Damn.
He digs the spoon into the bowl of chili. He puts the spoon in his mouth and says, “And don’t lecture me about the evils of necrophilia.” He says, “You’re about the last person who can give that lecture.” His mouth full of chili, Nash says, “I know who you are.”
He swallows and says, “You’re still wanted for questioning.”
He licks the chili smeared around his lips and says, “I saw your wife’s death certificate.” He smiles and says, “Signs of postmortem sexual intercourse?”
Nash points at an empty chair, and I sit.
“Don’t tell me,” he leans across the table and says. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t just about the best sex you’ve ever had.”
And I say, shut up.
“You can’t kill me,” Nash says. He crumbles a handful of crackers into his bowl and says, “You and me, we’re exactly alike.”
And I say, it was different. She was my wife.
“Your wife or not,” Nash says, “dead means dead. It’s still necrophilia.”
Nash jabs his spoon around in the crackers and red and says, “You killing me would be the same as you killing yourself.”
I say, shut up.
“Relax,” he says. “I didn’t give nobody a letter about this.” Nash crunches a mouthful of crackers and red. “That would’ve been stupid,” he says. “I mean, think.” And he shovels in more chili. “All’s they’d have to do is read it, and I don’t need the competition.”
Imperfect and messy, this is the world I live in. This far from God, these are the people I’m left with. Everybody grabbing for power. Mona and Helen and Nash and Oyster. The only people who know me hate me. We all hate each other. We all fear each other. The whole world is my enemy.
“You and me,” Nash says, “we can’t trust nobody.”
Welcome to hell.
If Mona is right, Karl Marx’s words coming out of her mouth, then killing Nash would be saving him. Returning him to God. Connecting him to humanity by resolving his sins.
My eyes meet his eyes, and Nash’s lips start to move. His breath is nothing but chili.
He’s saying the culling song. As hard as a dog barking, he says each word so hard that chili bubbles out around his mouth. Drops of red fly out. He stops and looks into his chest pocket. His hand digs to find his index card. With two fingers, he holds it and starts to read. The card is so smeared he rubs it on the tablecloth and starts to read again.
It sounds heavy and rich. It’s the sound of doom.
My eyes relax and the world blurs into unfocused gray. All my muscles go smooth and long. My eyes roll up and my knees start to fold.
This is how it feels to die. To be saved.
But by now, killing is a reflex. It’s the way I solve everything.
My knees fold, and I hit the floor in three stages, my ass, my back, my head.
As fast as a belch, a sneeze, a yawn from deep inside me, the culling song whips through my mind. The powder keg of all my unresolved shit, it never fails me.
The gray comes back into focus. Flat on my back on the bar floor, I see the greasy, gray smoke roll along the ceiling. You can hear the guy’s face still frying.
Nash, his two fingers let the card drop onto the table. His eyes roll up. His shoulders heave, and his face lands in the bowl of chili. Red flies everywhere. The bulk of his body in his white uniform, it heaves over and Nash hits the floor next to me. His eyes look into my eyes. His face smeared with chili. His ponytail, the little black palm tree on the top of his head, it’s come loose and the stringy black hair hangs limp across his cheeks and forehead.
He’s saved, but I’m not.
The greasy smoke settling over me, the grill popping and sizzling, I pick up Nash’s index card off the floor. I hold it over the candle on the table, adding smoke to the smoke, and I just watch it burn.
A siren goes off, the smoke alarm, so loud I can’t hear myself think. As if I ever think. As if I ever could think. The siren fills me. Big Brother. It occupies my mind, the way an army does a city. While I sit and wait for the police to save me. To deliver me to God and reunite me with humanity, the siren wails, drowning out everything. And I’m glad.
Chapter 41
This is after the police read me my rights. After they cuff my hands behind my back and drive me to the precinct. This is after the first patrolman arrived at the scene, looked at the dead bodies, and said, “Sweet, suffering Christ.” After the paramedics rolled the dead cook off the grill, took one look at his fried face, and puked in their own cupped hands. This is after the police gave me my one phone call, and I called Helen and said I was sorry, but this was it. I was arrested. And Helen said, “Don’t worry. I’ll save you.” After they fingerprinted me and took a mug shot. After they confiscated my wallet and keys and watch. They put my clothes, my brown sport coat and blue tie, in a plastic bag tagged with my new criminal number. After the police walked me down a cold, cinder-block hallway, naked into a cold concrete room. After they leave me alone with a beefy, buzz-cut old officer with hands the size of a catcher’s mitt. Alone in a room with nothing but a desk, my bag of clothes, and a jar of petroleum jelly.
After I’m alone with this grizzled old ox, he pulls on a latex glove and says, “Please turn to the wall, bend over, and use your hands to spread your ass cheeks.”
And I say, what?
And this big frowning giant wipes two gloved fingers around in the jar of petroleum jelly and says, “Body cavity search.” He says, “Now turn around.”
And I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 . . .
And I turn around. I bend over. One hand gripping each half of my ass, I pull them apart.
Counting 4, counting 5, counting 6 . . .
Me and my failed Ethics. The same as Waltraud Wagner and Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy I’m a serial killer and this is how my punishment starts. Proof of my free will. This is my path to salvation.
And the cop’s voice, all rough with the smell of cigarettes, he says, “Standard procedure for all detainees considered dangerous.”
I’m counting 7, counting 8, counting 9 . . .
And the cop growls, “You’re going to feel a slight pressure so just relax.”
And I’m counting 10, counting 11, counting . . .
And damn.
Damn!
“Relax,” the cop says.
Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn!
The pain, it’s worse than Mona poking me with her red-hot tweezers. It’s worse than the rubbing alcohol washing away my blood. I grip the two handfuls of my ass and grit my teeth, the sweat running down my legs. Sweat from my forehead drips off my nose. My breathing stops. The drips fall straight down and splash between my bare feet, my feet planted wide apart.
Something huge and hard twists deeper into me, and the cop’s horrible voice says, “Yeah, relax, buddy.”
And I’m counting 12, counting 13 . . .
The twisting stops. The huge, hard thing backs off, slow, almost all the way. Then it twists in deep again. Slow as the hour hand on a clock, then faster, the cop’s greased fingers prod into me, retreat, prod in, retreat.
And close to my ear, the cop’s gravel and ashtray old voice says, “Hey, buddy, you got time for a quickie?”
And my whole body does a spasm.
And the cop says, “Boy howdy, somebody just got tight.”
I say, Officer. Please. You have no idea. I could kill you. Please don’t do this.
And the cop says, “Let go of me so I can unlock your handcuffs. It’s me, Helen.”
Helen?
“Helen Hoover Boyle? Remember?” the cop says. “Two nights ago, you were doing almost this exact same thing to me inside a chandelier?”
Helen?
The huge hard something still twisted deep inside me.
The cop says, “This is called an occupation spell. I translated it just a couple hours ago. I’ve got Officer whoever here crammed down into his subconscious right now. I’m runnin
g his show.”
The hard cold sole of the officer’s shoe shoves against my ass, and the huge hard fingers yank themselves out. Between my feet is a puddle of sweat. Still gritting my teeth, I stand up, fast.
The officer looks at his fingers and says, “I thought I was going to lose these.” He smells the fingers and makes a nasty face.
Great, I say, breathing deep, eyes closed. First she’s controlling me, now I have to worry about Helen controlling everyone around me.
And the cop says, “I had control of Mona for the last couple of hours this afternoon. Just to give the spell a test run, and to get even with her for scaring you, I gave her a little makeover.”
The cop grabs his crotch. “This is amazing. Being with you like this, you’re giving me an erection.” He says, “This sounds sexist, but I’ve always wanted a penis.”
I say, I don’t want to hear this.
And Helen says, through the cop’s mouth, she says, “I think as soon as I put you into a taxi, maybe I’ll hang around in this guy and beat off. Just for the experience.”
And I say, if you think this will make me love you, think again.
A tear runs down the cop’s cheek.
Standing here naked, I say, I don’t want you. I can’t trust you.
“You can’t love me,” the cop says, Helen says in the cop’s grizzled voice, “because I’m a woman and I have more power than you.”
And I say, just go, Helen. Get the fuck out of here. I don’t need you. I want to pay for my crimes. I’m tired of making the world wrong to justify my own bad behavior.
And the cop’s crying hard now, and another cop walks in. It’s a young cop, and he looks from the old cop, crying, to me, naked. The young cop says, “Everything A-okay in here, Sarge?”
“It’s just delightful,” the old cop says, wiping his eyes. “We’re having a wonderful time.” He sees he’s wiped his eyes with his gloved hand, the fingers out my ass, and he tears off the glove with a little scream. His whole body does a big shudder, and he throws the greasy glove across the room.
I tell the young cop, we were just having a little talk.
And the young cop puts a fist in my face and says, “You just shut the fuck up.”
The old cop, Sarge, sits down on the edge of the desk and crosses his legs at the knee. He sniffs back tears and tosses his head as if tossing back hair and says, “Now, if you don’t mind, we’d very much like to be alone.”
I just look at the ceiling.
The young cop says, “Sure thing, Sarge.”
And Sarge grabs a tissue and dabs his eyes.
Then the young cop turns fast, grabbing me under the jaw and jamming me up against the wall. My back and legs against the cold concrete. With my head pushed up and back, the young cop’s hand squeezing my throat, the cop says, “You don’t give the Sarge a hard time!” He shouts, “Got that?”
And the Sarge looks up with a weak smile and says, “Yeah. You heard him.” And sniffs.
And the young cop lets loose of my throat. He steps back toward the door, saying, “I’ll be out front if you need . . . well, anything.”
“Thank you,” the Sarge says. He clutches the young cop’s hand, squeezing it, saying, “You’re too sweet.”
And the young cop jerks his hand away and leaves the room.
Helen’s inside this man, the way a television plants its seed in you. The way cheatgrass takes over a landscape. The way a song stays in your head. The way ghosts haunt houses. The way a germ infects you. The way Big Brother occupies your attention.
The Sarge, Helen, gets to his feet. He fiddles with his holster and pulls out his gun. Holding the pistol in both hands, he points it at me and says, “Now get your clothes out of the bag and put them on.” The Sarge sniffs back tears and kicks the garbage bag full of clothes at me and says, “Get dressed, damn it.” He says, “I came here to save you.”
The pistol trembling, the Sarge says, “I want you out of here so I can beat off.”
Chapter 42
Everywhere, words are mixing. Words and lyrics and dialogue are mixing in a soup that could trigger a chain reaction. Maybe acts of God are just the right combination of media junk thrown out into the air. The wrong words collide and call up an earthquake. The way rain dances called storms, the right combination of words might call down tornadoes. Too many advertising jingles commingling could be behind global warming. Too many television reruns bouncing around might cause hurricanes. Cancer. AIDS.
In the taxi, on my way to the Helen Boyle real estate offices, I see newspaper headlines mixing with hand-lettered signs. Leaflets stapled to telephone poles mix with third-class mail. The songs of street buskers mix with Muzak mix with street hawkers mix with talk radio.
We’re living in a teetering tower of babble. A shaky reality of words. A DNA soup for disaster. The natural world destroyed, we’re left with this cluttered world of language.
Big Brother is singing and dancing, and we’re left to watch. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but our role is just to be a good audience. To just pay our attention and wait for the next disaster.
Against the taxi’s seat, my ass still feels greasy and stretched out.
There are thirty-three copies of the poems book left to find. We need to visit the Library of Congress. We need to mop up the mess and make sure it will never happen.
We need to warn people. My life is over. This is my new life.
The taxi pulls into the parking lot, and Mona’s outside the front doors, locking them with a huge ring of keys. For a minute, she could be Helen. Mona, her hair’s ratted, back-combed, teased into a red and black bubble. She’s wearing a brown suit, but not chocolate brown. It’s more the brown of a chocolate hazelnut truffle served on a satin pillow in a luxury hotel.
A box sits on the ground at Mona’s feet. On top of the box is something red, a book. The grimoire.
I’m walking across the parking lot, and she calls, “Helen’s not here.”
There was something on the police scanner about everybody in a bar on Third Avenue being dead, Mona says, and me being arrested. Putting the box in the trunk of her car, she says, “You just missed Mrs. Boyle. She ran out of here sobbing just a second ago.”
The Sarge.
Helen’s big, leather-smelling Realtor’s car is nowhere in sight.
Looking down at her own brown high heels, her tailored suit, padded and tucked, doll clothes with huge topaz buttons, her short skirt, Mona says, “Don’t ask me how this happened.” She holds up her hands, her black fingernails painted pink with white tips. Mona says, “Please tell Mrs. Boyle I don’t appreciate having my body kidnapped and shit done to me.” She points at her own stiff bubble of hair, her blusher cheeks and pink lipstick, and says, “This is the equivalent of a fashion rape.”
With her new pink fingernails, Mona slams the trunk lid.
Pointing at my shirt, she says, “Did things with your friend get a little bloody?”
The red stains are chili, I tell her.
The grimoire, I say. I saw it. The red human skin. The pentagram tattoo.
“She gave it to me,” Mona says. She snaps open her little brown purse and reaches inside, saying, “She said she wouldn’t need it anymore. Like I said, she was upset. She was crying.”
With two pink fingernails, Mona plucks a folded paper out of her purse. It’s a page from the grimoire, the page with my name written on it, and she holds it out to me, saying, “Take care of yourself. I guess somebody in some government must want you dead.”
Mona says, “I guess Helen’s little love spell must’ve backfired.” She stumbles in her brown high heels, and leaning on the car, she says, “Believe it or not, we’re doing this to save you.”
Oyster’s slumped in her backseat, too still, too perfect, to be alive. His shattered blond hair spreads across the seat. The Hopi medicine bag still hangs around his neck, cigarettes falling out of it. The red scars across his cheeks from Helen’s car keys.
I ask,
is he dead?
And Mona says, “You wish.” She says, “No, he’ll be okay.” She gets into the driver’s seat and starts the car, saying, “You’d better hurry and go find Helen. I think she might do something desperate.”
She slams her car door and starts to back out of her parking space.
Through her car window, Mona yells, “Check at the New Continuum Medical Center.” She drives off, yelling, “I just hope you’re not too late.”
Chapter 43
In room 131 at the New Continuum Medical Center, the floor sparkles. The linoleum tile snaps and pops as I walk across it, across the shards and slivers of red and green, yellow and blue. The drops of red. The diamonds and rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Both Helen’s shoes, the pink and the yellow, the heels are hammered down to mush. The ruined shoes left in the middle of the room.
Helen stands on the far side of the room, in a little lamplight, just the edge of some light from a table lamp. She’s leaning on a cabinet made of stainless steel. Her hands are spread against the steel. She presses her cheek there.
My shoes snap and crush the colors on the floor, and Helen turns.
There’s a smear of blood across her pink lipstick. On the cabinet is a kiss of pink and red. Where she was lying is a blurry gray window, and inside is something too perfect and white to be alive.
Patrick.
The frost around the edges of the window has started to melt, and water drips down the cabinet.
And Helen says, “You’re here,” and her voice is blurry and thick. Blood spills out of her mouth.
Just looking at her, my foot aches.
I’m okay, I say.
And Helen says, “I’m glad.”
Her cosmetic case is dumped out on the floor. Among the shards of color are twisted chains and settings, gold and platinum. Helen says, “I tried to break the biggest ones,” and she coughs into her hand. “The rest I tried to chew,” she says, and coughs until her palm is filled with blood and slivers of white.
Next to the cosmetic case is a spilled bottle of liquid drain cleaner, the spill a green puddle around it.