Posted on September 4, 2008

Karaoke Quintessence: Chapter 4: Freaks

The biscuits were terrible. The gravy was worse. Three great mounds of soft, doughy bread that stuck to the top of his mouth like peanut butter, smothered in thick, white paste with tiny lumps of brown gristle. Jimmy cut through it with his fork and swallowed another mouthful with the aide of a gulp of coffee. The burning kept him from thinking about the taste.

“This is shit,” he told the waitress when she walked by and she shrugged like she knew, because of course it was shit, but what could you expect for $3.99? She didn’t bother to refill his coffee.

Jimmy had found this place on the way home from the bars a week ago and it was now where he had his dinner/breakfast every day. His job didn’t make a lot of money and, no matter how bad they were, the night owl specials filled him up. Sometimes he didn’t even feel the need for lunch.

The restaurant was two stops from his hotel. Jimmy’s routine was to sing at the bars until tips dried up or last call, take the bus here and eat, and then go back to his room to sleep until noon or one. Then he’d kick around the city, waiting for the bars to fill up and the process to begin again. Not the kind of life he’d envisioned for himself when he’d been catching punts and screwing chicks in high school, but it sure as hell beat working for a living. And it was easy, ever since he’d found that book and discovered what he could do. Karaoke for tips? Most people would think that’s crazy, but Jimmy’s talent gave him a way about him, an attitude bar regulars liked throwing money at. He’d do it until it didn’t work any more and then he’d find something else.

He flipped through the city’s free weekly newspaper, looking at bar ads. Sometimes they had karaoke competitions, when he could make a lump sum and take a few days off. But none looked to be in the cards this week. Jimmy closed the paper, pushed it across the table away from him, and stared at the biscuits. One and a half left and he wasn’t sure he had the stamina to finish. He made up his mind and pushed these away, too. Tips had been good, he could afford to swing by Subway if he got hungry later.

Jimmy left cash on the table and waved to the waitress on his way out. She was cute, but too tall for his taste. But if he got board, he could always use his latent mojo to score a little action. When you got down to tacks, Jimmy Pete loved his life.

He trudged to the bus stop. Once there, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the tuna can. Jimmy pushed away the foil on top and looked in at the beetle. Weird motherfucker, that guy who’d given it to him. One of the weirder ones he’d met since beginning his journey into the under society of mojo. Jimmy didn’t care for the freaks. They offended his blue collar upbringing. They didn’t realize how good they had it, especially the ones who could use mojo like he could. Or no just like he could because, as far as Jimmy knew, nobody could do that, but he hated the way so many of the freaks he’d met were all down on their luck when they could do such amazing things.

Like the guy who could eat playing cards. He showed Jimmy the trick once. An ace of spade held up, so Jimmy could see, and then he stuffed it in his mouth and chewed. Once it was down, he waved, palms out: nothing. “Deal me a hand,” he told Jimmy. Jimmy did. “There an ace in it?” Jimmy checked and saw that there wasn’t. Then the card eater spread the hand out, face down, across the dirty table in the back of that midwest bar, and had Jimmy turn them over one by one. The last one, right there, was the ace of spade.

“It’s a trick,” Jimmy had said.

“Of course it is,” the card eater said.

“No, I mean it’s a trick like a magician does.”

“Naw,” the card eater said. “You can check. It’s not that kind of trick.”

Jimmy did, watching him do it over and over again from every angle. There was no illusion here. This was the real deal. “I can feel it,” the card eater said. “I can’t see it—and neither can nobody else—but I can feel the card moving from my stomach to my hand than then it just kind of oozes out onto the other ones. It’s the craziest thing.”

But it didn’t make him happy, he told Jimmy. You’d think something like that could make you a ton of money, playing blackjack or poker, but it didn’t work. The cards they used now a days are all plastic. You can’t chew them.

Jimmy figured the guy could’ve come up with some other way to make a killing off his talent, but the card eater didn’t seem to want to. He was, in Jimmy’s estimation, a lazy bum.

Jimmy looked around. There wasn’t any bus in sight and it got cold this time of night. He stood up and began pacing to keep himself warm.

That’s when he saw the van. It was parked half a block away, on the other side of the street. As soon as he looked at it, Jimmy’s finger began to itch and then the itch became a burn. He reached behind him and picked up his briefcase from the shelter’s bench. He wasn’t scared or worried, not yet, but he knew there was something wrong with that van.

Jimmy held his hand out and waved it. The itching got stronger as it arced in the van’s direction, then died down again when it was pointed away. “The fuck—” Jimmy said, but was cut off when the van’s lights came on and the engine roared and then it was driving straight at him.