he said to me. Then he whispered to Ricky:
“It was Mudcap or us. Sorry, man. It'll be over soon.”
I doubt it was Dan the Man's thoughtful words, but Ricky stopped struggling. I felt that cold sinuous soul drift out of him and hopefully fly somewhere far away, to a starry place of thoughtless rest and coal black emptiness. Soon we were catching our breath, washing our hands in the sink, and staring down at a corpse that had once housed a good friend of ours.
Eddie yelled out, “it's done?” and we told him it was.
A real hit is never like it is in the movies. In a gangster flick, Ricky would've worn his nicest suit and shown up like a real man. He would've sat down on Eddie's couch and told us to go ahead. Pull the trigger already. We would've told him how nice it had been to work with him. Eddie would've given him a ten dollar cigar. Then POW!
That's what kills me about the movies. Guys are always staring right at certain death and never flinching. But from what I've seen, your toughest tough-guy would rather push his own mother down a flight of stairs than face death like a man. It's an animal reaction. When the squirrel sees the car tires coming, he turns and runs back to the side of the road.
Eddie never came in to look at Ricky. Me and Dan the Man wrapped him up in a new shower curtain that we'd bought at Target. We duct-taped around it a few times. A neat package. I stared at Ricky's face for a second or two before I wrapped around his head.
There was a scientist a long time ago, Duncan MacSomething, who tried to weigh the human soul. He did his research on guys who were dying from tuberculosis. According to his measurements, a slight bit of weight really does flutter off somewhere, right at the moment of death. But the results were hotly debated. Theologians—and even scientists—claimed that the soul, being strictly a spiritual entity, should be weightless.
I felt Crazy Al's ghost leave his body, didn't I? Maybe it was just the shivering of my own soul, knowing what road it had taken; knowing it could never turn back from that icy expanse.
And Moe's face was an awful mask that looked as though life's spark had never burned there at all. Nothing would change his dumb expression; not the taking of limbs, nor the removal of the head itself. Our bodies really are on loan: destroyed when the contract is up. I don't believe that Al and Moe and Ricky are playing the harp on some billowy cloud, but I hope for some kind of afterlife. I hope I grow wings. I hope God's soft hands wring all of this filth right out of me until I'm as pure as a honeybee, a grasshopper, a milksnake in the hay of a hot summer barn.
Eddie said goodnight to us, patted us on the back, and told us how proud he was to have guys like us around. Guys you could trust. Outside on his fake grass-turfed front porch, I peeked back through the slit between the curtains of the living room window, and saw him sitting on the edge of his recliner, head in his hands, his body kind of heaving up and down.
Dan the Man drove Ricky's Park Avenue. He had to push the seat back pretty far and adjust all the mirrors. I thought about that drive I'd taken with Ricky in the very same car, and how he'd given Santa Claus twenty bucks—and how Santa said God Bless You to him.
Sometimes the fresh memories are the worst. It's best when they fade, when you have to really struggle to re-assemble the face, the mannerisms. For the first few months, it's far too easy to conjure up the ghosts. You feel like a stage director, running through the same precious scenes, again and again, until you have them just right.
The world felt especially dark and pointless. I'm sure to someone else right at that moment, it was a real swell night; maybe to some high school kid, parked on a hilltop with his hand in his girl's pants, and her lips on his neck. That's the thing about the world: there are millions of versions of it, all of them happening at the same time.
I tipped my head
“It was Mudcap or us. Sorry, man. It'll be over soon.”
I doubt it was Dan the Man's thoughtful words, but Ricky stopped struggling. I felt that cold sinuous soul drift out of him and hopefully fly somewhere far away, to a starry place of thoughtless rest and coal black emptiness. Soon we were catching our breath, washing our hands in the sink, and staring down at a corpse that had once housed a good friend of ours.
Eddie yelled out, “it's done?” and we told him it was.
A real hit is never like it is in the movies. In a gangster flick, Ricky would've worn his nicest suit and shown up like a real man. He would've sat down on Eddie's couch and told us to go ahead. Pull the trigger already. We would've told him how nice it had been to work with him. Eddie would've given him a ten dollar cigar. Then POW!
That's what kills me about the movies. Guys are always staring right at certain death and never flinching. But from what I've seen, your toughest tough-guy would rather push his own mother down a flight of stairs than face death like a man. It's an animal reaction. When the squirrel sees the car tires coming, he turns and runs back to the side of the road.
Eddie never came in to look at Ricky. Me and Dan the Man wrapped him up in a new shower curtain that we'd bought at Target. We duct-taped around it a few times. A neat package. I stared at Ricky's face for a second or two before I wrapped around his head.
There was a scientist a long time ago, Duncan MacSomething, who tried to weigh the human soul. He did his research on guys who were dying from tuberculosis. According to his measurements, a slight bit of weight really does flutter off somewhere, right at the moment of death. But the results were hotly debated. Theologians—and even scientists—claimed that the soul, being strictly a spiritual entity, should be weightless.
I felt Crazy Al's ghost leave his body, didn't I? Maybe it was just the shivering of my own soul, knowing what road it had taken; knowing it could never turn back from that icy expanse.
And Moe's face was an awful mask that looked as though life's spark had never burned there at all. Nothing would change his dumb expression; not the taking of limbs, nor the removal of the head itself. Our bodies really are on loan: destroyed when the contract is up. I don't believe that Al and Moe and Ricky are playing the harp on some billowy cloud, but I hope for some kind of afterlife. I hope I grow wings. I hope God's soft hands wring all of this filth right out of me until I'm as pure as a honeybee, a grasshopper, a milksnake in the hay of a hot summer barn.
Eddie said goodnight to us, patted us on the back, and told us how proud he was to have guys like us around. Guys you could trust. Outside on his fake grass-turfed front porch, I peeked back through the slit between the curtains of the living room window, and saw him sitting on the edge of his recliner, head in his hands, his body kind of heaving up and down.
Dan the Man drove Ricky's Park Avenue. He had to push the seat back pretty far and adjust all the mirrors. I thought about that drive I'd taken with Ricky in the very same car, and how he'd given Santa Claus twenty bucks—and how Santa said God Bless You to him.
Sometimes the fresh memories are the worst. It's best when they fade, when you have to really struggle to re-assemble the face, the mannerisms. For the first few months, it's far too easy to conjure up the ghosts. You feel like a stage director, running through the same precious scenes, again and again, until you have them just right.
The world felt especially dark and pointless. I'm sure to someone else right at that moment, it was a real swell night; maybe to some high school kid, parked on a hilltop with his hand in his girl's pants, and her lips on his neck. That's the thing about the world: there are millions of versions of it, all of them happening at the same time.
I tipped my head
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