Unspeakable Home by Ismet Prcic

Author:Ismet Prcic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

It’s Friday again and I’m on the ladder, teetering, sweating. Hunter is below and behind me, supervising, and Tracy is just out of my line of vision, sniping at him about how they’re gonna be late, how she’s waited so long to see this band live, how she will get him kicked out of her house if he makes her miss them. He goes on a diatribe about responsibility, about how his “taint” is on the line if he gets caught trying to take a seventeen-year-old to a twenty-one-and-over show, X-rated at that, not to mention leaving “Bosnia boy over here” and “that nimrod” in charge.

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!” she screams, and I almost fall down.

I spit out the stick and hug the wall with my outstretched arms, abrading my cheek against it. I stay like that until the ladder steadies.

“Is this… good?” I say.

“Never move in with a girl with a tattoo on her tit,” he says. “Come down.”

I do, and look up.

FRIDAY MIDNIGHT CLASSICS

@ VISTA TWIN THEATERS

BUTCH CASSIDY AND SUNDANCE KID

“We should get a new ladder, huh?” Hunter says, patting me on my moist back.

Ever since Monday’s “shenanigans” (this is what he calls it), he’s been extra nice to me. He may be tough, but he’s not tough enough not to sweat what would happen to him if I went to the cops and told them what he did, what he keeps in his office. On Tuesday I had asked for a Thursday off and had gotten it—a first. He even offered me a baggie of weed to take home, to implicate me in his criminal activities, but I declined.

We go back to the front of the theater. Tracy honks thrice from the parking lot, each honk longer and more painful than the one before it.

“Just follow the list,” Hunter says. “And don’t forget to deposit the cash.”

He goes leisurely down the steps, stops, and lights a cigarette.

Tracy starts to honk in a wicked, demented rhythm, like a goose being tortured with a fork. He ignores it, turns back to me, and grins. Slowly, prolonging every movement, Hunter gangsta-walks to the truck.

Inside, Gabe greets me with a lewd gesture, his tongue out, his curled hand bobbing in front of his crotch. “I’d fuck that bitch and wouldn’t take a dime from her,” he says.

“After Hunter?”

“Oh, that would only make it sweeter,” he groans, then abandons jerking it and starts to mount the concession counter, thrusting his hips at it. “Christ, to fuck that asshole’s girl!”

“You know she only has seventeen… I mean, she’s only seventeen?”

“Me too, man. Me too.”

He laughs like he’s gotten away with something. I try the box office door and it gives.

“Listen, Gabe, you want to go home? I will do everything.”

“I need the hours, dude.”

“I’m not gonna say anything. Put whatever hours you want on the thing.”

“For reals?” he says, and cocks his head.

“For reals.”

“See ya,” he says, and runs out of the place, bucking and pumping his fists.

I walk into theater B: thirty or so people watching John Travolta take a sip of a milkshake.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.