“I’m good,” Stagger said without being asked. How old was he, anyway? If he’d been in his twenties for Desert Storm, he would be in his forties now. It seemed probable, but he was somehow older than that, much older. His body was fit and still young, but the rest of him was, shall we say, excessively mature. Or maybe he was just crashing down from his high. “Proceed,” Stagger said, his face ghostly pale. With all the wrinkles and grimaces and madness now bleached from it, Joshua could suddenly perceive the young man Stagger used to be way back before the big party in the desert, before his landlording career and ensuing madness, before all this. Joshua obediently proceeded, but he needed to pee. The body never quits working. The mind goes out, but the body always hums along, proceeding until it stops. The beauty of life is that eventually everybody turns into a zombie, whereupon they die.
Before Ana’s door, two large thick-soled shoes with dirty tips stood at an angle, as if turning away in disgust. Ana straightened them with a careful toe poke, out of habit, no doubt. It seemed like a meaningless gesture; yet, Joshua understood, she cared about the way things ought to be; she didn’t quite succumb and surf. He, on the other hand, was exhausted as the rococo hopelessness of everything set in. Also, terribly hungry still and in need of urination.
She fumbled for the right key in the batch, and there were a lot of them. What property did she own to have all those keys? The door was unlocked, it turned out, so she walked in. Stagger shuffled sideways in her wake, half squatting like a Jedi, his sword high above his head ready to strike, even if he couldn’t fully grip the handle with his cast. Joshua could see the cicatrice stretching between the ridges of Stagger’s shoulder blades to reach the base of his neck, where Semper Fi was inscribed in blue ink. Joshua had no idea what Semper Fi actually meant. How many marines could read Latin anyway? They could’ve made it more American and vernacular, say: No quittin’ or Thrills and Kills or Appetite for Destruction. Everything should be simpler and more American, particularly at this point in time when we must all stand united because we’re all falling apart.
Ana switched on the light in the hallway, exposing its emptiness. “Esko!” she called, turning on more lights as she moved deeper in. The vacant sadness of the apartment: they had little, Ana and her family. No pictures on the wall; no carpets on the floor; no heirloom furniture; no framed diplomas; no useless VHS players; no books on the coffee table; no coffee table. They were thrown out of their own past, the you people, carrying only their mystical consonants and a weathered catastrophe surfboard. It made Joshua even more queasy, as if he’d just driven over roadkill.
The last light Ana switched on revealed Esko, his left hand under his cheek, lying on the sofa, which was much smaller than him, so his feet hung over its end. One of his tube socks had a huge hole, the ball of his foot bulging out like a peeled potato. He was facing the TV, on which two women, richly oiled and glowing with the soft-core ochre, wrestled in slow motion. Only when Ana moved in front of the TV did his gaze acknowledge her. He glanced over to Stagger in his broken-arm combat posture, and then on to Joshua, who picked that particular moment to gasp for air. Ana said something in Bosnian, something that sounded angry and confrontational, but Esko just shrugged and scratched his nose listlessly. The floor before him was covered with plates and food leftovers and bottles of Corona; it seemed he hadn’t left the sofa for a long time. Ana kept talking, the edge in her voice getting sharper. What was she saying to him? Joshua wished he knew, not only because it pertained to the solution of the missing-girl mystery, but also because he really had to relieve the pressure on his prostate and he couldn’t leave in the middle of a showdown. Ana pressed her hand against her chest and kept shaking her head dramatically as she spoke, making a poignant point, then offered something to Esko in the cupped palms of her hands. Whatever it was, Esko didn’t care much about it. Wincing, as if his nose kept itching, he looked past her at the screen, where one of the women was now arching in what was supposed to be extreme pleasure as the other woman was rimming her navel. Ana stepped forward, excavated the remote from the debris on the floor, and turned off the TV. Her jaw clenched in some form of Balkan fury, as she slapped first her left then her right cheek and then pointed her finger at herself, then at Esko, who finally sat up and nodded resignedly, as if everything had just come together for him, to congeal into an incontestable defeat. Stagger, still as a statue in his samurai pose, stared at Esko with a delirious focus.
“Excuse me,” Joshua said. “I don’t mean to interrupt your conversation, but could I use the bathroom?”
Ana turned to look at him in what could be adequately described as stupefaction; Esko chuckled as if pleasantly reminded of Joshua’s pathetic existence. “You okay?” Stagger asked, not taking his eyes off Esko.
“I really have to pee,” Joshua said.
“Go pee,” Ana said.
“I got it here, Jonjo,” Stagger said. “You go and pee.”
As Joshua made his first step toward the bathroom, Esko leapt off the sofa, over the chaos on the floor, and rushed at Joshua, who froze in place. He would’ve surely been crushed in a merciless tackle had Stagger not managed to swing the sword and slice Esko with its tip across the curve of his thigh. Ana screamed. Blood gushed instantly out of a gaping crevice, diverting Esko’s acceleration. Stagger was about to inflict another cut as Esko put all of his force into the fist whose trajectory terminated at Stagger’s nose, which, blinding him, exploded. With another punch to the chin Esko felled Stagger, who crumpled to the floor, on top of the beer bottles, announcing his landing with a painful groan. Ana screamed again and grabbed her head as if to throw it at the men. Esko pried the sword from Stagger’s limp hand and turned to point its tip at Joshua, whose bladder miraculously held, even if the air left his lungs rapidly, along with all the words he’d ever learned to utter. Esko said something in Bosnian to him, pressing the tip against his chest. There was already blood at Esko’s feet joining with what was coming from Stagger’s blown-up nose, but Esko couldn’t have cared less. He repeated whatever it was he’d said and now offered the sword handle to Joshua. Stagger looked pretty dead, except for the blood steadily flowing from his nose.
“I don’t know,” Joshua mumbled with effort. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me.”
“He wants you to kill him,” Ana said. “With that thing.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” Joshua said. “I’m okay. Really.”
Esko paid no attention to what Ana was saying to him and pressed the tip of the sword against his own throat. Joshua could see the deep indentation, and the vein it was pushing into. “Please,” Joshua said. The tip of the sword now opening the skin on Esko’s neck, a trickle of blood emerging; he was glaring at Joshua, but looking into something beyond his face, beyond him. I don’t want you to die, so I may live and recount the deeds of God. Ana was talking in Bosnian, sounding calmingly reasonable. Esko was a hairbreadth away from cutting his own throat and Joshua closed his eyes, resigned to a shower of blood. Lord, please save us! Or at least, Lord, save me! But then Esko grabbed the handle again, Joshua flinching, and smacked the sword against the floor; it snapped like a bread stick. The blade fell in the blood puddle as Esko tossed the handle away, and fell on his knee, bowing his head like a knight before the king.