Cherry

by Nico Walker

THERE ARE countless women in the world. At times it’s more than I can bear to think about: that there should be so many and they all start out the way they do, with all the brightness and their own invisible worlds and secret languages and what else they have, and that we ruin everything. And I have been mangled by vicious killers in my time, but I haven’t ever doubted it was only that someone had killed them first. Someone like me.

Still I did a lot of push-ups. I was good at them. Most of us could do push-ups. And were the outcomes of all the wars decided by push-ups and idle talk, America might never lose.

What’s your fucking problem, man? Don’t you trust me?” “I trust you. It’s just that there’s no such thing as a nice guy. Believe me. I’m as nice as they get and I’m a total piece of shit.” “You don’t have to worry about me.” “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about this motherfucker.”

The Fuck Van was bad for morale. Guys argued about whether

the Fuck Van was actually real. But it had to be real because it was there and we could see it. And we knew then that life was just a murderous fuckgame and that we had been dumb enough to fall for some bullshit.

Libby said, “He talks shit about you.” I said that was okay. “It doesn’t bother you?” “Why would it bother me? Nine times out of ten, you have a friend, he’s gonna talk shit about you. That’s just the cost of doing business.”

Days came like dead moths on the bathroom counter.

I don’t imagine that anyone goes in for robbery if they are not in some kind of desperation. Good or bad people has nothing to do with it; plenty of purely wicked motherfuckers won’t ever rob shit. With robbery it’s a matter of abasement. Are you abased? Careful then. You might rob something.

But a loss was a loss. You didn’t ever get it back. Even if you recouped the money, the injury was still done. What was best was to write it off. So long as you didn’t give a fuck you had them beat.