Eddie

Eddie rolled out from beneath the Lincoln just in time to catch the beer bottle that Marshall tossed at him. Turns out, Marshall's 'shop' was just a porch full of broken down vehicles - set right in Eddie's very own Forest Hills Trailer Park. The property owner had warned the Munsons that they'd have new neighbors, and to clean up the fucking Trailer Park, god damnit. Eddie had been delighted when he saw Marshall and Marianne pull into the Park. Marianne had scurried into their designated trailer without looking around, and Marshall had stood there with his hand shielding his brow as if he were a census worker taking stock of the land.

But that had been a week ago. Eddie and Marshall had become thick as thieves since then. True to his word, Marshall forked over several crisp twenties for Eddie's diligent work in his 'shop.' It was strange, seeing Marshall peel those untouched bills from the thick, folded wads of cash in his back pocket. A man with that kind of money generally wanted nothing to do with Forest Hills.

"Y-you ever got into a fight, compadre?" Marshall asked him over the sound of music blaring from the stereo. That was another thing that Eddie liked about Marshall: they shared the same taste in heavy metal. Eddie had shown Marshall a recording from a Corroded Coffin show, and Marshall had proclaimed it to be 'some real good shit.'

"Me?" Eddie called back. "Yeah, once. Got into a nasty scuffle at a tetherball pole. Son of a bitch didn't know what hit him!" Eddie whispered 'whoosh' under his breath and pantomimed punching a tetherball through the air.

"What, he stole your girl or something?"

"No, no. It was much worse than that." Eddie shook his hair away from his face and took a long sip of his lukewarm beer. "The little fucker stole my He-Man figurine. It was a special edition, too. Can you believe that?" Eddie paused to reconsider his memory of the event. "Though to be honest, we were both around ten years old at the time. But still, you know-"

"Special edition is special edition," Marshall said. "Hurry up and finish that beer! I want to show you something."

Eddie did as he was told, gratefully sucking back the last dredges of the nastiest beer he had ever tasted. It was one of those imported brands that Marshall had gotten from 'the wife of a friend of a friend.' The sooner they finished it, the sooner they could break into Eddie's ice-cold Coors. Marshall grabbed Eddie's empty bottle, shielded his face in the crook of his arm, and smashed the bottle against the wall of his trailer. From the corner of his eye, Eddie saw the curtains in Max Mayfield's trailer flutter. He waved jovially in her direction, but she did not return the gesture.

"Here, hold the neck. Grip it like you mean it, god-duh damn!" Marshall slipped the beer bottle into Eddie's hand and closed his fingers along its neck. Earlier that morning, Eddie had introduced Marshall to his more exclusive stash. They had partaken in several things, washed their cotton mouths out with beer, and distracted themselves from the come-down blues with heavy metal and car maintenance.

"Next time you find yourself sizing up an opponent at the tetherball pole, make sure you got a broken beer bottle with ya. Hold it with the jagged end pointing down - now swing! You see how awkward that feels?" Marshall adjusted Eddie's hold on the bottle until its broken end was facing the sun. "See how you can thrust it up and to the side like that? Holding it right gives you more power and flexibility, like."

"Have you gotten into many fights, Marsh?" Eddie asked as he practiced swinging the broken beer bottle. Across the way, a couple sitting at the bench shook their heads at the odd scene. Marshall scoffed as he lowered himself onto an overturned crate and pressed a Coors can against his brow.

"Made a career out of it," he admitted.

"Like a boxer, right?" Eddie spun around, feeling very much like an Elven knight slicing his sword against a Goblin's jugular. Except, Eddie's sword was a broken beer bottle and the only goblins in the Trailer Park were the toddlers that lived down the way. "Right?"

"You gotta do what you gotta do when it comes to protecting your family," Marshall said, one eye closed against the sunlight. "And if you get paid for it, even better."

Eddie's arms fell limply by his side. He suddenly felt that creeping, sinking sense of awkwardness that preceded a lull in the conversation. Allen Munson had often pointed out that Eddie lived to fill such lulls with chit-chat and pacing. But, just then, Eddie wasn't quite sure what to say. There was something to Marshall's tone that rebuffed any further inquiry on the matter.

"Speaking of family - or, I guess, I don't know if she's actually, technically your family or if she's, you know, just-" Eddie paused to catch his breath and steady his careening thoughts. He impulsively wrapped his arms around his chest. The school counselor had called it a 'self-soothing gesture.' Eddie had called her bluff and walked right out of the room.

"Marianne," Eddie coughed the name up as if it had been lodged in his throat for years. Marshall's brow twitched slightly as he watched Eddie thump at his chest. "So she's your-?"

Marshall offered up nothing. His face was still and weathered as stone as he toyed with a ring on his finger. Eddie's question was left uncomfortably open-ended between them, and he racked his mind for an answer of his own. If Marshall was related to Marianne, it definitely wasn't by blood. Perhaps he was a stepfather or an adoptive father. Or, most likely, Marianne was Marshall's ward. But still, there was something about the way that Marianne and Marshall addressed each other on the day of the fender bender. They treated each other with the playful indifference of siblings, and the exasperation of a married couple.

"Friend," Eddie said tepidly, testing the waters. "Marianne is your friend?"

"What's it to you?" Marshall asked, his voice like a whip cracking above Eddie's head. "You want to fuck her, don't you?"

"Jesus, no," Eddie lied. It was with some difficulty that he held Marshall's eyes. Only a few nights earlier, Eddie had gotten off to the thought of Marianne and her corset-tight hippie vest. Marshall couldn't have known that, but still, Eddie felt as if he was a deer in the trajectory of oncoming headlights.

"So you don't think she's attractive?" Marshall pushed on, tilting his head to the side.

"I mean, yeah, I do. Come on, man. What's this about?"

"If you try to fuck her, I'll break that fucking chicken neck of yours."

"O-kie do-kie," Eddie pursed his lips and sighed. There was no doubt about it: Marshall's come-down blues had reached its zenith. The man appeared more disgruntled and red-eyed than Eddie remembered. It was time for Eddie to find Marianne and clear the air. Marshall had begun to give off too many red flags. Eddie needed to be sure that she was safe.

"Can I use your bathroom?" Eddie tossed his thumb in the direction of Marshall's trailer. "Our toilet overflowed again. You know how it is - glamorous trailer park life and all that."

Marshall sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes as he pressed the Coors can to his face again. "Make it quick," he growled.

Eddie nodded and climbed the rickety stairs to the trailer. The screen door was torn, allowing for the entry of several flies that buzzed dizzily around the main room. There was nothing particularly note-worthy about Marianne and Marshall's trailer. It was bereft of furniture and instead housed a plethora of large cardboard boxes covered in tape. Eddie assumed that they would be moving in the rest of their stuff later, or that they would be leaving sometime in the near future. The thought of Mariann leaving filled Eddie with a split-second sense of disappointment.

"Hello?" Eddie knocked on the door of the bathroom and then pushed it open. There was no one there. Steam wafted through the air, and water dribbled from the shower head. The smell of shampoo made him realize that someone had just taken a hot shower. He closed the door and wandered down the short hall towards the single room at the back of the trailer. It was open a fraction of an inch. Eddie placed his hands against the splitting wood and pressed his ear against the door. Someone inside was humming nervously in short on-and-off bursts like they were struggling to remember a song.

"Marianne," Eddie called. "It's me, Eddie! Look, I know you don't know me and all but I need to talk to you for a sec. Alright?"

Again: nothing. Eddie began to worry. He warned her that he was coming in, then pushed the door open. The interior of the room appeared just as bereft as the main room. It housed a single mattress and cardboard boxes stacked in the corner. Marianne sat in the middle of the room, bent over a keyboard and wearing a pair of large headphones. Aside from an overly large shirt - Marshall's, Eddie assumed - she wore nothing but knee-high socks and blue striped boxer shorts.

"Hey, can you hear me?" Eddie bent down on one knee and gingerly waved his hand in front of her face. Her eyes were closed and it was apparent that she was lost in whatever music was coming from the headphones. She adjusted a knob on the board and furrowed her brow, deep in thought.

Unsure of what to do, Eddie glanced around the room. There was a pile of magazines sitting on the floor to her left. He nudged them aside with his finger and whistled. They were Playboy magazines, each page heavily highlighted and annotated. One of the passages had been highlighted so heavily that its inky letterings were smeared across the page. Looking to spice things up in your sex life, Eddie read, try BDSM: the craze that's taken over the nation. In the corner, somebody had written in pencil, 'bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism - Bunny.' Christ, Eddie thought to himself. The plot had thickened in a way that he hadn't even anticipated. He picked up the magazine, on the verge of reading another scandalous passage when suddenly someone yanked the magazine from his hands.

"Whoa - hey! Hey!" Eddie threw his hands up, his eyes never leaving the switchblade in Marianne's hand. She bit her bottom lip and bounced the tip of the blade against his nose. The message had been received loud and clear: she was two seconds away from flaying his face off.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, her words clipped and abrupt as if she were interrogating him. Eddie attempted to speak and was subsequently embarrassed by the squeak that escaped his lips. He covered his mouth and attempted to smile.

"I was looking for the bathroom-!"

"You missed it by a long shot-"

"Oh, pardon me if I don't know my way around your trailer!" Eddie repressed another squeal as she pressed the flat end of the blade against his Adam's apple. "Look, either kill me or don't! Because this whole 'limbo' thing is really fucking with my head, man!"

"Kill you?" Marianne sucked her teeth and tucked the blade into its plastic handle. "And risk being haunted by Eddie 'the Freak' Munson's ghost? I'd rather drink piss."

She bent down and quickly gathered the Playboy magazines in her arms. Eddie tried to keep his eyes off her ass but failed miserably. There wasn't much to look at, but he was a simple man excited by simple things. He spread his arms along the wall and slunk closer to the door in case she harbored any funny notions about stabbing him.

"These aren't mine." Her eyes were wide as she turned to look at him, the magazines clutched against her chest. "They're Marshall's, okay? He's into that new age, weird handcuff-and-spank-me shit - not me. I'm not, you know, deviant or anything like that."

"I-"

"I just don't want you to get the wrong impression," she continued, her voice tight and flustered. Eddie found it amusing that she was more worried about him seeing the magazines and less worried about his physical well-being. "I'm solid, you know. I'm straight. I'm level."

"Whatever you say, Bunny." For a brief moment, Eddie feared that she would bring out the blade again. But instead, she rolled her eyes and dropped the pile of magazines into a cardboard box. Whoever had highlighted the Playboys had signed off as 'Bunny.' Eddie hardly believed that Marshall would take on such a moniker.

Marianne plopped down on crossed legs and held one headphone against her ear. Sensing that he was no longer in danger, Eddie tucked his arms around his chest and walked slowly around the room. He had a feeling that he was no longer of any interest to Marianne. It was a shame. The way that she had held him against the wall had really gotten his blood pumping.

"So you and, uh, Marsh. You guys trained in combat or-?"

She peered up at him from beneath a tilted brow. Eddie cleared his throat and rubbed nervously at his arms. "I just mean to say the whole 'impulse for violence' isn't really something we see around these parts, 'specially not when we meet someone for the first time." Was he talking too much, he wondered. He was definitely talking too much. Marianne adjusted the silver band on her ring finger and then flicked a switch on her keyboard.

"Marshall used to work a lot of odd jobs. Some of them required a-" the corner of her lip twitched, revealing a dimple in her cheek. "- an 'impulse for violence.' I guess you could say that I learned the tools of his trade."

"Yeah, but he's not-" Eddie gestured hopelessly, unsure of how best to phrase his main point of concern. "He's not hurting you or anything, right?"

The dimple disappeared and her lips stiffened into a down pull. Eddie wondered if he had asked the wrong question, or if the answer was too troubling for her to consider. She sighed as she pulled the headphones away from her ear and wriggled her neck free of its stiffness.

"Come 'ere for a second."

He did as he was told and plopped down beside her. She leaned over and fit the headphones over his ears. She tugged several strands of hair from his cheeks then pressed a button on her board. The headphones carried the sound of metal whining as if several slats were unfolding one after another, followed by a crash. He recognized it as the sound of the gate being pulled shut in front of the Student Snack Store.

Then she clicked another button, and the sound was replaced by the soft blare of the school bell. She transitioned between the two sounds, slowly pushing a slide on the board until The sound of the gate deepened to an incomprehensible growl. Then she distorted and elongated the sound of the school bell until it sounded like a wind instrument. Eddie listened, his jaw slack as she played the sounds back and forth until they created a rhythm that sounded musical. His fingers roved of their own accord along an invisible air guitar as he imagined adding a bass line. His drummer could add a really sick beat to it, something subtle to compliment the punctuated sound of the gate closing.

And just like that, Eddie found himself planning out the bare bones of a song as she watched with a tepid smile on her face.

"I already have a name for it," she said as she lifted the headphones from his ears. "Flesh of the Scapegoat. I just feel like the music sounds like-"

"-someone riding an elevator into Hell-"

"-yeah but, like, that 'someone' is a woman convicted of witchcraft, right-"

"-and she's accepted her fate-"

"-yeah, and she's listening to the sounds of Hell's elevator-"

"-and she hears the music in it, yeah! Yeah!"

Eddie leaned over and plucked a crumpled newspaper from the floor. His shoulder brushed against her chest and - for some inexplicable and heart-wracking reason - the smell of her cheap drug store perfume filled him with comfort. He spread the newspaper along his knee and began to write along its edge, humming snatches of the industrial-mechanic melody that she had created.

"I'm not much of a lyricist," she said as she watched him write. "I'm more of a mixer-type. I like to cook up weird sounds from the shadows."

"Like Vangelis?" Eddie asked. From the corner of his eyes, he saw her eyebrows jump. Then, just to really prove that he was on her level, he added, "Mr. Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou himself."

She threw her head back and laughed a slightly crazed, cat-hacking laugh that Eddie generally attributed to chain-smoking women and v-necked sorceresses on VHS tapes. Marianne shoved open the small window and leaned outside for a breath of fresh air. When she turned around, the smile was gone and he saw in her eyes that deadpan look of distrust that seemed to creep across her face often.

"Hey. You know, you're cool and all but you should probably leave," she said gently. Eddie had a strange, unshakable feeling that she was trying to convince herself and not him. "It's getting late."

"It's-" Eddie glanced at the clock in the corner. "One thirty-four in the afternoon. Besides, a pretty girl like you hardly requires beauty sleep-"

"Stop," she said abruptly, holding out her hand. "Don't do that. Please."

"Hey, look, I didn't mean-"

"It's okay. It's just that," she sniffled and quickly brushed the back of her hand beneath her nose. Then she inhaled deeply and met his eyes again. "It's just that I'm married."

"Married," Eddie repeated. "S-sorry - how old are you, again?"

"I'm twenty-one," she said softly. "Been married since nineteen-eighty-fuckin'-one."

Several things clicked into place in Eddie's head at once. Marianne must have been held back multiple times, just like him. And if his math was correct, she had been married at the age of sixteen - implying a matter of parental consent that struck him as dubious. He whispered 'oh' as he looked down at her fingers. As he watched, she spun the silver band around her finger with her thumb. Eddie had seen that silver band somewhere before, he was willing to bet on it.

"Leave," she ordered, her voice quiet but firm. "And if you know what's best for you, don't tell Marshall that you were talking to me. Tell him that you were stuck in the bathroom for a really long time."