HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

fine; the problem was, like always, I couldn’t let her really close
to me. I knew it wouldn’t last. So long it was Timmy and me
closed up against the world, there was never room for anyone
else. After a while our relationship got down to great half hours
in bed and a war zone the rest of the time. More than that, my
dull job in an office mail room was a drag and, let’s face it, I
missed the old life in the ’hood. At least there I fit in. Timmy
and I had different strains of the same disease. He always needed
people around him, always headed for the brightest lights
and the loudest noise, while Danny the Watcher never trusted
anything far enough to make it work. Okay, I’m a loser, but I
can spot my kind a mile away. That’s why the Front Office
keeps me in gravy. I’m real good at what I do now.
So I’m home one Saturday when Monique’s out shopping,
and who calls me but Timmy. We’d not seen or talked to each
other in a few months. He needed money, wouldn’t say for
what, meet him at Feeney’s like now. His voice had always been
piercing clear; now it sounded reedy and strained.
I got there around three, when Feeney himself was back of
the bar. He drew me a Miller and nodded to a back booth. If
he sounded bad on the phone, Timmy looked worse—nervous
and irritable, his hands shaking visibly. I’d never seen my little
brother like this. He looked drained, all the personality that was
the Timmy I loved now just wiped clean out of his face, leaving
it drab and aged ten years.
“Jesus, where’ve you been, a war?”
He ignored the question, slumped over his hardly touched
beer. “Got a job coming up tonight.”
“Like what?”
Timmy dropped his eyes. “You don’t need to know.”
“Busting?”
“Piece of cake, but I need a touch now.”
I didn’t need to ask what for. Even in the shadows,
Timmy’s pupils were too small. When he raised his beer, it jiggled
in the glass. “I gotta get straight before tonight.”
That hit me like a death, my own brother with a habit. The
helpless rage began to build in me with nothing to hit at now
but Timmy.
“How long you been hooked?”
“A while.”
“Dumb. Who’s dealing, the Westies?”
Again with the evasion, not meeting my eyes. “It’s
around.”
I grabbed his arm and held on hard enough to make him
wince. “Is it Charley?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Timmy shook me off, angry. “He deals to
pay for what he uses. That’s how it is.” When he looked at me
square again, he was naked desperate, pleading. “I’m flat until
tonight and bent way out of shape. I’m hurting, Danny. Can
you let me have about sixty?”
Painful to look at him needing a fix just to feel normal.
You did this, Charley. And I had to freebee my brother to
another hit? “I only got twenty and change.”
‘Not enough.” Timmy’s body jerked suddenly as if all his
muscles revolted, spilling some of his beer. “Cash.”
“Cool it. I’ll write a check.”
“It’s Saturday.” His voice jittered and cracked. “The banks
closed early.”
“Easy, Timmy, for God’s sake.”
“Okay, let’s find an ATM.” And then what was left of my
kid brother took my hand, and I heard all the love and bond of
all our years in his voice. “Please, Danny.”
What could I do but pull out my checkbook and lie to
Monique later? “Feeney’ll cash me.” Which he would always do
for regulars. I put the money in Timmy’s hand with a promise,
praying my brother heard me good. “Get on a methodone program.
I mean now. Get in rehab or I swear I’ll turn you in
myself.”
“Don’t, Danny. I’ll handle it.”
“Yeah, real good you’re handling it, and you shooting
what? Sixty bucks a day? Eighty?”
“Get out of my face, Danny!” It came out of him too loud.
Feeney turned around behind the bar and two old tads in a
booth across from us looked over. “I’ll be okay.”
“Do it, kid.” Monique would be home now and wondering
where I was. I didn’t leave her a note; hell, I never did. I got up
to go, feeling as sick inside as Timmy must. “Do it. Jesus, you
stupid bastard, I love you. You’re all I’ve got close to my heart
in this world, and for the first time in my life I don’t want to
look at you.” It wasn’t anger that made me say the rest, just the
hurting love. “ I got problems of my own, so get straight or go
to hell.”
I walked out of the bar knowing I shouldn’t have pushed
him away like that, but I damn well would turn him in. Too late.
Feeney himself called me next day: Timmy dead in a warehouse
break-in on 12th Avenue, one unknown perp escaped.
I had to go downtown to identify the body, the worst day
of my life because I was looking at me on that table, my own
death, and the best of me would go into the ground with my
brother. I went into serious hock for the funeral and wake, and
then stayed drunk for three days—no, that doesn’t describe it.
All the years with Timmy boiled up as I drank and blacked out
into a terrible dream of myself lying in his coffin and Timmy
bending close, begging me to come back, come back.
Drunk? I was Pompei, St. Helen’s and that volcano in the
Pacific that blew up a whole island, going down and down into
blackness shot with the color of blood. Monique called everywhere,
frantic, finally got me at Feeney’s where he’d laid me
H .P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R 35