Bleeding

The air was cold, the night bitter, and my heart black with hate. I went silently down the deserted sidewalk, mulling over the day like a growling dog. My side still hurt; I didn’t know if it was bleeding again; possible. Their faces, their names, were still in my mind, my friends, dead. Who beside me remembered them? Who would remember them when I was gone? Who would remember them tomorrow?

I pulled the brim of my hat low, grinning to hide the grimace creeping onto my face. I was nearly there. Maybe, I hoped, just maybe, he didn’t know. There was a cafe close by, empty with big windows. Perfect. 

Falling into a booth with a good view, I waited for the waitress. Sparing a moment to pull my eyes away from the window, I glanced at the menu. Anything would be good, I thought. French Dip, I decided, if the server ever came.

Again, I glued my eyes to the window. There, across the street in a dark parking lot a single lamp produced a quivering light, now and then fainting into darkness. I was bleeding. I heard the dripping before I looked down and saw the little, black puddle forming beneath me. My smile broadened, and I looked out the window again.

“Anything to drink?”

“Just water,” I said, not looking her way.

I listened to her heels clopping along the linoleum, the sound growing softer and disappearing. My eyes stayed on the parking lot. Later, the distant clopping returned, growing louder in its approach. Clunk. The water found its way onto my table. Clop, clop, clop, the heels retreated. My hand searched for the glass, and my knuckles brushed the ice-cold drink, beads of condensation sticking to my rough skin.

I pulled the drink close and felt for a straw. No straw. Sighing, I bring the drink to my lips. Sipping, my eyes boring through the window and into the lot, I feel the shifting cubes of ice move along my lips. My teeth ache as the water flows around them, and I feel the drink’s cold bite along the roof of my mouth. I massage the area with my tongue, hoping to halt any brain freeze.

She’s back, I hadn’t heard her, and she asks, “What’ll it be?”

“French Dip,” I whisper.

“Looking for someone?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He’ll be along.”

“We close in an hour,” she informed.

I grunted. Time meant nothing to me as I quietly bled onto the plastic cushion. He’d come or I’d go. I’d go either way. He comes, and I’ll go. I’m going, I think. I try to see their faces, but my memory’s already getting blurry. Their names are leaving me too, leaving with my blood. I think of the stories, how they say doctors used to bleed men, thinking it would get rid of bad blood. I was bleeding, and something more than blood was leaving me.

“To go, then,” I said.

“Alright.”

Time, time, time. Ages and centuries. Time. Nothing moves; nothing happens. Time moves on.

There, a car, it’s headlights off. I’d not have seen it but for a glimmer in the darkness blinking as the faulty lamp winked in and out. So close. I might have missed him. Jumping from my seat I groan, a weightlessness coming over me like being drunk. Swaying a little, I clutch at the table. Gasping, I fill my lungs. Pulling my wallet from my pocket, I grab two twenties and throw them down. All I had. No time for change. One bill flutters, missing the table and landing in the sticky swamp of my blood.

Grinning like a madman, I limp toward the door. There’s the waitress. I see her face for the first time. Beautiful, at the precipice of age. Soon ugly, fat, unloved. I saw she knew. In her weary eyes she too knew that she was bleeding, bleeding time. No ring, no hope, only the avoidance of despair.

“Sorry for the mess,” I say, grabbing the paper bag. “Money’s on the table,” I call over my shoulder. I open the door, and the bell rings overhead. She screams behind me, and I know she sees the blood.

Across the street. No cars near at this hour. My hands are trembling; my fingers barely hold onto my food. I think about throwing it away. It’ll do me little good. Stubbornly, I hold on.

They’re uneasy in the darkness, and their voices go back in forth in harsh whispers. I can see him around the car, see his back. The buyer doesn’t trust him, or is trying to argue the price down.

I am so quiet. Without my blood, I’m so much lighter. My feet barely touch the ground. Slowly, I make my way to a clear shot.

The other man, the buyer, sees me. His eyes grow white. Then he, the betrayer, turns. I have his face for only a moment. No time for shock or fear to come over it. Only the eyes have time to react, to stare at the muzzle of my gun. I wonder if he saw my face or not. Did he have time to know it was me, the man he shot, the man he left dying with his dead friends beside him? Did he have time before the blast?

The buyer is already running, and I’ve enough hate for him as well. Putting the French Dip under one arm, I extend the gun in the other. Shutting one eye, I send a volley of lead his way. I wonder who he was?

Collapsing, I sit, pressing my back against the car, and throw the gun aside. Opening the bag, I retrieve one half of the sandwich all wrapped up in tinfoil. I’m still bleeding. Biting into the hot food, I slowly chew, tasting the meat and feeling the textures with my tongue.

It’s the best French Dip I ever had.