(After Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York City)
By Matthew Kasper and Mike Itaya
My problem was I never could square things. The life I wanted was always out of reach. I flunked the fifth grade (and have suspicions that my pal Marv Murchins did, too.) See, Roy, my stepfather, the Superintendent of Montgomery County Schools, always told me I’d amount to nothing. And it turns out, he was right. For me and Marv, burglarizing 671 Lincoln Boulevard was gonna be our gravy train, the golden ticket that paved our way to the top, the one score that made everything right.
And here I was thinking, we’re the heroes of this particular story.
So, Marv and I were talking. We were celebrating our release from prison at an abandoned house in downtown Chicago. The gin and juice bottle went back and forth. Somehow – of course – we ended up talking about Kevin McCallister, our preteen nemesis. Or, maybe that was just the hooch talking.
While listening to Marv yammer, I relieved myself for the fifth time in two hours. Marv: ‘He beat us up so many times, you remember, Harry? Paint cans. Iron to the face. Those goddamn Micro Machines. Cement bricks? I mean for Christ sakes, I’m a human fucking being!’
I farted my encouragement, the hammered equivalent of a nod.
‘If I saw Kevin now, you know what I’d do?’ Marv gazed at the saturated, half demolished brick wall beside us. ‘I’d grab him by the throat and say: ‘Welcome to hell, motherfucker.’
A recidivist chill went down my spine. I stopped peeing mid-stream, dribbling a bit down the front of my trousers. ‘Goddamn, Marv, we just got out of the pokey.’
‘It’s not about the kid,’ said Marv. ‘No. It’s about the chase. That’s what I loved about him. He knew how to spice up the home invasion. It may seem crazy to you, but burglars ain’t all the same.’
‘Jesus, Marv.’ I gestured to the derelict kitchen we’d gotten drunk in. ‘Man, look at us. I used to sit around pretending to read The Wall Street Journal, like it meant something. But now I just don’t know.’
There comes a time in a man’s life when an accounting must be done. The gin gets drunk. The good times run out. The Superintendent of Montgomery County Schools alters the content standards for fifth grade graduation. A man has to take account of all that’s gotten away, and what he might yet still lose. Years ago in New York City, I thought I hit rock bottom, holding a cement brick over a ledge and trying to tag Kevin McCallister, a ten year old kid, in the street below. That’s what we’re talking about, when we talk about Kevin, when we talk about regret, when we talk about life.
Every time it feels like a friggin’ brick to the face.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Matthew Kasper is a Baltimore native. He has an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University where he was a Washburn-Hayes Scholar. His work has appeared in Newsweek, BULL, The Pinch, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Bloomin’ Onion, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and elsewhere.
Mike Itaya is the editor-in-chief of DIRTBAG and writes about dirtbags, always.
Image generated on Magic Studio
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