Birds With Cancer

       I had been walking barefoot for around two miles when I saw Santi in the subway. I wasn’t actively trying to contract tetanus, though it seemed the only possible advantage of getting everything stolen during my chronic black-outs. Santi seemed more fatal anyways, chomping away at his phantom turkey leg next to me in the subway. He was sitting shirtless on a mound of old flannel jackets and he was definitely on a lot of acid because he was sweating so bad he had to wipe it off the invisible turkey. Even without the sweating, I could tell he had a lot of diseases. He was dying a slow, vacant death while the whole world watched.

       “Do you ever hang out by the underpass with the outdoor workout equipment that the homeless people fuck on?” I imagined when he stood up his entire top half would fold as if it was his bottom and he’d walk around like a zombie smelling his own genitals.

       “I’m going to die soon,” he said more clearly than I would’ve expected. He had a slight latin accent, beautiful and charred.

       “Like tonight?”

       “I’ll show you how it works if you want.”
       
       “Death or the workout equipment?” Up close I could see how poorly bleached his hair was, how stark it was against his dark eyebrows.

       “Both, maybe at the same time.”

“Cynthia,” I said, outstretching my pale hand. 
       
“Santi, nice to meet you.”

I told him I had a boyfriend but that I had never been fucked on outdoor workout equipment or any workout equipment at all for that matter and he said it wasn’t cheating then, that it was just exercising. I never exercise with Sebastian anyways.

***

I was too sober to feel anything, so I stared at Santi’s scar while we fucked. It wrapped around his skull and laced through his dark eyebrows leaving deep x’s through them like white tufts. He must have had some super frontal lobotomy. Where can I get one, I giggled to myself. 

Everything beautiful about him seemed painful–the dirt that encrusted his tan, sun-wrinkled skin, his purple eyelids, his plump, dry lips. I rubbed my hands up and down his biceps, they were muscular, but rough with bumps and indents. I tried to pay attention to how it felt, but I couldn’t help but to look around and see if anyone was nearby. I knew my dad hung out around here because it was right next to the liquor store that gave him free booze if he twirled the sign fast enough. Free shooter with every handle. It seemed like an okay deal, but the shooters were always bottom of the bottom shelf. And it was the same bridge Mom was killed on. She always told Dad never to drive drunk, but still got in the car when he did. As fucked up as it seems, they really loved each other. 

Santi rolled off me. I don’t think he even came. I was actually surprised he could feel anything on all the drugs he was on. I pulled him back to me, feeling his warmth radiate through me. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. 

“It’s probably just the acid.”

He laughed, sifting through his pockets for a half-empty carton of marlboro reds. I told him if he met a guy named Chester Hunt to tell him we did it.

“That an ex or something?” He asked, sucking the white smoke to the back of his throat. 

“Nah.” 

He raised his eyebrows and smirked. I felt bad using him for his possible diseases then. I wanted to tell him about my plan, to get as close to death as possible because maybe that would be enough. Maybe, he would’ve respected it.

I rolled onto my back, looking at the light pollution projecting onto the night sky. I didn’t want to have autonomy over my death. Every time I got close, I thought of my dad. Even though I know people on the street saw him as a rat, he was overwhelmingly human, his nose was pink and his breath smelled like beer, in a kind way. He never had to say the right thing; you just had to hug him to feel better. Sebastian would make money, and he’d leave me alone. I wonder if I needed more of that or if what I really should do is spend as much time around people as possible until I gather whatever social skills I lost in my youth. My brain has been stuck ever since my dad was labeled a murderer. That’s a hard thing for a middle schooler. I liked being with Seb because I didn’t have to face any of that. I could be with someone and all alone at the same time. I think that was all Seb needed too. It was something you didn’t want to need, but were rather accustomed to and now closeness felt like an itch. 

***

“Ya know, Cynthia, would it kill you to fill the napkin dispensers sometimes?”

“If it would, I’d do it more often,” I snickered.

“I’m starting to worry about you, ya know.”

“Ok, ok I’ll fill them. I’m sorry that wasn’t funny.”

“It’s just the whole fucking the homeless guy” She said, unpackaging the next set of thin drink napkins. I should never have told her that. “Why . . . why do you do that sweetie?” Angie always talked to me like this. She was two years younger, but because she was my boss, she thought it made it okay. I shrugged, sipping my diet coke til I was only getting small chips of ice sucking to the back of my throat. 

She continued, “I heard your dad lives out there.” 

“Look Ange, I know we’re kind of friends, but it’s really none of your business.” 

“Just cause you come from. . . I’m just saying you could do better. ” Angie would be a good mother someday. I tried to picture my own, but her face was flat, everything about her was one-dimensional and I was still mad at her for dying. I know it was Dad’s fault, but it seemed there was already too much to spite him for and I needed someone to hold onto. 
“I am. . .I mean. . .I have Seb.”

Angie rolled her eyes ever-so-slightly, I knew she didn’t like him ever since he came into the place and asked where our calamari was sourced from. Angie told him it was the freezer and he said he’d just eat at home. He could be funny like that sometimes. 

She started saying something about how she was here for me, but when people say shit like this to me, I feel like I have a brain tumor that makes every syllable I say reverberate with some rude inflection I never foresaw and the old guy that always sat at the low tops so he could get a better look at my ass was here and it looked like he needed another beer. He was easier to talk to anyways. 

By the time I was done placing another corona at his table and shaking my ass a little for an extra tip, Angie was still staring at me longingly, tapping the butt of her pen against her waiter’s pad. I huffed and shook my head, laughing at her to knock it off. We were friends once, but one day everything started to feel paper mache and it felt weird keeping her around. I thought drugs would make everything make sense, and they did, but they don’t make you part of the everything.

***

Sebastian takes another line. His fourth, I think. This one was the longest. He straightened it, but not meticulously like I’d seen other people do. Sometimes, he would make long, white swooping hills, making a small heaven on that marble countertop. He was leaving a message, a singular emotion, before sucking it all up to the back of his throat to drip into an empty stomach. Sometimes, I believed he was entirely hollow. 

He grabbed me and pulled me in, leaving a red handprint on my waist. I don’t know if he thought that’s what a straight guy would do, but I kissed him back, our tongues remaining in our respective mouths. Somehow, it was still vicious and wet like highschoolers, a further exchange of that powdery alien nothingness that we’d packed into our gums. I pictured Santi’s germs crawling over to Seb’s lips, and I couldn’t help but to stick my tongue down his throat, breaking this unsaid mutual agreement. Everything about Seb was so cavernous, that I imagined any germs would die upon touching him. Instead of organs, he had gears and sprockets.

 He didn’t know I knew about his little secret, but I was afraid if he did know, that he’d find a new girl and therefore a new girl to give drugs to. He was more concerned with his trust fund than whatever happened to me. So, we kept kissing and blaming it on the substances that it never went further.

 I could feel his body slowly becoming more sluggish as the kiss went on and eventually he sat back down on the closed toilet, holding his upper half up with the countertop.  

“It’s funny... I never really find myself attractive,” I said. In order to keep him in the dark, I had to play the part—equal parts insecure, stupid, and needy. “But when I’m next to you... I think we look good together.”

 We actually looked quite bad next to each other. Seb had a good body, hence the hollowness, but his face wasn’t much. His eyes were slate gray – minimalistic holes in his face. Though, they did complement his newfound finance career. He had terrible rosacea, the eternal flush, seemingly embarrassed to everyone he came upon. The red clouds on his cheek painted his face the same fiery red as my hair, which I always found funny. 

He replied to my romantic gesture with, “You need another line,” and proceeded to craft one diligently, taking his time. I think he wanted to put more space between this interaction and what I had previously said. 

I slid my face against the countertop, feeling the powder accumulate into a crust, coating my nostrils. I don’t remember what drug he said it was. Cocaine, ketamine, 2CB, probably something newer, more clinical. Hopefully, it's meant for birds with cancer or something. I wonder if it’s addictive if the rest of my life will be dedicated to robbing exotic veterinarians. That would be a shame. There aren’t many around here. 

Seb sank back down and I swam in viscous soup, trying to shake each arm to get some feeling back to my fingertips, but they swayed more than shook and I gave up. It was one of those instant drugs.There must have been some addy in it too because I thought clearer, but about nothing of importance. Warped spirals of effervescent thought.  

I watched over Seb as his body readjusted, the way his golden eyelashes were fluttering under the fluorescent light and then pressing intently into his dark circles, made me want to pet him, but I was scared I’d hurt him like he was a duckling in an incubator. Fuck, this drug is definitely meant for birds. He looked nothing like he did earlier in our relationship like when we visited his lake house in Wisconsin, as his mother calls it ‘the Hamptons of the Midwest’. I’ve never been to the Hamptons, but I think she offended a lot of people with that phrase, but it was a huge house. Seven people died in it, but it was so old that the number seemed much smaller compared to all the generations that lived there. 

One night, we ate dinner at this grand wooden table that stretched the length of the ballroom beside a window that opened up to the vast blueness of the water. Though, at that time of night, it seemed much darker, with small waves of infinite black crashing onto the dock. The chairs were equally separated so that speaking across the room felt awkward, and all of us were bystanders to the silence. I had imagined the seven people filling the spaces with rowdy laughter, spilling red wine, and speaking with mouths full of chicken, corn, beans, and stew. Later that night, Sebastian scolded me for not having made more conversation. He looked taller when angry, but now, breathing so slightly, all curled up on the toilet, eyes tight like something was going to barrel into him in his Chicago penthouse, he looked nice. Sweet, even. 

Staring at him, suddenly, the sound of outside came crowding in through the slit under the door. I wish I could return to moments before when it was just a hum, this dim noise, but now all I could register were the voices of whatever GTA mission Alex was on, “You can’t call me a crackhead if I still get shit done.”

“Forget it, I’ll do it myself. These fucking crackheads,” Michael De Santa replied. Alex must be on one of the better seasons. 

Alex was Sebastian’s best friend if you could call it that. I always thought they were friends just because they talked in the same tone as if they could only really understand someone if they spoke at that frequency. I made sense of their friendship by reasoning that they were, in fact, saying more, but I just couldn’t hear it. That was before I knew they were fucking. 

Before Alex was in rehab, we could do lines out in the open. I remember walking into bigger parties; there was an almost tangible film from the sway of bodies, letting thick dollops of smoke out into the air. It was beautiful and horrifying. If you weren’t on drugs, which everyone was, you felt them still; whether the secondhand smoke or the way everyone moved dream-like in these thick reflective Moncler jackets, it was a glossy haze. I always felt like I was in a crackhouse, but then Seb would look at me, and something about how his hair was cut so precisely, made me feel safe. That was enough for me. 

“Thinking too much when you’re high is how you die.” 

I agree, Trevor Phillips, I agree. 

Sebastian seemed to hear the GTA too, as his eyes fluttered more frequently until they were mostly open. I’ve been in that state before, and it feels like an infinity between each flutter. I thought I had everything figured out, but when I opened them again, it was all lost to reality. 

He got up, stumbling, and as he motioned to me to scooch aside because he was opening the door, I realized I had been leaning against it. I thought I had been freestanding, a soldier strong above the ruins of a fallen city, but I was utterly dependent. Shifting myself upright made the bathroom's starkness go fuzzy until it was a grainy pearl-gray, shiny and dim all in one frame. 

We left the bathroom with not a lick of dust on that countertop, instead, it floated through our bloodstream, that alien nothingness manifesting in our DNA. In this moment when the drugs actually hit, when the environment changes, and the stimuli sneaks up, I have to make a decision whether or not to die. The air felt thicker and every sound warped and stretched, but I was blossoming, a thousand mirror fragments, realigning, forging themselves back together in space. I felt less human than before, but instead of the filing cabinets I always try to shove this feeling in, it was drifting along an empty road. Everything in my brain was firing so that everything in the real world felt quiet in comparison. I awaited the next phase when every circuit grew tired and they all curled up and died. With every drug, this phase came sooner. 

I steadied my body against the wall, feeling the coolness of the back of my hand on my forehead. Seb and Alex spoke briefly, their voices made me think of evolution, of all the animal noises that evolved into Hemingway and Tolstoy and had now regressed back into these poorly enunciated grunts, Alex’s even more so, which made it clear that he was still using. I bet he was also sneaking into the bathroom to do lines which made me laugh aloud, the image of us all flocking to the same fluorescent lights we were born under to lick little baggies and forget that we were ever born at all, to slow our hearts so much that that glimpse of the other side pushes us through the next day when we need another reminder. They ignored my chuckle, but I kept it tight in my throat, letting the thought ring softly through my brain. 

I followed Seb onto his balcony. He was dragging his feet so much that his sweatpants would get stuck under his heels like a little kid. He’d have to shake them out every few seconds, and he stopped to shake when Alex called out to leave the door open to let the weed smell air out. Seb would’ve left it open anyway; he always said you couldn’t get flies up this high. I grew up near a pond, where the stagnant water attracted so many bugs that some days, it was hard to see the surface. May was the worst; they’d cover everything. When I was a kid, I thought that because of the way they traveled together, they could accumulate into one beast when you weren’t looking. My dad would swing me onto his back and pretend to chase it around with a tennis racket. “No one hurts my Cynthia,” he’d say, letting me down and rubbing my head so hard my little whispers of ginger hair would stick straight up.  

The sound of Alex’s video games followed us as we walked to the balcony, yet it felt like we’d never get there, that whatever we would see when we arrived would be too much for us to handle, so some external force made sure we never would. Still, we did. 

We sat with our legs crossed as if praying, staring into the great divine. We always sat far apart, and now it was no different. We were two parallel lines staring back at each other, too similar to ever intertwine. 

Seb lived far enough away from the skyline that if the city had been a toy set, with arms outstretched, you would just be able to reach the Sears Tower. We both noted the Walgreens, how you could see two of them, a hand’s width apart. All the little brick houses, the grass, the trees were all neatly placed.  As much space as I had thought we covered, I still heard Michael De Santa talking about capitalism and corruption, civilization’s only virtues. It seemed now like something I cared about. To look at it from above was to create it. Seb’s voice harmonized with the hum of traffic from far below, “It’s like we ruined it.”

 I looked over at him, and the coldness inside me warmed and pooled in my eyes. Then he laid back, I presume, to die. 

Now all alone looking over at all the tiny plastic cars, like a child, I reached my hand out to pick one up and throw it into the other and watch them crash and know afterwards that nothing really changed, but they were too far. I hated that no one would give me that, that everytime I tried to die it had to be something I decided. I wanted to be in one of those cars and give into that itch when you’re driving; one twitch in the brain would cause a twitch in hand, and you’d be flat on the concrete. I got it so often that I stopped driving, I thought that could be my gift to humanity; if I were to die, I wouldn’t make someone wipe up from the sidewalk, but now, looking over the edge, everything seemed to be looking me in the eye, and if I looked away, I would die all the same, it would just take longer.

I took a baggie from my jacket pocket and took a final bump off my acrylic fingernail. I pulled my limp body up to my feet using the charcoal railing, its roughness chafing my palm. I climbed over calmly. I had never been so calm. My feet were uneasy on the ledge, and I wondered if Seb had completely blacked out, if Alex was watching from inside, if anyone would look over–if they already had.
Then, out of nowhere, loudly, animatedly, a voice from inside said, “You don’t get to die just because you think you deserve it. What, just because you think no one gets you, that makes it okay?”

I wanted to step back inside, but I didn’t know if I could. I pushed everyone away, everything away in my life, and I knew that now. It all seemed so distant, so hard to get back, but here I was on the edge of it all. The street looked like wet velvet and the lights like God and I could see the underpass where Dad was. I leaned out to get a better look.