The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories by Robert Chazz Chute Page A

shining knight.
    “You made my nights shiny.”
    She gave him a big toothy grin that was so defenseless he glimpsed who she had been when they were kids. “So I guess I’m a typical Hollyweird celebrity. It’s all about me! Me! Me!”
    “Yeah. Way to hold up the brand.”
    “So what about you? Where are you at?”
    “I got ambitious too late. Now I’m playing catch-up. I don’t see how I can ever retire from a job I hate. When it comes down to it, I’m just another vulture like those twits at the cemetery.”
    “You’re nothing like them.”
    He shook his head, meaning to warn her off.
    “You’re a journalist and a radio personality. You’re a celebrity, right?”
    “Betty Jane. Asia. Whatever. Coming from you, that’s about the cruelest and most insensitive thing you could say.”
    She looked down at the filthy rug and seemed to study it for some time.
    “I wanted to form a band but got a lousy technical degree instead,” he said. “I fell into being a DJ and somehow ended up no farther than a mile from where I was born. Money and distance from where you’re born: That’s how all success is measured. There’s no end in sight to me going in at five in the morning to do a morning drive show for a place so small there’s no rush hour. When we were—when I was a kid — I was so sure I was better than this.”
    She looked at him levelly. “Tell me what you want.”
    “I want to live where there are palm trees and I don’t have to wait forever for a vacation so I can get somewhere where there’s a Starbucks. I want to live in a city big enough that I can wander around and see something different each time. I want to be able to go somewhere where I can pick up an Irish newspaper or a book that hasn’t been read by someone else first.”
    “In other words, you still want what every kid in a small town dreams of?”
    “Yeah. It would be nice to go somewhere where there aren’t a bunch of people who remember me as a kid so they talk to me like I’m still a kid. Maybe meet some people who will remember I don’t want to be called Marky anymore.”
    She look chagrinned. “Marcus.”
    “Thanks. I see you and I am really nostalgic, but the Funky Bunch obsession is way over. Even Marky Mark is Mr. Wahlberg now.”
    “So, why not leave?”
    “I got bills like everybody else.”
    “No ties? I heard you married a nurse from around here.”
    “Jodi. Married and divorced. Didn’t last. Now it’s about alimony until she remarries, hopefully to the guy she’s shacked up with right now. Until then, she continues to get a free ride on the Marcus bus.”
    “Careful, you sound like my ex. How come it didn’t work out?” she asked.
    “She kept comparing herself to you.”
    She gasped. Finally, in a voice just above a whisper, she said, “That’s not fair.”
    “You’re right. I’m sure that’s not all of it, but the point is, I can’t seem to get out of here. I’ll die here.” He was about to take another drink but found his glass empty and realized he didn’t have the energy to challenge gravity and get over to the bar for another.
    “What would it take to start a new life? Where would you go exactly?”
    He contemplated his empty glass for a long time, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know exactly, but that would kind of be the point. I’d like to have enough money to pay everybody off, climb in my old beater and head out. All I know is west. Then I’d see where I end up. I want to lose myself in a city and see what I end up doing there. I’ve got skills. I’d find something eventually. I just want some time to myself and the chance to look around. I want to—”
    “Start again. You want to start again. I get that. I can feel it. I tried it in Cincinnati before the cute guy with the big cock stole my vacuum cleaner.”
    He winced.
    “Oh, yeah, he was really cute and he was huge. I nicknamed his dick ‘Moby’ it was so big.”
    His cheeks flushed red but he said