Departure--Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“You want what?” said the outraged voice on the other end of the line. The woman was so angry she was on the verge of hysterical laughter.

Silence.

“No, really. Tell me again. I want to hear your words.”

“Ma, please—”

“Ma, please,” she mocked him. “You disgust me. If you were here I’d slap the shit out of you.”

He knew from experience it was best to let her tirade run its course.

“I should’ve guessed when I saw your number on the caller ID. Run to Ma when you’re broke. Ha!” Her rage was old and tired, and it deflated itself in a long exhale like an overstretched balloon. “Ah, Matty. What is it this time? Late on your rent, or—”

“No, that’s not—”

“Drugs again, then?”

Silence.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said. “How many times do I have to tell you that Loser Liuzo is bad news?”

“I know, Ma. I just—”

“You know, I just wonder what your real mother would say if she were alive.”

Disdain and cheap bourbon dripped from her voice like blood from a fresh wound. Her anger was coming back, and this time he took the bait. “You leave her out of this!” he snapped.

“I hope she’s not watching over you, ‘cause she’s spinning in her grave if she is, crazy witch or not.”

“Shut up!” he snarled through tears of rage. “Like you have room to talk. Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your after-church bender!” He choked on a sob for a moment and lost his anger. “Just…shut up.”

For a wonder she did. After a moment he heard a muffled sniffle from the woman.

“I’m sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean it.”

“No, I’m sorry, Matty. I shouldn’t have said that. I loved your mother like a sister. You know that, don’t you?”

“Even though she was crazy?” he asked.

Her quick laugh was tear-choked. “No, she wasn’t crazy. Folks around here just don’t take well to out-of-towners when they’re different like your mother, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

After a moment, she changed the subject. “We missed you this weekend, Johnny and I.”

“Huh?”

“Remember, we invited you over for dinner on Saturday?”

“Dinn—Oh shit.” He felt the color drain from his face as a wave of shame broke upon him. It was in that moment, that sickening moment when he heard the tired hurt in her voice, that he knew why she was so upset, and why he deserved to feel the stinging lash of her harsh words a hundredfold. Saturday had been two years to the day since her oldest son David, Matt’s best friend, had been found dead in the river. “Oh, God. Mrs. Johannes, I’m so sorry. I—I just forgot.”

She had invited Matt to go to the cemetery and then have dinner with her and her other son, John.

“I know,” she replied. There was no expression at all in her voice. “It’s okay.”

“Did Johnny make it through alright?”

“Oh, Johnny’s fine. He’s barely old enough to remember he ever had a brother.”

“Is there anything—”

“No,” she sighed. He winced at her tone. There was no anger in her abruptness—just utter defeat. “No, there isn’t. Look, Matt, I don’t have any money to give you. I would if I did.” Then she added, “I’m glad you called, though. I was worried about you.”

His heart ached with the knowledge that her concern for him remained genuine despite the near-constant let downs from her surrogate son. “I know you would. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

He paused before answering. “Sorry for missing this weekend,” he replied. “Sorry for sorry excuses. I don’t know—sorry for being such a sorry excuse, I guess. Sometimes I think my whole stupid life is an apology.”

“Join the club,” she said.

“Look, Ma, I shouldn’t have called you like this. I’ll let you go.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I said I was glad you called and I meant it. Matty?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you sell David’s old car? It’s got to be worth at least a couple hundred bucks.”

“I can’t sell Lenny. He’s my only way out of this town.”

She snorted a quick, sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, provided you one day get up the nerve to leave.”

He chose not to respond to that.

“I don’t know how you can hang on to that old thing,” she went on. “I gave it to you because I couldn’t stand to be reminded of David every time I looked outside.”

“It’s all I have left of Dave. I can’t sell it.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

“Well,” he pondered, “I’ll either leave town and get as far away as I can, or I’ll spend it trying to figure out where I’m going to get Frankie’s money.” Then he added, “And Lenny’s just about out of gas, so that sorta cuts my options in half.”

“Maybe you should go ask Homeless Dan for money advice. He seems to do alright.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah, right. That crazy fuck threw shit at me the other day!”

“Oh, you must be special,” she joked. “He usually just shakes his peepee at me when I walk past his alley.”

“Hmm, sounds like he’s got the right idea—just annoy people ‘til they pay you to go away. Anyway, I gotta go do something about this hangover.”

“Matty?”

“Yeah?”

“If you get a chance, will you stop by the house later? I’d just like to see you.”

“Okay, if I’m still around after Frankie’s done with me, I will.”

“That’s not funny, Matt.”

“I know. Bye.” He thumbed the END button on his phone without waiting for her reply.

Departure--Chapter 1

Chapter One

It was going to be one of those days, and it hadn’t even started yet.

In small town Pennsylvania, you can set your watch by the once-daily moaning blast from the firehouse siren. Matt had long ago pawned his last watch, so the siren was instead his alarm clock. It woke him just in time for the crack of noon.

He could almost hear his eyelids squeak like rusty hinges as they peeled back from his eyes. There was another sound too, like a distant unseen jet crossing the sky, but more sinister, and pulsing. What the hell is that? he thought. He lay still for a moment and tried to remember where he’d gone to sleep. He failed.

When the slow down stroke of the town siren finally died away, he turned his head to the side and regretted it instantly—his neck burned, his head throbbed, and the pulsing rush in his ears got louder and faster and resolved itself into his rushing pulse. At least that mystery was solved.

He had to pee, and maybe puke too. That thought brought a grimace to his face and a groan to his lips. He dragged himself into a sitting position at the edge of the naked mattress and immersed an unshaven face in shaky hands. The familiar stink of his dirty clothes pile comforted him. So he had ended up in his own digs after all. “Damn,” was all he could manage.
He sat like that for several minutes trying to remember how messed-up he’d been the night before, and, for that matter, how he’d ended up in his own bed. A pocket-sized mirror was lying on the nightstand, and if memory served—a big if, there, folks—the empty bag beneath it had held half an eight ball of cocaine the night before. He was supposed to sell that shit to the idle rich come to play in the beautiful Poconos, not snort it himself. And not only because he couldn’t afford the luxury of coke, either. What it really came down to was that he didn’t trust the product peddled by Frankie Liuzo, the local pusher boss. He had no idea what he had been celebrating, or who had helped, but it must have been pretty important for him to splurge like that. Or he was pretty drunk.

“Holy shit.” he mumbled, taking a deep breath that hurt his head no more than every other movement he made. He sat a moment longer and tried to remember what other drugs he had ingested to make his head hurt so much. A hit of E maybe? He decided he’d rather not know. Really, he was just trying to put off moving as long as he could, no matter how badly he had to take a leak.

Predictably, that bastard Murphy prevailed. Just as Matt was about to force himself to his feet, a muffled rendition of Eine Kliene Nachtmusik shrieked from his cell phone and lanced directly into his aching skull like the some nightmarish dentist’s drill. Matt tried his best to block out the ringing as he let out a savage string of curses and threw himself off the bed, leaping for the phone.

At least he tried to leap for the phone; it turned out to be more like a lurch, and it earned him a sore knee and a bruise on his elbow when he “found” his battered old skateboard buried beneath a mound of soiled clothing. He did finally manage to come up with the phone, and he answered it with a labored “Hullo?”

“Hey, Matt!” screamed the grating voice he’d come to dread this past year. “You owe me four hundred bucks for that coke Friday, you piece of shit! I didn’t give you that fucking cell phone so you could disappear with my shit. Where’ve you been, huh? If you stiff me again, I’ll—”

“Hey, Frankie, I’m good for it,” Matt cut in, thinking what a blessing it was that Frankie could not see his face through the phone. “I’ll be at Markley’s tonight around nine. I’ll have your money with me.” He hoped.

“You better, fuck-face, or I’ll come looking for you! And I won’t stop at your fingers this time.” An ominous click followed by silence told Matt he had less than nine hours either to figure a way out of this latest mess or to leave town.

Hold on a minute—Friday!? He checked the date on his phone, and sure enough, it was Monday morning…afternoon...Shit. So it was a full-on binge and a lost weekend.

He looked around his room for something to sell, but other than his phone, a broken CD player, and unmatched bits of cigarette-burned furniture, everything of value had been hocked long ago to feed the habit that had gotten him little more than three broken fingers. Frankie had been in a good mood that time.

The thought of cigarettes roused him. He reached hopefully for the limp pack of gas station generics lying in front of his empty closet, but hope was denied.

Having such a worthy mission in mind perked him up a little. He ran his fingers over his stubbly face and began the task of climbing to his feet. That accomplished, his hand went to the grab-bag pile of dirty laundry at his feet and pulled out today’s prize: a wrinkled black Limp Bizkit t-shirt. He sniffed it, grimaced, and pulled it over his head.

He took a moment to ponder just why it is that town scuzzbags always have names like Frankie Liuzo. It never occurred to him as he slumped off to the bathroom that Matt Wexler was a name only one step above that of town scuzzbag, and falling fast.