Meat City on Fire and Other Assorted Debacles

MEAT CITY ON FIRE

AND OTHER ASSORTED DEBACLES

Angel Luis Colón

PRAISE FOR MEAT CITY ON FIRE AND OTHER ASSORTED DEBACLES

The beauty of what Angel Luis Colón does within the boundaries of the short story is you never know what you’re going to get. He seamlessly shifts from dark noir, to comedy, to character examinations with breakneck speed and the skill of a dozen writers. —Todd Robinson, author of Rough Trade

"Meat City on Fire is a hard-hitting collection of fast paced noir stories that never disappoint. Sometimes hilarious and sometimes poignant, Colón gives us his best: old school fathers, vindictive TV producers, vengeful musicians, and broken addicts. With writing that crackles, Meat City on Fire delivers a great punch."—Jen Conley, author of Cannibals

Angel Luis Colón creates fascinating characters who wear hard exteriors to hide their fragility. Their bad decisions lead to painful calamities that readers will both cringe and enjoy as they go from one story to the next. Between flying fists, shotgun blasts, and explosions, Colón writes with the human soul in mind. Hard-edged and human, this collection is American crime fiction at its best. —Travis Richardson, author of Lost in Clover

Copyright © 2017 by Angel Luis Colón

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by Liam Sweeny

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Meat City on Fire (and Other Assorted Debacles)

My Heart Died on Blackrock Avenue

Shotgun Wedding

Help Me, Harry!

Tourists

#Beardhunters

43% Burnt

First Timer’s Club

Meat City on Fire

Sacrifice

The Gospel According to Lee Van Cleef

They’ll Choke on Your Lies

Saltimbocca

Jenny

X

Whatever Floats

Separation Anxiety

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

Other Titles from Down & Out Books and its Imprints

Preview from Knuckledragger by Rusty Barnes

Preview from Face Value by William E. Wallace

Preview from Bad Samaritan by Dana King

To Jeanette. Thank you for shoving me off that ledge

MY HEART DIED ON BLACKROCK AVENUE

I’ll never forget my first fight.

And I mean a real fight, not the random tussles with my brothers or cousins. I’m talking a knuckle-busting, lip-splitting, eye-swelling fight. The kind of fight where you go savage and the world’s pure fire, where there’s no concern about whether your punches connect or if they’re going to do permanent damage. A real street fight—drawn blood, scrapes and cuts you find days later, and that taste at the back your throat, as if you’d been chowing down on pennies all day long. The kind of fight a person with more brains than heart knows to avoid.

Obviously, my first fight was over a girl—surprise, surprise.

I was nine years old, maybe—that part’s hazy. I was at that age where time sort of congealed. What I thought happened in first grade really happened in third and so on and so on. Probably some kind of defense mechanism that keeps us from acknowledging that we’re all going to rot away no matter how fucking particular we are about where we were on April 13, whatever the fucking year.

I had a thing for a girl named Wanda. Real cutie. She lived across the street from me on Blackrock Avenue in the Bronx, not far off from the Bruckner Expressway. When I first fell in love with her, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street. I’d pine after her, show off my handstand while she pretended to ignore me and play double-dutch with her sisters.

That day we held hands for the first time by the swings in the park up the street. I remember feeling the same way as when the ice cream truck came down the street. That burst of intense joy at the first notes coming out of a tinny loudspeaker perched on the truck’s roof. It’s funny. You ask me now and I couldn’t tell you how my wife’s hands felt in mine but in an instant I sure as hell can recall Wanda’s sticky palm against mine in perfect fucking detail.

Not ashamed to admit I loved Wanda. I mean that. In that little runt brain of mine, I knew she was the absolute love of my life. Didn’t matter whether her mother rolled her eyes at the pasty little Irish brat hung up on her daughter or that her sisters giggled at the way I stared into her big, brown eyes. Her father was nice enough to me, but I think that was because he and my dad took the same train to work.

You a nigger-lover? Danny Foglia asked me. He was a wise guy wannabe that lived a few doors down from my house. He was twelve. Had a father who acted like he had connections, but the only thing that asshole was connected to was a mountain of debt thanks to burning all his cash daily at the Aqueduct Racetrack or the off-track betting station in Westchester Square under the 6 train tracks. I remember feeling like he was the tallest kid I’d ever seen—like two of me. He had the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip that he’d rub every five minutes as if it would magically make those whiskers coarser. I don’t remember his friends’ names, but they were all cut from the same cloth: working-class kids of working-class stiffs. Some of us were assholes and some of us weren’t as big of assholes. It was a fairly simple pecking order.

Even in a neighborhood like ours, where it was mixed, most of the kids stuck to their own. I had a few friends, but none lived on the block. It would have been different if I went to the public school on Pugsley, but my mother wasn’t having it. She had my ass in Catholic school where my older brothers went so many years before me. They were in high school and too busy chatting up a parade of bubble-headed girls that walked into our house like special-guest stars on a sitcom. They also did my mother the favor of sticking to their own, so obviously, I was the one who had her stone-faced whenever I asked to see Wanda or eat dinner at the Romero’s house—they were the Puerto Rican family next door.

My brothers, the shining lights of my ma’s life, the less said about those two the better. I was six years younger than the youngest of them. That was thousands of miles apart to my spongey little brain. Not a damn thing we did made sense to each other at all. Clothes, entertainment, the people we admired; all different.

And since I came from that working-class house, with that working-class mom, and two brothers who stuck to their own, well, don’t let me pretend like I didn’t hear what Danny called Wanda before or that I never heard it used under my own roof. I was raised in the Bronx during the seventies. We were all a little racist. And I’ll admit the word didn’t sting me. I didn’t care. I was happy to be holding Wanda’s hand. No, what got my cheeks flushed was the way her eyes went dead and all that light faded away. The way she let go of my hand like it burned her and ran home as if her life depended on it. That word made me as much an enemy as it did Danny. I mean, hell, the weight of it.

That chaffed my fucking ass like I never knew before.

Danny and his boys laughed, the smallest of the crew making a big show of it too. I stood there and soaked it all in; my anger planting me on the spot. When my silence tested the last of their patience, the boys walked away—content that they accomplished their mission to shit on someone’s day. They were powerful for milliseconds. Don’t seem like much to most, but to a kid, a glimmer of control is a hell of a drug.

I had a million scenarios in my head. So many ways to get back at them, to show Wanda they were wrong and I’d defend her, make up for ever letting her cry. Of course I turned tail and ran home too. I was in my kitchen by myself before I knew it. I opened the silverware drawer and stared at the knives. I wish that wasn’t my very first instinct—to find a weapon—but it was. I won’t pretend as if my father didn’t shine our asses when we got out of line. Violence was common in my house. Hell, this was the Bronx, violence was the normal.

There was a strange kind of guilt that overtook me as I scoured through Ma’s nice silverware. That’s probably why I decided against a knife. I didn’t want to go to jail, even if that prick Danny deserved it. Still, he was a head taller than I was, so I grabbed a soup ladle—Ma’s favorite—and ran back outside. At the bottom of our stoop, I ran into my dad.

What the fuck are you doing? He squinted at me through the smoke pluming out of the business end of his Lucky Strike. You could tell everything about a man from the brand of cigarette he smoked. My father smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes as if he’d popped from the womb with one in his mouth. I didn’t know yet that men like him, with that barrel chest and deep, gravelly voice—that man’s man—they were more scared than anyone you’d ever meet. Back then, though, this was the man I aspired to be and the brand I aspired to smoke when I was of age. He was my personal mash-up of Eastwood, Bronson, and Marvin. A one-man wrecking ball. To say I loved him would be a disservice. I worshipped my father, warts and all.

I tucked the ladle into the back pocket of my dungarees. Nothing. Didn’t worship him enough to be honest. Not like I was a complete idiot.

My dad held out a grubby mitt—calloused and covered in faded ink. He was a hard-working asshole. If you believed him, he was the only hard-working asshole on the block. Everyone else was a bum or a faggot. I never understood why he’d categorize only between those two, but the man wasn’t the type you questioned. You let him classify the world through his eyes and nodded through it before he barreled over you.

I handed the ladle over and stared at the cracks in the pavement. Watched the ants marching over to where the melted remains of a Sugar Daddy boiled on the curb. I hadn’t realized how hot it was that day. Wondered if it was more my father’s stare than the sun beaming down on me.

Why the fuck are you taking this outside? Dad slipped the ladle into his own back pocket.

I shrugged. Scratched the toe of my brother’s old Keds against the pavement.

Look at me, Sean. My father always said those four words with steel in his throat.

So I looked at him. Then the tears came. I don’t even know why. I wasn’t mad or sad, no; it was a literal outpouring of emotion. Like my very spirit was pouring from my mouth and my eyes. That piece of shit separated me from something I thought I needed more than breathing. Being nine years old made it even more dramatic. I told my father everything between breathy sobs and sniffles.

He only stared down at me with a sour frown. He crouched to put his lunch bag on the first step of our stoop. Where’s this kid?

At the playground. I turned my waist and thrust a thumb towards the metal fencing visible from where we stood. Wiped my eyes with the back of my forearm and sniffed.

My father nodded. Grabbed my shoulder. Then let’s go. He started walking me towards the playground. His big, gnarled hands effortlessly guided me. The man could have slid me there he was so strong. Then again, all fathers are Superman to their kid at some point in their life, no?

I didn’t understand what my father was doing, but I kept my mouth shut. Once my father started to move, there was no wall that would put a stop to him. The man plotted a path and that was that. Couldn’t tell you how many times he’d sit in hot, dingy apartments on visits with great aunts and cousins thrice-removed or pulled triple shifts all because it was what had to be done.

Danny and his little stooges were still standing around near the slides. There were kids my age and younger trying to have fun, but those pricks were busy tripping, pushing, and pulling them. Misery loved company.

My father turned me around and crouched to meet my eyes. Listen close. He slipped a handkerchief from his front pocket and handed it to me. Clean your face. He watched as I did what I was told and then nodded. Now, you’re gonna walk over to the little bastard with the mouth and you’re gonna hit him. Hard. You understand? Don’t talk; don’t give a single sign of what’s coming. That shock he gave you and Hank’s little girl? You give it right back. He stared into me then like he’d never done before.

I handed his handkerchief back. Isn’t that taking a cheap shot? I thought only guys like Gorgeous George did that.

My dad laughed. Gorgeous George is a fag wrestler. He lives in a fucking fantasy land. This is the real world. He pushed me gently towards Danny and his crew. Go, do what needs to be done. This is about you not taking shit from nobody.

I turned and looked at Danny. He was laughing. Pointing at a kid who was crying because his white pants were ruined when he was tripped near a puddle. I don’t think what I felt was hate, but it was probably as close to it that I’d ever been in my life.

He’s bigger than me. What if he wins? I asked.

Nobody wins a fight, Sean. Take the hits. Just don’t let him knock you down. Try to keep your teeth too. Just bought that Lincoln and we ain’t got room for a dentist appointment.

What if I need help?

My father snorted. Don’t.

I thought about that single word for so long. It crawled up my spine and solidified into ice. Was it a threat? A simple statement? I never asked—too scared of the man to ever question him like that. Somehow, though, I felt ready to take this on. Not that I believed my father would jump in to save the day, no, but I knew even if I had my ass handed to me everything would be alright.

So I listened to my dad. I walked over to Danny. My fists balled, my heart knocking against my ribcage like a fucking SWAT team at the door. My lips were dry. My senses felt alive. I could smell freshly clipped grass; see the texture of the rust covering the top of the monkey bars. It was hot—even for July—but my skin felt like I was in a freezer.

Danny’s eyebrows perked up as I approached. Hey, ni—

A hard right cut him off. It wasn’t enough to put him down. Danny had three years on me. Plenty of time for all that muscle to condense and move past the awkward stage I was in the middle of. Still, the punch surprised him and it certainly surprised his buddies at either side of him. Danny lurched back and snapped forward just as fast. His eyes went wide and he wiped his mouth clean. I’d split his lip. For a second I imagined myself as the hero in a Shaw Brothers flick; here to dispense motherfucking vengeance by the monkey bars.

Danny spit. You screwed up, ni—

It was like he pressed a button whenever that hard N came from his lips. Another punch, a kick to the groin, a cheap shot to the gut. Fine, Dad said there were no rules—sort of—and I’d follow that guideline. Danny meant nothing to me. He was an obstacle, a wart on the face of my world—all one New York block of a world. I kept at it. And let me tell you, he got his shots in too. I felt them, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to walk away until he understood to never, ever talk that way to my Wanda again. Now I was hot as the day and I kept at it until Danny took a knee and held a hand up.

My father said don’t; so I didn’t.

Danny said something, but I couldn’t hear anything past the blood rushing in my head. So I kept punching.

Sean. We’re good, we’re good. My father pulled me off my feet and dragged me out of the park. The ease of it still apparent. There was no tension in his grip or in his walk. No sign of anything as he tossed his cigarette butt aside and blew smoke over my head as he lead me home in silence.

I turned my head to see Danny’s stooges bent over him. They were laughing. Figured. First time life showed me that when the blindly devout see their god bleed, they turn without blinking.

I was sitting at the top of our stoop before I knew it. My dad handed me his handkerchief again. Your nose hurt?

There was a sizeable pool of blood at my feet. Well, for someone my size. The front of my shirt was drenched with it. The source: my nose. I held the cloth to my face and felt a