In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  EVERY DAY I went up to Rose’s apartment and fed Mona and Mary and Jack Flash. While they were eating, I walked around touching things. The ghost of Rose on everything: the brass table, the purple-velvet chair, the blonde-fainting couch. Buddha. The red lava lamp. The Joey Heatherton bed. The French fuchsia telephone With the gold earphone and speaker. The fuchsia bathtub and toilet and sink. The photograph of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra behind the brocade blonde-fainting couch, the photograph of Elizabeth Taylor in the white swimsuit in Suddenly Last Summer by his bed, and all the other paintings and photographs of Elizabeth Taylor. The Dwight D. Eisenhower ashtray. The Randolph Scott lunch pail. The red velvet curtains. The Persian rugs. The Italian chandelabra that needed dusting.

  One day I uncorked the lid on the gallon jar that always sat on the brass coffee table. Leaned over and smelled. The amber liquid was gasoline.

  THE FIRST TWO weeks, every day, at the deli on Second Avenue and Fifth, I bought a carnation for Rose. White ones. Pink ones. Red ones.

  One day in the third week, when I walked into Room 335 with another red carnation, Rose pointed at me, then moved his index up next to him. I followed his finger, put my ear down close to his mouth.

  Lips at my ear: Fucking funeral flowers! Rose said. Get those motherfucking carnations out of here!

  The next day I brought a calla lily.

  And the next day black-eyed Susans.

  Forget-me-nots.

  Chrysanthemums.

  Primroses.

  A half dozen long-stemmed red roses.

  The Cary Grant day, I brought some kind of big purple flowers.

  And then—I couldn’t believe it—the next day when I walked in—ta-da!—the room was full of flowers, not just mine. Vases and vases, roses, lilies, daisies, Canterbury bells, phlox, heather, lavender, you name it—every kind of flower every color you could imagine. Except carnations.

  There were vases on top of the nightstand, the tray you swing over where you eat, on the windowsill, on the floor, on top of the television, on the shelf above the sink, huge draping fuchsia flowers standing on great Grecian pedestals on the green-and-tan tiled floor. They even had to put some of the flowers in the bathroom.

  I was standing in a fucking flower shop.

  Elizabeth sent them, Rose said. Isn’t she sweet!

  ON THE THIRTY-THIRD day in the hospital, the day he got out, Rose told me what outfit to bring: the black and avocado striped pedal pushers, the red seersucker shirt, his red bikini briefs, the mules, and the hologram earrings.

  I brought Rose’s mirror and barber clippers like he told me, and in the hospital bathroom, Rose holding the mirror, I clipped Rose’s inch of curly black and silver hair down to stubble. Then, Rose’s special Kiehl’s shaving lotion rubbed in my hands, I applied the shaving lotion open palm to Rose’s head.

  New razor blades in the razor.

  Every pull of the razor against Rose’s scalp was a cattle prod to my cock, but I didn’t nick him, not once. Then a mixture of rosemary and passion flower oil made Rose’s head shine.

  The nurses came in, all smiles. Every kind of woman you could imagine, black brown white yellow, short fat thin. Each one of them gave Rose a kiss. They’d made him a card, a drawing of Rose in purple Mae West drag. Under the drawing, the words:

  No no no, Yoko Ono!

  Rose screamed when he opened the card.

  The little scream that gives it all away.

  Oh, you shouldn’t have! Rose said, bracelets clack-clack.

  * * *

  FROZEN MOMENTS IN time.

  The way Rose walked out of that hospital was something to behold. Ankles, knees, hips, belly, back, shoulders, arms, neck, head, head bone connected to the tail bone, one long graceful black muscle, mules snapping on the shiny hospital green-and-brown tiles with every step.

  Rose handed out roses as he walked.

  The bright hallway, shiny tiles, Rose’s runway.

  Every orderly, every doctor, every anesthesiologist, every nurse and aide, every candy striper, every janitor, every lab technician, every patient who was still alive stopped, watched Rose walk.

  You could feel the anticipation, the hope of theater to lay bare the human heart.

  In all the world, every eye on Rose, on Rose’s body, deep from the center of him, from his balls out to his shoulders, his calves, his ass, to the tips of his fingers, the top of his head. Rose thirty pounds slimmer. Rose’s size thirteen mules, his pedal pushers stretched over his ass, his big basket, the red seersucker shirt open and tied at the waist, hologram earring dangle, shiny head, catching light, Rose’s bracelets—the green Bakelite, the copper, the silver Sikh, the gold with the lapis, the jade—clack-clack.

  In full participation with the life flowing through his body. A man dancing alone in a room. Complete lusty presence, his lucid lucid compulsion, Rose extra extra extra lovely.

  Keep dancing and cop an attitude.

  A polemical kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy.

  MONA AND MARY and Jack Flash were barking barking, their tongues hanging out like wet bologna, jumping up on Rose. Jack Flash was back and forth every which way around Rose’s apartment, running like the wind.

  WELCOME HOME ROSE was the banner I’d hung from wall to wall, and I’d bought helium balloons, fuchsia helium balloons. I’d found an old photo of Elizabeth Taylor in a secondhand shop on Second Avenue. The photo was in an Egyptian deco frame and Elizabeth was Cleopatra. The photo was sitting on the brass coffee table.

  The little scream that gives it all away.

  Rose picked up the photo and the frame, his eyes, ebony stones rolled smooth, looked at Elizabeth the same way she looked at Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun.

  Rose laid the photo up against his heart.

  Perfect, Rose said. Just perfect.

  Then Rose threw his arms around me, bracelets clack-clack, and we kissed like they do in Europe, both cheeks.

  ROSE SAT DOWN in his purple-velvet overstuffed chair. I brought him the lovely erect pink penis with a big Sho-ko-lat rabbit turd in it, lit the rabbit turd, and Rose sucked in.

  Rose’s Sahara palm holding the erect pink penis, Rose’s inside sunset color of his lips, Rose’s head shiny, his hologram earring, flash flash. Jack Flash was lying in Rose’s lap, and Mary and Mona were on the Persian rug at Rose’s feet, and the lighting was just so, like Bobbie’s Marilyn Monroe light, soft, the red velvet drapes pulled. I put on Maria Callas, “Norma,” and I rolled cigarettes, one for Rose and one for me, lit Rose’s, lit mine. I got the Baccarat crystal glasses out, poured us both a Courvoisier VSOP, and we toasted: Salud, L’chayim, Na zdarovya, Bottoms Up, Here’s Looking at You.

  For a moment there, I believed everything was going to be all right.

  But it wasn’t the truth.

  Just like that, Rose threw up, all over himself, the purple-velvet overstuffed chair, the brass coffee table, Jack Flash, his red seersucker shirt, and his black and avocado pedal pushers.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  The first big winter blizzard that year—whirling big wind like to knock you over—I turned my ball cap back around so the bill could keep the snow off my face, turned the collar of my pea coat up, hunched my shoulders, kept my head down, tried to bury my ears, stuck my hands in my big pea coat pockets, but it was no use.

  Show World was warm inside. I stomped off my feet and I could feel my socks wet inside my wet shoes. There was a big black man, not big pumped up, he was just a huge man, like if you took a man my size and stretched everything out a foot longer—this huge man worked at Show World and he’s checking me out, so I went right to the magazines in the row of magazines down the center of the room. Unrelenting neon light from above. The magazine I stopped at said Big Boobs and there was this blond woman on the cover whose breasts were bigger than her head, twice as big as her head, even with all her big blond hair.

  The sign just above on the magazine stand said HOLD MAGAZINE WITH BOTH HANDS. My hand
s were wet and in the unrelenting fluorescence looked like cooked lobsters.

  On down the magazine stand: Blow Job. Wet Pussy. Licking Lesbians. Back Door Love. French Tickler. Bi-Frenzy. Tits and Ass. Ebony and Ivory. Eight Inch Tongue. Yellow Snow. Piss on Me. Cum Suckers. Cock Crazy.

  Downstairs was the gay part. The men were every kind of man and were not looking at the magazines so much as holding the magazine out with both hands so you can see what it was they liked.

  Fuck Buddies. Big Cock. Black Dick. Suck and Fuck. Fuck Frenzy. Big Balls. Up the Ass. Latino Lovers. Top Man. Black Brothers. Master and Slave. Sodomy Man. Cum Crazy. Sweaty Assholes. Asian Glory. Cowboys and Indians.

  I picked up Cowboys and Indians with both hands and flipped through the pages. A cowboy sees an Indian and a white horse by a stream. The cowboy pulls a gun on the Indian. Ties the Indian’s hands behind him. The Indian has a big bulge under his leather pouch. The cowboy lifts the pouch, sucks off the Indian. The Indian loves it. Then the cowboy’s hands are tied behind him. The cowboy’s hat is still on, and his boots, and the holster and gun around his waist and his legs are in the air and the Indian is fucking the cowboy in the ass. The cowboy loves it. Some Union Army guys see the white horse and then see the Indian fucking the cowboy. Then the army guys are all fucking each other and sucking each other and the cowboy and the Indian. Three Indians see the white horse, then see the army guys fucking and sucking each other and the cowboy and the Indian. The Indians all start sucking and fucking the army guys and the cowboy and the Indian and each other. The last page, the Indians and the army guys and the cowboy all are riding off into the sunset on their horses and it says on the last page: How the west was won.

  In the corner under the stairs was another section and a shelf of books. These books were not magazines, they were novels. INCEST LITERATURE the sign said in red letters above the shelf.

  Uncle John and Me on the Lake. Out in the Woodshed with Tommy. Kissing Cousins. Sodomy Brothers. Daddy Dearest.

  The guy behind the counter in front of the wall of dildos was white, shaved head, Hawaiian shirt. His nails were bitten. I gave the guy behind the counter one dollar.

  Inside the booth, I closed the door, pulled the seat down, and sat in the blue light. Token into the slot.

  A football team of jock cocks, a classroom of student cocks. A prison cell of inmate cocks. A submarine full of sailor cocks. An army barracks of army cocks. A swimming pool full of swimmer cocks.

  Every cock a huge cock.

  Fifty-four channels.

  In each side wall of the booth, there was a window with a curtain over it. Two buttons next to a red arrow said CURTAIN RIGHT and CURTAIN LEFT.

  I pushed both curtain buttons and the curtains on each side of me went up, and just like that, on my right on the other side of the greasy Plexiglas, was a white guy, his pants down around his knees, cock poking up, the guy pumping tokens into the slot, watching a video of a guy sitting in a chair, shitting out one firm dark-brown turd at a time, one at a time.

  The guy on my left looked like a Korean guy. He was totally naked sitting like Buddha on the seat with a huge black dildo up his butt. The Korean guy, all Saint Theresa Gone to Heaven, looked over at me, pinched his nipple, blew me a kiss.

  And then on down the line, the same way as when you open a mirror and angle the mirror with another mirror so it looks like you looking at yourself forever and forever.

  Frozen moments in time.

  On each side of me, forever and ever, men in their booths, every kind of man, each man in his booth, dancing alone in his room with someone watching, with his curtain up, with his savage beast, his tiny Catholic heart, his legs up, his cock out, his cock against the Plexiglas, his butt hole against the Plexiglas, his mouth. Men in the blue light, the images on the videos screaming and fucking and coming and shitting and sucking. The men, each in their booth, jerking off with one hand, pushing tokens into the slot with the other.

  The janitor at Show World looked like Grandfather Alessandro. The guy had a mop in his hand, a mop bucket next to him on the floor. I went to step around the guy. I looked down at my feet. I was standing in his mopped-up pool. The pool looked like sticky New York City melting gray snow.

  But it’s not the truth.

  DURING THOSE MONTHS Rose was so sick, I called and called Romeo Movers. I really needed to talk to someone besides Rose, and Fiona was always wound up in her trip with Stranded Beings Searching for God. But True Shot never picked up, or wasn’t there, or else had suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Ever since that night in the meat district when I told True Shot about Charlie 2Moons’ scar, there had been no communication, nothing at all.

  Ruby kept calling. Same old shit. Breathing, burping, street noise, sirens. One time I picked up.

  Ruby, I said, where’s True Shot?

  Ruby coughed and coughed and coughed, hacked up, spit.

  William of Heaven, Ruby said, from underwater.

  Ruby, I said, Where’s True Shot? Is he all right?

  Street noise.

  Ruby, I said, Can you stop being so fucking stoned for just a second and tell me where True Shot is?

  Fools, Ruby said. Pharisees, he said. Noam Chomsky.

  * * *

  I’D CALLED THE Columbia Writing Program several times. I’d spoken with a Joe, a Mary, a Harriet, a Mark, a Liz, a Jane, even the head of the department, a Stephen Something-or-other, but no Janet, and not once did anyone ever know anything about Sebastian Cooke.

  Sebastian Cooke never returned my letter.

  Most of all, nothing, nowhere, nohow, ever, never one single iota of a shred of info about Charlie 2Moons.

  Nothing.

  No Charlie 2Moons.

  Nowhere.

  APRIL OR MAY 1987. Outside on East Fifth Street a Conran truck was double-parked. Someone was yelling so I opened my window.

  It was Fiona.

  You’re two fucking hours late! Fiona was screaming. Next time I’m going with Pottery Barn!

  The truck driver was a small brown man. He just stood on the back of the truck, staring at the screaming woman in a black leotard, her hair flying up all over the place.

  The chairs were in cardboard boxes and Fiona didn’t want the cardboard boxes, she only wanted the chairs, and the truck driver said the chairs come with the boxes, and Fiona said, I have no place for the boxes, and the truck driver said, That’s your problem, lady, and Fiona said, I’m not a lady, asshole, and why can’t you just put the cardboard back in your truck and take it off with you to cardboard heaven? And the truck driver said, It’s against company policy, and Fiona said, Fuck company fucking policy, I’ve got a tiny theater and what the fuck am I going to do with three acres of cardboard? Burn it?

  You can shove it up your ass, lady! the truck driver said.

  Fuck you! Fiona said.

  No, fuck you! the truck driver said.

  No, fuck you! Fiona said.

  Fiona stomped back into Stranded Beings Searching for God. The truck driver was just about to jump out of the truck.

  I yelled out at the truck driver to wait. I ran out of my apartment, out the front door, down the stoop. Stopped running, walked up to him, reached up my hand for a handshake. The truck driver looked at my hand New York drop-dead fuck-you. I took my hand back and put it in my back pocket.

  This woman, I said, She’s my friend. Her name is Susan and she is a very high-strung person. I said, She’s taking high-blood-pressure medication.

  The truck driver stayed squatted. The muscles in his legs were tight against his jeans. He was wearing a red T-shirt, rolled-up sleeves, a tattoo of Puerto Rico on his right bicep.

  The truck driver said something in Spanish, puta, I think.

  She’s got an even bigger problem, though, I said. In fact, everybody in the building has this big problem.

  I stepped closer to the truck, leaned my arm against the truck bed. When I spoke, I kept my voice low.

  The building’s super is the
voodoo super from hell, I said. He’s a devil worshiper who casts spells on the tenants if they fuck with his garbage.

  The truck driver looked up the street and down the street when I said voodoo.

  Please, I said. Can’t you please take the cardboard?

  Then I brought out the twenty-dollar bill.

  On the inside of his arm, the truck driver had a red heart tattoo that said Crisantema across it.

  The truck driver took the twenty.

  I helped him take each black steel folding chair out of its box, fold up the carboard, and put the cardboard on the truck.

  Fiona said, Cool.

  We were just bringing in the last of the chairs when it started to rain. I grabbed two chairs, and Fiona grabbed two chairs. We were just running down into Stranded Beings Searching for God when Rose came walking down the stoop.

  First time I’d seen Rose outside his apartment since he went in. His face under a huge red umbrella looked purple. Rose was wearing Lolita sunglasses, a checkered skirt like the Prince of Wales, combat boots, a leather jacket, and a black T-shirt with yellow lettering that said FUCK JESSE HELMS. Mary, Mona, and Jack Flash were on leashes.

  When Fiona saw Rose, Fiona dropped the chairs she was carrying and headed quick for the door.

  Rose stopped on the stoop, leaned over the railing.

  Shit spray, my dear? Rose said.

  Fiona stopped.

  It was not a heavy rain but a quick splash, just enough to make everything wet.

  Argwings Khodek, Fiona said, and looked up Rose’s skirt, You’re my Absolute Ultimate Idol.

  AUI, Rose said, bracelets clack-clack.

  In all the world, at the bottom of the stoop, on the sidewalk, in the rectangle of earth where I’d plant the cherry tree, everything wet, the dirt wet, Rose’s huge red umbrella scratching the top of my head, is where it happened.

  Argwings Khodek, I said, Susan Strong.

  Susan Strong, I said, Argwings Khodek.

  Fiona’s hand was so small and so white inside Rose’s.