"Seems like you have a load on you, man."
Rust's watching him, boneslessly at ease at the other end of the sofa, smoking a Camel, socked feet crossed on his rug. Marty realises his hand's in his mouth again – he takes it out, glares at his cuticles, and sits on it.
"I'm no poker player, huh?"
"Can't be worse than I am."
"Sounds like a challenge."
Sometimes it gets so he can't focus on anything – memories coming down on him, ping, ping, ping, like hailstones. Goddamn relentless.
It's come to him pretty late, but he's clung to honesty as a saving grace amongst the shitstorm of his life – tell the truth. Or as close as you can get to the truth without losing anything – your shit, your grip on your shit.
"Nothing specific, man." He flips the channel over. "Old stuff, you know? Kinda just comes down on me sometimes."
Rust blows a plume of smoke to the ceiling. "Guilt is all ego, man. It's essentially self-indulgent-"
"Oh fuck you-" he spits it out, stung, his face flushing hot. He should goddamn know better by now.
Rust throws his hands up, palms upturned in surrender. "All right, all right. Jesus. Well the good news is it's fuckin' pointless anyway."
"Well gee, Rust. I was unaware of that particular fact." After a few seconds he waves a hand in defeat. "Comes and goes. It'll lift."
"Well, good for you," Rust says.
Marty closes his eyes and thinks very hard about throttling him.
In Marty's opinion, parking lots are haunted fucking places. Nothing good ever happened to him in a parking lot. Pushing a cart behind Rust, squinting into the sun, that pattern repeats itself.
What's that Rust's always saying about time? That it repeats and repeats, like it's a loop, and when Rust hinges up the trunk of the car and starts loading in the bags, there's a guy with a face he hasn't seen for ten years, and all he can think of is the last time he saw it, greenish in the light of the holding cell, wet and raw as a pound of hamburger.
Marty can see the whites of the guy's eyes, he is blinking and blinking and for a second every detail sears hot and sharp and bright, the cantaloupe he's clutching Producto de México upside down on the sticker, car exhaust and hot tarmac and a twenty foot POTTERY BARN sign behind them. Marty takes a step back, and the moment breaks, and the kid – guy – turns on his heel and walks away.
Rust slams the trunk and it makes him jump.
"Marty?"
Marty shakes his head and gets in the car, turns on the air con and breathes hard for a few seconds, until Rust swings himself in.
"Hotter than hell out there," Marty says, and starts the car up.
As he steers the car round the low-level shrubs and kerbs that border the lot, he catches sight of the kid a few rows over, just standing still, watching.
He's silent and clenched the whole way home. He regrets it, yes he fucking regrets it, but what the fuck can he do now? It's over, it's done. And he's sure as shit his father's son.
"You fucking asshole," he mutters under his breath.
"'Scuse me?" Rust throws him a sideways look.
"Not you," he says, and takes the turning for their house.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
It's a few days later.
It takes him too long to clock the sedan, just cruising in his back mirror, slow and sleek and grey. He's left the office late; it's getting dark already.
He tries an experimental left: it turns left. A right: it follows him round the corner.
He whistles through his teeth. "Shit."
With a feeling that whatever's coming is inevitable, that that fucking circle has caught him, pulled him into its orbit, he heads out of town till the road gets quiet, out where the factories sit on the horizon like broken down castles, pumping clouds of dragon steam. He pulls over, waits for a few seconds, gets out and settles himself on the hood.
His palms are sweaty, and when the other car pulls in and the door opens his heart kicks up a notch – the guy walks up to him, pale arms sticking out of a blue uniform shirt Marty recognises. Marty gets out a "Hey," and then a fist cracks across his nose.
He stumbles but rolls with it and rights himself, puts his hand out, placating, and tries again. "Hey, kid-"
"Fuck you!" He's half hysterical, vibrating, and as he swings again Marty knows he's going to lose this one.
He buys a fifth of whiskey in a dark bar where the barman gives one look at his bloody face, torn shirt, and slides his change across the counter.
He walks back out into the dark parking lot, almost deserted, stretches out on the back seat and starts drinking.
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!" The last is punctuated with a boot to the ribs, and then the kid throws back his head and screams "I have fucking DREAMS."
Marty gets in one shot, two, but they're mostly defensive, not up to much. A man's game – he hears it in his dad's voice. He surrenders. He takes it as his due.
He's a pretty poor excuse for a man and he's going to drink till he forgets it.
At some point his phone rings, and at some point he talks to Rust. The car feels like a boat, dipping up and down. He doesn't really listen to what Rust is saying, kinda tunes out the words, just listens to his voice. He's still on that thought when there's a rap on the back window, and Rust wrenches the back door open.
"I should not-listen to you more often."
"Mmmhm." Rust collars him, pulls him up and out, and then they're in the jeep, streetlights sliding by. Marty makes a pillow of his arms on the dash, sleeps till Rust's voice cuts through the dark.
"What is this, Marty?" Rust cracks a window, tosses his butt out the window. Jagged shadows show under his eyes. "Husband? Debt collector?"
"Got it under control."
"Yeah, looks like it."
"Can you just not, man?" Marty puts his head back in his arms and mutters, "Just don't."
He wakes up in his bed with a skull-splitting hangover, still half dressed in yesterday's bloody clothes. He takes a piss and stares at himself in the mirror and after washing off the worst of it shuffles into the kitchen for a glass of water.
It's 8:30am on a Wednesday. He's running the tap, and the sound of the water rattling against the aluminium is making him feel like he's going to throw up, and Rust pokes his head over the back of the sofa.
"We workin' today?"
Marty gives a little laugh, and as needles drill into his skull, briefly wishes he was dead. "Hell no."
He swallows two aspirin, pulls the shades and goes back to bed.
A few days later, Marty slides his car into the parking lot of the PetSmart. He told Rust he was going to Walmart – Rust hates Walmart, says it tastes like burning plastic. Damned if he believed him though.
The doors slide open and Marty walks into the air-conditioned chill, his armpits prickling, still a little stiff down his left side. There's a cage of parakeets by the door, and a woman in a blue shirt is refilling their water, and down the aisle another blue shirt is stacking sacks of kibble.
Marty starts at one end and works aisle by aisle. Birds, birdseed, bird cages. Amphibians, sand, glass tanks.
Audrey had a terrapin once; must have been, what, twelve years ago? Or was it Maisie? He remembered carrying the tank inside, a birthday, and the tight line of Maggie's smile when he pulled the cloth off, the hushed fight in the kitchen as the kids wrecked the living room and watched The Lion King.
"Who's going to feed it Marty? Clean it out?"
Him palms up, something he'd picked up from Rust, already half-drunk, insulated against the noise and the mess and the way everyone in that house looked at him with endless, bottomless goddamn need.
"I will, okay? I will. And I'll make sure Maisie does too."
He forgot, she forgot. The thing died. The twist of Maggie's mouth when she said "You always make me the bad guy."
He stops short at the end of the aisle. The guy has his back to him, stacking bales of straw.
Marty sticks his hands in his pockets, clears his throat and the guy turns.
"Hello again."
He looks like he might shit himself, cuts his eyes around to see if anyone's watching. "What-"
"I'm not here to make trouble," Marty says. "Look, for what it's worth, I... regret what happened back then. I was under a lot of-" He stops himself, tries again. "I was an asshole. I'm here to, uh, make reparation."
He pulls out the card sweating in his palm, steps up to the guy and slides it into his breast pocket.
"If I can ever do anything for you. You know."
He steps back, and they stare at each other for a few seconds. "Right then," Marty says. "See you around."
He turns back a half second later. "Actually, a bit of fatherly advice? Next time you beat the tar out of somebody, don't do it in company colours, huh?"
He's walking back toward the exit when a familiar figure detaches from an aisle and falls into step beside him. Marty eyes Rust, is tempted not to say anything, to not give him the satisfaction.
"Do I need to give you some more work to do, keep you out of my business?"
"Nothing to do with you why I'm here," Rust says evenly, and the doors swoosh open in front of them. "Was thinkin' of getting' a hamster."
"Don't tell me – it's the wheel. The symbolism of the fuckin' fruitless nature of human existence, yadda yadda yadda, right?"
Rust raises an eyebrow at him – his version of a smile. "Didn't know I was gettin' so predictable."
He walks off towards his truck, and Marty looks at the broken down old pile of junk and says, "You need a new car. Get a new car for fucks' sake."
"My image don't really concern me none, Marty."
Marty sticks his middle finger up, Rust returns the gesture, gets in and slams the door, and Marty stands there wondering if everything Rust says to him is meant to make him feel like shit, or if it's just a side effect of being in his orbit.
"Huh." Rust has gone out on the back porch for a smoke, the word floats in on the air from the open door.
Marty walks out to see the scattered bits of lawn furniture he owns have been spray-painted a thick, arterial red. Rust is looking behind him, at the back of the house, and Marty turns. PIG and FUCK YOU is sprayed repeatedly across the back wall, varying sizes and heights.
What did he expect, a knock on the door, he'd buy him a few beers and end up with a surrogate fucking son? Take him on as a rookie, have Rust train him up, add his name to the goddamn shingle? Just a story, just words in the wind.
He turns and goes back inside, lies down on the couch with his arm over his eyes. He's real tired all of a sudden.
He hears Rust come in a few minutes later, trailing a chemical cloud of cigarette stink. "We gonna have a problem, Marty?"
"Naw, man." He takes the arm off his face, pulls a cushion over it instead. "I asked a question. That's my answer."
Marty hears him sit down on the coffee table. He always does shit like that. Like he was born in a goddamn barn.
"You gonna wallow all day man, or are we gonna go to work?"
Marty sighs. "Look Rust, could you give me just, say, three minutes where you stop being a perfect son of a bitch?"
Rust chokes on a laugh. "What?"
"Just shut the fuck up, Rust." His face is burning. This is circling way too close to the bone, close to things he's tried very hard to bury, to forget.
"Marty, I've killed more men than I have fingers on this hand. That's me. None of them were much of a loss, now, don't get me wrong, but that's on me." Marty hears the click of a lighter, and Rust's next words come in a slow exhale.
"You are what you are, man. Leave out the maudlin shit."
Marty feels his throat get tight; he stays very still. He feels Rust's tap his shoulder, light, three times. "Now come on and get the hell up."
He clears his throat, gets his voice even. "I tried to fix it."
"Well, some shit can't be fixed." Rust pauses for a second, and then says "Spill if you wanna. I ain't gonna brace you."
Marty pushes the cushion off his face, looks at Rust sitting there with his hands on his knees. The fucker's always right – everyone wants absolution. It occurs to him that this, that all of this has been Rust bracing him, but he shoves that thought quickly away, though it sticks in him like a needle in his chest.
Right now what he wants – the only thing he really wants – is a friend.
"Try me," Rust says, and god help him, weak as he is, Marty does.