part 4

It’s ten in the morning and Jennifer wants her gun back.
“…and my bullets, and my pills, and all of my knives. You fucking asshole, did you think I was going to slit my wrists with a cheese spreader?” In the background I can hear someone moving around her apartment. A voice, muffled. Male. I stare at the ceiling. “No, Richard, he’s a fucking asshole and this isn’t funny. God you’re such a dick sometimes. Stop fucking laughing!” A crash, silence. Her voice is soft now, quiet. “I mean it, Mitch. I know you were just trying to help, but, fuck. You knew I needed it all for. Shit. I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t deal with you. Just. I want it back, Mitchell, all of it.” Silence, then the machine cuts out with a beep. I turn onto my side, burying my face in the unwashed bed sheets. Downstairs the elderly couple is fighting again, and outside my window the street blares with morning traffic. For all last night’s rain, the sun streams down outside, and the air bakes with the last of the summer heat. I should have been at work hours ago. They’ll cut me some slack after last night, but any later and I’m pushing it. I pick at the nicotine patch on my arm. It’s not helping.

In the bathroom mirror I watch myself rip off the patch, drop it in the trash. There’s dry blood in my hair. I look like shit. My fingers press into my chest, probe its surface for sign of cracks. Nothing. I’m whole. Alive. It’s more than can be said for some. I turn the shower on, and I’m hit with a frigid sheet of water. I grit my teeth against the cold, sorting through the previous night’s events. I don’t kill people. Not often, anyway. And they’re usually a lot further gone than the guy last night. In my head, I know it was the right thing to do. He was dead already. Whatever, whoever he had been, all that was gone.

Something had to be left though. Enough to go looking for a drink. Enough to remember what he looked like, what he should have looked like.

The water is ice, but I make myself stay under the spray. It clears my head. I need to move Jennifer’s shit. I should get the locks changed too, or she’ll trash the place looking for it all. Leo will know someone, at the office. Shit. The office. I need to go in. Work to do. People to kill. Re-kill. Like it makes any fucking difference.

I dry myself off and consider the box of patches. What I need right now is something tangible. Something to chew on, to suck the smoke out of. I need a cigarette. I peel the backing off of a patch and slap it on my arm. You know what they say about old habits.