Read Online Cannibals in Love by Mike Roberts - Free Book Online

tie.”
    â€œNo,” he said, stepping backward.
    â€œWhat does it mean?”
    â€œIt doesn’t mean anything.”
    â€œDo you work at a bank?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre you a Jehovah’s Witness?”
    â€œShut up.”
    â€œAre you now, or have you ever been, a member of the so-called Republican Party?” I asked, getting right up in his face.
    â€œFuck off.”
    â€œHave you ever knowingly consorted with any so-called Republicans?”
    â€œIt’s just a tie!” he snapped as he walked away.
    â€œThat’s not an answer,” I said. “That’s evasion. I’m keeping my eye on you.”
    *   *   *
    All in all, I had a car. More than a car, really, I had a birthright. The blue Camry had always been a thing that was rightfully mine, and I was hell-bent on keeping it now. I was the eldest son, of course. Mine was a condition beyond reproof.
    Plus, it was fun just to drive. Ripping through the city with the windows down and the radio up. I laid on the horn as I rocketed past every white van I could find. Looking up and laughing at all these startled faces. A young man with a car can do whatever he wants. Go wherever he wants. Even with a killer on the loose. This is the stuff of a thousand classic rock songs. I was going too fast to be killed now.
    Mike and I hadn’t always listened to this music while we worked, though. Back in August, after I’d quit my data-entry job and joined him painting apartments, we were devoted listeners of NPR. These marathon runs with the radio going eight hours a day, until we could practically recite the news breaks verbatim.
    This was on the other side of town—at the yellow apartment—before we’d made the hard switch to classic rock. Mike already had the orange one lined up, too, taking us straight through the Terror Alert color wheel. The joke was not lost on me, but I was serious when I told him I would quit before he found a red one.
    Unfortunately, it was this yellow apartment that introduced us to the specter of death. Long before the Sniper started circling the city, Mike fell into a period of distraction. A new and brooding silence that coincided perfectly with the midpoint of his girlfriend’s pregnancy. We wouldn’t even turn the radio on some days.
    It was one of these mornings when Mike climbed the roof with a bucket of yellow paint, only to find the top sealed shut. Painted on and baked hard in the sun. Mike tried to pop it off with a knife, but his foot slipped, and the blade jerked, right through his wrist.
    â€œFuck!” he yelled.
    I stepped back to see what was happening, as the yellow paint came rolling off the roof and nearly struck me. WHAM! The metal can hit the ground and exploded all over my legs. Mike was already coming down the ladder, holding his wrist and cursing.
    â€œWhat? What happened?”
    He took his hand away and the blood squirted four feet across the sidewalk. Mike had severed one of the small blue power lines running up his wrist. Clutching it again, as he stared at me. “I cut myself,” he said simply.
    â€œJesus Christ. No shit,” I said, feeling completely scrambled. “What do we do?”
    I walked away, looking for something, anything. I took my shirt off and pressed it to his arm. “Hold this,” I said, as we watched the dirty white cotton bloom with blood.
    â€œFuck, fuck.” I panicked. “Do we make a tourniquet?”
    Mike just smiled dimly and walked away from me, toward his truck. I ran out ahead and opened the passenger side, helping him into the seat. I found the keys in his front pocket and slammed the door closed.
    I wanted to call an ambulance, of course, but Mike wouldn’t let me. He said that he was fine; he’d insisted on driving, even. He was laughing when he said this to me. That was the thing—the anger was gone, and Mike was nothing if not tickled by the whole