Where the Waves Takes Us

A long time ago and yesterday, I was a boy. My big brother Paul was a boy too, but determined not to leave me fatherless as well as motherless, he scooped me out of the foster system as soon as he was legally able. Paul pulled double shifts at knuckle-skinning bars, in the cellar and on the doors, hauling hollow kegs and busted drunks down anonymous alleys so we could afford a shitty one-bedroom apartment in West Garfield Park.

I was a mediocre student, but he treated me like Stephen Hawking. He bought me a desk. A computer. He wouldn’t let me work. Insisted I hit the books. Chewed me out, demanding to see assignments he couldn’t follow. My job was to study. “You’ve gotta patent something, Laurie,” he’d bark from the couch he slept on, an ice pack over a freshly pulped eye. “Make us millionaires. Make us the makers, comprende?”

I scraped into UCLA as a Physics major. Paul, who graduated from bars to loan shark muscle, bankrolled me. He insisted I stay in California, and never come home, and not think about him apart from Thursday nights at eight o’clock sharp, when he’d call without fail.

“How’s school, kid?”

I’d start to tell him about fluid mechanics and electrical fields. He’d ‘uh-huh’ me for two minutes tops.

“Hey Paul, no girls.”

I’d laugh.

“Don’t laugh at me, asshole. You’ll get a nice girl, like mom before the heroin, but do the science first. And don’t work! You need more money, I’ll send it ya. I’ll send a few grand right now, keep you on the safe side. But no girls! No work!”

I’d ‘yeah yeah’ him. Ask about Chicago. About his business. He’d mumble and trail off in the same way, always ending on his terms.

“Alright, baby. Well, y’know... if I don’t call, I’m gone. Keep livin’. Love. Proud.”

#

I started working to fill the in-between times, as respite from lecture halls and libraries, but more to meet people – real people – as a Saturday burger boy at a diner by the beach. I met a girl – Cindy – a waitress on roller-skates who’d twirl her sandy locks at me and complain about her ‘roided boyfriend. I’d moon over her. Give her a shoulder to cry on. Make out with her behind the fryer.

She liked my accent. The kudos of being gangster adjacent. The gritty fairytales of brawls and empty chambers Paul told (and I might’ve attributed to myself).

Pretty soon, the need to be around Cindy swamped everything. I took on more shifts at the diner, stopped going to class, figuring I’d figure Physics out myself, then watched my grades spiral, then dropped out. I grew my curly black hair. Bleached it blonde. Let the endless sky and saltwater turn it silky.

Cindy taught me how to surf. We’d tumble and fumble in the blue crush of bobbing bodies. Peel our wetsuits off each other and make love in the back of her campervan, then lay in the dunes, watching the sun set on the waves upon waves upon waves.

I wondered on them. I tried not to see them as disturbances – transfers of energy from one place to another through oscillations - the matter, the water, the molecules, staying the same. I tried instead to hypothesise on what I didn’t know, as Cindy’s tanned curves nuzzled into me.

What made one bigger than the other? What made them swell? What made them break?

#

“How’s school, kid?”

“Great.”

“Great? What is ‘great’? What does ‘great’ mean?”

“It’s all going well, Paul. What do you want me to say? Do you really want to hear about speed over time equalling distance?”

“Ah, fuck, Laurie.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“What?!”

“A girl?!”

“No!”

“What’s her name?”

“...Cindy.”

“Jesus H Christ.”

“She’s… she’s a physicist too...”

“…oh yeah? Huh. Okay. I’ll, err… I’ll send you a couple extra thou this month. Take her out fancy.”

“…listen, Paul. I need to tell you something and... I don’t want you to get -- ”

“Alright, baby. Well, y’know... if I don’t call, I’m gone. Keep livin’. Love. Proud.”

#

Cindy chewed her strawberry lips. She fussed with the phone in her apron. Her break went on too long. I took out a half-full trash bag.

That ‘roided lunk was yelling at Cindy next to her campervan in the carpark, his armpit in her face - one bare, sinewed arm flexing as he leaned in and pinned her. He thumped the metal panel. Pointed a neanderthal finger. Slapped her freckled cheek.

I sprinted, my pulse in my temples, catching him cold, shunting him to the concrete.

He hopped vertical. A piston right hook. My back tooth cracked. My melting synapses faltered. Cindy’s pleading screams scraped. I groped for history. Experience.

Paul had given me that single boxing lesson.

Hands up, kid. Hands. Hands.

I raised my trembling fists. The lunk socked me in the chin through my paper guard.

Feet, kid. Feet. Make a square. Fix your stance, or you’ll...

I dodged a wild one, tripping and slamming on my ass. I scrambled and braced on trestle legs with a rueful resolve.

The nose, kid. The nose. Hit ‘em clean in the nose, break that son-of-a-bitch, it’s over before it starts. It’s...

He one-twoed me – welting both cheeks. I staggered against the dumpster, flailing blindly - clawing and wrenching his thick neck as he wailed on my ribs. I yanked him, stretching his vest, scratching his chest, until he was deadlifting me towards the kerb, splitting my shorts, kicking and punching and punching until all I could do was cower and block and push and shove him into the path of an oncoming dump truck.

He crunched under the wheels, smearing the asphalt.

A group of chuckling cops broke off from their coffees, pulling their sidearms.

#

I took a cab to the apartment I was renting above the laundromat, opposite the diner, and twisted the shower to ten, scalding the prison off me. The desire I thought I’d feel after six months inside – for Cindy, for the surf – swilled into churning fatigue.

I floated on the bed’s alien softness and charged my phone. The buzz of notifications came. No messages, just a sigh and a click. I expected Paul to know I needed him and come looking for me. To find me. To bail me out. I couldn’t bring myself to use his money for that, or worse, let him know. I’d be vindicated. Self-defence. The courts would agree. I could do some time.

But he hadn’t come. And only three missed calls, out of a possible twenty-six?

I checked my bank account. The more than enough I always had was now just enough. The money from home had stopped rolling. I cursed his petty affection. His transactional love for a housebroken pet. I swallowed hard and called.

This number has been disconnected.

I packed a bag for Chicago.

#

Our shitty one-bedroom apartment was empty, unpaid bills heaped on the doormat. Bloated flies buzzed at the dirty dishes in the sink.

Paul’s mumbles were always punctuated with Malones. Drinks at Malones. Poker at Malones. The busty piece I banged ‘round the back of Malones.

I went to Malones. Malone himself squinted at me from behind the bar – an old man pickled tight from spite and belonging.

“Ah, you wanna know about Paulie House Red?”

“No. Paul Brooks.”

“Yeah, yeah, but we all called him House Red. Ask me why. It’s okay, I’ll tell ya. It’s ‘cause he was the cheapest going.”

“Cheapest what?”

“Cheapest at what he did. You’re his brother, you must know? And he was cheap for a reason. Even the ‘accidents’ he fixed were botched. A bullet hole at a factory fire. A slit throat at a road traffic accident, heh heh heh.”

“Is he dead?”

“He drank in here religiously, and the pious don’t skip church. You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon. But before you ask, I don’t know who provided his bed post, or how he notched it, heh heh heh.”

“Who would?”

“That strip club, The Cat’s Pyjamas. He was tight with the crew that worked outta there, so he said.”

Malone scanned his stooled patrons – a captive audience - who sucked their teeth as I receded from the dinge towards the sunlight of the street.

“Hey, don’t tell no one I sent you there, or I’ll smash that baby face for you, give it some character. Your brother was a no mark of no consequence, alright? Get it straight and get gone.”

#

A silhouette of a feline-female hybrid with conical breasts adorned the flank of a converted strip mall. I asked the shiny-headed hulk on the door to take me to someone in charge. He told me to get fucked. I said I knew Paul. He told me to get fucked.

I got fucked at a safe distance.

A shambling goon in a too-big tan suit stepped outside for a cigarette. He consulted with the doorman, took out his phone, nodded at me, at a mounted camera above the buxom monstrosity. He ushered me over, and inside, and through a thumping neon expanse of strobing flesh, to a plush office.

A wiry, moustachioed man with a mahogany glaze perched on the edge of a desk, a cluster of monitors behind him showing champagne rooms, and basements, and sidewalk malingerers. The goon folded himself into a corner.

“You’re Paul’s brother?” the boss blinked, long and leathered.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. So what’s the plan here, kid?”

“Plan? I -- ”

“You armed? You come alone? You suicidal?”

“No... yeah... no, I -- ”

“Peace of mind is important, and it’s within my gift. Paul was a friend of mine. An employee, but a friend. I liked him. I... I admired him. You are Laurence?”

“Laurie.”

“Well, he talked about you, Laurie. He showed me pictures. You were his north star, y’know? The scientist. The scholar. Paul was many good things, many likeable things, but he was not a scholar. Not a thinker. He cut corners for no reason, and in the end, he stole from me to prove he could. I couldn’t allow that.”

“Tell me...” my tongue crackled. “...tell me more about… about -- ”

“You wanna know, like, the what of it? The when? The where?”

The co-conspirators exchanged a loaded, lingering pout.

“Look, he didn’t see it coming, kid. He was sentimental about the sea, did you know that about him? A Chicago guy, I mean, what the fuck? I took him out on my boat, anyways. We made a day out of it, didn’t we Joe?”

“It was a beautiful day,” the goon glistened, his baritone blistering at the edges. “We brought beers and steak sandwiches.”

“You killed him,” I accused, jaw clenching.

“I killed him, yeah,” the boss nipped his septum.

“Because he was of no consequence?” I found myself pleading. Sneering.

“No consequence? Are you stupid, kid? Have you listened to a word I fuckin’ said? You disrespectful little punk. Get the fuck out of here. Get him out.”

The sniffling goon gripped me by the neck, through neon and flesh, ruffling the nylon red carpet outside the strip club with my tossed carcass.

I walked and walked. Passed the mean mugs. Passed the hangdog shrugs. I didn’t know the neighbourhood. I didn’t know any neighbourhood, only what Paul told me about avoiding them. My becoming was a nothing, devoid of matter, these streets possessing vacuum energy, only enabling the universe’s expansion around me. Beyond me. The ratio of void volume to solid volume.

I knew the way home from school, in a straight line – get it straight, get it straight –that rectilinear motion of an object moving in one dimension with displacement, velocity, and acceleration defined along a single axis.

I paced in front of a bodega with the bottle of vodka I’d bought. I took a sip. Retched. Threw it in the trash.

I thought about collisions, where two or more objects interact and exert forces on each other over a short duration, causing changes in their motion. Elastic collisions, where objects bounce off each other, where total momentum and total kinetic energy are conserved. But mostly - as a homeless guy with yellow teeth hassled me for spare change - I thought about inelastic collisions, where objects stick together or deform, resulting in a loss of kinetic energy, usually converted into heat or sound.

Like a car crash. Get gone. Get gone.

Like a punch - a chain that converts potential energy into kinetic energy, maximizing force by accelerating the entire body's mass—not just the arm...

Hands, kid. Hands.

...through the hip.

Feet, kid. Make a square.

I receded from the sunlight of the street, into the dinge of Malones, vaulting the bar, lunging through the hip, shoulder, fist, nose. Malone’s face exploded – a crimson big bang.

He tipped like a tanker, his lead skull catching the edge of a liquor shelf with a satisfying thunk.

“How’s that for no consequence?!” I bounced over him, tears stinging.

Blood gushed and pooled and spread from the lethal fissure, Malone’s dead eyes only saying, ‘another fuckin’ cheap shot, House Red, heh heh heh’.

The off-duty cops at the booth broke off from their poker game, sidearms drawn.

#

Cindy picked me up in her minivan. She had two kids by then, and another on the way. When she started writing to me inside, we made plans that diverged between our own discount surf school and bean picking in Minnesota. In the end, it was both and neither – situations that worked for a while, swelling and breaking, but never breaking us. We collided in that inelastic way, propelling each other, but sticking together with a common velocity.

The latest bump turned out to be a girl, but she still let me call her Paula.

BIO: Ian Johnson is a writer from North East England. His words appear in such publications as Trash Cat Lit, Literary Garage, Pistol Jim, Bull, and Scaffold. He is a BotN nominee.

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