Read Online Friends by Stephen Dixon - Free Book Online

gets it unlocked or the latch back in or just to keep my shoulder against the door and myself screaming if he tries to get back in.
    He doesn’t. I look through the peephole and see him struggling to get his pants on. He’s on the floor, having trouble getting the first trouser leg over the shoe. He’s stillcrying, face in great pain. He stands with the pants, falls to the floor. He beats the floor with his fist, but lightly, as he doesn’t seem to have the strength for anything more. I want to open the door and with the lamp near me smash him over the head. But he might suddenly revive by then. So I keep screaming and looking at him and his eyes are almost closed as he tries to get the same trouser leg over the shoe. Then he stands, holds his testicles and sort of drags himself with the pants in his hand to the stairs and down them.
    Three days later I get a phone call. I’d seen the police here and went to the station and wasn’t able to pick his picture out of the thousands they showed me. The man on the phone says “Remember me?”
    â€œThe police have a tap on all my phones.”
    â€œBullshit. Think they can afford it every time some woman meets a new man? But you remember me.”
    â€œAll right. Talk at your own risk. Longer the better I was told.”
    â€œYou almost killed me with that hold.”
    â€œI wanted to, so feel lucky I let you go.”
    â€œYou let me go because you had to. I wish I’d killed you when I had the chance from the start. I’m all better now. Took a couple of days to recover. You want to try it again?”
    â€œOh sure.”
    â€œI know your name.”
    â€œGet lost.”
    â€œOf course you don’t and I wouldn’t trust you if you said you did. You’d call the police and they’d be there in a minute. And that nutcracker grip of yours. Where’d you learn it? I want to know if it was in the newspapers before I met you and so how widespread it’s known.”
    â€œWhy the call?”
    â€œYou were a bastard for shouting like that when I was in the hall. You broke your promise.”
    â€œI didn’t think. It was all my emotion unleashing or something. But you have to expect that when you treat someone as you did me.”
    â€œWhat did I do to you, Magna? Come on, just what did I do that’s so bad to you?”
    â€œYou’re so stupid. Anyway, you got away.”
    â€œYou didn’t see any photos of me at the police, did you?”
    â€œNo I didn’t.”
    â€œThere aren’t any. But I have killed women. Nicer women than you too and I’m going to kill you. That’s why I called. In the next week I’m going to get you on the street, force you into your apartment or a car or just be in your apartment or on the stairs again waiting for you. If you go to your friends I’ll get you there and kill them too. First I’m going to rape you though till you hurt as much as you made me hurt. No more baby oil. I’m going to make you suffer real hard. And no chance of your hands stopping me because they’ll be tied from the start.”
    â€œFinished?”
    â€œNo, I got much more to say.”
    â€œWell I don’t.” I hang up.
    He calls right back. “I meant everything I said.”
    â€œThen I’ll tell you what I mean and what I swear you made me be. If you ever come here or any place I am or whatever next time you say you’ll try anything with me, I’ll bite or slice but cut both your balls and your penis off—now take your choice, and you’re right, I don’t need any fucking police tap, but take your choice but that’s what’s going to happen to you, now do you hear me good?” There’s silence at the other end and then he hangs up.

pp. 221-224
    Page 221.1 don’t know if I can write it. It’s taken me almost two years to get to this page. I don’t have anything more to say. The