Blood Sports (30 page)

A nearby joke shop had a pump that squirted unconvincing blood and the butcher didn’t find his request for pig guts as odd as Tom had thought he would. Chicken skin was harder to come by. Tom had to buy a large roaster.

Tom set up the camera in the dining room. He went back to the kitchen and contemplated the chicken. He’d never skinned anything before. His chicken came in
KFC
buckets.

“What’s going on?” Jer said.

“Hi,” Tom said, surprised. Jer wasn’t usually a morning person. “You’re home early.”

Jer cracked the lid of the ice-cream bucket filled with glistening pig guts that Tom had left on the counter. “Breakfast?”

Tom carefully withdrew his knife, so the skin wouldn’t tear. “Birthday present.”

Jer made a face.

“Surprise,” Tom said. “It’s a homemade zombie movie.”

The kitchen table was covered with black garbage bags, which were stuck to Tom’s back. Jeremy lowered a jagged knife to Tom’s chest, pausing. Tom regretted the blood capsule he’d inserted between his cheek and gums. Jeremy only had eyes for his torso. Jer pressed the knife into the chicken skin covering Tom’s chest. They hadn’t been able to figure out how to make the blood ooze out like a real wound, so the cut Jeremy made at the top of Tom’s chest was not very convincing.

Once the knife opened up Tom’s fake guts, though, the pump they’d hidden spurted an impressive fountain of coloured corn syrup, splashing Jer’s face and body. Tom bit down on the capsule and, after a few seconds, his mouth foamed red spit. He convulsed on the table, moaning. Jer pressed his fingers into the open skin and pulled out a length of gut. Jer’s expression, rapt, engrossed. He was flushed. His hands shook.

Tom had a hard time not laughing. If he’d known this was all it took to make Jer happy, the last year would have been much, much easier. Tom had been planning to holler, but Jer looked annoyed if Tom distracted him from the real show, his fake guts spilling onto the counter.

Neither of them heard the front door open. By the time they realized Tom’s mother was watching them, she had already turned, running out the door. The foil bouquet of Happy Birthday balloons drifted upward and bounced against the ceiling. Tom scrambled off the table. She wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow.

“Mom!” he yelled. “Mom! It’s okay!”

“Fucking get washed up,” Jer said.

While he was in one of the bathrooms, his mom came back with three security guards. One of them escorted Tom to the lobby, despite Tom’s explanations. He sat on the bench near the concierge’s desk. She came downstairs with the other two security guards. In the taxi, she wouldn’t look at him.

“Where’re we going?” Tom said.

“You should have told me,” she said. “You should have told me he was … he was … sick.”

Tom left Paulie’s place at midnight, driving a Rent-a-Wreck car to Jer’s condo. He parked nearby, looking up at the twenty-seventh floor. The lights were on. Hopefully, no one was home.

Tom slung his knapsack over his shoulder. He’d been afraid the concierge or security would challenge him, he hadn’t been living there for a while, but he seemed to barely register. He heard music coming from the condo, and paused, card key in hand. Jer might have left the stereo on when he went out or he might be passed out with the stereo on. Tom slipped his key in the door.

He stood in the entranceway, surprised at the crush of people inside. You couldn’t hear the music above the roaring waves of conversation. The dress code for the evening was power suits for the men and plunging cleavage for the women. Firebug sat morosely on the sofa, staring at a boxing match flashing between the crush of bodies.

“Firebug!” Tom yelled. “Where’s Jer?”

Firebug shrugged.

Jer’s bedroom was empty.

“Jer?” Tom said.

Jeremy kept an ashtray on his nightstand, a little silver dome that held the stink of old smokes to an area around the king-sized bed with dark brown posts and a scratchy tan duvet. He tended to leave his lights on. His reading material ran from dry to drier: eye-glazing reports, adjective-heavy company brochures.

Tom found Jeremy’s videotape collection tumbled together in heaps at the back of the closet. He hadn’t even bothered to put them back in his wall safe. Tom quickly packed the tapes inside his knapsack, taking the tapes on top figuring they’d be the recent ones. He considered the remaining tapes littering the floor. If Jer had been taping him for as long as Paulie said, even the older ones might have embarrassing sections on them. Tom brought the tapes down to his rental car and dumped them in the trunk. He went back upstairs and took a second load of tapes. On his third trip, he noticed Firebug leaning against the entranceway wall, arms crossed over his chest, head lowered. They studied each other. Tom waited for Firebug to ask what he was doing. Firebug glanced at the bulging knapsack and then at Tom. He seemed to be waiting for Tom to say something. Tom could feel Firebug watching him as he walked out the front door and into the hallway.

He poured the tapes in the trunk. They’d soon find out if Jeremy noticed his homemade porn was
MIA
. If Tom left now, he was guaranteed to leave without a scene. But since he was staying with Paulie, she’d suffer the same things he did if Jer went ballistic. Better to face him while he was feeling good and surrounded by witnesses. Tom headed back to the condo and waited by the elevator, checking his watch every few minutes. He gave up and started up the stairs. Near the top, he met people from the party concentrating seriously on making it down the stairs in a hurry. Maybe there was a fight going on. Or maybe Jer had broken out the karaoke machine.

By the time he reached the twenty-seventh floor, the last crush of people had pushed their way in the elevator and the doors were chiming shut. The condo was open. The floors and tables were littered with liquor bottles and dusty hand mirrors. The Gypsy Kings played in the background. Tom heard someone moving in the kitchen, but when he got there, he didn’t see anyone. On the counter by the sink, Tom recognized Jer’s briefcase, shiny and expensive-looking metal. He shook his head as he snapped the case shut on the stacks of hundred-dollar bills and the three keys of coke. Jer was getting seriously sloppy. Tom swung the briefcase off the counter.

“Jer?” Tom said. He heard someone moving behind the butcher’s block. “Jer?”

The call he’d made to the 911 operator was later used as evidence. Tom’s voice, unsteady and breathless: “He looks bad, he looks real –”

“Shut up!” Jeremy yelled in the background. “Shut up!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” the 911 operator said, her voice low and soothing. “You’ll have to repeat that. What is your cousin’s condition?”

“He did some bad blow. He’s crawling around and he’s throwing up blood and he’s got blood coming out of his ears and his nose. There’s blood all over, it’s all over.”

“Shut up!”

“Did he inhale, smoke, or inject the cocaine?”

“I think he snorted it. It’s still on the counter.”

“What room are you in?”

“We’re in the kitchen and there’s blood everywhere. Jeremy! Jeremy!”

“Calm down, Tom. The ambulance is almost there.”

“Jeremy! Wake up!”

Jeremy curled up on his kitchen floor. Tom shakily felt for a pulse and didn’t find one.

“He’s not breathing,” Tom said. “He’s not breathing and he has no pulse.”

“Tom, you’re going to have to perform
CPR
,” the 911 operator said.

“He’s got stuff in his mouth.”

“Is it vomit? Turn him onto his side and clear out the vomit before you begin mouth-to-mouth.”

“He’s on his side.” Tom stuck his fingers in Jeremy’s mouth and fished out chunks. The sweaty, bloody cordless phone slipped out from between his neck and his head, squirted out like a banana from its skin and slid across the floor. “Shit!”

He turned Jeremy onto his back, and Jeremy’s arm flopped, hit the marble with a smack. He could hear the operator’s voice, tinny and distant, but was too busy feeling for Jeremy’s sternum to pick up the phone. He pushed, hoping it wasn’t too hard. He couldn’t remember how many times he was supposed to do compressions. He couldn’t remember how to give mouth-to-mouth. There was a mnemonic, something about airways,
AIR
, something like that. You had to tilt the head back. Or forward. He needed to talk to the operator and had decided to reach for the phone when the paramedics jogged efficiently through the kitchen door. They shoved him aside when he was too stunned to move.

Tom had no idea where the spleen was or what it did, but the doctors and nurses he caught in the hallways assured him that it was an organ Jeremy could live without.

“He’s going to live?” Tom said.

“Are you a relative?” one of the nurses said.

“Yes. Can I see him?”

“Not right now. Please sit down. Please take a seat, and someone will come out and talk to you.”

“But everyone’s been saying that and no one’s done it.”

“Have you contacted Mr. Rieger’s family?” she said. “The phone is right over there.”

He phoned Paulie first, explained why he wouldn’t be home that night. The phone line crackled as he waited for her to speak. He thought she’d yell. She sighed.

“I can’t believe you saved him,” she said, and then hung up.

When he phoned Aunt Faith, he did not give details. He picked up the phone in the Emergency room and called her collect.

“It’s late,” she said, and then, joking, “It must be bad news.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom said. “It is.”

“Is it Christa?” she said, her voice shrill with hope or alarm. He preferred to think alarm.

“I’m afraid it’s Jeremy.”