“I don’t want my picture taken.”
“Come inside to my office. We’ll talk.”
He touched her arm to guide her to the sleek building where his office was. She stopped her instinct to jerk free. The touch of his hand, his punishing hand, repulsed her, but she bore it. The sound of his voice made her heart clench like a fist, but she bore it. Her nightmares and dreams had driven her to him to ask one question. His answer might save them both.
He sat behind his massive mahogany desk and his secretary, Mary Ruth, brought them tea, staggering under the weight of the silver service while Thomas Flood beamed. It was a family reunion.
The ornately carved pulpit caught Robin’s attention.
“That’s beautiful. Eighteenth century, isn’t it? Maybe Munich?”
He was pleased. “Vienna, they tell me. I see your education hasn’t been wasted on you.”
“No. I did an art history minor. Once I did a paper on the evolution of pulpit design, of all subjects to choose.”
“Like father, like daughter. Do you think I can get away with using it on television? I don’t think so.”
“I haven’t watched you that often, father, but I would say not.”
“We hit 40 million households. It’s a big ministry, Robin. Big Nielsen ratings. I should wait, I suppose, until you tell me why you wanted to visit here — but I’ll say it anyway. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, they say. There’s a role here for you at Parousia. I couldn’t wait to tell you that.”
She was stunned.
He looked expectantly at her, as if he’d offered her the keys to his kingdom. She saw in his eyes what she had never seen clearly before: the pressure inside him was so great that it might erupt from any of a hundred places in his psyche. He was chillingly possessed. His demons were responsible for his charisma.
“I’m a minister without a helpmate, Robin. I won’t marry again. Who could step into the role more naturally, than my own flesh and blood? Oh, I won’t rush you into anything. But if down the road you could see yourself serving as my... what shall we say...?”
He waited for her to speak, allowing for the shock of his proposal to be absorbed. When she simply stared at the pulpit without speaking, he asked: “Robin?”
Her reply was a mumble, he thought at first, but he heard what she said. Her words struck in him a deep organ note of despair Yes. He heard what she said: “Am I your flesh and blood?”
But he asked: “What?” He spun around in his chair so that his back was to her. He fought to control what rose up in him.
“I wanted to see you so that I could ask you. You said that my mother was a slut. If she was, how do you really know that I’m your flesh and blood?”
“I am your father.”
Suddenly she was filled with an anger that etched her next words into the air as if she’d written them with a flame thrower: “If you are my father, I hate you so much that if I could explode your head right now I’d eat what’s left on a plate. And then I’d vomit your brains in someone else’s face, some derelict. And I’d kiss his dirty mouth and fuck him in your Baroque pulpit!’
When he spun back around his smile was crocodile sharp, and he sounded almost grateful for her anger when he spoke, “Shh, child, don’t. Don’t injure yourself and your immortal soul.” He put his hands up, as if to ward off her attack.
“You have killed me inside.”
Thomas Flood frowned and closed his eyes. He stood up slowly and walked to the window that looked out over the Parousia garden. Another golden afternoon was dying, its long crisp shadows playing over the carp pool. He wanted her to explain, but he couldn’t bear to hear her answer. He knelt on the floor by the window to ask for guidance.
— She is the only one who can save me, and she reviles me. I will burn in hell without her.
— What do you want me to do? You’re scheduled for hell in my book. She won’t forgive you.
— Help me claim my punishment, Lord.
He spoke to her.
“I am guilty, Robin. In my soul, I am guilty. There’s something inside me that wants to come out, some foul thing that lives in me...”
“You don’t have a soul!” she hissed at him, backing away. His kneeling frightened her. She watched him crumple slowly until his forehead touched the floor. He sobbed.
“It lives inside me. It has since I was little, since the clown put his snake in me and the snake grew and now...”
His shuddering sobs were so heartfelt she felt herself relax her guard. What was he babbling about?
“You killed my mother! You burned me!” she almost wailed, controlling her voice just in time. “You raped me!”
“Then punish me! Burn the thing inside me! Do whatever you want with me!”
He pushed himself up to his knees again and began tearing at his tie, fingers scrabbling down the buttons of his custom made shirt.
“Whip me!”
She felt cool and dry and hard inside. It was unique, hearing her father beg. She felt a perverse curiosity about how far he might go. She imagined black slime oozing from him, inky exhalations of evil billowing into the room.
He exhaled, she inhaled. What was inside him would be inside her then. Unless she forgave him. She tried to imagine punishment serious enough for his crimes. Punishment that she alone could administer there and then. Punishment so that she could forgive him.
He pulled his belt out of his trouser loops and held it out to her. She took it because of Emily. He had bared his broad hairy back to her, and she struck him with all her force with the buckle end of the belt, then dropped it. One for Emily, but nothing for herself.
She imagined degradations, but they would be no more than tokens, innocuous theatre. Shitting in his mouth would probably get him off, she thought bitterly.
“Use the belt as hard as you can. Burn me!”
Maybe if she could pull him down as he had her, hold him down as he had her, she could burn him, scald him as he had her. But what good would any punishment do? There was no forgiveness in her heart.
“Forgive me, Robin. Asmodens can be beaten out of me. I can vomit him out, you’ll see. Please, little Robin, I never meant to hurt you, or Rebecca. This devil inside me has its claws in my heart.”
“Father, I wouldn’t piss down your throat if your heart was on fire. There is no punishment for you but your own hell.”
He looked up at her with cold, tired eyes. They were dry. Sadly, weakly, he stood.
“You are my daughter, and you are cursed. Your mother was a whore and I was weak with her, and when you came I hated you as the devil’s spawn.”
Then Robin wept. The question was answered. If he was her father, then for her to live he certainly had to die. She was too weak to punish Thomas Flood, but not Buddy Tate. He was strong. She could make him kill for her.
Buddy Tate, bang, bang.
XXVIII
Night of the Living Dread
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed king is crazy, somebody told me at the hospital. Maybe I got that wrong too. Hell, I was born with a crazy tendency in me and those crosses sent me over Niagara Falls in a lawn chair. I seriously didn’t care. I was fucked up. No place to go but the end of the line. Homeless at twenty-two. I slept in a box in a parking lot that had been carved out inside an old movie house on Mission Street.
The marquee outside said ‘El Capitan’ but the inside had been bulldozed to make way for cars. Nobody left their cars there because it was too dangerous, so now there were just bottles and weeds and boxes and bundles and shopping carts full of shit. It was as safe a place as any to sleep. I was the one-eyed crazy king of the Mission, from 16th to 24th Street, from Valencia to Guerrero.
During the day I dragged my box out to the sidewalk and put an old pot out with a sign on it:
Willing to do anything you wouldn’t do
Blind and homeless — please help out
I’d sit there on an old car seat I’d found, calm as a fucking Chinese Buddh
a, with my eye patch pushed up on my forehead showing the bloody cotton wadding the hospital had put in my empty socket. I kept myself clean and kept K. Farouk’s pistol handy to use against the burners. (Kids had always done it for fun, but now there were gangs of vigilantes who drove around looking for helpless homeless to set fire to.) I made a few bucks a day just sitting there, but the competition was stiff, so my speciality was geeking.
That means, say, that if the landlord of a flophouse finds an old lady dead, and she’s been dead in one of his rooms for a while, and, like old ladies do she’s let her cat food dishes pile up, and the stench was perfume for maggots, that landlord might engage my services. And I’d come clean it all up, glad to be of service. A geek will eat anything...(just a joke!)
My life wasn’t too bad. I had a lot of time to think. I’d sit on the sidewalk and watch the passing parade, laughing in the morning at the worker bees who ran past me on their way to the business graveyard. Zombies.
I tried to keep Dollar’s dead eyes out of my head, but Robin was always there. I didn’t know where to start looking for her — and if I found her, what would I say to her? I fucked up? Same with Anyguy.
I didn’t do what I said I would, so I was nothing to them.
Hell, sitting there with my pot, I was taking bread out of Anyguy’s mouth.
It was temporary, being homeless. I told myself that every day, while I waited for luck to catch up with me again.
Seeing life at crotch level seems to me just about right. It equalises everything. All kinds of people put money in my pot except for richies. I really hate them. The world at crotch level is divided between the people who feel bad for you and sometimes throw a quarter or a dirty job your way, and the people who never feel bad for you and who would step on your tongue if you put it out onto the sidewalk to catch flies with.
The worst thing about being homeless and fucked up was no sex. The second worst thing is dealing with crazies. They are all over the streets, like in that movie Night of The Living Dead.
Crazy people should never have to deal with other crazy people. It makes us anxious. Scariest of the crazies were the Vietnam vets. They were mostly great old guys when they were sober, but when they beamed up, watch out. One of them took a fix on me for some reason. He was a big dude with a beard. Word on the street said when he was really flying he’d claim two to three dozen kills in service. Put him together with some malt and some crunch and munch, and you had one dangerous lost soldier. His name was Big Mac.
I stayed out of his way because whenever he saw me he got belligerent. I didn’t want the rocks in his head banging against the rocks in my head.
When I had my run-in with Big Mac, I was in a pissy mood. Lonesome, maybe. I needed to get laid. What I had in the pot wouldn’t buy a hand job in a dumpster. I was sitting inside my box in the El Capitan homeless shelter when I saw him coming.
He was juiced and yelling, “Kill! Kill! Die! Die!” Staggering at me like a monster movie. There was a full moon just coming up — the El Capitan had no roof — so maybe that was it. I took out K. Farouk’s .38 and cocked it and yelled back at him:
“Get back, Big Mac! I’ll shoot your ass!”
I showed him the pistol and it slowed him for a minute, but the motherfucker thought he was Goliath and kept on coming. Anything short of a missile wouldn’t have scared him.
So I aimed for the leg. Missed — which is why Daddy always says aim for the belly. Shot again and hit him, but he kept on coming, really worked up now, so I jumped up and ran, out of the El Capitan and across Mission. Cars almost hit me, but people ducked like they’d rehearsed all their lives when they saw me running at them, a blind man with a pistol.
Stopped in a doorway to catch my breath and put the pistol in my pocket. When I walked out on the street again I forced myself to go slow and keep to the shadows. After a while I felt calmer, but more weirdness was waiting for me when I got to Market Street. It had to be the full moon.
I was just standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, minding my own business. I was headed for the Castro where they were crazy, but about sex, and maybe I could peddle my ass. Innocent, just your ordinary homeless victim on the street.
A little woman in a blue dress and a vinyl jacket walked up and stood behind me waiting for the light. I was hyper-aware and could feel her eyes in my back, but I didn’t turn. Just crossed the street fast, figuring I could outdistance her. Half a block later she’s running after me, yelling something I couldn’t understand. I turned to figure it out and she yelled it: “You think you’re gonna get away with it, but I know I can do something about you. You’re a child molester, and I’m gonna have you arrested!”
Child molester? I was still not full grown myself.
She’s screaming this, on the south side of Market Street, just after Valencia. People passing by must have thought it was an argument between homeless people. I couldn’t tell them I’m not that crazy, so I really picked up the pace. She followed right after me, yelling and carrying on. If a cop car had come along then, good-bye Buddy! I had to break into a full-out run to escape the loony bitch.
I ended up on a traffic island near the Castro with busy traffic on both sides of me. I don’t like to play in traffic, but it felt like a refuge because there were no people on foot nearby. And what better place to peddle my ass? I was so horny I’d let some faggot suck me off so I could go find a good looking girl like Dollar to fuck. I was so desperate to get off the street I’d take the first offer that came my way. If you had a taste for real raunchy rough trade, you’d put the brakes on for Buddy Tate. Where else but on this traffic island on a full moon night in San Francisco could you find a crazy, one-eyed homeless man who’s hung like a stallion?
Naturally I stood there for a long time. I had a full basket under my tight old street sale 501s, but maybe people could sense the harder bulge of the .38 in my pocket. Knowing pigeons, I figured that under the influence of the full moon there’d be one who’d put himself at risk. All it took was one.
A car passed me, slowed down and backed up. A grey BMW with vanity plates I liked: IAMTHEONE. I looked into the car when the window was rolled down. There’s always that first excitement when you’re about too see someone you’re going to have sex with. When you’re expecting a stranger’s eyes to look you over and you see a familiar face instead, it’s a kick to the heart. It took me a minute to put the right name on this face, but the circles under his eyes reminded me. It was that pervert pornographer, Markus Bloom. Long time no see.
“Buddy! It’s Buddy Tate!” He was giggling like he was high on something, but I was glad to see him at that low point in my life.
“What are you doing here?” I said back, and that made him giggle even more. He nodded his head in the direction of somebody in the front seat. I looked in closer with my eye and saw a woman, nothing more than a skinny bag bride.
“Same thing you are, by the looks of it. Getting my fix.”
“I’m not having much luck.”
“Well, you look kind of wild. Get in the back, come on.”
I hopped in and slid across the leather seat, to sit behind the skinny whore he’d picked up, so I could talk to him.
He held up a finger that was wet and gave me a big grin.
“Smells good, doesn’t it Buddy? Sweet smell of pussy. The owner of this aroma, this pungent whiff of sublimity, is Tinker Bell, whose acquaintance I have just made.”
She wasn’t bad looking in the dark, but I couldn’t see much. He was playing with her as he drove, you could smell it.
“Come home with us, Buddy. We’ll have a little party.”
“Three’s a crowd, isn’t it?”
“Oh, there’s more than three. Other guests are waiting at my apartment. Tinker Bell is the party favour.”
That brightened things up.
“I’m glad I came to California,” I told him. “This is the promised land, like they say.” Things were definitely looking up.
; “Yes, it’s a wonderful illusion, this town. Full or wonderfully depraved people bent on having a good time.”
“You just got me out a jam, Markus. I’m glad you saw me.”
“It was fate, Buddy. But what the hell happened to you? What happened to your eye?”
“I see fine.”
“Buddy, you have a patch over your eye. You smell bad. This is your friend Markus Bloom asking you.”
I thought about it. I hadn’t talked about what happened to anyone but Daddy.
“It was a girl I can’t get out of my head, Markus. That’s what happened. I went from being a man who knows his own mind to a puppet. I’ll tell you all about it someday.”
“Give me a name?”
“The girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Robin Flood.”
That stopped him. For some reason I could tell he didn’t want to talk anymore. He said something light:
“Women are waves in the ocean, Buddy. You’ll see tonight.”
He put the pedal to the metal and knocked my head back.
XXIX
Play Party
Buddy Tate
I, Buddy Tate, thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I walked into Markus’s party. It was dark, but the first thing I saw was a big room filled with mattresses and a bunch of people getting friendly with each other, taking off their clothes, kissing, sucking. I just gawked, like I’d walked into a movie. There must have been twenty couples.
Markus stood there, looking at the scene before us, a grin on his face. His hand was around Tinker Bell’s neck, just stroking the back of her neck. He winked at me.
“I guess the clinic didn’t do us much good, did it, Buddy?”
I got a kick out of Markus. He was who he was, just like me, and he didn’t say sorry every time he had a lech.
“Big party,” I said, my eye glued to the scene before it. I watched as a woman pulled up her skirt and a naked woman tongued her clit. I could just move right in, slip it to that bare butt girl before she could turn around...
Dark Matter (Modern Erotic Classics) Page 17