The rock felt chalky. Stein was holding it in his hand, yeah, an irregular light gray lump, but he could feel it on his teeth and in his nostrils. Little granules of something that made his face feel dry and cracked. He wanted to brush his teeth. Or better yet, just drink some water. But that’s an excuse, he thought. He had to go through with it. Nick the Prick wasn’t answering his phone calls. And whenever Stein would knock or ring the doorbell, no one would ever open up. He’d stand on the low concrete stoop, staring into the wrong end of the peephole, watching for movement in the distorted illegible shadows. Then he’d hear a rustling at the window and look over just in time to see the blinds wavering back and forth. He’d call out that he knew someone was there, but no one would ever come to the door.
- Yuta Onoda
The window at Nick the Prick’s still had the entry wound from Stein’s rock, but it had been covered with clear plastic that fluttered in the breeze, swelling up inside and then puffing back out, and casting sunny rainbows back at Stein, who frowned. The passivity pissed him off. Why would he just cover the hole? He would have known who threw the rock—Stein had signed the note. But the coward, Nick the Cowardly Prick, had just taped it up and ignored it. He didn’t even call the police. And that’s why Stein was here again: he had to get the glove back. He had bought it when Matty was born.
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Stein had a knife in the hip pocket of his jeans, which he thought was kind of weird. It was a cheap thing he had bought in Chinatown, flimsy and dull with a braille dragon on the handle. He could feel it digging into his thigh all the time. In fact, it took effort just to ignore it, to not touch it, to not just rest a finger on it inside his pocket, to not take it out and play with it and stick it into things. Stein worried that this was getting out of hand. But he needed that glove back. He had caught a Mark McGwire home run with it. A before-the-steroids Mark McGwire home run. Plus, he had to get rid of the knife before it drove him nuts.
The whole time, Stein felt removed, like he was buried one layer deeper inside himself and was just a passenger. As he was running across the shallow uneven yard, as he was patting Matty all over, searching for wounds, as he lifted up his son’s shirt and inspected his skin for punctures. Only when he saw the mutilated animal in Matty’s lap did Stein rejoin himself. He sat down heavily in the grass in front of his son. There were little whitish chunks of pulp in the boy’s hair, brown rings now that would turn impossibly blonde under the summer sun in a few months. Most of his clothes were horrifically stained. An explosion of red had soaked into the fabric and turned it black. His white shoes could probably be cleaned, but who would want to? Not him. Not Stein. Stein would never want to be reminded again.
Stein stopped at Nick the Prick’s house and dropped the plastic bag at his feet. He watched the windows for a while but again saw no signs of life. Figures. He’s probably run away and taken them all to a hotel or somewhere like that, Stein thought. But that’s OK. He’d have to come back sooner or later, and the longer he waited, the worse the rabbit would smell. He opened the bag and turned his head away as a puff of hot decomposition steamed up from inside. He could see why the bag had felt heavier—much of the rabbit’s blood had drained out of the small bite wounds. The pool in the bottom of the bag was giving it more centrifugal heft. It was a bloody, swampy mess. All the better for Stein’s purposes, really.
“Why is it on the fence?” Suzanne asked. She wasn’t listening. She didn’t care anymore. That much was clear. Maybe she never did. She had cut her hair. It used to reach down and sweep forward just below her gentle jaw line. Now it just capped her head. It looked youthful. Stein didn’t remember her boobs being as big.
“Fuck your whore fence,” Stein spat. And then there was hot shameful pain when Suzanne slapped him. He kept his eyes closed for a little while, listening to his breathing and her breathing and the wind and the other noises the neighborhood made. When he opened his eyes again, everything looked brighter, whiter, and bluer. “I just want my glove back,” he said.
