Written Out by Howard Mittelmark

Author:Howard Mittelmark
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579625924
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2019-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

MAX HAD a car, it turned out, a gift from a relative who had recently given up driving, parked just across Jerusalem Avenue, an oldish, grayish, generic-looking four-door compact. Not looking forward to another half hour of hobbling, I accepted Max’s offer of a ride, and got in the back seat with Katrin.

Between the pills I’d taken, the pot they’d shared with me, and just enough Colt 45 to contribute something, I was by now suffused with a feeling of benevolence toward all, which settled inevitably on my new, young friends. The unpleasant encounter with Phil was, if not forgotten, then already reduced to an anecdote, an artifact, something with no feelings attached to it.

“So, where you need to go?” Max asked me, pulling directly into traffic without looking, eliciting a screech of tires and a blare of horn. I had, of course, just gotten into a car with a stoned, drunk teenager behind the wheel. I fastened my seat belt.

“If you just make a right, up here—” I said, as Max accelerated and shot past the turn into my development.

“You live in there?” Katrin asked, looking at me briefly before turning away to look out the window on her side. “Fancy.”

The aggregation of houses where I’d grown up was just a notch higher on the socioeconomic ladder than those surrounding it, but it was a notch that people were aware of, a notch that meant more of us went to college, and of those that went, fewer went to community college.

“I’ll turn around up ahead, okay?” Max said.

“Sure, fine,” I said, and leaned back in my seat as he stopped at an intersection.

“Who’s Mary Mahoney?” Katrin said, and I jerked forward involuntarily, stopped by the restraint of the seat belt. In the light that spilled into the car from the streetlamp on the corner, Katrin was reading the label on the pill vial which she must have filched from the pocket of my coat, no doubt a tempting target, just inches away from her. I reached out and snatched them back, put them in the pocket on the other side.

“Is that your mother?” she asked. “Did Roger steal pills from his mommy?”

“Shut the fuck up!” I said, my fog of benevolence instantly torn away, replaced by a visceral fear of exposure.

“Sorry,” she said, in a very small voice, actually looking a little scared, and of course she was just a slip of a thing, half my size at most, a child, and I was a large, angry stranger yelling at her. Max and Lucas had turned, startled, to look at me from the front seat.

I got control of myself, apologized, explained no, it was not my mother, she was a family friend, a sick family friend, and I only yelled because I was so worried about her, not bothering to explain how concern for somebody led to me walking around with her pain pills in my pocket.

Katrin looked down at her hand, idly picking at the peeling vinyl of the seat beside her.

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