-Simon.
-Peter?
-Jesus!
-Ah, pal, I don’t believe it.
-It’s true.
-You saw her?
-Yes. And …
-?
-I followed her.
-You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested.
-She didn’t even know I was there.
-I’ll bet.
-What do you mean?
-Women always know.
-Well, even if she did know she didn’t acknowledge me.
-Take the hint?
-Maybe she’s shy.
-Maybe you gave her the creeps.
-She was being playful, that’s all. I lost her in a patisserie.
-Archetypal tart.
-What I need is a strategy.
-Strategy? Strategy? Like what? Chloroform and handcuffs?
-Oh, please. I’ve no intention of resorting to the obvious.
-Listen to reason, buddy. You’re working yourself into a state. What’s wrong with the whores on Penelope Street?
-You know that’s not my style.
-You’ve no idea what you’re missing, Pete.
-Oh yes I do. Simon’s sloppy seconds.
At this, Simon laughs. He wonders what it must be like to be in love. If Peter’s permanent ‘shoulder arms!’ and goofy moanings are typical symptoms then he’ll opt for the clap any day.
-Let me get this straight, Simon says.
-on the basis of an artfully pubic polaroid, you’ve become smitten. Without knowing so much as her name, her address, without so much as an ‘I’m calling the cops, weirdo’ spoken between you. On the basis of this you’re going to harass her till she beds you?
-And more! I’ve a premonition of partnership!
-Oh weeping Jesus! The boy’s starkers!
-Mark my words, Simon. Twill come to pass.
-And where will bliss be bonded, may I ask. The Chapel of the Kittenwhipped Turk?
-No need to be rude.
-Sorry.
But sorry or not, Simon can’t wait to find out what happens next. To his quimthralled, knock-me-down-with-a-discount-garter pal. Cockproud Peter.
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Leaning against a withered fig tree, blasted lifeless in some recent tantrumed Act of God, Churl wipes his nose on the sleeve of his black, brocaded Persian jacket.
It is a purchase Churl is proud of.
Acquired brutal years earlier in a trade with a pimply theology student in the holy city of Qom. The student vouches for its pedigree from before the Islamic restoration.
The jacket was the particular sartorial perversity of a former SAVAK man, head of the department concerned with ‘Violation of Family Honor.’
A professional rapist, in short. A rusty trace of blood along one cuff is pointed to as proof. After long stressful hours toiling in the Shah’s torture dungeons, the fellow relaxed in the privacy of his modest suburban home by alternating slugs of infidel bourbon and mechanically tender buggerings of his favorite catamite. A pretty, pockmarked boy who would grow up to be none other than this same theology student, aspiring mullah, claiming for himself the charming sobriquet of ‘The Noose of Allah’.
Churl approves. He is, after all, a history buff, in a decidedly non-Hegelian sort of way.
Churl gazes upon the school kids at play. Bratty, untouched. The wave of the whitewashed future. Churl comforts himself with a brief game of pocket pool, his trousers undulating like a fat vaudevillean’s. His rapid breathing drains the colors from Evangeline Park. The pretty children skip and spin, freezing one by one into thin gray pillars of salt.
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She felt foolish for proposing an index of lines and foolisher for being drunk when doing so.
Lines, the Candyman said right off. Then repeated the word, its silky train bumped this time by a question mark, an usher about to topple.
She couldn’t remember that word being part of her original gaffe, but in a phrase of such brevity, it seemed remarkable to misplace a full fifty percent of the nouns. Remarkable. Downright daft.
He could easily have mocked her, or spurned her loudly in full view and earshot of the many still-mobile drunkards shambling all around them. But he didn’t. He was quite tender, in choice fact. Shoving a strand of errant hair behind her ear, then leaning back all cozy and self-satisfied on his stool, jacket flap opening and vandalizing her twenty-twenty with a glimpse of shadow and ruff, a marginal erection uncoiling comfortably the oval twinkle of his policeman’s belt-badge.
-‘Names’ perhaps you meant.
-Yes, she wheezed from astonishment to smile.
-an index of names. And you can pick.
-It’d be more exciting if you made the selection.
-You want me to.
-I mean it would make me more. You know. Excited.
-You mean.
-Hm.
-Really?
-Hm. Hm.
He certainly looked no very big difference from the other cops of her acquaintance. His methods were, however, more burl and incense than barter and claw.
She gave him her account number and he wrote it down on the edge of the lunch menu, before stripping the sheet and wedging it between the slightly obscene lips of his wallet.
That was weeks ago. Adelaide had her suspicions about him. It was merely dumb luck that kept her in the dark as to the fire she was playing with.
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As senior flatfoots, Detectives Hobsbaum and Muir have earned the right to flout and bend, to harass the strong and erode the sand the weak stand upon. There’s no hazard left that excites them. Corrupt judges have wept in their presence. Honest witnesses have perjured themselves at the sight of those two doing crosswords in the back of the gallery. They spire in and out of Allenby’s fiefdom on whim.
At this moment they are hulking about the Staging Room, squeezing Prieto for his notes, placing bets on the scale and time of the Glass ascendancy, questioning the ruggedness of their one-time pal, the legendary Pitt.
-Try saying that to his face.
Emma, having missed their earlier commentary, steps through the door, grocery back of take-out and sparkling water bottled in her arms.
-Say what to whose face?
Pitt follows, his body stopstart, as if led by an invisible chain.
Hobsbaum notes the two for a mental surveillance snap, to be bittered for clues at a later date. Muir notes Pitt’s unshaven jaw, a certain distraction of the eyes, almost remembers a period of his own career when burn-out was a shameful thing.
-Who, besides the three of you does Allenby have on this?
Hobsbaum juts his chin at the gruesome wall.
-A couple of uniforms from Central, Prieto volunteers, not quite sure where he fits in among the shadow-casting personalities.
Muir pulls up a chair as Emma begins to unpack the provisions for another all-nighter. His smile is benign, avuncular, slightly drunk, accepting the invitation not yet offered.
Hobsbaum’s still working his grizzly on a shakedown.
-Five cerebellums and seven toe-tags. What is that? Too few, too many, just right?
-You want in on the action? Pitt asks, holding a styrofoam cup with lipstick stains.
-We could use the help, Prieto laughs, and gets a sharp-eye from both Pitt and Glass.
What’s up with those two? Muir wonders.
In the hallway outside, having tucked the youngsters in for the night, Hobsbaum turns to Muir.
-Prieto seems like a sweet sort of chump. But what’s up with the other two? Beauty and the Beast?
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She calls herself ‘Centipede’.
Jocko calls her his redemption, though never to her face.
She is his precious fear.
Fabulous staying power.
Merciless enough to hint at generational horror, trauma remembered only too well.
Until she removes her leather jacket no sense of deformity and then, for the merest instance before the soft orders issue.
Severe curvature of the spine, constricted, catacombed in the tight thongs of her rubber corset.
Centipede is a specialist.
Jocko has never had the nerve, the courage, to ask.
The real reason for the heavy wooden crucifix, cartoon fire-engine red, which she wears on a chain about her neck.
An affectation?
Like the stilettos, the garter belt, the garlic and tarragon musking her shaved pubis? Or something else?
Jocko, stripped, bends over a wooden chair.
His knuckles white where he grips the edge of the seat.
The unpadded ridge of the back digs into his chest.
The copper tips of the whip graze the ceiling.
Bell-like they kiss and hiss.
The whip comes down.
Centipede’s got an arm on her.
There is no sissy code-word to make her stop.
Kiss the ceiling.
Whip comes down.
The trick for Jocko is to let it hurt.
And oh, it does, it does.
The blood runs down from his shoulders, back, and buttocks.
It slides and drips, a flood of tributaries.
It reddens his heels, pools from beneath his insteps, outlines his toes.
She has turned the alarm clock to face the wall.
He needs to believe it could go on forever.
And when it stops it’s just beginning.
Centipede applies the poultice of linseed, wood varnish, and salt water.
Jocko bites his tongue.
But his brain is screaming.
Later he will whisper:
-Forgive me.
Centipede will ignore him.
The words aren’t meant for her.
Besides which, she has no forgiveness to offer.
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In the small guest bedroom, where she occasionally entertains her nameless, regular boyfriends, Gwendolyn lays out Belinda’s nightdress. As a final touch, a trio of foiled peppermints on the pillow.
The dog lies in the doorway, head on paws, tail awag as though it might be happy or bemused.
Gwendolyn hums softly to herself. A pop song from her youth. A lighthearted ditty of betrayal, mutilation, and true love. She has promised to get out the photo album. To share with Gwenju those black and white still lives of her daughter’s childhood, girlhood, maidenhood. For now, however, she is grace besieged in the corner rocking chair, busily exorcising ghosts.
She remembers details, never names.
The boy who told her she reminded him of his favorite grade school teacher, who rimmed her so that she almost believed. The straddling lad who mumbled ‘Mommy’ as he unloaded between her mumsoft, rosy breasts.
She culls her lovers from the last unendangered species on earth. Panting for a shortcut back to the gourmandizing womb. And every one of them, as adamant as they are transparent.
Gwenju dozes, waiting.
He never cared for Belinda.
His ears burn still, no mockery left mute.
-Call yourself a dog, you paltry little faggot?
Where is my sweet potato pie? he pleads, he dreams.
Or, at the very least, a jelly doughnut from Gwendolyn’s secret stockpile.
His mother rocks and Gwenju growls queer warning.
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-I’ve had the strangest feeling lately.
-What’s that? Puss asks.
Fiona’s fork punctures the wedge of her Argentine omelet.
-I think … I feel like someone’s been following me.
-Why? Puss asks, noncommittal politeness tinged with the threat of proprietary dissolution.
-I’ve no idea. I’ve paid all my bills. I haven’t gone out without any clothes on in public lately …
-No, that’s not what I meant.
-Oh, you mean what is it I feel when I feel that feeling?
-Right.
Puss spoons a vulgar mound of cinnamon over his lukewarm oatmeal.
-It’s hard to describe, Fiona says softly, smiling as though distracted.
-but I feel a tingle right here.
She touches a spot near her left clavicle.
-It prickles, like it’s waking up, she adds.
Despite himself, Puss does a quick glance-around, checking out their fellow diners. Beneath the stubble of his raw buzzcut Puss’s scalp prickles, sympathetic to Fiona’s collarbone.
-Do you have that feeling now? he asks, barometer dropping somewhere in the region of his groin.
Fiona places thumb and index to her pale throat as if checking for a pulse, pauses, then shakes her head slowly from side to side.
-No, Fiona frowns, and brings no comfort, no standing down of Puss’s riding sense of urgency.
‘At risk.’ ‘In harm’s way.’ Two phrases Puss despises, yet which he now feels sufficiently spooked as to apply them to his special Fiona, his special Puss. His rapid vetting of the surrounding crowd has soured him with dread. Puss’s radicalism is one fueled by shyness. His inability to fit in. His unsuccessful flirtations with anonymity. His hatred of gangs. (Although he loves those girls in uniform.)
He and his true love are hemmed in by the reps of the ruling class, the wannabe-bosses. They’ve got their cake and they want to eat his and Fiona’s too. Too dim, too selfish to be truly Fascist, these money-grubbing, conspicuously consumptive haters of the poor, the unfortunate, and the downtrodden, finding them smelly nuisances they must hold their noses against and step over as they jog the golden highway to power. And yet, and yet, smugly insistent that they’re cool as the deadest of pale icons. Loud, insolent, having learned their manners from the latest blockbuster, where the white suburbs implausibly mime the boasts of the ripped-off desperate ethnics.
Can’t you see us? the enemy roars.
Our tons of money?
Our overpriced toys?
Our knockout mannequin girlfriends?
Our rock and roll?
Our imported beer?
Our Third World coke?
Our ponytails?
Our earrings?
Is Puss sheer envy incarnate?
Perhaps.
But more importantly.
Puss is suddenly very scared.
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-Um, Roger appreciates, sliding three fingers from his wife’s dollhouse glove and licking them with exaggerated pleasure.
-you taste like oysters and cognac, like amaretto and cantaloupe.
-Oh, you always say that, Mimi laughs, keeping her legs spread in the event he decides, her great repeater, to honeydrip her up again.
She is suffused and half braindead in her happy quota of orgasms, the fight in the beer garden almost forgotten.
Although Mimi and Roger always have sex as an aftercourse to their spats and battles (always), this afternoon has seen the advent of a new twist.
For it was Roger who made the first move.
Till now tradition dictates Mimi’s role as initiator. As though her tongue and fingers were the regal touch whereby her husband might be cured of the pout, as blood drains from brain and into his thinskinned ox, slack casing stretched dull with the raw thrumble and pulse, an engineer’s optimistic seesaw, dimwit muscle straining against the tug of ghostly weights, jerking lightly upwards to the whispered plink of chromed invisible tethers.
And Mimi would have done so had not Roger knelt and unsandaled her. And pulled down her pants. And panties. And shuffled her backwards until her rump bounced upon the ugly yet comfortable armchair, his hands gripping her by the ankles. To lift her knees. And part her legs. To brace his shoulders against the backs of her thighs. Lowering his head in false humility. And setting immediately about the exquisite aquatic task.
And were some flying squad of auditors and judges from the Marital Measures & Standards Committee to come knocking at Mimi and Roger’s residence, theirs would be a rudely split decision. The Cecil B. DeMille faction, for whom silence is golden, would be a hurricane of arched eyebrows, shocked in disbelief at the decibelic volume the pair is capable of. As for the aficionados of David Lean crowd scenes, earplugs might be the order of the day, but fisted thumbs up would pierce the horny air.
When Mimi gabriels a bloodstuffed horn, decapitating the mushroom’s foamy knob, she hums and moans and tantrums in a twelve-tone version of ‘Spank Me, Daddy!’ As though greedy that the head of her husband’s fat goat should come to nest in the shallows of her diaphragm.
When Roger dredges the swamp to kiss the fox’s perfumed face he won’t shut up. An Elizabethan monologue studded with drowned Phoenician garglings, passionate Blackamoor outbursts, once-more-into-the-breach exhortations. His lips sentimental at the warm silk sleeve of his wife, his tongue a hummingbird spasm in the epileptic thrum of her groove.
Needless to say, when our couple chooses the yin-yang of 69 there is a roar to beggar Nuremberg.
Mimi surfaces from her posting of a moist dream. Her pearl is wet as a dewberry in a snail’s snotty wake. Domestic racket wafts from the kitchen. Roger reappears, bearing a beer apiece. A sure sign that he wants to talk. But talk they will not. For the telephone bleats.
-I’ll get it, Roger says, setting the beers down on the coffeetable.
Roger’s greeting is brusque. A basso downswirl of rude impatience. He turns now, telephone receiver at his breast.
-It’s for you.
-Who is it? Mimi asks, yawning and struggling lazily to her feet.
-I don’t know. Some guy.
Some guy?
Portent of dread.
-Hello?
The voice on the other end comes to her as from under a vast weight of years. For a moment she doesn’t believe it. She senses Roger behind her, listening.
The voice of an old boyfriend. Whom she ditched so disloyal. Left curled in his own spew. Abandoned among mocking, jaded strangers. Long ago. And far away. On a dark, a stormy night. Mimi takes a deep breath and speaks:
-Peter?
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(Postcard III)
Early morning color.
Parisian autumn.
Going towards or moving away from.
The Louvre’s gravel courtyard.
Reacting to this image dates one immediately.
Only strong memories can make vanish the vitreous triangular atrocity.
(One’s first lesbian kiss? ; the realization that ‘The Coronation of Napoleon’ was one toothachingly huge canvas? ; the Right Bank at dawn, or dusk, and drunk! drunk! drunk?)
I.M. Pei, striding like a turd-dropping colossus, the horizon’s beckoning line an insult he alone might rectify.
Still, kids seem to like it.
They like it ugly and they like it big.
And who in their right mind dare contradict the midget tyrants, these late days and later nights.
Dear Burnt Offering A,
pillowtalk turns to nightmare
(which is where I heard this):
young men who cross the bridge below Rosario,
on the Parana River, are frequently lured
into the stream by a beautiful water sprite
named Catshit. Weeks, even months pass
before their bodies surface far upstream.
What little flesh remains on their bones
gives off a shine like silver.
Just keeping ya posted.
One-Eyed Jack