by Peter Manus
He’s sitting there, one leg up, old jeans and crusty boots just so. He’s sipping coffee and perusing his sketchbook, and he must get some inkling that I’m looking at him because he lifts his head and meets my eye. He says something, or maybe just mouths it—not in a stagey way but I’m meant to read his lips—and then he nods. His facial expression is not unfriendly or ominous—in fact, it might even be sympathetic, but then he’s a guy and so doesn’t show much of anything with his eyes. Bastard.
It takes me until I’m stepping through the revolving door and into the Parker House, imitating his lip movements with my own, to figure out what he’d mouthed to me. It was “I saw.”
GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT
36-D @ February 1 12:15 am
Hon, your life is getting spooky. I hate to break it to you but that lawyer creep is right: you should be focusing on Getting Out of this case, not on getting in deeper. Screw the whole search for the truth about Mr. Suicide. GET AWAY FROM EVERYTHING TO DO WITH HIM.
proudblacktrannie @ February 1 12:16 am
Pepper spray? I know where you can get some easy. TTYOL?
fickel @ February 1 12:17 am
All good advice, but, putting aside the Mysterious Hottie for a moment, don’t you see what is going on here? That is the Peacock’s necklace photographed on Stephen Pearle’s shop wall. What is the connection?
marleybones @ February 1 12:19 am
Maybe it doesn’t connect. IMHO we have been building mysteries out of some very unamazing coincidences. Leave it alone, fickel. Unless you ARE Mr. Suicide’s unknown lover and DID push him into the path of a train and therefore you need to stay close to the case so as to cover for yourself—all of which we know is NOT true—leave it behind.
proudblacktrannie @ February 1 12:21 am
And also blow off the Burly-Bear until he comes to you and assures you that the BPD are out of your life and he is off-off-off duty. That’s the first moment you owe him any hint of an explanation about the tat guy living in your place. Do you hear me, girl?
hitman @ February 1 12:22 am
Blow off Burly-Bear? With this mind-reading doodler stalking her, mouthing vague threats across crowded coffee shops? fickel, B-Bear represents the closest thing to safety in your life right now. Here’s some real advice: tell your brother to blow. Then call Burly-Bear and explain who your brother is, plain and simple. Then tell about this Mysterious Hottie, including the bullshit threat. Tell the cop everything and he will help you.
chinkigirl @ February 1 12:25 am
What about the weird necklace connection? Should fickel reveal that to Burly-Bear as well?
proudblacktrannie @ February 1 12:26 am
Not fickel’s problem. Keep that to yourself.
chinkigirl @ February 1 12:27 am
I don’t know. I have to say I was liking the sound of hitman’s advice, now that this “Mysterious Hottie” figure has moved into focus. But if fickel is going to ally herself with Burly-Bear, doesn’t it have to be all the way?
36-D @ February 1 12:30 am
Mysterious Hottie might be a cop, remember? He’s also hot, so they’ve made his job to either seduce fickel and get her into some pillow talk or send her scampering into Burly-Bear’s arms. The only one you can trust is Mr. Groin. You know where he comes from and he doesn’t have any mixed motives.
proudblacktrannie @ February 1 12:31 am
wait, so she’s blowing off BOTH hot cops?
webmaggot @ February 1 12:35 am
What are you on, ladies? Anyone who still has a “cop conspiracy” theory in his head needs to swear off TV for a couple of weeks and adjust to real life again. Cops don’t go “undercover” for this kind of junk. This guy—Mysterious Rottie—is a psycho, plain and simple, who has got fickel spooked and confused because (and, with all due respect, here’s the way the distaff sex thinks) he happens to be good-looking. If you doubt me, think about this: if he isn’t psycho, why would he stalk her when he could just walk up and ask for a little vagina action like the polite young guy he looks to be? Well, apparently that’s not how the guy works, fick. He needs to do his own freaky thing regardless of what he looks like and how easy it would be for him to have the sex life that all the rest of us would love to have. Think Ted Bundy, ’kay? Just pretend it’s an ugly guy doing what he’s doing and suddenly you’ll see it exactly the way I’m telling it.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 1 12:44 am
Hear, hear.
fickel @ February 1 12:46 am
I’ll think that through.
marleybones @ February 1 12:48 am
Here’s something else to think through. This may sound like a stretch, but when I reread the diary excerpt that Burly-Bear and the Colonel analyzed, the so-called pandering pussycat from Sleepy Hollow sounds a lot like the Peacock!!!
i.went.to.harvard @ February 1 12:51 am
Although Sleepy Hollow is in upstate New York, or at least that’s what my sketchy memory of Ichabod Crane tells me.
marleybones @ February 1 12:52 am
Actually, there’s a Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Mass. I just checked.
chinkigirl @ February 1 12:54 am
I’m finding this whole Peacock angle strangely ominous, but I’m not quite in touch with why. It’s like I’m grasping about for a simple explanation that makes all of this go away, and instead it becomes increasingly complex.
proudblacktrannie @ February 1 12:55 am
Are we wondering if the Peacock could have been more than just a customer of Mr. Suicide’s?
roadrage @ February 1 12:58 am
Wait—I thought she was supposed to be doing the dirty with the Groin Machine?
36-D @ February 1 01:01 am
No—all we got there is that he’d like to be doing it with her.
marleybones @ February 1 01:03 am
Look, guys, we needn’t go so far as to put the Peacock in the middle of the action. But even if she weren’t a personal friend of Mr. Suicide’s, couldn’t she have gotten to know him a little while he designed her necklace? After all, a commission like that makes people rather friendly.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 1 01:05 am
And couldn’t she have, I don’t know, fixed him up with some young sex toy she happened to know—the pool boy, the landscape guy?
fickel @ February 1 01:17 am
Or the girl who edits her husband’s book. Isn’t that what you’re all thinking?
i.went.to.harvard @ February 1 01:29 am
It wasn’t what I was thinking. Not at all. Anyone else?
fickel @ February 1 01:44 am
I see. Well, no Purple Hearts going out tonight. ’Til tomorrow, comrades.
19
02.01 @ 2:43 am:
Killer Chick ’n’ Slacker Dude Sitting in a Tree!
Dropped by Killer Chick’s place t’othah night jes foh wu–up. The answer being nuttin’, I go round back, just for giggles, like. Behind her place is nice and dark, with the butt ends of four-story walk-ups kind of crowded together, their wooden porches forming a crooked ring around some sort of shared blacktop parking area where six, seven cars are jammin like pigs round a troff. No laundry hanging out but it’s that kind of yard, if you follow. No lights, either, except what cracks through winder shades. And no dogs. Dogs suck, so I’m real happy to not hear them (or step in their gooey piles of doo). Lot of TV angst floating round in the dope-tinged air. Warm night for winter, so a couple people r out on one of the porches, way high up, silhouetted against the night, smoking. Sigh—the sights you see when you ain’t got a night-vision bolt action sniper rifle—hey wait I do but unfortunately not on me. All in all a homey hood, even “safe,” in that easy-to-break-&-enter-but-nuttin’-to-steal sort of way.
So I swing me up and land light and sweet on the porch behind Killer Chick’s place. She got no window looking on the porch, more the shame, but I ease my bum up onto the soggy railing and lean out a little to check out some rattan shades and, oh yeah there�
��s my fav-o-rite girl hunched over some laptop. There’s a ceiling bulb throwing some low-end wattage, but the place is generally doused in deep brown gloom, except for the bright white screen of the Vaio beaming up into her tweetie lil face.
Killer Chick is wearing a clingy pink t-shirt made of something ribbed and stretchy so I can count the bumps of her spine, and maybe some yellow-n-white striped boxers below—guy’s boxers with the rim rolled over a couple times so they’ll fit her nice. She’s sitting in profile, so I can see one of her eyes in spite of the nerd-girl specs on her face that reflect the computer light—it occurs to me that these are different specs than the ones I’ve seen her wearing, and I wonder whether she broke her real glasses and so had to resort to an old pair (with an old scrip?—not a good idea, KC!)
She peers into that screen like a girl staring into one of those self-lit makeup mirrors you see in the pharmacy, hunting for beauty in that reflecting pool, but Killer Chick is looking at words, and her fingers don’t play among little jars of makeup, no, they trickle over the alphabet keys that allow her to express herself—giving her the blush and bravura she seeks as much as other girls seek rouge and lipstick. Is it Killer Chick’s blog, pray? And is this perchance an opportunity to take our relationship to the next level?
Shhhhhhhh. How I imagine us together, our date with destiny, approaching one another on an empty street in the deserted shopping district, the moonlight silver off the wet pavement, you in silhouette, your coat cinched tight at the waist, your hair an unruly thicket. You stop, seem to study me as I emerge from the shadow of an awning, and as I walk toward you, flicking open my straight-edge, you suddenly toss your cigarette off to the side, your gesture efficient yet loose and graceful. For a moment it seems as if you will run right to me, as you drift a step in my direction, but then you swing round and skitter down the steps of the T station with a little cry—whether excitement or fear, I cannot discern. I give chase, a smile involuntarily breaking across my face.
As I settle in to watch, Killer Chick is just swirling some booze around in a square-bottom glass while she reads her screen, then leans her head back and takes a throaty sip before she resumes her typing. I admire her for drinking the hard stuff. These girls hanging out in Cambridge with their sauvignon blanc de blanc bousheet I can stuff in a deserted Charles River drainage pipe (and have done, in fact, on one excellent evening some couple months back!) Occasionally she types; her keyboard style is like a journalist’s—hard and spurty.
While I’m watching, who should come strollin’ out from some unseen back hallway but the Slacker Dude, smokin a fat j and carrying a towel. First I think he’s wearing some sort of t-shirt decorated like a comic book but while he stops to take in Killer Chick I notice he’s playing with his belly button and so I catch that he’s shirtless—much of his torso’s just covered in multicolored tattoos. The reds especially seem brighter than most skin dyes you see. Dude’s got some of them nipple rings going on as well, making me wonder if he’s about to drop dead from blood poisoning—could happen, but it’s not, like, the type of thing you would want to rely on.
Anyway, he wanders over to snag a look over her shoulder at what she’s typing and I finally get the full picture: the boy’z bare-ass naked. He’s got the towel bunched over his pubes and draped down the fronts of his legs, which is why I didn’t notice his serious lack of pants before. But now I see the water dripping down his yellow tush. Just out of the shower, and not a speck of modesty on the dude.
Killer Chick doesn’t turn from the computer; maybe she don’t notice or just doesn’t care that he’s walking around nude as a doggie. She does care, however, about keeping what she’s doing from his prying eyes. She tilts the screen down so he can’t catch it, then makes a casual “bug off” finger flutter over her shoulder. He answers equally carelessly, parks his joint between her fingers and raises the towel to flip it over his head so he can dry his skull and then his back. Guy’s got a hard little physique going on sho noh and is obviously proud as hell of his manhood, but she’s not bothering to turn around so the show’s just for me. Thanks, peckerhead.
Anyway, the Slacker Dude wises to the fact that his posing ain’t catching much attention so he throws the towel aside and walks over to retrieve his doobie. He drags on it and then reaches around from behind her and places it between her lips. If she gave a shit about anything but what she’s doing online maybe his come-on might be almost working, but she doesn’t look interested even as she puckers up and takes herself a long, lush drag from between his fingers. Looks like these lovers are kind of used to it—bit odd, too, because he, at least, seems young to be in a fuck-rut. But, hell, you got a lot of ignorant folks doing each other at fifteen years of age, married just as soon as it’s legal, middle-aged with six turd-crusted offspring at twenty-five, dead to one another long time before that. Some parts of the country it’s quite common, I believe.
So anyway, the two of them start talking and it seems like he’s making a case for her showing him more of what she’s into on the Vaio and she’s making a case for him a go fuck hisself, although neither one seems actually pissed off. She’s pulled her feet up so she’s resting her chin on her knees and she pushes a foot against the desk to kind of rotate the chair round so that, whether or not she caught on that he was starkers before, she sees it now. She hardly blinks, and seems to make a casual gesture over toward somewhere I can’t see. Looks like there’s some clothes she washed and folded for him but he turns back to her with some kind of complaint. So with a roll of her eyes the Killer Chick half stands up and shucks off the yellow striped boxers and chucks them over, all in one smooth motion. She pulls the bottom of her pretty pink t-shirt down over her bottom when she sits again to make a kind of dress out of it, not wut I’d call particularly quick or anything. Seems like she just wants something between her sweet little cheeks and the chair, and I only catch a sliver of her girlie-nest but I do in point o’ fact see this and that’s enough to know she’s got nothing on under the boxers but the triangle of moss God supplied. The Slacker Dude flashes a smile—kind of brief and nasty like maybe he’d be up for some but has the idea that she’s not in the mood. Maybe they just did it before his shower.
So kool as can be she crosses her legs and swings the chair back toward her Vaio, where she lifts her drink and tilts herself another trickle. Behind her, Slacker Dude stands there, his fist gripping the yellow striped boxers round his unseen member. After a couple of long seconds he gets over it. He pulls on the shorts, then the pants she’s washed, and when he starts talking to her again I get the gist of what’s about to happen. This is fortunate because I’m getting tired of sitting on that rail. I slither off my perch so I’m out front well before he emerges.
Sure enough, in a minute out pops Slacker Dude in his downy-fresh threads. I give him a follow until again I get the gist of whu-up and then I hustle while he stops to suck off the nub of his hay-bone before hitting the Avenue. So I’m way ahead of him and inside the internet café, even have time to buy two coffees and guzzle an inch of joe off one of them before he arrives. Even this late the place is jammed with a bunch of morons, almost all college and post-grad geeks by my eye—guess they got too much know-how to risk calling up their favorite fetish sites back at the dorm. I grab like eighteen sugars and dump them in the coffee I haven’t tasted, then squeeze into the last available seat next to some fat chick doing it up in dyed orange hair, forehead zits and a knit cap. She is systematically chewing her fingernails whilst her eyeballs jizz all over some online garbage I don’t even want to begin to imagine.
“Got a pen?”
Fat Red turns her head sharply and takes me in without missing a chomp on some thumb cuticle, one of her chubby cheeks squashed up almost into her eye what with the effort. For a moment her gaze is utterly blank, and then her eyes flood with yearning. She’s asking herself if I might be some freak who’s gonna chat her up and then rape her raw, like in the movies. She’s not sure whether some stranger who asks
her an innocuous question could turn out to be such a psycho? (Just once, though, please, God, please?)
“Like to write with.” I mime writing in the air.
She studies me for another beat, then lets her eyeballs bounce back and forth between my two coffee cups. It takes her a second, and then she catches on to the implication of the second cup. She rolls her eyes and uses a tone like she’s saying something sarcastic, which she isn’t.
“Whutevurrrr.”
She sticks a hand into her coat pocket, then pokes it, fingertips glistening with saliva and cuticle blood, in my direction. In her hand is a cheap ballpoint with no cap and the plastic nub chewed to pulp. Unfortunately, it’s too disgusting to touch. My hand falters, all on its own accord.
“Yeah, that’s okay,” I say.
She stabs it into her pocket and turns furiously back to her screen. “Then wha’d you ask for?” she hisses, more to herself than to me.
“Hey, save my seat for a sec?” I say.
She hisses me a “fat fuckin chance,” but while I’m snagging a pen from the Euro-barista I see her slap a hand down on my stool to prevent some hovering dweeb from claiming it. Chicks, huh? Each pathetic one bearing her own cross through life. Hard to imagine why they put the effort in.
I resume my seat and write on the cardboard cup I haven’t drank from. Then I bang up Full Frontal, start typing, and sit tight, one ear listening for him. Sure enough, the door opens with the Slacker Dude’s signature jam-jerk and I catch a glimpse of his hoodie-sleeveless jean jac combo reflected in the plate glass. He looks around and seems about to start fuming that there’s no available stations, but I make sure that my tush is just leaving my stool when his eyes get around the room a second time and he homes in, intent on claiming my spot.