EVERYTHING IS JUST ABOUT THE SAME | Fiction by John Bovio

Amsterdam lights the shadow. That dark part of your soul. The winds off the North Sea cut to the bone. Can eat you alive. This city rages like a destructive and unpredictable fire. The people who come to Amsterdam and lack the good sense to leave usually are sent home. Sometimes breathing.

After I killed Jimmy my stories became more lyrical, but less believable. Some people didn’t care for that. Least of all Jimmy.

I feel taller working the counter. Like I’m important to someone. Someone who comes to a budget hotel in Amsterdam. I try to help. Point them in the right direction. Keep them safe. They’ll find trouble all by themselves. They don’t need my map.

The hotel owner is Nick – “Nick the Guilder Man” – because he’s cheap. I mean frugal. No fitted sheets on the beds. Cleaning ladies move the top sheet to the bottom to save on laundry costs. This is less than sanitary.

“Look after the small ones, the big ones look after themselves,” he says, in regard to money.

Nick’s love of money is only exceeded by his love of young men. A love that makes people uncomfortable. Not his wife and children. They don’t know. And not me. I’m not young, or judgmental.

When reception closes at eleven pm, I become the night watchman. Sleeping in a small storage room off of the kitchen. A buzzer rudely awakens me when someone fails to gain entry via the keyless lock system. Four numbers to remember. Guests can’t be bothered. I get up, walk downstairs, let them in. At four am, I meet the egg man. Old, fertilized chicken eggs. They’re cheaper. The big red dot a cluck never to be heard. The special every day – unhatched futures on toast.

Bill is my boss. The manager. A biker from Australia, Finish carpenter by trade, hooligan by hobby. A bat broke his smile, his wife, his heart.

Tractor trailers in Australia have bullbars or roo catchers on the front of their rigs. A fence across the windscreen. When you hit a kangaroo the body flies up, into the windscreen, and muscle spasms kick in. Many a trucker has died, kicked to death by half a kangaroo.

When his wife left, Bill took his Harley out. Cranked back the throttle. Wide-open, he leaned in when a truck approached. Stuck his right leg out. The driver didn’t swerve or slow down. Neither did Bill. Stuck in the fence, Bill’s severed leg pointed with defiance towards the horizon. The truck continued across the driest continent on earth. Driest inhabited, I mean.

Bill suffered from Body Integrity Dysphoria or BID, a feeling of incompleteness. To be their full selves’ sufferers believe they must have a limb removed. Unfortunately, Bill was left with a phantom limb. His leg gone, but not the feeling. Just like his wife.

I have coffee in the afternoon in the Red Light District. Away from the hotel and train station. Eyes that have seen too much have a blankness and recognize it in others. Mine hide behind a shroud of dope, struggle against the stare of reality. That’s how I met Aiyla. I see her every day. We have coffee before she goes to work.

“Wil je koffie?”

“Alsjeblieft.”

I return with the drinks.

“Your Dutch is getting better,” she says.

“No, but I can swear and order beer well enough people reply in Dutch now.” Aiyla laughs, hands me a joint. “What part of Turkey are you from?”

“Batman. In the southeast, called ‘Suicide City’ because many women kill themselves. He loves you, he beats you, they say in my home.” She clears her throat with a rattle of horrors to come. “My father raped and beat my mother. She bore scars of a society with no respect for women. I carry the burden of not being able to have helped her.” She pushes back her black hair, hits the joint, passes it to me. “When my uncle raped my mother, she could take no more. She doused herself with petrol, set herself on fire. I still hear her scream in the night. You don’t eat meat again when you’ve smelled your mother burn.”

Fire is a chemical reaction between oxygen and the fuel. The oxygen now gone from the room. From my body.

“My culture, my people, my religion fucked me. Here, I get paid for it. The service I offer is for the lost, lonely, those unable to ask for their needs and desires to be filled. When it happens to a whole society, it’s a crisis.”

I set my cup on the table and move the small vase closer to the wall. My hand picks out a flower, smells it. “Do you enjoy flowers?”

“I love flowers. In the ground, rooted in the earth. Once cut, I prefer them dead, after they’ve performed their obligations for the person who cut them. So they can rest in peace.” She speaks with the wisdom of a sage or a junkie. Being the latter, I can’t decipher which. I finish my coffee with a mouthful of grounds. The bitterness of life fills my mouth. Like being buried alive.

“I hope you have a nice day,” I say. Like an idiot offering ten cents of wisdom to a millionaire.

“Hope is a wave that ends at the shore,” she says.

I stop, buy a bouquet for the bedside table, plant them in a vase, and wait for them to die.

A guy in riding leathers sets his helmet on the counter. Asks for a room. I’m trying to remember who this guy looks like. I think it might be me. Then I realize I don’t remember what I look like.

Sometimes I feel like a carny checking if people are tall enough to ride this ride. Get on. Safety is for sissies.

I take his passport. Fill out the register. Take his money. Give him a key. Write down the combination for the front door after 11pm.

I take him downstairs and show him the keyless entry.

“That your bike?’

“Yeah, is it safe there?”

“Sure. It’ll be fine.”

Fine being relative and all.

Stories of my adventure with Jimmy worked their way back to his supplier. Dude could give a shit about Jimmy. Nobody gave a shit about Jimmy. Just a junkie. But he lost one of his salesmen. Now I owe him a favor. Dude is the kind of guy who collects.

At the train station. Looking for backpackers. She stands in the middle of nowhere. A place I know. Like a porcelain doll sent from an Ingmar Bergman movie. Only more beautiful. Like Joan of Arc maybe. She doesn’t look afraid. Maybe she was born to do this. Her lack of climate appropriate clothing stands out. I look close trying to figure out how she is made.

“Are you cold?”

“No.” She is shivering.

“Do you want to go to my hotel for coffee?”

“Yes.”

I take my coat and drape it over her shoulders. We jump on a tram. I sneak her into my room because Nick would charge me.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’ll get some coffee.”

I return with the drinks. She stands naked, presenting a gift to someone that didn’t have one in return. Being taught to accept gifts graciously, I comply. 

I kiss her. She tastes like bubblegum lip gloss and mental illness. She comes at me like someone that knows me well enough to hate me. Calls me a bunch of names. None my own. I know better than to feel special.

We make sex. That’s when one party makes love and the other has sex. I won’t tell you which party I was.

“What’s your name?”

“Nicole.”

She doesn’t look like a Nicole. Whatever that looks like.

Motorcycle man catches me alone at the counter. Asks if I know a guy. I do. He plans to fill his tank Easy Rider style and ride back to Germany. I slide pen and paper at him. Product and amount? The number I give him is high. He doesn’t flinch or question. Cash tomorrow.

“Bill, I need some product.” He keeps a large stash in his artificial leg. Bill reaches around for his leg from his bed. He takes it off when he naps. I like to move it when he isn’t looking. I always drop or kick it so I can hear him yell, OUCH.

Phantom limbs are funny.

I feed her. Bathe her. Buy her a change of clothes. Keep her hidden from Nick. She ran away from something unspoken. I am versed in unspoken.

The next morning he found his bike gone. He wants to sell the product back to me.

“My guy will only pay XX.” 

“But, I paid XXXX.”

“Yeah. But. Sorry.”

I never did get my cut from the bike though.

Nicole agrees to go home. I buy her a ticket to Stockholm with the money I made from the motorcycle guy. Take her to the train station. She kisses me goodbye like someone trying to suck my soul out through my mouth. Maybe it’s love.

She made it home safely. Calls every week. Seems happy.

Got a letter from Nicole. She wants me to come to Stockholm for Christmas. Her parents want to meet me. They will go on holiday the day after Christmas. Then we will be alone. She says she loves me.

Jimmy’s dude finds out I’m going to Stockholm. He sends a couple of guys who look like they have never been happy. Unhappy specialists. It’s time for that favor. I will travel with an extra suitcase.

Humans stink. The armpit is one of the most profound sources of odor produced by any animal. Mine demonstrating this right now. My breath and my genitals reek. My skin covered in sweat and sebaceous glands, churning out fluids and oils with my scent. When I touch objects, I leave myself on them. A slough of skin with bacteria munching and excreting away. This is my signature odor.

I always stop to pet dogs. But when they come down the aisle on the ferry and you have two kilos of pure crystal meth in the luggage rack above your head you hope they don’t stop to say hello.

A dog can smell fear, anxiety, sadness. The increased blood flow is sending more chemicals to the surface of my skin. I’m shedding 50 million skin cells a minute. Each one with my particular scent.

My stink and I arrive in Stockholm. I’m still anxious but feel alive. For now, anyway. I look for my designated spot in the train station. I set the suitcase down and pretend to read a map. A man comes, takes the suitcase and replaces it with another.

Nicole meets me. She is happy. I might be. We take a taxi to her parents’ house outside of the city. Everywhere Christmas lights blink in that annoying way. It’s a wood house with simple clean lines. Her parents greet me, their enthusiasm is awkward. But then, so am I.

“Nicole is special,” her Dad says. And draws special out so long I have to look away. “You’re a nice man to send her back to us. We thank you. Please enjoy our home. But please. No fires. No smoking. No candles. No things left unattended on the stove. Everything is made of wood. We’re glad someone responsible is here with her.”

Her parents say goodnight and go upstairs to bed. The sex in the living room seems to have more to do with her making a statement than lust. Maybe she just has a thing against Scandinavian design. Had enough functionality and simple clean lines.

In Sweden, you celebrate Christmas throughout December and until St. Knuts day, Jan 13^th, when you throw the tree out the window and have a dance.

Christmas eve is a smörgåsbord. The highlight – ten kinds of pickled herring. I don’t like herring. At three pm Christmas day, everybody in Sweden watches Kalle Anka – Donald Duck. I’m a Daffy man. Maybe that’s obvious.

“I just got back from my girlfriend’s,” Nicole says. She’s shaved her pubic hair on one side, left it on the other. A strange look, but I support her need to own her body. She wants to perform some ritual. There’s a drawing on the floor. Like a star, but different. Candles in a circle. She needs some of my blood. That is mostly voluntary.

The sex spirited. Nicole vocal. Prayers or incantations, I guess. We both kick like kangaroos stuck in a roo catcher. Things are upended. Her eyes roll back. “The seed is planted,” she says, during her last throes of passion. Or demonic possession. How am I supposed to tell which?

I am a few hundred meters away from the house when I notice a glow on the snow around me. A look over my shoulder confirms her father is right about the candles. Looks like that tree won’t see St. Knuts day.

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