Walking out of the drug store with the water pistol that looked real enough to him, albeit the bright orange end in his hand, he strolled easily down the street. Not sure of what to do next, he walked towards the white house attempting to break off the orange nose of the water pistol. “Won’t work at all,” he half thought half said aloud. Finally breaking it off, he decided after some deliberation that the orange piece was going in the garbage and not on the ground. He would not have is his second to last action on the earth be littering.
Finally he arrived at Lafayette park, right in front of the White House. “What a piece of tainted shit that is,” he yelled. There were snipers on every building he knew, but hadn’t really formulated a plan. More shooting from the hip – the way he’d always done; playing every situation as a hand dealt to him, the same as a coin lands how it lands.
A secret service cop finally walked up to him after several minutes of ridiculous tantrums. He had begun to wonder if they would ever bother to enforce their police state. He’d already called most the people’s names he could remember any number of epithets for their character, their actions, their livelihood.
“How are you today, sir?” the stern young face asked in pubescent tones.
“Not as good as I wish I was.” he replied, safe in the knowledge that the water pistol was in his jacket pocket.
There’d been a lot of whisky, beer and cigarettes up to this point. The courage seemed to be overflowing, toppling the dikes of self control like they were children’s playing blocks.
“No, I wish I was feeling a lot better than I am. But the truth is, I can’t think of anything else but to die. Seriously, every thing I think is centered on that concept. Do you know what I mean?” The question was sincere; so was the statement. But the truth was he just wanted it all to stop. He wanted to stop inexplicably wanting to see buildings go up in flames with families in them. He wanted to stop punching walls and biting sores into the side of his cheeks; he wanted to stop having to be alone because all he knew was rage. Rage at the dawn, the sunset, the space in between the stars, the off hand remarks that left him feeling small and disoriented. He wanted to stop the world from its assault upon his senses, all of them: the ugliness of the woman on the corner with her cunt out from beneath her skirt asking for $20 while balanced on the whole of her belongings in a china town shopping cart in a dismal display of yoga and ballet choked on homelessness, the sound of mothers yelling at their babies for crying in the gas station convenience store, the smell of his lover’s pussy wafting around him in a taunt of teen jealousy, the feel of his ice cold cheeks as he passed the man sleeping in what must have been 10 layers of blankets – all of it was at war with him and everything demanded some type of recompense.
“Why don’t you go for a walk down the street,” the secret pubic patrol suggested to him kindly, as he reached out for his arm, clearly in an effort to push him off to some other sod who would have to deal with this lunatic.
“Listen, I’ve had enough whisky to know that I can say what ever the devil may whisper into my ear no matter where I am! So …” he paused, as he rotated more toward the white house and less towards where the cop wanted to point him, all while backing up, “ I’m going to say just what the hell it is I think!” The cop’s eyes betrayed his realization that this was not your average drunk bum. He wasn’t sure what he was going to have to do, but a simple shove on down the street wouldn’t suffice. “I could have told you I was trouble, if you’d bothered to ask,” the drunk commented after seeing it. “Shit, I haven’t passed out on a bus bench since my mother was called over the whole thing back in ’89.”
It occurred to him that the cop might not have even been alive in 1989, and that hit him with a despair weighing one hundred tons. He’d been backing away very slowly from the cop, while the cop talked at him. Finally, after backing up almost to the street, well past the statue of Andrew Jackson, he said to the cop in a low voice, leaning in and almost drawing him near, “I don’t really give a shit about the politics of the world, I’m heart broken. And whatever happens next, just know that you weren’t singled out, unless it was by god and I can’t say one way or the other.”
The cop reached out to put his hand on the drunks arm and instinct took over – either that or very learned behaviors. The drunk grabbed his arm at the wrist and the elbow, pushing his forearm behind his back and his fingers toward his elbow, while, as the cop rotated, the drunk put his hands on the pressure point just the base of his neck, forcing the cop down and his arm up, behind his back in sheer agony. He remembered he had the gun in his right hand pocket and immediately pulled it out and put it to the cops head. Knowing he didn’t have much time, he put his lips to his ears and began to whisper, “I don’t give a shit about all this crap. I don’t give a shit about you. I don’t have a heart anymore – what was left was destroyed and all I’ve got is these last few minutes. You think I’m going to kill you and they think I’m going to kill you and that’s good. Now,” he pulled on the cops arm pressing the plastic barrel into his temple, “where are the snipers?”
“Everywhere,” the cop gasped, in a choked, deep voice, “on top of all the buildings behind us.”
The drunk spun them around so the cop was facing I street and his back was to the White House. “You’re not going to die, I am,” the drunk said to the cop. “What’s going to happen here is you’re going to get some medal and a whole bunch of visits to a shrink. If your sincere about your pain, you’ll find god.” The cars kept going through the green light, the people kept walking on the sidewalk. “At the end of this, you’ll know I am harmless, though a bit off, sure. And with a bit of luck, you’ll feel responsible. What you do with that responsibility is up to you. This is what I’m doing with mine.”
The cop was in severe pain, with his arm bent unnaturally behind his back and the barrel pressing in on his whole brain he was having a rough go of it thinking of what to do next. The drunk kept talking, “This morning I started out wanting to destroy things, kill someone, you know – whatever. Then this afternoon, all I wanted to do was get in a fight and get my ass kicked, until this evening, when I knew I wanted to die.”
The radio started chattering – numbers and nonsense that didn’t mean anything to either of them. Eventually the words, “Can you respond?” seemed to ring out of nowhere. Someone must have seen something. He was racing as fast as his slow mind could – who? That didn’t matter he reasoned, there was a prescribed outcome to this and who wasn’t part of it. He noticed a police car pulling up in front of the white house and the guards at the shack started to come out, talking into his mic. “Fuckin’ pigs,” he let slip, “Sorry,” he corrected, “I know their just doing their job, I’m just a little prejudiced, that’s all.”
“You know it doesn’t have to end badly, right?” the cop asked, clearly shaken and obviously in pain.
“What, I get to die quickly?”
“No,” the cop shot back, “You don’t have to die. You may not even go to prison.” he couldn’t tell that the grin had gone ear to ear on the drunk’s face.
“Ahh, man, you’re the best,” the drunk said into the cop’s ear, almost erotically. “I couldn’t have posted on Craig’s List for someone as real as you. Here’s what’s going to happen,” he paused as he thought about it.
You’re going to fucking write the ending of this, cause I can’t see any more. I need practice – I’ve fallen out of it.