We set up a big wooden ramp from the lip of the van’s cargo hold to the greasy floor of the garage.
“There’s a hand truck right outside my office.”
I grabbed it and wheeled it up the ramp. Then I tried to jimmy its edge underneath the amplifier, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be.
“Wait for me. I’ll show you,” Al said as he started to hobble his way up the ramp. But the angle of the ramp was pretty steep and halfway up Al’s equilibrium started to give way. He gripped his crutch with two hands, tapping it hard against the wooden ramp and then hopping on his leg. He alternated these two movements in rapid succession, tapping (more like slamming) the crutch down onto the wood and then hopping on his leg. Tap, hop, tap, hop, tap, hop; pogoing himself higher up the ramp in quick spurts. It was a desperate, almost graceful display of strength and coordination; a perverted Fred Astaire number.
Just as he reached the top, the rubber tip of his crutch managed to get caught in the small gap where the ramp and the van met. The sudden stop of his forward thrust pushed him off balance. I reached for Al but was too late.
His foot slipped and his leg went flying up. His back flopped hard on the ramp, then he rolled and tumbled all the way down, landing in a violent heap on the cold concrete floor.
One of the lenses of his glasses was shattered and he had ripped a tear along the whole length of his good pant leg, exposing the white jockey shorts beneath.
“Motherfucker!!!! . . . That cocksucking shitbag!!! . . . Can’t rely on any-goddamn-body!!!”
“Are you okay?” He could have broken his neck the way he fell.
“Heads up their cuntlapping faggot asses!!!” His face and neck were bright red.
I put my shoulder under his arm and tried to help him upright.
“Gimme the goddamn thing.” He thrust his head toward the top of the ramp. The crutch was still lodged in the gap. It stood there straight and erect like the flag in a golf hole. Al leaned against the back of the van and I ran up the ramp to free the crutch from where it was stuck. I gave it to Al as fast as I could.
“Goddamnit to hell . . . Heads up their shit-stained asses!!!!” he screamed as he wiped the sweat off his face with a handkerchief. Suddenly he froze and his eyes went wide as they fixed on something behind me.
Norman’s timing could not have been worse. To add insult to injury, the unfortunate nephew was happily stoned and sipping a milkshake as he arrived. He was a short kid, not much older than me.
“Where the fuck were you? You son of a goddamn bitch!!” Al shouted so loud, so concentrated with rage, it created a bolt of static electricity that made the left side of his thinning head of hair stand straight up.
“Wh-what’s the matter, Uncle Al? What happened?” Norman responded as his buzz quickly evaporated.
“What happened?!!! I almost broke my ass because of you, that’s what fuckin’ happened.” Al raised the crutch high in the air and Norman cowered and covered his head. I was sure Al was about to split it open like a watermelon.
“No! Please no, Uncle Al,” Norman pleaded, sounding like a bad actor.
“Doing your fuckin’ job!! I almost killed myself, you rotten cuntbag, doing your fuckin’ job!!!” Al swung the crutch but missed by a mile. It was deliberate. He could have hit him with his eyes closed.
“No, no, no, no, no!!!” Norman squealed in a high voice, his hands still covering his head. “Please . . . no, no, no, no . . .” He was breathing heavy, hyperventilating, as he begged his uncle to spare him. He had every right to be afraid, of course, but there was something in the way he expressed his fear that made me think he was faking it.
Al took another big swing and a miss, but this time Norman fell to the floor like he’d been hit.
“No, no, no, no . . . please!!! . . . Uncle Al . . . no!!!” He continued his performance, which didn’t seem to be out of mockery or disrespect to Al. I don’t know what it was but I didn’t believe it. There was something very Kabuki about it. Or at least what I imagined Kabuki to be like.
“Dope-smoking piece of shit . . . just like your father!” Al poked Norman in the ribs with the crutch. But it was a very gentle poke, I mean he barely touched him at all.
“Owwwwww!” Norman wailed as if he’d been shot with a bow and arrow. “Owwww!!! No!!!!” He was curled up on the floor and started sobbing and whimpering. It was the worst acting I had ever seen. Worse than the wrestlers on Channel 9.
“Sorry, Uncle Al . . . so sorry . . . so, so sorry . . .”
“I should crack your goddamn hophead skull.” Al poked him again, this time on his butt. But it might have been even lighter than the first poke. And once again Norman reacted like he’d been pierced with a red-hot iron rod.
“Owwwww! . . . Aaaaaaaahhh! . . . Nooooo! . . . I’m so sorry.”
“Should shove it right up your dirty fuckin’ ass, you ungrateful retard!!!”
I started to think that this was some kind of very bizarre routine and it wasn’t the first time this exchange had happened between them. There was a very stilted, rehearsed quality to it.
“You want more, shitheel? ’Cause I got more.”
“Noooo. Nooo, please. Please, Uncle Al . . .”
“Tell me what an asshole you are.”
“I’m an asshole, Uncle Al.”
“Tell me what a shitbag you are.”
“I’m a shitbag, Uncle Al.”
“A what?”
“An asshole shitbag.”
As their play got more pathetic and grotesque, I noticed that Al had opened a gash on his leg.
“Your leg’s bleeding.” I was glad to interrupt the high school dramatics. Al looked at me and I pointed to his leg.
“Get me some Band-Aids, shithead!” He tapped Norman on the shoulder with the crutch.
This time Norman didn’t scream bloody murder. He just sniffled, got to his feet, and walked quietly to the office.
“And the Mercurochrome!!” he shouted to his nephew. Then he held his handkerchief to the wound, peered at me, and said: “Stay away from drugs.”
I nodded.
“Lemme get this under control, then we’ll get the thing down and you can go.”
“Take your time,” I said.
Norman reappeared with a bunch of paper towels, some Band-Aids, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Al cleaned and disinfected his wound and bandaged himself up while poor Norman and I got to work on the amplifier. He was incredibly strong for someone his size and we got the amp onto the hand truck and down the ramp without much trouble.
“Okay. One, two, three, four, five. And that’s for you.” Al counted out five hundred-dollar bills into my palm, and shoved ten singles into my shirt pocket. “You’re gonna bring me the case, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” I lied again. I had no intention of coming back at all.
“Tonight. Before midnight.”
“Okay.”
“And tell freakshow that Al said, Go fuck yourself.”
“I will.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the floor, then toward the office where Norman sat slumped in the desk chair picking his nose.
“You’ll get fired if you do. Don’t say that. Just make sure he gives you the case. I need the case. He has it but he gets so stoned that he forgets. It’s always like that with him, with half of the rejects I deal with. I should send my numbnuts nephew to work for him. Two peas in a pod.”
Al shook my hand, then as I climbed into the van he said, “How ’bout a Nehi for the road?” Before I could answer he shouted to Norman: “Hey! Get off your ass and get the kid an orange soda!”
Norman was now picking his teeth with the same finger that was just up his nose. He didn’t even bother to turn his head toward us. “Get it yourself, old man,” he said casually, the show now over.
Al looked at me and shook his head with the tiniest hint of a grin. “No respect. Kids today . . . no respect at all,” he muttered as he hopped to th
e fridge.
thirty
The second film featured a young woman, a girl really, I doubt she was eighteen. She was in a warehouse and there were two men with her and they were both old enough to be her father. I’d rather not get into the details of what transpired in the warehouse but it was ugly and disturbing. I’m guessing it was all consensual and the actors were just pretending it wasn’t. But that’s really more a hope than an assumption. I didn’t want to look but every time I tried to turn away I couldn’t. When the two men finally bent the girl into a particularly vulnerable and humiliating pose, I had seen enough and found the will to turn my head. That’s when everything in the room shifted. Or maybe it shifted a few minutes before the second movie started. I’m not so sure. I got pretty upset when I saw Smitty’s hand on Veronica’s leg. He was touching the stocking of her left leg and rubbing the inside of her thigh, just above the knee. Her legs were spread a little more than I think they were when we first sat down. I was feeling dizzy and light-headed. My pulse was racing and my heart beat fast. My thoughts became suspicious and paranoid. Had I been poisoned? I told myself it was the drug reaching its full effect but I didn’t believe it. Maybe Smitty and Veronica were in cahoots. I touched the necklace Veronica gave me. I was afraid it would start to choke me. My mind went back to the black magic store. Of course. How stupid could I be? Veronica and her family must belong to a satanic cult, Smitty was also a member, and now they wanted to draw me into it as well. Fresh meat, new blood. Maybe they wanted to offer me up as some sort of sacrifice. They did that kind of thing, the cults, didn’t they? I had heard of devil cult rituals that were practiced in the abandoned water tunnel of a heavily wooded park in Yonkers—Oscarmeyer Park, or something like that. I had been there, it was near my cousin Gregory’s house. I never went in so deep but Gregory did and he saw the bloodstained stone altar and the 666’s and upside-down crosses painted on the walls of the tunnel. My cousin said the stuff was painted with animals’ blood, but his best friend Emil’s older brother Gizzy knew some of the people in the cult and he told Emil that there was a big plan among the network of cults in New York and New Jersey to begin human sacrifices in the name of the devil and virgins would be the first to be sacrificed. The girl on the screen looked like she was about to cry and I think the fat man spit on her. Why did Veronica spread her legs even farther? Couldn’t she tell what a piece of shit Smitty was? I was a virgin but Gizzy had told Emil who told Gregory it was girl virgins who would be the sacrificial lambs. Was Veronica a virgin? How could I not know the answer to this question? The girl in the movie was small-framed and narrow-hipped and the men were so much bigger than her. Smitty kissed Veronica and she put her hand on my groin but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was not how I imagined it. Did Smitty put something in my drink? Yes, I took the pill but I’d tried a quaalude before and it didn’t do this. Was it LSD, and I was tripping? The cult sold drugs to fund its operations, that’s what Gizzy told Emil. Was Barry the Dogfucker in the cult? That seemed like a satanic thing to do, sex with animals, sex with children, right? Did the girl in the movie get paid or was she just acting like she was being forced? Was she just acting like she was gagging and choking? Veronica’s hand has gone from my groin to my hand and she pulls it to her breast. Smitty is kissing or licking or biting her neck. Veronica guides my hand up underneath her shirt and I touch her breast for the first time with no barrier between my skin and her skin but I feel no pleasure, no lust, no love. I feel only fear and I don’t trust her anymore. I want to get up and leave, both of us should get the fuck out. Smitty has taken off his shirt, his sunken chest and white-paste torso give off a smell like the flame on a stove. The two men have tied the girl’s ankles and wrists with extension cords. They turn her over. Veronica turns and kisses me. I feel nothing. I open my mouth and she’s inside it but I’m not there. I feel like I’m in the corner of the room watching the three of us. Veronica takes off my shirt and throws it to the floor. She pulls my undershirt over my head then twists it tightly so it’s thin, long, and taut like rope. She wraps it around my neck from behind, pulls me to her, and kisses me again. I look down at the hair on my chest and notice it’s about the same amount that Smitty has. He’s watching me. He took his hands off Veronica and though his head is facing the screen, his eyes are on us. Veronica’s skin is white like cream or fancy china or snow before it gets wet. I hate ELO and will despise them forever. The cult has members of all ages and their main focus apart from the cultivation of personal power . . . Wait . . . that’s what Veronica said about witchcraft. It’s all witchcraft. All of them witches. Who said that? Yes. Their main focus apart from the cultivation of personal power was sex, perverted sex, in groups, in rituals, on an altar, in a tunnel, in the woods, or in a church-like setup in someone’s house or basement—best of all would be in a real church if they could find one. Gregory and Emil scared me when they said these things. They said that dogs howled from deep in the woods, they were property of the cult, and they would be sacrificed on certain holidays, not holy days but unholy days. The day after Christmas, I think Emil said. He said they did things to kids too. Smitty was standing near the screen and part of the movie was showing on him. It was the top of the girl’s head and it was almost directly on top of Smitty’s head like a double exposure. She was like a toy, like a doll in the hands of the two men. Veronica put my hand under her skirt where she had rolled down the pantie part of her stocking and I felt her for the first time. Smitty lit a cigarette and something smelled like ammonia. I think I was hard but I was so scared. I was convinced people were coming and once I was unconscious they would put me in a sack, like a mailman’s sack, and take me. Take us. She didn’t know, did she? She couldn’t be a part of it. The girl in the movie looked like she was screaming in pain. Smitty was sniffing from a little dark brown bottle. It looked like a bottle of iodine. He was only wearing underwear now and was touching himself with his head still turned away but his eyes right on us. Veronica was warm between her legs, she was wet between her legs, and I didn’t love her now. Not here. I don’t think she loved me. Her stockings made me feel sorry for her. Is that the same as pity? Is pity the same as compassion? Did her mom buy her the stockings? She brought my fingers inside her and pretended to like what I was doing. Okay . . . now I understood. She was acting. This was a performance for Smitty, that’s what he was paying for. His legs are so thin he must have some kind of disease. I look in her eyes but it’s not Veronica. She is the role she’s been hired to play. I get it. So am I me? This is a better explanation of Veronica’s motives, much better than her being a cult recruiter. But we have proven that she is a witch and has a connection to that underworld. The movie is over. I won’t say how it ended. It’s too repugnant. Criminal. The music is adding to my illness, the harmonies calculated to unnerve me. Veronica is naked now. Smitty’s hand in his shorts moves faster. I’ve never been with a completely naked woman before. Girl. I am a late bloomer but the hair on my chest is almost the same as Smitty’s. Stay awake, don’t pass out. My pants are being pulled down. Veronica took them off me. She tightens the shirt that’s twirled around my neck. It doesn’t hurt and I’m not choking. It’s just tight. The wheels of the projector are still spinning but there’s no image, only dirty white light. Now I don’t see Smitty. I don’t know where he is. Veronica lies back on the bed and pulls me on top of her using the noose that’s around my throat. She tightens it some more and I feel the pressure but I’m not choking. Will this be how they bring me under? Gizzy told Emil that the cult killed a baby that a junkie woman gave them in exchange for a week’s worth of heroin. He said they killed the baby with a silver dagger at midnight before or after Good Friday the thirteenth. Gizzy said they cut her (the baby was a girl) from the vagina to the center of her throat and the leader—the king or high priest—ate something out of the baby’s guts. Veronica bites my neck and I think I feel Smitty’s breath behind my head. Like sour milk and onions. The little bottle smells like ammo
nia. Veronica shifts her weight, I am inside her and no longer a virgin. I can imagine how wonderful this feels. I can imagine it but I can’t actually feel it. I feel something but it’s not pleasure. I feel pressure and friction, I feel moisture and heat. How old was the girl in the movie? Was that her first time? Was it her first movie? My legs are thin but not as thin as Smitty’s. I’m forgetting to do something. I’ve forgotten something. Smitty’s hand is the claw of a cannibal bird. Veronica turns her head away from me. In profile she looks much younger, like a junior high class photograph. Did I see that picture? There’s something I should be doing or said that I would do, what is it? If Smitty is going to stab me he should do it now while my head is buried in Veronica’s shoulder. I can smell her hair now. I wasn’t able to smell anything coming off her body until now. It’s the one comforting thing. Because everything else is foreign and strange, even the sounds she makes are not hers. They belong to the character. Let’s not forget that she is acting. We are almost finished. She will get dressed and be paid and we will go. I hope Veronica and I will start over from scratch. Not this, not what we’re doing this instant, but all of it, our whole friendship. Like none of today had ever happened. How much will he pay her? Is he paying me? Smitty is wiping himself with a napkin which he then balls up and tosses on the floor. What did they pay the girl in the warehouse? Smitty has backed away, retreated into a chair to get dressed. He’s drinking his drink and looks tired. Veronica has picked up on this. She holds me tight. Something shudders through her like a sob. She releases the shirt from my throat. We both wear the same runic symbols around our necks. “Let’s get dressed,” she whispers in my ear like a conspirator. Smitty coughs and shuts off the projector. The room goes dark but little streams of light sneak in through the window shades and I search for our clothes. I hand Veronica her shirt and stockings but she’s not looking at me. Smitty is almost dressed and stares at the floor. The record hits its last grooves and it’s too quiet in the dim room. My underwear is ripped. Not from today, but because it’s a very old pair. Smitty lights a cigarette and turns on a lamp. I’m not afraid anymore.
The Perfume Burned His Eyes Page 10