BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 3 by David Cranmer & Elise Wright

Author:David Cranmer & Elise Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General
Publisher: BEAT to a PULP
Published: 2013-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

THE FOLLOW-THROUGH

Chris F. Holm

You know your problem, Matty? You got no goddamn follow-through.

Matthew Graham was drunk. That fact wasn't much of a surprise. Matthew Graham was often drunk these days—used to be, he worked construction, but ain't much call to hire an unskilled high-school dropout when the market was flush with trained craftsmen just itching for work—and anyways, drunk was the only time he ever thought about his father. Matt's pop was a florid, hirsute, meaty guy with a scraggly horseshoe of dark brown hair draped around his pate from ear to ear, and an unkempt lawn of scruff to match. He had a big mouth, big hands, and a big appetite for the coffee brandy, the latter of which often summoned the former, at least until he drank enough it summoned sleep. And every rant, every ass-whupping, always started the same way.

You know your problem, Matty? You got no goddamn follow-through.

The bitch of it was, Matt thought as he peered skip-visioned from drink at his shithole of a third-floor Lewiston walkup from his perch on one threadbare end of his scratchy, thrift-store couch, his old man had a point. A hundred-odd cases of beer aside, Matt had never finished a thing in his life. Most of the time, it didn't bother him none. He was content to coast through his days wherever they took him—even if that was just from bed to couch and back. He was a man of few wants, and consequently of few worries.

At least, until he met Kylie.

Then, all the sudden, Matt knew from want and worry.

Kylie lived across the hall, a pretty sad-eyed waif with a laugh as fleeting as it was magnificent. Matt fell for her the first moment he laid eyes on her—sleep-addled and pajama-ed in the dead of night, her eyes glistening with tears, her hair a haphazard bun atop her head as she stood outside smoking on the stoop—and sometimes, he half-thought she felt the same. But he never made a move, because she'd been shacking up with a string of deadbeats since long before they'd met, each leaning heavier toward the beating side of the equation than the last. Matt thought that it was Oxy that kept her seeking out these bums, but it seemed to him a vicious cycle—he was pretty sure she started popping pills to dull the ache of morning bruises, and then endured a whole new round come evening to ensure they'd stay long enough for her to score some more pills. Most of her suitors didn't stick around longer than a week or two—growing bored, maybe, or moving on to goods less damaged.

Until Dana, that is.

Dana Arsenault was some twenty years Kylie's senior—a scruffy big-boned guy with a dodgy comb-over and flashpaper temper, who, truth be told, reminded Matt of his old man. Guy'd been on disability for years—some kind of accident at the textile mill where he used to work the looms—which meant an endless, meager string of checks on which to live, and an endless supply of pain meds to kill the pain and boredom both.

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