What will I tell Eve, I wonder. What will I tell Rose. That I decided not to kill Jude. In fact, I massaged her feet and had breakfast with her. I take out my pocketknife and begin to trim my nails. I let her suck me like she was stealing gasoline and then I fucked her as if there was no tomorrow. The knife slips back and forth across my fingertips and white slivers fall to my chest. She has me wrapped around her little toe and I like it. I cut my thumbnail too short and soon it starts to bleed.
Is this it?
The cab has stopped at a haunted little bungalow with dark red shutters and a black tile roof with a weather vane. A curved hardwood front door, like a Hobbit hole. There’s a gargoyle birdbath in the front yard, and a FOR SALE sign.
Is this it?
How do I know, man? It’s the address you said—1013 Alpine.
It’s way the hell across town.
Yeah. And you owe me thirteen dollars.
I stare at the house. I was half asleep when I spoke to Rose. I could have written down the wrong address. There’s a scrap of paper tacked to the door, white and twisting in the wind. It might be a note.
I think I’ve been here before.
That’s great, man. Do you want out or what?
I pass the kid some money and tell him to keep it. I get out and watch him drive away. I’m immediately very cold and I can tell by looking at the house that no one’s home.
The note is unsigned, addressed to no one. If I’m not here at three please wait. I press my face to the cold windows. Dark rooms with minimalist décor. Wooden furniture and thick red carpets. No sign of life. I sit on the stoop to smoke. The wind is picking up and I waste a dozen matches before I get a light. It’s quarter to three. How long do I want to wait? It’s cold enough to die out here and I need to see Eve before I leave town. I want to have a shower and pack a few things and ask her to keep the Bug for me. And I should really see Crumb. Perhaps he can reinstall my kidney for a small fee. At the very least, he can give me a cup of tea and a little sympathy.
A car pulls up at the curb, a red Subaru wagon. A woman gets out and it’s not Rose. She wears a long gray overcoat and rubber boots. A bright blue scarf and gold earrings. She holds a leather briefcase in one gloved hand. She’s obviously a real estate agent.
Hello. Her voice is practiced, friendly. Are you my three o’clock?
I nod and smile and apologize for being early. She eyes the green icebox and I shrug. Some people carry briefcases, some don’t.
That’s fine. What about your wife?
She’s not going to make it. I’m all alone.
Super, she says. Are you ready to see the house?
Please. I’m nearly frozen.
I offer my hand as she approaches the steps. She smiles and produces a massive ring of keys. The door swings open and heat rushes out. There’s a damp smell of cats.
After you, I say.
Do you have children?
No…I don’t.
There’s a lovely little bedroom upstairs. Perfect for a baby’s room.
I drift through the front room and look for details, photographs. There is almost nothing. Not a book or candlestick or ceramic ashtray. Behind me the woman is reciting square feet and water pressure and morning light and nearby schools. I tell her I was hoping to meet the owner.
I’m afraid Miss Hunt is not well. She’s quite old, you know.
I try to mirror her expression of polite but uninterested pity.
It’s hard to be old, I say. What is she like, Miss Hunt?
Actually, I have never met her. A lawyer arranged for the sale.
But she has a daughter, then?
A daughter, no. I don’t think she was ever married.
I stare at her, nodding. Is there a telephone I can use?
She shows me the phone and hovers nearby as I dial the number Rose gave me. She watches me with nervous brown eyes. Three times I get a busy signal. I give up and call for another cab.
eleven.
The second cab driver is fat and cheerful. He wants to talk about football but I’m not in the mood. I tell him I don’t like football and he turns around to glare at me, as if I’m a pervert. Eventually we arrive at the address I gave him and he gets a good look at the Witch’s Teat. He nods and mutters to himself, eager to get me out of his cab. I give him a big tip anyway.
Crumb is watching the store and he doesn’t look too happy about it. He grunts when I walk in. He holds a sleek leather riding crop in one hand.
I’m killing flies, he says.
Where is little Eve?
She never came in. He swats at a fat winter fly and misses.
Maybe she’s not feeling well.
I don’t care, he says. She knows I don’t like to work the counter. The customers are a lot of freaks.
Do you ever get any customers in here?
Well. It’s a little slow today. But sometimes it gets crazy around Valentine’s Day.
I’m sure. I stare at a grotesque display of vibrators shaped like rodents.
What can I do for you? he says.
I lift the green icebox like a trophy, like the head of a deer.
Crumb shudders. Is that what I think it is?
Have you had your lunch?
I’m not hungry.
Excellent. This will be easier on an empty stomach.
Phineas, he says. I helped a woman give birth once. It was a difficult procedure and she very nearly died. But she didn’t. I kept her alive and she delivered a healthy baby girl. Six and a half pounds. The woman was so grateful that she asked me to help her eat the placenta. I was ill for days and I could never eat meat again.
I laugh helplessly. I’m sorry.
What is so fucking funny.
I’m not going to eat it. And if I were, I wouldn’t share it with you.
Oh, I see. Phineas was making a little joke.
Not a very good one, it seems. I didn’t even know you were a
vegetarian.
Crumb sniffs. What do you want, then?
I want you to cut me open and put this little jewel back where it belongs.
Crumb locks the front door without a word. He hangs a sign in the window that says he has gone fishing. He grins faintly and tells me the sign was stolen from a barbershop. I follow him into the back and he motions for me to sit down. He bustles about as before, boiling water for tea and tinkering with the radio until he finds a moody Bach fugue. I sit on the purple sofa and flip through a magazine that is five years old.
Crumb finally sits down.
This is not a good idea, he says.
Why not?
When was the kidney removed?
Three days ago. Maybe four.
Then it is surely worthless.
I stare at him, insulted.
He sighs. I never went to medical school, remember. I don’t know everything about transplant technology. But I don’t think human tissue can survive outside the body much longer than a day.
But there’s a chance, I say.
It’s very doubtful.
Then let’s open it and have a look.
Do you have the key?
No. But we could probably pry it open.
If the kidney is still viable, then forcibly opening the icebox would probably fuck it up. I would need all sorts of fancy equipment and two or three extra hands to do the operation. And I would have to do a little reading on the subject first.
Well. That’s just fucking great.
Listen, he says. You have had something terrible done to you. It’s like being mugged, or raped. You have been violently invaded and you aren’t thinking straight.
Fuck you. Don’t you think I know that?
Crumb closes his eyes. Where the hell is Eve? he says.
I light a cigarette and immediately put it out. I wish she were here.
What do you expect from me, Phineas?
The kettle has been whistling tunelessly for several minutes now.
I just want some tea, okay.
*
Crumb serves the tea with a tray of stale English cookies. I chew on a cookie and Crumb smokes his pipe. Steam twists from our cups and the Bach fugue gives way to an unknown cello piece that is frantic as razors against glass. I do have another problem, I say.
What’s this?
I may be carrying around a bag of heroin in my belly.
Are you serious?
I don’t know. The information is unreliable.
My, my. That would be diabolical. To steal your kidney and leave such a package in its place. I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense, though. What if you had died, for instance? The heroin would be largely unretrievable.
No shit. The plan is so full of holes you could swim through it. But then who would hassle a wounded ex-cop at the border?
Interesting. What do you want to do about it?
I don’t want to choke down a handful of laxatives and spend the day on your toilet. Especially if someone is only fucking with me.
I have an idea, he says. But don’t laugh.
Crumb is making a lot of noise. It sounds like he’s kicking a cardboard box to death. I can hear him wheezing and cursing and for once I wonder how old he is. Finally he drags a grocery cart with jammed wheels from his closet. The cart contains a machine that looks like the vile offspring of an old black-and-white television and a microwave. A variety of wires and dusty cords extend from its guts. It reminds me of a broken stereo I used to have. It was such a piece of shit that no one would steal it if I left it on my front porch.
What the hell is that?
Your ignorance betrays you, boy. This is a slightly used but perfectly functional ultrasound machine. I stole it many years ago from a hospital supply company.
Oh, boy.
Take off your shirt, he says.
Again I stretch out on Crumb’s table and wonder how many strangers have lain bleeding here. Crumb plugs in the machine and adjusts the small humming screen so that I can see it. He smears cold, odorless jelly over my skin that looks innocently like spermicide, like a friendly lubricant.
That goo is the same shit the paramedics use before they shock your dead heart, isn’t it?
Your heart is fine, he says.
And when they electrocute you. They smear that same jelly on your skull.
Crumb whispers for me to hush. He shows me a round black paddle that is wired to the machine and looks a lot like a Ping-Pong paddle.
This sends sound waves into your abdominal cavity, he says. The waves bounce around in there and the machine uses the information to construct an image. Submarines and bats navigate by the same basic principle.
Fantastic.
Crumb rubs the paddle over my belly like a magic wand. I watch the screen but it remains black. My belly is a bottomless pit. A small child could crawl in there and take a nap.
You’re a quack, I say. A hopeless fucking quack.
He grunts and fiddles with the machinery, and finally a grainy image appears on the screen. Random black and white shapes, endlessly shifting. I could be staring through the dark leaves of a tree against the gray sky before a storm. I remember watching television in the middle of the night when I was a kid; the broadcast would abruptly end at four in the morning and I was left staring at a window of blinding snow, at a thousand insects killing each other.
Have you ever seen anyone make sausage? I say. They take all the nasty leftover bits of a cow or pig and grind them up until they look exactly like this.
Shut up.
Weather patterns, I say.
That large chaotic mass is your large intestine, he says. Nothing unusual.
Thanks. What about that gray area?
What gray area?
Lurking off the coast of California, I say.
Oh, that could be anything. Scar tissue or undigested cabbage.
I don’t like cabbage.
And he mutters dryly, it could be a bomb.
Jesus, I say. Why can’t you just lie to me like a normal doctor? Tell me it’s my appendix. Tell me it’s an undescended testicle or something.
Crumb has a wicked laugh. The bomb could be wired to your heart. If your heart stops, the bomb loses an electrical charge and good-bye, Phineas.
Oh, you motherfucker. Doesn’t my heart stop whenever I sneeze?
Sorry, he says. I was up late last night, watching a bad spy movie.
Last night was a hundred years ago. I dreamt of Lucy last night.
I’ve only actually used this machine once, says Crumb. And I mistakenly told a woman she was carrying twin girls. For all I know, you have a bag of shit in there the size of my head. Or you might well be pregnant with a litter of puppies.
I feel so much better.
Latex would have surely dissolved by now, he says.
Of course. But drug smugglers are pretty imaginative these days. They may have come up with indestructible baggies made of bulletproof Kevlar.
Well, he says. Then I suppose you can’t be fucked.
twelve.
It’s a short walk to Eve’s place. The snow has stopped but the wind is still vicious. My shirt sticks against my skin where Crumb rubbed that foul jelly. I wiped most of it off but a fine sheen remains. I decide not to worry about the heroin. I will pretend it’s another imaginary tumor. I often dream that I have a brain tumor, and in the dream, I take strange comfort in the idea that I know how I will die but not when.
But I may as well go with Jude to El Paso. I’m pitifully drawn to her, like a moth. I remember when I was seventeen; I always went running back to the girls who tore my heart out. The kidney is apparently worthless, but I can still kill Jude if I want to. But I will kill her for my own reasons. The Blister can rot.
My car still sits where Eve left it, a friendly pink parking ticket fluttering on the windshield. I climb in and start shoving things into the duffel bag. A box of ammunition, razor and toothbrush, most of my clothes. I count my money and decide to leave some of it with Eve. I might die before I spend it all.
*
Her apartment is dark and quiet, as if no one’s home. I’m wondering if I can break in through a window but I try the door anyway. It’s unlocked. The air smells faintly of lemons and smoke. I step inside and flick on a light. The apartment has been torn apart; clothes and papers are strewn everywhere, like garbage ripped apart by dogs. Silverware and books and toiletries lay scattered. Someone came looking for me, for something I have. Perhaps the kidney in my icebox is not so worthless. It might have been the Blister, but this isn’t quite his style. He wouldn’t have left a trace. The person who did this was furious, manic.
I take off my shoes and slip through the kitchen. I hold my weapon like a bird’s egg. I hear my grandfather’s voice: Hold it tight, now. But don’t try to crush it. Pretend she’s a bird’s egg. And I told Lucy the same thing when I taught her to use my gun. First I circle through the living room to be sure. Nothing has changed and I move down the hall in silence. Stop and poke the door of the linen closet with my foot; it creaks open. Empty and I keep moving. The bathroom. Toilet and sink and clothes hamper. A window too small for an adult to pass. Push back the shower curtain and Georgia is there, naked and shivering. She is unharmed, but she looks at me with terrible eyes. Her pupils have swallowed her eyes. She looks like a tortured dog. She spits at me and I want to throttle her, to hold her head underwater until she comes out of it. But I know she’s already tipped over the edge.
Eve’s room, she says finally.
Walk down the hall, don’t run. Remain calm and be sure no one is behind me. Push open the door to Eve’s room and enter at a crouch. The gun is an extension of my arm. Eve is facedown on her bed, naked. Her wrists are bound with tape and tethered to the bed frame. Her ankles are thrown wide apart and tied to either bedpost. She isn’t moving and I smell blood. I cut the cords from her hands and feet, roll her over and there is so much tape around her face and skull I’m not sure she’s breathing. Even her eyes are masked. I ease the tape away from her mouth and s
he gasps for air. I tell myself she’s alive, she’s alive. She doesn’t make a sound and I hug her to me with my left arm, my back to the wall. The gun in my right hand trembles ever so slightly.
Where is he? I say.
She points at the window, the fire escape. I want to hold her but I need to examine her. I tell her I’m sorry and lay her gently down. There are bruises on her thighs and breasts and I’ve seen their kind before. The sheets are bloody. I know she hasn’t been shot or cut but I have to check her anyway. Georgia is in the doorway, weeping.
Eve is alive, I say. She needs you.
Georgia creeps into the room as if she’s moving through water. She stops crying and holds Eve to her chest like a mother with a child. There’s a phone beside the bed and I call 911 for an ambulance. I bend to kiss Eve and she pulls away from me. I touch Georgia’s cheek.
Listen to me, I say. You will have to talk to the police. Your attacker was unknown to you. He left the scene and you freed yourselves. I wasn’t here. I was never here.
When I hear the sirens I too climb out the window. I close my eyes and listen for voices. I try to become someone else. I think of Pooh, his heavy, clumsy body. His stinking flesh and his giant hands. Pooh saw me with Eve; he followed us home. I pick up a chunk of broken cement and whirl around in a circle and finally let it go at my own car. The windshield becomes a spider’s web but doesn’t break and I have something to remind me of this.
The stitches in my side are screaming.
I drive with one hand. The other hand is torn between smoking a cigarette and clutching my wound to keep my guts from spilling out. The pain begins to ease and I let myself have a cigarette. I glance at my watch. I have nowhere to be until the train leaves tomorrow morning. I can take care of Pooh at my leisure. I’m not worried about finding him. He’s a creature of habit. He will be thirsty. I don’t believe he really has the stomach for this kind of thing and his knees will be rubber before long. And he will go somewhere familiar, somewhere comfortable. He will go to the Inferno and I will get there before he finishes his first beer. And then we will see. I have revenge to spare today; suffering that was meant for Jude will not be wasted. I will give it to him.