by Dale Peck
“Don’t open that door, dude,” Dirk says, his voice low, raspy, sunglasses still on. “Don’t go in there.”
I pull my hand away real quick, put it in my pocket, pretend I was never going to check it out, whistle a Billy Idol song that I can’t get out of my head. “I wasn’t gonna go in there, dude. Chill out.”
He nods slowly, takes off the sombrero, switching to another channel, then back to Bad Boys. He sighs and flicks something off one of his cowboy boots. “He’s not dead yet.”
“No, no, I get it, dude,” I tell him. “Just mellow out.”
I go downstairs, bring up some more beer, and we smoke some more pot, tell some more jokes, one about a koala bear and one about black people, another about a plane crash, and then we watch the rest of the movie, basically not saying a lot, long pauses between sentences, even words, the credits are rolling and Dirk takes off his sunglasses, then puts them back on, and I’m stoned. He looks at me and says, “Ally Sheedy looks good beaten up,” and then outside, like ritual, a storm arrives.
I’m hanging out at Phases over in Studio City and it’s getting late and I’m with some young girl with long blond hair who could be maybe twenty who I first saw with some geek dancing to “Material Girl” and she’s bored and with me now and I’m bored and I want to get out of here and we finish our drinks and go to my car and get in and I’m sort of drunk and don’t turn on the radio and it’s silent in the car as she rolls down her window and Ventura is so deserted it’s still silent except for the air-conditioning and she doesn’t say a word about how nice my car is and so I finally ask this bitch, while uselessly opening the sunroof to impress her, getting closer to Encino, “How many Ethiopians can you fit in a Volkswagen?” and I take a Marlboro out of my jacket, push the lighter in, smiling to myself.
“All of them,” she says.
I pull the car over to the side of the road, tires screeching, and turn the engine off. I sit there, waiting. Somehow the radio got turned on and some song is playing but I don’t know which song it is and the lighter pops up. My hand is trembling and I’m staring at her, leaning away, cigarette still in my hand. I think she asks what’s going on but I don’t even hear her and I try to compose myself and I’m about to pull out onto Ventura but then I have to stop and stare at her some more and, bored, she asks what are we doing? and I keep staring and then, very slowly, still holding the cigarette, push the lighter in, wait until it heats up, pops out, light the cigarette, blow the smoke out, looking at her still, leaning away, and then I ask very quietly, suspiciously, maybe a little confused, “Okay”—taking a deep breath—“how many Ethiopians can you fit into a Volkswagen?” I don’t breathe until I hear her answer. I watch a tumbleweed come out of nowhere and hear it graze the bumper of the Porsche.
“I told you all of them,” she says. “Are we going to your place or, like, what is this?”
I lean back, smoke some of the cigarette, ask, “How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“No. Really,” I say. “Come on. It’s just the two of us. We’re alone now. I’m not a cop. Tell the truth. You won’t get in trouble if you tell the truth.”
She thinks about it, then asks, “Will you give me a gram?”
“Half.”
She lights a joint I mistake for a cigarette and she aims the smoke out the sunroof and says, “Okay, I’m fourteen. I’m fourteen. Can you deal with it? God.” She offers me the joint.
“No way,” I say, not taking it.
She shrugs. “Yes way.” Another drag.
“No way,” I say again.
“Yes way. I’m fourteen. I was bas-mitzvahed at the Beverly Hills Hotel and it was hell and I’ll be fifteen in October,” she says, holding in smoke, then exhaling.
“How did you get into the club?”
“Fake ID.” She reaches into her purse.
“Did I actually mistake Hello Kitty for Louis Vuitton?” I murmur aloud, grabbing the purse, smelling it.
She shows me the fake ID. “Guess you did, genius.”
“How do I know it’s fake?” I ask. “How do I know you’re not just teasing me?”
“Study it real careful. Yeah, I was born twenty years ago in 1964, uh-huh, right,” she sneers. “Duh.”
I hand it back to her. Then I start the car up again and, still looking over at her, pull onto Ventura Boulevard and start heading toward the darkness of Encino.
“All of them.” I shudder. “Whew.”
“Where’s my gram?” she asks, then, “Oh look, a sale at Robinson’s.”
I light another cigarette.
“I usually don’t smoke,” I tell her. “But you’re doing something weird to me.”
“You shouldn’t smoke.” She yawns. “Those things’ll kill you. At least that’s what my hideous mother always said.”
“Did she die from cigarettes?” I ask.
“No, her throat was slashed by some maniac,” she says. “She didn’t smoke.” Pause. “Mexicans have basically raised me.” Another pause. “Let me tell you, that is no fun.”
“Yeah?” I smile grimly. “You think cigarettes will kill me?”
She takes another drag off her joint and then it’s gone and I pull into the garage and then we’re walking into the bedroom and everything’s speeding up, where the night’s heading is becoming clearer, and she checks out the house and asks for a large vodka on the rocks. I tell her beer is in the fridge and that she can get it the fuck herself. She pulls some kind of demented hissy fit and slouches into the kitchen, muttering, “Jesus, my father has better manners.”
“You can’t be fourteen,” I’m saying. “No way.” I’m taking off my tie and jacket, kicking my loafers off.
She walks back in with a Corona in one hand, a fresh j in the other. She’s wearing too much makeup, these ugly white Guess jeans but she looks like most girls, waxy and artificial.
“You poor pitiful bitch,” I murmur.
I lie down on the bed, kick back, my head resting on some bunched-up pillows, stare at her, reach down, adjust myself.
“You don’t have any furniture?” she asks.
“I’ve got a fridge. I got this bed,” I tell her, running my hand across designer sheets.
“Yeah. That’s true. Boy, you sure have a point.” She walks around the room, then over to the door near the end of the room, tries it, locked. “What’s in there?” she asks, looking at the sunrise/sunset chart I clipped from the L.A. Herald Examiner for this week, Scotch-taped to the door.
“Just another room,” I tell her.
“Oh.” She looks at me, finally a little scared.
I pull my pants off, fold them, throw them on the floor.
“Why do you have so much, like . . .” She stops. She’s not drinking the beer. She’s looking over at me, confused.
“So much what?” I ask, unbuttoning my shirt.
“Well . . . so much meat,” she says meekly. “I mean, there’s so much meat in your refrigerator.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Because I get hungry? Because red snapper appalls me?” I put the shirt down, next to the pants. “Christ.”
“Oh.” She just stands there.
I don’t say anything else, prop my head back up on the pillows. I ease my underwear off slowly and motion for her to come over here, to me, and she slowly walks over, helpless, with a full beer, a sliver of lime in its top, a joint that has gone out. Bracelets circling her wrist look like they are made from fur.
“Uh, listen, this is—this is gonna sound like totally bizarre,” she stammers. “But are you . . .”
She’s coming nearer now, toward me, floating, unaware that her feet aren’t even touching the floor. I rise up, a huge erection on the verge of bursting jutting out in front of me.
“Are you, like . . .” She stops smiling. “Like, a . . .” She doesn’t finish.
“A vampire?” I suggest, grinning.
“No—an agent,” she asks seriously.
I clear my throat.
When I say no, I’m not an agent, she moans and I have her by the shoulders now and I’m taking her very slowly, calmly, to the bathroom and while I’m stripping her, throwing the espirit T-shirt aside, into the bidet, she keeps giggling, wasted, and asking, “Doesn’t that sound weird to you?” and then finally her young perfect body is naked and she looks up into eyes that cloud over completely, black and bottomless, and she reaches up, weeping with disbelief, and touches my face and I smile and touch her smooth, hairless pussy and she says, “Just don’t give me a hickey,” and then I scream and jump on her and rip her throat out and then I fuck her and then I play with her blood and after that basically everything’s okay.
I’m driving down Ventura tonight toward my psychiatrist’s office, over the hill. I did a couple of lines earlier and “Boys of Summer” is blasting from the tape deck and I’m singing along with it, air-jamming at stoplights, passing the Galleria, passing Tower Records and the Factory and the La Reina theater, which will close soon, and past the new Fatburger and the giant Nautilus that just opened. I got a call from Marsha earlier, inviting me to a party in Malibu. Dirk sent me these ZZ Top stickers to put on the lid of my coffin and I think that’s pretty tacky but I’ll keep them anyway. I’m watching all these people in their cars tonight and I’ve been thinking a lot about nuclear bombs since I’ve seen a couple of bumper stickers complaining about them.
In Dr. Nova’s office I’m having a hard time.
“What’s going on tonight, Jamie?” Dr. Nova asks. “You seem . . . agitated.”
“I have these images, man, no, these visions,” I’m telling him. “Visions of nuclear missiles blowing this place away.”
“What place, Jamie?”
“Melting the Valley, the whole Valley. All the chicks rotting away. The Galleria just a memory. Everything gone.” Pause. “Evaporated.” Pause. “Is that a word?”
“Wow,” Dr. Nova says.
“Yeah, wow,” I say, staring out the window.
“What will happen to you?” he asks.
“Why? You think that would stop me?” I ask back.
“What do you think?”
“You think a fucking nuclear bomb is gonna end all this?” I’m saying. “No way, dude.”
“End all what?” Dr. Nova asks.
“We’ll survive that.”
“Who is we?
“We have been here forever and we will probably be around forever too.” I check my nails.
“What will we be doing?” Dr. Nova asks, barely paying attention.
“Roaming.” I shrug. “Flying around. Looming over you like a fucking raven. Picture the biggest raven you’ve ever seen. Picture it looming.”
“How are your parents, Jamie?”
“I don’t know,” I say and then, my voice rising toward a scream, “But I live the cool life and if you do not refill my prescription of Darvocet—”
“What will you do, Jamie?”
I consider my options, then calmly explain.
“I’ll be waiting,” I tell him. “I’ll be waiting in your bed room one night. Or under the table of your favorite restaurant, mutilating your wittle foot.”
“Is . . . this a threat?” Dr. Nova asks.
“Or when you take your daughter to McDonald’s,” I say, “I’ll be dressed as Ronald McDonald or the Grimace and I’ll eat her in the parking lot while you watch and quickly get fucked up.”
“We’ve talked about this before, Jamie.”
“I’ll be waiting in the parking lot or in your daughter’s schoolyard or in a bathroom. I’ll be crouching in your bathroom. I’ll follow your daughter home from school and after I play fucky with her I’ll be crouching in your bathroom.”
Dr. Nova just looks at me, bored, as if my behavior is explainable.
“I was in the hospital room when your father died of cancer,” I tell him.
“You’ve mentioned this before,” he says idly.
“He was rotting away, Dr. Nova,” I say. “I saw him. I saw your father rotting away. I told all my friends your father died of toxic shock. That he stuck a tampon up his ass and left it there too long. He died screaming, Dr. Nova.”
“Have you . . . killed anyone else recently, Jamie?” Dr. Nova asks, not too visibly shaken.
“In a movie,” I say. “In my mind.” I giggle.
Dr. Nova sighs, studies me, largely unassured. “What do you want?”
“I want to be in the backseat of your car, waiting, drooling—”
“I hear you, Jamie.” Dr. Nova sighs.
“I want my Darvocet refilled or else I’m gonna be waiting beneath that lovely black-bottom pool of yours one night while you’re out for a little midnight swim, Dr. Nova, and I’ll pull veins and tendons out of your well-muscled thigh.” I’m standing now, pacing.
“I’ll give you the Darvocet, Jamie,” Dr. Nova says. “But I want you here on a less irregular basis.”
“I’m totally psyched,” I say. “You’re as cool as they come.”
He fills out a prescription and then, while handing it to me, asks, “Why should I fear you?”
“Because I’m a tan burly motherfucker and my teeth are so sharp they make a straight razor seem like a butter knife.” I pause. “Need a better reason?”
“Why do you threaten me?” he asks. “Why should I fear you?”
“Because I’m going to be that last image you ever see,” I tell him. “Count on it.”
I head toward the door, then turn back around. “Where’s the place you feel safest?” I ask.
“In an empty movie theater,” Dr. Nova says.
“What’s your favorite movie?” I ask.
“Vacation, with Chevy Chase and Christie Brinkley.”
“What’s your favorite cereal?”
“Frosted Mini Wheats or something with bran in it.”
“What’s your favorite TV commercial for?”
“Bayer Aspirin.”
“Who did you vote for last election?”
“Reagan.”
“Define the vanishing point.”
“You”—he’s crying—“define it.”
“We’ve already been there,” I tell him. “We’ve already seen it.”
“Who’s . . . we?” He chokes.
“Legion.”
Letting Go
by Gil Cuadros
I am on the beach a cold winter Sunday, dressed in white jeans, white t-shirt, white blazer. My feet are bare. The sand is unusually clean, shells are arranged in tribal patterns of the sun and moon, man and woman. I can’t recall if these designs had appeared there with the tide or were there from when I arrived. I feel something move in my hand, which I grip tightly, a thick sea-worthy rope woven of twine. The length moves away from me like a kite’s string. I can see the other end is tied to my old lover’s foot in the wing tips he used to wear when he worked. The soles have been worn down. My old lover’s arms move spastically, as if holding his balance on a current I can’t visualize. He looks down at me like I am the angel. We haven’t had sex in over a year; he has been in this condition for quite a while.
My new lover, Rudy, is at my elbow, trying to pull me away with his usual arguments. We haven’t had sex either. Not that Rudy hasn’t tried, rubbing his crotch on the side of my leg, kneeling in front of me, unzipping my fly till I nearly fumble with the rope. Today he has been shopping, and is wearing the sheer white bathing suit he purchased. The trunks are skin tight, “Versace” runs along the waistband in bold black letters. Rudy turns around like a model, gold fleurs-de-lys are on each cheek of his ass.
There are moments when I want to get rid of this rope, having tested how many fingers I can actually
let go of and still be able to manage the rope. The smaller fingers feel dead or asleep. As they curl open I can see cuts and bruises inside my palms. Rudy has brought astringent because he knows it will sting, and arnica because it can heal. I tell him that it doesn’t hurt, but he refuses to hear that, insists that I should let go as he holds onto the rope himself. He says there are rolls of bandages he can wrap around my hands. I see through his deception. “How are you going to be able to hold the rope and bandage my hands?”
It’s when I lose my temper that the priests come waltzing in. It has happened before. Their faces are drawn, skin and bones. The father today is particularly ugly, lesions cover what little flesh is exposed, his breath smells of shit and urine. He looks close in my face, says, “Son, it is time to let go, last rites, you need to live in the city of God.” My old lover smiles, unaware of what is being said around me. He is so trusting. He has given Rudy and me his blessing, has thrown down what was left in his pockets, a brass lighter, copper coins as gifts to us. Rudy holds on to them, has buried them somewhere farther upshore.
I look where I believe the artifacts are buried and can see the sand rises in little dunes. I notice a head growing out of the sand, a young woman with long, black hair. My mother at sixteen. A young man follows her, reaches to hold her hand. By that simple touch, magic, I see her belly swell. There is pain in her eyes, regret for being so young. When I am born, my father dances with me in his arms, drunk. I smell his love. My mother pulls me away from him. He begins to strangle her, she won’t leave. I want to ask her why, she slaps me. My neck feels broken and she continues to hit me. I grab her hand. I am now grown, masturbating every day in the bathroom, letting the water run to cover the sound. My mother is afraid of what I can do to her. I am sure of my strength, my ability to break her arm. That’s when she tells me what a handsome boy I’ve become. My father turns his back on us, the muscles in his back are knotted. All he says is, “Faggot.” My mother wants to hit me but cannot bring herself to do it. I see myself walk away from them alone.
It’s like a mirror grazing over the sand, moving quickly to confront me. I try to have Rudy look at my life, but he is biting at my ear, blowing warm air into the canal. His fingertips are warm as they move over my body. I turn back to my image, now standing in front of me. Rudy says he is going to leave if I don’t let go. As he moves away I gradually become colder. I hand the rope to my image, which he gladly accepts, seems to have strength I have lost. It is the first time I have ever released the rope and my hands feel strange and useless. Rudy is near, running down the beach. My image is being dragged into the ocean. I start running for Rudy, but I can’t take my eyes off myself. I yell out my new lover’s name. He stops. I look back and see my image drowning in the ocean, my old lover looks more like a dead fish floating in an aquarium. Rudy kisses me, says, “Today . . .” and can’t complete his thought. The water has completely covered my image and the rope seems to have lost all tension. I return to Rudy, unsure that I love him or that I even want to be with him. I look down at my feet gliding over the sand, notice the cuffs of my pants have begun to fray, the threads twirl in the sea air and start to become twine.