Three Wednesdays, Part 3: The End Of All Things

I Lost Myself Remembering The Night I Spent In Her Arms

Read Three Wednesdays Part 1: The Worst Alley In The Universe, HERE

Read Three Wednesdays Part 2: The Best Bench In The Park, HERE

Soul Love is playing on the Café sound system. Not too loud and, since they played Five Years right before, it’s safe to assume they just put on Bowie’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and are letting the entire glorious endeavour run its course.

A young lady brings me the coffee and pastry I ordered. I say thank you without looking up, staring out the window.

Today’s Wednesday.

I’m still getting used to the chair I’m stuck in. Another six months, at least. My neighbours are nice about the whole thing, holding doors and saying hello and what have you. Nobody asks questions. The doctors gave me pills to help ride the pain, strong stuff. There are metal bolts in my legs that have to be tightened, every evening at 6. The swelling on my face is gone, at least. Lost two teeth but turns my jaw wasn’t broken, it just hurt like hell on account of all the abuse it suffered that day…

Rain gently taps the window I’m staring out of, drawing wavy lines of blur over the world outside. I crave a cigarette but that’ll have to wait. My coffee feels exactly right going down. Rainy day coffee. Burning hot and pitch black. I dip the pastry into it and take a bite. That’ll be breakfast.

Nine in the morning is a strange world with lots of movements and too much brightness, but I’m getting used to it. My physical therapy starts at 11 am sharp, every fucking day save Sundays, so I had no choice getting used to starting my evenings early, so to speak. Still, 9 AM is pushing it.

But that’s when she said she’d be here.

I take another bite of coffee-soaked pastry and stare outside, gently tapping my glass finger against the window. Like sending Morse code messages to the rain outside. “Hey what’s up?” “Not much, just raining, you?” “Not much, just being…”

Just a guy being a guy with metal in his ribs, a glass index finger held to his hands by an arrangement of leather straps someone smarter than me designed, and a wheelchair you can fold into a small nothing and put away pretty easily.

A cigarette, right now, would be so good…

The young lady comes to top off my coffee. I thank her with a nod. “Another pastry, maybe?” she asks. “That would be a little too good,” I say. “Nothing that good is ever too good,” the waitress replies with a friendly smile. “Maybe some things,” I say, “but ask me again in a half hour.” “You got it, handsome,” the waitress says, walking away.

Well well.

“That girl just called you handsome,” says a familiar voice in front of me, “I’ll wager a shiny nickel you got a shot.”

“I’ve had enough shots to last me forever, thanks,” I reply, turning to face the princess, wiggling my glass index finger at her.

“Cry me a river. How’ve you been?” She asks, taking a seat in front of me.

“Just trying, you know?” I answer truthfully.

“That’s what we’re all doing, Frank,” She says.

“Me a little more.”

“Again, the river.”

I smile. She’s quick, and she doesn’t put up with my self-pitying act. I’m angry at her still (or probably just bitter) and I’m hurt, but she’s clever and witty and it’s hard not to appreciate that.

“Why am I here, Abby?” I ask.

“I know, I know, you’re right,” she says.

She looks at her hands for a moment, searching for words there, maybe, then she looks up at me and says that there is nothing she could ever do to show me how grateful she is. She sounds earnest. It’s moving. She tells me that this life (pointing at her chest) is hers, now, and that since that afternoon when everything happened, when I came back and did what I’d done, the thing, that horrible thing, since then she’s hers, you know? She works at a record store that barely gets by but she loves it, and she has a boyfriend who’s good to her, and she’s taking tai chi on Tuesdays and she sucks at it but she feels amazing at the end of each lesson. She says there’s nothing that she can do to properly thank me but that maybe this’ll do. She takes a large brown paper bag out of her backpack and slowly pushes it on the table toward me.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Money my dad won’t miss,” she says, “It’s from years back, from Christmases and birthdays, all gifts I put away and never spent, maybe just to spite him, or to prove to myself that I didn’t need him. Anyway, it’s enough money that you can set yourself up with a nice little place, maybe a condo, never worry about rent again, learn to cook, dress like a million bucks and light some lady’s cigarette — that waitress over there — and say something cool and take her up to your pad and show her how you can make someone happy. I don’t know. It’s not enough to spell thank you, not the thank you I owe you, but enough for something. A new start.”

I don’t say thank you. I don’t refuse the money either, or act offended that our story ends with a brown bag exchange, payment for services rendered. None of that.

I say I’ve missed you.

She lets that go. She gets up and says that she wishes there was a bigger, better word than thank you, one that picked you up and shook you and held you close and made everything better.

I take a sip of my coffee, turn to the window, wait silently and, finally, listen as she walks away from me, toward the door.

I think back to that day, that afternoon when I came back for her, back to where the king and his minions were, two floors above some shitty dive bar, window overlooking the worst alley in the universe.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I opened the door and walked into the hotel room, as straight as I could manage given the state of my body and its collection of injuries. My right leg in particular — obviously broken — hurt like two lifetimes of bad karma. This was pain my children’s children would feel an echo of. But I’d stood straight and walked into the room where I’d almost been killed mere minutes (hours?) ago, determined to walk out with the princess.

I could see, in the back of the room, the broken window through which I’d jumped maybe an hour (minutes?) earlier — after everything had gone straight to hell. And here was the king, shit-eating grin firmly in place, holding his daughter by the wrist, his grip hard, full of violence, her face bruised, tear tracks of mascara carved down across her cheeks. Around him, on each side, stood a collection of obedient, sadistic assholes. All of them with their weapons pulled on me, the king included.

“Hello Frank,” the king said, “how was the fall?”

That got a laugh.

I ignored him. I reached into my coat and took out my cigarette pack. I tried to fish one out but they were all broken or wet with alley juice or my blood or both. I sighed, disappointed, dismissed the cigarette pack with a twist of the wrist and watched as it fell to the floor right next to, holy shit, my severed finger. I remember how I’d considered trying to grab it but I felt pretty sure if I bent over I’d never be able to get back up again. Forget the finger, Frank.

I looked at the king for a moment. Then the henchmen.

Everyone had a gun on me. I was scared but tried hard not to let that show.

I turned to the princess and said, “I’m sorry. What I said earlier, I shouldn’t have said that. Out of line.”

She said don’t worry about it and that she was sorry she’d slapped me.

I said okay and I’ll admit that small exchange made me feel a little better. If I was going to die today, I wanted things square between us.

Using her free hand, she took out two cigarettes from a pack, lit both and threw one to me, which I caught with my good hand. I took a long drag and let it fill me. It felt like a little bit of her, of her warmth, seeping into my broken body. It felt amazing.

I blew the smoke out at the room and turned my focus to the king again.

I said to the king, like I’d just been interrupted, “So, like I was saying earlier: Your daughter’s not your daughter. You understand me? That’s over with. It’s yesterday. Today? From now on? She’s your total stranger.”

The king didn’t take to that, said to Fish to go and break me in half so Fish handed his gun to Sticky Pete, cracked his knuckles and walked towards me. Fish was a huge motherfucker.

Still looking at the king, right into his eyes, I said, “She’s walking out of here with me, now, and if word ever reaches me that you so much as looked in her direction, I will come back and kill you all.”

I said this and then I put out my cigarette in Fish’s left eye and punched him in the groin with a force and momentum only terrifically angry people possess.

Fish screamed and fell to his knees, his hands covering his face, fingers scrambling to dig the cigarette out of his eye socket. I wrapped my left arm around Fish’s head, in a stranglehold, and put my right hand — the one that still had five fingers — on Fish’s shoulder to ground me. I began to pull on Fish’s head. Hard. I wanted to hurt Fish, to make him scream and maybe beg. I wanted to forget the pain I was in and deliver this message once and for all…

I closed my eyes — pulling as hard as I could, allowing my rage to take over and work for me — and I left the room.

I left the pain echoing everywhere in my body.

I left all the guns that were still pointed at me, held in place by the frozen arms of half a dozen thugs waiting for orders, too enthralled by the insanity of the moment to take action.

I left all the evil and the cruelty and the shit and the awfulness and everything that was sombre and wrong.

I left all of it and I returned to her bedroom.

To that one night, once upon a time, when she’d said, standing in the doorway of a building she was renting a secret flat in, fuck it, why don’t you come up.

I lost myself remembering that night. How she’d taken her time undoing my shirt and how she’d let her hands explore my bare chest, feeling me, looking genuinely turned on. How she’d undone my pants next, and had knelt before me. The way she’d taken my cock in her mouth, how her warmth had enveloped me completely. Her tongue and her spit and her throat, inviting me deep, all of me, every last inch. She’d spat on it, jerked it, licked it, called it beautiful, sucked it so hard, so passionately, moaning with hunger, bewitching me.

I lost myself remembering how I’d watched her, watched every second of this flawless blowjob. This woman — who was so out of my league — giving me one night. One go at it.

I lost myself remembering when she’d gotten back up and kissed me again, letting me taste myself on her lips and tongue. How she’d smiled, then, before pulling her shirt over her head and tossing it, revealing, by the pale light of the moon shining through the window, the most perfect breasts I’d ever seen. I’d undone the clasp of her bra and removed it, tossing it like she’d tossed her shirt. I’d watched my hands squeeze those warm, firm and supple breasts, as I lifted them up toward my mouth. She’d arched her back to give me better access, her hands running through my hair and guiding me. I’d tasted every inch of her perfect chest, her saliva-covered pink nipples pointing up at me, permission all over them. Every time my lips landed on her pale skin, she moaned her pleasure at me, unafraid to show me she could be a sexual person.

I lost myself remembering how we’d fucked ten different ways that night. Tender. Rough. Against the wall, over the kitchen counter, on her bed, in the shower. She’d given me her asshole, her pussy, her mouth again and again. She’d straddled me, forward and back, letting me watch as she moved on me, using my cock to hit every good spot inside her over and over, showing me what she liked. What she loved. What made her burst and glow. She’d stood on all fours on the bed, looking back at me and begging me to take her. To pull her hair. To fuck her rough and hard. She’d lied down on her back, holding her ankles up as I fucked her with absolute abandon. She’d whimpered and she’d moaned and she’d screamed.

I lost myself remembering how, in the end, she’d begged me to release in her mouth and had taken great care in swallowing every drop I had to give, which, that night, was an ungodly amount…

I heard a wet, half-swallowed scream, and snapped back to reality just in time to see Fish’s decapitated corpse crumble to the floor before me. I looked at my right hand. It was covered in blood. My left arm was still wrapped around Fish’s head, which I’d apparently slowly torn off of the man’s neck, cold.

I looked up at the king, who was staring at me, the man’s mouth wide open but no words in it.

I dropped Fish’s head to the floor. It rolled a few feet and came to a stop face up, a little pool of blood forming at the neck. The other men were no longer pointing guns at me. They were staring at Fish’s lifeless head, an interrupted scream of agony still waiting at the edge of his mouth, a look of horror permanently sculpted on his lifeless face. They had just seen a completely broken man tear another man’s head off with his own two hands, and for the first time in their lives, they were scared shitless. They’d seen what I could do.

I extended my right hand to the princess.

The king let go of his daughter’s wrist. The princess walked across the room to me and took my hand. We turned and walked towards the door, still open. Before leaving I turned back to the king.

“I don’t want to have this conversation again,” I said.

We walked out of the room and she closed the door behind us.

Abby reached the door of the café and, before walking out, looked back at Frank. He was staring out the window at the rain-soaked city beyond. He can’t stay sad forever, she reassured herself, only fools do that. He’s no fool. She walked out of the café and almost jumped when she saw, by her feet, an enormous rat. It stood there, looking up at her. It said something, then, but it was in rat language so she didn’t understand a word of it. Still, it was a big fucking rat so she kicked it out of the way. It rolled on the sidewalk for a few feet and ran away screaming, probably calling her an asshole. Maybe she deserved it. She lit a cigarette and walked to work, rain be damned.

I watched the princess go, knowing it was probably the last time I’d ever see her. I turned and caught the waitress topping off my coffee again.

“So,” she said to me, “do you still think some things are too good?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’ll take that second pastry now…”

“One pastry, coming up,” the waitress replied with a friendly smile.

She was pretty.