Mercy

Maybe if I were born somewhere nice, I would be nice, too.

You can understand that only if you're from somewhere no-good. So my girlfriend doesn't understand, because she's from one of those Connecticut suburbs with big, green yards and a Blue Ribbon school district. Whatever a Blue Ribbon is.

We keep having the same argument, the same way every time. She says she thought people in the Midwest were supposed to be nice, but she says I'm not nice. This isn't the Midwest, I tell her. Bullshit — Cleveland isn't the Midwest, she says. And it goes on.

This is what we're arguing about when I get the call from my mom that I take in the next room. I know someone is dead, because my mom calls nowadays only when people die.

"It was a bad batch," she says.

I hate when people say that. It makes it sound like he was eating cupcakes.

But I tell her thanks for calling, I hope she's doing well. And she says, "Please, take care of yourself. You know."

I tell her I will, goodbye.

When I get back to the other room, my girl is still arguing with my ghost. Still yelling like I'd never left, so I just slip back into my role for a while. But there's this humming behind my eyes that's making everything run like wet paint, so I go to the bathroom to catch myself.

The porcelain sink is blurred like a deer bone on the highway. There is a crack in the mirror that's started to spread itself like a vein from the bottom corner to my face in the center of the glass. I trace the fracture with the tip of my finger, press a little too hard, and slice it open. A crescent moon on my pointer. All the humming stops. Blood fills the crack and starts to run down the wall.

My girl opens the door and stands there, says, "Did you cut yourself on that goddamn mirror?"

"No," I say.

"I can see the blood," she says.

I just shrug one of my mountainous shrugs, like I've never known a thing. She says she hates when I lie to her, and I'm always lying to her. She tells me the mirror is broken, "You need to replace it."

"The crack is just going to get worse," she says. She tells me to get a new mirror tomorrow, then goes off to bed.

I wash myself clean and bandage my finger, leave my blood to harden in the crack and on the wall.

Fighting always makes me need to smoke, but she wants me to quit. Doesn't understand how we need our little addictions. So I've been smoking one here or there just until I can go without them. If a time like that could exist. I sneak out and finish a half cig I've been saving, then lather soap up and down my arms and over my neck, so she won't be able to smell it on me. But I get into bed, and she doesn't even move.

The next day I wake up and call my mom. She thinks someone is dead, but I tell her, "Nobody new yet." I just wanted to know about the ceremonies — the wake, the funeral, and whatnot. She tells me the wake is Friday at three, two days from now, and asks if I'm going to go, or if that would be too hard for me. I ask her why it would be hard. She says, "You know." And I do.

I tell her I probably won't.

And then I go to work, selling life insurance on the West Side.

I'm mostly on the phone all day, but my voice is no good today — just sounds like it doesn't understand what it's saying. So I don't sell much. After work I go to my meeting, and then I go home and my girl says I forgot the mirror. She says...