Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

by Alissa Nutting

  And then the stick poking my balloon turns into a feather, and I am tickled. I feel my Inner Worm remind me that Intensity comes when I forget that life is art, and Intensity is what clogs the path to enlightenment. As CT likes to say, “The boy at the top of the mountain of knowledge, the one standing like a flamingo with one leg straight and one leg bent. He is a mild child.”

  As I ready the bottle above CT’s golden locks, dead center in the middle of his part, Gustav’s head lifts up and he gives a half-hearted protest, “Don’t spill, ze suit, ze suit,” but CT gently moves Gustav’s head back downward, the way a parent might guide the cheek of a child who just had a nightmare back down to the pillow.

  “How can I wear a leather suit that does not carry the stains of wine and blood?” asks CT, and Gustav does not answer; of course the question was rhetorical, and the bloody wine pouring over their green night-vision bodies fully cloaks them. I feel more powerful than ever, like a superhero who has shadow-juice as one of her many weapons. I streak their bodies with the unseen.

  When my phone rings there’s about a fourth of the bottle left. I tilt the bottle over CT’s mouth and drizzle the rest of it inside until he makes a happy noise.

  My phone’s screen is so green that beneath the goggles it seems wholly interactive. I speak to it for some time before realizing I need to press a button to answer. Luckily it’s just Sister calling, and she keeps calling until I pick up. Once she tried to call when I had a few squares of acid beneath my eyelids. When I finally distinguished the source of the ringing I mistook the phone for a fetal orb—not an orb from the beginning of time but a baby orb, one that has only been alive for a few million years—so I sang children’s songs to it and told it bedtime stories, hoping this would make its musical electronic cries please, please stop. I later got distracted by CT leading me to a hammock that had been stretched over a hot tub at his request by the really expensive hotel’s staff, but the next morning I saw that I had eighty-seven missed calls, all from Sister.

  “Hello,” I say. I am unsure of the duration of time it takes me to complete the word. The bat blood wine—at least our particular serving, I am beginning to realize—has complications to its chemical makeup beyond alcohol and blood.

  “Oh Lord. Are you on drugs right now? Call me back later when they wear off. This is important.” I can hear sliding window blinds in the background and I know that she is staring out at the sky with a deep frown on her face.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Just sleepy. Just terribly awake.” I hear Sister’s nervous fingers tapping on the glass of the windowpane, or maybe someone knocking on a really thick foam door. “Sister?” I ask, because it is so quiet except for the rustling of the bats and the gentle sounds of Gustav’s mouth that I can’t remember whether the conversation has ended and she has already hung up or not.

  “Listen,” she says. “I want the rest of your share of Mom’s estate money. All of the little that’s left. I want you to sign your half over to me. CT is rich and you don’t need it. The real reason I call you all the time and ask for money is because I’m not in good health and you’ve been paying my doctors’ bills. Sometimes I need medications badly and quickly but I feel like I have to ask you every damn time I use some of your money from the trust, and you’re usually impossible to get ahold of. How can I put this delicately? I want you to give me the money so I don’t have to talk to you ever again.”

  The electronic vacuum cleaners, perhaps detecting CT’s new emission on the floor, all rush over to CT and Gustav, encircling them. It’s very cute, like the two of them are surrounded by a hungry brood of flat Maltese puppies. “Mine sweet bitter fruit,” Gustav is saying to CT, licking the stains of wine on CT’s suit of leather.

  “Sister,” I say worriedly, “you are hurt? Your health is failing? We shall heal you together! We shall sail through the air like spores from a fern of renewal, a pollen containing life and promise, a seedling that blossoms into substance where before there was void!”

  Sister’s words take on a strained, metal colander tone; her voice is so tight that it will hardly even strum. “You don’t know anything about life or trying to live,” she says. “Would you like to call my insurance company and ask if they accept ferns of renewal? Wait, why am I still participating in this conversation? Tell me where you are and I’ll bring the paperwork and a few things of Mom’s for you to have, and that will be it for us, okay? You have no idea how long I have wished for this peace. To be able to turn on the TV and see you walking down Rodeo Drive leading a goat that you painted to look like a giraffe or whatever and hear the gossip-police screech about what a lunatic you are, and simply agree and change the channel. I can’t do that now. I can’t do that with you in my life; instead I have to call and try and tell you to hurry up and get the damn goat into a van or a limo or what-the-hell-ever and move away from the cameras.”

  “It was actually CT who painted the goat—”

  “I DON’T CARE,” she yells. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  I pause. I’m fearful that Sister will not be satisfied with my location.

  “We are in a bat cave inside of a cave-mansion in the desert,” I say. Gustav looks up at me and waves a chiding finger. “No partiez, sweezheart. I have to be up early tomorrow. My friend in Milan is getting circumcised for his fortieth birthday and he commissioned ze codpiece you saw in my studio. Zat sort of ting, you deliver zat sort of ting in person.”

  “It’s so beautiful, Gustav! I had no idea it was a codpiece. On its stand I assumed it was some kind of ceremonial container, or an urn? For the ashes of someone really special and powerfully phallic, like your father, maybe.”

  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!” cries Sis, and then she hangs up.

  “Ze ashes of mine father, zat is a sad story.” Gustav points to the electric vacuums. “Zees hungry suckers, I love zem, I have zem swarming in every room. But when my friend knocked over zee father, zey ate him before I could find zee remote to make zem stop.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Sister calls back. “Let’s try this again,” she says. “Have you emerged from the cave?”

  “We’re on the bus,” I report. I don’t remember how or why, but I know that we are. The bus-bed CT and I have is so exceptional; it looks like a large clamshell and can even shut. It’s not good to shut it for the entire night, though, because then the oxygen we breathe starts to get a little recycled and we wake up with bad headaches.

  “Okay,” she says. Her tone implies that I am completely useless. This makes me sad, so I stare into the pearly whiteness of CT’s teeth. He consciously sleeps with his mouth very open. There is a complicated wellness-reason why he does this but we’ve both forgotten what it is. “Where is the bus headed to?”

  “I will have to let you speak to the driver, Sister.” She makes a tsking sound. “Thank God,” she says.

  “Sister,” I beg. “Please tell me what has stricken your body. Let me be a part of your detoxification.”

  “No,” she snaps. “You are a spoiled brat with no grip on reality. We don’t all have rich rock-star boyfriends. The hardest part of your day is figuring out what pills you’re on.” She sighs a loaded sigh; I hear leaves stirring inside of it. Very dead, very dried leaves. They scare me, these leaves inside my sister’s voice.

  “Let me get you the driver,” I whisper.

  This news about her health is stirring my eternal waters. I make a mental note that later on, I should put on the crystal helmet and get inside the sensory deprivation unit. Once Wolf Rainbow got sued because a fan in Idaho climbed aboard the bus without our knowledge, got inside the sensory deprivation unit, and was not discovered until we were in Atlanta one week later. It took him a few months to speak but when he did all he could talk about was how totally grateful he was, so his family finally dropped the charges.

  “Here,” I tell her, “here you go.”

  “Finally,” she exclaims, “someone sane.”

  “His name is Fracty
l Clymber, Clymber with a ‘y.’” I tap him on the shoulder and he gives a jump and spills a large thermos of purple tea all over the dashboard. Because he is small-statured, his arms stretch wide when holding the bus’s large steering wheel. This combined with the fact that his eyes aren’t very open makes him look like a sleepy bird.

  “Sorry,” he stutters, “I thought you were something else.”

  “This is my sister,” I say, pointing to my phone.

  “My brother,” he says and nods, pointing to his phone on the passenger seat. He lets out a short giggle, then looks rather distraught.

  “I mean my sister’s on the phone.”

  “Cool.”

  “She wants to talk to you.”

  The phone is down at my side, but I can hear a sound coming from it, a scream.

  “If it’s about that,” he emphasizes, “I don’t know anything about that. Whoever did that, I’m sure . . . that was a total accident.”

  “No, she wants to know where we’re going.”

  “Oh.” He glances across the many dials of the bus’s control panel for a moment. “A sign should be coming up soon or something. These roads are totally filled with signs.”

  I feel Perry, CT’s press agent, put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to her,” he says. I nod and hand him the phone.

  It’s daytime but the bus has heavy black curtains and tinted windows, so it always seems like the sun hasn’t come up. I trod back to our bedroom. The bus’s thick, shaggy carpeting is soothing on my bare feet. At almost every stop we get the carpet shampooed because none of us wear shoes when we walk around inside. It feels amazing.

  I crack the clamshell open a little wider to get in and then lower its lid back down to where there’s still a safe amount of sliver. When I nuzzle up to CT, his leather wine suit smells like bread. In his half-asleep state, his fingers find my hair and kind of party a little.

  Moments later, there’s a light knock on the clamshell. Perry slides my phone through its crack. “We’re meeting her in Dallas,” he tells me. I whisper thanks.

  “Listen,” he says.

  The cracked-open clamshell bed has a crescendo effect on sound, it’s even shaped like a crescendo, so when I’m inside I barely hear the first few words in someone’s sentence but then the last few words are quite loud. “If you want me to deal with her for you, thAT’S FINE, SHE SEEMS REALLY ANGRY AND MAYBE . . .”

  “No,” I whisper. “The Worm Eternal values fortitude. I must pursue a final attempt to bring Sister enlightenment and prove my spiritual strength to the Worm Eternal.” Perry pats the top of the clam.

  “Okay, kiddo.”

  Our conversation rouses CT. He turns and puts his lips on my neck. His lips are soft as olive oil. “I was having this dream that you were a starfish and I was feeding you tempeh bacon,” he says, and I shut the clam bed and we love each other; I let the whole thing with Sister be like grains of sand that just polish the softness of CT’s lips even softer.

  * * *

  There is a slight delay in meeting the sister.

  After he ate some pumpkin-flax brittle, CT’s stomach got a little torn up and he requested Fractyl Clymber stop the bus for a defecation stroll.

  “Not here, man,” said Fractyl. “Right here is too close to that.” But after about twenty minutes Fractyl did pull over.

  We all got out and practiced yoga behind the bus while CT walked ahead. Shortly after he squatted, a sports car screeched up and a man inside the car jumped out pointing a gun.

  On CT’s defecation strolls, he wanders until the universe gives him a sign that he is in the right place to go. Unfortunately, this time the universe directed CT to relieve himself in the place where the man from the car’s mother and sister had been hit and killed in an accident. The man kept pointing the gun at two white crosses with MOTHER and SISTER written on them, and a large plastic floral bouquet with pictures and ribbons.

  CT was trying to explain himself. “Like, I detected that this was a hallowed place, man. That’s why I stopped here; it was like, the earth was saying Here, Worship Here; I mean this is like a shrine.”

  “You were shitting on it!” the man with the gun screamed.

  “Do you hierarchize organic matter?” asked CT. “Because I don’t think that’s the right way to go about things.”

  Just then a cop pulled up, and several minutes later a lot of photographers showed up, too. Perry walked over to me while CT was educating the cop regarding the back-and-forth of earth and man.

  “You should probably call your sister,” Perry said. “This is going to take a while. I don’t know if we’re going to make it to the show.”

  I decided to go ahead and dial her number, then figure out exactly what to say while the phone was ringing, but Sister picked up on the first ring.

  “Sister,” I began, “there has been an unfortunate detour. If the show doesn’t get canceled you’ll have to meet us at the arena. Tell them ‘Hashish four-twenty’ at the backstage area. That’s our code phrase. They’ll totally let you in.”

  “I’m not going to your boyfriend’s concert and I’m not saying that phrase. What do you mean, detour?”

  When the police showed up, everyone except Perry and CT, who were already talking to the man with the gun, had been forced to run inside the bus and ingest all the drugs on board. We divided them equally according to body mass, meaning Fractyl Clymber and I took the least, but it was still a pretty heavy load. Grog was already freaking out and had locked himself in the bus’s closet to masturbate.

  The words coming out of my mouth were like a canoe at the tip of a waterfall. I saw what was ahead but was unable to stop it. I am always for truth but with Sister sometimes the truth has to be dressed up a little bit, not hidden but wrapped up in a way that makes it better, like a Christmas present. I was feeling very chatty, though, and the sweat on my tongue didn’t help. Everything just poured out.

  “CT accidentally relieved himself on this grave, and now a lot of people are taking my picture.” The flashes from the paparazzi’s lightbulbs were bright and painful but I couldn’t stop staring at them. I moved closer to the flash. “I’m like a moth or something right now,” I told her. She started crying and then Perry grabbed the phone and told me to get a full-body cape for CT from the bus closet. CT was so into sharing the truth of the Worm Eternal that he had not yet proceeded to tie up the bottom and fly of his leather suit.

  “Grog’s in the closet masturbating,” I told Perry. “He’s really freaked.”

  Perry sighed and nodded. “You stay put. I’ll get it.”

  * * *

  When we finally arrive at the arena, the noise of the crowd doing the Howl of the Wolf is deafening. Their pack call drowns out the opening band, an experimental metal group that heavily utilizes electric bongos.

  The arena’s head of security approaches us. He’s shivering with fear. “You’ve got to get out there,” he pleads to CT, his voice trembling. “I’ve never seen a crowd get this crazy, and I’ve worked this arena for almost thirty years.”

  CT throws off his cape and uses his arm to make a sweeping motion, like he’s violently clearing a table. “No problem,” he says, “this is my gig, man. Don’t even worry.” The fly of his leather suit is still open as he walks onstage; he tends to forget about things like that, but there is no time. Also, since the crowd is already worked into such a manic rage, what better to satiate them than the sight of CT’s loveworm? It is like his music: hard yet soft.

  CT’s voice bleeds through the loudspeaker.

  “People of Earth: I come to you as an ambassador . . . from the planet of ROCK!”

  With that, Grog slams the bass and the drums are off and running like a wild, hungry dog.

  Let me tell you about the sound of Wolf Rainbow.

  It is loud but it is a very harmonious loudness. It is like the most beautiful woman in the world beating you up with her hair.

  At Wolf Rainbow concerts, I curl up in a little ball lik
e I’m trying to keep myself from vomiting. But what I’m really trying to do is hold on. When I hear CT’s voice going up through the clouds and then back down and up again at a dizzying rate, like an airplane showing off, I can’t help but feel that I’m suspended on the edge of a cliff or somewhere similar where the beauty before me comes with the price of danger. A lot of people who know about the over-edge view from the top of a bridge or tall building are dead, because they climbed up in order to jump off. Sometimes I’m afraid of such ledges. I worry the view might be so beautiful as to urge me—that I might suddenly be so overcome by what a wide, big net beauty is that I want nothing more than to jump into its middle. That’s how I feel about Wolf Rainbow—I’m a little afraid of falling in and losing myself.

  At this moment I feel a short kick at my ribs. Sister. She must have said hashish four-twenty.

  “Look at your pupils. Do you need a doctor?”

  I shake my head and get up, attempting to hug her.

  She steps backward and covers her torso protectively. “Please stay away. Let’s just get this done. What a complete nightmare. Do you know that reporters get ahold of my cell phone number? No matter how many times I change it? Normally I only pick up for people I know, which is, well, you, and doctors’ offices, but this time I answered every call. ‘Yes,’ I told them, ‘I do have a comment on the latest fiasco: she and her boyfriend are crazy and I am publicly disowning her.’”

  “We got married,” I say. “Remember?” I would’ve invited Sister to the wedding if there had been time, but I didn’t actually become aware of the ceremony until it had already happened. Mescaline can be that way. Grog showed me a video, though. CT and I were slathered with divine jelly and rebirthed together as twins from the Womb of the Worm.

  Sister stretches out her arm, handing me a manila folder with a pen attached. “I’ll show you where to sign.” Suddenly she cringes and rubs her temples. The band is starting in on a particularly heavy number titled “Reign of the Pig Women.” “My God,” she whimpers, “do you have some aspirin?”