By Connor Batsimm
Sandcastle Motel Pt. 1
I stand in the corner of the Sandcastle Motel, flipping through a stack of travel brochures from the lobby display case. Paz is next to me, helping himself to some coffee and cheese Danishes left over from that morning’s continental breakfast. This is a stakeout. I have reason to believe the owner’s a real piece of shit. My woman, Tabitha, told me this. She says he’s a crook and a liar, charging bogus maintenance fees and hiking up prices with no warning. So we’re looking into it.
The receptionist, one of those mousy, curly-hair blondes, keeps looking over at Paz. She wears a fluffy pink turtleneck. You can tell he makes her nervous. Which makes sense. He’s a big guy.
“Excuse me sir, can I help you?” She’s caught me staring.
“I’d like to speak to your boss.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Samson’s not available right now. Could I take a message?” She’s picking at the threads of her turtleneck.
I walk up to the desk and lean over her, squaring my shoulders, drumming my knuckles on the countertop. “I’d like to speak to your boss, now.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve already told you, he-”
I pull out my badge. “Jacksonville, P.D. Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I’ll let him know you came by.” She’s a horribly ugly woman. Awful to look at. I look at the coffee table Paz is swiping pastries off of, and think about beating her over the head with it. It’s a good thought.
“C’mon Mike, let’s get out of here,” says Paz. I glare at the receptionist and punch the wall next to her desk. It makes a dull metal clang against my fist. We stalk out of the motel and drive back to the station.
“Those fuckers, Tabitha’s right, they all ought to burn in hell.”
“People don’t respect cops like they used to. Used to be if you pulled a badge, everyone lost their shit.”
I got paired up with Paz two years back, and we hit it off fast. For one, both of us had been reassigned from different departments over reports of poor conduct. That gave us a lot to talk about.
“It’s not an organization that rewards ambition,” Paz had said. “The harder you push, the harder they push back.” I’d been feeling more or less the same way, and was going through a rough patch for unrelated reasons–my dog had just been diagnosed with diabetes and was spending most of her days engaged in a futile staring contest with the pantry door–so I ready to start making drastic alterations to my worldview. We’ve both been inching closer and closer to something indescribable, Paz and I, like a mountain you know is looming right behind the trees, that you just can’t see quite yet. I have a feeling that at any moment, life’s going to start moving very fast.
Sandcastle Motel Pt. 2
Someday, when we’re all dead, shot full of holes or bound with latticed IV tubes, our children will tell stories about us. Like the time Paz and I got into a day-long shootout with a roving band of crackheads up in the Okefenokee Swamp. Now that was a story. There were at least nine of them, and they all had old-school muskets, as if they’d been doing some drugged out civil war reenactment. By the time we made it back to Jacksonville, we were both covered head to toe in mud, and had about a dozen leeches apiece.
But there’s some stories they’ll never tell. Some things Paz and I never share with anyone. Like this–Paz and I go back to that motel. A little before midnight. I’ve got two pistols, a shotgun, a boxcutter. Paz has a switchblade and an AK-47. We’ve given each other alter egos. I’m Captain Query, international man of mystery, one moment he’s there, the next he’s gone. Paz is Crusher, the breaker of bodies. We both wear bandanas over our faces. His is red, mine is blue. Our usual good cop bad cop routine is gone. It’s this side of me I hope Tabitha never sees.
The motel office door is still unlocked, but Paz kicks it down anyway. It splinters into a sawdust heap. Some alarm is going off. We ignore it and take stock of the room. The blonde receptionist is gone, replaced by a short, fat man wearing a bowling shirt and a Marlins hat. He looks bored. And I know in an instant this is the man I’ve been looking for, so I grab him by his shirt collar and hoist him up onto the motel desk. He begins to flail, so I hit him in the face, once, then twice. There’s something warm and sticky on my hand. He’s trying to talk to me, offering money, making deals, arguing, begging, but by the time I process what he’s saying, he’s silent again, a pulpy mess spread out over the counter.
There’s a shuffling sound coming from just outside. I pivot and see a night janitor, peering through the smudged, fogged-up office window. He’s young. His cheeks are puffy. He sees Paz and I staring at him and bolts. Then we’re chasing after him, while the neon motel sign beams down above us. He tries to duck into an alley to shake us off his tail. Big mistake. Paz and I pull out our pieces and unload on him. He ricochets off the alley walls, bullets clinging to his body like it’s flypaper. Parts of him are scattered around, chunks of skin fused into the gravel.
Superheroes
That’s not the last appearance of Captain Query and the Crusher. We pay a visit to one of our co-workers, after he gives me a parking ticket. We don’t kill him–we don’t need to–but we set his car on fire and Gorilla Glue a bunch of pubic hair to his badge. We find out the next day he’s sent in his resignation, and exchange a secret hi-five.
“We need to be thinking on a bigger scale,” says Paz one day. We’re walking along the beach after work, killing time.
“Maybe we burn down some of these condos. Every time we walk down here there’s more of them. Like a Hydra.”
“No, we need to go about this systematically. What’s our agenda?”
That’s the difference with Paz and I. With him there’s always a next step, an end goal of some kind. I’m not sure what there is for me. There’s Tabitha. There was my dog, but I haven’t seen much of her recently. I read somewhere that animals go into hiding before they’re about to die. That’s awfully respectful of them, to keep it private like that. When humans die we make as big a show of it as possible, with rituals and plaques and screaming and ugly-crying.
Paz shows me some plans he’s drawn. He’s written them on the backs of old case files, in silver Sharpie. He’s drawn a lot of arrows. They all have long stems and wide, obtuse points that lead to words like “legacy” and “anti-heroes.” To me it seems like all this writing is the opposite of whatever it is we’ve been trying to achieve. I don’t mention it to Paz though. He’s a big guy, and talks like he’s not interested in hearing responses to his ideas. Across the beach from us, a couple of preschool-age girls have caught a horseshoe crab. They’re pulling its legs off one by one and throwing them back into the ocean.
Desk Work
Sometimes I wonder if Tabitha has ever seen Captain Query. When we’re in traffic perhaps, and I honk a little too loudly at the idiot trying to change lanes. Or in bed, maybe. Would she say anything if she had? Our relationship has never required much communication. The language barrier is partially to blame. Her English is limited and my Spanish might as well be nonexistent, though Paz has offered to teach me the important phrases. But we’ve always known what the other has wanted, with or without words. We have a mutual understanding. We met at the club where she dances. She had legs like butchers’ knives, sleek and sharp, and when she moved it was like watching a gun fight. I asked her if she wanted to come home with me, to which she gave a confused shrug. We spent the rest of the night fucking.
Today, Paz and I are back at work. I got promoted last year, which means I now spend most of my time behind a desk, organizing case reports and briefing meetings. Paz says it’s the funniest shit he’s ever seen. Captain Mike Donald, man of mystery, sorting through paperwork. I play with the stapler on my desk, emptying it, refilling it, emptying it again. When my shift ends, I leave the station, slip on my blue bandana, and walk into an OfficeMax. Captain Query unloads a clip into the air, as shoppers dive to the ground, huddling for cover under racks of notebook paper and pencil sharpeners.
Later, Paz and I meet up for drinks. After that I have only the vague memory of standing in an aquarium, past closing hours, watching penguins slide along the rock embankments that line the sides of their tank. The aquarium lights are dim and dusty. The next morning, I wake up covered in blood. I have no idea where it’s from, only that it isn’t my own.
School Committee
“Check out this asshole,” says Paz, pointing at the TV. We’re in his living room, watching some local news channel covering the school board election. A red-faced man in a baggy suit is ranting about budgets. “Thinks we should cut all the arts programs in the city.”
“Should we not?” It’s an honest question.
“Fuck you, man, I’ve got a daughter. And what if she wants to be an actress? Or play an instrument? Y’know, a kid’s chances of getting into college are ten times higher if they play the oboe.”
“Isn’t Jenny like two years old?”
“Man, when are you and Tabitha gonna have kids? Being a parent would really be good for you.”
“Don’t know. We’ve never really talked about it. We’re not even married yet.” I’m aware, suddenly, of how big Paz is. Almost a foot taller than me.
Later that night, Captain Query and Crusher drive out to the suburbs. We pull up in front of a big red brick house. Paz has a tub of gasoline, which he starts drizzling around the estate, a little on the front steps, a little in the bushes, some in the bird feeder, a hearty splash over the welcome mat. He’s pulling out his lighter when the guy from the red-faced guy from the TV runs out onto the porch. He’s wearing a bathrobe, and is much fatter in person. He has a gun, a big rifle. I duck into the bushes, trying to steady my breath. Paz is waving his lighter in the air like he’s at a Skynyrd concert. The TV man shoots, hits Paz in the leg. He’s on the ground, fumbling around in the dark, trying to find the lighter. The TV man reloads. Paz pulls out his badge. “Jacksonville, P.D., don’t shoot!” I smell something burning. I run through the woods, tripping my way over stumps and brambles. Paz has the car keys. I stuff my bandana into my pocket. When I reach the road, I hold out my thumb and wait.
Bad Dreams
I’ve been reassigned to Paz’s old position. I’d forgotten how much I missed being out on patrol. My new partner asks me a lot of questions. I rarely have answers.
I don’t hear from Paz again after that night. He’s probably in a ditch behind that red-brick suburb house, but for all I know he’s lying low in Argentina or starting riots in Kuwait or a secret prisoner of the government somewhere.
It’s becoming harder to tell where my job ends and Captain Query’s begins. I spend three hours screaming at a suspect in a dirty interrogation room. Later that night I beat an insurance salesman to death with an empty bottle of Pinot Grigio. One day, we raid a house, looking for a meth lab. Instead, we find an orgy with at least two dozen people. They’re crammed into a tiny room, piled haphazardly on top of each other. I leave work early that day. When I get home, I grab Tabitha by the waist, tear her panties off, and fuck her til neither of us can move. She’s studying English online now. It’s a sweet gesture, but the ESL course she found is through the University of Brisbane, so everything she says has a thick Australian accent. I have to stop myself from laughing every time she opens her mouth and starts talking like Angus Young. Still, it’s progress.
They’re starting to talk about the recent uptick of violence on the TV. There’s been a bunch of copycat crimes too. It started out as vigilante justice, but it’s turning into something else now. I guess it doesn’t take much convincing to get people to start killing each other.
Around this time, I start having dreams. A recurring one, of a line of penguins, all on fire. The penguins waddle as fast as they can to the water, but the water is gasoline, and at the bottom of the pool of gasoline is Paz’s gaping mouth. I figure this won’t do, so I start experimenting with sleep medication. But well, the thing with experiments is they’re not always successful.
I’m standing in a cloister of sand dunes, trying to find the ocean. I’m naked, except my police badge. I feel coarse sand stones sinking into my pores, submerging in my bloodstream. I keep walking, falling deeper into the sand with each step I take. Below the sand, the earth is cool and deep.
Something I Didn’t Tell You
There’s something I didn’t tell you, about the night Paz and I went out to the suburbs. When I make it out of the woods, I stand on the side of the road, waiting for a car to pass by. I wait for three hours, until my eyes can barely open and the trees around me have swirled into a mess of kaleidoscope pixels. I feel increasingly like a crab without any legs, trapped in a world that makes less and less sense to me the longer I live through it. Finally, a car pulls over, a rusty little Volvo. The driver is the motel receptionist in the ugly pink turtleneck. Her hair is worse than before. She says something to me. Her voice sounds like a computer lagging behind on updates. I get in next to her. She spreads her legs apart and I see she’s not wearing underwear. She tells me to fuck her, so I slide it in. Her pussy is dense and hairy.
“No, not like that,” she says. She fishes into my pockets and pulls out the blue bandana. She ties it around my head. “Like this.”
I push her up against the windshield and kiss her through the folds of the bandana. The car continues forward, drifting from one side of the road to another. I can feel her orgasm, swelling up around me. We cum in unison, as the Volvo hurtles over the shoulder and into the marsh. I hold her there, as we sink deep into the swamp. I kiss her, and she kisses me in return. I can feel her lips through the bandana. They’re rough as sandpaper.
Then she unties the bandana from my face and pulls me close to her. “Go,” she says. “I’ll call you sometime.” She pushes me upward, and I find myself clawing through water and reeds and plant debris, up to the surface. I drag myself back onto the road. I’m covered from head to toe in gasoline. I turn back and look at the car, now barely visible within the thick knot of the swamp. I drop the bandana back into my pocket, and continue walking down the road.