Neal Pollack

I cranked Never Mind the Bollocks up to ten and took a deep breath to find my center. You should never rush moments like these; they simply do not come knocking all that often. I put the gun in his hand and, cupping mine over his, pointed it at his left shoulder. The sleeping pills did their work, and he barely twitched when I pulled the trigger. The scar, a death mouth tattoo, was going to be gorgeous. Now we all have what we want. I’m so happy.

Later, people will tell the cops they saw me leave the bar with him. People will say they saw me leave the apartment without him, maybe. I don’t care. I'’d tell them too. It’s just some fag with a fetish committing suicide. The city gives and the city takes away. The cops think we’re a freak show anyway. No matter, the police don’t care and his Christian foster parents sure as sin don’t care. I got tickled thinking about that. And so we part. I left the note he gave me, the one he wrote, for just such an occasion, under his left hand. He was right to leave it without a date and his thoughtfulness made me smile.

I lay one finger on his wrist. The throb was mine.

“Eduardo is full-on.” The phrase made me laugh and it echoed a howl in the quiet room.

“He’'s full-on.”

It was the first thing Matt had said to me about Eduardo.

And the last thing I said to Matt.

Eduardo was just coming off stage when I walked back in the club. He watched without moving as I covered the last distance between us.

“Well.”

“Like smothering a baby.”

“You are a wicked, wicked boy, Stephen.”

“I’m your wicked boy now. Any complain'ts?”

“Not from me. Come on, I want you to meet some people.”

He took my hand and drew me across the room behind him. The crowd gave way, then closed quickly over the wake of the new king.

LIKE A ROCKET WITH A BEAT

BY JOE MENO

Lawrence & Broadway

High black cat is the worst kind of luck. It’s the luck of knowing your ghostly number is up. It’s the luck of the zero, the no one. It’s the record that automatically plays whenever the radio comes on. Like Donna Lee with the trumpet blaring.

“Shirley stole this record too,” Seamus cursed. “She took this one.”

He’d borrowed a coupe and the night was warm so we were out driving. At the time, he was up to number nine. Mister Ten might go walking by anytime. “Pull over,” he said suddenly. I slowed the automobile down, figuring it quick.

At the corner of Broadway and Lawrence, there was Cannonball Adams, the piano player, with a girl, standing unsuspecting. He was telling her the ideas he had about her—her legs and hair, the way she looked like a movie star in the lights of the evening. She was buying it because she wasn'’t his wife. The girl was on the corner listening to the music Cannonball was whispering and he began leaning in at her with his enormous hands, and it was then that Seamus opened the passenger side door.

In a flash, Seamus was at the corner and had already slugged the fellah in the back of the neck. Seamus gave him two chops to the head and a shot to the kidney and then one more to the crown, which laid him out pretty well. Seamus hadn'’t fought in the ring in years but he could still move like lightning. Then the heartbreak. Seamus raised his foot up.

“No, no, not my hands, not my hands,” Cannonball pleaded, and he had hands unlike any other man, three times the size of most men’s, they were the hands of a monster really. Seamus snarled and stomped down hard with his size-elevens on the sap’s fingers, a step on the right, then the left, then back and forth, then again. The girl didn'’t like the idea. She swung her purse at the side of Seamus’s head. It only made him madder. He turned and grabbed the purse from her hand, then turned again. He came shuffling back to the automobile but he was slow now and sad. He closed the automobile door and I took off quick like that.

It was quiet for a while. The ghost of a small black cat cut across the snow, from one corner into a dark alley, its shadow stretching thin and long. That cat, and me seeing it, was just about the worst thing that could happen at that moment. I swore to myself. We went on driving and I looked at Seamus, and what he placed between him and me on the front seat made my eyes ache, but badly. It was the girl’s white purse: small, square-shaped, etc., etc. He had taken the girl’s purse for some reason.

“How come?” I asked, and he looked down, embarrassed, then turned his head and started to open the purse, sad that the whole thing had ever happened maybe.

“He was number ten,” he said.

“How come the purse then?”

“I don’t know,” he frowned, out of breath. “You want it?”

“No,” I replied. “It’s bad luck. I won’t touch it.”

“That settles it,” he said, “I don’t want to think about Shirley again,” and even as he was talking, I was sure neither of us was having it. Cannonball Adams was number ten, the tenth fellah to have fooled around with Shirley. Somewhere out there, I was sure, was number eleven.