Four Corners by Wally Rudolph

Author:Wally Rudolph
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619023932
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Maddie drank bleach to thin her blood, she said. I caught her in the act a few days after we met. It was our first proper date. I tried to stay clean the day before but ended up falling for a plate of blow with Ben in the back of an art gallery off Canyon Road. I slept an hour and bought some expensive cologne and a bottle of expensive perfume to give to Maddie, thinking she’d just smell it and be mine. She didn’t notice. She was too embarrassed I had caught her with the gallon of Jewel-Osco bleach, a pint glass, and a jug of distilled water. I asked if I could watch. Then she poured a capful of bleach into the glass and filled the rest with water and went to the bathroom.

‘I always gag. I don’t want you to see that,’ she said, closing the door.

I sat in the living room of her tiny apartment watching her fat gray and white cat clean himself while she dry-heaved in the bathroom. She came out with her hair tied back, lip gloss on, and no other makeup. For the first time, I saw her freckles and short legs. We walked to the Cross of the Martyrs and watched the sun fall. We smoked cigarettes, and she said she wanted to get back in with Jesus.

Once I met Maddie, I didn’t think of Phoenix. Ben never spoke of it, and the terrors and screams died off when I realized Santer was never going to call. I knew plenty of junkies who barely remembered where and when they were born, so me losing a year on the cheeva seemed square. I took a job at the El Paseo bar downtown. I knew the bar owner there—an Irish ex-model who ended up in Santa Fe after a divorce. She was pretty and knew it and could barely stand me. I told her I needed a hand not so much for the money, but to try and keep my nose clean, remember how to walk and talk regular-like. She let me wash glasses and work with a short-bearded prick named Larry. One night, I cut him with a paring knife and said it was an accident. I would have done it again, but they fired me.

Maddie and I didn’t talk much at first, and I tried my best not to let her see me on any speed. We only had sex when we were drunk and high. Maddie kept all her hair unkept, so her pussy always looked fat and swollen in her underwear. After we finished, I would cough and drink whatever liquor she had around. I took showers with my arm against the wall. When I puked up blood, she would drive me to the only free clinic in town. The doctor there knew Ben and I were eating too much coke. He always winked and told me to stay away from spicy food and get checked for AIDS every six months.

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