He tore away some of the tattered flesh before the EMS even got there. The cops were gonna get involved, but it was gonna take ‘em a while.
Kevin Baylor dropped into shock, pulling at flesh on his thigh, repeating Kevin Baylor, Kevin Baylor.
His street name was Rake and he had been Rake so long he had to remind himself to tell the authorities he was Kevin Baylor.
He had been Dave Farhat once, and Chuck Harrington in Ohio once.
Never carried ID.
If you were Rake you wouldn’t either.
The job was a hundred and ten K, he’d get a bonus for getting shot,probably.
They rerouted the ambulance, Rake was stable, stablish anyway, wondering what they gave him for pain.
Some of the hood buses stopped carrying the good shit because they were getting robbed of it up in the Schoolcraft Projects.
He heard the driver tell the other guy, the guy holding the IV, rerouting to St.John’s.
“Football traffic?” Rake asked.
They had planned the job for when the cops were focused on the football crowds.
Rake felt like he was starting to broadcast shit he shouldn’t and closed his eyes.
Cops would get involved anyway. Of course they would.
***
He woke up in St. Johns and his dick almost got hard when he realized he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed.
Nurse was nice.
No indication he was in trouble.
It was a warm soup feeling, a weird kind of contentment that some normie in a fluorescent sales computer zoo wouldn’t understand.
He could hear his roommate’s TV.
Wondered if the Lions won.
Even doped he felt like some metal was still in him, tried to do the gunshot distance math, got a headache, closed his eyes again.
“Back to the top story, pop sensation SayMir is in serious but stable condition in Henry Ford Hospital after being attacked…”
Rake inadvertently yanked his IV so hard sitting up that one eye rolled independent of the other.
The warm soup feeling vacated.
His flee response was nearly non-existent. His fight response was keen and broke through much of the dope fog.
His phone was nowhere.
His bag of personal belongings wasn’t in sight. Maybe the cops took it as evidence. No, they’d have to charge him with something.
He fumbled the weird phone/TV remote combo and came up on a cooking show.
Changing channels rapidly, he couldn’t find news.
He was high, and panicked.
“FugghappentaSailor?”
The roommate responded “You talking to me?” through the sterile blue curtain that reminded Rake of Dorothy’s dress from The Wizard of Oz.The curtain fluttered. He saw the Yellow Brick Road. He was really high, maybe higher than he had ever been from street drugs.
“Yeah,” Rake tried to say and it came out “Yap,” like a command.
“What was the question?”
“Whaddafugghappen ta Sailor?”
“SayMir? Crazed fan attacked her at the concert last night. Young woman. Superfan thing who-”
“Howbaddishehurt?”
“One stab wound to the kidney, one to the leg?”
Rake was sitting up now, wide awake but stoned dull so that his anger made bright lights in his eyes.
“Whu seggurity do to the guy?”
The hospital roommate said “I told you, it was a woman, a fan club member. It’s crazy, she was on an angled loading dock. They body slammed her, she hit her head and died.”
“Sailor died?”
“No, dude, she’s stable, go back to sleep. They got you on the good meds.”
The roommate got up to piss.
He looked at the guy they wheeled in while he was sleeping.
Dude had flames tattooed up his neck, dragon climbing over his left ear.
Head shaved so it shined.
Dale Meint thought to himself “What does that mean fucker care so much about a pop star/”
Guy’s lips trembled.
His arms were moving in an odd motion. It looked like he wanted to eat and strangle someone at the same time.
Maybe he had Parkinson’s, Dale thought. Maybe he’s just crazy. Dale wondered if the psych ward was full.
He went into the bathroom with his IV and locked the door behind him.
The question Rake was gonna ask didn’t get across his lips before the door closed.
He scrolled through the TV channels, looking for news.
CNN might have it.
Rake scrolled, cursing 70’s TV and financial reports.
Sailor Miranda Pietrowski was on her fourth album.
SayMir.
Her first manager told her she had to ditch the Polish last name.
“What’s your mother’s maiden name?” the guy asked.
Sailor winced and said “Czyzmeier.”
Rake would tug at her skirt, jam his tongue in her ear and say “Marry me. You can be Sailor Baylor. Everyone will remember that.”
Sailor would laugh and say “Rake, we’re sixfuckingteen years old.”
She cut a 12 song demo for FriedStyle Management. Massy Wom did some of the beats for it, because Gerald Fried was his manager too.
On that 12 song demo was “Beautiful Murder (Kevin’s song)”.
Kevin Baylor could hear the riff in his head as he leaned on the button to call the nurse.
When SayMir signed to Epic, Beautiful Murder disappeared. They wiped it from existence.
SayMir basically disappeared from Kevin’s life.
The nurse and Kevin Baylor got into an argument about Kevin’s right to leave.
He repeatedly asked if he was under arrest.
“Why would you be under arrest?” the nurse asked, and Rake asked it two more times before his brain told him he was high as fuck and he should get back in bed.
When Rake calmed down and the nurse came back in to change the IV, she said “Don’t be tough, okay? Be smart. You have a shell fragment in your leg.”
Rake fidgeted in bed.
He was glad the bitch who attacked Sailor was dead. He knew Sailor wouldn’t be. She cried when goldfish died.
The nurse took care of the guy in the other bed and walked back by.
“I know you’re tough, but you gotta rest. You’re not going anywhere for a minute.”
Rake snorted, but lay back down.
The toughest he ever was was when he let Sailor Miranda Pietrowski walk out of his life so she could be a pop star.
He had a juvenile record longer than the assembly instructions for a cruise missile, and dabbled in meth enough that maybe he had a little issue.
He didn’t really let her walk. The management team had erased him from her, but he handled it. Didn’t stalk her. Just missed her. Tough.
They took her to LA, London, shit like that.
When he was 19 years old she started sending him a Christmas card with a $5000 dollar Visa gift card to his mom’s house.
He kept the cards that she hand wrote “Kevin” on and snapped the gift cards in two.
He was Kevin “Rake” Baylor.
Everyone on the street knew that the Olde English letters SMP tattooed on Rake’s forearm stood for Schoolcraft Money Playas.
Everyone except Rake, who was the only one who still remembered Beautiful Murder (Kevin’s Song).”
***
True love. It’s no joke, and it’s forever.
Interesting piece, and interesting perspective. I want to know more about Rake now.