The memory of a loved one is something personal.
But in the Gutter, revenge gets personal too.
But in the Gutter, revenge gets personal too.
Her Name was Flora by Matt Phillips
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I’ll tell you that I
had never fired a gun. Some things, though, a girl has got to do when the time
comes—that’s life. Like a first kiss. Like giving birth.
All that transition
to adulthood crap.
Well, I bought a used
.38 at a little gun store in Jerome, Arizona. It was a legal purchase, but I
didn’t plan on using the thing. I wanted it as a kind of insurance, or a
threat. I’m 39-years-old, five feet and two inches tall (by a hair), and I
weigh 103 pounds with my winter coat on. My occupation is—was—emergency room
nurse. Trauma nurse, they call it. I’ve seen gunshot wounds, stab wounds, lots
of other shit, too—things I don’t want to mention.
Two weeks before I
bought the .38, the cops found my little sister face down in a vacant lot
between a furniture warehouse and one of those places where you buy used
refrigerators.
This was in a suburb
outside Phoenix.
She was dead, my
sister. Her name was Flora.
The cops told me it
was a small caliber gunshot to the temple that did it. Her body was dumped in
that vacant lot. It was not the scene of the crime.
The man who killed my
little sister—I’m quite sure of this—was called Viggo. He owned a towing
business out of Gila and didn’t know how to treat women. He was a shade under six
feet and seemed to hate the world for it. You saw him at trashy dive bars in
Phoenix on the weekends, and he was a regular at a biker bar called Rico’s,
where my sister served cocktails.
On Independence Day,
last year this was, I met my sister at Rico’s for a drink. Viggo came in at
midnight and asked for the key to her apartment. This fucker did not say two
words to me.
After he left, I
asked my sister if they were an item, if they were together.
“He’s just a friend with
benefits,” she said. “We
hardly know each other.”
I asked about the
faded bruise under her left eye, a patch of skin gone slightly yellow, not
visible without the warm glow of neon in our corner booth.
“Kickboxing class,” she
said.
I guess there aren’t
many things they teach you in kickboxing class to help you dodge a bullet.
Least not when the gun is planted against your temple, at point-blank range.
The cops told me that part of it too, after I showed up in the detective’s
office and let him know I could take it. I could take all of it.
Like I said, I had
never fired a gun.
But I bought myself
the .38—I kept it in my purse.
***
If shot from the
right distance, and in the right place, a man can survive a gunshot wound for
quite a while. I know this because of my occupation.
One Saturday night,
about six months after we put Flora in the ground, I happened to see Viggo
watching a shitty metal band at a bar on the outskirts of Phoenix. This was the
kind of place where you think twice or three times before you sit down to pee.
Viggo didn’t remember
me from Eve. Why would he?
I was just another
girl with eye shadow and a short skirt.
He practically begged
me to take him home.
I obliged. But we
never did make it to my place.
I’ll tell you that I
had never heard a man scream like a woman, not even in the emergency room, but
that’s what happened when I shot Viggo. I drove us about twenty miles outside
Phoenix, took I-10 toward California, and pulled off where I knew it was all
just factories and warehouses. He asked where the fuck my apartment was and
kind of grunted at me.
“Let me show you,” I
said. “I think you’ll like
this.”
We got out of my car
and I came around the front and pulled the .38 from my purse. Viggo had this
surprised look on his face; he asked what the hell I meant to do.
“Maim you for life,” I
said.
That was my first
time firing a gun. Kind of an odd thing, I guess. I ditched the .38 after
that—dropped it in the Colorado River on my way to Mexico.
Viggo could have made
it, maybe, but I fixed it so he’ll never fuck anybody else again. Like I said,
the cops found my little sister face down in a vacant lot in a suburb outside
Phoenix.
She was dead, my
sister.
Her name was Flora.
