Travis Landhuis<\/strong><\/p> \/\/\/ Buggin’ Out Travis Landhuis Nobody invited Randy, but that was never going to stop him from showing up. And honestly? I was relieved because just having him around takes some of the pressure off me, what with him being such a talkative liar. It was Thursday, the night we aim for a total blow-out\u2014before the … <\/p>\n
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Nobody invited Randy, but that was never going to stop him from showing up. And honestly? I was relieved because just having him around takes some of the pressure off me, what with him being such a talkative liar.\n
It was Thursday, the night we aim for a total blow-out\u2014before the weekend hits us full force and we find ourselves trapped in the pizza shop, sweating over the makeline and all those pepperonis while the orders stack up on us and we get more and more agitated with each other and how we are all slow in our own ways.\n
So on Thursdays we get ripped on cheap beer, and sometimes someone orders wings.\n
When I showed up at Suds, Randy was already there, just him and poor Beth, his mouth moving while she stared cross-eyed into her foamy beer, her face plunged into the sweating glass, and I thought I was reading a sort of horror in her eyes, her lifted eyebrows. She was taking a long drink.\n
I grabbed a seat at their table and caught the end of whatever Randy was telling her: \u201c\u2026buckets of it, like if you took a party balloon, filled it up with blood, and dropped that fucker off a bridge. Ka-sploosh<\/em>\u2026\u201d\n
Beth looked relieved to see me. \u201cRandy was just telling me about this deer he hit.\u201d\n
\u201cOh, wow. Randy.\u201d\n
Randy looked at me and smiled.\n
Over his shoulder, Beth was blinking aggressively at me, but didn\u2019t say anything quick enough, and then Randy was back in: \u201cBut that was nothing compared to my cousin\u2019s accident\u2026\u201d\n
I saw Mark and Kara weaving toward us through the crowd\u2014connected to each other via one of their hands in the other\u2019s pocket, like always\u2014while Randy told us about the time his cousin stapled his hand to his own thigh.\n
\u201c\u2026his dumb fault. Well, Andy had the staple-gun propped up on his leg while we were taking a break to chug something, and then, outa nowhere, Princess was freaking out, barkin\u2019 her fuckin\u2019 head off at a squirrel across the fence, and then she hopped up on Andy\u2019s lap. Well, we both thought the gun was unplugged, but then that tiny-ass little Shih Tzu bumped the trigger and next thing, Andy was stuck to himself and staring down at his little dog in her little sweater, just wagging her tail, and Andy was \u2018shit shit shit.\u2019\u201d\n
Mark, having just arrived, backed away from the table, put his mouth by Kara\u2019s ear, and was off. For beers, I guessed.\n
Randy seemed extra jittery tonight.\n
\u201cAnd I said \u2018At least you didn\u2019t staple your dog to your leg!\u2019 Which he did not think was funny. Neither did the ambulance guys\u2014they kind of shook their heads at us and loaded \u2018em up.\u201d\n
We had heard this sort of shit before, and I was just hoping someone would buy a pitcher soon, which usually helps Randy grow on you a bit. And also, I didn\u2019t want to have to ask for any favors until there was at least some beer in us all. I wasn\u2019t quite sure yet the best to tell the few people I know that I\u2019m technically homeless. I mean, the idea was still pretty new to me.\n
Randy stood up and slapped my back.\n
\u201cTime to drain the main vein.\u201d He chuckled and sauntered off toward a dark corner.\n
Mark came back with one beer. \u201cOK. Who invited him?\u201d\n
Everybody likes to bitch about Randy, but I don\u2019t believe any one of us genuinely dislikes him. After a while you sort of tune him\u2014but even still, he did get to me one time when we were alone in the back of the pizza shop and he started talking about his daughter, telling me how she got kidnapped from his house. How he heard it happen. By the time he came up from the basement, the front door was open and swinging, and outside there was just leaves blowing around.\n
But then another time he told Kara his daughter was in Alberta working with sea lions and living in some commune. So.\n
I shrugged. Mark said something to Kara, and she pulled a little plastic cigarette roller out of her purse and laughed.\n
\u201cRandy just has an overactive imagination.\u201d That was Kara, being nice.\n
I asked Mark how the remodeling was going.\n
Kara laughed. \u201cRemodeling. Good one.\u201d\n
Last time I was over there, me and Mark shotgunned a couple beers and then eventually decided to tear down his garage after he bet me I couldn\u2019t punch a hole through the plywood, which it turned out I could.\n
I asked him if he figured out what he was going to replace the garage with, and he said, \u201cAnother garage.\u201d\n
I wanted to spill the beans, but something stopped me. I knew Mark and Kara had a spare bedroom at their place, having crashed there more than once, but I didn\u2019t know where to start, and felt generally humiliated by my crumbling marriage, which they only knew about vaguely\u2014mostly that it was something I didn\u2019t want to talk about\u2026 \n
Then Mark bent his head down toward Kara\u2019s giggling, and I took that as my cue. I stumbled off to the bathroom, music thumping in my back teeth, and stepped up to a grimy urinal.\n
I heard a stall door whip open, and then I was jolted by a sudden hand on my shoulder, which turned my pissing into an entirely conscious act.\n
\u201cMike.\u201d\n
\u201cAh, hey Randy.\u201d\n
\u201cHow\u2019s it hanging.\u201d\n
\u201cDude.\u201d\n
He was standing so close. I guess we were about to have a regular conversation.\n
\u201cYou know, my brother took off on us in \u201969. Didn\u2019t even say goodbye. I guess he stole some canoe in Detroit, paddled his ass over. Next thing, we got a postcard from Canada\u2014cartoon beaver smiling and waving on top of a pile of sticks\u2014and just \u2018From: Johnny\u2019 with a smiley face in the \u2018O.\u2019 Fuckin\u2019 hippy.\u201d\n
I wasn\u2019t sure why he was telling me this. Then I heard this loud unzip, and Randy stepped up to the urinal next to me. So I guess I have no idea what he\u2019s been doing in here this whole time.\n
He whistled for a second and then asked me: \u201cSo you buggin\u2019 out?\u201d\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d\n
\u201cYou heading North? You know something I don\u2019t?\u201d\n
I shook my head. I wasn\u2019t prepared to tell him how my wife had sort of put her foot down all of a sudden by packing up her car and tearing off to St. Louis on some weeklong getaway with this guy she used to date in high school. Those fuckers even used my card, which I found out right around the same time my landlord started sending me these All-Caps texts about the rent check and something about how it bounced. But I wasn\u2019t ready to have this conversation with Randy. Or at least not with my dick out.\n
Randy made that gross horking sound, and I felt my own throat swallow thickly. \u201cYou know,\u201d he said, \u201cwhen I lost Maggie? I wanted to burn my whole fucking house down.\u201d And he spat a thick loogie into the urinal.\n
Maybe he could feel me bristling, because he said, \u201cLook. I got a trailer, ok? You ever need to stay there, just tell me.\u201d Like he knew.\n
I guess he must\u2019ve seen my car in the lot, and all my clothes crammed in the back with all my other shit I didn\u2019t want to be in the apartment when my landlord inevitably showed up to take his house back. I looked over at Randy, everything quiet except for the twin streams thing we had going at these two urinals, and he turned his head and gave me a shiny smile.\n
I should\u2019ve said thank you. But he zipped his pants up and left.\n
When I got back to the table, there was a beautiful full beer at my seat waiting for me, and Randy reached over and flicked it, glancing up at me, but didn\u2019t stop talking. I spent the next four hours rippling along with everyone else, while Mark whispered in Kara\u2019s ears, and Kara dragged her fingers through all the water circles on the table, and Beth and I kept tipping glasses. We all took turns slug-walking back and forth to the bathrooms, smiling, a fuzzy distance between us and the air we were breathing. I could feel Randy\u2019s heat the whole night. He told the deer story two more times, I think accidentally. More blood each time. I smiled at Beth. Then Randy tipped his chair back and steadied himself on the table. I gathered he was leaving, so I stood up too.\n
\u201cRandy, hold up.\u201d\n
He nodded like we\u2019d already decided it.\n
Sometimes Randy is just great.\n
He said to follow him and then got in his car, which was covered with this coagulated brown stuff. I guess he really obliterated that poor deer after all. He lit a cigarette, reached out to wipe the blood off his cracked side-mirror, smearing it instead, then gave me a big sloppy smile and a thumb\u2019s up, his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He swerved out of the lot, then remembered to turn his lights on, giving me something to follow even if it was just two winking brake lights and the smooth crunch of gravel beneath a dirty moon.
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Travis Landhuis adjuncts in writing departments at colleges in Iowa and keeps himself alive by writing freelance websites about back surgery and limo rentals and different types of garage doors. Actually, no. He keeps himself alive by writing and reading fiction. The rest just helps him eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/files\/2020\/06\/42tan.png\")
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