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Nailed

Lise Quintana

    “I can’t,” Lieber said.
    Lieber sat on the filthy couch, twisting one hand over the other as though trying to wash something nasty off them. He stank of greasy sweat and of at least two weeks sleeping behind dumpsters and eating half-rancid food.
    “Ah, whatever,” Dix said. He waved a dismissive hand in Leiber’s direction, but Leiber just hung his head and sniffled. Grow the fuck up.
    “No, I mean I won’t. It’s not going to happen. I mean, well it might happen, but not with me,” Lieber said, staring at his hands.
    What is he talking about? He suddenly grows a pair, but he can’t make a sentence that makes any goddamned sense?
    “Don’t forget,” Dix said. “You owe me.”
    “I guess, but I owe somebody else a lot more.”
    Dix’s scalp prickled. He pulled a folding chair up in front of the couch and sat down, his elbows on his knees, his face less than a foot from Leiber’s greasy, jaundiced mug. “A lot more? Asshole, you owe me your life.”
    “I know,” Lieber whispered down at his hands.
    Dix’s belly tightened. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The job hadn’t even started, and he was getting that feeling of things spinning out of control toward disaster.
    “Who do you owe more than your life? It’s not Johnson. I know it’s not Hartford. Who?”
    “A woman.”
    Dix pulled a hand down his face, breathing deeply and shaking his head. His palms itched as he felt the whole job slip through them. He looked hard at Lieber, then delivered a slap that left a clear imprint across Lieber’s pale yellow chin and cheek.
    “You’re willing to fuck me over for some woman? You know, I should kill you right here, but I need you.”
    Lieber said nothing, and Dix’s stomach turned at the silver string of snot suspended from Leiber’s nose, dripping onto his pants. Leiber sniffled loudly, sucking the slime back in.
    “What are you doing?” Dix let his voice go soft, his own one-man version of good cop/bad cop. “You’re throwing it all away just for some piece of ass?”
    “No. It’s not like that. I owe her.”

    As the car crept down the side street, Lieber looked down the length of each industrial strip mall. Auto body shops, small machinists, storage places: the buildings looked like rusted-out vermin crouching in the headlights’ glare.
    “There it is,” Lieber said. “I remember that sign.” He pointed to a sign for the “Sisters of St. Anne Bakery,” so new that the white looked luminous in the surrounding gloom. They walked past the bakery sign as they went down the row of doors. Lieber led Dix to the last door in the row and knocked. A halo of light shone around the door as it opened. They passed inside, and Dix could see that some joker had scratched a skull onto the door.
    It wasn’t what he had expected. From what Lieber told him, he expected singing or white robes or some other happy clappy bullshit. This looked more like the one and only AA meeting he’d attended to satisfy his parole officer - a bare cinder block room that smelled of wet dust, two dozen folding chairs in a circle, the clammy air making him sweat even as he shivered. Near one wall, a tall, gaunt man stooped over a table, fussing with what looked like a lot of medical instruments. Next to him, a hot girl with a fresh scar in the shape of a Celtic knot on the back of her shoulder whispered into Tall Guy’s ear with her bee-stung, pierced lips. Tall Guy turned, and Dix could see that some animal had taken a swipe at his eye – three long scratches went from just above his eyebrow to the middle of his cheek. Whoa.
    “Hi, take a seat,” Tall Guy said without looking up from his work.
    “Thanks,” Lieber said. He tugged Dix’s sleeve, guiding him to the circle of seats. They sat with their backs to the door, and Dix turned a little to stare at the medical instruments again.
    “What the hell is this?” he hissed.
    “I told you. You’ll see. You’ll see why I can’t do it.”
    Thirty-six hours since this prick first said those words, and it just keeps getting weirder.
    As Leiber sat hissing in his ear, Dix felt a cold breeze on his back. He turned to look as the door opened to a heavyset, middle-aged woman whose bright copper hair and ill-fitting pantsuit reminded Dix of an overenthusiastic social worker or a grade school art teacher. She smiled at Dix and Lieber, then turned to Tall Guy.
    A man and woman skulked in like a couple of kicked dogs and stole over to a pair of chairs on the other side of the circle. Everyone shuffled in their seats trying not to look at each other, but Lieber stared at the redhead. Finally, he got up and walked over to her. In the uncarpeted, bare room their whispered conversation came across loud and clear.
    “Where’s-” Lieber started.
    “No, she’s done,” the redhead said. “It’s me, dear. But you did the right thing.”
    Lieber looked at Dix, who turned his head and looked at the other couple again. They both had the furtive look of people who know they shouldn’t be listening in but can’t help it. Before Lieber came back, four more people walked in and sat down. One guy looked like he’d spent time outside throwing up – his face pale and sweaty, the armpits of his shirt wet and wrinkled. His whole body shook, and he kept looking over at Tall Guy and making wet gasping noises.
    Finally, Lieber sat down again. He stared straight ahead, his mouth thin and tight. Dix’s hemmorhoids itched, and he squirmed in the cold metal chair to find a comfortable position. Five more minutes and if this whole deal doesn’t get a lot more clear, I’m out of here.
    “What the hell is this?” Dix hissed, looking around and squinting angrily at the one or two people who had turned in his direction when he spoke, daring them to react.
    “Not much longer,” Lieber said.
    “Can I have your attention?” Tall Guy said, holding up his hands. “Everyone, settle down. We’re about to begin.”
    Like it was a signal, six more people walked in the door and hurried toward seats, shrugging their shoulders and making apologetic faces at the people already sitting down. The redhead came forward into the middle of the circle, and Dix steeled himself for the kind of homey bullshit sermon he’d heard thousands of times from thousands of people. Ex cons, current cons, priests, wives of guys on the inside, more social workers than he could remember. And he never felt anything more than an ache in his ass and the feeling that most people did nothing in life but whine. This lady walked around the circle of people, holding out her hands and offering quieter, more subdued greetings than Dix expected from someone dressed like a brass band.
    When she came to Dix and Lieber, Lieber put his hands out and she said “Thank you. I know you’ve been here before, and I’m grateful that you came back.”
    Turning to Dix, she offered him her hands. He crossed his arms, shoved his hands into his armpits and looked away.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly. He looked back with a wiseass comeback on his lips, but she beamed a smile of unexpected beauty at him. She moved on, and Dix felt like an asshole for not having taken her hands. Would he look like a pussy if he got up now and went over to her? No, it was too late. She’d finished greeting everyone, and Dix had to sit, his face burning with shame and regret.
    “I’d like to thank you all,” she said in a quiet, powerful voice. “And I think that the sooner we get started, the sooner we all leave.”
    Tall Guy brought something that looked like a narrow dentist’s chair into the middle of the circle. The arms of the chair stuck out at right angles to the body, and the redhead sat down and made herself comfortable. Celtic Knot Chick swabbed iodine all over the redhead’s hands and arranged the medical instruments on a tray next to the chair. Dix looked at them, long, sharp and shiny, and a chill went through him.
    “You can save yourself. You can get up out of that chair,” Celtic Knot Chick said.
    “She saves others. She can’t save herself,” Tall Guy said, picking up a mallet and a six-inch long stainless steel spike.
    “What the hell is going on?” Dix whispered to Lieber, but before he could answer, the redhead looked up.
    “Don’t worry. You’re all going to be okay.” And she put her head down and closed her eyes as Tall Guy placed the tip of the spike on the back of her right hand.
    What the fuck?
    Before Dix could puzzle out what the redhead meant, Tall Guy raised the mallet and brought it down on the steel spike. Gasps echoed off the cinder block walls. A lightening bolt of pain shot through Dix’s body and dissipated just as fast, leaving the feeling of a burning emptiness at the core of his being. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw tears making their greasy way down Lieber’s face. The pale, sweaty man retched loudly and began a steady moan. The mallet came down again.
    Blood welled around the spike, running down the woman’s arm, soaking into the sleeve of her shirt. Her face twisted in agony, but no sound issued from her lips. Dix waited for the thick, animal smell of the blood, but it didn’t come. He couldn’t feel himself breathing. He couldn’t hear anything. The gasps of the assembled group as the mallet rose and fell, the sobs of those who wept, his own heartbeat – nothing made a sound. He tried to remember what his own heartbeat in his ears should sound like, should feel like in his chest, but he could not remember sound or taste or touch or smell. Only sight remained, and in his sight was this woman whose left hand was now being pierced with a steel spike, and whose blood ran over the bare concrete floor and whose agony he was meant to see because...but now he couldn’t remember that either.
    Dix rose from his chair, his hands out in front of him. They burned because he had not allowed her to bless him. Oh, God, the things he’d done, the things he was trying to force Lieber to do. He deserved the bone-deep misery of his life. This woman, this suburban soccer mom with her bad dye job and discount-store clothes, she had done nothing. He expected to be turned back, told to go back to his seat, but he wasn’t the only one moving forward to touch her.
    He lay one hand on her leg and reached out the other to catch the blood as it dripped from her elbow. He stared at the thick drops on his fingers, smeared them over his lips and eyes, across his cheeks. He reached out for more and put it in his mouth. The salty, coppery taste mixed with something primal and animal, and he closed his eyes and hung his head. The last clang of the mallet on the spike reverberated through the room.
    Still minutes passed before Dix could bring himself to open his eyes. A skinny, lank-haired blonde woman pulled the spike out of the redhead’s right hand and bathed it in a basin. A tall, good-looking guy in his late twenties tended her left hand. Both had shining, round scars on the backs of their own hands.
    Tall Guy and Celtic Knot Chick packed up their things, wiping away their own tears. Before walking out the door, they went to the redhead who kissed each of them on the forehead and whispered “Thank you.”
    Lieber knelt down next to Dix and whispered in his ear, but Dix couldn’t understand what he said. He watched as the two people wrapped the redhead’s hands in bandages and the words tumbled into his ear, and slowly Lieber’s bad breath and the damp chill of the room and his own heartbeat and the taste of his shame came back. The redhead turned to Dix and her lips parted in a strained smile.
    Lieber blushed. “I was just telling him about you and what it means.”
    “It had to be done,” she said, and closed her eyes. The man and woman helped her from the chair, and Lieber pulled Dix to his feet.
    “Come on. It’s time to go.”
    The two men went to their car and sat in the dark parking lot, staring at the stars.

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