by William Kier

It's three AM and hot as hell, because I can't afford the AC. So I've got the window open, but all summer we've been overrun with cicada. Their sound, it's like a diesel powered maraca, and with the window open they might as well be rubbing their rutted legs along the bony shapes of my ear.

Somehow my baby fell asleep about an hour ago, despite the miserable heat. I pull a traffic ticket out of my jeans pocket. They want a hundred and fifty bucks for a bad muffler, fucking fining me for smog and noise violations. Fining me, while the cicada are driving us all deaf. Why not provide us with a real service and sentence them to a flattening by the boot! Suddenly, my baby stirs and I jam the ticket back in my pocket.

She brushes the sheet down her back, and for a second there's life coming from the corner floor where our mattress lies. It's like a wind hitting embers. But there's no wind, it's just still outside. And the air is still and stale inside. And I'm sitting by the window, just sweating hard in this dark tiny room.

And something bad has been brewing in my mind. Something that's going to hurt me. Something that's going to hurt my baby. A voice enters my head, "Clean out the fucking register right now, man." It's mine, resonating like an empty bottle rolling down a stairwell. It's coming softly off my lips, not to wake my baby, but loud in my head, loud enough to compete with all the goddamn cicada. And the stomach is going at four hundred thousand RPMs.

I fix my eyes on her long back. It's a calming shape, flat and smooth. She has one knee up to her chest and a hand draped over a pillow that's bunched up on my side of the mattress. She used to live out of her van, selling acid and shrooms. Not anymore. That all stopped when we met. But she sold for real -- not just to friends. She was barely eighteen and would walk around concerts like some peanut vendor, sometimes even advertising with a cardboard sign. And get this, while at a Grateful Dead fest she was topless with "ACID 4 SALE" written across her tits and two square hits stuck to her nipples. Goddamn ballsy. I asked if she ever worried about getting busted. "Busted is only a state of mind...," she said, "Just kidding, you bet your sweet ass I worried, but it beat worrying over which schmo was gonna ask me to prom."

It's all behind her now, she's temping these days. But she has guts, no question there. Me? Nothing that crazy, never had the guts -- not the tits. I've played it straight, hanging on to the same job with my teeth. But then, it takes guts to be a good schmo, too. With God as my limp-dick witness, that's exactly what I've been. But we, the schmos, can't afford risks, that's what they don't understand. Not when the tow truck's looking at about two hundred dollars in repairs. And the dispatcher's threatening to pull my calls if the tow doesn't get a new muffler. But she thinks we're great. The golden horizon is nearer than it alludes and the resourceful know this. That's the stars speaking, baby, it's your daily dose of the white-witch columns. But the truth is, I got a big fine in my pocket that you and the stars don't even know about. And who's paying that? This burdened straight man, that's who. And even you said, the sexiest thing about me is my pride. And baby, my pride is the result of straight living.

But I'm fooling no one, I sin. I do. In this room. I hate. I really fuck-ing hate! I'll speak aloud their names as I hammer my beer on the table. It's worse if I don't have a name...like that stinking junkie freak with his cart of health food, stopping us in the market, remembering my baby from back when, reminding her what a heavy trip it was, that time she was topless at the Dead concert, and his eyes are constantly dropping to her tits like now his name is written there. My baby's hand was over my fist squeezing, or I'd of issued that ragamuffin a serious lesson in manners. I've got my damn pride, but the hate will consume me. And I find myself back in the room, alone, drinking gin, shooting the stucco wall with my pellet gun, goddamn if it doesn't look like the real thing.

A cicada starts up close to the window, and I'm sure it'll wake my baby.

The train...

Now it comes. There's no setting your clock by that thing. It comes when it wants. Four AM, five AM, don't matter. It gets louder. The wheels clacking along the rails, a rhythm of persistence. The train effectively riles the cicada into a frenzy. My baby rolls onto her back and kicks the sheet down her legs. She lies naked, hair sticking even though she would never say it, we both know she deserves more than waking to that -- so much more.

But who am I to give it to her?

Busted is only a state of mind, baby. I love you...

And here it is, the World against my baby and me. Y'all got us contained like some frozen fish sticks getting freezer burn. And it's all about space, it's always been. Fences and walls and secrets and shit, keeping us out, keeping us in. And I want to violate and I want to trespass, ha, even if some fuck's trying to pump buckshot in my ass.

I get up and go to the kitchen area. Beer's spilt on the linoleum, making it too goddamn slippery to stand. I reach across the counter grabbing the keys. I head to the front door, stopping at the window. Beyond a tall fence of trees the pink light of a liquor store is bleeding into the night sky. I'm mumbling, "Fuck y'all, fuck y'all, fuck y'all!"

I slip the pellet gun into my pocket -- goddamn if it doesn't look like the real thing. I'm out the door.

She's asleep. I'm going for a ride.