by Sims, Karina
We sit in complete silence. Finally she leans back, closing her eyes and motions for me to take away the plate of paint. She wheels herself over to the kitchen. “I’m ready for clean up.”
I soak a rag, wash her fingertips and arms, carefully rubbing away any bits paint on her skin. While I wash her face with warm water she asks me, “You talk to any of those boys?”
I wipe a glob of ivory white off her cheek and toss the rag into the sink. “Boys?”
She wheels back a bit and rolls over to the couch. “Yeah. You know, men.”
“No, sorry... No. I haven’t”
“Well, if the guys you work with are such dolts then why don’t you try getting friendly with some of the customers?”
I think about Rick finger banging the silicone cunts on the shelf, Dennis raping his inflatable Queen of France and crying about going to hell. I think about the midget and the creep who stood beside her. I think about Trisha, I think about the dildos I stole and I think about hiding them inside Trisha. I think about Lilly, I think about her little burned feet and I think about murdering Harry with a baseball bat while he’s masturbating.
“No, they aren’t anything to write home about, Marcy. So, bringing them here... it`s not an option. You wouldn’t like them anyway.”
She turns around to face me, her eyes heavy with insecurities, “Why? Why wouldn’t I like them?”
I run the dish towel under some warm water to get all the paint out. “Because you just wouldn’t.”
She turns back to her TV staring at it for a good minute before turning The Price is Right on. I clean up her painting messes, do her dinner dishes and ask if she needs help going to the bathroom. She doesn’t say anything so I open the door to the stairs that go down to my floor.
She says, “You’re ashamed of me.”
Bob Barker asks America to please remember to spay or neuter our pets.
I turn to her and say, “No Marcy, you would be ashamed of me.”
As I’m walking down the stairs to my suite that cuckoo clock clucks three pm. I grab my wrist watch off the back of my couch and call Carl.
Neither of us have work that day so we go to the park and snort Ecstasy until Alison shows up with some decent cocaine and a loaf of bread which we toss to the ducks under the bridge.
Carl starts talking about Michael Jackson’s Bad album saying how great it is. “His best one. Better than Thriller I think. Smooth Criminal though is easily his best song.”
Alison and I both light cigarettes and shake our heads. She says, “Billie Jean! Billie Jean!”
I say, “Bad isn’t his best album. But Man in the Mirror is definitely my favorite song of Michael’s.”
Carl laughs, spits over the bridge into the water. “Yeah it’s good but my favorite song on the album other than Smooth Criminal is easily Leave Me Alone before Man in the Mirror. I mean, he could’ve left that track out and still had an amazing album.”
I shake my head. “No way.”
“Yeah way.”
Alison is digging in her pocket for more cocaine but keeps the bag inside her jacket as a jogger goes by pumping little plastic weights as he runs.
I wrap my smoke in a piece of bread and toss it over the edge. A duck catches it before it hits the water, shakes a bit, squawks violently and then flies away.
Alison hands me the little baggie and a snipped straw from McDonalds. “How’s Ronnie doing, Carl?”
I take a deep sniff and pinch my nose as the drips slide down my throat. Carl shrugs. “He lived, so I guess that means he’s good? I bought that Ecstasy from him yesterday. He doesn’t look too too bad. A little pale I guess, but otherwise fine. Why?”
She takes the baggie away from me, wipes the straw on her jeans and sniffs the thing empty. “Kinda scary.”
I aim a wad of spit at the duck below me, but it moves just in time. “What was?”
“Just freaky I guess.”
I try cracking my neck. “Well, just gotta learn how to handle your drugs, I guess.”
Carl slaps my shoulder. “Exactly. Like what Roger Alan says, right?”
I rub my sneaker into the cement wall of the bridge. “If you’re gonna be dumb you gotta be tough?”
He laughs, lights a smoke and slaps my shoulder again. “Yes! That’s exactly right!”
Alison tugs my tank top. “Trisha is coming out with us tonight.”
“We’re going out somewhere tonight?”
Carl jumps up onto the bridge ledge and pisses into the water. “Fuck yeah!”
Alison rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna push you off.”
His piss stream quivers a bit. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
She pulls some sunglasses out of her pocket and scratches her cheek. “Yeah we’re going to some house party. Friend of Carl’s is throwing some party for his medical school acceptance thing.”
Carl jumps back onto the bridge and squeezes Alison’s butt. “Yeah, so we’re gonna get lots of drugs before we go over.”
I spit over the ledge again. “What about beer?”
He looks skyward and scoffs, “Well, obviously.”
We head back to my house, watch Betty Boop cartoons and drink beer until Ronnie shows up at my door with three grams of cocaine which he insists on snorting at least half of with us before he leaves.
When we get to Carl’s buddy’s place, two of the front windows are broken and half the house is covered in picnic cups dripping with keg beer. The DJ in the backyard is blasting Ladytron’s “Seventeen” and feeding himself pills between mixes.
I’m starting to peak from the Ecstasy and I know if I don’t pee now I won’t feel like I have to when this shit really kicks in, and I don’t want my bladder to explode so I go into the bathroom. Of all the people to be there, Trisha is on the toilet. Some chick is sitting on the sink pissing so I tell Trisha to spread her legs. I pull my pants down and sit on her thighs so I’m facing her. I run my fingers through her hair and pull her mouth onto mine. Half my piss drips off her pussy before it hits the water.
The chick on the sink, the one with the faucet jammed up against her tramps stamp, she farts into the drain and says “You guys are fucked.”
Trisha’s heart is pounding hard enough to turn her face pink, she’s all out of breath, I have to keep covering her mouth to keep those horrible words from slipping out, but they do in awful little gasps, “Amanda...I... want you...to... be my...my…girlfriend...Amanda...”
I pull up my pants and drag her into the hallway; she’s still tugging up her jeans while we walk through the kitchen, crushing plastic cups under our feet with every step. No one really notices because about fifteen of them are all doing keg stands and playing flip cup.
We go into the backyard. Carl’s friend must be rich because there’s a fucking river at the end of his lawn and a dock and a few sail boats and not a neighbor in sight. The DJ is spinning this really shitty mix of Tomcraft’s “Overdose” while Trisha and I sit on the grass and feed each other all the drugs in our pockets.
There’s a group of guys down by the dock with a helium tank. They’re inhaling it, inflating balloons and setting them free in clusters. You can hear one of the guys speaking in that high ducky voice you only get from helium. “Now watch me bring em back down to earth boys!” Helium boy fires a few rounds out of a hunting rifle, pops half a dozen high rising red balloons and laughs like an Oompa Loompa. “Bam bitches!”
We make out under the moon and stars until the stars are dancing balls of light, illuminated fairies I try catching, but the gun shots and balloon fragments floating down from the sky keep scaring them away. Trisha is talking about wanting to be a model, asking me if she could be a model, while pulling blades of grass from the lawn, chewing them. Green spit drooling down her chin, she’s shouting in my face “Don’t you think I could be a model?!”
The gun shots and pixie stars and damp grass all around me, I grab a hand full of dirt and shove it in her mouth. All that grass between her teeth, makes me want
to put her into the earth, water her every day, mow her nice and short. She spits out soil and jumps on top of me, her face millimeters from mine. When she talks, that green drool is pouring into my mouth and I’m spitting it out, misting her face with grass juice. “I love you Amanda. I’ve never been with a woman, I want you to be my first, I want you. Love me! Love me! Love me!” She starts crying, her tears dripping onto my eyelids, onto my eyeballs, stinging them. I push her off me and wipe my eyes. She caresses my arms, “Don’t you cry too! I couldn’t take it if I ever made you cry! Fuck!”
I want to tell her something, but I just can’t think of what to say. I can’t stop staring at the sky. She’s pulling on my tank top saying “I love you!” over and over again, I get up, walk over to the DJ and start dancing with Carl and Alison and some other jerks flailing around.
Alison asks me how Trisha is, I look over to where we were and she’s gone. I shrug and keep dancing. Those helium gun boys go into the house and come out with a keg. At least fifty people come filtering out of the house and the keg is empty within a half hour. Me and Alison do keg stands until she pukes and I take her inside to help clean up all the foam and puke soaking her t-shirt clear to her tits.
Alison is stumbling in front of me through the house, mumbling between spit strands, “This is so gross...”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ve seen worse. Just go into the bathroom, I’ll help you clean up.”
She spits off to the side, a wad of phlegm sliding across the kitchen counter. “Thank you, babe... Thank you so...” She pushes the bathroom door open. Two dudes are standing side by side, pants down around their ankles, one of them aiming a cell phone down at Trisha as she jerks him off, her mouth full of the other dude’s cock. Her eyes watering, little rivers of black mascara traveling down her face, soaking in with green bits of grass and spit.
The cell phone jerk-off guy says, “Fuck yeah, ladies! Join the party!”
Alison stands totally still, stares for a second, and then throws up again. The cell phone jerk off guy flicks his phone shut and backs up. “Awww, gross! Get the fuck out of here, bitches! That shit isn’t cool. This is my buddy’s place...”
Trisha peeks around the guy whose dick she’s choking on, sees me, goes to speak, but her jaw snaps up and the guy with his dick in her mouth howls, backs up and slaps her hard. “You bitch! Why’d you bite my dick, you fucking slut!”
Trisha reaches forward but she’s too fucked up to stand. “Amanda, I...”
Me and Alison back out of the room and close the door before she can say anything else. Alison, she shakes her head and looks at me. “Holy Christ...”
Walking down the hall, out towards the car I can hear that guy in the bathroom screaming his head off, “Why’d you bite my fucking dick?”
After that there’s a lot of crashing around, but once we’re outside Alison pukes in the bushes and says, “Ok, I’m good to go.”
We leave Carl there and go back to my place where we finish all the cocaine and have sex in the shower.
XVIII
Carl drops a cup of coffee on the counter, half of it running under the cash register. “Drink.”
I cough into my fist, look around the store and sigh. “I don’t think I’m happy.”
“Who is?”
He pulls a few pussy pocket keychains off the displays and shoves his finger inside until they break. I crack my neck and scratch my stomach. “You think some people, they’re just different right... and maybe they are just meant to be alone. Like forever and like, that’s how they’re supposed to be. That’s their role and shit, yeah?”
Two fingers popping through two keychain pussies, he looks up. “What?”
“I just mean—”
“No, I missed the whole thing. What were you saying?”
Some fat asshole who’s been pacing in front of the store all morning catches me looking at him, looks up and runs away. I can see where he stops, panting in front of traffic.
I look at Carl; he’s pulling torn bits of rubber finger pussy off the keychain. “I’m dying inside.”
He nods “I was flying last night, too. Shit was crazy. Cops got called, that whole fuckin’ house got arrested. Where’d you and Alison run to?”
“We went back to my place.”
He drops the keychains on the counter. “Do I have to pay for these?” The two dangling vaginas, they remind me of the girl I left in my basement. I sewed a rat inside her to see what it would do. After two weeks I thought it was dead, but then it came nibbling out of her vagina. “No worries, buddy.”
He smiles, says something about pants. I think of rats squeezing their ways out of a dead birth canal and wonder if there’s any symbolism to be found there. I give Carl a hug before he leaves, pat his shoulder and everything until Harry comes out of his shitty little office to talk about nickels and quarters.
Harry shows me a piece of paper, something about customer complaints or whatever. He shows me a list of lost and misplaced items and then he tells me about the importance of cleanliness for the sake of our female customers and then he stomps back into his office and I hear the click of the door being locked from inside.
I don’t know why I’m still at this job. But what else would I do? Work at a coffee shop? Waitress? At least here I can steal gag balls and dildos and never be suspected for it. I’d quit, but I have no desire to work anywhere else, just as I have no desire to work here. When I started working here I was earning eleven dollars an hour, mostly because I was working nights, because we stay open twenty-four-seven on weekends. After about a year I was going to go work at a shipping company, but when I told Harry I was quitting he insisted on upping my salary. Now I make eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents every sixty minutes and mostly work day shifts. I have every second weekend off and I get three day weekends. Harry said it’s because sales double on my shift and that he’d “have such a hard time finding another girl as pretty” as me.
I guess I stay because the money isn’t that bad. I also don’t have to pay rent as Marcy owns the house, and when she dies the inheritance moves onto me. So it’s not that bad. I mean, it gives me good stories to tell. But after those stories entertain you for five minutes, don’t forget that I have to go live that shit. It gets dull.
I do, however, have the satisfaction of the upper hand in a way. For example, a man comes in here trying to buy the sickest, dirtiest rotten shit that can be legally sold and distributed within the United States. He comes in here with such high hopes, but goes home with Anal Invaders or The Fist Time: Volume Four. He may get lucky with Choked Sluts 7, but I know that tape will only go so far and then end. So I am satisfied with the fact that I have over a dozen snuff films labeled only by snips of hair glued to the cassette. Red heads, blondes, brunettes, but mostly just black hair. It feels good to know that nowhere in the entire world is a collection like mine.
Maybe that’s why I stay. I’m a silent overlord, secretly gloating in the faces of all those flabby cowards who come wandering in here all alone, pathetic and horny.
XIX
“Two years ago Teresa Whitford painted Jesus Christ’s face black. Out of all the entries, hers was the only one with the Negro skin. It lost, yeah; it got taken down before the judges even saw it. She was banned from ever competing in the Paint by Numbers States contest for life. But Teresa is such a kind lady, so she came back to watch the next year’s contest. And you know what she saw? Twenty five other Black Jesuses nailed on the cross and hung up on the walls.” Marcy throws her head back, tapping her teeth with the end of her paint brush. “But Amanda, the whole thing is not without irony because…” She leans toward me for effect. “The lady who won last year—Maria Munoz—she was a Mexican lady who painted the Savior as a Chinaman!” She slaps her wheelchair. “Can you believe it?”
I eye her cuckoo clock. “Weird.”
She taps the thin wood against her teeth and mumbles, “A Mexican, too. I mean, aren’t all the Latinos devout Catholics?”
I shrug and wonder how many heart attacks would ensue if I spray painted on every carefully crafted picture; a big black cock on top of the withered and wasted loins of our Savoir on the cross. I keep staring at the clock waiting for that bird to pop out and shriek three o’clock.
“That’s too bad for Teresa, I guess.”
She takes the brush off her teeth and scowls, “Why?”
“Well... I mean she sort of set the trend, you know?”
“What?”
“Well, like, she set the trend and the next year everyone was…” I laugh, slap the table, Marcy’s eyes shoot to the paints. “Oh come on, Marcy...”
“What?”
“She paints a black Jesus and gets booted, everyone else does the same thing the next year and then a Mexican wins with her Chinese Christ? Seems a tad unfair.”
“How?”
I shake my head and roll my eyes, “Oh never mind.”
She shrugs and fills a circle marked nineteen with Venetian red. “I don’t see it.”
“Whatever, when’s this thing due anyway?”
“What?”
“This thing, the painting.” I fan a hand in the direction of the Last Supper. “When’s it due?”
“The entry date?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Oh, not until June. I have the next two months to do it perfect.”
I nod, get up, look in the fridge for a Coke. There’s only rotten food and a bucket of compost housing dozens of writhing maggots. I turn around. “Marcy...what’s this?”
Her shoulders slump a little, and she looks so old. “I can’t go grocery shopping...”
“Well yeah but I thought we had that Danny boy come deliver for you. This isn’t cool, you should have told me, I...”
“I don’t need you to do every little thing for me, Amanda.”
I look back in her fridge, maggots slipping in and out of broken egg shells. “Marcy... what’ve you been eating?”