The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories

by Eugen Bacon

“No change, darling,” she said. “Come along later. We’ll find something. Maybe food too. Those bones need meat.”

  For his haggard, disheveled look, he realized, she had mistaken him for a tramp. He opened his lips to speak, to ask directions to one Sugar Sweetman. But the woman had already turned toward the inner room and was waving him inside.

  “You look crook,” she said. “Belushi, can of baked beans. Come in. I’ll feed you, all right. This once. Come.”

  He followed.

  “I’m no bargain store, chappy,” she tossed over her shoulder. “But something’s going down for you to look that crook.” She nodded at a visitor’s lounge. “We’ll fix us up good.”

  “I’m—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it was a case of mistaken identity. He wasn’t a tramp.

  “Yes?”

  “Sugar. Sweetman. If you could just show me where she—”

  “Who are you?”

  “My . . . my name . . . Liam—”

  “Keen?” Her gaze incredulous.

  He brightened. “Are you Sugar Sweetman?”

  “None other twenty miles round.”

  “On the phone . . .” he said. “We—”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “You’re worse than Nero said. Belushi, can of baked beans. Worse.” Loud, rolling laughter spread free as a sneeze.

  When Sugar’s laughter subsided, she lifted a menu-like tablet from a chrome shelf unit. Wordlessly, she passed it over to him and left him to it in the visitor’s lounge. He looked at the list spread out before him, the graphics and explanations of each, and flushed.

  She returned dressed in a daffodil-yellow kimono of slinky silk. Lemon drops sprigged with crimson baby spade-leaves. They danced on the cloth. A topaz necklace swayed above smooth honey-colored breasts. A heady scent, clover and wild, wrapped around her as she moved.

  She pressed a small shot glass into his hand. “Malt Rum,” she said. Her hands were rough as a farmer’s, the nails on them clean and trimmed. But her touch on his fingers was like a spinal tap. It shook him all over.

  “Drink,” she said. He hesitated. “You’ll need it.”

  He took a gulp.

  “You look comfortable,” he managed through a tight throat, wary of what was on offer.

  “Comfortable?”

  She threw her head back and laughed, that loud-as-a-sneeze laughter, perhaps louder. It spread, it tinkled. One couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t.

  “Comfortable,” she said again. “I’m comfy, darling. More than.” Candy-eyes appraised him. “Now you need to be.”

  She led him by hand to an inside chamber, a room that smelled of lavender, primulas and cyclamens. It, in fact, had those very flowers in colorful array in a vase.

  Liam noted a leather head on a Rustler king bed of solid timber in the Pharaoh suite.

  Sugar sensed his severe mental baggage. She treated him like one on the critical list.

  He exclaimed, closed his eyes and faded into a calm sleep.

  6

  He stirred to her coaxing, fingers and then hands, finally her mouth, rousing him.

  He was lying on his back, but she pulled him so that he sat, entwined in her arms. She nurtured him in her caress. “Think of Audrey.”

  They soared to a cosmic dimension.

  “I’m a body artist,” she whispered, as he wept.

  ***

  The weather was wild when he stepped outside the building. He hunched against a whooshing wind. Cold air touched his nostrils, inside a heady scent of warm cinnamon bread from Hoochi Mama. His jacket flapped about until he clutched the ends.

  Hoochi Mama was impossible to resist.

  “How you doing?” said a heavy mono-eyed woman with a bust ten melons wide.

  “You’re lucky to be inside.”

  She followed his eyes out the flapping shutters.

  “Does that to people, the bread,” she said with a twinkling eye. “How many bread you want?”

  He settled for one loaf.

  She peered into the oven. “Ready in a minute.” Her R dragged. “Drink-a coffee? How you take it?” Gave him marks with index and thumb joined in a circle with the word “Good”. It was a compliment. “Too much sugar no good. Look-a me!”

  He joined her honest-as-music laughter. The coffee when it came was something else. One sip tightened his nipples.

  “Have-a some apple cinnamon,” she said. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. The bun was crispy and golden outside, perfectly baked inside. It fell apart like snow in his mouth. He closed his eyes to linger the taste.

  “You drink-a more coffee?” He couldn’t. But she tossed a puffed bun anyhow into the brown paper bag with his crusty cinnamon bread.

  “Don’t insult-a me,” when he tried to pay for the coffee.

  In the car on the way back, he wondered about Sugar, how she fit in his picture of healing. Why exactly had Nero directed Liam to her?

  When confronted, Nero mounted a very scientific argument. “You needed a score, baby. Been running on reserve, man. Seeping to subzero.”

  “But why?” Liam demanded.

  “Why were you on reserve? You tell me!”

  “Why did you give me Sugar’s number?”

  “Your existence was dominated by a woman who tossed you out like a bin. Now you’ve got momentum to find purpose beyond Audrey, you ask me why?”

  “I thought the number was for a shrink,” Liam said.

  “You wanted a shrink?”

  “No-o.”

  “Listen, matey,” Nero put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “I did a bust once. Explosives. I was green, knew jack. And there were explosives. Know what the officer-in-charge did? He said: ‘If you hear a big boom, lurch out the nearest exit, hop into a car and drive.’ That’s what our officer said. ‘Drive like mad. Don’t try and be a hero.’” He removed his hand. “You are in a boom, mate. One hell of a plonker. Drive.”

  “Yes. Well. Fine one to say. But—” he had to know. “How did you . . . surely . . . What in heaven will Viv think—?”

  “Leave my wife out of this.”

  Liam finally squeezed it out of him: “First time I met Sugar, she was a tarot card reader.”

  And—yes—Nero did know about the menu in Sugar’s no-red-carpet apartment.

  7

  Sugar paced him. She ran him through her menu, one that left no boaty burp. Sure, sometimes she cooked. But whatever it was on that menu, it had little to do with food.

  Despite all that, Liam was dismayed to find Audrey hung on in his head, refusing to dislodge. He left lengthy messages on her mobile. She never answered, never called back. But he was possessed by the woman. She spread, filling every brain cell of him, growing more and more beautiful each dream. He soon succumbed to the realization he was a well-adjusted slob: Audrey had left an indelible scent of herself in his head; an imprint like a bloodstain that constantly reminded him of death.

  Through it all, Sugar was a gun. A bit more each time.

  One day, sensing his deep helplessness, his neediness as he sobbed in her arms with no self-preservation, she set him straight. “I give no absolutes,” she said. White-as-white hair flicked. “Falling in love is a no-no.” She squeezed him gently. “That’s one potential danger slot.” Sweet saucer eyes regarded him. Black candy-eyes that went deep and deep.

  And though his heart raced tall and fast, he understood her words. They were simple. He could take what she offered. Use it, need it, but he could never, could never ever control it.

  He accepted that space: no complications.

  And it was just as well. He was home and hosed when it came to no complications. Liam could hold his own now. Love was black-eyed venom.

  8

  At the aqua center there was another swimmer in the water. She left the wall, arms first. Her head and s
houlders came out of the water. Kick, she lunged forward.

  On his way home, he saw her again, across the car park. She dropped something—her goggles.

  “Thanks,” her voice syrupy. Their fingers touched past the goggles.

  He noticed her frumpy look: a jean shirt above a striped frock; a black jacket thrown over the shirt; soiled shoes and the most ridiculous rucksack. He also noticed her hair: sloppily contained with a single clip, but how lustrous! It was chestnut with highlights. It twinkled under a blonde moon, a single moon, unlike the triple moons of Bathox.

  Bathox: memories of it ambushed him when he least expected.

  He made his way through the dusk, stopped by a traffic light. The night was full of innocence, no angry clouds in the horizon. Down the road, the wink of a garbage van’s lights. A chill in the air blew his way. The wind smelled lightly of smog, or smoke, or a whiff of reeds. Out yonder, a line of birds climbed on a silent migration to someplace.

  Liam looked about him in the night. He spotted the odd folk loitering about: a man with a short crop, but half his face covered in a mustache, walking past a pharmacy. A girl with crystal eyes and a boyish figure. She clapped down the street in knee-high boots, past a fleet of shops: a closed fish and chips, a pawn shop, a shoe repair shop. She cut into a corner. A gent with a furrowed brow and receding hair. He walked in Liam’s direction.

  Liam wondered about them. Singly, he studied anyone he saw. Were there other visitors to this world like him? Hard to tell—how easily visitors blended. How they cleaved through people. Like him, arrivals didn’t come with a beak on their face or bark in their skin. They looked like everyday folk. They played laidback and they fit. Like Audrey, who belonged to this world. She fit. Yes, he still remembered Audrey. Wisps of her catapulted in chambers of his mind: the kitchenette, the lounge, the bedroom. Memories of her lunged at him with the intensity of a longing that was also a nightmare.

  At this moment, he thought, a man named Flint was in bed, dragging Audrey under his breath. Did she wear black lace that showed everything, sprawled on his bed and willing?

  He remembered how he and Audrey that final night had sat together yet alone, how she smiled a tender smile, and said words that shot out like grenades. “His name is Flint.” He remembered how the music stopped.

  9

  It took twelve full lunar cycles of Sugar and of Hoochi Mama’s hot cinnamon bread before Liam’s application to the force was screened and processed. Before he knew it, he was a recruit. Then he was a cop. His life was getting back on track. It had taken a while getting his faculties together, but he was no longer morose and maladjusted. Sure, he still wept at Sugar’s. But the rest of him kicked to a new dimension. Sugar had repaired him to good nick. Keen career prospects were looking his way. The rate he was going, Nero was hinting at ballistics.

  ***

  One day, Sugar upped the ante.

  “New item on the menu,” she said. “Obsessavaganza.”

  She tossed her white-as-white hair. He ran his fingers through it, and agreed.

  Obsessavaganza.

  First, she ran him a warm bath.

  Liam soaked in the fat tub, legs wrapped around the faucet as water rushed against his body. He thought about the water, its hydrogen and oxygen molecules combined, reacted together, a chemical equation not dissimilar from person-to-person chemistry. In one combination, it formed water—purging, sustaining. In another: hydrogen peroxide—burning, toxic. Time slipped by. He sat and sat in that bathtub scented with tropical pineapple salt.

  He remembered how he arrived in a glider. How it needed something compact and small to shoot into, else the energy scatter arising from velocity and impact would cause a blast. He wondered how many visitors to this world reached safe passage. Acorns made good landing. Or okra. Coconuts were too big.

  He remembered Audrey’s profoundly beautiful eyes teeming with something more, her smile genuine and big soon as she set eyes on him. He remembered their first bath together, how she scrubbed the parts of his back he couldn’t reach, how the pleasure was near impossible to take.

  What went wrong?

  Now Sugar delivered him to the bedroom. She produced a towel, plush in its thickness, ripe in its yellow color. Toweled, dried, he lay on her Rustler king bed. He allowed himself to relax to the hum of ornamented music: it threw up slurs and bends and slides and wails. It rose and fell, jigged and reeled as music notes bent, cut and rolled before they softened to quiet.

  Sugar caressed him all over. She explored with her fingers. First, she guided him through eye circles: look at the ceiling. Breathe. Move your eyes only. Look as far left as you can. Now as far right. Now toward your feet. Your eyes only moving, not your head.

  Then she massaged his jaw. Breathe. Make a sound. Any sound. What sound? Be silly.

  She held his jaw with her hands, wiggled it. She pressed her fingers into his lips, reached into his cheeks, massaged his teeth, his gums. She worked his head, lolled it from side to side. She touched his belly, kneaded gently with her hands and then fists. She squeezed and released until he felt loosened, and then tense as the pressure of her hands shifted to a new dance on his skin.

  It was an awakening.

  He strained for her touch, willed her hands to reach every part of him. Energy rushed through his body like steam. He felt new and hot all at once, breathed faster and faster unable to contain himself. As more and more energy engulfed him, the intensity pushed tears to his eyes. It felt like any moment he would fly. He took a breath. He thought about the water, its hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Just then, Sugar moved her touch. His breath fell.

  The sensation . . . It was ecstasy, a dance drug, a spa. Firepower. Release. Pressure. Release. Heightened senses pulsated in every inch of him. Liam’s life stood still, then he was flying into a bright light. He swallowed his cry—only just. Something snapped and exploded. His body whistled in all parts.

  Obsessavaganza.

  It stamped Audrey right off his head, a complete whitewash. First, fragments of her sprinkled away like shards of glass, and then blew away like fairy dust. Liam nearly danced outright. He started a victory dance with his hand, but Sugar restrained him.

  “You have matriculated with honors,” she said.

  “Therapy,” his voice full of wonderment.

  To celebrate, Sugar cooked for him. She tossed a live, squirming lobster into an angry frying pan spitting oil. Stirred it with a wooden spoon until the shell snapped. Inside, the meat was white and tender.

  They ate from one bowl with their hands, spat shells into another. Liam’s fumbles with the lobster, pinching its legs with thumb and index fingers, snapping clumsily to arrive at moist meat inside, amused Sugar.

  Tender, juicy, fresh—that lobster eaten so primitively was far different from Audrey’s thread-thin bream, ribboned bell pepper arranged on a plate in a bouquet of purple, green and orange around baby strips of beef. No classical music, Valkyries and the like. Just Sugar’s fat laughter that tinkled, prickled and spread bigger than a sneeze.

  Sugar was vintage. And she was addictive. With a girl-next-door demeanor, candy soft eyes and big white-as-white hair, she was no spread for a magazine cover. But she mastered a fine art few women could boast. After Obsessavaganza, Liam never thought of Audrey. Not once. In fact, she receded to a very thin memory that did not meaningfully upset him.

  No sterner measures were necessary for healing at this point.

  Yet to oblige Sugar—or perhaps to expand his horizon—Liam tried, in a pivotal moment, Erase. Sugar dropped a gloop of oil on his body, and greased him up. She lunged at him in tackles, one knock and down he went on flexed knee clutching at his ribs.

  She swung a hook in an unprecedented back flip that had plenty on it. She swooped him, kneed him, punched him, kicked him. Threw him, choked him, tonged him, cuffed him, chained him, concussed him. Left purple bruises
bigger than grapefruit on his skin. He caved, driven half-mad with pain and pleasure.

  He knew that when he left Sugar’s to stop at Hoochi Mama’s, she might ask, “You run-a red light? You bang-a into a wall?” He could well have slid under a freight train, the way he looked. Winded, he amazed at Sugar’s strength.

  Belushi, can of baked beans! he thought on a whopper flyer. Celestial. Pigs might fly.

  10

  They lay side by side on a fuchsia carpet, feet touching. A lime sky streaked with smoky cloud out the far window. Tall glasses sizzled with bubbly between them. It was the first time, he realized, she’d got a sparkly for them.

  “What did she do to you?” Sugar asked.

  “Who?” he asked, tongue lazy with vintage fizz. Distinct apricots, acid and a blend of something biscuity toyed on his lips.

  She raised on her elbows. “Audrey.”

  “What do you mean?” he hedged.

  “Why did her leaving make you like you were? Break you?”

  Light from a white, shifting sun caught the mahogany wood of a chiffonier. He was silent for a moment, not sure where this question had come from. Bothered him where it was headed.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly at last. “I really don’t know.”

  A distant craft soared across the streaked sky. Liam followed it with his eyes until it vanished beyond the window. Even then, he still thought and wondered about why “His name is Flint” had left him so off the rails. Broken him enough to need fixing.

  Sugar rose from the floor and stood there in a Fanta-orange kimono by the chiffonier. Layers of age formed unique contours on the wood. She gazed at him.

  Slowly, his words began to form. He let them spill out in bits and fits as they came. “She was the works.” There was no texture in his voice. “Audrey was. A prime cut.”

  Sugar nodded lightly. “A fine, fine lady she must have been.”