static. Soon the buildings subside and trees dominate the roadside. Big, towering oaks that look like they’ve been there since the Revolutionary War. Their carcasses aren’t quite completely bone yet, but the majority of the leaves are off and the rest fall out like they’re undergoing chemo with every gust of wind.
A former greenhouse and farmers market lies directly under a streetlight, only to expose the fact that the building was overtaken by its contents. Gangly bushes reach their arms through the cracked windows while moss and grass grow on the caved-in roof.
Man, all the weed you could grow in that thing too.
But business ideas like that are pipe dreams he thinks. He’s just six months removed from the clink and on the hook for another 14 for probation. Even an idiot like James knows he ain’t trying to go back.
So instead he dreams about smoking weed and fucking Michelle for the remainder of his drive. She isn’t thin, but then again James doesn’t want her to be. He likes a little something to grab onto and he really likes the fact she’s down for whatever.
And he knows that he’s still exploring what all that entails.
She has a nice collection of tattoos, which James digs. They’re colorful and bizarre and add a little life to her pale arms. Her pale everything really, but her arms stand out the most, probably because of Betty Bop or whoever slinks up her forearm and stares out with big doe eyes.
He shutters to think what his mom would say about her. All those tattoos…
But he doesn’t think very long about that. He doesn’t talk to her anymore and that’s probably for the best. She was never a big fan of the prison visit to her eldest son and so he eventually told her not to bother. Apparently, that had a longer implication than he realized.
He breezes under the final blinking yellow and rolls towards the Colonial Apartments, where a streetlight is also flickering. The apartments look like a shady motel wanted to disguise itself as a shady apartment building. All side-by-side and one-story stretching across a fairly narrow parking lot that’s speckled with rundown cars. His apartment is at the end of the row, number 22, and he likes that. He doesn’t have to deal with anybody else’s bullshit because even to an ex-con, those people are real assholes.
He slides into the last spot on the end and clicks the car off. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner that had the plug pulled out of the wall. He wonders when he needs to change the oil and glances at the odometer and remembers that it’s broken. So 204747 just stares back at him, like the number stenciled onto all of his prison-issued clothing.
Fuck.
He’s ready to shut his mind off as he strides to his door, key in hand. He doesn’t think twice about the faint trace of light seeping out from under the doorframe. She can be so damn forgetful he thinks as he unlocks the door.
The apartment isn’t very big. Just a front living room, complete with a scratchy couch courtesy of a yard sale up one of the windy off-shooting roads from Route 4, one of those 30 pound 90′s TVs that rests on an egg crate and a circular coffee table that only warrants the name because it’s sticky. Connected to that a small kitchen—emphasis on small—with no room to maneuver through it if either the fridge or oven door is open. Then there’s a brief hallway that passes by their bathroom and leads to where the magic happens: an oversized closet with a double bed stationed directly in the middle of the clutter.
The lamp next to the couch is at full blaze and without its lampshade, it’s more like a torch. He shakes his head as he hangs his keys on the hook next to the door.
Stay in school kids.
He makes his way towards the bedroom but stops when he realizes the door is closed. Light also seeps out from under, but much fainter. He listens.
Music.
Something squeaky, maybe some R&B, complete with some diva moaning over the chorus.
So forgetful he thinks.
He opens the door and the first thing he sees is him.
Him is a large black guy straddling something on their bed.
The something is Michelle, face down with her glowing white ass elevated slightly above the mattress and from the looks of it, everybody is thoroughly enjoying themselves.
“What the fuck!?”
“Who the fuck!?”
“Why the fuck!?” But before Michelle can finish asking why he stopped, James launches himself across the bed and spears the man. They careen into the wall and smack off the floor while Michelle shrieks and scurries to cover herself with the bed sheet because, suddenly, she’s a lady. James and the man jostle for position in the coffin-sized gap between the bed and the wall.
It doesn’t take long before the man establishes dominance. He has James pinned to the floor. He straddles James’ chest, his knees resting on his biceps and hands clasped around his wrists.
The man’s member also rests on his chest, neck and his chin.
James squirms to try and at least remove the penis from his face but the man is really strong and is wedged into his spot.
“You better get the fuck up off me-”
“Shhhh. Calm down yo,” the man shifts his attention from the subdued James to the panicked Michelle on the bed. “Chelle, I thought you said he wasn’t gonna be home for another couple hours?”
“Chelle!? That’s real fucking cute. Bitch, I’m gonna kill you.” Again James struggles to break free and has the same type of luck.
“Relax, dude. You ain’t going anywhere and you ain’t gonna kill nobody,” his voice is stern and James feels the grip on his wrists tighten.
“What are you doing here, James?” Michelle asks in her meekest voice.
“I fucking live here, bitch,” again his wrists are squeezed and he starts to get the pins and needles in his fingers. “This is my bed.”
“Whoa, I thought you said he didn’t pay any rent here?” The man says to Michelle.
“He doesn’t, Sherrod.”
“Why doesn’t Sherrod mind his fucking business-”
“Man, this is my business. I probably got more right to be here than you, broke ass nigga.”
“That’s it!” James tries to throw his legs up towards Sherrod’s head but comes up remarkably short. He tries again but doesn’t get any closer. Sherrod just stares in disbelief at the idiot underneath him.
“Chelle, call the police and have them haul this fool away.”
“Aight, aight, I’ll chill. Can you just get the fuck up off me, Sherrod?”
“I don’t think so. You got something to say to her, I suggest you do it now.”
James closes his eyes and exhales slowly out of his nose.
Thanks, prison anger management.
“How long?”
“Man, I don’t know-”
“Not you, Romeo. Fucking Michelle. I want to know how long this shit has been going on.”
“I don’t know, maybe two months. Ever since he started working the door at Maggie’s.”
“I think I started in July.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, so probably closer to three months actually.”
“Well, happy fucking anniversary, you whore.”
“Look, James, you’re nice and all but you’re not going anywhere. You can’t get a decent job with normal hours and you basically live here for free. You keep saying you’re going to pay rent and you never do. You leave all of the lights on and don’t even know the name of the goddamn electric company.”
“And the fucking doorman at Maggie’s has got his shit figured out?!”
“Jesus, at least he can fuck me right. You always bust in 30 seconds and then ask me to make you a Hot Pocket like you just rocked my world. Sorry hun, but you’re not even close.”
Sherrod, flattered by the compliment, smiles affectionately towards Michelle. James thinks his head might explode. He feels Sherrod again smoosh against the bottom of his chin.
“Are you fucking kidding me, bro?”
“Shut up bro. Why don’t you just call the cops, Michelle? I’m gonna fuck you so good once they take this scrub away.”
Sherrod blows her a kiss.
James wants to blow his brains out.
Now Drake plays softly in the room. Something about holding on because he’s coming home.
James lets out a pained yell and tries to break free one last time as he hears Michelle call in and tell the dispatcher there’s been a disturbance.
Just hold on, I’m coming home.
