Ryan M. Moore

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Remembrances of Vincent Chase’s Penis Past (Part One)

Vincent Chase, sixty years old, stood on the cratered asphalt of Franklin Avenue, looking thirty years into the past. It was him.

The guy standing one hundred feet away from Vince was… Vince. “Queens Boulevard” Vince, to be exact. Old Vince would know that look anywhere. Looking back, he had always secretly considered that his peak- he had been young, beautiful, a huge success, every girl wanted him, but there was something else too- he had been doing good work. Billy Walsh had brought out the best in him the way no one else ever had before, or would again.

And this guy had it- the walk, the look in his eye, the unshakable knowledge that he was in exactly the right place, at the right time, doing what he was born to do. There had been a few impersonators on Hollyood Boulevard right after “Aquaman” – but those guys looked like sex offenders, and Drama and Turtle had thrown eggs at them while Vince laughed behind tinted glass in the back of the Bentley.

But this guy was good. Looking at him, it suddenly broke like a rogue wave over Vince- his golden youth, all of it, the enormity of what he had had, and lost. And he knew now that he had lost it a long time ago- long before he locked himself away in his penthouse. He wanted to cry.

He wanted to cry. But instead, Vincent Chase shit his pants in the middle of Franklin Avenue.

He wished he hadn’t, but the truth was it had been happening more and more. He wanted to ask the girl to bring him diapers, tell her it was for some kinky sex thing, but no. He couldn’t do it. He was sure she would know the truth.

Then something happened. As Vince stood there, silently enduring the worst moment of his life (so far), as he stood there in the middle of Franklin Avenue with his own excrement dripping slowly down the inside of his robe and into his four-hundred dollar designer sandal, the guy, the thing, the other Vince, whatever it was- it looked at him.

It was just a look, just one second of eye contact. But in that moment, old, pants-shitted Vince achieved enlightenment. Well, maybe not enlightenment exactly, but something like it. This guy, this younger self, saw straight into the gnarled depths of his tortured soul. Vince had spent his adult life trying not to be understood: Always he strove for mystery, to leave ’em wanting more, to get the girl out by morning with nothing but a story to tell her friends and a ride home in the Bentley from Turtle.

While the moment lasted – it was probably less than a second, but Vince found himself high on a hill, looking out at a 360 degree view. There was nothing but a sea of impossibly soft, white clouds anywhere as far as he could see, and he was at peace.

Then the earth shattered. Vince never heard the rocket coming until after it had impacted in the street, sending asphalt into the air like a fountain. The next thing he knew he was laying flat on his back, in a cloud of black smoke and dust, trying to breathe. Something deep down in his brain stem was telling him to move, to get up now, he had to find his double, talk to him, find out what it all meant. He might never get this chance again. Vince tried to will his legs to move, but they were emphatically not taking requests.

“It’s perfectly normal,” said a voice in the dark. It was a female voice, so that was something. Vince wondered if he was in Heaven. He flashed back to the scene that had filled his mind just before the rocket strike- that hilltop, those clouds. Maybe he had already been dead. If people were firing rockets, he could have been hit by something else just as easily.

“You must have crapped your pants when the rocket hit. It’s completely involuntary- happens to everybody.” Now Vince was fairly certain he was not, in fact, in Heaven, because even if it was possible to shit your pants in Heaven, he remembered a little bit from that church on Atlantic Avenue his mom used to drag him to, and he was pretty sure in Heaven they wouldn’t call attention to stuff like that, if there was a way to avoid it.

Experimentally, he opened an eye. It hurt, but eventually shapes started to form out of the white blurs. His focus pulled until he saw a room, and a girl. She was hot.

Her name was Mary, she told him later, after he felt good enough to sit up on the military-surplus green cot. He hadn’t looked under the blanket, but Vince was pretty sure he wasn’t wearing his crapped pants anymore. She must have helped him out of them. The room had no windows at all- were they underground? It felt like they were underground.

Vince checked Mary out from behind as she stood in the little kitchenette, boiling water. Her hair was black and short, Vince would usually have said too short, but there was something about the white skin of her neck. Moving downwards, he paused to take in her shoulders, feminine but rippling with muscles under her white tank top.

And then- she still had her back to him – making tea or something, so why not – down to her ass. It was toned and frankly spectacular.. She turned with the finished tea and brought him a cup. “Drink up, baby.” So it was “baby” already? Vince was starting to like her, dykey camouflage pants and all. She put her hand on his shoulder, just a touch, but he was shocked by how strong she was.

But then something else came into his mind, eclipsing even the urgings of his ageless libido.

Vince tried to talk, but found himself hoarse. His first attempt came out as a pathetic little croak that hurt him somewhere deep down in his chest. But he had to know. He tried again:

“That guy back there in the street…”

Mary smiled an innocent little half-smile. Or maybe not so innocent.

“What guy?”

“Right before the rocket hit. He looked… it was me. But young.”

“And who are you?”

Vince just cocked an eyebrow at her. He wasn’t hurt that bad.

“You really want to know, baby?”

Vince caught a different inflection in the word “baby” this time that hadn’t been there before. Or maybe he hadn’t been paying attention. It was a little harsh, a little condescending even. It cut into him. All at once he was acutely aware that he was thirty years older than this girl. At least.

“You want to see him again? You sure?”

Vince nodded. He was sure. He thought.

Mary stood up from where she’d been sitting by the cot. She went to a mirror that hung over a bare sink, right there in the open, and fixed her face a bit. When she was satisfied, she produced what looked like a tiny remote control, and pressed a button.

A hidden door in the wall slid open, revealing a cunningly concealed secret chamber. And there he was. For the second time that day, Vincent Chase looked into the eyes of his younger self. But this time, they were as black and lifeless as a dead sun.

Vincent Chase in Hollywood

Vincent Chase was hungry. He had eaten the last steak three days ago, cleaned the freezer of Sea Bass (possibly Chilean), and emptied the cupboard of canned Everything. He checked one more time, grunting with exertion as he stood on his tiptoes to finger the dark reaches of the top cabinet.

Nothing but dust and shadows. Vince slammed the cupboard door shut- hard. What a bunch of bullshit! For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he was angry. Really hot. Where the fuck was that girl? Vince didn’t know what day it was, but she should have been here by now. She always showed up just when he needed her.

Fuck it. He’d order in. He knew how to do that.

But where was the goddamn phone? He threw aside piles of ancient, yellowed magazines, throwing up fifteen years of neglect in a Dust Bowl-caliber cloud. Old scripts, some kind of award statue from some forgotten cable show, empty bottles, generations-old console gaming systems. Finally he found it, tucked in a corner behind a four-foot-high venom-green bong.

He blew off the dust, held it gingerly to his ear, and mashed down the “Talk” button with his thumb. It made some kind of noise he didn’t even recognize. What the fuck was this shit??

Before he even knew what he was doing he had thrown the phone to the ground and he was smashing it- first with his foot, then with his fist, with a vigor he hadn’t possessed in fifteen years. He was Vincent Chase. Vincent Chase couldn’t even get a simple fucking dial tone anymore??

When the rage cloud cleared from his mind, Vince became aware that 1) His fist was bloody and it  hurt, a lot, and 2) He was still very hungry. Well. He would just have to go out and get something, wouldn’t he?

In his closet, he found a collection of ever-so-carefully-hand-distressed jeans that failed to come within ten sizes of accommodating his current girth. Fuck it, he’d go out in the robe. The tabloids would have a field day, but it would blow over, like always.

Vince undid the locks and stood at the door for a long long time. His knees felt weak, he wanted to puke, but he made it out into the hall. Why the fuck was everything so dusty? And there were holes in the carpet, like animals had been chewing on it. He’d have to have somebody call the manager, but anyway he was making it, supporting himself against the wall, slowly down the long corridor.

When the elevator didn’t come, he took the stairs. In the lobby, a fallen chandelier blocked his way, but nothing was going to stop him now. He slouched up to the big heavy door, gold-handled and glass tinted against the prying eyes of the lesser people who might wander by, hoping for a glimpse of their idols.

Vince pushed hard, and he was outside.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Vince did a double-take, then a triple-take, then did them both again. Hollywood looked like it had been bombed. Great black dead hulks of buildings towered overhead. There were no lights on in any of them; no signs of life anywhere. The street was covered in broken glass. To the North, thick black smoke rose from the devastated but still familiar cylinder of the Capitol Records building. At Vince’s feet, the Walk of Fame had been plundered, every star smashed to gravel, or completely removed, leaving only a series of shallow five-pointed pits full of trash and urine.

A pane of broken glass fell from high on one of the desolate hulks, shattering fifty feet ahead, sending huge shards skating out across the desolate street. The night, if it was night, was lit only by a dull-red sky, as if something very large was burning just over the hill. The overall effect was of a painting of Hell by an artist Vincent Chase had almost certainly never heard of.

Vince shrugged inside his triple-XL bathrobe. So, the neighborhood had gone downhill a bit. Nobody was going to fuck with him. He had street cred. He was Queens Boulevard. Hoping he still looked a little like Billy Walsh’s erstwhile noir demigod, Vincent Chase walked north on Vine Street, alone, looking for someplace that was open late.

Turtle, Crawling Slowly Forward.

Turtle inched his way forward down the tunnel, one careful step at a time. If you didn’t know what you were doing you could find yourself neck deep in raw sewage real fast. Raw sewage if you were lucky. There were far worse things in the sinkholes, and some of them were alive. Another man might have been frightened, or at least grossed out. Not Turtle. He had been slogging through shit all his life, one way or another. He lived for this.

He froze. Something was out there. It was just a blip, a little orange flash way out there in his peripheral, but it was definitely there. The Big Boss didn’t shell out for these military-grade night vision goggles for nothing. Probably just a rat, but a careless soldier was a dead solider. He’d learned that a long time ago.

Turtle’s black-gloved left hand, acting independently, had shot up in the shape of a fist. Behind him, his squad was instantly on alert. They didn’t make a sound, but he knew they were there, locked and loaded. Turtle knew them because he was one of them- a solider since age 11 on Queens Boulevard. Every man who served under him would kill or die for him without a second thought.

Yeah. Just a rat. Before he could stop himself, Turtle had mentally clocked its weight: big boy, about a seven-pounder. That was from the dark years. He had sold rat meat when that was all there was, and yeah, he might have eaten it once or twice in his time. It didn’t taste any worse than some of the Gyro places back home. But those days were over now. He had his men, and he had the Big Boss, and most of all, he had The Group. The GPS told him they were close now. He took four deep breaths to calm himself, not that he really needed to. A few quick hand signals and his men fanned out behind him, ready for action. Turtle took the lead, like he always did. In 15 seconds flat, he was up the ladder and had the hatch open.

­

They emerged from the sewer into a sub-basement storeroom. Every available surface was piled six inches deep with- Turtle could barely believe the irony, but there they were, unmistakable – ancient movie scripts. Insides the once-glossy covers, each one held one hundred and ten pages, give or take a few, now yellowed and slowly disintegrating, never to be rewritten into their better or more profitable selves. Here they crumbled, their wonder and adventure imprisoned forever in the flat black and white of the Cole and Haag format. “To what base uses we may return,” quipped Turtle’s internal Voice-Over.

He picked one off the top of the pile, and almost smiled at the title: “Benji: Arctic Dog.”

TURTLE’S BRAIN (V.O.)
Alas poor Vincent..

No. No time for that shit now. He tossed the script aside and led his men out into the hall. The first guard’s body was halfway to the floor before he knew what had hit him. These guys talked a big game, put on a lot of glitz, but at the end of the day they were dilettantes: War just wasn’t their thing.

Exactly seven minutes later, Turtle and his men returned the way they came, a razor-thin 20 terabyte jet-black hard disc nestled securely in Turtle’s pack. All 12 people who had laid eyes on them were now dead.

Between the stiffening fingers of the biggest one, Turtle had left his calling card, as he always did: All black, with a white Death’s Head leering out at the world. And below it, in unmissable block letters:

THE MURPHY GROUP.

A new chapter is posted every Monday morning. If you want to start at the beginning, check out chapter one.

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Chapter two: Vince’s Houseguest

“Won’t you come in?” said Vince, still doing his best to sound like his long-ago turn as Nick Caraway in Scorcese’s “Gatsby.” The girl came in, she always did. Vince watched her from behind as she put the bags down in the kitchen. Nice ass, he thought. Once upon a time he had thought it chivalrous to help them with carry the stuff in, but his back had been acting up, and the last thing he wanted to do was throw it out again. Not today. Besides, it was cooler this way. “Lay back and let her do the work, bro” – this was how Johnny would have wanted it.

The girl was almost done now – pulling cans and packages from the bags until Vince’s nearly bare freezer and cupboards were again stocked in neat rows with all his favorites. A strip steak, flown in overnight from his beloved New York, materialized from one of the bags. “Later,” he told it with his eyes. “Just you and me.”

She finished putting the stuff away, and turned to face him. They both knew what was coming now. Vince looked at her face – the hair, dark, short but not too short, framing an unblemished face that hadn’t aged a day since high school. She was perfect. They were always perfect.

Was it the same girl? Vince realized with a start that he didn’t know. She certainly seemed to know what he liked, but then Vince supposed that was still common knowledge out there in the 310 and 323, just as it had always been. The better parts of the 818, too. And he’d had a 562 once. Didn’t know where 562 was then, still didn’t now, but he’d wanted to add it to his list. Turtle hooked him up at some sneaker thing. Anyway, she looked like the girl from last week. She was dressed the same, in a little skirt that showed just enough leg, and a polo shirt with two buttons open and some kind of logo Vince didn’t recognize over her left tit. She needed some real clothes – maybe he could hook it up, take her to Sunset Plaza and drop the Black card, like old times. They would still know him. Wouldn’t they?

It didn’t matter now because the clothes were in a pile on the floor and she was stark naked on the bed, waiting for him. Shaved: nice.

Once Vince had been the master of a thousand exotic positions- there had even been some talk of putting him in a remake of “Kama Sutra,” until an ill-timed racial slur from Ari sent the New Delhi investors straight into Toby McGuire’s waiting arms. He didn’t remember quite when the change had come, but he preferred Missionary now. Nice, simple, clean, no twisting his body into positions it no longer snapped back from. And no memories, just sweet escape.

Seven minutes later, it was over. The girl tucked him into the big bed, gave him a tiny peck on the cheek. When she let herself out, Vincent Chase had already slipped into the blessed forgetfulness of a dreamless sleep, free for a few hours from the ghosts of his sun-dappled past and his long-lost brother, Johnny “Drama” Chase.