..
Snippet Fence
by Ray Ogar, 2001
bobby walks to school wearing heavy steel knee pads.
his backpack is transparent.
he even carries a snowboard so he can cruise down the hill
when class is out.
he thinks about his lunchbox.
how cold it is.
not normally so.
cool for carrying sake.
a dense rack of glass tubing rests snuggly inside.
he smiles knowing he’s the football teams’ only fence for
supermodel fat and blood.
bobby considers for the moment how much money
he might make today if he can take his math quiz and
slip out in a slightly secret way before the end of class.
soon he’ll be standing at the back of coach’s office.
some overly masculine odor trying to break down his face.
and he’ll be smiling as clear test tube samples of hollywoods’
brightest and beautiful make their way into the hands of
pubescent male teens.
bobby also smiles because he is the school’s master fence.
he buys it.
deals it.
and reaps the benefits.
in the case of the vials, only once did he have the guts
to question what was being done with the supply of
genetic material.
and only once did he have to see george mackenzie injecting
the stuff, via syringe, into his girlfriend’s ass and then
proceed to fuck her in the manner of a mobius strip.
bobby swats away a mosquito and considers what the
rest of his afternoon will be like.
he rattles his lunchbox and delights in perhaps holding
off from delivering early.
either way, he’ll get whatever money he needs.
he moves to his locker and presses three pressure points on the
surface of his snowboard.
the board goes limp and bobby rolls it up like a pair of
freshly dried socks.
he stows it and grabs his chemistry crc and heads for lab.
julie smarthes pays him ten bucks to just look in the lunchbox.
bobby says how about a kiss instead.
julie pinches him and wags her finger.
then she’s on her cell phone and titrating a rather viscous polymer at
the same time—she starts to cry but bobby doesn’t have time.
he get’s pissed but puts his lunchbox in the freezer at the back
of the room.
he then checks over the rest of the class’s work.
trying to flirt with julie can wait.
he notices a little acetone on one counter top.
freddy franklin laughs as he reads his lab note from his
laptop computer.
later bobby sees freddy’s screen saver is actually a picture of
miss rabinszki twirling her buttocks at bobby while holding a
tightly wound whip.
a sigh maybe?
then bobby gets evil eyes from two girls.
both of which are jealous they didn’t make lab assistant this semester like he did.
“yeah right,” bobby thinks, “and you’ll be paying me to look in
my lunchbox later.”
and of course they do.
a few more dollars in the pocket.
the class bell rings and julie walks by and pecks a kiss on
bobby’s cheek.
bobby figures he’ll see her during lunch period.
into the bathroom and he has to wait while two kids try
to fence a motherboard from a freshman.
bobby just pisses and walks out in disgust.
shaking his head of course.
and then mike demando stands in front of him.
shaking.
holding a gun.
pointing it at bobby.
other kids just walk.
bobby pushes the gun aside.
“it’ll have to wait till later,” bobby says.
he shows mike his lunchbox and
the guy puts down the gun, “okay i’ll kill you tomorrow.”
and bobby recalls just how stupid mike is
because he never loads the gun.
whatever.
the back of coaches office.
the smell.
and a line of guys who’ve just showered off,
now thinly veiled in towels washed maybe once a month.
a handful of one dollar bills from juan.
two bills from steve.
a playstation2 game and a few classic issues of 2600
from morton.
(morton gets two vials today).
even coach wants some this time.
but bobby suspects coach injects it into himself.
bobby shakes out the leftovers of ice in his lunchbox
and bangs it against the locker room wall.
julie moves behind bobby and runs her hand
over his inner thigh.
bobby turns and leans back against the dull lockers.
he tries to stuff the wad of money into the lunchbox and
repositions himself for some sort of make-out move
he knows julie will try to pull.
but julie just knifes him.
she shivers
and thinks about the few milligrams of
supermodel blood circulating in her body.
as bobby goes down she kisses him on the forehead
and takes the money box.
she steps on morton’s motherboard and magazines.
bobby just curls up into a ball and starts to cry.
he may live.
julie suspects he will but to make sure of some
eventual form of slow death she cuts a small
slice from her finger and lets a dab of blood
trickle out.
she rubs it across bobby’s lips, holds his nose closed
and finally watches as he licks the blood away with
his tongue.
“oh come on bobby, it’s just aids...,” julie stands
and carries the lunchbox like a child between her
arms.
coach and two of his boys look around the corner
at bobby and reconsider helping bobby after hearing
julie’s final words.
one of the boys does call the nurse on his cell phone.
she says she’ll be there in a few minutes, something
else has come up, apparently mike demando had bullets today.
coach and the others walk off.