Free Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott

diapers. She tied straps around my knees, locked my wrists into the table, and placed two leather pads next to my ears so I couldn’t move my head. She stuck a pin through my nipple and I let out a steady moan. She burned me first with candle wax, but then lowered the candle to my body and I caught my breath as the hair on my chest sizzled. She quickly pulled the candle away, lit a cigarette with it. She pulled up on the piercing while pressing the lit cigarette into my chest. She did it over and over again until I couldn’t stop screaming. She held my nose closed and dropped the cigarette into my mouth. I left an hour later, my chest covered in burns, my mind clear.
    Yuen has turned on all of the lights and Hank’s wife is on the stage and Hank is holding her in his furry gorilla arms to stop her from attacking the American woman. As the American is leaving, pulling her husband behind her, I lean over the balcony and launch my glass toward her. The whiskey lands on her head and the glass bounces down the aisle and rolls under a seat. She looks into the balcony, loosing a string of curse words. Toine’s hand searches through my collar. “What’s gotten into you tonight?” he whispers into my shirt. “This is no way to act.”
    It’s December and a light snow falls. The barkers who stay at work have the bottom of their shoes lined with rubber. The morning shows are cancelled. The hotels advertise lower prices and many restaurants close for the season. Space frees up in the jails and the thieves who have been waiting to serve their sentences disappear from the streets.
    Two days before Christmas my plane lands safely in San Francisco. You can tell a lot about a person’s childhood by whether or not they like Christmas. I pass through the gates and customs with my one bag. Toine didn’t want to say goodbye. He said it was meaningless since we’d inevitably see each other again. A line of yellow and white cabs wait for fares while the blue shuttles stop in the center of the median and claim their passengers. “Last one,” the driver says, shutting the door.
    I push my pack into the back of the van. “You’re going to love San Francisco,” a man says to his companion. “Cleanest air in the world.”

CHAPTER FOUR
MY WIFE
     
    JOE PUNCHED PETEY square in the face and Petey’s nose exploded and his blood hit the garbage cans and a garage door. Petey tried to get up but Joe kicked his feet out from under him and his head cracked on the entryway to someone’s garage. Then Joe stamped all over his legs and hit Petey over the head with a garbage can lid, then a bottle, which put Petey out for good until the ambulance came. At least that’s how I heard it. Someone at the bar said he had it coming.
    “Guess we won’t be seeing Petey around anymore,” Marco says, raising yet another beer, showing off the burn on his forearm where his tattoo used to be. Someone puts a song on. The pool players continue to shoot. Honey, who always sits on the end near the jukebox in a tight shirt with a leopard print across it, says, “Ain’t that a shame?”
    I order another beer, one more than I usually have.
    “That’s my boy,” Marco says, slamming his bottle on the counter so the foam pours out, covering his fist. “Let’s live a little.”
    ***
     
    Petey had been stalking Joe’s girlfriend, Maria. He’s been stalking Maria for years. When Maria and I lived together in that yellow efficiency over Jonquil I’d look out the window at night and see Petey’s cigarette burning on the corner. I knew he was staring up at the window and that he saw me looking at him. I knew he was waiting for Maria to walk to the front of the room where our little half-fridge stood. There were trees on that street with gym shoes swaying in the branches, and a park across from the building where the twins hung out, sitting there all night on the monkey bars.
    “He bothers me,” Maria would say from behind one of her books, sitting on the