Chapter 13

The urge to kill Artie Tedesco had been mollified by his remembrance of the man who had come to visit him in his apartment with the package of brown sugar. He could still feel the man’s blunt index finger sticking him in the chest as he said, “don’t contact us. We’ll contact you.” He wasn’t so afraid about the threat. The man was intimidating, as he could have easily killed him with his bare hands if Artie ordered him to do so. But what concerned him more was what the man represented indirectly. If he bought a gun and did away with Artie, the same shadowy figure would always be after him. He would always have to protect himself against creatures like that—not run from them exactly, but always shield and protect himself against them. And after he kills Artie, or after he kills the shadowy figure, how many more of them would follow? How many more of them would he have to evade, or if he took a more pro-active approach, how many more of them would he have to kill in order to feel safe again?

There’s always a catch involved when slaying an enemy, he guessed. One would have to slay them for the rest of his life, and perhaps that slow progression towards that inevitable status is what development for a man was really all about. Or maybe not. He could dodge and evade too. He could somehow make his enemy his friend, as that’s what many religious texts call for. But if a man follows through on his anger and murders someone else, whether justified or not, he’ll be watching his back his entire life. He’ll be evading and ducking and running from tall, shadowy figures waiting for him in the dark, until at a moment of weakness, they finally catch up to him. And if he killed Artie, he’d have a long way to travel to hide from him, which he couldn’t do on probation, since he couldn’t leave the country at all. So does one accept being betrayed and made a fool of? Does one accept that someone just stole a thousand dollars from him? Does he stuff his rage and his anger inward, like stomping on dead leaves in a lawn bag and hoping that anger decays over time, now that he is forced to adjust to the dire circumstances of losing all of that money?

The middle path takes money, and he didn’t think he’d be able to sue Artie for a thousand dollars in a court of law. He couldn’t imagine having a municipal judge decide a case that involved an illegal drug deal gone wrong. He couldn’t think of any lawyer who would take the case either. He could have someone threaten him, but Artie was too protected for that. He had things like bodyguards and security cameras at his command. To settle disputes among criminals, firepower was the real court of law, and a man had to use as much firepower as necessary until some agreement could be brokered. And even though Charlie hated the idea of killing a man in cold blood due to the more moral and spiritual consequences involved, he couldn’t see the middle path, or any other path for that matter, as effective in dealing with someone like Artie.

Despite all of his talk about trying to help him with his weight and with his girl problems, Artie was simply another scumbag who preyed on the weak, and so Charlie had to do something instead of letting it slide and taking it on the chin as he had done so all his life. He would have to accept the consequences of killing him too. Artie’s friends would want Charlie dead. But this was far better than taking yet another blow from yet another boot heel that walked all over him. There was a limit to how many dead leaves he could stuff into a lawn bag The leaves had no choice but to spill out onto the rest of the world.

But it wasn’t something he wanted to do so quickly. As he bandaged up his nose in front of the bathroom mirror and rinsed off the dried splatter of blood from his face, he thought about telling Renee about what he planned to do. He wanted to tell her that he had reached a limit in his life and was about to open another door that brought him closer to death—or if one looked at it another way—moved him further along that number line towards maturity and actualization. To a higher number, in other words. There was no way to get rid of the anger except through revenge. Being brainwashed and all the exercise in the world wouldn’t contain it any longer.

He asked Renee to the coffee shop after the meeting the following night. She was reluctant to meet with him at first, but Charlie said that it was important, and so she obliged him.

“You look like shit,” she said to him. “What happened?”

“It was Artie,” he said. “He screwed me over.”

“Ah! Artie does that to everyone,” she said wistfully. “He does it to everyone he comes into contact with.”

“This time, though, he picked the wrong guy to screw over.” Renee laughed at this and then placed her hand on his.

“Aww, Charlie. I know you’re upset, but you see, you’ve been given a great gift. Now you never have to deal with Artie ever again. You’re in a position where you can’t deal with him ever again. He hurt you badly, and so you can’t run back to him. Your relationship with him is over, and that’s a gift, Charlie, not a curse. It’s a gift.”

“It’s not over yet.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m going to do away with him is what I’m going to do.”

“Hold on a minute. You’re going to do away with him? You’re not serious, are you? Correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m a little confused here. You’re going to do away with him and then somehow get away with it? Killing Artie isn’t an original idea. You aren’t the first one who’s tried by any means. There have been many who have wanted to kill him, but, you see, Artie winds up killing them first. I’ve accepted this as the way things work. And let’s say that you do kill him. You’ll wind up dead right next to him. Is that what you want?”

“It’s one less prick in the world as far as I see it.”

“One less prick, but two fewer bodies. You’ll die with him.”

“And what about you, huh? You want to be a slave to that bastard the rest of your life?”

“No, I don’t, but I’m not going to kill him either. That’s just not smart.”

“Well, what if I do it then? For the both of us?”

“Ha! Don’t do me any favors. Don’t think for a second that I’ll go along with it. What do want? My permission or something?”

“I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

“So you want me to talk you out of it? Is that it? Is that why we’re here?”

“No.”

“Then why even tell me about it, Charlie? I mean you sit there with your busted nose and those puppy dog eyes of yours, and you tell me you want to kill him for what he’s done to you. How does it involve me is what I don’t understand.”

“Because I’d be doing it for you too, Renee. The man needs to be stopped.”

“But why would you do that for me? I don’t want you to do that for me.”

“Because it has to be done, damnit.”

“Charlie, you’re not answering my question.”

“That’s because I can’t answer your question. I just want you to be free of him.”

“But why should you care if I’m free or not? What does it matter to you?”

Charlie could only sit in the silence of her question and look at her hair, her eyes, her nose, her skin. And then he looked at her as a man who’s attempt at winning her was futile and flawed and unlawful to begin with. His eyes quivered as a stared into hers. He could hardly hold his stare. And then she realized it.

“Oh, Charlie, no,” she said. “I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You would have just said no,” he said. “Besides, why would a girl like you be with a loser like me, right?”

“Charlie, I had no idea. Really. You should have told me.”

He couldn’t sit still in his seat any longer. There was something too honest about having her know. He got up and made for the door.

“Charlie! Wait!” she called.

He ran out of the coffee shop and into the night, almost like a boy who tries to flee his truancy. He ran underneath the sagging trees along an avenue that descended into the more urbanized zones of the town until he made it back to his apartment unsure if he should have told her or not. Maybe he just wanted to see her one last time before he bought the gun and murdered him—just one last look from her in that divine light of truth before the entire world came after him and set his body on fire as sacrifice and testament to the only thing that made sense on earth, that one iota of truth that had kept him staring at her, as though that essential blink of a moment was all that it took for the Fates to sharpen their scissors. He realized then how he had no right to her love, and because he didn’t, there was no pretending any longer that he didn’t need to kill Artie to become a full-functioning adult. It was the rite of passage he needed that held murder more sacred to humankind than any long narrative about a prophet who once sacrificed himself for humanity’s sins. He understood quite suddenly what to kill or to be killed actually meant. He was not going to sacrifice himself this time around. It was Artie’s turn, and Charlie would make sure of it. The only question involved how he would do it. He had little money remaining for a gun, but he would spend whatever he had left for it. He guessed he’d have to sneak onto Artie’s property in the middle of the night and kill him in his sleep, if such a thing could be done.

He fought the temptation to call him to arrange a meeting. He took the threat seriously that he shouldn’t contact him. He could have arranged a meeting, but this option was closed. He’d have to climb over the gate and hope he didn’t get caught. Artie’s front gate was always locked. An intercom system protected the property. But what he counted on was Artie’s cavalier attitude that thought of Charlie as too much of a flake to murder him. And this is what really chewed on Charlie’s nerves—the perception that he was indeed too much of a flake and too much of a weakling when these traits were simply misinterpretations made by arrogant people. All he was trying to do was judge whether or not killing another person was the right path to take. That’s not being flakey or being weak, he surmised. It was simply judging the fear of what would happen if he didn’t cooperate with a system that didn’t allow him to ascend beyond the number of his name. It was the fear, he figured, that was the main problem in his life—the fear to question, the fear to offend, the fear to tick someone else off, the fear to get involved in the lives of others, the fear to speak his mind or else suffer some fantastic punishment that the system certainly threatened him with but never acted on—just so long as he continued to pussy-foot around his problems and stay as quiet and innocuous as a mouse.

Charlie had been ruled by the fear of those punishments, and fear can sometimes be good for a man, since it then forces him to overcome them. But for many, this fear is crippling enough to sentence a man to his own slavery. And Charlie walked on that fine line now—that border between conquering his fears or letting them overtake him as they did every time. He would again have to stuff away those dead leaves of anger and wait patiently for their decay if he didn’t act. And the borderline that he rested on became unbearable that night, as his wanting to kill Artie then slipped into indecision, and then back into pro-action—a back and forth tug-of-war that found him pacing in his room wondering where he would get the gun. It wasn’t something he could get so easily in the town, but he did recall seeing an Army & Navy store that may have sold them. He wasn’t sure if they just sold pellet guns or the real thing. He decided to take a walk down there after he stayed awake the whole night, his mind racing and pushing the limits of its own rationality.

By the time morning came he was on fire with neurotic energy, the blare of sunshine through his window adding to a mad euphoria that just kept building. He had decided to kill, and because of this he was now king of the world—or so he thought. With every step he took towards the Army & Navy store, fits of mad anger interspersed with rampant energy accompanied his walk as though the power to kill had suddenly become his divine right, as all kings had that divine right.

He walked into a store that had just opened for the day. Camouflaged trousers, orange neon hunting vests, green tents and mosquito netting, fishing rods and reels, pea coats and ponchos, gold-plated belt buckles, and infantry patches were all arranged in meticulous order. A bleary-eyed sales clerk stood at the cash register. Charlie was his first customer.

“Do you guys sell guns by any chance?”

“Yes we do,” said the clerk, wiping away the sleep from his eyes. “They’re in the back.”

The clerk pulled out a set of keys and led him to a back room that featured hunting knives, both long and short, archery bows and steel-tipped arrows, and finally to a row of glass cases that displayed all kinds of guns. A wide wall rack of hunting rifles hung behind the display cases. The clerk didn’t say much, as he assumed Charlie knew what he was doing.

“Which do you recommend?” he asked.

“Depends on what you need it for,” said the clerk, suppressing a yawn.

“Just for protection.”

The clerk walked down the line of display cases and came to a stop above a row of revolvers and automatic weapons. Several of them were silver, and their metallic bodies gleamed in the light while others were black and heavy looking. They seemed to absorb the light like a black hole would.

“I’m a little short of funds,” said Charlie, “so I guess I’ll have to go with the cheapest one you got.”

The clerk unlocked the case and handed him a short, silver, snub- nosed revolver.

“It’s fitting, because this is also our most popular item around here,” said the clerk with a grin.

It felt heavy in his hand, his wrist barely supporting the weight of it. It felt strange in his hand too, and he was careful not to point it at the sales clerk, as though this act of decorum mattered much more than getting a feel for the weapon. He also bought a box of bullets, and after surrendering his state-issued identification card, which was entered into a computer along with the serial number of the gun. There were no red flags or bells and whistles that the clerk’s computer waved. The computer allowed him to purchase the gun without a problem. He left the store feeling a bit strange with it on him. He was not nearly as neurotic as before, as his overweight, flaccid self had supplanted the killer instinct that had brought him into the store earlier. Because it was the fear again—the fear of killing someone, the guilt and the shame of doing so, and knowing that he would also die if he killed Artie.