She leans forward, smiling richly. Her teeth are long and curved and there is a bright trickle of sweat down her left cheek. I’m sure it would taste like ashes.
It’s perfect, I say. My head suddenly feels like it has been disconnected.
I touch the thin slip of her dress. The material feels like it might melt between my fingers. Her white thigh is smooth as porcelain and I pull my hand away.
What is most precious to you? she says.
Nothing, I say. My arms and legs.
Do you have any brothers and sisters? she says.
I have a little brother. But I haven’t heard from him in five or six years.
He could be dead, she says.
He’s not dead.
Isabel makes a soft clucking sound, like a hen. Did you adore him? she says.
Not really. I tolerated him most of the time.
Did you protect him?
He was my brother, I say. I periodically beat the crap out of him. But if I had a candy bar or a few dollars, I gave him half.
Then you understand, she says.
No, I don’t.
What was his name? she says.
Fuck you.
I have a brother, she says. He’s seventeen. He’s made of glass. If I could hold him in the palm of my hand or keep him safe in my pocket, I would.
Who are you?
She sighs. It doesn’t matter.
But you have seen me before, haven’t you?
I chose you, she says.
No, I say. Jude chose me.
Jude preys on thieves, she says. On prostitutes and drug addicts.
I’m a drug addict.
She shakes her head. You are only confused.
Did you come to steal me away from Jude?
I came to watch over you, she says.
Like an angel.
Jude is very dangerous, says Isabel. She is not what she seems.
No one is.
Even so. You would be much safer traveling with me.
Isabel takes my hand and pushes it into the soft fold of her crotch. I suck in my breath and beg Jude to forgive me. I want to kiss this stranger, to see if her mouth is like Lucy’s.
My brother’s name is Everson, I say. Everson Poe.
I feel sorry for you, she says.
Why?
Your brother could be dead and you feel nothing.
My brother is in Africa. He wanders.
Isabel leans close, her lips dark and bursting with blood. I kiss her hard enough to bruise and I don’t feel anything but dead skin and elusive shame.
You’re not real, are you? I’m dreaming again.
She shrugs and pushes past me.
Come on, she says. They are waiting for us.
Henry juggles limes with little success. His chest is brown and smooth as stone. Isabel kicks off her shoes and crouches on the floor. The thin black dress is impossibly short; she is naked to the hip. She drops one hand between her thighs to hide her crotch, to touch herself. Limes roll in every direction and I crouch and begin to gather them. I try not to look at Isabel but I can’t help it. I can’t take my eyes off her.
Throw me one of those limes, brother. Don’t be shy.
I flip a lime at Henry.
Now where the Christ is that bottle?
Jude takes a long drink and comes to kiss me, her mouth hot with mescal. I bite her softly and suck the breath from her and I am still hungry.
I don’t like your friend.
He’s harmless.
Look at him. He’s a shark.
It’s too late, I’m afraid.
Henry lies back on the floor and dumps salt on his slick belly. He tucks a chunk of lime between his teeth, the pale flesh outward. Isabel bends to lick the salt from his belly and drinks long from the bottle, then chews the lime in his mouth. Yellow liquor and juice run down their throats.
Henry gives me a brutal smile.
I kneel beside Isabel and crush half a lime in my fist; the juice gathers in the hollow of her throat. I lick the salt between her breasts and drink, then lick and bite at her soft throat. She laughs as if it tickles, as if we are dear friends.
Does it feel good?
It’s like a fish, nibbling at me.
I look at you and I see a dead woman.
What a thing to say.
Isabel wraps her strong bare thighs around me and shrugs and suddenly I am on my back. I’m a specimen, a corpse beneath her. She bends to kiss my throat and my penis swells terribly.
Jude is silent, she’s invisible.
Isabel pulls up my shirt and exposes my belly, my wound. I feel a hot, wet trickle like blood or tears and I think she’s cut herself, she’s menstruating and I remember Lucy saying that she and her sister were forever bleeding on the same cycle. But this isn’t blood, it’s urine. Jude drags her away from me, a fistful of Isabel’s hair in her left hand. Their faces are almost touching.
Oh, you fucking coward.
Are you a woman or a dog?
You should be careful where you sleep.
And you should never have fucked me.
Isabel pulls off her torn dress and sits naked on the other bed. She licks salt from her hand and I see her sitting across from me at the waffle house, slowly licking whipped cream from her finger.
You have beautiful hands, I say.
She holds out her hands, grinning. Her left hand bears the hourglass birthmark. I take a drink and the worm slips between my teeth. I chew it, tasting dirt.
twenty.
Sleep is black and lifeless for me. I edge to the surface and try to dream of Lucy but nothing comes. I take myself back to a bright, hot morning. The lake is shaped like a horse’s head. I rent a flat-bottom boat from a toothless, shirtless man who wears striped suspenders to hold up his pants. Lucy wears a red bikini top and short cutoff army pants that barely cover her skeletal ass. She wears a baseball cap to keep her hair from blowing away. The boat has an ancient motor; it wheezes and dies again and again as we cross the lake. There is no wind. My gun is sealed in a plastic bag to keep it dry. It sits in the bottom of a Styrofoam cooler with sandwiches and fruit and cheese. I’m going to teach her to shoot. The motor dies again and I can’t get it to roll over. There are no paddles and the boat begins to drift. I curse the toothless man. Lucy takes off her bikini top to get some sun on her breasts. I open a bottle of wine and drink. The boat drifts under the staring sun. I tell Lucy to be careful she doesn’t burn. She doesn’t answer and I think she’s asleep. The boat drifts and time is elastic. The bottle is empty. I take off my shirt and use it to cover Lucy. She’s turning red now and I check the pockets of my shorts. I have a knife and nothing else. No identification. I slip over the side of the boat.
*
Jude is curled and silent beside me, her face pressed against my ribs.
Whoa, girl. Take it easy, now.
Jude sits naked on Henry’s chest, she throws his face back with her left hand and her little stinger barely touches his exposed throat. I never heard her move. She’s a cat.
What are you looking for? she whispers.
My cigarette lighter. It’s nickel-plated and I’d hate to lose it.
Don’t lie, she says. It’s insulting.
Do you mind putting that thing away? You seem a little too eager to cut me a new smile.
Isabel is snoring in the other bed and I am struck by the thought that I don’t remember if Lucy snored. I always slept like a dead man, with her. That was a lifetime ago and now I sleep like a lizard; I breathe through my eyelids.
I don’t like you, Henry. I don’t know you and you make me very fucking nervous.
Henry breathes evenly. I do have that effect on some people.
It’s a liability, she says. Who are you?
My name is John Henry King. I was born July fourth, 1961. I sell speedboats and orange is my favorite color. I like my coffee with sugar, no cream. I don’t eat breakfast unless I’m on vacation. I have a wife named Josephine back in St. Louis. She
’s a law student.
And what about Isabel? You seem pretty friendly with her for a married man.
My wife and I are estranged. Isabel is but a daydream, an illusion.
Jude is silent and I know she doesn’t believe him. But she doesn’t have much choice and she really doesn’t want to kill him. Dead bodies aren’t so easy to hide on a train.
I’m sorry, says Henry. I’m still working on that story. I have another one where I’m running from the federal witness protection program, but it’s too bloody for polite company.
Jude laughs reluctantly, then pulls her stinger away and stands up. Henry rubs his throat and watches her. She covers her breasts and says, did you get a good look?
Oh yes, ma’am.
I’m glad, she says. I hope it keeps you awake at night. Now get out, please.
As you wish.
Jude glares at Isabel, passive and drunk in the next bed. She sneers.
Take that bitch with you.
Henry gathers himself and lifts Isabel as if she’s made of air. Her arms and legs dangle. She growls and grunts, still sleeping.
Jude leans over me, perhaps to kiss me.
Did you believe him?
Jude smiles. Oh, you’re awake.
She sits on the edge of the little bed, turning the stinger in her hands. It seems to comfort her.
I roll over onto my side, the blankets pulled tight around me.
Of course I didn’t believe him. He’s too smooth, too frightening. He’s like a stockbroker with a meat cleaver in his briefcase.
I like him, I say.
She bites her lip. I may be paranoid. But I’m thinking he works for Gore and maybe Gore has decided he doesn’t want to pay. Maybe he wants to kill the messenger.
I smile in the dark. But you said Gore was a nice land developer, a taxpayer.
Jude hugs her knees.
Okay, she says. I might have lied to you. Luscious Gore is hardly a land developer.
That’s a shame.
Jude smiles.
Tell me the truth, I say. My teeth clash together and I marvel at my own foolishness.
The stories are better than the truth, she says. He’s a bored, sick millionaire. He’s a rich pervert who wants to be the big bad wolf. He likes boys, he likes farm animals…ho-hum. He wants to be a terrorist, but he has no political agenda. He loves a good bombing and random assassinations. He killed two of his own children.
She is grinning like a fool.
Okay. If Luscious Gore is so high on the food chain, why does he run the double-cross?
He might double-cross me because it’s raining, because he can’t find his socks. It’s not about the money with him, it’s about sport. Henry makes things interesting.
And what about Isabel. Isn’t she interesting?
She only wants to fuck with me and send you screaming back to the nuthouse.
Hold the phone. I’m not crazy.
Oh, Phineas.
I sit up with the sheets around my waist. Bits and pieces of the sun break through cracks in the heavy curtains, and Jude’s face flickers in and out of the dark. She is still naked. She plays with the stinger now, running her thumb across the cruel point.
I know about your wife, she says. And I know what she looked like. Don’t you think I would check you out before I asked you to come on this joyride?
And what did you find?
I found a pack of lies and misinformation. Your wife was killed last spring and you resigned from the police department in a cloud of smoke. One newspaper said it was suicide and another said it was a boating accident. She was buried in a closed casket and there was no autopsy. One newspaper hinted that the body was never even found. You surrendered your gun and then it disappeared from evidence. The district attorney wanted to crucify you but the case was dropped suddenly.
Five years with the cops, I say. And you learn how to kill an investigation. To make a fine mess of things.
So what really happened?
My wife was killed by a gun, by my gun. Her face was blown off. There was no autopsy simply because I arranged for the medical examiner to lose the body among the Jane Does. She was cremated with a dozen nameless women.
And the gun?
I helped it disappear from evidence. I carried it around for months like a dead albatross. Then I lost it the night I met you.
Purely a coincidence.
Or fate.
Her face was blown off, says Jude. Are you sure it was her body?
This isn’t television. Of course I’m sure.
And who pulled the trigger?
There is silence between us.
The bright steel against her yellow skin is too much for me. The sheets have formed a ridiculous tent between my legs. I take the stinger from Jude and she leans to take me in her mouth but I stop her. I pull my knife from its sheath and softly kiss her fingers, the back of her hand. The pale underside of her wrist. I touch the dark veins with the blade, with my tongue. The bend of her elbow is soft, vulnerable. The biceps are sleek and curved and her skin smells like almonds. Is this supposed to be fun? she says.
Trust me, I say.
I press the knife’s edge into her shoulder and pull it away quickly. The cut is as long as my pinkie and maybe a quarter inch deep. Her body shudders once, then relaxes. She trusts me. She wants me to hurt her, perhaps. I push her onto her stomach; she is numb and doesn’t resist. The cut is bleeding profusely now. I use the knife to cut a long white strip from the sheet and tie it around her shoulder. The blood slows, but the cut will likely require stitches. I press the blade against the back of her thigh, barely below the soft flesh of her ass. She jerks and makes a small sound. The blade leaves a mark but there is no blood. I place the knife at her tailbone and trace a hair-thin cut along the pale bikini line. The skin hesitates then opens slightly and blood appears, as if she has cut herself shaving. I move the knife to the area of her right kidney and scratch a mark that is like my own cut but will not scar. I am nearly bursting now, and my left elbow is trembling under my weight. I push her legs apart and let my body fall over hers, heavy as a blanket of snow. I drop my knife on the bed where she can reach it and I am inside her.
Minutes later I am kissing her ear, her neck. I tell her I’m sorry.
I haven’t earned your tenderness, she says.
Jude is asleep on her belly and the sheets are dark with blood. Her mouth is open slightly and her lips glisten with spit. I allow myself to hate her, briefly. Then I wake her with a hurried kiss, whispering her name and she answers me in a purring, drunken voice.
Tell me about Isabel, I say.
I feel good, she says. Don’t spoil it.
This is important.
Jude rolls over and uses her folded arms as a pillow. The shoulder is painful, I can tell.
Isabel is Luscious Gore’s daughter, she says.
I close my eyes and I see Lucy’s face.
And she doesn’t have any bone disease, does she?
Jude sighs and I don’t think I’m in the mood for this, not really.
I’m sorry. But I don’t think I’ve told the truth in over a year.
A year is nothing, I say. And the truth drifts, like smoke.
I’m not in the army, she says. I’m attached to a deep-cover unit called the Platypus Project. It’s a bastard child of the CIA and totally unprotected.
You’re a secret agent, I say.
It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But yes. For the past two years I have been undercover, living as Luscious Gore’s bodyguard.
And the organ snatching? That’s a hobby.
The kidney is actually intended for Isabel’s brother, Horatio. He’s a coke addict and he slipped into a coma four weeks ago. Almost total renal failure. He needs a transplant right away, and even if he was a legitimate citizen he would go on a waiting list. But Horatio is wanted for a dozen capital crimes; he can’t just walk into the emergency room and flash his Blue Shield card.
Oh, yeah. It must be inc
onvenient.
Jude smiles through shadows.
Anyway, she says. Isabel disappeared one night and came back at two in the morning with a bloody, mutilated kidney in a shoebox. She had gutted a male prostitute in downtown Dallas.
I love it. Then what.
Everyone was hysterical. They had to sedate her. The funny thing is that Luscious can’t stand Horatio. He would gladly pull the plug and call it a day. But Isabel adores him, so he promised her a kidney. He knew I had the surgical background to do it right, and he offered me a lot of money. It would have blown my cover to refuse. I told him I would take care of it, and I went to Denver alone. Isabel followed me.
Denver, I say. Why not Albuquerque?
It was just far enough away and removed from Gore’s sphere. And no one knew me. To be honest, I wish I had gone to New Orleans. It’s my favorite city in the world. It’s crawling with vampires and voodoo queens. No one would have noticed a missing kidney.
Now, I say. Why did you fucking choose me?
Isabel chose you, she says. She said you were a perfect tissue match, a rare find.
I’m special.
Very.
Why not just give the damn thing to Isabel?
She doesn’t have the money, says Jude. And I like to watch her twist.
It’s an excellent story but I don’t believe her for a minute. Jude is an organ smuggler, a flesh thief. She made the crucial error of falling in love with her victim and now she’s trying to dazzle me with a lot of intrigue. Isabel is her estranged partner, perhaps her lover. Her resemblance to Lucy is all in my fucking head.
Do you know anything about Greek mythology? she says.
I stare at her. You aren’t going to change me into a pig, are you?
Jude laughs. I was thinking of Orpheus, the poet. His wife was killed and he was so shattered by grief that he followed her to the underworld.
Poor bastard.
Orpheus begged the gods to release his wife, but they refused.
I light a cigarette. I really don’t like this story.
For years he charmed them with his pitiful music and finally the gods couldn’t stand it anymore. They agreed to let Orpheus take his wife back to the living, on one condition.
The gods always have to fuck with you. It’s not enough to just kill you.
Kiss Me, Judas Page 12