Chapter 69
Aweek later, Byron and I have been seeing each other every day, which means we are officially together this time around.
It's funny how things work out. The last person you'd imagine ever being friends with is now your boyfriend.
Tonight is my night off. Byron had to go out of town for a few days, so I'm home alone.
In the silence, a FaceTime call rings on my laptop.
It's Dinah. I accept, and she pops up on my screen, bleary-eyed and looking as disheveled as the peeling gray wall behind her.
“Dinah?”
“Wade! Thank god for English,” she says.
“Where are you?”
“I'm in Russia.”
“You WHAT?” I ask. “How? They are completely cut off from the West right now.”
“I went to Russia to meet Ruslan. He asked me to transfer all my money through crypto so we could run away to Thailand together.
First I had to meet him in his apartment north of Moscow.
Then I woke up today and he's not here… and the money is gone now!
I'm talking hundreds of thousands. That bastard stole all of it!”
“You lost ALL your money?” I practically scream the words at her like she's my own child.
“Nobody speaks English here. Can you believe it?
I've been drinking water from the tap, and now I have a parasite.
I barely have anything to eat. I never want to see another goddamn potato again in my life.
And now there's a babushka who won't stop harassing me. I gotta get out of here, Wade.” I can see a cross-eyed old woman in a veil pounding at the window behind her with a cane, screaming at her in Russian, her teeth rotten and full of silver caps.
“Wade, you're the only man in my life who has been consistently terrible instead of surprisingly terrible. I respect that. Please help me. I don't want to be here anymore.” Tears run down her face.
I'm so tempted to tell her to deal with it and shut the laptop on her, but this is a scary situation for anybody to be in.
“What can I do? Do I call the US embassy there?'” I ask.
“Don't get the government involved,” she says. “I'm probably on some watchlist anyway. Please buy me a ticket back to Houston.”
“How?”
“Don't you have any money?”
“No. I just started a job. I already blew all my savings on the first hospital payment, and your cop friend keeps writing me tickets. I'd need a month's salary to afford a plane ticket.”
“Okay, can you do that, please? And I'll pay you back?
I promise! It's the least you could do,” she says, sobbing now.
A rat the size of a shoebox scurries behind her and squeaks, and Dinah howls.
“PLEASE, WADE. PLEASE, PLEASE HELP ME. I'LL DO ANYTHING TO GET OUT OF HERE.
I'M SORRY I SAID ALL THOSE THINGS TO YOU. YOU MADE ME FEEL AWFUL WHEN YOU RUINED MY CAREER. PLEASE HELP ME.”
I pity her so much right now, even after the way she's treated me. Behind her bravado and vindictiveness, there's somebody who is not well; a little lost girl who needs help. She'll always be this way.
I also hit her, even though she hit me first. Still, that was wrong.
“Fine. I'll buy you a ticket. I punched you, and I shouldn't have done that,” I say. “But I'll get it under one condition.”
“Anything!”
“I want you to sit there in your apartment and think about every person you've hurt.
I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the lady at the elevator, the lady with the lisp, that time you strangled the lady at a wedding because you didn't get the bouquet, all the people you lied to about Plutonium Cactus…
Think about those people you victimized, the way I've been forced to think about everybody I've hurt the past year.”
Her tears stop falling. She sits back in her chair and crosses her arms. “I'm sorry you only seem able to remember me that way. Sounds more like a skill issue on your end,” she says.
“Dinah…”
“Fine, fine, fine! I will. I promise. I know I haven't been perfect, okay? Get me out of this shithole country.”
I guess once you hit eighteen, all you ever think about is money problems.
When I get off the video call, I plod over to my bedroom, turn off the light, and collapse on my bed. I'm about to fall asleep when I hear rustling outside.
The silhouette of a man stares into the window. A bolt of stinging panic makes my heart thump. They fumble with the panes, trying to lift it open. I slide onto the floor and crawl out of the room. I hear the window break behind me.
“It's me, Santa Claus!” Clint says. “Just kidding. I have a bigger dick.”
His footsteps creep out of my bedroom and into the hall. I run to the living room and hide behind the couch just before he enters.
“Where y'all at?” he says in a sing-song voice. “You know what happened after you released that video? You know what that crowd of men did when they got their hands on me? They beat me black-and-blue.”
The path to the back door in the kitchen is clear, but just as I'm about to scramble over to it, he turns the lights on.
“But it's okay. I'm not gonna beat the shit out of you. Just like I didn't burn the garage down. I'm a nonviolent man of peace, like Gandhi.”
He walks up to one of his gun racks and picks up his flamethrower.
“What I am gonna do is burn this house to the ground. Whoo-ee! Pecos!”
He tries to light up the wall, but it's out of gas.
He tosses it on the ground and it slides right toward my hands.
I crawl to the other side of the couch, where I see Clint's KISS coffin wide open.
I crawl past the couch, waiting for him to pass, then slide into the coffin and close the lid over myself.
“Ain't nobody home but my friend Jack!” I hear him gulping a liquid down for ten full seconds before the sound of glass shattering over the floor. He belches.
“Mighty fine, mighty fine! Yessiree!”
His footsteps get closer, and just as I think he's going to open the lid, the coffin slides across the floor. He pushes from behind, wheezing the whole way.
“I'm taking back my coffin, you whores of Babylon. Then I'm gonna come back and burn it all down! Be advised!”
I press my hands against the sides to keep myself from rocking around and making noise. Right in my face on the ceiling of the coffin is a picture of Gene Simmons's demon makeup and enormous tongue.
With heavy breaths and grunts, Clint lifts the coffin and pushes it into what must be his truck bed. The engine turns, rattling the coffin, and suddenly I'm off to whatever nightmare destination Clint has in mind.
After ten minutes, I think about sneaking out of the coffin and jumping off, but the movement of the truck becomes more erratic.
It swerves left and right, then speeds forward like it's chasing somebody.
I hear his tires screeching and then something crashes into us, sending the coffin flying with me in it.
Just a giant metaphor for my stupid fartass life.
I land hard and my face slams into Gene Simmons's tongue, but the rest of my body is cushioned by the silky interior.
I hear Clint stumbling nearby. The coffin shakes a little. I yelp without thinking, then slap my hand over my mouth. I know he heard that.
Slowly and drunkenly, Clint struggles to open the lid.
Right as he's about to see me, I sit up and blurt out, “BLARGH!
I'M A SPIDER!” and he screams and twitches like he's got ants in his clothes and stumbles back until he's flat on the ground.
I survey my surroundings, which include the ditch I am currently in and the tree that Clint crashed into on this backcountry road. His truck is totaled.
I grab my phone from the coffin and make a run for the woods across a field, unsure of where I'm going, thinking about how I'm leaving Clint the same way I did when I met him: drunk and sprawled out on the ground.