Mister Trot from Tin Street

By Pablo D'Stair

Wynol Trot—a family man and high school teacher with a pornography habit he takes pains to keep hidden.

To Trevor English, the idea is simple—threaten Wynol with exposure unless a modest sum is paid.

But when the blackmail doesn’t go through, Trevor realizes his own past makes him more vulnerable than his would-be victim—and that Wynol Trot is more amoral than he could have imagined.

Praise for the Books by Pablo D’Stair

“D’Stair is clearly a master. Likely Jean Patrick Manchette reincarnated...” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and The Bad Kind of Lucky

“Somehow again and again you’re drawn in...you get used to the book’s rhythm and follow it because the work is obsessive. We find ourselves in a languid kind of suspense, bracing ourselves...” —Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

“Pablo D’Stair doesn’t just write like a house afire, he writes like the whole city’s burning, and these words he’s putting on the page are the thing that can save us all.” —Stephen Graham Jones, Bram Stoker Award-winner

“Pablo D’Stair is defining the new writer [and the new film maker]. D’Stair’s late realism needs to be included in any examination of the condition of the novel.” —Tony Burgess, award-winning author/screenwriter

“Like Kerouac before him, I felt there was one roll of paper on which the story was typed. And there’s a rhythm behind it. Not the speedy bop of jazz this time, more an urban dubstep. Shadows and edges becoming audible.” —Nigel Bird, author of Smoke

• Language: English
• Publisher: All Due Respect Books
• Release date: Mar 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463503423

Pablo D'Stair

Pablo D'Stair is a novelist, filmmaker, essayist, interviewer, comic book artist, and independent publisher. His work has appeared in various mediums for the past 15 years, often pseudonymously.

Book preview

MISTER TROT FROM TIN STREET

A Trevor English Novella

Pablo D’Stair

PRAISE FOR PABLO D’STAIR

D’Stair is clearly a master. Likely Jean Patrick Manchette reincarnated… —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and The Bad Kind of Lucky

Somehow again and again you’re drawn in…you get used to the book’s rhythm and follow it because the work is obsessive. We find ourselves in a languid kind of suspense, bracing ourselves… —Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

Pablo D’Stair doesn’t just write like a house afire, he writes like the whole city’s burning, and these words he’s putting on the page are the thing that can save us all. —Stephen Graham Jones, Bram Stoker Award-winner

Pablo D’Stair is defining the new writer [and the new film maker]. D’Stair’s late realism needs to be included in any examination of the condition of the novel. —Tony Burgess, award-winning author/screenwriter

Like Kerouac before him, I felt there was one roll of paper on which the story was typed. And there’s a rhythm behind it. Not the speedy bop of jazz this time, more an urban dubstep. Shadows and edges becoming audible. —Nigel Bird, author of Smoke

Copyright © 2011 by Pablo D’Stair

First All Due Respect Edition March 2020

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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an imprint of Down & Out Books

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by JT Lindroos

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mister Trot from Tin Street

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from this letter to Norman Court by Pablo D’Stair

Preview from Stay Ugly by Daniel Vlasaty

Preview from I’m Dying as Fast as I Can by Jerry Kennealy

for Sebastien and Lucian

Feel like a broke-down engine, ain’t got no drivin’ wheel

You all been down and lonesome, you know just how a poor man feels

—Bob Dylan, Broke Down Engine

I’d almost forgotten I’d wanted to keep an eye out for this certain customer after having seen him at a restaurant with his wife and kids two weeks prior—he walked into the store and I nodded Hello before I’d even looked up. It was him, certainly the man from the restaurant. He lingered around the new release wall, then slyly ducked through the curtained partition into the adult section.

I let Teresa take her break before me, waited almost half hour for the guy to come out with the usual stack of six pornos—three newish ones, three random older ones. Wynol Trot—he looked just like his name, smelled like his deodorant and the fabric of his sweatshirt. Wedding ring still on the hand, which I’d wanted to confirm, then I got a glimpse in his wallet, photos of his kids, younger than they’d been at the restaurant, two boys and a girl in department store portrait.

As soon as he was gone, I pulled his account back up, scribbling down his telephone number, address, at the same time I pulled up his history, hit Print, nervous Teresa might ask What’s going on? she noticed the machine spitting out papers before it got through. Ducked the printout into my duffle back in the office, waited out the shift kind of jittery over nothing, left without renting anything for myself.

It was thirty-three pages long, Wynol’s history. Considering he’d been a customer many, many years, this wasn’t staggering, but the weight of the papers in my hand made the whole thing seem dreadful and immense. While I leafed through the pages on the bus going back to the basement I rented out a house next town over, I noted a few repeats of certain titles, highlighted these once in my room, heating coffee my six-cup maker, eating a few slices from a loaf of white bread.

Wynol was what I learned from the other clerks to refer to as a clockwork jerk-off, had his little life built around stopping in, getting his six pornos each week—there were other people who took out six a night, seemed to go overboard with it, those who not only rented but bought and bought when the films were new and high priced, not even waiting two weeks for the first fifty-percent markdown—Wynol was just a clockwork jerk-off, made me chuckle.

Thing was, even the fact he rented six was so middling, store was set up that way, rent-three-get-three-free, it was so commonplace he used the freebies to grab random material. In my heart, I figured he only wanted just the one, maybe two, but knowing three’d get him six, it was four dollars more and who could turn down such mathematics?

Saw he lived on Tin Street, town next over but in the other direction from the video store than the town I stayed in, didn’t know exactly where was Tin Street this town, but I’d figure it out day after next I was off from work entirely.

Had it arranged with the people I was renting from I could use the guest bath and even though they didn’t mind me using it or even hanging around the kitchen, living room for a while, they were home, I liked to take care of grooming things the evenings between six and seven thirty, noted they were seldom around then.

Smoked while I took a walk around the neighborhood, gotten used to not being able to just light up indoors whenever the mood struck me, had with me the handwritten list I’d copied of the six titles Wynol seemed to rent out most frequently, one title seemed he took out with every third rental batch or so, Street Legal Rides volume thirty-five, figured he must have a crush someone particular in there, twenty-eight times he’d rented it last two years, second-most repeated title only’d taken out thirteen.

The nights were mostly sickly warm, lately, and I’d had to move my bed around, get it away from the end of the basement room with the window because some thick bugs would gather around the pane at night, mulch and bushes out there always seemed damp despite the bushes hardly had leaves or anything grown to them—one night one of these insects’d been on the wall, crease of the corner, it’d put me off, I’d sprayed the sill down inside and out. It was ugly the way the bellies of the things’d look, the ones trying to crawl up the outer glass or else just kind of stay put, suckle on it, especially when the jabs of the television cast all over them scribble scrabble, room dark otherwise, like they were twitching, moving in shakes, vibrating.

When it got to be four in the morning and I wasn’t asleep, went for a walk, bought some document mailing envelopes, photocopied Wynol’s whole list seven times, closed one copy in each envelope, bought a little can of alcohol, a mixed drink cost only dollar fifty but had a kick to it and beside they sold them at the grocery store open all night.

It wasn’t pleasant to walk around holding all the envelopes, even with them all in a plastic bag, wasn’t pleasant to sit a bench or anything with the buzz on from the drink so got home, could already hear the husband and wife I rented with up, chatting and could smell their coffee brewing but knew they wouldn’t drink any of it until they were back from their jog.

I poured myself a cup into my own mug while it was still brewing after I heard them lock up the front door, leafed through one of their magazines while I drank at the counter, realized rent’d come due top of the week I’d maybe go into the store for my check, get it cashed, leave the rent early like I preferred to do, get it out of the way, like a game to keep me from instead trying to toy out ways to skip out on it altogether.

So dressed and bus had me to the store good timing, mail’d just been dropped, I had some chit chat one of the clerks I earnestly liked, opened my check I got outside started off in the direction of the cashing place shopping center about five minutes’ walk. And waiting with the sad lot of folks I always waited with, sighed a little bit it was almost two weeks’ worth of working almost full-time the video store just to keep this basement apartment and I’d lucked into that beside, if not for it I’d’ve been dipping into my reserve of a few thousand dollars—the job was enough to keep me sheltered, fed, keep me in smokes and dollar-and-half cans of liquor almost whenever I felt like it. The last month or so I’d kept myself burning through every free cent and’d squirreled away few hundred dollars.

Pocketed my money said thank you the cashier never said anything back, had a smoke while I walked to the bus stop. Wynol’s address well in my memory, just needed to figure out where Tin Street was—I’d ask at any shop along by where the bus let out, worse came down I’d ask a cab. This was just to give me an idea of Wynol, make sure it’d be worth any trouble—there was a hive of other Wynols like him he didn’t feel soft enough and even if he did this’d just be to get my footing, tap few hundred dollars off him, five hundred, feel out the rhythm.

Paying for a