Sunday is game day. No more waiting, no more wondering, no what-ifs. And
sure as hell no whining.
Kick ass or have yours kicked and handed back to you on a blood-stained
platter. No excuses, only results: this is for the power and the glory.
And the money.
Every
day since last Sunday has led up to this. On Monday I could have sat
around eating Cheetos and pulling my prick—and that's exactly what a
lot of guys do—but I wouldn't have had anything to show for it.
Instead I ran through the tapes two
times, and I punched every one of those little arrow-looking
motherfuckers on the remote control: fast-forward, rewind, slow-mo, mute
and unmute. Sometimes I even let the tape roll normal speed while I
caught my breath and took notes.
I had definitely made some mistakes and muffed the timing at a couple of
key points, but no way in hell was I going to make the same mistakes
again. I made sure: the rest of the week I worked like a bastard.
Then Saturday night rolls around and there's nothing more to do. At that
point everybody has his own routine, his own little ritual or
superstition. One time I heard about a running back who liked to eat a
bowl of spaghetti about the size of his head and go to bed early so he
could sleep twelve hours. Whatever.
I don't know how you call that living. I just try not to get too crazy
and leave my best stuff at home. Saturday night the last hooker's out by
11—unless it's Bettina, who's only in town every couple of
months—and by midnight I'm blowing one last rail on my own so as not
to come down too fast, and I take the edge off with a tumbler of Johnnie
Walker Red.
On Sunday morning—now—I am ready to go. I just have to get into my
zone. Sitting alone in a room doing breathing exercises or
visualizations or some other crazy-ass New Age shit doesn't do it for
me. Two screwdrivers and a cup of joe and I'm out on the street to feed
off all the energy.
As soon as I get outside there's this guy walking with his head down
like his life depended on it. Maybe it does. He's got one half-eaten
doughnut in his hand and the fat fuck's already looking into the bag for
cruller número dos.
"Taste this," I say, and
before Jabba Junior can shake the powdered sugar off his chins I've
stepped into the bucket to deliver an uppercut and smash the rest of the
baker's dozen into his blowhole.
"Bon appetit," I say, "lardass."
He's down, cooked and curled up like a pork rind, and he's yakking his
colossal guts out, but I've got to move on.
I need a challenge. And sometimes you just get a present dropped in your
lap. This one comes in the form of a delivery truck crawling down the
cross street. The driver steadies the wheel with one hand and with the
other chucks the Times, all five pounds of it, onto the front
steps of the townhouses. Good arm, too.
This guy's in his groove, though he might still be half-asleep, and you
can tell when he's going to throw out the next plastic condom filled
with the infojizz of ads and disasters.
I get up on my toes and jog a few
steps until I'm even with him, and I let the package clip the side of my
head before catching it. Sometimes you have to take a hit.
Overgrown
Buster Brown stops the car when he doesn't hear a thud or breaking
glass. I get to the driver's side window before he can step out.
"What is this?" I say, wrapping my hand around the front
sections. "What in the fucking world is this?"
He mouths the air like a hooked fish until he gets the words out.
"It's the news."
"No," I tell him. "This is the news." The
sentence ends with a hard-copy smack that turns his nose into a.m.
pizza. A bitch-slap with the magazine section knocks any bad ideas out
of his head, like getting up and coming for me, and he slumps into the
wheel. Break time for newsboy.
I'm starting to get somewhere.
A block away, a dog-walker crosses the street to get out of my way. His
Rottweiler bares its teeth until it gets a good look at me, then puts
its ears back and tail down. They cower away at the next intersection.
I'm almost there.
I hear footsteps steadily pounding on the sidewalk behind me. Then I
hear a man's breath.
I put on the brakes and bend my knees, sticking out an arm, and brace
myself. There's no time to look back.
Score!
Flesh hits flesh, and a body drops. Not mine.
Now I get a look. The skinny bastard
I've clotheslined is trying to get his wind back and pulling pebbles
from the bloody scrapes on his hands. Joe Aerobic doesn't even try to
talk as I tee off for the first kick in his ribs.
Now I am there. I am in my zone. No one can stop me, and no one had
better try.
I go home and get ready for the drive to the arena.
No question: today I'm going to preach the sermon of my life.
Copyright 2007 by
J.D. Smith
J.D. Smith has published crime
fiction in Thug Lit and Pulp Pusher and has work forthcoming in Out of
the Gutter. He was awarded a 2007 Fellowship in Poetry from the National
Endowment for the Arts, and he has a children's book coming out in 2008.
Check out his web site at www.jdsmithwriter.com.
