“Okay. You’re here. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

“So, what do you want to know?”
“Well, you have an interesting story. I’d like to know more about it.”
“Interesting?”
“That’s right.”
“So, you’re a journalist.”

“Right.”

“You want to write about me and Mattie. Why?”
“Because you’ve said you want to kill someone. Well, that’s a story. An interesting one, wouldn’t you say?”
“Maybe so. Hey, would you happen to have some peanut butter with you?”
“Peanut butter?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I don’t bring food to interviews. I’m here to hear your story. Have you ever killed anyone before?”
“No.”
“Why now, then?”
“I guess it’s another failure on my long list of failures.  Right up there with never having more than $117 in my checking account. Or never having a car that will start when I need it the most. It’s a piece a shit Honda.”
“Tell me about Mattie.”
“Well, Mattie O’Shea…How can I say this? She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You’ve probably seen a picture of her. So you know what I mean. But now that I’ve gotten to know her, I want to kill her.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“On a lunch break. I was on a city detail to pick up trash off the highway. Punishment for something I did. Mattie got in trouble for shoplifting. Judges don’t want to throw kids in jail for first-time offenses. Especially misdemeanors. Mine was alcohol and weed-related stuff. This judge told us that picking up road trash for a week should teach us. Then he had this little hammer that he hit his desk with. Kinda violent, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. So what happened on the trash detail?”
“Ok. It’s Tuesday. Me and Mattie, we were hot and sweaty in our little orange vests. Grimy with dust caked in our nose and ears. Friends are cruising by laughing, yelling shit at us, and throwing paper cups and hamburger wrappers out the window. That’s grounds for an ass-whooping when I catch ‘em.”
“Did those friends have anything to do with your predicament?”
“Never mind the stupid friends. Back to my point about killing Mattie. Strangulation will be good—no blood to deal with. I have strong hands. No kidding. Look at em. I’ll squeeze the hemoglobin up into her head, and crush the wind down into her well-padded chest. For the record, Mattie has no tits to speak of. Well, nothing to write home about anyway. She sticks socks in her bra. I saw a Nike logo through her arm hole one day. But Mattie O’Shea doesn’t have to worry about the size of her tits. Cuz she has that something about her. That look, the cut of her jaw, the coy angle of her brow, perfect ass, long neck. Sexy eyes.  Ummm.”
“So, you were on this trash detail….”
“Yeah. Sitting under this bridge together on a break to eat our lunches. The supervisor told us to pack something for the day. Now Mattie is probably the best-looking creature ever to be on a trash detail. But she never listens. So there I was, having to make the best of that shit-can trash-picking affair in the sweltering heat, working side by side with this goddess, about to have lunch. I had packed a PB&J.  My favorite.  Mattie had nothing. Never brought anything to eat. So I decided to share.  The right thing to do, right?  Wrong O, Mister horse face.”
“Wow. Horse face, huh. Well. I guess we’re finished here, then.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry. This is just my weird life causing trouble again. So sorry. I didn’t mean to call you that. Please, stay. This is almost over. Promise. I’ll stick to the point.”
“You say something like that again and I’m outta here.”
“Okay. Promise, no more of that.

“Okay then. Go on with your story.”

“Right. Back to Mattie. She needed something to drink after the peanut butter and asked me to get her a Coke.  She digs into her tight jeans for a scrumble of coins.  Look, there’s a McDonalds. She points. Diet, please.”
“Now I didn’t want to go all the way down there, but I had no choice.  This is Maggie O’Shea, my fantasy girl. The one I started dreaming of screwing every night after being with her on that trash detail. If I said no, she might not talk to me. I couldn’t have that. It might have prevented my weird fantasy of being with her from ever coming true.”
“You say you live in a weird world?”

“Right. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Write a story about the weird boy planning to kill his girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She was my crazy lover.”
“Your lover, you say?”
“Let me finish. So, I take her money.  Not nearly enough for a drink, but I want to touch her palm, feel the coins that had been against her thighs, next to her, you know, her place. You know what I mean. Those nickels and dimes had been cozy and warm there, less than two inches away. Intimate with her smell, heartbeat, and heat. How could I say no?”
“So you got her the Coke?”
“Yeah. This is where the luster starts to fall from her star. The gorgeous raven-haired goddess that she is. So now, I’m in line for her Diet Coke at MacDoos when the city detail supervisor comes in and yanks me by the shoulder, yelling—I never said you could come in here. Who the hell do you think you are? Get back to the highway with the other deadbeats. Well, I never spent those coins. I wonder where they are.”
“What happened with the supervisor?”
“What? Oh yeah. Okay. So, after I busted that supervisor in the snot locker and laid a big ole’ shiner on his eye, that’s when the law got involved.”

“The police?”

“A Sheriff.”

“What happened?”
“Yeah. While putting me in handcuffs, the chubby officer laughed at us in our orange vests. Mattie gave him a wise mouth. He almost let it go until she called him ” Porky Pig ” with her hands on her.” “He called her a bitch.”

“I told him to shit and fall in it. A charge of ‘resisting arrest’ was added to the crime.”
“Both of you got arrested?”
“His patrol car smelled like piss and puke. So did the jail cell. We needed a lawyer. Mattie knew one and called him. A Real Estate lawyer shows up. Mister O’Shea, Mattie’s husband. Bergen O’Shea. Yep, you got it, Mattie O’Shea, the queen of all that’s carnal, was married. Her hubby shows up all huffy and belligerent. Well, Bergen probably knows something about land contracts and stuff. But when it came to getting me out on bail for assault, well, he’d met his Waterloo. Bergen almost screwed up the bail. Can you imagine that? Without me, never even having so much as a parking ticket, he almost couldn’t get me out. Bergen is a sad-sack of a round-shouldered whimp. He’s at least a dozen years older than Mattie. But for some reason, he does have her to sleep with. What else matters when he’s going home to those long legs every night?”
“So, Mattie was attracted to you.”
“Yeah, man. I’ve got a body. I mean, I’m lean, look at me. Girls love this body.”
“So, he got you out on bail. What then?”
“Yes, he did. I walked right of out of jail holding my tongue about how stupid Mattie was for being with a toad like Bergen. Mattie tries to clear the air. She suggests we get a beer to sort of have a tribute to Bergen’s legal prowess.”

“Oh pleze! He has none, and he can’t hold his liquor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s getting a little tipsy. Starts making trips to the john, leaving his bird-of-paradise with me, thigh-to-thigh in a booth. Alcohol in our veins, and me with a woody the size of Florida. No brag, just fact. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the weird in me waking up. I sensed stars and planets colliding. Me n’ Mattie. All I could think of.”
“So, you were coming on to her. What about Bergen?”
“Yeah, Bergen sensed what was going on. So he starts in, trying to belittle me by asking me questions—So, what do you do for a living, kid? Mattie has her hand under the table, rubbing my thigh. She tells Bergen that I really did work for the CIA. I almost choke. You see, when we were on trash detail, I told her I was working undercover for the CIA. Mattie is beautiful, but she’s not the brightest. I actually run the bucket lift for a billboard advertising company.”
“What did Bergen say about the CIA?”
“He said, No fucking way. Mattie took up for me and told him that I really did. Bergen slapped her.”

“What? He hit her?”
“Yeah. That’s when I found out Bergen can’t fight. He has a puddin’ belly and a glass jaw. Old Bergen sounded like a watermelon hitting the floor when he went down.”

“What did Mattie do?”
After that, in the middle of the day, she’s in my little bedroom laying in my arms. I gotta give it to the girl, she sure knows how to move in the sack. Know what I mean?”

“I guess. But I still don’t understand what happened. Something musta gone South for you to want to kill her.”

“Right. I began to see her how she really was after catching about three of her good burrito windys, and seeing her on the can reading Cosmo. The fantasy was finished. She’s not the Goddess I thought her to be. Sex got to be more like biological getting-off in her instead of starry-eyed lust.
“What about the husband? Bergen.”
“He keeps calling. His threatening letters don’t worry me much.  But rumor has it he has friends from the wrong neighborhoods who he might hire to dog me.  That’s a little bit of a bother. But I’m the one that started this whole thing because of my lasciviousness for Mattie. Pretty good word, huh—lasciviousness. I found that word in a Playboy at the barber shop.  It means horny.”
“Yeah, I know what lascivious means.”
“Anyway, I should have considered the consequences of her being married in the first place. Should a got rid of her and moved to Alaska, where Bergen couldn’t find me. I’ve never been to Alaska. Another thing on my list of failures.”
“Why Alaska?”
“ Good fishin’”
“Huh. Okay. Go on.”
“So after a few weeks, Mattie really gets pissed. She says I’ve ruined her life. Give me a break. We began to fight, not physically. I’d never hit a girl. But verbally, we’ve had some good ones. That’s when it happened, without warning.”

“What happened?”

“I’m in the middle of a great morning romp with Mattie on the day I’m scheduled to show up in court. Damm good makeup sex. She’s digging her nails into my backside when she hits her crescendo. Is crescendo the right word for that?  Well, anyway, I’m about to finish when the door caves in; three guys with pillows, a bucket of something and a camera. They run in and pull me off her. They’re coating me with this warm sticky stuff. But I’m in a state of suspended ecstasy to know what’s happening. Sweaty Mattie O’Shea lies naked, watching them tear into the pillows and covering me with feathers on this sticky stuff. Camera flashing like a war zone.  For a second, I see Bergen outside laughing.”
“I’ve never seen Mattie so jubilant. Is jubilant the right word for that?  I think so.  Anyway, she stands there sweaty with her hands doubled up under her chin, shaking with laughter, lost in juvenile pleasure like a child, giggling. Little titties shaking. I must have looked like a huge bird fighting with those guys.  They weren’t prepared for what I was capable of. I beat the shit out of them, except the Nikon nerd. He ran like the wind with Bergen following. I caught Mattie in the parking lot as she tried to get away in my Honda. But you know the story. It wouldn’t start.”
“Getting her to the billboard and hoisting her up in the lift was a lot of work. Especially tying her bare assed for everyone to see was worthwhile. My friend Desmond got me a copy of the Five O’Clock News clip. Me, Big Bird, tying Mattie O’Shea to the “Got Milk” billboard.  She shook until the cops got her down.  Damm she looked good.  I was kinda getting the ole feelin’ for her again when it happened.”
“What?”
“Ah, you know what happened.”
“What about Mattie. How is she?”
“Oh, she’s fine.”
“What about you, though? You don’t look so good.”
“The docs say I’ll never walk again.”
“So, how do you think you’ll kill her?”
“She’ll come back to me. I know she will. We was good in bed. We’re meant to be together again.”
“Even after what she did to you, you still think that?”
“I think so.

“Kill her, you say?”

“Hey, how do you suppose little Mattie got her hands on that officer’s gun, anyway?”