Sometimes, people just snap.
My short story, “Been on the Job Too Long” is now available for the Nook at Barnes & Noble, Amazon (Kindle). You can also get it for the Sony Reader, find it on iTunes — or go to Smashwords to get it in PDF or HTML, or plain text.
Here’s the description:
James is paying his college tuition by dealing cocaine to frat boys. When a dealer screws him, he cons his former roommate, Larkin, into going to collect. Larkin is sweet-tempered giant — or so James thinks. When the dealer won’t pay, he finds out Larkin is a bit more than he bargained for …
Still not sure if you’re interested? You can sample the first part of the story below, for free:
BEEN ON THE JOB TOO LONG
By Benjamin Chambers
Darn Write Publishing
Copyright 2006 Benjamin Chambers
Since June, Crockett had owed me a hundred bucks for some Scotty that had been cut so thin it was all lidocaine and baking soda, almost no coke at all. I’d sold it to some frat boys who wanted to experiment. When they complained, I went to Crockett. He wouldn’t pay me back because I’d gotten the stuff from his girlfriend Diane, he hadn’t sold it to me personally. It was the same difference, and he knew it. She got all her shit from him. He thought he could scam me because I was college and he was street, but I let it ride. It was my last deal — I was graduating, and after I got a job I figured I wouldn’t need the extra cash anymore. I spent the summer looking for work. When September came around and I still hadn’t found a job, I started thinking about that hundred bucks again. I owed my landlord a month in back rent, and that was just the start.
Thing was, Crockett was a hard case, and I didn’t relish asking for the money back. If things went bad, I didn’t think I could take him alone, and I didn’t want to have to. So I brought Larkin along, as a threat. He was an innocent: never lifted his hand in anger, still a virgin, all that. The kind of guy who shows up for work every day for thirty-five years, never sick, never a complaint. But he was big like an Apollo rocket, and he had the slavering grin of a starved wolf. People took one look and gave him plenty of elbow room.
We knew each other well enough to say hey — we’d been roommates sophomore year. So I looked Larkin up at the bookstore where he worked. I told him I’d just gotten a job, lunch was on me. He was surprised, but said sure, like I knew he would. He didn’t turn down free meals. When we got in my Camaro, I told him I had to run an errand first, collect a hundred bucks, wouldn’t take a second. I told him a story about the money, but I don’t think he heard it. His lips were moving, like he was reciting a poem. He probably was.
After a couple miles, I turned the Camaro onto a side street and parked in front of an old, dark apartment building. Put in a little work and a lot of money, it would’ve had character. Now it was just decrepit and dirty. The neighborhood was worse.
Larkin looked around nervously. “Thought you said this guy’s a student.”
“I think he deals, too.” I rotated my arms at the shoulders to get the blood pumping.
“He deals?”
“Relax. I know him.” This was technically true, so I felt all right about saying it.
We went up the concrete stairs in silence. I pushed open the building’s broken security door and led the way down a dark hall that smelled of winter and piss. At a door near the back of the building, I stopped and knocked. Then I began to crack my knuckles. I didn’t know exactly what I’d be up against.
A girl opened the door. The only hair she had was on the top of her head, though her bangs hung past the place where her eyebrows should have been. Her face was heavily made-up. She wore a dirty white t-shirt and a tight black mini-skirt. “You here to see Crockett?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Incoming!” the girl shouted over her shoulder. Larkin flinched.
I asked the girl, “Where’s Diane?”
The girl walked away from the door, letting it swing open. “I dunno. Who’s Diane?”
I looked up at Larkin, then stepped inside. I breathed a sigh of relief when he followed. I’d been afraid he’d bolt.
It was broad daylight outside, but inside the apartment it was murky. The bulbs, all bare, threw only dingy shadows. The strongest light came from a 20-gallon aquarium in a corner of the living room, where fish sparkled. The living room bled into the kitchen without any clear transition. In the sink lay unwashed dishes; on the counter lay the remains of a turkey gone gamy. Crockett was nowhere in sight.
The girl sat down at a table topped with dull yellow Formica and began to examine a large crystal pendant that hung from a chain around her neck. A radio played.
I walked over to the refrigerator and hunted around in it. When the girl asked me what I thought I was doing, I said, “Entertaining.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Larkin sat down at the table across from the girl. The chair complained, but it held. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Larkin.”
“Is that contagious?” Then she looked up and really saw him for the first time. “Oh my God,” she said.
He turned pink. He licked his lips and pretended to study a magazine on the floor near his chair. He wasn’t very good with girls.
“You okay with beer, man?” I said.
He looked up. “They got any juice?”
“Oh, right. I forgot you were Mr. Straight Arrow.” I leaned down inside the fridge again. “Nope.” I shut the refrigerator door.
“Water’s fine.”
“Juice,” said the girl, shaking her head.
I filled a glass with water. I set it in front of Larkin and then twisted the cap off my beer. “Here’s to the future.” I raised the beer bottle in toast, and he clicked his glass against it clumsily.
“To your new job,” he said.
“Sure.” I drank, wiped my mouth, and sat down. With Larkin there, I felt good — exhilarated. Proud of myself for having all the angles. “Crockett owes me some money,” I explained to the girl.
“Don’t even bring it up,” she said. “He’s in a mood.”
Then Crockett walked into the living room from the adjoining hallway. Since I’d last seen him, he’d shaved his head, but he wore the same black, unlaced Doc Martens and a tattered t-shirt advertising a band called The Feederz. A pair of suspenders was draped loosely over his thin shoulders. His chin was weak, his eyes soft and apparently gentle. He said to the girl, “Who’s in a mood?”
“You.” The girl didn’t look up from her crystal.
“Hi Crockett,” I said.
“Look at me,” he said to the girl.
She leaned closer to her crystal, peering at it intently. Crockett grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back until she was looking up at him. Then he spoke very slowly, his breath in her face. “I’m not in a mood.”
She swallowed. Embarrassed, I picked at the label on my beer bottle.
Crockett released the girl. Her head snapped forward. “He’s not in a mood,” she said. She dangled the crystal by its silver chain. “He gave me this. It’s supposed to be a healing crystal. But every time I look at it, I feel sick.”
“Then stop looking at it,” Crockett said. He lifted the cover on the aquarium and put his hand in the water. The bulb inside the cover highlighted the lack of distinction on his pasty face. “Here, Geoffrey. Come here, boy.”
Larkin started swishing water around in his mouth so loud I could hear it. He looked like an enormous baby about to spit milk. I glared at him and he swallowed. Then I turned to Crockett. He had his back to us — to Larkin. I needed him to turn around and see what he was dealing with.
“You got that hundred bucks?” I asked.
“No.” Crockett chased some of the smaller fish around the aquarium with a tiny net.
“I told you not to bring it up,” the girl said. She laid the crystal against her forehead and closed her eyes.
“Come here, Pépé,” Crockett said in a coaxing voice. He crouched down and watched the net enter the water. Then he straightened up and tapped it on the edge of the tank.
The girl laid her head down on her arms. “I don’t feel very good.” Her voice was muffled.
I set my bottle down on the table, hard. “You didn’t give me what I paid for.”
Crockett’s gaze didn’t leave the aquarium. “You got me confused with Diane.”
“Who’s Diane?” said the girl. No one answered.
I took another swallow of beer, smiled. I felt powerful. “So you’re a thief.”
“You getting snotty with me, college boy?” Crockett said, turning. He noticed Larkin for the first time. “Who’s this peckerhead?”
Larkin shifted, his eyes wide. “Me? I’m just a friend.”
“We’re all friends,” Crockett said. His eyes glittered.
“What?” Larkin threw me a confused glance. He looked the way he did when he thought he’d hurt somebody’s feelings.
“Just give me the money,” I said to Crockett. I was getting nervous. I’d expected him to fold up quick.
“This your pet dog?” he said, pointing at Larkin. “He don’t scare me.”
Larkin screwed up his eyes and looked from Crockett to me. His cavernous nostrils quivered like a rabbit’s. “What?”
“Don’t insult him,” I said to Crockett.
He waved a hand. “Ahhh, get off my nuts, man.”
A knock came at the door and Crockett went to answer it. His boots made no sound on the carpet. He opened the door slightly. Someone muttered and he slipped out into the hall, pulling the door shut behind him. The radiator banged.
“Fuck,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to do next.
The girl sat up and rapped the crystal against the tabletop. “I bet they have crystals made out of Formica. I bet they mine the stuff down in South America.”
Larkin leaned over and whispered to me, “I thought you knew this guy.”
“I do,” I said.
“Why’s he calling me names, then?”
“Would you shut up and let me think?”
He stared at me, his upper lip overhanging the lower one. I noticed for the first time that his cheeks and chin were absolutely hairless. “You mean I am your dog.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Don’t let him get to you. Anyway, I’ll take care of it.”
Moving faster than I thought he could, he caught my wrist. His fingers were incredibly strong. “You needed a dog and you chose me.”
Still looking at her crystal, the girl announced in a sing-song voice, “I can heaarrr you.” We both looked at her, then back at each other.
“You’re way off,” I said.
“Forget it.” He let go of my forearm, unreeled himself from the chair and walked over to the aquarium. “Hi fishies,” he said, tapping on it while the girl and I looked at each other. Then he walked over to a dark hallway that led deeper into the apartment, and peered down it.
“What’re you doing?” I said. I was peeved — my wrist hurt like hell. “Get back over here.”
“Thought I’d poke around some.”
“S’cuse me,” the girl said. “It’s just my house.”
“Shut your face,” said Larkin casually, and disappeared down the hall.
I told the girl, “He’s not usually like this.”
“Do I look like I care?”
I stared out the kitchen window. It opened onto a stained brick wall. While I tried to think, a voice on the radio listed several artists, then gave way to power chords. Voices rose in the hallway, and Crockett came back in the front door. As he walked back into the kitchen, he said to me, “Maybe I should start charging you rent.”
“Like you pay any,” said the girl.
All of a sudden, Larkin walked out of the hallway and stood beside me. “Look what I found,” he said. In his hand was a giant revolver. I couldn’t speak.
Crockett said, “Uh-oh. Peckerhead went snooping where he wasn’t supposed to. Isn’t that right, peckerhead?”
Larkin’s nostrils fluttered. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to.”
“Time out,” I said, more abruptly than I’d meant to. I tried to stand, but Larkin’s hand on my shoulder kept me in my chair. I looked up at him and said, “Let’s just leave.”
“We’ve got some money to collect.”
“Never mind — it doesn’t matter.”
“Everything matters.” Larkin weighed the gun in his hand. “So let’s collect it.”
In the Jan. 16 issue of The New Yorker, American writer Saïd Sayrafiezadeh has a short story, “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy,” that would’ve been kick-ass, had it been published forty years ago. As it is, it’s worth reading for its absurd humor and the intimations of what sort of writer Sayrafiezadeh might some day be.
