Fiction: City Ordinances
By Tom Miller
It worried me that she owned a gun,
but most things about her worried me. The substances she used, her ever
wavering mental health, her overbearing job that kept her up ‘til 11:30 on
weekdays.
But as we drank and talked on her
back porch, none of that was on display. She was in a good mood. Despite her
dysfunctions, she was highly successful–owned her house and a new car.
Corporate America killed your soul, but it had its benefits and I thought about
them as I glanced around her finished porch. Wind chimes, gifted greenery from
her tenant, paintings she’d yet to finish. Her paintings were elegant, but what
I really admired was that she painted despite having a job that worked
her 60 hours a week. I wrote on a daily basis, but my paltry gig was laughable.
“What do you like about Lorca?” I
asked, pulling on a cigarette.
She took a long swig of her Vinho
Verde and stared out at the trees past her yard. “I dunno,” she said, trying to
find the right words, “but he’s become one of my favorite contemporaries. When
I was in Spain last year, I saw his work in person and it was so impressive.
Just…large scale. Detailed. Unnerving.”
“Do you wanna do larger pieces?”
“I’d like to! Gotta finish those
ones,” she said, nodding to her pieces on the nearby sofa. “And then figure out
what I’d wanna do, but yeah.”
I smiled at her like an idiot. She
didn’t notice because she was on her phone changing the music. She played “Blow
My High” again, the third time in an hour. She was the first woman I’d met who
liked Dee Mula and Guillermo Lorca.
“What,” she said, after clocking my
stare.
“Your eyes look good,” I said,
knowing I was coming on too strong.
“Shut up.”
“I mean it! They do.” I did mean
it. I often bullshitted the women I dated, but the hazel glint in her eyes
always penetrated me.
She turned to me and I took in her
face. Her eyes and lips were everything to me. The tiny mole that sat on her
left cheek.
My lovesickness was interrupted
when her neighbor, Jim, walked out onto his porch next door. I looked at him
over the wooden fence and clocked the scowl on his face. The only thing that
pissed me off more than his bald head was his smug attitude. He lit a
cigarette, glanced at us and shook his head. A week prior, he and Mila had
gotten into it over the noise at her house. She realized he was on his porch
and turned up the music. A smile spread across her full lips.
“Hey!”
She looked over at him.
“I’m not going through this shit
again, turn it down.”
She calmly packed her bong and
turned up the music again.
“Goddammit,” he shouted,
“ENOUGH!”
His screech struck a nerve. She
stood up and marched over to the railing. They leered at one another over their
porches in a standoff that reminded me of a Leone Western. I watched them both
and chuckled because Jim was diminutive while Mila pushed six feet.
“It’s not that loud.”
“Yes it is and I’m fucking sick of
it!”
“Then call the cops!”
“No, I shouldn’t fucking have to!
You should have the common decency to be a good neighbor and respect city
ordinances!”
“City ordinances? The sun is still
out and it’s a Saturday!”
“Look it up! And grow up!
Your fucking tenant pissed on our mailbox last weekend and I’m sick of having
this conversation! It’s nine o’clock and I’m tired.”
“Then get some ear plugs. My music
isn’t that loud and other houses play theirs louder. Welcome to the West End.”
He grit his teeth and stubbed out
his cigarette. “I know where you work, Mila. Stop fucking with me.” He turned
around and walked back into his house, still cursing but it was hard to make
out what he was saying because of the music. Mila turned to me and I saw her
right eye twitch in the fading sunlight. I knew she had a prodigious temper,
but so far had only caught glimpses of it.
“That little fucking imp. Him and
his alcoholic wife. What the fuck? Is he serious? Does he think a man
can talk to me like that? ‘Cause I’m not the fucking one!”
She opened the door to the back
room and I jumped up and grabbed her.
“Mila, stop.”
“Stop what,” she said, shaking my
hand off her.
“Don’t. Seriously.”
“Don’t what?!”
“Don’t get your gun!”
Her face softened and she leaned in
and kissed me. “Hank,” she said, touching my face, “I’m not gonna shoot him.”
I didn’t believe her, but knew I
couldn’t stop her. She was the only person I’d ever met who was more stubborn
than me. I sighed and went back out to the porch and my beer. She was gone for
thirty minutes and I expected to hear gunshots from next door.
But none came.
Instead, she came back outside with
a stack of printed papers and a butcher’s knife. She handed me the papers. CODE
OF ORDINANCES.
“You’re so petty,” I said, glancing
over.
“Me? I just printed them out for
him–trying to be a good neighbor.”
I smiled. “The knife, though?”
“I’m gonna cut up a watermelon. You
want some?”
“Yeah, that sounds nice.”
***
I woke up naked in the middle of
the night in her bed. I had a faint recollection of fruit, sex and more
drinking. My splitting headache confirmed the latter. I slammed a water bottle
I’d left by the bed and checked my phone. 4:45. I had to be at work at 7. I
knew if I went back to sleep I’d never make it, so I stood up and got dressed.
Mila was passed out. I walked around the bed and kissed her. She stirred, but
kept her eyes closed. I walked out of the bedroom.
“Come back,” I heard her say as I
walked through the kitchen. I desperately wanted to but couldn’t afford to miss
another day of work.
Outside, the street was dark and
warm. No one was out. I got into my beater and started it, thankful that the
engine still ran. I turned on my lights and they illuminated something on the
neighbor’s porch. It was hard to make out because of my hangover. A foot?
I exited the car and walked across
the dew stricken lawn.
When I got onto the porch, I found
an obscene amount of gore. Jim lay there with his eyes open, a pool of blood
beneath his bald head. His bathrobe was soaked with blood and Mila’s butcher
knife was lodged in his chest. Beneath it was a stack of papers. I crouched
down and saw it again: CODE OF ORDINANCES.
I turned around, ready to vomit and
found Mila standing there in her pink bathrobe. Her eyes were filled with
dreams. My engine rumbled on the street and crickets chirped around the corner.
I brushed past her and vomited onto the lawn. I turned back to her with
bloodshot eyes.
“I told you I wouldn’t shoot him.”
I coughed and hocked a loogie.
“Well thank God for that.”
She calmly walked towards me and
grabbed my hand. “Come back to bed.”
I looked at her and over at Jim. I
sighed.
“Let me turn my car off first.”
Tom Miller was born in Central New York and
attended college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since 2020, he's written,
produced and directed six short films--one of which won an award at the Cayuga
Film Festival--and written three feature screenplays that have placed in
various contests. Although he's primarily a screenwriter, he also writes short
stories. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Socials: