'I mean - I like having you, Jonathan,' Bash said. 'Hanging out and catching dinner at restaurants and seeing movies at grindhouses downtown is my language. Cammy always knew that.'
She had started calling him Jon, knowing it annoyed him.
'Maybe she chose to ignore that. Doesn't fit into her master plan.'
'Yeah.' Bash cracked another fortune cookie and dropped the fortune into the ashtray.
Beware of offers that are too generous.
'She's local, right? I mean, you met her here?'
Bash nodded. 'She applied for the desk job at Rapid. She had a fiance in the city, Robert Somebody, who dumped her. All her furniture was in storage. I was looking at a rent bump in Russet Run I really couldn't afford solo. Melanie and I had broken up; I was going out with waitresses from the Apple Pan, for godsake.'
'Yow, jailbait city. You one daring dude.' Jonathan decided to have a fortune cookie. A man is known by his deeds.
'So, Melanie was gone, anyway. Camela shows up. We took lunch. We did bed. She said, wouldn't it solve a lot of problems if we moved in together? Partners. Maybe a genuine relationship could develop here. You know, a relationship is what you do while you're looking for someone better to come along. I thought her little-girl lisp was cute. I still do, sort of. I don't know. Somewhere between takeoff and landing this plan to grow old together popped up… and to date, I have done nothing to countermand it.'
He unleashed a beery sigh, gathering air in his big hands as though trying to mold it into a shape, make his problems physical so he could wrestle them, fight to win. Bash had always disliked if-come, blue-sky shit. He massacred another cookie.
Marriage requires much serious consideration.
'Amen,' he said to that one.
'Is this a woman you look at and say, 'I'd like to spend the rest of my life with you?' ' Jonathan fiddled with the snow globe. The dead were reburied by snow.
'Nope. Not at this moment.'
'You're hedging.' Jonathan exhumed all the dead with a shake of his hand. The snow resembled whirling curds of cottage cheese.
'Yup.'
'Then both of you guys are waiting for the penny to drop. You're trying to outlast each other, because nobody wants to take the actual responsibility for terminating the relationship.'
'Doesn't everybody do that?'
Jonathan conceded. 'I'm beginning to think it doesn't do any good to stand and watch a relationship shrivel and rot and finally drop off the tree. Even when it turns to compost, goes back into the earth, you try to convince yourself that it's still there, and nothing really has changed. Hope springs eternal. Guilt, too. But when it's over, it's over- I'm still not very good at it, but I'm learning.'
'You're worse at it than I am,' Bash said. His new beer was drained to the dregs.
'We're talking about you and your roommate, big guy.'
Bash had a new sparkle in his gaze that said he was ready for a Terminal Turbo. 'Don't obfuscate. I am bigger than you, squirt. Half squirt.'
'Oh yeah. Beat me up. Change my opinion.'
'I didn't say taller, needledick.'
'Uh-huh.' Jonathan aimed his Quietly bottle, lapsing into his demented Oriental voice: 'Mister, you trying to dlive car wif no gas, and car a Datsun, anyhow.'
'Wrongo, chuckwalla.' He rose and made a rude monster noise accompanied by a pelvic thrust. 'Watch Truck-Zilla crush buses!' He was hale and valedictory now.
Jonathan toasted back. 'You mean watch Hindenburg crash, white boy.'
Bash proudly displayed the international greeting he carried between his index and ring fingers. 'Terminal Turbo for two?'
'Yowzah.' Jonathan replaced the snow globe and picked up the Magic 8-Ball, inverting it without actually thinking of a question.
Eat shit, pinhead.
Bash stoked the Krups and spooned up his quadruple measures. Unscrewed caps for liquor bottles. He hummed.
Jonathan had another cookie. Better than playing a loser's game against the Magic 8-Ball.
Be prepared for unexpected new developments.
'Did you see that xerox Jessica brought in?' said Bash from the kitchen. The hairless cat? Some rare breed. Supposed to be only a hundred of them in the world. A cat with no fur. It looked like a demon, all pointy-eared and wrinkle-skinned and hungry-looking. Feral. Ugly fucker.'
'I missed that one.'
As a fifth grader, Jonathan had fed cats. It was too presumptuous to say you owned a cat, since they always vanished or got killed in messy ways, and with either the departure was permanent.
He had hated Amanda's cat.
She had named it Puff, of all things, back in the early days before a normal person would realize what a stupid name that was. Puff was an orange tabby. Amanda used to let it sleep between her legs. Dozens of times, Jonathan had watched Amanda part her legs in sleep to accommodate Puff, who rubbed against her, supplying warmth and pressure and, Jonathan supposed, a gentle purring vibration, in a kind of loathsome surrogate of sexual union and childbearing. The invader would monitor Jonathan through half-sleeping, slitted devil eyes. It insinuated itself into the warm saddle from which Jonathan had found himself, more and more often, rebuffed.
Thinking of cats now was just one more thing that demonstrated what he had lost. He was worse at this than Bash.
'I've always supposed that dogs and cats have the same degree of raw animal intelligence,' Jonathan said. He had to say something, to prove his mind hadn't gone a-wanderin' again. 'Cat people say cats are smarter. Dog people ditto. It's probably that dogs are much easier to anthropomorphize. They lead the blind. They pull drowning infants from frozen creeks. Cats… cats stare at invisible monsters.'
Invisible monsters. That had been Amanda's rationale for Puffs habit of sitting and staring into a blank corner for minutes at a stretch.
'It's the way they toy with their prey that unnerves me.' Bash demonstrated just how good he'd gotten at frothing milk. The Terminal Turbo ship was about to land. “They bat it around and torture it before they dismember it. All fun and games. Mundane sadism. It's innate, keyed right into their bones.'
'I think cat intelligence is unsettling just because it's so alien.' Jonathan could not resist thinking some malign point was being made whenever Puff did his thing between Amanda's fine legs. Her taste for good sex had waned, but Puff never had to do without his nightly berth. At least, she had told Jonathan that sex with him had been good sex…
The espresso machine gurgled and wheezed. There is no sound quite like it. The kitchen was filled with its wracking, asthmatic toilet noise.
If Jonathan brought up Puff with Amanda there would be another argument. Of which there had been too goddamned many. The arguments always led to Amanda's stonewall views on children and life in the real world and what normal people did. It never failed to degenerate into a nightmare of tension and tight-lipped disagreement.
Ask Again Later. Fuck You, Asshole.
Things were too damaged to ever work out. Jonathan and Amanda were so wrong for each other. There were basic things that they would never agree on. He knew all that. He also knew how much he missed her. Her absence was a hole in his stomach, eaten by acid, that never went away. All the times he thought about her. The things he saw in stores that he knew she'd like. It hurt that he missed her; it hurt that she didn't miss him. And if she did she would never let on; that would be exposing a weak side. Any conversation between them was like an Egyptian tomb full of booby traps. It was lucked up to an extent made possible solely by long and intimate knowledge of a fellow human being. He would miss her right now, and he would miss her tonight when he curled up on the couch.
Cookie. The time is right to make new friends.
'Here,' said Bash. 'Fill the hole in your soul.' The cup of Turbo was almost beer mug size, pulsing heat, topped with a creamy whitecap.
Jonathan sipped, and thought he felt the world change. 'Bash, about me and Amanda, I…'
'Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.' The humor had fled from Bash's fac
e. 'I don't want to hear any more Amanda stories. No. That's a bad habit you've gotta break. No Amanda. There is no Amanda. You copy?'
He hadn't expected such a total rebuff, but Doktor Bash probably knew best. He was as good at reading mindwaves as anyone.
'Okay. How about the box score between you and Camela.'
'My dear heart and bed-pal Cammy, I fear, is decaying into one of the Butt People,' Bash said sourly. He'd had enough to drink that coarseness was no longer a concern. 'Breakup is imminent. But it ain't gonna happen tomorrow, and it ain't gonna happen this week. Time is required.' He quaffed and won a white moustache atop his black one. 'My personal sense in this matter is that she'll get pissed off and move out. Which means you can move in. But first, I think you've gotta vacate, so she and I can finish up. Your presence has imposed a stiff and mannered detente; in a weird way it's put the deterioration of my relationship with Cammy on hold. Now she's trying to prove to me that she's more fun to live with than you are. Therefore, squire, we have gotta find you a place. A way station. If only for a while. So I can knock down these dominoes my own way, and build 'em back up to suit. I know Cammy and I are going nowhere fast. It's my problem. I see it. And I've gotta deal with it in my own way.'
Jonathan dealt with it. He'd sensed it coming. The too-polite ultimatum from the embarrassed friend. He should ease Bash through this, not shovel shit at him for saying the wrong lines. 'Well… if I could find some cheap place… with the idea that it was temporary. Well, almost anything could be withstood, yes? I might even find a place you can escape to when things get too hot at home.' The Turbo was sharp and strong and Jonathan's palate could not get enough of it.
Bash looked relieved. 'After that, it'll be the Bash and Jonathan Show. That's a promise you can take to the bank, Dino Boy.' Bash's Louisiana accent was creeping back, as it generally did when eroded by alcohol and inspired by caffeine.
'Remember that place we checked last week? It's as basic as you can get without pitching a tent. I can he and say I'm gonna be cooking in there, so they'll stick in an oven I can use as a heater. Looks like that place isn't too lavish with the steam heat. You'll have to loan me your ghetto blaster for a bit.' The compromises were stacking up in Bash's favor, and Jonathan now felt entitled to make requests. 'That building does have one advantage.'
'What's that?'
'It's walking distance from Rapid. Even in the worst weather I could hoof it to work.'
'Worst?' Bash sniggered. 'Bro, you ain't seen the worst this place has to offer. Yet.'
EIGHT
It was a three-story drop, easy, and Cruz thought, Jesus fuck, campers, somebody could die down there.
Fergus, majordomo and greasebag super extraordinaire of Kenilworth Arms, had informed Cruz that this abyss was a ventilation shaft, though Cruz could not see how in hell it ventilated anything unless maybe you savored catching a whiff of your neighbor's potty waft. By standing in the bathtub you were able to look out a cramped two-by-one casement window. About ten feet distant across the sheer drop you saw another sealed-up bathroom window. Others were staggered above and below on all three sides, black and cataracted the way windows next to the shower usually grow, fogged by mildew and strata of soap scum.
The shaft itself was lined in rusty corrugated steel. Whenever anyone in this leg of the building washed up, Cruz could hear a tinny dripping noise. From His vantage on the top floor it was impossible to see the bottom of the shaft even with a flashlight, but from the smell it must have been lousy with bilge and mulch and toilet leakage. It had been a weightlifter's challenge to pry that teensy damned window open even halfway, and all that had won him was an odor kind of like humid fertilizer.
Past the sill it was impossibly dark, suffocatingly close; Cruz could not perceive a bloody detail up or down. On the roof, the mouth of the shaft had been tarped over, probably due to the snowfall.
'Ventilation. Right.' He banged the window down and flakes of paint jumped from the runners.
It was a pit. It was home insofar as there was no place like it. Best perk: No Bauhaus.
Hanging at Bauhaus' overblown wet dream of a bachelor pad held all the appeal of a Drano enema. Bauhaus was not merely a coke vendor; he was the dealer cliche loudly personified. He played at being a player, spending half the day with his ear in a mobile phone and the other half bragging and braying. The man was piggish, lethargic, overfed; in seconds Cruz had stockpiled a lifetime of hatred for Bauhaus' donkey laugh. He was the sort of spud who would huzzah his own stupid jokes with a half-assed chuckle designed to cue all brown-noses within range that they'd better laugh along, loud, or else. Bauhaus cut loose that laugh a lot in public, dropping five hundred on dinner, wasting good bubbly while parading his catch of the day from the teenybop coke whore zone. It was all smoke for his urban contacts - a bunch of beard-stubbled fucksticks wearing bolo ties. All smoke.
That first night, Cruz had done the AM Creep, peeking into Bauhaus' inner sanctum. He found Bauhaus beached and naked, snoring like an asphixiating whale and wrapped around a thirteen-year-old who turned out to be a boy.
Cruz had not been introduced.
He had finally cleared the snowstorm from his brain enough to lapse out on the sofa in the circular pit. Two hours later he woke up; the revived Chari was busily mouthing his cock. Once she powdered her nose she was like something out of a monster movie. Oral-Zilla. He had not felt his pants being peeled to his knees. Escape proved hairy, not that he made all that knightly an effort. He settled for trying to get his eyes to focus and track. A pinch of nasal espresso would bang the room into full color resolution - sort of like whacking the top of an uppity TV set to make it work. Chari continued sucking his bone with demon fervor. Prone feet were visible beyond the onyx bar; Krystal was still out of it on the kitchen floor. The soles of her feet were dirty. White granules clung to Chari's upper lip, making Cruz think of inept makeup, like a child practicing. She was so boosted that sleep would be impossible for hours. She had probably been up all night, gumming kitchen utensils and humping bedposts while Bauhaus cornholed his best boy.
All that titty-squeezing and raw alcoholic-daddykins innuendo had been for Cruz's benefit. Oh joy. This was a nest of stale eggs breaking open for sure.
Cruz needed his own haunt; he knew this instantly. A place away from this center ring pig circus. A place closer to the promised Oakwood High School action, where he could bolt his doors and not suffer Bauhaus' omnipresent alarms and cameras. The neutral expression on Chari's face as she gulped semen had probably been recorded. White stuff, thought Cruz - maybe that was all she needed it to be.
He had shaken his booty inside snow queens aplenty; enough to turn ten concupiscent rock 'n' rollers gray. No thrill no more; barely distracting. Chari had been like jerking off into a mannequin - spasm and voiding, slight pain. Her mouth was dry from too much blow. It would take something much more potent to distance him from the day that had begun with Chiquita's moist one-point landing. Cruz did not wish to learn any more about the ways a human body could come apart.
Especially not his body, at Emilio's vengeful hands.
Around his neck Emilio wore a folded straight razor on a chunky chain. It was a keepsake from his gang-banging days. More recently he'd had it immortalized in platinum, and it was sharp enough to carve visible patterns on air. Cruz had heard all the stories about the tricks Emilio could perform with his pet razor when piqued. Like the Vanishing Tongue Trick. The Disappearing Balls Trick. So real you'd swear it wasn't an illusion.
No thank you.
He had to make Bauhaus find him a place. Any place.
In two days Cruz had been billeted as Kenilworth Arms' newest tenant, a reasonable jog from Oakwood High.
His first shock had been Fergus, the 'manager,' whose job description would read 'pusbag' on some document if there was any justice in the cosmos. He lived in clothes that looked scrounged off dead winos and smelled as if he drank a pint of Aqua Velva a day… perhaps to pickle his flesh, which was do
ughy, and spotted like overripe fruit. His ratty Converse All-Stars were slick and grimy; they had been white at the beginning of time. Maybe. Things had hatched inside them, Cruz thought, and Fergus had slipped them onto his plump, horny feet while the membranes and afterbirth were still warm. Gnomish and dull of gaze, he exuded the aromas of stale dates and sour sweat from beneath his megadose of aftershave. There were brown gaps between each of his teeth, and even in this freezing climate the tips of his hacked-off and slicked-back hair were perpetually gravid with droplets of some opaque liquid. Cruz would learn that the guy only understood English clearly around the first of the rental month. He had informed Cruz - in English - that rent would be acceptable only in the form of cash or money orders, the ukase new and the fault of newer tenants, who were unreliable in such responsibilities.
We have standards to uphold here, Mr Crooze. Fergus had not said this out loud. Cruz would have herniated from laughing.
Cruz's room-plus-bath had been designated a 'studio.' The floor covering was to carpet what a scab is to healthy flesh. He had gotten the refrigerator he requested. It now crowded a doorless alcove that had once been a bedroom closet. Two big casement windows overlooked Garrison Street from three stories up. When the steam heater wheezed on, the windows usually clouded up. It was a sweatbox, even in winter, sifting the rising heat from lower floors in a structure built long before insulation.
Unexpectedly, the bathroom had been recently retiled and all the faucets worked without dripping. The toilet did not gurgle. That part, at least, was basic but civilized.
Cruz had been duly unveiled as Bauhaus' new runner. The Oakwood boys were a yuppified zoo of blond-on-blond palotnitas with firm handshakes, PR grins and Aryan eyes like video snow. All bound for med school or law degrees. You could sense the zippers on their girlfriend's vaginas. Cruz pushed Bauhaus' 70 per cent cut another ten with ground-up aspirin; the Oakwood dildoes never caught wind and the extra income was always welcome. Cruz accumulated a backstock of the prime cut, the middle pile, for personal use.
The Shaft Page 9