The Standard Grand by Jay Baron Nicorvo

Author:Jay Baron Nicorvo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

WINTER

2012

THEY SLEEP SPOONED NEAR THE WOODSTOVE, Ray waking to feed the fire, she waking to watch.

Tell me about your tattoos.

Little intense pain in the moment. Makes you forget a whole load of past hurt. Problem is, don’t last so you got to get another.

I see your meat tag. She touches his ribcage just below his left armpit, nine numbers overtop the letters A NEG.

We didn’t wear dog tags. Too noisy.

Now I can steal your identity.

You can have it.

Our blood’s compatible. I’m A-pos. What about this one? We are shadows of … tendon fury?

Tender. Gave myself that one. And this one over here.

You draw?

A little. Or used to. Painted a few T-walls in my time. Painted our unit’s rock at Painted Rocks when we trained at Fort Irwin.

Liked my time there. Almost got a tattoo off-base in—what’s the town’s name?

Feel like you’re testing me.

Well.

Barstow.

Test passed. You give me a tattoo?

Maybe.

How you feel about dogs?

This is getting serious.

Well.

Think I’ve reached the stage where I’m more fond of animals than people. Part of the reason I’m up here. Rather have the company of a couple of rambunctious raccoons.

* * *

Naked in the warm yurt, they regard each other. For an instant, he seems virginal, tearful.

To be able to look on you like this? See you all so beautifully … together?

I’m smelly and hairy and, top it all off, on my period.

You’re talking to a fellow soldier.

What’s that supposed to mean?

I don’t feel at ease unless someone’s spilled a little blood.

Well I might mess your yurt.

We’re pissing, crapping, bleeding beasts. Squeamishness over menstrual blood? That’s crazy. Specially coming from a woman. It’s the same sexist insanity of Sharia. To make menstruation an embarrassment? That’s terrible. Sight of blood’s a reminder of what we’re made, how fragile we are. Nice to see some on occasion that’s a sign of the potential for life. Instead of its end.

Okay.

Okay what?

You can fuck me now.

* * *

You got family?

Mother finishing out a life sentence behind the counter of a 7-Eleven. Two younger brothers. One’s in East Jersey State, other at Monmouth University.

Good they’re both getting education.

East Jersey State’s a max security penitentiary. Once known as Rahway. Monmouth’s more like a debtors’ prison than a college. When I left for my first tour, my brothers spiraled straight down. Think I might’ve done to them just like our father did to us.

* * *

The first orgasm she has with Ray feels like one of those psychic surgeries performed in the Philippines: it’s as if he goes in with bare hands and removes a mass from her. After that, they come easier, better, and their lovemaking—some hours long, some an intense minute, some all the increments in between—is the most satisfying of her promiscuous life.

* * *

In Iraq, when I was working for Zeitgeist, I bought a Russian Ural 650. Cost me 5 million dinars. The Fedayeen Saddam ordered a couple thousand of the bikes just before the invasion. Time the shipment arrived, Saddam was down in his hideyhole. Bikes were sold off one by one.

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