by Todd Grimson
In a gay bar, a handsome blond man in his forties buys Keith a drink, and asks if he wants to see his museum.
“Yeah, I would. Is it all right with you if my sister comes along?”
“Your sister? That’s fine. Where is she?”
“Listening to some music.”
“Excuse me for asking, but I can’t help but wonder, what happened to your hands?”
“I was a hit man,” Keith says. “I fell in love with the guy I was supposed to kill.”
It feels true as he says it, and he misses this long-lost imaginary love, real emotion comes through.
“My name’s Dan,” the other says.
Keith smiles, nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t offer his name in return. It’s like it’s slipped his mind. They leave behind the Shirley Bassey medley, and Keith does not resist when Dan massages the back of his neck. It feels good.
”Where are you parked?”
“That way.”
Opposite directions, so it’s determined Keith will follow the other’s black Corvette. It’s hard to tell what Dan thinks of this sister idea. He seems open-minded. Justine is amused when the subterfuge is explained to her.
“You’re my brother?”
“Yeah. He’s going to show us his collection.”
When they get to the house, in Beverly Hills, Dan looks older than Keith thought. His hair is white instead of pale blond. His skin is tough-looking, as though he’s been deeply tanned for too many years. Does he really believe that Keith is going to go to bed with him?
A bald-headed tall black servant lets them into the house. All of the large, strategically lit interior is open, like one big room, going up with three stories of landings and galleries, freestanding staircases, mirrored ceiling and walls at unexpected places, making the exact dimensions hard to calculate at first glance. The place is indeed like a museum, a museum of Mayan, Aztec, and Incan kitsch. Some of the exhibits may well be expensive, or rare, but the overwhelming impression is of hundreds of toys and small cheap colorful figures, touristy items, hung on wires stretched all over, dolls and suchlike, wires strung high up and diagonally, dark wood tables and stands in turn used to show off painted plaster figurines and pottery, gold and jade monkeys and jaguars and carved wooden gods. The obviously cheap mass-produced item from Mexico City next to what might be pre-Conquest, stolen from some tomb.
Justine and Keith follow Dan up the steps, which appear to be made of glass, as are the floors above, transparent but seemingly strong enough to bear all this weight.
There are little areas a half-level up, with their own little staircases, to confuse things further. There are potted plants all over, big green fronds and vines, stuffed parrots and taxidermied snakes. Painted standing screens, with Mayan hieroglyphs telling the histories of forgotten warriors and kings.
Up on the third level, they come to where Dan evidently sleeps. It’s disorienting to look down through the glass floor.
“This is great,” Keith says, with some honestly felt awe.
“I’ll open the skylight.” Dan sits down on his low, large bed and hits a switch.
He looks up at Justine now, really with interest for the first time. Then he cannot look away.
Keith feels like a pimp. He tries to freeze himself and just dig the utter strangeness of the surroundings, as well as what’s going on. It’s a secret, it’s something no one knows about or believes in, way outside of any ordinary accounting of good and evil. Justine has her mouth on the guy’s neck.
But only for a moment. She turns to Keith then, and he feels terror, it’s involuntary, there is blood dripping from her fangs, her gaze is fixed and cruel. He doesn’t move; in a moment the murder is out of her eyes.
She gasps.
“Tainted,” she gets out. She wipes her mouth, spits blood mixed with saliva onto the floor. She’s angry.
“The butler,” Keith says. She needs it bad now, he can tell.
They go downstairs, leaving Dan dreaming, eyes open, mouth agape. The fillings in his teeth pick up the light.
The butler does not welcome Justine as she comes into the kitchen. He sees the fangs immediately, and throws a silver tea service at her, turning his head to avoid looking into her eyes. He tries to get a meat cleaver out of a drawer, “Get the fuck away from me, goddamnit,” but Justine is undeterred.
She’s so fast. Slams the man’s hand in the drawer and then leaps up onto him, lithely, he’s so much taller and more powerful but as soon as she’s into the vein his knees buckle, he turns, falling, and she rides him on down to the tile floor.
Taking a walk in the opposite direction, Keith can’t stand it, too much is pent up—he kicks up through a glass table, shattering it, sending shit flying noisily all around.
The butler, depleted, will survive.
TWENTY-SEVEN
There is an indigo ribbon in Tamara’s brown hair, matching her indigo skirt. Otherwise she has on a white blouse and navy tights, black shoes, white lab coat, beeper, and stethoscope. They sit across from each other in the air-conditioned cafeteria of the hospital, at 4:30, an “off” hour, so there’s hardly anyone else around.
“I still don’t feel right,” she says. She seems vulnerable, maybe a trace depressed. “I don’t like to say this, but … did we do something else the other night besides drink?”
“You mean like some weird drug?” He’s quoting Iggy Pop. He doesn’t expect her to get it, and she does not.
“I don’t know. It’s just that this business of losing my memory has never happened to me before. Did you offer me a sleeping pill, maybe, is that possible at all?”
Keith thinks it over. He takes a bite of this stale croissant he got to go with his coffee, as some kind of a breakfast after broken, unsatisfactory sleep.
“Justine might have given you something, I don’t know. Whatever it was, I’m sure it will be out of your system in another few days.”
“How can you know that, if you don’t know what it is?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You’re not in any danger, I swear to you.”
“Why should I be in danger?”
“You’re not.”
Tamara tries to figure this out, not looking at him.
“I live a very strange life,” he says. “Everyone says that, I guess.”
“Tell me more about how you live. You’re with this woman, Justine, right? Where does the money come from?”
“She’s rich. She inherited a house in Beverly Glen.”
“If I wanted to visit you there, would that be all right?”
“Oh yeah. That would be great.”
“Are you guys involved in selling drugs?”
“No.” He shakes his head, smiles, amused. “Nothing like that.”
In a few minutes, she asks, “How are your hands?”
“They’re okay.”
He shows them to her. The bandages are a little bit dirty, not too bad.
“Who wraps them for you now?”
“Justine.”
“She does a nice job.”
Tamara moves her head sometimes sort of awkwardly, not like a confident young woman sure of her grace and appeal. More like someone who’d play an oboe or a bassoon.
Is she reassured? From the way she looks at him, it’s plain that plenty of questions are being left unasked. But the longer they sit here, even if unspeaking, or talking about nothing, the more it feels like they’re communicating, like they have an alliance somewhere offstage or offscreen. They’re comfortable together. Neither of them means the other any harm.
TWENTY-EIGHT
There is a Macintosh computer in a room at the back of the house, a room with straw matting texturing the floor, another big geometric painting, rattan furniture, bookshelves filled with a disordered collection of books. There are some games within the computer, and Keith has found one that he likes to play. This is all he can do on the computer, is play this game. It’s a Chinese tile game, subtle and hard. Peaceful.
The object is to remove the decorated tiles, randomly stacked in a pyramid, until they are all removed and an illustration of a colorful Bengal tiger, or Chinese dragon, is completely revealed. Whereupon “cymbals” crash, and the computer plays a little song to celebrate your win. It is a difficult game.
Tonight, Keith wins twice in a row, so he stops. He goes out to the living room, where Justine reclines on the couch. He sits down, so that her bare feet are over his lap. She wears a slightly oversized white nightgown, or shift. He puts his hand up between her thighs, and she is warm. She does not seem to mind the hand. She squeezes it, in fact.
“I’ve never asked,” he says. “How did you get this house?”
Justine collects her thoughts, then answers, taking her time, reciting the most coherent story she’s ever managed to tell him heretofore.
“There was a man named Maximilian Durand, whose wife had died, and he lived here alone. His one child was some kind of a dancer, living in New York. They never talked. Max was very rich. He had been a backer of some films, and a producer, but he was tired of all that. His wife had died of cancer, and he had watched it kill her for over a year. So he was afraid of dying, very afraid. He became a vegetarian, and did yoga exercises, and traveled to India and Nepal. He had all kinds of adventures. He climbed a mountain in the Himalayas, and lived by himself in the forest up in Oregon for a year. Then, back here in Los Angeles, he met a woman one night. He became devoted to her. She had some special abilities, and he thought she could do something to extend his life beyond its natural span. They kept to themselves. They were married, in Las Vegas, in the middle of the night. They lived together in this house. It could have gone on for many years, but he wanted this thing from her. Well, he died, believing as he died that he would reawaken soon. The doctors called it ‘pernicious anemia.’ He left all of his wealth and property to this wife. A lawyer handled everything for her. The son in New York got some money, and there was no funeral to come to, because Max was cremated two days after his death. That’s what his widow thought was best.”
Keith bursts out laughing at this. When Justine smiles, just a little, Keith breaks off his laughter, and moves up so that his face is right in front of hers, he puts his right hand in her hair and says, in a low, barely controlled voice, “You shouldn’t laugh at him.”
Justine, taken by surprise, astonished by his audacity, replies, “I didn’t laugh at him. You’re the one who was laughing. It’s not fair.”
She sounds like she may start to cry. A tear wells out of Keith’s left eye, as he stares at her, trembling.
“Did you go to bed with him?” he suddenly asks.
‘What makes you think you can … ? No. He tried once, but it was no good. You’re impossible. You don’t understand anything! He was better off—No! What are you doing? Stop it!”
Keith kisses her on the mouth, mashing her lips as she pushes against him, he tries again and then gives up, a curious smile upon his face.
“I don’t care about Max,” he says after a while. “He was a sucker.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Justine says, provoked, an innocent child in her nightdress, long brown hair messed up. “Leave me alone.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone. I’ll do what you tell me, though. If you want to be alone, I’ll leave you alone.”
There are actually tears in her eyes. She’s still angry. Keith stands up and walks back into the computer room at the back of the house. After a while, he hears her bare feet, but she does not come in, nor does she speak to him. He listens intensely, he is intensely aware. He closes his eyes. What is he doing? He thinks of when he’d push the melted heroin, mixed with blood, into his vein. He’d push the plunger down, and the instantaneous rush would scare him, just for a microsecond, there was always the chance it would be bad stuff, or too strong and he’d O.D. His life was fucked up.
What is it now? He replays Dan, last night, and the butler, he sees the classic puncture wounds in both of the throats. How can he talk to her, this vampire, talk to her like she’s a person he has come to know? It’s insane.
It’s like they’re living on the moon. Things are different, when you’re living on the moon.
TWENTY-NINE
It’s an afternoon a few days later. Justine and Keith have hardly spoken, hardly interacted at all. No hunting, no blood. The bell rings. It’s 3:00. Keith is awake, showered, wearing a white shirt and black jeans, black jeans he’s had for five years. Since before the trouble, back when he still played guitar. He puts on gloves, walks out barefoot to the gate. Who will it be? If it was going to be the lawyer, Philip, he would call. He wouldn’t just show up. The gardener came yesterday. The new maid starts next week.
Oh, it’s the girl with the mohawk. Pouty and sulky-looking, moving around in a kind of olive green sleeveless dress with pockets, short enough to see most of her thighs. Black shoes and black anklets. Again, lots of slim chains as accessories, going down into the dress. A thick leather cuff buckled around her left wrist.
“Hi,” he says, and opens the gate. She doesn’t seem happy to be here, and where’s the car? Keith doesn’t remember her name.
“I don’t think you gave me a phone number,” she says, “so I’m just dropping in. It’s probably inconvenient, but I was with a friend, and she just let me off. So, sorry, I don’t have a ride home.”
She seems to be challenging him to find her unwelcome. If he was to say, “Yeah, I don’t know why you’re here. Take a cab,” it seems like she’d be somehow pleased, or if not pleased, satisfied in some way.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Keith says. “It’s no problem, later on, to give you a ride.”
They walk into the house. She wants to look around a bit more. She tries Justine’s doors, which are locked, and gives him an interrogative look but says nothing. He puts on some music. The latest in Tunisian disco. It’s great.
Her name comes back to him, and he says, “Michelle, can I get you something to drink?”
“What do you have?” she asks, and follows him out to the kitchen to see. The chains cause her to faintly tinkle as she moves. As she looks into the refrigerator, he can smell her perspiration, and perfume. She chooses a Beck’s Dark bottle of beer. He takes one too.
They go to his room, and sit on the couch. She brings out, from her purse, the latest issue of the magazine, The Darkest Night. In the table of contents, he sees an interview with Vladimir, the video director, by Michelle Zwick.
“I haven’t told anyone,” she says seriously. “I’d like to do an interview with you, it would be great, but not if you’re not ready. I think I can understand.”
Keith has taken off the gloves, in order to leaf through the pages of the magazine. It’s less cheaply done than he would have assumed. Michelle touches his shattered left hand, which, unbandaged, looks kind of bad.
“Slammed in car doors, you said.”
“More or less. That’s descriptive enough.”
“You could do something with sampling and synthesizers, couldn’t you? You could still do music, one finger at a time.”
“I don’t want to,” he says. She’s caressing, examining each of his hands now in turn, looking at his face now and then to see how he’s taking it, being ultracareful to be gentle, not to hurt. He lets her.
One night several months ago Justine was very curious about his sexual history, she wanted to know if he remembered everyone he’d ever fucked. If he remembered all of their names. Then, had he ever fucked a black girl? Yes. A Japanese? Yes. Other Orientals? Vietnamese? One Vietnamese, yes. In Houston. Anyone much older than him? Yes. When he was sixteen, a woman in St. Louis, thirty-six. She liked young flesh. Michael did her first, and Keith never thought he would, but one night he was seduced. Had he ever had sex with someone fat? Yes. She had a sweet face, and he picked her out. What about experiences with other males? There was a time in New Orleans, with some very pretty transsexuals, and then in prison, every night Pascual would blow me, and I’d dream.
Now, at this moment, Keith wants to touch Michelle, wants to see and feel her big breasts, but he doesn’t want to take the initiative, not with his fucked-up hands. He never masturbates, because of these hands. He hasn’t fucked in four years. Not since Renata was alive. When he was a junkie, one time a stripper gave him head, but he couldn’t maintain his erection, so they never went anywhere with that.
The taste of the beer seems stupid to him now. They both drink some more, in the blondish light, and he thinks of Dr. Rothschild, Justine, the concept of young prostitutes in Thailand training the muscles of their cunts so they can do tricks in Bangkok nightclubs, smoking a cigarette or writing with a pen, expelling ping pong balls across the room. He focuses on Michelle’s painted, dark and glossy lips, the bare skin of most of her skull, and he says, “I’d really like it if you would give me a kiss.”
She flashes just a half smile and puts her arms around him, and they kiss for a long time. It’s something to do. They kiss and kiss. The beer on hot young breath. Tongues in each other’s mouth. It seems huge, this one connected mouth. The tape ends, and he’s glad. They continue to kiss, sometimes taking breaks. “I like you,” she says, at one point.
He kisses her in response, and draws her to him. She’s mortal and warm, dumb and young and wise. Wise when she does not speak, when she’s unknowing, when she doesn’t try to know what’s going on. Keith likes the soft hair of the mohawk cut, the way it brings into prominence these delicate hollows at the side and then the back of her skull. She sighs, and her eyes close, naked skull turned sideways, grazing his mouth. The bed is right over there. She stands up, stretches, pulls him along. She takes off her dress. The chains tinkle and sway.
THIRTY
Driving, avoiding the freeways, Keith copes with traffic. The radio is on Michelle’s favorite station. He feels like he can touch her, she doesn’t mind his touch. She looks as if she’s in a bad mood, but it’s just her mouth. They both wear sunglasses against the glare, the white sunlight reflecting off all these steel cars, shiny and dirty, old and new.