by Jerry Stahl
“Baby, you want me to fuck you?”
She pulled away. “We’ll be late.”
“Okay.” He smacked her ass as she walked away from him.
Eliza grabbed her purse and the car keys off the nightstand. She stopped at the door, fanned a little air into her panties, and walked out. All the pills hit her as the sunshine seeped into her skin. She pulled her hair up into a loose chignon mimic of a bun with a black twisty-tie, before getting into the white mini–station wagon and turning the air-conditioning on full blast to fight the Florida heat. She watched the apartment door Eli had just rushed back through to get the directions their connection had given them. He waved the paper around as he came out.
Eli threw himself into the driver’s seat.
“You okay to drive?” she asked.
She knew she wasn’t. The pills were in control. She handed Eli the keys. They headed up Seventh toward Martin Luther King Boulevard, took that to the toll road, and got on. The car was gliding down the expressway when there was a loud boom. They looked around for a moment before realizing it was the sound of them hitting the railing along the side of the highway. Eliza snapped out of her stupor as the car screeched and scraped along the rail. Eli, his foot pushing the brake to floor, was trying to pull away and regain control. The car came to an abrupt stop. He looked over at her, his eyes stretched wide with fear and surprise.
“What the fuck! I thought you were okay to drive!”
“I am. I sorta fell asleep.” He smirked, and they both started to laugh.
The little white, and now steel-gray, station wagon was banged up good. The driver’s-side door wouldn’t open. Eliza got out and took a look. Eli peered inquisitively at her through the windshield before sliding across the seat and getting out of the car, the air-conditioning blasting, the radio blaring, the engine still running. They stood stupefied glancing back and forth between the car and each other, shook their heads, and shrugged before walking around to get back in. Eli slid behind the wheel. Eliza got in after him, slammed the door, and looked at the time on the dashboard clock.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here. It’s already fucking three thirty. We can’t miss this.”
Eli smiled, revved the engine, and absentmindedly tweaked the key in the ignition making the car squeal. Knowing that neither of them would pass even the suggestion of a sobriety test, they took off, looking back to make sure no one had been called to check on their welfare. Forty minutes later they were pulling up at a ranch-style house with an immaculate yard, the peek of a screened-in pool enclosure beyond the rooftop.
“You sure this is it?” asked Eli.
“I’m as sure as your bad-sorta-fell-asleep driving.”
They both laughed, high, and a little nervous, as they approached the door. Eliza rang the bell and they both stood back toward the edge of the stoop. She held her hands together in front of her like a schoolgirl. Eli had one arm around her shoulder, the other behind his back. They waited.
A woman they assumed was Ann-Marie answered the door. She did not at all fit the image of the people they had become used to working for. She was blond with loosely curled hair. She wore thick blue-framed glasses that called attention to what was already a prominent nose, sharp and pointy. Her short, tanned athletic legs, the green of her veins shining through the skin, holding up her petit, frumpy frame, gave off a soccer-mom vibe. Eliza wondered what Eli was thinking, and for a moment she imagined they were both expecting two chubby little kids to come running out from behind Ann-Marie, chasing out the smell of baked cookies.
The woman stuck out her hand to greet them. They reached for it at the same time. The woman grabbed Eli’s, and then Eliza’s.
“Hi, I’m Ann-Marie, nice to meet you. Come on in.” She led them to the kitchen. “Would either of you like a drink? There’s juice, milk, sodas, beer, gin, rum, or vodka. We want you to be comfortable.”
Eli and Eliza replied in unison: “Just water.” They all laughed, and relaxed a bit. They sat for a time in the kitchen chattering on as if they were at an afternoon barbecue with friends. Then Roy came in and the conversation stopped. The camera in his hand served as a reminder of why they were there.
“Hey, kids. You ready to get started?” asked Roy.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” said Eli.
Ann-Marie stood behind Eliza, her hands on Eliza’s shoulders. “Okay, darhlin, you follow me to the back room.”
Eli wasn’t letting go of Eliza’s hand. He squeezed it. “Hey, guys, could we have a minute?”
Ann-Marie smiled. “Of course, you can just step out on the back porch for a little privacy, and perhaps a cigarette. You kids sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”
Eli acquiesced and took a beer. Eliza followed his lead and asked for vodka and soda. Drinks in hand, they went to the front room. Eliza could see Ann-Marie and Roy in her periphery, Roy shaking his head. Ann-Marie had her fingers to her lips, her head tilted slightly to the side, signaling, Eliza believed, for her husband to give his temper tantrum a rest, and let them have a moment.
“Baby, you wanna leave?”
“No, I just don’t want to fuck Roy.”
“Come on, Eli. Jacob would’ve told us if it was that kind of situation. He’s never led us in blind before.”
“I know.”
“So shake it off. Let’s get in there and get our money. Baby, it’s four hundred apiece.”
“Baby, you got any more pills?” It came out slurred, a sign of sufficient escape from reality. Eliza dug into her pocket and handed him two hits of Adderall; it was time to get up.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Seriously? Just fucking take it.” She slipped one into her mouth too, and washed it down with the vodka.
“You kids all right in there?” asked Ann-Marie.
They walked back into the kitchen, glanced at one another, and then headed off. Eliza, following Ann-Marie, looked back to see Eli as he stepped into the shadow of Roy and headed off toward the garage. She hoped Jacob hadn’t left anything out.
Eliza walked into a pink pastel bedroom perfect for a twelve-year-old girl with a serious frills and teddy bear jones.
“Okay, doll, get naked,” said Ann-Marie.
Eliza pulled a sea foam–green teddy out of her purse; she loved the way the color looked on her skin, and held it up. “Sure you wouldn’t like me to start in something?”
Ann-Marie stared at the garment. “No, just naked and masturbating are all we’ll need for this scene. It would be great if you could incorporate the teddy bears. There’ll be no need to talk. You understand, right?”
Eliza put her lingerie away; this was about sex and not about her. The camera didn’t need her memorable, just wet and ready. She got on the bed, tried to take herself to the moment when she and Eli were leaving the apartment, when fucking seemed like a natural reaction, but the thought of him was a reminder of how she got here. It stirred anger, not ecstasy. She felt empty. The deeper she dug, the harder she rubbed her clit, the harder she jammed her fingers into her pussy, the more she writhed, the tighter she squeezed her nipples, the less she felt. It went on like that, finger fucking, licking, and performing with teddy bears licking her ass for what felt like forever.
Ann-Marie’s voice broke the tension of her heavy breathing. “Do you think you can come now? I know I could. Like a little help?”
Eliza looked from the camera into the willing, wanting eyes of the pornographer soccer-mom. She pressed into her clit, arched her back as she laid into the stuffed animals, moaning and screaming. She faked her orgasm.
“That was fantastic. You can have a smoke, grab another drink, get dressed or not, and go to the porch. We’ll start the next scene in a minute.”
Eliza put on her shoes, nothing else, and walked into the kitchen. Eli was tied up in the center of the large kitchen table. His hands and legs were trussed up behind him with rough blond-colored rope, silver duct tape over his mouth, and a red bandanna covering his ey
es. Roy smiling and directing him: “Move around more, really struggle.”
Eliza grabbed a cigarette from a pack on the counter, walked outside, and lit up. She stared out at the pool. It reminded her of home, her parents’ house. She wanted to dive in. Swimming always made her feel free no matter what had happened to her inside their house. Underwater she was silent, and safe. The tap on the glass door startled her.
“You ready to go again?” said Ann-Marie.
Eliza nodded her head to indicate yes, crushed her cigarette in the ashtray, and followed Ann-Marie back into the house. She always seemed to be following someone into something she’d rather be walking away from. The day went on, one room to the next, Ann-Marie leading the way to singular sex with vibrators, fingers, and remote-controlled fuck machines. The length and girth of which had convinced Eliza that the in-and-out friction, the intense pounding of her now swollen vagina, was sure to decommission her ovaries or—at the very least—provide her with the gift of a yeast infection.
Eliza and Eli saw each other one more time, both tired, him marked with red welts, during a naked cigarette break by the pool. A forty-five-minute eternity later, they left the house together, the sky now inhabited by the moon. They walked slowly, quietly back to the end of the drive eight hundred dollars heavier, and got into the car. In that silence, they quietly breathed their day in and out, Eli peering back over his shoulder every few minutes. Perhaps, Eliza thought, his furtive backward glances were to see if A & R, seeing them stationed there at the end of their drive, would be coming to ask them to do just one more scene. At the thought of it, she started the car and headed toward the highway. One hand on the steering wheel, the other digging for a cigarette in her purse.
“So, should I call Moses?”
Eli grabbed the mobile phone out of the glove compartment and dialed, smiling, revitalized at the thought of what they were moving toward.
“Hey, Moses, where are …? We can be there in twenty … What do you mean, don’t rush? You out …? Oh, okay, we’ll wait in the parking lot … What? Okay, okay.”
“What’d he say?”
“He has to re-up. He doesn’t want to see our faces any sooner than an hour from now. Fucker freaked out when I said we’d wait in the parking lot.”
Eliza fumbled for a CD, looking between the CD case and the road. She shoved in the silver disk with SONIC written across it. The sound of Kim’s sultry moan of a voice opening up Sonic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot” filled the car:
Hey, you’re really it
You’re it. No I mean it, you’re it
Say it, don’t spray it
Spirit desire (face me)
Spirit desire (don’t displace me) …
Eliza turned the volume down before Thurston’s voice could come crashing in. “Fuck it. He’s going to find a reason to yell at us either way. We’ll park at the edge of his lot and call the minute that obnoxious black, gold-trimmed Lexus pulls in. Don’t look at me like a scared little kitten. I won’t let Moses smack you up.”
Eli smirked, settled back into his seat, and focused his gaze out the window. No doubt counting his chickens before they’d hatched, little dancing eggs of dope doing the conga in his head. His four hundred already spent.
Eliza killed the headlights as they pulled into the parking lot. They stationed themselves in a spot at the edge near the street, and she rolled down their windows. The night was warm and sticky, with no sign of a breeze swooping in to save them. She and Eli commenced chain-smoking cigarettes, their growing pile of butts at either side of the car—a definite trail to their destruction. They waited, occasionally remarking on something unrelated, like the fantasy that they’d get food before they booted up. Eliza called the bringer for the third time. No sign of the black car.
He finally answered. “My guy’s not here yet. You two fucks better not be outside. Stop muthafuckin’ ringin’ me. I’ll find you when it’s time.” The click of the phone slammed into her eardrums.
The heavily adorned Lexus—big black wheels sticking out too large for the body, soft yellow LED lights flickering inside the metallic spinning gold rims—rolled into the parking lot forty-five minutes later, Spoon’s “Jonathon Fisk” pumping out of the windows in disjointed fits with reverberating bass:
Maybe you’re locked away
Maybe we’ll meet again some better day some better life
Jonathon Fisk speaks with his fists
Can’t let me walk home on my own
And just like a knife down on my life …
The unlikely choice of music stopped abruptly. Eliza and Eli looked at each other holding back laughter, before ducking down in their seats, thinking the inhabitants of the car might have seen them. When no sound of footsteps materialized, they sat up just in time to see Moses strolling over to the black Lexus. The lights on the car dead, the inhabitants were now just three shadows, slapping hands and making small talk. The exchange must have been going on down low, in between the front and back seats. Moses got out of the car walking backward, waving and smiling. The moment the back end of the Lexus bumped up and over the curb, he was walking toward them.
“Fuck,” punctuated Eli’s last meandering sentence about ninety-nine-cent burritos at Taco Bell. They froze, their fingers twitching, legs mindlessly shaking at the sight of him, their savior; his lithe cocoa-brown shape walking toward their car, seemingly gliding in slow motion, his steady approach bringing the guarantee of having to patiently sit through a flow of venomous words to get what they wanted.
He didn’t speak, just got in the backseat. They forced smiles to their faces, and handed him money too soon and without any finesse, as they attempted to exchange pleasantries: How’s your wife Sheila? His wife-girlfriend in prison on a five-year drug traffic charge he had happily let her swallow after shoving his drugs in her purse. Their questions flowed out jumbled and too close together.
Moses shook his head and let out what they presumed was a laugh. “Fucking junkies.” He never answered their questions, just handed them their bundles of powder and pocketed their money. “I shouldn’t sell you shit. You’ve been fucking sitting here the whole time, even though I told you idiots to wait somewhere else.”
They played dumb; their silence was an agreed-upon sign of respect—never wanting to upset him to the point that he might make his threats real.
“Next time you get nothing. Anyway, this shit is good so be careful.” The biblical bringer had spoken. He got out, slammed the door, and walked away.
“Where should we go?” Eliza asked.
“Anything with a bathroom or a parking lot.”
“Let’s go to Wendy’s.”
“Hawkeye Wendy’s? Where that guy chased us out last time?”
“It’s not like they posted our pictures on the fucking window.”
They pulled into Wendy’s, parked by the door, and headed with purpose to the back of the restaurant, checking behind them before entering the handicap bathroom.
“Hand me a bag and my spoon.”
They looked at each other one more time, dueling syringes clasped between lips and teeth, the first part of the ritual complete. Needle in, blood out.
Calm. Then, her ears ringing, she dove into nothingness, didn’t try to hold on. The first slap across her face was like a cool paper towel, the second shook her back into the moment. With Eli’s face looming over her, his lips shaped into some sort of scream, she waited for sound to come back.
“Fuck! I thought you were dead.”
“You crying?”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s the best shit we ever got from him.”
They smiled collusively, Eliza cradled in Eli’s arms. He wiped a dribble of spit from the corner of her mouth. She went to the sink to look at herself in the mirror, wash her face.
“I need a hit, baby. You’re dying shit blew my high.”
“Let’s go back now before he runs out.”
“I’ll be quick.”
“Yo
u take too long, I’ll leave your cockroach ass.”
Eli smacked her ass, then watched her smile disappear through the closing crack in the door.
Eliza was still listening to the phone ring when he came out walking on air. Fuck me if he isn’t beautiful—her thought punctuated by Eli clutching his stomach and puking on the hood of the car. “Jesus Christ, Eli.”
“This ain’t fuckin’ Eli,” came the voice on the phone. “You know whose number you callin’, bitch?”
“Sorry, sorry, it’s me, Eliza. Is it all right if we come by?”
“You just left.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get fresh. Yeah, come up.” The phone went dead.
She pulled into the bringer’s, and moved toward his place solo. She knocked on the door. The mess that greeted her was a mirror reflection.
“Fucking come in.”
She walked in, Eli on her heels. “What the fuck!”
He smiled. “What, baby, you thought I was gonna sit in the car and leave you to your own devices?”
A calm, subdued PRDD slumped himself onto the couch.
“Hey, is it okay if I smoke?” The cigarette was already in her mouth, the match already headed for its end.
“Guess so.”
Eli and Eliza sat on the maroon, gold-trimmed love seat, PRDD remained slumped on his matching couch. The place looked like a rent-a-center model home. An uncut pile of dope winked at them from atop a large mirror covering the coffee table; the mirror’s edges a no-fly zone, its passenger too precious for the floor.
“We wanna get two hundred.”
“Put the money on the counter. Get me a Ziploc.”