Guy goes to a five-dollar hooker and gets crabs.
When he complains, she replies, "For five dollars, what did you expect? Lobster?"
When he complains, she replies, "For five dollars, what did you expect? Lobster?"
Ruffle Bar by Angel Luis Colón
We
were poaching horseshoe crab at Ruffle Bar when Jamie asked, “You ever fuck
around with a hooker worth the trouble? Kind of woman makes it completely
rational to lose everything over?”
We
barely spoke about sex or life. Wasn’t much time to talk about philosophy or
belief when you were looking over your shoulder for police spotlights and
avoiding the spiky parts of horseshoe crabs. Apparently these little
motherfuckers had valuable blood and there were a million hoops the pharma companies
needed jumping through to bleed them legally. It was easier to pay a few
assholes to troll the beaches and sandbars.
It
was stinky, messy, paranoid business. Fortunately, the money was solid for a
side gig.
I
changed the subject. “You think you can eat these fucking things? Been taking
them two weeks now and I’ve yet to think of a single reason to try thanks to
the smell.” I picked a crab up by the tail. Ugly fuckers.
Jamie’s
eyebrows perked up. “Nah, I think you’d shit your pants for days. Hell, I don’t
think a damn thing in this water should be edible.” He motioned out to the
water. “People buy it, though. We’re all
too stupid or don’t care enough.” He pointed at me with a broken crab tail.
“You know most tuna out there isn’t even tuna? Something called snakefish. Got
oils in it that we can’t stomach and can make you leak out the ass.”
“Like
those chips from back in the day?” I asked.
“Yeah,
what was that stuff called? Olektra?”
“Nah,
Olestra. Made people leak out their assholes. Had a friend who had the same
problem from too much creatine or something.”
We
heard the sound of a boat motor. Jamie and I ducked down and scurried towards
the dilapidated remains of a brick wall closest to us. We kept low. I held my
breath and said a prayer to whatever God would have mercy on my crab-poaching
ass.
“But
seriously, you ever fuck a hooker you thought was worth the money?” Jamie had a
setup he liked and wasn’t letting go.
I
sighed, ignoring the dead fish stench of the filthy sand only an inch away from
my face. “Never fucked a whore, man.”
“Really?”
The tone was making the punchline obvious.
“Yep.
No whores. I’m too pretty. Only crabs I ever had experience with are the ones
in our boat.” I slowly pushed myself up with my arms. I kept my legs dead. No
police boats. Must have been someone making their way back to dock. I stood up
and brushed the sand from my pants. “I feel like you’ve got something to say,
man.”
“What
makes you say that?” Jamie stood up. There was fury in those eyes—the kind of
anger a desperate man with a broken heart likes to carry. “What makes you think
I got something to say to you?”
I
moved back to the pile of crabs I laid out earlier and started to transfer them
onto our boat. “For one, fuck,” I said as I pricked my finger. I dropped the
crab that pricked me and its shell shattered. “For one, this is the most we’ve
ever spoken. And, as luck would have it, I found out I’ve been fucking your
woman just yesterday when you showed me her picture. I’m figuring you found out
about me in a similar way.”
Fuck
yeah, I jumped ahead. Best way to take the wind out the sails of folks think
they got something over your head—you pull the fucking rope attached to the
guillotine blade yourself. I kicked myself for sending Viv nudes the other
night. Of course she didn’t delete the goddamn things. Couldn’t figure what
irked me more, finding out I was working with my side lay’s hubby or that he
probably knew which way my dick curved.
Taking
control of the big moment seemed to make him smaller. It wasn’t that I wanted
the poor bastard to suffer; I just didn’t give a flying fuck about him. We were
there to make cash, nothing more. We happened to be on the same team. I wanted
to explain that to him; to say that the drive thru cashier doesn’t sit back
worrying about the motherfucker mopping the bathroom, but my words had
consequences.
Motherfucker
pulled a knife. Motherfucker came at me with tears in his eyes and a dwarf star
made of hate eating his heart inside out. Motherfucker tripped and missed me by
a country mile. Went head over heels and landed in the boat on our pile of
horseshoe crab.
The
response time after the fall was bizarrely quick. Jamie popped up like a kid’s
theater puppet—same slack jaw—and yelped at me. The poor fuck fell in the pile
in a bad way. Three crabs’ tails pierced him and those fuckers stayed put. Two
in the chest and one nestled firmly under his left eye.
“Am,
am I okay?” Jamie asked.
I
didn’t have an answer.
He
stood there trembling and asked again, “Am I okay?”
I
noticed the knife then, behind the crab in his face and lodged in his ear. He
still didn’t make a move and his eyes looked vacant—like he didn’t even see me
anymore.
“Okay?”
This time his tongue stumbled over his teeth and he lurched forward, taking a
tumble back off the boat. He landed face first on the sand and lay still.
“Well,
shit,” I said, stymied to find the sense of urgency I was supposed to have.
Still,
the body needed burying, didn’t it?
#
I
called Viv a few hours after I’d finished the work. Cut off whatever it was we
had amicably while I counted the night’s take. She mentioned she was going to
her mom’s house either way. That whatever her plans were didn’t really amount
to anything at all and she realized it only after Jamie decided she was
something he owned more than valued.
Took
the long way home and saw a quick report on the news regarding an unidentified
man found dead in Jamaica Bay. Felt bad, drank, showered, and tried to sleep.
Shower
didn’t really help. The damn smell clung to me. Couldn’t get a wink of sleep.
