Drawing Dead (2 page)

Over what?

If I want your opinion on anything, I’ll just beat it out of you.

I stole that from some obscure z-grade Chuck Norris flick I’d watched whilst drunk with a semi-conscious whore at beginnings of a stale dawn. Sensation was too stupid to know this, or much anything else.

You didn’t come here to be a smartass did you Jack? I know you didn’t do that…Come on. Please.

I got nothing for ya. Not a thing pal. I’m tapped.

You owe ten Jack.

He let that sit for dramatic effect.

Ten.

Then added that to top it the fuck off.

Yeah well, I got a proposition for you Sensation.

A proposition? Whaddaya wanna do? That sounds a little intimate Jack, you wanna fuck me? Pay me back in homosexual activity and the like. No. You owe ten, and that’s not even figuring the fucking juice.

Give me another ten. Let me back in game. Another ten…

Another ten?

I could tell that my brazen ability to be an asshole had piqued his interest. He was either pondering the possibility of giving me the money, or thinking to himself just how easily he could kick my ass.

What can I tell you Sensation? They’re my fingers, my legs.

Jack, if you don’t pay us back our money in a timely and orderly fashion, it won’t be fingers and legs. It’ll be a life.

He was talking tough but straight. He hesitated a moment but I was pretty sure he was gonna go for it. What I wasn’t sure of, but was pretty pleased about, was that he hadn’t mentioned that he thought I was mondo drunk. Bourbon bombed and cut loose of the fury. That said I do hold my liquor like a muscle bound bull in heat.

Whatever you win on the ten tonight comes straight back to me and we subtract from the principal, plus any of the ten you may decide to give back on top of that. Conversely, if you fuck it up and lose it all then you owe twenty straight. We'll make the first collect in three days, just to see if you get it and if you have nothing we'll fuck you. Stiff us twice and we'll fuck you again. Three times and you're out Jack. Nothing will ever hurt again.

That was a real nice speech Sensation, you must practice that shit in mirror...Can I have the money?

He laughed at that. It was amusing to him how much of jackass I could be.

Yeah. Daisy…

Daisy, made sense for her to be called that, a flower fulsome and dazzling against the heaped up piles of refuse.

This is Jack. Get him ten large in chips, and add it in the owe column before you get back here.

Daisy walked off into a small further back room, couldn’t have been three metres away but the Sensation knew what I knew.

Love watching her leave.

All I could do was nod in like sentiment. Watching her every slight swing son. He went on unabated.

You drop ten of mine three days ago and then come back asking for ten more to win it all back. You either got a huge set of balls or you’re just some sort of asshole.

It’s the same thing.

Well yeah, it can be…

He saw me watching Daisy leaning over the table, counting out chips, her ass jutting out like God himself, and he took a long look too and then whipped round and came back at me again.

My main concern here is that maybe you don’t give a shit if you live, or if you die, 'cause I’ve seen that, it happens. I don’t know exactly what your story is Jack, but you could be there, you could. If that is the case, my money is in jeopardy, and my money is king here. You understand? So my question to you is…Do ya?

How’s a man to know to know a thing like that?

He just does Jack.

What are you… looking out for me?

I’m looking out for my money.

I took a breath and weighed up which way to play it. Over his shoulder Daisy was still bending over that table, blonde see-through sparks fizzing off her forever legs, sprouted out those red heels she wore then settling into the gleaming twin fleshy wholesomeness, the purity of it shone through in my polished speech.

I recognize, I do, it's business, and you know what I sometimes do for a living, you know so I won’t pretend like you don’t, I find guys like me for guys like you when they miss those important payments, you know that, what can I say to you, man to man, let’s try this, when I look at her, back there, ass out and hair down over her unclothed shoulders, it warms me, you know what I’m saying, I find it enthralling…that sound like a man about to cut his own wrists.

As soon as the words had left my mouth, a dreaded pain shot up through me, like poison being gushed into my vessels unwilling. The Sensation didn’t seem to notice, probably he didn’t care. He just looked back over his shoulder once more and gawked as Daisy wandered back on over. Chips in her pretty sky blue finger-nailed hands and a drop dead gorgeous smile on her maw.

Yeah, I’ll take that.

He meant my explanation. Then he put his arm around Daisy and squeezed her squirming close. I weighed up the kicking of him square in the groin. But to be honest my earlier poor choice of terms was still ringing in my heart and ears like a gunshot. And as Daisy handed me the chips and I watched her breasts shift against the yellow material of her stretched singlet, noticing abruptly that her nipples were at the early stages of showing through, I felt that perhaps I should have punched my own ticket already, 'cause life was a sham, a piece of fruit with a rotten core, an éclair with pus in the centre. The only girl I’d ever loved was being eaten by worms, and all I could do was think of the warm intensity of what must have the glory and marvel of Daisy’s delicious vagina.

I followed her over on a leash, her salacious grin holding off the grim and me tracing in her perfumed orbit. The chip rack in my hand like a boy bringing the Blessed Sacrament to the altar.

The game is alternating lowball and the jackals leer with their come-in-sucker smiles as I plant my ass in the seat. I can still see the meat in between their teeth from the last time they tore me apart. I give Daisy a hundred worth of chips and tell her to just keep bringing’em, she kneels down before me and whispers what and I look deep into her like she wants me to and say bourbon baby…club soda, bitters, handful of ice.

What do you call that?

I call it a ‘Counterbalance’. Made it up all by myself.

No you didn’t.

Did too. Put a lot of thought into it. Have one on me. If the Sensation says you can’t tell him I said in advance ‘To go and fuck himself’.

She laughed real nice at that, thought I was a regular riot. And she kept them coming just like I asked her to. Shimming back and forth in the muted fluorescent card-room light. Getting prettier as the planet spun on, as the night waned into nothing but overspill wax running down the side of a thin cheap candle.

I was up early on. I felt like shit but I was up. I could play Razz well and that was the game I sat down to. The dealer had a clock and the games switched up about every forty minutes. Apart from Razz, which is a limit game, they were playing no-limit Deuce to Seven single draw, followed by Badugi, which was being played no-limit too. When done in the rotation you went back to Razz. Like I said I could play Razz. And was up about four grand within twenty-five minutes of getting there. Got the wheel twice and had players with me calling my maximum raises to the death.

Daisy kept delivering the bourbons in a brilliant succession. I kept drinking’em like they were ice tea on a long summer’s day and I was out cruising my yacht on the Mediterranean.

The depression that had washed over me when I’d spoken those ill-gotten words earlier had taken over. The everything of nothing and the nothing of everything had slowly and relentlessly drilled down into the nucleus of my every cell. I was left sitting at a table playing cards with strangers in a room at the backend of a strip-club, drinking bourbons on a planet dropping through space into a fiery and inevitable destruction. Seeing her blood and wounds and face. Feeling the non-stop hunger and loneliness and suffering of life. The symbols on the cards reading like a noxious tarot, telling me everything will fade into torment –horrible, perpetual torment.

No not even Daisy’s liberal breasts against my shoulder as she served my drinks could pull me from my desolation. Oh how many times I stared into them firstly, into that savoured vortex and next into her eyes and could tell it was exactly what she wanted me to do.

I told myself to be a man…a man!

Buck up and ship out and grow a goddamned pair. Get a better job and a large mortgage and a brand spanking new girl too.

I had to take stock son and pull my over sized head outta my arse.

Thing is I’d become cognizant to the fact that to be a MAN, one must head to the Himalayas. I’d realised long ago that few deserved the title MAN, and the more aware I became the fewer were deserving. All that was left to do was climb a mountain and stare into the void for forty days and finally know that man does not yet exist and is in fact waiting to be hatched.

I could smell the blood before I actually saw her. I knew what she’d done. I knew she’d be dead. I tried to pull her from the bloody gutter and slipped in the dripping slick crashing to my knees. We used to fuck in the backyard on sunny days right under a fragrant lemon tree. Just lay a towel out on the dirt and grass and fuck, the sun booming, maybe drink a bottle of wine and watch the light filter down through the enormous jacaranda tree wrapped in vines whose lilac blossoms would rain soothingly down upon us though the iridescent luminescence. Falling into her hair while we fucked. There was a half dry smear of blood on her mouth and chin, as if she’d tried to drink of herself, or maybe blanch the bleeding back together with her teeth. And Daisy, beautiful, young Daisy, she kept bringing them drinks. And the cards kept landing at my fingertips too. And what I’d won I lost, and what I’d borrowed went too. All in a roaring roll of rumble like a celebration of my fated demise.

In a sudden drunken reprieve I somehow convinced the Sensation to lend me five more, and I pissed that away quicker than I did the other ten. Reveling in it without a hint of hesitation. Like a champion loser, undefeated in his ability to be overwhelmed.

Just me, Daisy, many drinks and the bloodstains tattooed on my hands.

It happened as fast as a stinging slap across my unsuspecting face. Left me breathless in the daze of the staggering blow and furthered the one I’d been reeling from even before I even sat down to receive this. When I’d run one outrageous bluff too many, when every chip was gone and I’d shot my mouth off just that little bit too much. I tried to walk out but was thrown. Jimmy, in his haste, spilt my godforsaken drink all over the fucking floor. Malicious threats drumming in my ears as I hit the street. I wandered about outside smoking and raging, calling on the Sensation to bring me one last drink. It was still dark, and was an idiotic request in light of all that had happened but I felt I was owed it.

All Jimmy kept talking about was the twenty- five grand I owed and I told that fat fuck that I was quite aware of the situation and could he bring me one more fucking drink. After he popped me in the gut I shut up about it. Went and sulked round the corner smoking my mostly mashed cigar sitting like a hobo in the dim alley, plotting on how best I could put the stogie out in Jimmy’s eyeball. I continued on talking loudly enough to myself so as he could hear ever word of it.

When she came round the corner I figured it was Jimmy was coming back to show me what’s what. I was hoping he would and had kept on like an asshole to make it so. This time I was gonna fight back, by then I’d said goodbye to all consequence. It was gonna be a fight to the death. Most likely my own.

It wasn’t Jim though. It was Daisy. Lovely, leggy Daisy.

Tough night.