LIFEHATER

Lifehater3.mp3

“So you made it your first week- how does it feel to be free?” He looks at me from across the table, noncommittal in his corduroy slacks and his clean white Polo shirt, offering no hint of what he’s fishing at or if he’s fishing for anything at all.
I laugh to myself at the way he uses the word “free”. I’ve never been free- don’t know the meaning of the word. I’ve always been shackled by the constraints of social norms and right and wrong and my own underhanded moral standards and those rules and lines I’ve set for myself that aren’t to be crossed.
The guys that I know who are truly free- well I’d never let them in my house. Shit- I’d never turn my back on them. To be truly free is something that lets you do anything at all without consequence. Me? Nah- not free yet.
“Out on your own, no one watching you- gotta be some temptations there, right?”
I just give him a blank stare across the table and nod almost imperceptively to the negative. This guy’s good- I’ve played this game with the best of them but this one’s really polished his game. He should play blackjack in Vegas instead of fucking around trying to trip up ex-cons in their own tangled up stories. “Anything? All the open space giving you the creeps?” He takes a sip from his coffee as if it’s hot, even though I know by the time we’ve been sitting here mincing around it has to be nearly cold.
“I dunno….” I take my hand from the table and scratch my head offering nothing, really- nothing he can sink his teeth into. “I guess it’s just nice to be able to walk around and to come and go as I please. I never much liked being inside if I didn’t have to be.” I rest both hands on top of my legs beneath the table, letting out a long sigh. “ I sure as hell don’t miss the food.”
He doesn’t laugh but maybe I see a smile forming at the corners of his mouth. People like me- they always have assumed more than there is. Or assumed wrong, anyhow. I’m not the hard case he’s thinking I am. Everyone always assumed that I was trying to pull something off. They never could figure me- the rest of my crew were hard guys, and they assumed that I by association was a hard guy too.
But I could hold my own in conversation and had read a few books that seemed to some to be some indication of some type of formal education. Mostly people jumped to the logical conclusion that I was running a racket of some sort. No one could for even a moment admit that I was just on a big adventure- a tourist in this culture that they caught me in. To them I manifested their fears of treading in the darkest shadows- attempting to discover why our parents told us not to go there but could never tell us why. I never did really find anything too shocking out there- I was a product of my environment and there wasn’t anything much left that was worth seeing that I hadn’t seen.
Now my crew- they were different. Potter and McGinty and Crawford and I- we all grew up together but I was one type and they were an entirely different breed of cat. I layed back and layed low- I’d back them up if the occasion arose- and the occasion did- but I wasn’t a hard case. I was just someone that grew up in the neighborhood. Those guys were tough and callous and crazy- I was just crazy.
But the rest of my crew got taken down, one by one- first Potter and Haig got it under the roller coaster down by the boardwalk. Then McGinty O.D.ed one night and we found him under a tree down by the railroad tracks- he sat there till noon because everyone just figured he was hung over or asleep. Crawford got shivved in the ally off of Ventura down by Todd Bolt’s house- and Bolt got it two nights later in front of a bar on PB drive- supposedly by a disgruntled “customer”. One morning I woke up and took a look around and saw that I was the only I was left.
I shoulda split then, but where was I going to go? Somebody got to each and every one of them until I was the only one to take the fall and when the shit hit the fan it was me they came looking for and it was me they hauled away and it was me they locked up. They said they were throwing away the key but things didn’t work out that way. It was a hard time but I kept to myself mostly and rested easy and read a lot and kept my mouth shut and minded my own business and stayed out of trouble and sooner or later I was walking out of there. Sooner or later I did.
So here’s this guy sitting across the table from me, looking me in the eye and trying to call my bluff. Trying to let me know who’s boss and what’s what and to get into my head and trying to get it across to me that he’s onto me- that he’s seen it all and his formal training as a head-shrink and a cop puts him one step ahead of me- and all the while I just have to laugh because no one’s got shit on me.
I’m just like anyone else- flesh and bone- a man, not a machine. I’m just a guy that wasn’t afraid- and to most people that’s scary. If I’ve got anything at all to hide he’d be the last guy to know. Plus, I keep my mouth closed- always have. That’s why the boys let me hang around even though I was a lot younger than they were. That’s how I stayed around and stayed alive- by keeping things that didn’t need to be talked about to myself. Nobody's gotten under my skin yet, this guy isn’t about to do it in one sitting.
“How’s work?”
I think about this one a minute, deciding how I want to answer. Taking a deep breath I exhale, something between a sigh and a chuckle, spreading my hands wide, steady, palms down in front of me. “I don’t think work is going to pan out so good.” This is as much as I want to say- work didn’t work out to the tune of some asshole foreman calling me convict all day and fucking with me- verbally- until the moment he tried to push me physically and I pinned him against one of those big stainless steel dryers and held the tip of the double edged dagger I carry in my shoe against his throat. I held him there while he struggled and told him if he fucked with me one more time he was going to find himself breathing from about six inches lower than he’s used to. Scared the absolute piss out of him- he actually pissed his pants and shook and shivered and started blubbering like a baby, begging me to let him go. Fucking princess, that one.
“What do you mean by that?” The starched white Polo shirt isn’t going to understand it- of this I’m certain- so I spare him the gory details. “I guess the boss and I don’t really see eye to eye.” He jots something down on his clipboard- I assume a note to him self to talk to the boss down at the dry cleaners where they got me working. Me? I guess I had enough of this.
He looks up at me with a surprised look on his face as I stand up against the table- confusion in his eyes but he doesn’t really look startled or scared- his eyebrows are raised and he has this stupid expression, coffee cup in his hand- just curious as to what I’m doing. The look turns from curious to startled as I raise the pistol in my hand with one smooth motion, gazing down at him as if looking at a bug through a microscope- taking careful aim, calm, unperturbed, unflinching at the dropped coffee cup and the panic and fear rising behind his eyes.
Red stains blossom on the barren plain of his starched white shirt, his eyes showing equal parts indignance and discomfort and disbelief – a hundred other emotions vying for position flash across his face in an instant. Trying to stand as he was when I put the two in his chest his legs wont cooperate and he now begins to crumple back into his chair, trying to speak- to plead with me- but only mouths the words with soft exhalations as he expends the last of his oxygen.
Barely raising my hand at all I take careful aim and give him one quick tap exactly in the center of his forehead like a punch to the face that sits him back into his chair as if he’s just come home from a hard day at the office, leaning back with his arms outstretched, legs in front of him- a small whisp of smoke drifting up from a small black hole in his forehead. No need to empty the clip. No, no need for melodrama.
“How does it feel to be free?” I ask him softly, not quite smiling, imagining his total and complete freedom. “You should never have let the Lifehater back out.”

Lifehater3.mp3