The guy with the fauxhawk showed me his blade, a slight crust of dry blood gummed at the hilt.
– Say that again? Say it. About to go Bruce Lee on your ass here, you keep talking about my moms.
I put my back to the door and shifted the carrier of cleaning gear so that I held it in front of me.
– Hey no, all done, Im not saying anything.
He took a step, twirled the knife.
– I fucking thought not, asshole.
– Did it hurt?
He stopped walking, the knife stopped twirling.
– What?
I spoke very slowly.
– When. You. Thought. Did it hurt? Like because youre not good at it, I mean.
He slammed his forearm across my throat, pinning me to the door, the point of the knife poking my cheek.
– Asshole! I said shut the fuck up! I said it was a wrap!
I thought about bringing up the carrier and shoving it into his gut, but the last time Id fought anyone other than Chev was in junior high. And that was scrawny Dillard Hayes whod made some lame joke about Chev not having a mom and Id gone whacko about it. And I got the shit kicked out of me. And Dillard didnt have a knife.
So I tried diplomacy instead.
– No, you didnt actually tell me to shut the fuck up. And you certainly didnt say anything as lame as-GAH!
No, he didnt say GAH! I said GAH! Or, rather, I kind of barked GAH when he drove his knee into what was meant to be my balls, but was actually the carrier, which then hit my balls.
– GAH! GAH!
He did it twice more. If that didnt communicate.
The bathroom door swung open and Soledad came out toweling her hands dry.
– Jaime!
This seemingly directed at the fauxhawk dude about to put his knee on the money for the fourth time.
He let go of me and turned.
– What! What!
I dropped to the floor and tried to figure out how breathing worked.
Soledad came and kneeled next to me.
– What the hell, Jaime?
Jaime waved his knife.
– He was being an asshole, just like you said he would be!
She put a hand on the side of my face.
– I said he might act like an asshole and you needed to be chill.
He pointed the knife at me.
– Why do I have to be chill when hes being the asshole?
She shook her head, looked at me, her face all but hid in the long curls of hair falling around it.
– You OK?
I squirted more tears and kept my hands jammed in my crotch by way of an answer.
Jaime came and leaned over her and looked down at me.
– Besides, he deserved it for being an asshole at your house today.
She looked up at him.
– He wasnt. Fuck, Jaime, he was trying to make me laugh.
He raised his hands over his head.
– See! Thats sick, man. Your dad offs himself, blows his fucking brains all over, and this asshole tries to make it funny? Thats sick shit.
She stared at him, shook her head.
He raised his shoulders.
– What? What did I say? Hes the one made jokes about your dad eating a bullet. Whym I getting bitch looks?
She looked at the floor.
– Just shut up. Shut up and have a drink.
– Whatd I do?
She put fingertips to her forehead.
– Please, Jaime. Just. Chill and have a drink. Please.
He reversed the gesture with his wrist and thumb, folding the knife and tucking it back in its sheath.
– Fine. Whatever. Just want people to remember, this whole production, its my deal. We got a schedule to keep to here and I dont like falling behind.
He walked to the rooms lone chair, almonds popping under the heels of his chrome-studded ankle boots, took a seat, and picked up a white plastic shopping bag from the floor.
– So you just get the asshole up to speed and on set. I want to roll this thing and wrap.
He reached in the bag and pulled out an airline bottle of Malibu rum.
– Incidentals keep popping up and throwing my budget to shit.
I pointed at him.
– Let me guess, youre an actor, but what you really want to do is direct?
He drained the bottle and threw it across the room and it bounced off my forehead.
– Fuck you, asshole, Im a fucking producer.
Soledad closed her eyes, shook her head, opened her eyes, and looked at me.
– Web, meet my brother Jaime.
– Its not as bad as it looks.
I sat on the closed lid of the toilet, the plastic bag of ice she got from the machine by the motel office resting between my thighs.
– See, the funny thing about that statement is the fact that it looks so very very bad, that there is ample room for it to be not as bad as it looks and still be chronically fucked up.
She took the wet hand towel from my forehead.
– I know. Still. Its not as bad as it looks.
I looked at the blood on the towel in her hand.
– Well then, that explains all the relief pouring over me at this moment.
She bent and peered at the gash in my forehead, reopened when Jaime kneed me and I bit the floor.
– This should be stitched up. Want me to take a crack at it?
– What? No. What the hell with people who dont have any medical training at all wanting to stitch my tender flesh?
She straightened and dabbed the towel on my head again.
– I dont know. Just something I always kind of wanted to try.
– Stitching up an open wound?
– Yeah. Weird, huh?
I didnt bother with an answer, the weirdness of such a desire going without saying. The sexiness of it not being something I wanted to get into. As it would suggest too much about my own weirdness. A quality already on abundant display in my current mode of employment. Also by the fact that I was sitting in a motel bathroom at one thirty in the morning with a bag of ice in my bruised crotch and a beautiful and bookish and emotionally complicated young woman tending to my hurts while her brother got tanked in the adjoining blood-splattered room.
Instead, I got straight to the most important matter at hand.
– You smell great.
She took the towel away again.
– It must be the rose petals Ive been bathing in.
I inhaled.
– Could be.
She tossed the towel in the sink.
– Or the deodorant Ive been spraying on myself to cover the fact that I havent bathed since my dad died two days ago.
I nodded.
– So I am kind of an asshole, huh?
She boosted herself on the sink and dangled her feet.
– You do have some moments of impropriety.
I took the ice bag from my nut bag and touched my numbed genitals.
– Yeah, certain things bring it out in me.
She picked up a pack of cigarettes sitting by the basin and put one between her lips.
– Like having the future generations of your family name put at risk?
I dropped the ice bag in the tub.
– Like being asked to an apparent murder scene to clean it up.
She struck a match and placed the flame to the end of the cigarette.
– Oh, that.
She shook the match out and let it fall to the floor.
– Jaime didnt actually kill anyone.
She blew some smoke.
– He just cut him up a little.
I rose from the can, testing my ability to move with a dangling pendulum of agony between my legs.
– Oh, is that all? Well then, lets get to work.
– He was being an asshole, asshole.
– One assumes.
– What?
I took my head from under the bed, where I was shining a flashlight looking for stray blood, and looked at Jaime.
– One assumes he was an asshole. Otherwise, one assumes, you would not have cut him up a little.
I looked at Soledad, standing by the open door of the bathroom, arms crossed, a cigarette she only occasionally bothered to drag from between the fingers of her left hand.
– That was the phrase, was it not? He just cut him up a little.
She looked from the floor.
– Yeah, that was it.
Jaime waved the latest in a long line of Malibu nips.
– A little? I just about did a Silence of the Lambs on him. Just about peeled him raw.
I looked again at Soledad.
She shook her head.
Based on the amount of blood Id seen at her house, and how much less there was here, I was inclined to think he was full of it. But thinking isnt knowing. Is it?
So, not knowing which of them to believe, I went back to work.
Id done as I saw Po Sin and Gabe do at the Malibu house, started at the top and worked my way down. Like cleaning a dirty window. There hadnt been anything on the ceiling, but along one wall next to the bed there was a nice spackling of blood that rose nearly to the top. Id worked my way down it, spraying with a bottle full of Microban and sopping it up with paper towels that I dropped in the rooms waste basket. To be disposed of later.
Jaime narrated as I worked.
– See, if hed just come in here and conducted business in a responsible manner, I wouldnt have had to cut him. I mean, I understand that in this business contingencies sometimes arise without having been accounted for, but its not the exclusive burden of the producer to absorb those costs. The deal starts going all Waterworld, I dont see where I should be on the hook for the overages. He got all the situation has changed. Shit like that. I told him, said, Dude, Im working this deal on a short schedule with, like, no budget at all. So maybe you should get out of my fucking face before I fucking cut your ass. He didnt listen. All that blood up there, thats where he freaked out, started waving his arms around after Id cut his hand. Hed stayed still he wouldnt have got blood on my new jeans and I would have left it at that. As it was, I had to stick him to make him sit down and shut up. Gave him a poke in the shoulder and he settled down. Wadded up those sheets and got them over the hole to stop the bleeding.
By that point in the conversation Id shot about my hundredth look at Soledad, all of them saying pretty much the same thing: What is the nature of his birth defect, and do you have the same one?
Her looks in reply clearly indicating: I know, I know, just please dont f revoke him because I dont want to fetch any more ice for your swollen testicles.
Still unsure if Jaime was a congenital moron or just your average drunk fucking idiot infected by a particularly nasty form of the Hollywood Virus, I was working my way down the wall, deliriously happy that the blood hadnt had time to seep through the wallpaper, as he drew his tale to a close.
– Asshole wanted to take the sheet with him. Fuckin’ believe that? Told him, No way, man, Im on the hook for this room. Those sheets end up on my bill if they go missing. Thats not an expense Im gonna carry. Asshole.
That detail bringing me up to where I was looking under the bed, finding nothing worse than more almonds.
Jaime pointed at the sheets.
– Way I figure it, some bleachll get those spie an’ span. ‘Course, Im not much when it comes to cleaning, doing laundry, whatever, but I knew Sol would be able to help.
He smiled at his sister.
– Shes always good for lending a hand. Any wonder I got pissed when she told me some assholed been messing with her today of all days. Then shes gonna call that asshole to help us out over here? I mean, what the fuck, right?
He pointed at her.
– Above-line expenditures kill a production, Sol.
She looked at the long ash on the end of her cigarette, tipped it and watched it fall.
– Im just trying to help, Jaime. I can leave at any time.
– Aw, dont be like that. Get all bitch on me.
– A bloody hotel rooms not the same as when you dropped the cookie jar. Something happens to that guy you cut, you want this room to be more than spie and span.
– Nothins gonna happen to him. He was fine. I just didnt want to pay for, you know, room damages and shit.
She stared at the tiny coal at the end of her nearly dead smoke.
– Fine. Whatever you need. Taken care of. No problem.
– Shit, Sol. Cmon.
I got to my feet.
– Well, I dont think the rooms gonna pass any kind of close scrutiny by a team of crack experts with ultraviolet lamps, but its as clean as I can make it.
And it was. Walls and furniture gleaming in the lamplight. The only signs remaining to tell that the carpet had been bloodied were patches where the original color showed brighter from my scrubbing. The offending bedding stuffed in the wastebasket with the paper towels.
A job well done.
A potentially very criminal job, well done.
Details, details, details.
Jaime lurched up from his chair, scattering the litter of tiny bottles at his feet, and toed the wastebasket.
– So all you gotta do is wash those out an’ you can get the fuck out of here.
I peeled the rubber gloves from my hand and dropped them on top of the stained sheets.
– Jaime, my man, I dont know how to tell you this, and I dont much want to, but Im afraid youre going to have to eat the deposit on the sheets.
He watched me as I packed the cleaning gear back into the carrier.
– Fuck is that supposed to mean?
I wedged a pack of disposable paint scrapers into the carrier.
– It means that shit is not coming out.
– Little bleach. Fuck do you know?
I pointed at the sheets.
– I had a girlfriend once, had the heaviest periods you ever saw. Dated the girl for over a year, and I threw away enough sheets in that year to know a lost cause when I see one. Those are dead soldiers.
Soledad came over.
– Can you get rid of them for us?
I nodded.
– Yeah, I can get rid of them. I can do that.
She nodded.
– Thanks.
I bent to pick up the wastebasket and Jaime slapped my hand away.
– Fuckinway man. Sheets stay here.
I looked at the clock. Almost four. My eyes ached. My head and my mouth throbbed. I dont want to talk about how I felt below the waist. Suffice to say, I was really looking forward to lying down.
I picked up the carrier.
– OK by me, the sheets stay here.
I started for the door and heard his knife snap open behind me.
– Fuckin’ freeze, asshole. No one leaves till these sheets are clean and this location is wrapped.
I turned and looked at him, swaying drunk, knife in hand.
I set the carrier on the dresser, between the TV and the lamp.
– Do you have a gun?
– What?
I looked at Soledad.
– Does he have a gun?
She tossed the stub of her smoke through the bathroom door in the direction of the tub.
– No.
Jaime twirled the knife, almost lost his grip on it, recovered, settled into a credible kung fu stance that I was pretty sure I recognized from Chevs copy of Game of Death. -Dont need a gun.
I picked up the lamp, knocked the shade from it, yanked the plug from the wall, turned it upside down and showed him the pointed corners of the heavy wood base.
– And I have a lamp. If you take one more step toward me with that knife, I will hit you as hard as I can with this lamp. If you die, I will clean up the mess and leave. If you dont die, you can clean up your own blood. Asshole.
He looked at his sister.
– Sol?
She went to the closet and got a jacket and pulled it on.
– Dont look at me, Jaime.
He jabbed the knife at the air.
– Dudes threatening your brother. Gonna let that happen?
She walked to the wastebasket.
– Still willing to get rid of this stuff?
I hefted the lamp.
– Yeah. Sure.
She picked up the wastebasket.
– Can I come with?
– Sure.
She came to my side of the room and picked up the cleaning carrier.
– Lets go.
I followed her to the door, eyes on Jaime, the lamp held out.
– It wont cost much, theyre crap sheets.
He dropped his arms to his sides, knife dangling from his fingers.
– Fuck do you know? Didnt even clean up the almonds, asshole. Fucking dont call me, Ill call you, fucker.
And I backed from the room, pausing to set the lamp inside the door before I closed it and ran for the van, taking the carrier from Soledad, she taking my hand, running along with me. Laughing.