Phillips - Know Me From Smoke

KNOW ME FROM SMOKE

This edition first published 2018 by Fahrenheit Thirteen, an imprint of Fahrenheit Press.

ISBN: 978-1-912526-27-7

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.Fahrenheit-Press.com

Copyright Matt Phillips 2018

The right of Matt Phillips to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

F 4 E

Know Me From Smoke

By

Matt Phillips

Fahrenheit Thirteen

An Imprint of Fahrenheit Press

If you aint gonna do me right

I might just do you in

Aint it a sin

Aint it a sin

Aint it a Sin by Charles Bradley

Part One: Hard Times

C hapter 1

Three weeks before Christmas, a widowed lounge singer named Stella Radney paid two hundred bucks to have a rotten molar pulled. It was a gray Friday morning; sea-mist shone wet along the streetsthe shop windows were slick with it, a syrup-like coating Stella noticed as she stepped off a southbound city bus. On the corner, she checked the address written in black ink across her palm and headed west. It was the only dentist she could find on short notice who took cash, and Stella had to get this taken care of. Hell, she couldnt sing with a toothache.

And not singingno paywasnt an option for Stella Radney.

She stepped off the curb and crossed the next street, winced at the sharp pain in her mouth. One part of her was nostalgic for the tooth; after all, it had been in her mouth for forty and some odd years and Stella didnt like to know a part of her was dead. Or dying. You get to a certain age and theres things about your body that feel unfair. Did a little piece of you have to die each year, Stella wondered? One part of her figured it was so a person can get used to death. If the world kills us little by little, that makes it more acceptable to die for real. And the biggest ending of them allthats deathwas the biggest sucker punch life could give you. Best we get used to it.

Stella Radney endured more than a few rough endings in her life, sucker punches all.

Getting her tooth pulled reminded Stella of the .45 caliber slug lodged in the plump part of her left hip. The doctors couldnt get it out and the slug, burrowed inside her like a nasty tick, reminded Stella of her dead husbandtheres an ending you dont forget. Come Christmas day, it would be an even twenty years since Virgil died. Back then, shed do a song now and again, just a quick ditty to keep the regulars happy, but she made her money slinging drinks. She got to laugh while tending bar, and that was more than Stella could say for other jobs, more than she could say for the things she did afterwards. But that was another story, a worse story.

Hustling along the sidewalk, Stella cleared her throat and touched a thumb to her throbbing right cheek. That sonofabitching toothit was time. After checking the address on her hand once more, Stella passed a liquor store, a squat little post office, and climbed a flight of stairs in a muggy office building with beige walls and a smell like rotten wood. Once she signed her name and the receptionist snapped bubble gum at her with fat rouge lips, Stella sat in an uncomfortable office chair to wait. The ache in her mouth stretched from her chin to the bridge of her nose. Soon, the damn pain would end and she could sleep beneath the haze of pain meds, or so she hoped. And later that night, after the meds wore off and the pain was a dull memory, shed sing a few jazz standards for clucking old folks in a halfway decent Italian joint. When youre young you have all kinds of dreams about fame and riches, but the years roll by like lazy notes taken flight from sheet music. You end up a lounge singer waiting in a cheap dentists drab office. Talk about the blues.

A bullet in her hip, and here she was getting a rotten molar pulled.

Miss Radney? A masked dental assistant breathed Stellas name into the humid waiting room. We re ready for you.

Stella followed her into an exam room and fell into the body-length dental chair. This molar hurts like a bitch, but I cant say I like the idea of having it pulled. She pressed two fingers against her swollen right cheek and winced.

Theres still the option of saving the tooth. You can always opt for a crown. The dental assistant slid alongside Stella in a rolling chair and peered at her with shiny black eyes.

How much would that run me?

A crown can range from eight hundred to sixteen hundred dollars.

Well, Stella said, theres your answer. Has pulling teeth changed much since the Old West days? You know, when they gulped bourbon and prayed away the pain?

The dental assistant lifted a syringe. We have anesthetic, at least. But pulling the tooth? Pliers still work best. Her cheeks lifted as she smiled beneath the mask.

Stella groaned and cleared her throat. Lets get it over with then. She dropped a hand to where she knew the scar lurked beneath her blue jeans. There it is, Stella thought, the brother to the bullet that killed my husband. Yeahin life, you get sucker punched sometimes, and boy does it hurt like you wouldnt believe.

Chapter 2

They close the gate behind youthats all it takes, and youre free.

Royal Atkins spat onto the sidewalk and cleared his throat. He squinted at a gray sky plastered with flat unbroken clouds, tried to imagine what the sun would feel like on his skin. It might burst through soon. He hoped it would. He slung a plastic shopping bag over his shoulderextra blue jeans, a pair of clean white socks, a short toothbrush and his ID cardand started walking toward the bus stop.

A voice stopped him: You got out, didnt you? How lucky can you get?

Royal turned and saw a fat prison guard sticking his face through the slotted fence. The mans pasty lips pressed through the metal, spit a gob of tobacco-stained saliva toward Royal.

I guess Im lucky, Royal said. At the sight of the prison guard, the left side of Royals face twitched. He had a thick scar running down his faceit came at the business end of a prison guards billy club. The man who cracked Royals face went by the name of Zane. Old, fat Officer Zane. The manif you dared call him thatmet his maker a year later at the bottom of a prison laundry tub, snuffed to death beneath stacks of crisply folded towels. It was a team job, that murder. Royal by no means took all the credit for himself. He remembered the scent of laundry detergent strong in his lungs, floral notes edged with the pungent body odor of old, fat Officer Zane. It didnt take much motivation for Royal to convince the three inmates folding towels with him to kill Zanetruth was, they all hated him. And the riot two months earlierthe appointment for Royals permanent makeoverstill lingered in all their minds. It was all blood and pain that day; there was no other description for it. When Zane came to escort them back to their cells, Royal hid behind a commercial drying machine and cracked the officer on the back of the head with linked fists. He didnt knock Zane out, but the man was stunned. Another inmate turned Zane over and punched him square in the nose. Blood poured down the officer s blue uniform shirt.

He spit blood at them and said, You pricks better think twice.

Royal knelt next to Zane, tried to memorize his puffy face with its plump jowls and double chin. He said, We thought about it every night since you split my face in two. Maybe you should have thought twice about that.