The Pharmacist

The sign said "vibrators," right at the top of the list, in big red letters. The other items included Netty pot's, heating pads, nicotine patches and other hodgepodge, but "vibrators" caught Melanie's eye and made her smile. She needed toothpaste, not the dark green gelatinous mass they offered at the shelter that tasted like old lady candy, but a nice thick abrasive paste. She wanted to scour the enamel like a porcelain sink. She longed for erosion.
Making sure she appeared to have purpose, eyes scanning her surroundings while keeping her chin determinedly up and forward, she had almost entered the drugstore/check-cashing establishment on 42nd, but an argument wasn't suing inside between the stouts Pakistani man behind the counter and an older grizzled black man she recognized from a shelter she frequented. She had gotten along well with this man, and had never seen the symptoms of his personality disorder. She didn't ever want to, so she had continued walking, knowing somewhere on some corner nearby there must be a Walgreens, surely there must be. But as she walked, she drifted further and further away from the familiar, away from the pawn shops and cricket stores and gas stations and Liberty Tax services she knew from hanging around this rescue mission or that shelter. The air grew quiet and missed Halo the streetlights. She felt as if she had wandered into someone else's dream. It had to be someone else's, because she had stopped dreaming long ago.

Stinkfoot

The gym is quieter today, now that April is here and people have abandoned their New Year's resolutions. There are more than enough treadmills, and yet the round guy with the rattail of gray hair dangling down his neck chooses one right next to me. Even if you were three down and across from the entrance, through which a spring breeze sometimes blows, anyone could smell him still. I admit I don't shower before I come to the gym. But what would be the point? I slather on a layer of Speed Stick, just in case, but even without it, I could never approach the level of stench this man exudes. She's always smiling as he trots away, perhaps finding the power of his olfactory reach amusing. Perhaps it's funny to him that we all must breed inin his pugnacious fumery, and none of us can escape or even have the balls to react. It's a smoldering, almost peppery smell, a hint of moldy orange peel and vinegar rounds out the bouquet. And something else that reminds me of Tijuana. The way the dust clung to you. The smell of bad meat cooking. Morning-after tequila breath and sour milk. Wet dog. But it smells good to you when you are clinging to life suspended on the wire of pain. I held that duffel bag to my chest like a child's teddy bear. Breathed in the sweet scent of the stained and mildewy canvas. The movement of the bus had brought team met toward through me like bullets. But I didn't let go of that bag. The entire ride, someone seem to be carrying a basket of fish, perhaps hundreds of baskets of them, the briny smell hanging like Christmas lights around our heads, cut briefly sometimes by the greasy smell of sun-baked scalp. So many heads, all bobbing and jiggling as the road would have them. In Nogales, I stepped out and vomited against an aloe plant. The hotel at which I stayed was overrun with cats.

The Kidnapping

I'm on my way to somewhere I shouldn't be going, when the limo pulls alongside me slowly, its shiny black sides catching my eye just enough like a shark catches a deep-sea diver's as it swishes past. Limos are not scarce here, but ones thatstop for me are. The tinted window lowers, and I know it's Lisa instantly. Her hair red like Georgia mud, with a gleaming part in the direct center. Those eyes deep and dead like a doll's and the two front teeth that peek out just below her lips which she has painted the usual oxblood red. I am about to say "Ahoy" when she shouts out: "Get in quick! Quick!" The urgency in her voice is powerful and I find myself sliding in next to her when she opens the door, even though I will be late to my appointment which I ought not to have made. She has a padded envelope in her hand that has already been stamped and addressed. She wears a very short cotton dress, black, with the corseted middle and a halter top. Each her stockings are patterned with running stags. She is barefoot and wearing no jewelry, which is unusual. Her white chest stands out between the straps of her dress like a blank screen. Sweat has gathered in the crease between her breasts, and on her forehead. I start to ask her how she is, where she's going, what she's up to, when she demands, "Give me your phone." I begin to think there's some emergency, that some dire situation has driven her to flagged me down and not any desire or particular affection for me, but I still hesitate. Not the message from the person I am meeting but my wife's texts are what I'm ashamed to hand her. But I do anyway. I feel suddenly that I want her to see the code. 6 0 5 6 6 9 means come now or else. 6 0 5 5 2 8 3 means the phone calls to my wife start. I've been not avoiding her anger, but letting it crystallize and form shards. I want to tell Lisa what the code means. I want to hear her read the numbers aloud in a stern voice. But when she takes the phone, she doesn't even look at it. She stuffs it into the envelope with wads of bubble wrap and seals the opening. "I certainly hope that's addressed to the Department of Homeland Security," I say, "because it contains a detailed terrorist plot by a cell I've been tracking." I like to tell people I am CIA. I like to say the scar on my lip is from the kickback of a colt 45 and not from my having bit myself after coming off a bender and having a seizure. But I know Lisa does the same thing. She says she is a double agent for the anti-Zionist front, for the Communists in Korea, for Al Qaeda, for the Russians. She even fakes very convincingly that she can speak Chinese. Sometimes when a phone rings she pretends it is a signal that places her under remote control. Must kill executive producer Goldberg. Must kill codename BART. Must kill whoever's in the god damn room at the time. But she's terrified of guns.
"It's addressed to your house," Lisa says.
We come up to a mailbox, and she slides it in. Flip. Clunk.
"How dare you. Do you even know what you've done? Do you know what's on that phone?"
"You said you misplaced your wife's mailbox key, so who cares? Have I taken away your porn baby? Have I deposited your very soul in that mailbox? Can't you check the scores elsewhere? Can you not live without your tweets?"
"You're certifiable."