Mario Muscar

 

An excerpt from Gemma, a novel in the works

by Mario Muscar

 

 

It was as Gemma and I were staring at the street lamps and smoking the last of our cigarettes that I realized that without a really solid plan, ritualistic killing was probably not the best action to take. 

 

We had missed our bus and were sitting on a curb outside a Greyhound station in a small city called Wheeling, West Virginia.  We left Pittsburgh about 2 hours ago on our way to Chicago and we weren't on the bus for more than an hour that the fucking thing started to spew smoke from the machinations in its belly.  The driver told us we had to stop and it just so happened there was a Greyhound station in little Wheeling, West Virginia. 

 

Gemma scrunched her cigarette out on the sidewalk and opened the pack for another when she remembered we had just run out.

 

"Shit.  We're out of cigarettes," she said and tossed the empty pack in the street.

 

I handed her the half that I had left and she took a long, deep drag.  The blue smoke rose in the night air and hung above her head.

 

Just days ago we had decided that Chicago was where we would be heading.  There was really no way we would be found in a city the size of Chicago.  I had my buddy, Chad Romita, make us fake IDs before we left for Pittsburgh.  I have been getting into bars since I was 14 with the fake IDs Chad makes.  He's a fucking Picasso with those things.  Credit Card companies and DMVs have been trying to make the production of fake ideas very difficult for years.  The cards are almost all made out of Polyvinyl Chloride these days.  Polyvinyl Chloride, or PVC for short.  You know the big white pipes you can find in Home Depot that people use for plumbing and such?  That's PVC.  The thing about these PVC cards is that they are really a bitch to print on.  You have to use really expensive printers like Fargo or Electron.  This is so counterfeiters like Chad have a hard time without having to buy a printer for ten grand.  But Chad has never had a problem.  All he needs is a Mac and Photoshop.  He uses some kind of template and prints the IDs on a product called Teslin, which is very similar to PVC.  The IDs Chad can make are amazing.  Forget Monet and Van Gogh and Da Vinci.  Give me Romita any day.

 

So it is with Chad's IDs and a city the size of Chicago that we would disappear from the world.  The Dandys could put every living (or unliving, I imagine) being they had on the payroll on our trail and I bet they wouldn't track us down.

 

"I'm gonna go check with the guy inside and see how long of a wait we got," Gemma said as she stood up and brushed the sidewalk off of her ass.

 

"I'll find us some cigarettes," I replied, spotting a 7/11 on the next street over.

 

I watched her walk away from me and into the little station in this run down old town.  There was an elderly couple standing by the door that reminded me a little of my father's parents.  The man was wearing an old overcoat that looked like was being held together only with the dirt it had collected.  He looked tired and I wondered if he was homeless, really poor,  a drug addict, or some combination.  There was a hopelessness and lack of sharpness behind his eyes.  The woman was talking to him the entire time, not once looking at him but definitely bitching in that 'we've been married for an eon' way that only a wife can.  He didn't seem to care what she was saying and never once responded to her incessant rambling.  I couldn't make out what she was saying from where I was.  Something about leaving the door open?

 

I crossed the street towards the 7/11 and made my way inside.  There were two cops standing in the store, drinking coffee and rambling about some football game at the local high school.

 

"That Sanderson boy is good but he wasn't good enough against Central's secondary defense," the taller cop said.

 

"I heard he had to miss out on a practice because he failed one of his tests," replied the short one.

 

"These goddamn teachers are too hard on these kids," remarked the tall one.  "Don't they know it's playoffs?"   

 

I moved my way to the counter and caught sight of the clerk.  He was unlike any person I had ever seen working a convenient store.  This man was a far cry from the foreigner/teenager/lowlifes I am used to seeing as a counter jockey.  This guy had the look of an extra from the Lord of the Rings.  He was quite tall and had a long grey beard that reached down to his belt.  He wore odd rings on most of his fingers as well as a pair of dark sunglasses.

 

"Pack of your cheapest menthols, please," I asked.

 

"Sure thing," the clerk said as he turned around and grabbed a pack from the rack.  "Gonna need to see your ID though."

 

I pulled the new ID Chad had made for me out of my wallet (my new name was Donald Brooks) and handed it to the odd looking man.    He stared at it for a few seconds before handing it back to me and saying, "That'll be $3.89."

 

I handed him a five and he handed me back the appropriate change along with a pack of matches.

 

I exited the shop and made my way back down to the bus station.  I caught sight of the driver and walked up to him to find out how long we would be stuck here.  The driver was a very short man, so short I would say he was bordering on being a tall midget instead of a short man.  His face was very childish looking despite the pathetic excuse for facial hair he was trying to grow.  His hands were covered in dirt and grease.

 

"Any idea how long until we can get out of here?" I asked.

 

The driver took a rag out of his back pocket and began to wipe the filth off of his hands.

 

"Not quite sure yet," he said as he put the rag back and pulled a small can of snuff out of his other back pocket. 

 

I watched as he took a pinch of snuff out of the can so large that there was no way he could fit it in the little lip of his child-like, midget-sized face.  With the ease of someone who had obviously been doing it for years, the driver forced the giant wad into his lip.  I was sure that this man must have been one of those African tribesmen with the lip plates in a former life.  He spit some tobacco juice out and looked me up and down. 

 

"I was told we would have another bus in a couple hours," he said.  "Then we'll load everybody up and get back on the road to Chicago.  Why don't you get something to eat and be back here in about two hours?" 

 

Two hours wasn’t so bad. It surely shouldn't be enough time for the Dandys to find us here. I looked around for Gemma. She hadn’t come back outside.

 

I packed the cigarettes against my hand and opened the pack, sliding out the first cigarette and reinserting it upside down. The Lucky Cigarette. This was something I had been doing since I started smoking. My Uncle Hal had always done this and I thought it was right cool.

 

I pulled out another cigarette and opened the pack of matches the clerk at the 7/11 gave me. As I struck the match and brought it to the cigarette in my mouth, I noticed some writing on the inside of the matchbook.

 

“We have Gemma. You’re fucked.”

Shit. I’m fucked.