ATM
Michael Shirzadian
It
was after sundown and Carson was
speeding ten over on US-95, going home. He lived in Orlando. He had told his wife Lauren he was spending the weekend with an old friend from his college days whose name was Antonio. He had said Antonio was an Italian exchange student assigned to him through Alabama’s Office of Admissions, and that during Antonio’s brief stay in Tuscaloosa he had given him a proper introduction to American culture in a city which—he smiled at his wife—so properly typified it. Lauren smiled too, but she didn’t believe him about Antonio. Carson understood. He was happy she didn’t pursue the subject. He said he would be back by Sunday night, which he thought more than enough time to return home, a safe estimate. He intended to return earlier, Sunday afternoon, maybe. He had been invited to his former fiancée’s wedding. Her name was Kelsey and she was marrying a woman named Jennifer. He would leave mid-reception on Saturday, find a hotel room and drink two bottles of cheap Shiraz on the veranda. He would fall asleep early and get back before Lauren returned from church in the blurry heat of an Orlando afternoon. As it turned out, Carson drank three bottles of cheap Shiraz on the veranda. He woke in his north-Miami hotel room long after Pastor Martin had finished another of his dreary sermons for Lauren in Orlando.
He was almost ninety miles outside Orlando when his front-left tire blew out and his car rumbled forward in the emergency lane for a full two minutes before coasting to a stop half a mile outside Fort Pierce. The sun was almost completely set. Carson had never been to Fort Pierce but he had passed it several times commuting from Orlando to Miami on 95. Carson had moved to Orlando ten years prior, after Kelsey cut off their engagement. They had been dating for six years and engaged for one. Kelsey invited Carson to her apartment in Miami on weekends for the first few months after they separated. They would mix strong drinks on Kelsey’s patio and listen to the ocean, talking like they used to, like when they first met.
At the wedding reception Carson mustered what little courage he had and told Kelsey she looked beautiful. He had been drinking on the drive over from the ceremony to the reception, over Biscayne Bay and to the beach.
“And I love the tent; great weather for an outdoor reception.” Carson looked down so that Kelsey couldn’t see his face. The moon was orange on the water.
“It’s Jen’s wedding,” Kelsey said. “She made all the decisions.” Kelsey looked into the reception tent. Jazz music poured out from somewhere inside. Carson looked up again.
“Didn’t want to risk all that time, if you had second thoughts?”
Kelsey feigned a smile and straightened his tie. “You look good, Carson,” she said. “I always loved this blue dress shirt.”
Then she met Jennifer at the tent’s entrance and together they walked inside to the roar of jazz and applause.
He was still wearing the blue dress shirt when the car broke down outside Orlando. He was also wearing his favorite black dress pants, with the crisp fold and thin white pin stripes. The shirt was wrinkled. Before walking into Fort Pierce for the tire, he put on his smoking jacket and sat on the back of his car, dividing his time between a Pall Mall and the last of the joints he had rolled before leaving for the wedding. When he finished both he flicked them onto the road, first the cigarette—a glance to confirm the road was clear—then the joint. He began walking.
At the first gas station the attendant told Carson that Phil’s, three blocks west on Main Street, would be his best chance for a tire after ten. Carson asked to use the telephone. He dialed his home number to explain the tire to Lauren. When Lauren didn’t answer, Carson called again, and when again she didn’t answer he thanked the attendant and left for Phil’s. He did not leave a message.
When he arrived at Main Street he jumped into the tall median strip, walked through the small palm trees and purple dogwoods planted by city beautification engineers, and from there, in the median, he saw Phil’s. There was an almost-full moon directly overhead; cylinders of gray light fell through the palms in the median and the dogwoods performed in silver-dollar spotlight. The lights were off inside Phil’s. The sign was lit—the capital ‘P’, anyway—and parked in front was an old black sedan. Carson could not see inside the car. He checked his watch and thought the car might belong to Phil himself, Phil leaving for the day, going home. Carson ran through the empty street and stopped walking only when he was ten feet from the car. The back license plate was absent, Carson noticed, but before he associated this absence with danger a short man—Cuban, Carson thought—stepped out from the car, out from the passenger-side door. The man was wearing a long black trench coat. He had large, pierced ears, and scars and bruises on his face. Carson noticed a black handgun holstered loosely beneath the trench coat. The man was looking at Carson, considering him.
“Timothy,” the man said, extending his hand. The man’s hand was shaking. His accent was strong. “Or just Tim, for you and the rest of Jefe’s people. Whichever is good for you and Jefe.”
Carson didn’t speak. He shook the man’s hand. There were no cars in the street or, for that matter, any other place Carson could see. The moon was bright. It was hot outside but there was wind, crisp Florida wind—summer wind—and Carson’s hair fell over his eyes, one way then another, fitfully. The palm trees hissed. The black sedan was humming softly, and through its tinted windows Carson noticed movement, in the driver’s seat. After shaking Tim’s hand Carson put his own hands in his pockets so that Tim couldn’t see them trembling. He had the feeling Tim wasn’t the man’s real name.
“We should go, amigo,” Tim said to Carson after some time of standing there. “Lucie P.D. out to prowl, you know?”
Afraid, Carson nodded and entered the sedan through the door Tim was holding open for him, the back-right door. He was high from the joint, and he thought complying with an armed man’s request a smarter option than arguing with the man or asking stupidly for a tire. He entered the car with a final glance at the sibilant palms waving in the median.
The driver was young woman with heavily pierced hands. She wore a University of Florida tee shirt and black sweatpants, the white drawstring undone, resting on her upper-thigh, teasing. She wore a ball cap that said Gainesville on the front. Her grip around the steering wheel looked uncomfortable, Carson thought, metal pulling at her skin as she slid her clinking mass of hand up and down the leather of the wheel, making turns. Carson noticed through the dim light that her eyes were a dark shade of brown. Her black hair was long beneath the baseball cap and her complexion was dark.
The woman was driving slowly. Carson’s first guess was that the woman was a prostitute, that Tim was her pimp, and that they had mistook Carson for a potential client. He opened his mouth to explain this mishap but at that moment Tim extended his left hand and placed it on the woman’s thigh, fingering the drawstring, and the woman slapped her right hand of metal across Tim’s face.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Tim said. “I don’t mean to—” and the woman slapped him again, harder. The back of Tim’s head hit the window, cracks shooting out from the contact point like trains leaving Chicago—every way, every direction. He recovered slowly and rubbed his broken face.
“I’m not your sweetheart,” the woman said. Her voice was low. She put her right hand back on the steering wheel and stared out blankly at the road. The car turned into a small subdivision. Tim turned to Carson.
“You can see she’s worked up,” Tim said. “One night trying to bash in an ATM. We’re not professionals, you know? Not like you—not like Jefe’s people. Mr. Anybody goes loco. But like we told Jefe, we got the box; we got his money inside there. We’re just grateful to have you, and grateful to Jefe for sending you.”
The man spoke to Carson nervously, and Carson’s own nervousness began to decrease. Carson nodded at Tim and smiled a small, dismissive smile. The corner of Tim’s left eye was trickling blood down his face.
“Let’s just see what we can do,” Carson said neutrally. It bothered him to see Tim’s mutilated face light up when the moonlight flashed in through the car windows. Tim nodded at Carson, still trembling.
The woman pulled into a driveway leading to a small house. She did not speak to Carson. Carson kept his hands in his pockets, but he was no longer as nervous as he had been. Tim opened the car door for Carson, and Carson thanked him confidently, approaching the house, following behind the woman with metal hands. Carson had always feigned confidence believably, a trick he had learned during his many years with Kelsey, both before and after their separation.
Carson had feigned confidence when he met Jennifer, too. The day before, at the wedding. He had been walking alone through the church basement before the ceremony when Kelsey, sitting with Jennifer, spotted him and called out his name.
There was a laptop sitting on Kelsey’s lap. Kelsey and Jennifer were sitting together on a bench, downloading wedding songs for the reception.
“Unorthodox,” Carson had said. “Seeing each other before the ceremony.”
“Carson,” Kelsey said to Jennifer. “This is Carson.”
Jennifer nodded an it’s-good-to-finally-meet-you nod and extended her right hand. Carson looked at it before shaking it. After she shook his hand, Jennifer replaced her hand on the laptop, scrolling between songs on the mouse pad and banging words into the keyboard. The laptop was still in Kelsey’s lap. Jennifer spoke to Carson without making eye contact with him. Her hands danced over Kelsey’s lap and Carson imagined her playing an instrument, a piano, into Kelsey’s body. He imagined Kelsey throwing her head back, her eyes rolling up, moaning quietly, Jennifer finding the notes between her legs.
The ATM was set up in the middle of the living room.
“Just getting it in and out of the truck took half the night,” Tim said.
“Good,” Carson said.
Tim looked at him. Carson thought Tim looked frustrated, but he couldn’t tell exactly, not with the scars and bruises.
“If it’s heavy there’s money,” Carson said. “If there’s money you can pay Jefe.” He wanted to reassure Tim, who was still trembling.
The woman with metal hands remained silent after entering the house. She proceeded through the living room and into the kitchen to mix a drink. Tim followed her and made his own drink. He offered to make one for Carson.
“Gin, if you have it,” Carson said. He had not drunk since Miami.
“Excuse my wife,” Tim said to Carson when he returned with the drink. “It’s been a week and a half since Jefe cut us off. No one wants to sling your way when the boss isn’t happy.”
Carson looked over at the woman. She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen sucking out of a glass bong stem. The kitchen light was flickering. On the counter around her were ChoreBoy Brillo pads and dozens of Bic lighters. Carson looked at Tim.
“No worries, amigo. We’re not inhospitable. She’s pulling on resin, or trying to. If we had any, amigo, I’d offer you some. Like I said, Jefe’s sending his rocks somewhere else until we bust up this box.” He kicked the ATM.
There was a sledgehammer and a screwdriver resting against the base of the machine. Carson picked up the screwdriver and attempted to wedge it up the bill dispenser. When he couldn’t, he asked Tim to hold the screwdriver in place while he hit it with the hammer, wedging the screwdriver into the card slot. These, Carson thought, seemed to be the two weakest areas on the machine, the bill dispenser and the card slot. Carson slammed both with the hammer for over an hour before giving up. He was sweating. When he finished—when he resolved his approach wasn’t working—he turned to Tim and his wife. He shrugged.
“I’ll need more alcohol,” Carson said.
Tim smiled and ran to the kitchen to mix Carson another drink. The woman leered at Carson before approaching the machine herself. She still hadn’t spoken to him. She punched the machine with both hands, hard, and the machine rattled. She turned to Tim.
“I swear to God,” she said. “I fucking swear to God.”
Tim returned to the living room with Carson’s gin. He turned to his wife, who was already looking at him. Her eyes were red and swollen.
She said: “You can’t get in by morning I swear I’m leaving you. Won’t ever hear from me again.” Her voice was deep and commanding. She banged her hands against the machine again.
“You always say that,” Tim said. “Always have something to bitch about but never any follow through.”
The woman swung a metal hand at his face but Tim was prepared. He ducked and backed away from her. She was taller than Tim by a half foot. Her piercings glinted in the dim light of the living room as she backed Tim into a corner, towering over him.
“This time,” she said, “I’ll tear off that face of yours.”
The woman with the metal hands went to bed after hitting Tim on the top of the head with an especially thick ring pierced into her thumb. Somehow, Carson thought, it seemed merciful, hitting him with only the one ring, holding back the full force of her hand, the entirety and eternity of her metal.
Tim sat awake with Carson, drinking gin. They were sitting together on the living room’s sole piece of furniture—a stained, mauve couch.
“Can I ask you something?” Carson said. He put down his drink.
“Anything,” Tim said. “Anything for Jefe’s people.”
“Your wife, are you happy with her? Being with her, I mean.”
Tim stopped trembling. “The love of life, amigo. And she loves me too. Lucky to find that, you know?”
“And she beats the shit out of you everyday,” Carson said.
Tim looked down at his shoes. The ATM sat listening to their conversation in the center of the room, also curious. Tim touched his hands to his own face.
“She likes to be controlling,” Tim said. “And I like to be controlled. It’s good to know when you don’t have a choice, when you know exactly what you have to do. Do you know this feeling?”
Carson emptied his glass. He nodded. He clenched his fingers into a fist and stared at the ATM. Tim dozed off after thirty minutes. When Tim was fully asleep, Carson leaned into his face to examine his scars. They were deltas, Carson thought. He traced his fingers through the lines on Tim’s face and he was not afraid for Tim to wake. He wanted Tim to wake. He considered rousing Tim to tell him something, to tell him anything, but he didn’t know what to say. He thought of Kelsey and how he didn’t know what to say to her either. He traced a final line through Tim’s face—a long, slow line—and then got up off the couch to mix another drink.
He approached the ATM. He picked up the screwdriver and placed it into the card slot again. Then he held the screwdriver in place with his left hand, and with his right he picked up the hammer. It was too heavy for one hand but he swung it anyway. The first blow struck his left hand, missing the screwdriver, but Carson didn’t flinch or recoil. The screwdriver fell to the floor. Tim was sleeping. Carson picked up the screwdriver and swung at it again, harder, this time hitting his target. His hand was bleeding. Kelsey had soft hands, he thought. She would need a man with rough hands to balance her out. The warped card slot held the screwdriver in place while Carson beat it deeper into the machine. He would get to the money, he thought; he would get to the money for Tim.
Carson beat the screwdriver into the card slot until it wouldn’t go farther. He stood before the ATM panting, his two hands holding the hammer, his left still bleeding. He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to see Lauren and have to explain why he had returned so late. Or what had happened to his hand. He swung the hammer at the ATM’s computer screen and the fiberglass cracked and dented. He swung again. Kelsey had told him she didn’t have any idea what she wanted, but she did. Carson swung at the screen again and the fiberglass shattered, coating the floor. She knew exactly what she wanted, Carson thought. He swung again. Copper wires shot up from the broken screen. He swung again.
The familiar green of circuit board. He swung at it with as much force as he could muster. Tim did not wake. Carson wondered whether Tim’s wife was awake, whether her metal kept her awake at night. He kept swinging. Green chips whirled around him, thrown against the walls of the living room. The walls were speckled with blood. He smashed away the circuit board and kept swinging. He would get to the money, he thought; he would get to the money for Tim.
speeding ten over on US-95, going home. He lived in Orlando. He had told his wife Lauren he was spending the weekend with an old friend from his college days whose name was Antonio. He had said Antonio was an Italian exchange student assigned to him through Alabama’s Office of Admissions, and that during Antonio’s brief stay in Tuscaloosa he had given him a proper introduction to American culture in a city which—he smiled at his wife—so properly typified it. Lauren smiled too, but she didn’t believe him about Antonio. Carson understood. He was happy she didn’t pursue the subject. He said he would be back by Sunday night, which he thought more than enough time to return home, a safe estimate. He intended to return earlier, Sunday afternoon, maybe. He had been invited to his former fiancée’s wedding. Her name was Kelsey and she was marrying a woman named Jennifer. He would leave mid-reception on Saturday, find a hotel room and drink two bottles of cheap Shiraz on the veranda. He would fall asleep early and get back before Lauren returned from church in the blurry heat of an Orlando afternoon. As it turned out, Carson drank three bottles of cheap Shiraz on the veranda. He woke in his north-Miami hotel room long after Pastor Martin had finished another of his dreary sermons for Lauren in Orlando.
He was almost ninety miles outside Orlando when his front-left tire blew out and his car rumbled forward in the emergency lane for a full two minutes before coasting to a stop half a mile outside Fort Pierce. The sun was almost completely set. Carson had never been to Fort Pierce but he had passed it several times commuting from Orlando to Miami on 95. Carson had moved to Orlando ten years prior, after Kelsey cut off their engagement. They had been dating for six years and engaged for one. Kelsey invited Carson to her apartment in Miami on weekends for the first few months after they separated. They would mix strong drinks on Kelsey’s patio and listen to the ocean, talking like they used to, like when they first met.
At the wedding reception Carson mustered what little courage he had and told Kelsey she looked beautiful. He had been drinking on the drive over from the ceremony to the reception, over Biscayne Bay and to the beach.
“And I love the tent; great weather for an outdoor reception.” Carson looked down so that Kelsey couldn’t see his face. The moon was orange on the water.
“It’s Jen’s wedding,” Kelsey said. “She made all the decisions.” Kelsey looked into the reception tent. Jazz music poured out from somewhere inside. Carson looked up again.
“Didn’t want to risk all that time, if you had second thoughts?”
Kelsey feigned a smile and straightened his tie. “You look good, Carson,” she said. “I always loved this blue dress shirt.”
Then she met Jennifer at the tent’s entrance and together they walked inside to the roar of jazz and applause.
He was still wearing the blue dress shirt when the car broke down outside Orlando. He was also wearing his favorite black dress pants, with the crisp fold and thin white pin stripes. The shirt was wrinkled. Before walking into Fort Pierce for the tire, he put on his smoking jacket and sat on the back of his car, dividing his time between a Pall Mall and the last of the joints he had rolled before leaving for the wedding. When he finished both he flicked them onto the road, first the cigarette—a glance to confirm the road was clear—then the joint. He began walking.
At the first gas station the attendant told Carson that Phil’s, three blocks west on Main Street, would be his best chance for a tire after ten. Carson asked to use the telephone. He dialed his home number to explain the tire to Lauren. When Lauren didn’t answer, Carson called again, and when again she didn’t answer he thanked the attendant and left for Phil’s. He did not leave a message.
When he arrived at Main Street he jumped into the tall median strip, walked through the small palm trees and purple dogwoods planted by city beautification engineers, and from there, in the median, he saw Phil’s. There was an almost-full moon directly overhead; cylinders of gray light fell through the palms in the median and the dogwoods performed in silver-dollar spotlight. The lights were off inside Phil’s. The sign was lit—the capital ‘P’, anyway—and parked in front was an old black sedan. Carson could not see inside the car. He checked his watch and thought the car might belong to Phil himself, Phil leaving for the day, going home. Carson ran through the empty street and stopped walking only when he was ten feet from the car. The back license plate was absent, Carson noticed, but before he associated this absence with danger a short man—Cuban, Carson thought—stepped out from the car, out from the passenger-side door. The man was wearing a long black trench coat. He had large, pierced ears, and scars and bruises on his face. Carson noticed a black handgun holstered loosely beneath the trench coat. The man was looking at Carson, considering him.
“Timothy,” the man said, extending his hand. The man’s hand was shaking. His accent was strong. “Or just Tim, for you and the rest of Jefe’s people. Whichever is good for you and Jefe.”
Carson didn’t speak. He shook the man’s hand. There were no cars in the street or, for that matter, any other place Carson could see. The moon was bright. It was hot outside but there was wind, crisp Florida wind—summer wind—and Carson’s hair fell over his eyes, one way then another, fitfully. The palm trees hissed. The black sedan was humming softly, and through its tinted windows Carson noticed movement, in the driver’s seat. After shaking Tim’s hand Carson put his own hands in his pockets so that Tim couldn’t see them trembling. He had the feeling Tim wasn’t the man’s real name.
“We should go, amigo,” Tim said to Carson after some time of standing there. “Lucie P.D. out to prowl, you know?”
Afraid, Carson nodded and entered the sedan through the door Tim was holding open for him, the back-right door. He was high from the joint, and he thought complying with an armed man’s request a smarter option than arguing with the man or asking stupidly for a tire. He entered the car with a final glance at the sibilant palms waving in the median.
The driver was young woman with heavily pierced hands. She wore a University of Florida tee shirt and black sweatpants, the white drawstring undone, resting on her upper-thigh, teasing. She wore a ball cap that said Gainesville on the front. Her grip around the steering wheel looked uncomfortable, Carson thought, metal pulling at her skin as she slid her clinking mass of hand up and down the leather of the wheel, making turns. Carson noticed through the dim light that her eyes were a dark shade of brown. Her black hair was long beneath the baseball cap and her complexion was dark.
The woman was driving slowly. Carson’s first guess was that the woman was a prostitute, that Tim was her pimp, and that they had mistook Carson for a potential client. He opened his mouth to explain this mishap but at that moment Tim extended his left hand and placed it on the woman’s thigh, fingering the drawstring, and the woman slapped her right hand of metal across Tim’s face.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Tim said. “I don’t mean to—” and the woman slapped him again, harder. The back of Tim’s head hit the window, cracks shooting out from the contact point like trains leaving Chicago—every way, every direction. He recovered slowly and rubbed his broken face.
“I’m not your sweetheart,” the woman said. Her voice was low. She put her right hand back on the steering wheel and stared out blankly at the road. The car turned into a small subdivision. Tim turned to Carson.
“You can see she’s worked up,” Tim said. “One night trying to bash in an ATM. We’re not professionals, you know? Not like you—not like Jefe’s people. Mr. Anybody goes loco. But like we told Jefe, we got the box; we got his money inside there. We’re just grateful to have you, and grateful to Jefe for sending you.”
The man spoke to Carson nervously, and Carson’s own nervousness began to decrease. Carson nodded at Tim and smiled a small, dismissive smile. The corner of Tim’s left eye was trickling blood down his face.
“Let’s just see what we can do,” Carson said neutrally. It bothered him to see Tim’s mutilated face light up when the moonlight flashed in through the car windows. Tim nodded at Carson, still trembling.
The woman pulled into a driveway leading to a small house. She did not speak to Carson. Carson kept his hands in his pockets, but he was no longer as nervous as he had been. Tim opened the car door for Carson, and Carson thanked him confidently, approaching the house, following behind the woman with metal hands. Carson had always feigned confidence believably, a trick he had learned during his many years with Kelsey, both before and after their separation.
Carson had feigned confidence when he met Jennifer, too. The day before, at the wedding. He had been walking alone through the church basement before the ceremony when Kelsey, sitting with Jennifer, spotted him and called out his name.
There was a laptop sitting on Kelsey’s lap. Kelsey and Jennifer were sitting together on a bench, downloading wedding songs for the reception.
“Unorthodox,” Carson had said. “Seeing each other before the ceremony.”
“Carson,” Kelsey said to Jennifer. “This is Carson.”
Jennifer nodded an it’s-good-to-finally-meet-you nod and extended her right hand. Carson looked at it before shaking it. After she shook his hand, Jennifer replaced her hand on the laptop, scrolling between songs on the mouse pad and banging words into the keyboard. The laptop was still in Kelsey’s lap. Jennifer spoke to Carson without making eye contact with him. Her hands danced over Kelsey’s lap and Carson imagined her playing an instrument, a piano, into Kelsey’s body. He imagined Kelsey throwing her head back, her eyes rolling up, moaning quietly, Jennifer finding the notes between her legs.
The ATM was set up in the middle of the living room.
“Just getting it in and out of the truck took half the night,” Tim said.
“Good,” Carson said.
Tim looked at him. Carson thought Tim looked frustrated, but he couldn’t tell exactly, not with the scars and bruises.
“If it’s heavy there’s money,” Carson said. “If there’s money you can pay Jefe.” He wanted to reassure Tim, who was still trembling.
The woman with metal hands remained silent after entering the house. She proceeded through the living room and into the kitchen to mix a drink. Tim followed her and made his own drink. He offered to make one for Carson.
“Gin, if you have it,” Carson said. He had not drunk since Miami.
“Excuse my wife,” Tim said to Carson when he returned with the drink. “It’s been a week and a half since Jefe cut us off. No one wants to sling your way when the boss isn’t happy.”
Carson looked over at the woman. She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen sucking out of a glass bong stem. The kitchen light was flickering. On the counter around her were ChoreBoy Brillo pads and dozens of Bic lighters. Carson looked at Tim.
“No worries, amigo. We’re not inhospitable. She’s pulling on resin, or trying to. If we had any, amigo, I’d offer you some. Like I said, Jefe’s sending his rocks somewhere else until we bust up this box.” He kicked the ATM.
There was a sledgehammer and a screwdriver resting against the base of the machine. Carson picked up the screwdriver and attempted to wedge it up the bill dispenser. When he couldn’t, he asked Tim to hold the screwdriver in place while he hit it with the hammer, wedging the screwdriver into the card slot. These, Carson thought, seemed to be the two weakest areas on the machine, the bill dispenser and the card slot. Carson slammed both with the hammer for over an hour before giving up. He was sweating. When he finished—when he resolved his approach wasn’t working—he turned to Tim and his wife. He shrugged.
“I’ll need more alcohol,” Carson said.
Tim smiled and ran to the kitchen to mix Carson another drink. The woman leered at Carson before approaching the machine herself. She still hadn’t spoken to him. She punched the machine with both hands, hard, and the machine rattled. She turned to Tim.
“I swear to God,” she said. “I fucking swear to God.”
Tim returned to the living room with Carson’s gin. He turned to his wife, who was already looking at him. Her eyes were red and swollen.
She said: “You can’t get in by morning I swear I’m leaving you. Won’t ever hear from me again.” Her voice was deep and commanding. She banged her hands against the machine again.
“You always say that,” Tim said. “Always have something to bitch about but never any follow through.”
The woman swung a metal hand at his face but Tim was prepared. He ducked and backed away from her. She was taller than Tim by a half foot. Her piercings glinted in the dim light of the living room as she backed Tim into a corner, towering over him.
“This time,” she said, “I’ll tear off that face of yours.”
The woman with the metal hands went to bed after hitting Tim on the top of the head with an especially thick ring pierced into her thumb. Somehow, Carson thought, it seemed merciful, hitting him with only the one ring, holding back the full force of her hand, the entirety and eternity of her metal.
Tim sat awake with Carson, drinking gin. They were sitting together on the living room’s sole piece of furniture—a stained, mauve couch.
“Can I ask you something?” Carson said. He put down his drink.
“Anything,” Tim said. “Anything for Jefe’s people.”
“Your wife, are you happy with her? Being with her, I mean.”
Tim stopped trembling. “The love of life, amigo. And she loves me too. Lucky to find that, you know?”
“And she beats the shit out of you everyday,” Carson said.
Tim looked down at his shoes. The ATM sat listening to their conversation in the center of the room, also curious. Tim touched his hands to his own face.
“She likes to be controlling,” Tim said. “And I like to be controlled. It’s good to know when you don’t have a choice, when you know exactly what you have to do. Do you know this feeling?”
Carson emptied his glass. He nodded. He clenched his fingers into a fist and stared at the ATM. Tim dozed off after thirty minutes. When Tim was fully asleep, Carson leaned into his face to examine his scars. They were deltas, Carson thought. He traced his fingers through the lines on Tim’s face and he was not afraid for Tim to wake. He wanted Tim to wake. He considered rousing Tim to tell him something, to tell him anything, but he didn’t know what to say. He thought of Kelsey and how he didn’t know what to say to her either. He traced a final line through Tim’s face—a long, slow line—and then got up off the couch to mix another drink.
He approached the ATM. He picked up the screwdriver and placed it into the card slot again. Then he held the screwdriver in place with his left hand, and with his right he picked up the hammer. It was too heavy for one hand but he swung it anyway. The first blow struck his left hand, missing the screwdriver, but Carson didn’t flinch or recoil. The screwdriver fell to the floor. Tim was sleeping. Carson picked up the screwdriver and swung at it again, harder, this time hitting his target. His hand was bleeding. Kelsey had soft hands, he thought. She would need a man with rough hands to balance her out. The warped card slot held the screwdriver in place while Carson beat it deeper into the machine. He would get to the money, he thought; he would get to the money for Tim.
Carson beat the screwdriver into the card slot until it wouldn’t go farther. He stood before the ATM panting, his two hands holding the hammer, his left still bleeding. He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to see Lauren and have to explain why he had returned so late. Or what had happened to his hand. He swung the hammer at the ATM’s computer screen and the fiberglass cracked and dented. He swung again. Kelsey had told him she didn’t have any idea what she wanted, but she did. Carson swung at the screen again and the fiberglass shattered, coating the floor. She knew exactly what she wanted, Carson thought. He swung again. Copper wires shot up from the broken screen. He swung again.
The familiar green of circuit board. He swung at it with as much force as he could muster. Tim did not wake. Carson wondered whether Tim’s wife was awake, whether her metal kept her awake at night. He kept swinging. Green chips whirled around him, thrown against the walls of the living room. The walls were speckled with blood. He smashed away the circuit board and kept swinging. He would get to the money, he thought; he would get to the money for Tim.
