Free You and Me and the Devil Makes Three by Aaron Gwyn

YOU AND ME AND THE DEVIL MAKES THREE
    By Aaron Gwyn
    Y OU TURNED EIGHTEEN two days ago and still haven’t bought cigarettes. You can’t purchase beer and you’ll never afford the trip to Padre, but what you will do is go up these steps behind Jackson and get an eight ball from his friend. Up the steps behind Jackson, across the strip of concrete porch, onto the dirty carpet sample that serves as a welcome mat. You follow Jackson inside the house, reach back to close the door, but someone calls to leave it open, so that is what you do.
    Jackson’s friend is named Curtis. You’ve heard Curtis stories for years, now, Ohio stories, mostly, from when Jackson lived in Columbus. Jackson has always referred to Curtis as the Ohioan and you’ve come to think of the man in the shape of that state. So it’s strange to actually meet the Ohioan: five eight, 130 pounds, pale and bearded and nearly cadaverous. You’ve wanted to meet the Ohioan, but right now the Ohioan shows no interest in meeting you back. He holds the lower half of a pool cue in his right hand and he’s pacing back and forth between one of the sofas and the kitchen, tapping it against his shin. You walk over and seat yourself in a filthy blue recliner. The Ohioan has something in his left ear you think is a Bluetooth and then recognize as a hearing aid: flesh-colored and overlarge, wrapping around the back of the lobe. Like a hearing aid from the seventies. Like the first one ever made.
    It’s cold here in Charlotte, first week of December, and it’s cold in this room with the open front door. Curtis paces back and forth, tapping the cue against his leg.
    Then he notices the two of you and looks over at Jackson.
    “Asshole thinks she’s the one who’s had enough,” he says. He swings the cue and rests it against his neck. “I’m the cunt that’s had enough . Me. ”
    “Preaching to the choir,” Jackson says.
    You just listen. Or half-listen, really. You are six feet and a quarter-inch tall—six one in boots—and if you hadn’t lost the wrestling scholarship after testing positive for growth hormone, you’d be perfecting your double-leg on the padded purple mats of Eastern Carolina. You’re used to guys bitching about their women and what you want is to get off. In the religious-studies course you were taking, you learned the Hebrew word for “blessing” means “more life,” and that is exactly how you thought of juicing, how you think of coke. Words like forever leap right to mind. Phrases like more and more . Only problem is the people you have to be around, like this Ohioan character, who you realize, now you’ve met him, is a wreck—some deaf burnout who thinks he’s gangster. Jackson had said you’d buy the eight ball from the man, hang a few minutes, and then you could bounce. You told Michelle you’d be back in half an hour, but you see, now, that this isn’t going to happen.
    “They pull this shit,” says the Ohioan, “because they think they can pull this shit. They pull it ’cause they think they can. So that’s what they do.”
    “Fuck ’em,” Jackson says, and the Ohioan agrees.
    “Fuck ’em is right,” he says. “Fuck ’em is just. About. Right.”
    You clear your throat. You’re fixing to ask about the blow, when another guy walks in and seats a cordless phone in its charger. He nods hello and then comes over and sits on the sofa beside Jackson. The two of them touch knuckles and the man says, “Y’all might have noticed that Curtis is a little agitated.”
    “No shit,” you tell him and the guy laughs. He leans toward you, smiles conspiratorially, and whispers, “I think he thought she was the One. ”
    You nod, flash on Michelle again—half an hour—and ask if you can use his phone.
    The guy opens his mouth to answer, but he doesn’t get to answer. The Ohioan answers for him.
    “The fuck you asking him ?”
    “What’s that?” you say.
    “Don’t ask him if you can use the fucking phone. You ask me