Orange Cuts
Paul Jessup
The Gunshot:
The parking lot was empty now, and the emptiness threatened to consume Rae. It threatened to knock her down and out and swallow her whole with big car teeth chomping down, exhausts spitting smog in the air. She fought the emptiness and stood still, severed, a silhouette outlined in the snow, her mind a blank slate, as empty as the parking lot.
Sirens. They punctured the emptiness of her thoughts. She saw red, blue, red, blue, lights flashing, calling out. Gunshot. She remembered it. And it was painful.
Her sister had been shot.
She thought of something else. The kids in the parking lot, not even an hour earlier, the backs of their shoes as they ran inside. Their hollow voices screaming. Some of them were singing, but the songs stopped when the gunshot rang out, their words halted, silenced, dead in their mouths. Dead like bodies, dead like emptiness, dead like pavement. Dead like the Raggedy Ann dropping to its knees, dropping to its waist, head flopping around. Rag doll body dropped, deflated.
I got to call Mike, he needs to know my sister’s dead, he needs to know we’ve got a funeral coming up and some children coming over and they might be staying at our place for a week or a month or year or whenever. I’ve got to call Mike.
She knew that her cellphone was in her jean pocket, felt it bulging there, the weight of the phone call pressing against the emptiness of her thoughts, threatening to smother her.
That pocket was light years away. She couldn’t reach into her pocket, her arms weren’t long enough. She had to swim to get it, swim across a lake filled with sharks, swim beneath the sun and sea, swim and come to a small island in the middle of nowhere, where her cellphone lay stranded on a dune, waiting for her to pick it up. The phone knew which number she needed to dial. The phone knew she had to call Mike.
What the phone didn’t know was this: Mike was not going to be happy. Not for the normal reasons, of death and sadness and the triumph of decay over humanity. No, what the phone didn’t know was that Mike wasn’t even going to listen to what Rae had to say. Instead, he was going to turn this conversation around and completely destroy them both.
Just you wait. Just you wait and see what happens.
*
The phone call:
Mike: What’s up?
Rae: I’ve got to tell you something, oh it’s so horrible.
Mike: Me too, look can we talk about this in person?
Rae: I can’t. I can’t move. I’m made of concrete.
Mike: Look, the news I’ve got to tell you. I need to tell you in person, okay?
Rae: There’s a body, and I feel like it’s mine.
Mike: Yeah, cool. Right. Look, honey... come home.
Rae: They’ve taken her. She was shot right here.
Mike: I, well. Look. Damnit I want to tell you this now. Can I tell you this now?
Rae: The kids were singing. And there was this dog, barking. And it was trying to run, and get the bad man. But it was chained to a fence. And it kept snapping the chain, and being yanked back. Every time there was a gunshot, it darted forward. And then it happened. Again, again, again.
Mike: I was fired.
Rae: There wasn’t any fire. Are you listening to me? There was a gunshot. My sister was killed.
Mike: Come on home, we can talk about this. We need to talk about this, because, well. Because I don’t know what we’re going to do. I don’t want to be homeless.
Rae: I can’t feel my lips. They’re all numb.
*
A Memory:
Mike sliced downwards, cutting an orange in a half. His fingers were stuck, sticky, covered in orange juice. He was careful not to cut himself, he remembered the last time he’d done that and orange juice had got into the wound and it hurt like mother fucker. So bad, so much, he swore for an hour.
He set the knife down and admired the two orange halves, the knife resting between them. They looked like full moons, and they reminded him of the harvest moon, of a night out driving when he was still just barely a kid and he didn’t have to worry about employment or mortgage payments or whether or not Rae still loved him. He just worried about going home and reading a book and sitting on the back porch under that orange circle moon, hung delicately over the fields of corn.
The car was a truck, and it bounced and jimmied and danced and made him think of the roller coaster at the state fair, where he won a blue ribbon for writing a story about the desert. It was called Hot and Sick and was packed to the brim with metaphors about sex and wildlife. Not that anyone cared, the fact that he could string words into a sentence like jewels on a necklace made him the writer of the family and that was something he took with some pride.
The night of the harvest moon was always something special. It meant it was the thick of fall, and this memory, this sharp moment that Mike was transporting himself back to, was a very specific night on a very specific harvest moon. He was just being picked up from Hannah’s house, and he could’ve sworn he was in love.
She had grey black hair and eyes that were golden brown with flecks of green, and a nose and a face that was like something out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. They spent the day in a rowboat on her lake, looking for islands they could go and hide and make out on, her parents in their log cabin on the beach near the waves shouting for them to not be long and to behave themselves and be back soon.
What they found on the island was a small phone and an old shed that had bird bones hanging from twine. Mike wanted to make out; Hannah wanted to get the hell out of there. It creeped her out and she didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it.
And then the ride home, harvest moon overhead, a plump book waiting for him at their house. And all the while he thought about Hannah’s lips and breasts and legs, his thoughts like a magnet, dragging him back to her eyes and her body and that was all he could think about as the truck shook and shimmied on the broken dirt road.
He couldn’t read that night, under the harvest moon. Just like he couldn’t read right now, his hands still sticky, staring at the slices of orange, his knife nestled between the two of them. And he thought for the first time in over twenty years about Hannah’s legs, and her lips, and his first time with Hannah on an island and her opening to him and letting him, ah, letting him in.
And then he picked up that orange and began cutting some more. It no longer looked like a harvest moon. Now it looked like thin slices of light, his memory fading with each cut. And when he was done, and his memory was gone, fleeting, no longer hanging around in his mind, he heard a knocking at the door and realized Rae was coming home.
And then, with each knock, he remembered he was unemployed. And that she didn’t make anywhere near enough to support both of them. And that jobs were scarce and they were in a recession. And that was when he picked up the orange slices and began to shove them into his mouth.
*
The Orange Thief:
Rae waited patiently at the door, chewing on a fingernail and trying not to think about her sister’s body. About the way it fell, just like a rag doll. About the way her head burst, like someone stepping on an orange. She chewed on her nails and tried to think about something else, anything else, whatever else. Just as long as it wasn’t now, wasn’t then, was somewhere far away and distant. Like the island her cellphone was on, waiting for her to call.
Mike swung the door open, the light in the hallway cutting across his body. He had slices of orange in his hand, and a few in his mouth. He mumbled a come on, come in and Rae just waltzed in like a numb ballerina.
That was her orange. He’d eaten the only orange they had left. She was saving that orange for later, when she’d come home from a long rough day at work and peel it off and eat it whole, juices running down her chin and onto her shirt. She wasn’t barbaric, like that bastard Mike. She wasn’t going to cut it up, butcher it into little pieces and shove it into her mouth like some, well, like some wild and half crazed animal. She was civil
ized.
Well, she was civilized, up until this moment. When she saw him grinning at her, grinning with a mouthful of orange peel, his hands covered in sticky orange juice, his eyes distant and sad and she just screamed. She saw the knife on the table behind them, felt the weight of it against her skin. Cutting. Like she was the one being sliced up and devoured and not her orange.
She felt Mike’s eyes on her body, staring at her strangely, like she just wandered out of the crazy house and that just made things worse. The death of her sister fell out of her mind, fell into the shadows and the darkness. All of her thoughts and emotions rested on that knife on the table and these orange slices hung greedily from his lips like slack skin.
She lunged, howling, screaming, the knife on the table laughing at her, Mike’s eyes reflecting a panicked fear that she’d never seen before. His fear settled into her bones, and she fed on it. That adrenaline rush of seeing his eyes wide, his body turning, trying to run, trying to find some place to hide in the shadows of their house.
Orange Thief! Orange Thief! Orange Thief!
*
The Aftermath:
They were on the floor of their living room. The couch was turned over, the television set tumbled and blinking from the shelf. The overhead light shattered with the filament straining for light, and the knife scatters and stops near the refrigerator door.
There was an empty silence in the air, and an empty bottle of wine on the floor, and an empty pack of Camels near the overturned couch. Behind the couch came the soft rise of smoke, and the whispering of laughing voices, and two pairs of legs, dangling, tangled.
They were clothed, sorry eyed, staring at the ceiling. Rae thought about her sister, about the days they spent playing on the playground. Now her sister had two kids and those days felt centuries away, gone far away towards a distant time that was locked in cement and out of reach. She tried reaching her fingers across the generations and grasped onto nothing, empty air and broken shadows.
“She had a doll, a rag doll with red wiry hair. It was her most favorite toy in the whole world. She called her Allibaby. I remember the day a dog got loose on our street, when we were outside playing and waiting for Dad to get home. It was a large, angry thing, the chain still strapped to its neck, broken and dangling and making this hollow noise as it drug it behind.”
Mike was staring off into space, covered in small bruises. “Yeah?” he asked, “Did the dog bite you?”
Rae shook her head no. “My sis, she, well, she threw her doll at the dog. And the dog tore it to shreds. And when he was done he padded away, leaving all these doll parts scattered across our street. She didn’t cry or nothing, she just ran up and grabbed all the parts and hugged them.”
Mike reached over, put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. She scooted away from him, pushing him away. Since this morning she’d become all elbows and bones, all triangles and hurtful shapes. “We buried the doll the next day. In an orange crate, in the backyard. I think they said the dog was rabid, and one of the neighbors shot him. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if she saved my life.”
Mike put out his smoke, stood up and stretched. He wanted to hold her, to keep her close by. To make all the background noise stop. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We need to do something, right? But I don’t know what. I could start looking for work, but work is hard to come by.”
Rae sighed. “Sit down and shut up. We can worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”
*
A Reflection:
The next morning Rae found scattered newspaper pages on the floor and Mike curled up on the couch crying. At the exact hour that Rae’s sister had been shot, Mike’s first love had been mauled by a dog. They found Hannah on the street, the cars slowly pacing around her, people staring out of their windows as the dog pulled on her arm, dragging her body towards the sidewalk, a trail of blood behind her corpse.
The pictures in the newspaper were graphic and disturbing. They showed her face, a face he’d last seen smooth and young and fourteen, now with crow’s feet and laugh lines and a bit torn out of one cheek and her eyes half closed in death. Her mouth, once young and lustful and bright red, was faded with newspaper ink and slit open with the tips of her teeth peeking out from behind her lips. The last time he’d seen her eyes and lips and mouth posed in just the same way, she was close to coming beneath him.
In the newspaper photos her hair was curled and ragged and grey streaked. It was not the same hair Mike had gotten his fingers tangled in so many years ago, this hair was older and finer and aged. The photos showed her ripped blouse, the bite marks taken out of skin and flesh, and her bare stomach torn to shreds. A memory of a kiss on that stomach flooded him, filled him with sadness.
Later that night he and Rae had hollow sex, unable to fill the emptiness that tugged at either of them. All his thoughts centered around one thing. Him and Hannah on the beach, her body rocking beneath his, the sound of the lake waves tumbling against the coarse shore of the island. His hand in her hair, jumbled in those curls, the harvest moon hung pregnant and low over the cornfield, just like an orange cut in half.
Instance
John Cairns
My Christmas visit to Bob was sticky; and rather than keep on kick-starting it (I’d see him at Doreen’s New Year party) I decided to end it by getting up to leave, yet another shock tactic to get it going—by going myself?—by sparking off a wish to detain me to avoid social failure.
It wasn’t working; he got up too, but wasn’t proceeding to showing me to the door. If I sat down again, he’d sit down again: we’d be no further forward. The only alternative was for me to go. He’d follow my lead until I was out, but whether that’d amount to his showing me out was questionable; I’d be outside questioning it, and wondering what the hell that was all about. I’d never know. To know I’d have to stay, but, staying, I’d exhausted all expedients to stay except the last, this, to go—I’m going.
“Kenneth Roy’s run off with the money.”
It works! Mibby. He lacks conviction. It’s a start. Work on it. What’s he talking about? What money? His money? Who’s Kenneth Roy?
“Theatre Company money.”
He answers before I’ve asked! though it was what I asked myself (or you, who am myself, so myself) unless, without my question, he realized a need to clarify. I’ll find out if he answers my next question. By his answer he’s also answered the second: if it’s theatre company’s, it isn’t his. He’s not answering the next, the third I asked (in case he thinks ‘next’ means one to come instead of after the one before). And if he had answered it, it might’ve been he realized the need to clarify than answering my thought he received; but, just in case he is receiving and awaiting a next question, let’s think it again first: Who’s Kenneth Roy? Who is Kenneth Roy? He might think because he knows I must. Do I? Is Kenneth Roy an actor? How would I know him because he’s an actor?
He’s not an actor.
Is that you, or him? If him, he’ll think by ‘him’ I mean Kenneth Roy.
I’m not Kenneth Roy!
It’s him! It’s working. How could an actor—he’s not an actor. How...?
“£2000.”
What! He spoke. It’s not working.
(He thinks he has to because you’re too slow if you thought Kenneth Roy was an actor after he’d said he wasn’t, and too stupid if you thought he was Kenneth Roy.)
! And, again, what. He thought I’d asked ‘how much’. He couldn’t think that, however slow he thinks me, however stupid he is; I’d’ve had to ask ‘how much could’. He might’ve thought I was going to, once I’d corrected myself. He’d expected me to ask ‘how much’, and on hearing the ‘how’, presuming the ‘much’ would follow,... He couldn’t have expected that—he might have, but not on thinking I’m stupid. He wanted me to ask that, and in case I didn’t told me anyway. Why?
Interesting though the amount is, and I’d’ve got round to asking, though if I didn’t wouldn’t imp
ly stupidity—though it might slowness—since his interest isn’t criterion of any intelligence; and interesting, more interesting, why he was intent on impressing me with the size of the amount with the dying fall on the words ‘two thousand pounds’, more of a sigh punctuated by despair at the enormity of it—it certainly impressed him, or he wants me to believe it does—it didn’t answer what I’d asked and still want an answer to.
What?
‘What’?
What’s the question? I forget.
Oh—so do I! How. How could Kenneth Roy, whatever he is, depending on what he is,... “You’re the director. Aren’t you!” Oh! now I’m speaking. This isn’t working. Sometimes I think it is—when I’m not thinking it is because it is—then it’s not. I know why it didn’t there, not that that’s any help; I leapt to it’s his responsibility.
Mine too. Mostly mine. Entirely mine.
We share responsibility, me and Kenneth Roy, for the company—which is what I think you were getting at. I’m responsible, for that.
For this, I’m not responsible. I’d like to be. This is interesting. I’ve never done it before.
That you know of.
Do you, have you, that you know of?
Yes.
You’re responsible. How...
We share responsibility; we’re both doing it. Your question should’ve been why.
I know why. It stops feeling.
It stops everything.
How—why does it? I do mean how.
We, our unconsciouses are communicating infinitely fast.
How! How d’you do that? (because it is you doing it) make me think, communicate infinitely fast. Infinitely fast? That’s not possible.
Dadaoism (An Anthology) Page 28