I can’t explain why this is my job. I didn’t ask for it. Bodies—their bodies—are what it costs, but I don’t know why it’s me who has to pay. It’s a mystery. Like so many things.
At The Deserter, a bar so far off the strip you practically need a passport to drink there, I cruise slow past the nearly empty lot before I spot it—a decade-old Civic, tinted windows, the color of pencil lead. Invisible. The neon strung like veins beneath my skin starts to shudder and blink. I swerve into the lot, earning a blat of complaint from oncoming traffic, turn off the car and wait.
In a little while, a woman emerges, toddling on three-inch heels. Cigarette laugh and racoon eyes. I cross my fingers, hold my breath, wish her towards the Civic—she doesn’t disappoint. A drunk cowboy follows her, watches her fish out her keys, drop them, giggle. Would you? she points, pouting cartoonishly. As he bends to scoop them up with a hearty yes, ma’am, I step from the darkness and kick his head in.
I connect. The rush, the frisson of winning rides up my thighs, a wave, clinches low and hot in my belly.
A small oof escapes him, a little puff of surprise.
I stomp him like a cigarette.
Her eyes are wide, her mouth wider. Before she makes a sound, I smother it with my hand and take her like the break I need: roll her into the backseat just like I’m rolling a pair of lucky dice, weighted, shifty, loaded as guns, loaded as words like love or why or filth or sick or do you know what they do with boys like you?
So much depends on luck in this town, the clicking, whirring, hidden works that drive the world. I always try to make my own.
Hours later, spent, I drive the Civic—anonymous, unremarkable—into the desert. Thunk-clink! goes the universe, another reel slamming into place while the one-armed bandit spins. The body tumbles in the trunk, those bones just shakin.
St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, sways on a cord from the rearview mirror, watching over us. We all have good luck charms, don’t we? The finger bone of the saint, polished to a sheen by sweaty fingers. The plug nickel for the jukebox, a memory of tongue and spit. The long con of hope. We touch them, kiss them, hang them from our necks, all to try to keep the plates in the air. Maintain a balance. Balance the books—
Am I in your good books, Baby?
I nearly jump out of my skin. She giggles, her small, clever hand slipping up my leg. Jerks her head toward the backseat. I did good, huh? Her eyes gleam, a racoon browsing a casino dumpster.
There’s winners and losers, but the House always wins. I can’t tell you why it’s me that must keep accounts, or why these bones are the coin required. St. Christopher swings blithely overhead, having failed to save the traveler who once owned this blessedly nondescript car, while the cowboy carried St. Martin in his wallet, the patron saint of those who hope strangers will aid them. Two bad-at-their-job saints for two—lucky, but not yet a streak. Luck is a mystery, like so many things.
I glance at the loser next to me and grin. Decide to roll the dice.
Jennifer Maloney writes poetry and fiction; find her work in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, (Nov-Dec 2023), Synkroniciti Magazine, Literally Stories and many other venues. She is the author of Evidence of Fire (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023), a hybrid chapbook, and the full-length hybrid book Don’t Let God Know You are Singing (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2024). Jennifer is a parent, a partner, and a very lucky friend, and she is grateful, for all of it, every day.
Published 10/31/24