A hand grasped Miriam’s shoulder and spun her around. Her hat fell from her head and bounced away into the crowd. “You deaf? I said, did you take my fuckin’ drink?” She looked up into the twisted, angry face of one of the giants from the bar. His ugly expression and wavering posture said he’d had more than a few and didn’t need the one she’d stolen. It was a moot point anyway, now that it was staining her boots. Unwilling, however, to see how much ethanol had lowered his inhibitions, she bit at his hand and shoved. Clutching his wounded thumb, he stumbled back, tripping over his barstool. The giant banged his back against the metal bar rail and bellowed. Feeling a touch of satisfaction, Miriam pushed into the crowd before the howling drunk could recover and come after her again.
Winding her way through the club, she did her best to track the stranger and his girl. Some other time? I need this now. To her right, she heard Sara shout her name. The urgency in her tone suggested she might have run into Erik and the whore he was going to invite home. Unconcerned with where she was going to spend the night, Miriam kept searching, trying to duck away from her friend. But her androgyne Duke was gone. Out of time.
Sara caught up to her, pulling some boy along like a glassy-eyed puppy. He tugged impatiently on Sara’s hand, looking annoyed that they had taken this detour when he thought they should be headed back to her apartment. She shot him a withering look, assuring that whatever she’d already promised him would be replaced by a crippling case of blue balls if he didn’t heel, sit, stay. Miriam knew that, even if he got what he wanted from Sara, he was in for a lot more than he expected. “What the hell is going on, Miri? Have you seen Erik?”
“I saw him,” she said, still scanning the crowd.
“Well, what the fuck? Do you want me to castrate him or what?”
Miriam didn’t want to admit that her best friend had been right about her boyfriend. She was sure a chorus of I-told-you-sos would be sung over more than one bottle of wine in the days to come. All she wanted right now was another glimpse of the stranger—something to take away with her. She dropped her head and wished that she was still wearing her veil so no one could see her cry. “Forget about it.” Sara cocked her head in sympathy at her friend’s anguish. But she didn’t understand what Miriam mourned losing.
“Come on, Clara,” the boy said. “Let’s go.” Sara elbowed him hard in the stomach. He grunted. “I thought we were going to get out of here.”
“I told you I needed to find my friend first.”
“So? You found her.”
“Now we need to talk. You can wait.” The boy looked Miriam up and down like he was assessing the personal value to him of Sara having found her. He smiled like a boy imagines a wolf would. Miriam narrowed her eyes, shooting him a you’re-not-gonna-get-any-from-me look. In your dreams, ass!
He turned back to Sara. “Well, I’m not waiting all night. There are hotter chicks than you here.”
“Then go find one,” Sara said.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.
“What? Two minutes of heavy breathing in my ear and you staining my sheets? Go fuck yourself. It’ll feel the same to me.” He glared at Miriam for an uncomfortable few seconds before mouthing “cunt” at her and stomping off.
“I’m sorry, Sara,” Miriam said, secretly glad that she’d cock-blocked the guy. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“What? That? I wasn’t going to fuck him anyway. I just wanted someone to pay for my drinks.”
Miriam wanted to fake a laugh again, to pretend that she was happy to be having this conversation and not following the stranger into his car, his house, his bed. She couldn’t summon the energy to put up the façade. Emotional attrition was getting the better of her. “Is it okay if I sleep on your couch?” she asked instead.
Sara pulled her close in an embrace and gently stroked her hair before tipping her chin up and kissing her tenderly. Her breath smelled like menthol cigarettes and vodka. Miriam thought back to the last time they’d made love. It had been fabulous and hot but in the morning Sara was still Sara, and she wasn’t about to be tied down to just one person, no matter how much that person was in love with her. Resigned, Miriam wanted to slip into Sara’s bed and lie with her head on her best friend’s chest, listen to her breathe, and pretend she was someone else. Can I make it work? Can I shut my eyes for an entire night, imagine that it’s really him and that I’m not just giving up?
Sara smiled at her and said, “Let me go get my credit card from the bar and we’ll go, okay?”
Miriam said, “Okay,” and watched Sara disappear back into the crowd, knowing that she wasn’t going to go home with her either. She decided to have one more look around before slipping out the back and hitting up Livia at the hostel around the corner for a place to crash. Before that, however, she needed the bathroom.
She sidled up into the line and waited while man after man walked by, smirking at the privilege he enjoyed being able to stand and piss. She looked every one of them up and down as they passed, hoping. . . . Some of the men met her gaze and smiled. Most just ignored her. But none of them were her stranger.
Finally, she made it into the bathroom and took the only empty stall, second to last in the row. Hiking up her skirt, she pushed her panties down to her knees and hovered over the wetly glittering toilet seat. She sighed as her bladder emptied. For the first time that night, she could get a deep breath. As unpleasant as the odor in the room was, it still felt nice to breathe without the music beating at her body.
Miriam pulled a wad of paper off the roll and wiped, careful not to let her dangling satin skirt brush through the trembling amber droplets on the seat. She stood and pulled up her underwear. Outside her stall, a woman shouted, “Oh, come on! You two can’t find a better place? It’s disgusting!” A few other voices groaned and complained until a high-pitched voice told them to mind their own fucking business. Peeking out through the crack, she saw her stranger and his “date.” They passed her door and shoved into the adjacent toilet stall. A few women shouted about safe places and rules, and stomped away, promising to get security to kick them out, but it didn’t seem to matter to the couple. The wall to her left banged, and she heard the stupid girl gasp. That should be me. I should be getting ravished by a beautiful person in a bathroom stall.
Underneath the divider edge, she watched the girl’s panties drop and hang up on her boots. She stomped out of them, kicking them into Miriam’s stall. For a moment, she considered kicking them back. Instead, she kept watching. The stranger stepped in between the girl’s feet and her legs disappeared upwards. The wall began to bang and shudder, and the girl panted and groaned while he made no noise at all.
Miriam placed her hand on the stall divider and felt the couple’s rhythm. Pushing thoughts of Erik and Sara out of her mind, she closed her eyes and pictured the beautiful face of the androgyne who’d complimented her now-missing hat. She turned and leaned back against the divider, feeling the repeated impacts against her back and her ass through the thin wall. Pulling up the front of her skirt, she pushed her hand down into her underwear, caressing and stroking her clit with his imaginary fingers and occasionally plunging them deep inside herself.
She pressed back against the wall, willing herself into the other stall, into another woman’s body. She thought of the stranger’s mouth tasting her, of his hands feeling her, his cock, firm and soft as velvet in her hand, in her body. She sighed, running the fingers of her other hand through his white hair and looking up into those black eyes that reflected her face. She breathed deeply, smelling him as he pressed into her, kissing her and firmly holding her neck in perfect, soft hands. She pretended to breathe in clove smoke from the stranger’s clothes, fresh soap, maybe a bit of breath like juniper from his gin martini. The stranger caressed her sore breast, and he filled her body. The wall pounded harder at her back, and she rubbed faster, trying to finish before they did or someone from the club came in to stop them. She felt him pushing inside of her and she
pushed back. Her orgasm swelled up and over her. She shoved herself against the divider, wanting him to know she was there in front of him, that she was his, that she was.
The girl between them gasped loudly and then fell silent.
Coming down from the blasts of dopamine and oxytocin saturating her brain, Miriam resolved to follow them back out into the club and have the chance to feel him for real, not just in her mind. She didn’t care what his date thought. She wasn’t leaving without touching him again. A kiss goodnight. A promise she’d see him again, and he’d be hers.
She heard a loud thump from the next stall. Startled, Miriam tried to adjust her footing and slipped, sitting hard on the filthy floor, a shock of pain jolting up her spine. She knocked her head on the wall, seeing stars. Yanking her hand out of her underwear, she reluctantly planted it on the wet floor and pushed herself back up. The dim light in the bathroom flickered, and a smell like wet pennies stung her nose. Frustrated and embarrassed, she pulled a wad of toilet paper off the roll and wiped at her hands. A feeling of cold wetness seeped through the back of her skirt. Fucking perfect, she thought. You’re fingering yourself in a public toilet and you fall in a puddle of piss. Good going. Real sexy. She was resigned to having to go back to Erik’s place—it was now Erik’s place, not hers—to get a change of clothes. Might as well grab your lab ID and laptop while you’re up for being humiliated.
She dropped the toilet paper into the toilet and bent down to flush. Redness spread in the water like a blossom. Miriam looked down at her red-streaked hands and the dark puddle spreading along the floor between her feet in a slow-motion tide. Her breath caught.
A slender line of red metal slipped in the crack between the wall and the door of her stall. It raised and lifted the latch on the door. The stranger pushed the door open and stood there. Hair that had been slicked back fell down across his forehead, curling around a cheekbone and dispelling the illusion of masculinity. His shirt . . . her shirt . . . was unbuttoned, showing a hint of cleavage, and untucked, accentuating feminine hips beneath the vest. The stranger raised a hand, holding Miriam’s stained hat pin in front of her face. Without the black contacts, her eyes were the coldest blue. It was him. It was her. The stranger smiled broadly, parting stained, crimson lips to show ruddy red teeth. “Thank you,” she said, holding out the pin. Her voice was softer than before, like a sigh, but still resounded deep in Miriam’s body. She stared at the stranger dumbly, too shocked to move or cry out. The stranger took her hand and turned it up. She leaned down and kissed Miriam’s palm, warm, soft lips leaving a red stain severed by her lifeline. White hair tickled Miriam’s wrist. Standing up straight, but cocking her head at an angle, the stranger peered out from under her bangs with a smirk. She laid the pin flat in Miriam’s hand. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Perhaps some other time.” Miriam felt like the words flowed over her, filling her ears, her mouth, her nose.
“Some other time,” Miriam whispered. The stranger turned and walked out of the bathroom, hips swaying, leaving Miriam standing in the aftermath next to the girl lying on the floor on the other side of the divider. Careful to step lightly around the spreading red stain on the tile floor, she peeked through the door into the next stall. She held her mouth at the sight of the body lying at her feet. No one has seen yet. They’re all waiting for them to walk out together. They’re waiting for the Thin Duke to walk out, not that woman.
She followed the stranger out of the empty bathroom and watched her walk, head up, out through the front of the club and into the night. No one tried to stop her. She just slipped away.
Sara reappeared. “Hey, there you are. I got your coat. Are you ready to go home?”
Miriam thought about home. She closed her fist around the hat pin, holding tight the stranger’s kiss, and realized just what she wanted. What the stranger offered. She leaned up and kissed Sara hard, grabbing a handful of her hair and pulling slightly. Sara moaned a little. “Yeah. You can take me home. But first we need to drop by Erik’s place.”
“You don’t want to do that to yourself. You can borrow some of my clothes for a few days. We’ll get your stuff next week.”
“I’m not going there for clothes.” She said as she wrapped her own hair back up in a loose bun and slid the bloody pin back in. Pulling Sara along behind her, they headed for the front door as the screams from the bathroom began.
MORGENSTERN’S LAST ACT
The smell of caramel popcorn couldn’t mask the underlying scents brought to the fairgrounds by the traveling carnival. The elephant ride, spilled beer, engine grease, and the pit toilets all took their turns assaulting Terry Withers’ sense of smell. He thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t prone to seizures, otherwise the strobing lights assaulting his vision from every direction would have him writhing in the sawdust. He stuffed his hands deep in his pockets despite the temperate climate of the late-September night. Clenching his fists kept him from fidgeting with his collar. Even though it was loose, he felt like he was choking. His problems breathing had nothing to do with the neck size of his shirts.
He walked over to the girl sitting on a stool beside the Rock-O-Plane. She tucked a lock of unnaturally black hair behind an ear. Too young to be dying away gray, he concluded that she was a blonde or a ginger who wanted to be Bettie Page instead of Marilyn. Tattoos covered her bare arms from wrist to shoulder and spread across her chest. He fought conflicting emotions as he looked her over. Despite her best efforts to add hard edges, she had soft curves in all the right places underneath the black and white polka dot dress.
“You know where I can find Sam Morgenstern’s act?” he asked. Of course she did. It was her job to know. Still, she blinked at him with wet doe eyes and a dumb, suspicious look like something driven more by instinct than intellect. He repeated his question, thinking the calliope music from the ride she operated had drowned it out.
“I heardja the first time.”
“Well?” he asked. He resisted the urge to pull a hand out of his pocket and fidget with his lip. The woman’s cigarette was giving him the jones. He was pretty sure he’d be brushing his teeth in the car and then stopping off for a beer before heading home to his wife and her bloodhound sense of smell. Belinda’d smell a Lucky Strike before I even got up the driveway.
The Bettie seemed to sense his craving and exhaled menthol in his face. “I’m thinkin’.”
“What’s there to think about?”
“I’m thinkin’, ‘why should I tell you anything?’” she said. “You don’t look like a rube. I make you for either a dick or a kneecapper. I don’t see a bat; so you must be a dick.” She twirled a bit of dyed hair in her fingers and smiled. “And I don’t like dick.” She pulled her finger free of the curl, frowned, and let it droop in front of his face.
“Everybody’s a goddamned smartass,” he coughed.
“I don’t like coarse language either. Izzat how you talk to a fuckin’ lady?”
“Listen, I don’t really care what you like or what you don’t. You tell me whether you know who I’m talking about or I’ll make a call to my friends at the Local 686 and ask how many nuts on this deathtrap they tightened.” Withers swallowed hard. He really didn’t like putting the screws to people—especially people with the right kind of curves, lesbo or not. It offended his sense of chivalry. Then again, her attitude made him want to treat her like a man, if only he could keep his coughing under control.
“Whatever, pal.”
“I’m not your pal, gal.”
“Helpful hint, guy: you want to threaten a shut-down, do it to the jerk whose take comes out of admissions, not attractions. I could use a night off.” She took another deep drag of her cigarette and turned to the control panel on the Rock-O-Plane. Punching a big red button, the ride began to slow and the music wound down. “Another morsel you might chew on is that while shit attracts flies, you catch them with honey.” She was right. Still, she finally tired of being difficult and sighed again before giving him what he wanted. “Sam’s over
on the sideshow lane. Check out Dr. Morningstar’s tent.”
“Dr. Morningstar?”
“Ja, Arschgeige. Morgenstern ist Deutsch für ‘morning star.’ Now scram, so I can tear my tickets.”
Withers reached up toward the brim of his hat but stopped short, making a show of not tipping it. He hadn’t gone halfway around the world to kill Krauts to listen to some sideshow freak speak their gibberish at home. The woman at the booth rolled her eyes.
He headed toward the sideshow tent. Up around the bend, he handed a string of red paper tickets to another woman sporting full-sleeve tattoos. He’d expected to find a tattooed lady in the freak show, but it looked like they had a full painted burlesque. She ushered him past the gate with a head jerk and a desultory, “Enjoy yourself.” He walked up the lane looking at the lurid signs advertising the Freak Show attractions. See the One-Eyed Giant; marvel at the Two-Headed Baby.
There were shrunken heads and the putative World’s Tallest Woman, but nothing that looked like what he’d come for. Then, at the very end of the row, he saw it. It was the main-event tent. Outside, a garish painting of a man in a vintage suit, top hat, and a handlebar mustache stood beside a tall sandwich board illuminated with spotlights that cycled from red to blue to white and back.
DR. MORNINGSTAR’S PSYCHIC SURGERY
DEATH DEFIED AND DISEASE DEFEATED DAILY
COME ONE COME ALL
(NO ONE ADMITTED UNDER 18)
He coughed into his handkerchief, not wanting to look at the spot of red inside, but unable to keep himself from it. It wasn’t as bad as other nights. Cold comfort when other people didn’t cough up blood at all.
13 Views of the Suicide Woods Page 9