When your whole life is a lie you lose sight of the truth.
Hardly revolutionary, I know. But in the Gutter, where one and one already equals three, payback can be disproportionally cruel. Or “Shitty Billy Joel Songs” for $100...
Hardly revolutionary, I know. But in the Gutter, where one and one already equals three, payback can be disproportionally cruel. Or “Shitty Billy Joel Songs” for $100...
Nice Guys Finish Bad by Paul Greenberg
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Leonard Terry’s day off began with a bad night’s sleep.
Sucking in his gut to get into a pair of pants, he realized that he had grown
another inch around the waist.
“Trying to take control of my life,” he thought, “has become
a full time campaign and I am losing the fucking war.”
Today, his goal was to cancel his Planet Fitness membership,
which had been sucking him dryer than a pair of Depends. He had calculated that
he had pissed away over five hundred bucks the past three years to a club that
he had seen the inside of, sadly, less than four times.
After a few phone calls he found out that a cancellation had
to be done in person. So he drove over to the South Boston location to do it.
It was ten o’clock in the morning and a liquor store near
the club was just opening. Leonard went up to the counter and told the clerk
that “two punks are trying to break into the store’s delivery van out back, so
you better get out there. I’ll keep an eye on things.” The clerk put down his
copy of the Herald and ran out of the
store, leaving Leonard to pocket a pint of Jack Daniels and a bag of beer nuts.
He was on his way out and the clerk was on his way in, shaking his head,
thinking that he may have been sent on a goose chase. Squinting his eyes and
looking at Leonard the clerk said, “Hey, you take something?”
“Fuck you. I didn’t take shit,” said Leonard and walked
away.
Leonard stood at the side of the building and drank from the
pint and threw the bag of beer nuts at a passing PT Cruiser.
Back in his Honda, Leonard drove from Boston through
Cambridge to Watertown to the Mall on Arsenal Street.
A Target store anchored the mall. Leonard parked in a
handicap spot, walked in the entrance, and still fortified by the whiskey, grabbed
a two-hundred-dollar air conditioner off of the display floor. He put it in a
carriage and brought it up to the return desk and said, “I got two of these for
my birthday and I only need one. I live in a one-room studio apartment and if I
put in two air conditioners I won’t be able to shit and turn my head at the
same time, so give me the money on a gift card.”
The clerk took this all in while twirling his nose hair, finally
asking for a sales slip.
To which Leonard replied, “If I have to stand here for
another minute I may have to staple your tongue to your chin.”
The clerk scanned the box and a gift card and handed it to Leonard
who promptly exited the store.
With gift card in hand, Leonard grabbed the first sap that walked
by and said, “Listen, bub. I have a two-hundred-dollar gift card that I have to
turn into cash. My daughter was raped and killed by the Procol Harum in Iraq
and I’ve got to get her body back and this government isn’t helping me, for
shit. I’ll take a hundred bucks.”
The guy looked it over and said, “That’s like half price?”
“Yeah, genius. What do you say? I’m doing you a solid.”
The guy pulled his wallet out of his pocket and counted out
eighty dollars. Leonard took it and walked off.
Behind the Target store, among delivery trucks, he spotted two
black guys smoking a dube. He approached
them and asked if they had any weed that he could buy. One guy said that they
had a couple of joints but it would cost him fifty. Leonard asked to sample it
before he paid, so they passed him the joint. Laughing at the white dude with
the penguin shape, they watched as Leonard took a long draw, held it in and then
coughed it out. He said, “This is shit and I don’t mean that in a good way. I
know my weed. I was born in Jamaica and this is the worst fucking hooch that I’ve
ever smoked, bro. I’m not buying crap from you guys.”
They exchanged “fuck yous” and “you don’t know shits” until
one of the men clocked Leonard on the side of the head with a fist the size of
Plymouth Rock. Passed out on the ground, Leonard had his pockets rifled. They
took the eighty bucks, his wallet and car keys, tossed it all on the front seat
of their truck, pulled a gas can out of the back seat, poured the contents over
Leonard, took a lighter and set him ablaze.
Coming to, Leonard flopped and rolled around the concrete
trying to put himself out while screaming, “I was lying. It was all a big joke.
Help me.”
“Liar, liar…” they chanted as they sped off.
A security guard came by in a golf cart and tossed a blanket
over Leonard, called for the EMTs. When they arrived Leonard was barely
hanging on. They asked him to identify himself but after a morning of stories and lies all he could muster was, “Pants on fire.”
“True that,” said the EMT.
“True that,” said the EMT.
