Jane, Vegas PI

by Jane Brooke

  I swish the steam from the mirror, lean in and groan. My eye looks like a black and blue mushroom cap, lips swollen, cut and my eye brow too.

  Eddie Jett packed a punch. I think of Eddie, wonderin’ how he’s getting along with his new coyote amigos. I don’t know. I am sure it will all work out in the end.

  Limp out of the bathroom.

  “Owe, owe and owe.”

  My ankle is swollen as I move to a pine armoire. Avoiding more mirror gazing, I grab a pair of cut at the ankle white dance leotards, Danskin.

  I pull them on like a second skin, grab a white-hoodie. I’m in to white this morning and feel all virginish; all new and such.

  Throw it on, exhale and hear the rain smacking the sky lights. I love rain and it is rare in Vegas; Sin City being a boiling desert and all.

  I need coffee, its cold out this morning, not that cold though. Turning, I limp to my kitchen, same deal, black, grey tiles, big pine chopping block, four gas burners set in it, cabinets stainless steel sink set into the grout.

  I can’t cook for fuck, but am learning. A girl needs a nice kitchen, if she’s going to court another human beings.

  Moi built all of it. There’s that horrible, horrible vanity again.

  I guess it ain’t so bad. I could have had Eddie’s decorator do it. That is if I knew the bitches name. I should of asked him, but didn’t. It’s too late now.

  Move to my coffee machine, pop the lid and put one of those white paper things in the tray. I move to this stainless towering fridge, GE, like Eddies, I think I mentioned that. The wizards there make great stuff, open it and groan thinking of Missy’s last home, a freezer.

  I moan again as I see two ancient cartons of Chinese take out, dim sum something, noodle something rotting next to them.

  I see the green kiss has arrived; groan again.

  Grabbing a can of coffee, Brazilian, back to the coffee machina (that’s Mexican for machine) load her up, hit the button, lean against the chopping block. Finding my smokes, I light one up as I watch the drip, drip, drip of the golden brown life saving liquid as they fill the pot.

  I grab my JANE is RAD coffee cup. I had it made special at this little souvenir clinic over there across the street from the Venetian. They do t-shirts too. You know, like with Shit Happens in Vegas stenciled on them.

  Boy does it ever.

  Like I said, I’m in one of those chill and solemn moods.

  So I limp out of the kitchen, “OWE” grab my smokes, Zippo, the one with the Jar Head insignia on it. Moving to this set of double massive window doors, I set down into the chassis of the loft, facing the alley.

  I of course take peek-a-boo at my secret admirer’s artist’s loft, two story affair just about a hundred feet across from mine, alley separating both of us.

  I mentioned that I am almost totally off men, but for this African God, well I wet-up every time I sneak a peek at him.

  He doesn’t seem to be chiseling away at granite at the moment, so I open the windows and sit.

  “Owe.”

  The cold feels good on my face. Rain is sweet, rare in Vegas as I set my tiny, sore ass on the stoop and bring my knees to my chin. I light a smoke, sip coffee and, then take another sneak peek at a very magical place. That of course is the open window at his artist loft.

  I glance-left and look down the alley, no dead bodies, no dead crack whores. That’s good. I see the once vacant lot has been taken and where now a Mexican circus has stacked their claim to a piece of Vegas sod.

  They showed up a coupla a months ago after the economy had tanked. They somehow got a license, bearded lady too for I guess some commerce is better than nothing in recession ravaged Vegas.

  They threw up the red, white tents, lots of games and booths. You know, throw a ring on a coke bottle, roll a softball into a square hole, make, tic-tack-doe.

  These are skills usually only found with some grand yogi from Tibet, but I figured no harm, no foul.

  Folks, have to make a living, no problem with that.

  They got this miniature Ferris wheel, lots of neon blinking on a loop de loop. Happy kids are puking, screaming and having a hoot on the pony ride. I think their ponies, not like the kind I see at the Santa Anita race track.

  But the kids like them, guess that’s what counts.

  I moseyed over there one night, lots of Hispanic kids, parents, tios and tias; the Hispanic community is tight in Vegas.

  There rock solid folks constructed of religion, family and food. I could never figure out what all-the brew ha ha was all about with these fine people. There the back bone of this lazy and insanely monistic nation. I won’t go there for the moment.

  Though, I can go off on the subject of what’s wrong in America at the drop of a Peso.

  Saw a blind elephant, that fucker could eat some peanuts, also a camel. He had two humps, not three. There we’re some sheep, goats, a llama, a donkey in a pen. They call it a Kids Zoo; don’t know about that.

  They had a lion in a cage. Big fella and he seemed like most of the residents in Vegas, pissed and stoned. He wasn’t roaring, just kept pacing back and forth, leering through the bars, big yellow eyes, angry eyes.

  I thought of sneaking over there late at night, springing him, getting him a one way ticket back to Zimbabwe. Maybe make him happy. Maybe fuck the other girl lions, something like that. But, I didn’t.

  I got a thing for clowns, and it is not a good thing. They give me the spooks. You know, grown men, make up, sandals, wearing funny clothes, hangin’ with little boys and girls. Weird men, making the kids laugh, touchy feely stuff.

  FUCK, that’s it, I get it.

  That’s where all those defrocked Catholic Priests go after they get bounced from the parish after they get caught with their frocks down around their ankles with little Billy.

  Don’t know why I never put two and two together before. It makes perfect sense to me.

  Anyway, back to the black artist god-man across the alley.

  No secret, I have this sexual current running non stop through my blood veins, complicated as they are and all are trying to connect to my cunt, a screaming Mimi.

  Hey, that’s funny. Fuck, even that hurts when I giggle.

  I’ve begging for some gal, (switched years ago, though the Flicks cremation was fun) to do something to it, anything. Maybe drill it with a jack hammer, sand it smooth with an air grinder, rack and pinion it, just do something, for I’m growing tired of meaningless sex.

  OH REALLY?

  Like I said, Missy has made me begin to reevaluate my life. I hope not too late.

  For look at me, pathetic, ugly me who looks like she just went twelve with Evander Hollyfield.

  Where did I put my hand gun? Christ. I have to get out of this self pity blue mood.

  Ike, that’s his name, the black African artist across the alley has changed that, well mostly for me.

  Though, all of this shit is happening to me in my real time fantasy and voyeur world.

  He’s got muscles on muscles and shoulders like an air craft carrier, and lately, well my thinking on men has been tweaked.

  In my mind, he is the only guy I want to fuck me blind. Though, because I will never change, I have recently sinned with my EMO and Goth girl loves, you know like Glenda and Zoe.

  But that didn’t count, because well, she was Glenda and Zoe was Zoe.

  For awhile I liked tattooed biker girls, but they got their own bullet men to Tap there booties. I see I’m at the Tattoo parlor down the street, never went there, don’t mind the pain, just don’t want ink on me.

  Ink is forever and now I hear that tick tock, tick tock in my noggin, meaning something really boffo is going to happen, or I’m in real trouble, and of course that scenario is across the alley, just there.

  XXX
/>   I spend some time drinking coffee and smoking while the rain kisses my face and feet.

  And, then presto-chango that’s him across the way, over there in his two story loft, top floor.

  Ike’s his name, I think I mentioned that before. Is that just the coolest name or what?

  He’s like a world famous black sculptor, stone and granite, marble too, welder artist godly dude so obsidian black beautiful, he melts my mind.

  He’s corded muscles, thin, shaved head, about 6ft 2, maybe 180, white teeth like the marble he blasts his chisel into.

  Fuck, I wet-up just watching him, which I do every moment I get.

  He showed up about a year and a half ago, which was a very good thing.

  Voyeur, god I’m ashamed to say I am, but I am. There, I said it. I

  I’m a sick girl and never have I denied that.

  I mean I don’t sneak around looking in windows, you know like Chang’s.

  Think I would die dead seeing Chang fucking Sehi-Shei, his wife.

  I know they do it. There are four kids to prove it. But, some things are better left to my imagination. You know, like what Ike would look like totally naked?

  It’s not like the fucking Zeus man doesn’t have a boat load of female beauty type girly girls hanging around his cut, muscled bod. Christ I’ve seen them come and go, come and go. None of their tooth brushes ever stay the night, see the dawn.

  I often lay in my bed at night, windows open, listening to Monk, Miles and Cole Porter creaming across the expanse from his loft. That makes the summer cool, bearable, nice for me. Christ I love that black guy, really I do. I cringe as that word again love clanks like an anvil to the floor. Yet delusion for me out-lives my reality.

  Get it together, “Owe.”

  My body hurts even when I breathe.

  He stays single though, for I know passion and his work always comes first. He is a very cool, studly onyx black man, smiling all the time, frowning when the granite gives him hell.

  I am jealous he hasn’t come on to me before.

  Oh really?

  I am sure he knows I exist and if he does, then why not love me too.

  Me, me, me, me.

  Am I really winning like this?

  STOP, SHUT UP, OK.

  I get a look at times, accompanied by a smile, which drenches my cunt.

  Lately I’ve stumbled into him, sometimes at the street, few coffee cafes now and then, as well as an internet café. Our street is showing some hope in growing, barley.

  He’s always in his heavy leather welder pants, leather apron late at night. I stroll around when I can’t sleep and we chat. If I didn’t know better, he almost seems interested in me.

  Said he heard I was a PI, had strong street creds, thought that it was cool.

  Information and MO’s twitter around Vegas like a soaring sparrow. Do not know where he heard that info on me. I didn’t ask.

  He’s super duper intelligent, funny, not self absorbed like a lot of artists with far less gifts then he has in those calloused hands. He’s actually humble, a rarity in these self absorbed, ego centric days.

  Why I don’t limpty limp dick click over there and beg him to drive that chisel into my cunt, into my ass, best into my forehead I don’t know.

  Fuck, I’m so messed up it makes me sick

  Lately, I’ve caught him staring at me from across the alley, nothing suspect and nothing obvious.

  Probably curious, enjoying the freak show that I am. Yet, more than not he’s been hangin’ around more than I can understand. The bevy of empty heads he usually bed’s have been vacant lately. Christ, my imagination is running amok just thinking of that amazing Africans, (he is British/ Ghanaian) arms wrapped around the spinet that I am.

  I sit there for awhile, listening to Alicia Keys spiraling from his open window, felt sleepy. I haven’t had a good-night sleep in a while. Missy did that to me.

  Finally, totally hurting, I yawned and went to bed, slept like a gold bar, no Missy nightmares thankfully.

  Waking, lightening was cracking in the sky. It was evening, rain still pounding my sky lights.

  Got up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I limped over to my kitchen and grabbed a glass of wine, back to the stoop. I smoked, sat, and appreciated the cold water drops as they softened the world around me.

  Night swept in, it always does.

  I lit some candles, their flickering everywhere around my loft, around the flowers, low lit lamps throwing shadows upon my furniture. I try to keep basic in everything except how my brain works. That is a very complicated thing indeed.

  The night begins to cool, everything except my cunt and mind which we’re replicas of that Biblical Burning Bush. Except as I said, I did the laser beamer thingy on my cunt, for I still wanted to look pretty.

  The wall mirror, and in between this nervous break down I am having, it is the only reminder I have of being a women any longer. Because I’ve become so butch, I can barely look into it any longer. Missy did that to me also.

  Two years since I’ve been with a man, (Jimmy Flicks doesn’t count) some jerk off guitar player from a lounge show at The Fremont. He had great abs, no brain, could fuck like Moses. I dumped him after two weeks because he wouldn’t play scrabble with me, and of course Eddie Jett doesn’t count.

  I usually lay naked under the sheets, doing this and that. Glenda and Zoe we’re good, but it’s all about brains for me. Some show girls I sometimes pick up are just a way station because my adrenaline was off the charts.

  I feel empty, evacuated from my sex feelings; the mental pain almost matches the physical.

  Christ, I’m becoming my mother, didn’t realize that. Maybe Missy’s woke me up more than I thought? I don’t like it. Seems though, that has happened.

  I can see him over there, onyx bare shoulders, work bib overalls, barefoot, he always works barefoot. He’s Vogued out in old worn denim hugging down those small hips.

  His muscles are rippling as he crashes her chisel, sands, grinds, chips away at some piece of white granite. It looks like again he’s turning a slab of stone set on a pedestal into something beautiful again from the memory of his eclectic mind.

  I don’t do drugs, could never trust myself to stop.

  Last thing I need or anyone needs is me bumping around stoned. You know, an insane girl lying in some alley in her own urine and puke, waiting for the trash guys to sweep her up and carry her back to her loft.

  Me mumbling something about a black God’s white teeth, amazing black dick, and a black fist I need, desire, yet know will probably never be rammed in me, anywhere, at anytime. Any orifice will do, fine, thank you very much, end of story.

  Thinking always moves time for me, I have problems keeping track of it. So I open my blues, sip at my wine, smoke, tilt my head, peek through the night at his open window.

  Gulp, blink, gulp again, no way.

  I can hear Sade, perfect, softly thumping from his window.

  There he is, standing with his chisel in his hands, bib overalls covering his muscled chest. His bare arms are cut, wide shoulders, apron hiding very little, thank God. He’s covered in night summer sweat, rock dust, ripped body, he is a working man. No gym cosmetic kinda guy I suddenly see that he is staring at me.

  GULP.

  I can see his black eye’s as the white’s silhouette against them so strident. I’m sure I must be delusional, for I feel that I can almost reach out and circle them, out line them with my white finger.

  I gulp again, for their un blinking this time and his eyes are aimed directly at me. ME?

  I groan, just great, perfect night, I look like I got hit bye a Singer sewing machine.

  But, he is unflinching now, and I can’t, don’t want to break what is happening, or what I am fantasizing is happ
ening.

  My breathing begins to swell, my cunt beginning to feel something, like it’s got the stutters again. First Touretts and now the stutters.

  Please, not twice in two days. My cunt is screaming out.

  Me, me, me now Mr. man.

  But that is nonsense, isn’t it?

  I giggle, my pallet is dry, so I sip again at my wine, feel all Absinthe struck.

  Dreamy with illusions and delusional as the French say, involved with in l’heure Verte, The green Hour.

  A state of twisted affairs after drinking the-hallucinate verte elixir.

  It was Rimbaud’s, Degas and Manet’s choice of grief too.

  A Paris party artist’s drink, except I’m not stoned. I want to glance behind me, see if someone else is there. But, he’s leering at HER, Jane, deconstructed, suddenly insecure, the new pathetic me, for the damn moment.

  I, fucking hope.

  JANE NOTE: Stop the fuck swearing all the time. Ooops.

  Hope I’m not drooling, it feels like my heart is a metronome, faster, faster, and for a few minutes we are stoned dead starrers, gawkers.

  I know he’s just fucking with me, why else would he be staring at me like I’m a water, and he was dying of thirst.

  I can see his stomach, bellow-bellow from his intense breathing. I am mesmerized with those wide cut shoulders, powerful from lugging 300 lb. blocks of stone up his steps with a dolly. He’s always welding and bending iron vee ingots as his shoulders seem to be broadening more by the moment.

  Nobody or body is perfect, but he’s fucking close. Then, and presto-chango I am a female again.

  It makes me ill being this fragile.

  For the moment that shrieking pain in my beat hell body has disappeared.

  Gosh, what is happening to me?

  More looking, my own breathing, it’s wild to say the least. I can almost feel something akin to one of those space rays aliens use crossing the expanse between our lofts, drilling me between my eyes.

  I blink a couple of times for he still seems completely like I have never seen him before. Of course, I have never had a tryst with him between the sheets. Yet I can see his breathing becoming more intense. But, not as critical as his eyes are, that simply will not leave me alone.