The Winner: Part Twenty-nine

The cell phone Burke gave to me has been ringing for some time, but I’ve just been staring at it in a half-asleep, half-awake daze. I set the ringer to the Beethoven’s Ninth ringtone. I must have been in an ironic mood when I set my harbinger of doom to the “Ode to Joy”.

Anyway, the electronic classical abruptly ends. A few seconds later it announces NEW VOICEMAIL, and 3 MISSED CALLS. Then it stays silent for maybe thirty seconds before another incoming call starts the music again. This time, I drowsily pick it up and press the SEND button. “I’m sleeping.”

“It’s nine-thirty,” Burke says. “You can’t afford to be asleep or to dodge any more of my calls. All I have to do is press send on a text message I’ve already got punched in and you, the stripper, her children, and your mother will all die.”

“You’ve told me that a million times already,” I cough. My mouth feels dry, like it’s glued shut with saliva. “Just let me sleep another fifteen minutes.”

“Seeing as this is the day you’re going to die, I figured you’d want to savor every last breath. I figured you’d at least like to see one last sunrise.”

“What’s there to savor about life?” I grunt, sitting up in my pile of blankets I have laid out across the floor. “As far as I’ve seen, life is a great big steaming pile of shit.”

Burke chuckles. “Haven’t you ever heard the old maxim that the world is what you make of it?”

Har-de-har-har. “Well, it’s too late for me to do anything about that now, isn’t there?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Burke says. “Listen, I’d love to talk with you, the condemned, about life the universe and everything, but it’s the big day and we’re on a tight schedule. I’ve sent some men to pick up the stripper at your apartment. They will be at your door in twenty minutes to escort her to an undisclosed location where her children will be released to her.

“Five minutes after the men have left, go downstairs from your apartment. The limousine the Secret Service has sent to pick you up will be there to drive you to the country club. Please take a quick shower and shave and dress presentably. You will be provided with casual wear at the club to wear on the course.”

“Don’t worry. I shaved and showered the other night and I’m gonna wear the suit you assholes left for me at the Brown Palace,” I say. I don’t tell him that the pants of that suit have a huge cumstain next to the crotch. However, you can’t really see it when I button up the jacket, so I didn’t waste money getting it dry cleaned. “So I guess I’ll be downstairs in twenty-five minutes, dressed and with my golf clubs, ready to go. Oh wait…I don’t own any golf clubs. It looks like your plan is fucked.”

Burke laughs. “Oh my god! Six months of meticulous planning and I forgot one little detail that will bring everything to a crashing halt! What am I gonna do, massa? Slap my ‘fro!”

That sonofabitch is mocking me. Well, we’ll see who has the last laugh today.

“Just do as your told, cracker boy. Be ready. It’s game time.”

And the phone goes dead. It’s game time…what a fucking homo, but I’m still too sleeper to properly sneer at his idiotic phrase.

As I climb out of my nest of blankets, I go into the bedroom where Apple is sleeping. Or at least is supposed to be asleep. She’s sitting in the chair, staring out at the window at the midmorning sun. I hadn’t bothered tying her to the bed last night. I was betting that her desire to get her children back would keep her from running off and telling the police. Guess it paid off. I pick up the last dose of methadone from where I hid it in the corner, as well as the bottle of asthma medication.

“Apple…”

Her head snaps in my direction, like I’ve startled her. “What? What’s going on?”

“It’s time. The men who are going to take you to get your children are going to be here real soon.” I pop open the childproof cap on the bottle and shake out five pills. She needs to be awake, but not jittery. “Here. Take your medication.”

She pops all of the pills right away, then washes it down with the thimble of methadone. “Do you have a shot?” she asks after swallowing the pills. “I could really use one right now? I’m so scared.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m all out. Besides, you need to have your head clear to get through today. Now, you remember everything you have to do, right?”

“I get my kids. I take a cab to the bus station. I call you by two-thirty from the payphone in the corner. If anyone is following me or forcing me to do something, I say ‘I’ll see you on Friday’ into the phone. Then, I get on the bus to Oklahoma and call you again when I get there so you can send me some money. Is that everything?”

“Yes. Very good,” I say as I pet the back of her head (although the part about me even being able to send her money when this is all over is pretty much a no-go at this point). “Here, get dressed. Those people are going to be here real soon.”

I start getting up when Apple suddenly snatches my hand. “You promise this is really gonna all be over after today?”

“Yes,” I say reflexively, although that’s more of a hope than a promise at this point. All the pieces are in place. There’s nothing more that can be done except to see this through and hope that everything happens as I planned it. I will either be dead or spending the rest of my days in a cell in Guantanamo Bay. And while that hardly sounds like an ideal outcome to most people, at this point, it sounds almost relaxing. I’ll have no worries except my day-to-day existence. No future to worry about, no past to worry about catching up to me since it will have already caught up. At least on this trip to prison, I won’t have to deal with being butt raped since the terrorists locked up in there don’t seem to hyped on the man on man thing.

Apple still hasn’t let go of my hand while I let my mind wander through my future of open-air cells in sunny Cuba. “Poopy, I have to tell you something.”

“Well, hurry and tell me because they’re gonna be here soon.”

She takes a deep breath. “I hate you…”

“Thanks, is that it?”

“No, let me finish. I hate you, but it’s more than that. Since you came into my life, everything seems to be going bad. I lost my job as a stripper, my boyfriend went missing, my children were kidnapped. I can barely even remember the last few weeks. Just a few days ago, I wanted to do nothing more than die. But I had a thought last night. It was one of those big thoughts, you know, an important thought…”

“An epiphany?” I say. I want get this maudlin shit over with so I can get ready.

“Yeah, what you said: an epiphany. I realized that my life was shit long before you ever came into my life and the more I thought about it, it’s been shit for as long as I remember. And when you came into my life, it was like you broke the dam of shit that has been building up in my life…”

“Okay,” I say, not knowing where this is going. “And?”

“Poopy, you made me realize that I’m shit. I’m a shitty woman. I’m a shitty mother. I lead a shitty life. I’m less than garbage. And while part of me hates you for showing me that, another part of me wants to thank you for showing me what I really am. I just don’t know what to feel any more.”

She starts crying. Fuck. I gotta say something so she can pull it together. Those guys are gonna be here soon.

“Apple, you’re not shit. You just got stuck in a shitty situation. I feel bad about what’s happened, even though most of it isn’t my fault, but I want to help you…you know…climb out of the shit and continue on as you did before. Maybe you can redeem yourself and maybe stop being such a shitty person. Which is not to say that I think you’re nearly as shitty as you keep saying you are but…aw fuck…I’m just talking in circles here. Listen, just get through today and everything else afterwards should be peachy keen, okay?”

“You…you promise?”

“Yes. For the second time, I promise you everything will be fine. Now will you please get up and get dressed? You’re gonna have to go soon.”

Apple keeps on crying, but at least she does get up and starts to put on the clothes I have laid out for her. I throw on the suit. Since it’s the last decent thing I have to wear any more, I left it folded neatly so I wouldn’t have to pay to get it pressed. Besides the cum stain on the front, I think it should look acceptable enough to not throw up any red flags. I still feel sluggish and barely awake after I put it on. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to dash out to Starbucks and waste the last five dollars I have to my name on some burnt, overpriced coffee, so I take four tablets of the asthma medication I’ve been feeding Apple to get her conscious and dry swallow them. It feels like they only get half way down my esophagus before getting stuck, so I start swallowing my spit trying to force them the rest of the way down into my stomach.

I hear a knock at the door to the apartment. Has it really been twenty minutes already? I look over at Apple who is pacing the carpet in front of the window. “They’re here. Are you ready?”

“I think so.”

“Do you remember everything you’re supposed to do?”

“Yes.”

I wave her over to the living room. “Come on then.”

Whoever is at my door keeps pounding incessantly. “I’m here! Fucking quit it!” I yell as I slide off the chain and undo the bolt. The door opens before I can touch the knob and in strolls the goatee guy and his buddy from the car.

“Please, come in,” I say as I close the door behind them.

I look at goatee guy and say, “Long time, no see,” then I stick my hand out to him. He instinctively reaches out to shake it, until at the last moment he pulls away, remembering where that hand was the last time he saw me. I grin at his disgust.

“Is this the woman?” the goatee guy growls.

“What? No ‘Hello’, ‘How have you been?’”

He is not taking kindly to my fucking with him, and he shows it by opening up his jacket and unholstering his Sig Sauer with a silencer screwed into the barrel. His thumb brushes the safety menacingly.

“I’ll ask you again, is that her, Mr. Peanutz?” he says, gesturing towards Apple.

“Who the fuck else would it be?”

Apple speaks up. “Are you gonna take me to my kids?”

Goatee guys says nothing. With his other hand, he pulls a black shroud out of his jacket pocket and tosses it at Apple’s chest. “Put that on and we’ll go.”

I snort. “That’s a bright idea. I’m sure no one will notice you leading a woman with a black hood over her head out of an apartment complex at gunpoint.”

“Let us worry about that, faggot,” he says, then looks over at Apple. “Put that on now or I’m leaving and dumping your kids in the river in a Hefty bag, bitch.”

Apple winces at the thought. She finds the opening to the shroud and starts putting it on her head. Before she pulls it down over her eyes, she looks at me says quietly.

“I love you Poopy Peanutz.”

At this point, I figure I should say something like, “I love you too” but I’m too speechless. Of all the things I expected her to say to me at this moment, this was the one I never expected her to say. She pulls the shroud over the rest of her face and Goatee guy sticks his pistol back in his holster and marches over to her. He grabs her by the elbow and starts leading her through the door. I think she’s about to lose her balance, but after stumbling a few steps, she’s walking just fine and goes up and out the door. I listen to their footsteps as they walk down the hall and the ring of the elevator as they call it to our floor.

I feel something swelling in my chest, realizing that this will be the last time I will ever see Apple. I’m so absorbed in this thought that I don’t realize that the driver is still in the room with me.

“Remember to be downstairs in five minutes, Peanutz,” he says. He walks to the door, then reaches down to the side and lifts a large bag and places it in the room. “When you go, take these with you.”

It’s a bag of golf clubs. Go figure.

The driver leaves, graciously closing the door behind him. I look at the LCD clock on the microwave just as the minute changes. I’ve got four minutes now. What do I do with these four minutes? Well, I really have to take a piss, so I go walk back through the path of trash in my apartment to the bedroom, unzip and let it loose. I don’t even bother to lift up the seat since I’m never coming back to this place again. I only bought this place a few months ago and I already miss it.

I finish up and shake the last few droplets of urine off my schlong (they inevitably miss the toilet bowl and end up as tiny dark wet spots on my trousers). Looking at the toilet, my guts start growling and I realize I could really take a dump right now as well, even though I can’t. In fact, if I even hope to survive today, I’ve got to hold off on that part, at least for the time being.

I hoped that taking a piss would eat up more time, but when I walk back in to the living room, the clock says it only took me one minute. Even though when I leave here, it inevitably either means my death or permanent imprisonment, I still feel anxious to leave. I stand there and the clock ticks off another minute. I pick up the golf clubs and step out the door. It will take me at least a minute to take the elevator downstairs.

I take it down to the first floor, then walk out of the lobby and onto the street. It’s nice and sunny and warm out here; a terrific spring day. It’s almost as if nature is mocking me. Or maybe I was just me hoping somewhere deep in my soul that it would snow today so they’d have to call off this fucking game. No such luck, and in fact, just as I step outside, the towncar that’s supposed to drive me to the golf course pulls up. Such perfect timing.

The trunk pops open and I walk over and throw my clubs inside recklessly. It lands on top of another golf bag and probably nicks the wood on the clubs, but fuck it and fuck them. I pull down the trunk and I think I have it close but the latch doesn’t take and it pops up again. I grab it and shut it again, this time with all the pent up aggressiveness I can muster. I shut it so hard that the rear shocks of the towncar groan a little bit.

“Please sir,” I hear a familiar voice in front of me. The driver of the car has gotten out to help me, “You don’t need to slam it.”

I’m about to yell fuck off, until I realize it’s Burke. Burke? What the fuck is he doing here? He opens the passenger door of the towncar and gestures for me to get inside.

“Please sir, we are on a tight schedule today.”

I look at him incredulously. “What are you doing here? What’s going on Burke?”

He smiles, showing off the contrast of his gleaming white teeth to his dark skin. “Please Mr. Peanutz, I need you to get inside,” he says. “And today, please call me Agent Burke…”