Medium Rare

Naked summer. Humid afternoon with insouciant bird chatter and the faint buzz of insects. A fungal pool of smelly water in a ditch by the road. A perfect day to hate.

I drive at a cautious pace, along a narrow and gravelled road that negotiates through a shaded neighborhood.The window is wound low; it invites a pungent breeze into my box-ugly red Hyundai. The windshield wears a diagonal crack and reminds me of life: it gets on my nerves to look at sometimes.

I pull into the cemetary looking for a cleanly shaven guy in worker overalls. He tends to the grounds and makes sure the place is picturesque, respectable. The bushes are trimmed, the lawn is neat and resplendant with tombstones and floral arrangements. His champagne colored Malibu is parked by the entrance, but he is on the clock so I have to meet him inside. I drive around looking for him. I see a few people on the cemetary grounds, a garden of baldheads and dark suits congregated about a marble bedside, stealing each other's words. I feel out of place but I wait. Underneath a bark-skinned giant. Its gnarled fingers cup the noon rays, spilling starlets over earthen shade. The car engine croons deliciously. He pulls up in a brown caddy a minute later and we act like friends. I hand him a wad of cash and he slips a bag of powder into my hand as I shake his. He asks how things are in general, then he asks how things are with my girlfriend. My lovelife is spinning down the toilet. She weakens my bowels but I carry on. Everything’s copacetic, I tell him. He met her once but he always asks about her. He grins when we part ways. I call him Blue.

Clouds ambush the setting sun. The scene broods red. Lights on in my apartment. In the living room I pace with a tuning fork in my head. I ring up Shirley and ask if we can spend the evening together. I apologize for the thousandth time for snapping at her. But she has other engagements. She can’t make time. Click. Green solutions slither from ill-suited cracked china and scald like the phone in my hand. We haven’t seen each other in two weeks. How can she be so indifferent? I’m neurotic about her. When I try her cellphone again, I get no answer and my thoughts shift from vivid to hallucinatory—from desire to distrust. I grab my car keys, cut the lights off, drink a quick glass of water and eye the cool bottle of unopened gin before I shut the fridge. I leave after making sure the apartment is locked.

The evening air is full of distant car noises and crumbs of dialogue. Harsh laughter erupts a few blocks away, clubmusic reiterates a catchy bassline from some houseparty in the distance. The nascent Saturday night ambience promises a good time if one is looking for it. I drive with an elbow perched on the window and smoke with a detached air, punctuating my absentmindedness with an occassional flick of cigarette ash. Embers scatter out the window. A thousand hooks tug at my skin. I’m the banana in a baby’s grip and she’s killing me the way she just carries on like I’m nothing to her. We need to talk.

I didn’t expect it to be there—her black Honda Civic. And parked alongside Blue’s champagne Malibu. Is he servicing her too? I park in a residential complex across the street from hers. I turn off the headlights and I watch for twenty minutes, conniving, loathing the woman, the meddler and myself most of all and missing the gin in my fridge. Wishing I had a gun, a knife, anything I could inflict some damage with. Blue has been sleeping with her all along. I can’t even think straight. I’m walking by a pregnant dumpster. A chorus of ugly flies issue from its bowels with a stench so brutal it arrests the breath in my nostrils. Strands of hair intermingle with rotten fruit. I drive home half dead.

Night. She quivers on the horizons of a steaming skillet, unsettling my conscience with her poisons. I’ve had it. My gin is two gulps shy of an empty vessel, but an irrepressable stimulant leaks from my glass, urging me to destroy something. Smash anything. Shirley is still not answering my calls. She’s ignoring me but I can’t help thinking how wonderful she is. Here I am, impotent as the cigarette stub at my fingertips. I can’t get over her! I build a wish, but the engines blow out halfway to the fucking moon. My delusions come crashing into earth with fists that leave craters in the plastered walls; blood stains its jagged surface. Desire is unrequited and pugilistic. Angst music bullies through the speakers as I rip the apartment to pieces. Thank God, the neighbors don't intervene.

Domicile. Disfigured. Over which, one movie poster keeps a curious vigil. With the leer of an imbecile. I stare at the black-and-white print of a demented DeNiro and my vision flickers black light into a dank hallway. The image won’t be still. My apartment has become a warzone. I keep thinking about Shirley and the guy she’s with right then. I seethe and stagger into the kitchen, yank at the cabinet and silverware crashes to the floor. Steaknife. I smear the white tiles to grab it. I’m not responsible for my thoughts when I walk away. Painful tremor in the corner of my head. Finish the drink, you bastard. I guzzle fire and shove the cutter into my cargo pocket. Fuel dribbles down my chin. Ready when you are.

It crosses my mind as I zigzag towards the box-ugly that Blue might have a gun. Shirley. But he won’t get the chance to use it. I reassure myself with a cigarette as I roar into the street. It tastes crazy but I swallow it anyway. Who the fuck does she think she is? I piece the scene together in my soggy head: park outside her apartment; wait till he steps out, then stick it in his throat. No talking. And if she screams, then what? I might have to force my way in. Yeah. I’ll just walk up to the place and kick in the door because she’s probably changed the locks. He’ll want to do the chivalry thing. But he can’t defend her with a hole in his throat. The night will split when she screams. I try to fixate on that, ignoring other details, like a blur of crimson, or the stop sign that just zoomed by. I bestir a devilish karma and, suddenly, my tail is a strobe light wailing blue and white. Catch me. If you can.

I make sharp turns and drive on the curbs, an indiscriminate trajectory of molten music. Speed. Into an intersection where the minivan swerves to avoid me, its befuddled driver nearly killing her kindercargo. A seasoned greeting crowds the rear. Seems like Santa brought the whole cavalry. I careen from lane to lane, my foot dead on the accelerator. Pedestrians jump for safety at the next intersection. I graze one, lose control. Head lights beam across the wooden park sign and a migraine fires through my skull. I slam the brakes, nearly blacking out as I crash through green gauze, missed volleys and five flood-lit tennis players with split-seconds to get out of the way. They get lucky. I jump out, tumble over blue fumes and charcoal trails as the Hyundai skids into the tennis net. Suffer to my feet but the cops are almost upon me. I’m a nightmare trapped in widescreen, a guest in a house full of carnivores and my feelings are raw. The knife is a glint in my hand. An invisible assailant punches me in the chest. I grit a curse and my throat clogs. With metal saliva and salvation gripped stubbornly, I charge the officer once more. This time I hear the guns go off, stumble backwards. And fall awkwardly.

The grainy court goes soft. I am melting. And Shirley crosses my mind—the thought of her, in a moist bed, with someone else making her scream his name. The silhouettes surround me like fingers crowding a meal; their voices are frothed with static. A tender light suffuses me, minces my defiance into mushy tendrils of surrender. My world leaks into a luminous unknown and I am like canola oil; there's so little of me that clings to the sieve. Blue is an alter ego who peddles daydreams in cheap plastic bags, a dealer of serenities whose indenture is forever. I wait for a cleanly shaven guy dressed like an open sky. He spills from the liquid yawn of an outstretched path. And the cemetary pulls into spidercracked view.