The Ape's Wife and Other Stories

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  And I find one more thing that I will put down here. Scribbled in sepia ink, in the left-hand margin of the newspaper page containing the account of the exhumation of Abby Gladding is the phrase Jé-rouge, or “red eyes,” which I’ve learned is a Haitian term denoting werewolfery and cannibalism. Below that word, in the same spidery hand, is written “As white as snow, as red as red, as green as briers, as black as coal.” There is no date or signature accompanying these notations.

  And now it is almost Friday night, and I sit alone on a wooden bench at Bowen’s Wharf, not too far from the kiosk advertising daily boat tours to view fat, doe-eyed seals sunning themselves on the rocky beaches ringing Narragansett Bay. I sit here and watch the sun going down, shivering because I left home this morning without my coat. I do not expect to see Abby Gladding, tonight or ever again. But I’ve come here, anyway, and I may come again tomorrow evening.

  I will not include the 1785 disinterment in my thesis, no matter how many feathers it might earn for my cap. I mean never to speak of it again. What I have written here, I suspect I’ll destroy it later on. It has only been written for me, and for me alone. If Abby was trying to speak through me, to find a larger audience, she’ll have to find another mouthpiece. I watch a lobster boat heading out for the night. I light a cigarette, and eye the herring gulls wheeling above the marina.

  Hydraguros

  01.

  The very first time I see silver, it’s five minutes past noon on a Monday and I’m crammed into a seat on the Bridge Line, racing over the slate-grey Delaware River. Philly is crouched at my back, and a one o’clock with the Czech and a couple of his meatheads is waiting for me on the Jersey side of the Ben Franklin. I’ve been popping since I woke up half an hour late, the lucky greens Eli scores from his chemist somewhere in Devil’s Pocket, so my head’s buzzing almost bright and cold as the sun pouring down through the late January clouds. My gums are tingling, and my fucking fingertips, too, and I’m sitting there, wishing I was just about anywhere else but on my way to Camden, payday at journey’s end or no payday at journey’s end. I’m trying to look at nothing that isn’t out there, on the opposite side of the window, because faces always make me jumpy when I’m using the stuff Eli assures me is mostly only methylphenidate with a little Phenotropil by way of his chemists’ Russian connections. I’m in my seat, trying to concentrate on the shadow of the span and the Speedline on the water below, on the silhouettes of buildings to the south, on a goddamn flock of birds, anything out there to keep me focused, keep me awake. But then my ears pop, and there’s a second or two of dizziness before I smell ozone and ammonia and something with the carbon stink of burning sugar.

  We’re almost across the bridge by then, and I tell myself not to look, not to dare fucking look, just mind my own business and watch the window, my sickly, pale reflection in the window, and the dingy winter scene the window’s holding at bay. But I look anyhow.

  There’s a very pretty woman sitting across the aisle from me, her skin as dark as freshly ground coffee, her hair dreadlocked and pulled back away from her face. Her skin is dark, and her eyes are a brilliant, bottomless green. For a seemingly elastic moment, I am unable to look away from those eyes. They manage to be both merciful and fierce, like the painted eyes of Catholic saints rendered in plaster of Paris. And I’m thinking it’s no big, and I’ll be able to look back out the window; who gives a shit what that smell might have been. It’s already starting to fade. But then the pretty woman turns her head to the left, towards the front of the car, and quicksilver trickles from her left nostril and spatters her jeans. If she felt it – if she’s in any way aware of this strange excrescence – she shows no sign that she felt it. She doesn’t wipe her nose, or look down at her pants. If anyone else saw what I saw, they’re busy pretending like they didn’t. I call it quicksilver, though I know that’s not what I’m seeing. Even this first time, I know it’s only something that looks like mercury, because I have no frame of reference to think of it any other way.

  The woman turns back towards me, and she smiles. It’s a nervous, slightly embarrassed sort of smile, and I suppose I must have been sitting there gawking at her. I want to apologize. Instead, I force myself to go back to the window, and curse that Irish cunt that’s been selling Eli fuck knows what. I curse myself for being such a lazy asshole and popping whatever’s at hand when I have access to good clean junk. And then the train is across that filthy, poisoned river and rolling past Campbell Field and Pearl Street. My heart’s going a mile a minute, and I’m sweating like it’s August. I grip the handle of the shiny aluminum briefcase I’m supposed to hand over to the Czech, assuming he has the cash, and do my best to push back everything but my trepidation of things I know I’m not imagining. You don’t go into a face-to-face with one of El Diamante’s bastards with a shake on, not if you want to keep the red stuff on the inside where it fucking belongs.

  I don’t look at the pretty black woman again.

  02.

  The very first thing you learn about the Czech is that he’s not from the Czech Republic or the dear departed Czech Socialist Republic or, for that matter, Slovakia. He’s not even European. He’s just some Canuck motherfucker who used to haunt Montreal, selling cloned phones and heroin and whores. A genuine Renaissance crook, the Czech. I have no idea where or when or why he picked up the nickname, but it stuck like shit on the wall of a gorilla’s cage. The second thing you learn about the Czech is not to ask about the scars. If you’re lucky, you’ve learned both these things before you have the misfortune of making his acquaintance up close and personal.

  Anyway, he has a car waiting for me when the train dumps me out at Broadway Station, but I make the driver wait while I pay too much for bottled water at Starbucks. The lucky greens have me in such a fizz I’m almost seeing double, and there are rare occasions when a little H20 seems to help bring me down again. I don’t actually expect this will be one of those times, but I’m still a bit weirded out by what I think I saw on the Speedline, and I’m a lot pissed that the Czech’s dragged me all the way over to Jersey at this indecent hour on a Monday. So, let the driver wait for five while I buy a lukewarm bottle of Dasani that I know is just twelve ounces of Philly tap water with a fancy blue label slapped on it.

  “Czech, he don’t like to be kept waiting,” says the skinny Mexican kid behind the wheel when I climb into the backseat. I show him my middle finger, and he shrugs and pulls away from the curb. I set the briefcase on the seat beside me, just wanting to be free of the package and on my way back to Eli and our cozy dump of an apartment in Chinatown. As the jet-black Lincoln MKS turns off Broadway onto Mickle Boulevard, heading west, carrying me back towards the river, I think how I’m going to have a chat with Eli about finding a better pusher. My gums feel like I’ve been chewing foil, and there are wasps darting about behind my eyes. At least the wasps are keeping their stingers to themselves.

  “Just how late are we?” I ask the driver.

  “Ten minutes,” he replies.

  “Blame the train.”

  “You blame the train, Mister. I don’t talk to the Czech unless he talks to me, and he never talks to me.”

  “Lucky you,” I say and take another swallow of Dasani. It tastes more like the polyethylene terephthalate bottle than water, and I try not to think about toxicity and esters of phthalic acid, endocrine disruption and antimony trioxide, because that just puts me right back on the Bridge Line watching a pretty woman’s silver nosebleed.

  We stop at a red light, then turn left onto South Third Street, paralleling the waterfront, and I realize the drop’s going to be the warehouse on Spruce. I want to close my eyes, but all those lucky green wasps won’t let me. The sun is so bright it seems to be flashing off even the most nonreflective of surfaces. Vast seas of asphalt might as well be goddamn mirrors. I drum my fingers on the lid of the aluminum briefcase, wishing the driver had the radio on or a DVD playing, anything to distract me from the buzz in my skull and the noise the tires make ag
ainst the pavement. Another three or four long minutes and we’re bumping off the road into a parking lot that might have last been paved when Obama was in the White House. And the Mexican kid pulls up at the loading bay, and I open the door and step out into the cold, sunny day. The Lincoln has stirred up a shroud of red-grey dust, but all that sunlight doesn’t give a shit. It shines straight on through the haze and almost lays me open, head to fucking toe. I cough a few times on my way from the car to the bald-headed gook in Ray-Bans waiting to usher me to my rendezvous with the Czech. However, the wasps do not take my cough as an opportunity to vacate my cranium, so maybe they’re here to stay. The gook pats me down and then double checks with a security wand. When he’s sure I’m not packing anything more menacing than my mobile, he leads me out of the flaying day and into merciful shadows and muted pools of halogen.

  “You’re late,” the Czech says, just in case I haven’t noticed, and he points at a clock on the wall. “You’re almost twelve minutes late.”

  I glance over my shoulder at the clock, because it seems rude not to look after he’s gone to the trouble to point. Actually, I’m almost eleven minutes late.

  “You got some more important place to be, Czech?” I ask, deciding it’s as good a day as any to push my luck a few extra inches.

  “Maybe I do at that, you sick homo fuck. Maybe your ass is sitting at the very bottom of my to-do list this fine day. So, how about you zip it and let’s get this over with.”

  I turn away from the clock and back to the fold-out card table where the Czech’s sitting in a fold-out chair. He’s smoking a Parliament and in front of him there’s a half-eaten corned beef sandwich cradled in white butcher’s paper. I try not to stare at the scars, but you might as well try to make your heart stop beating for a minute or two. Way I heard it, the stupid son of a bitch got drunk and went bear hunting in some Alaskan national park or another, only he tried to make do with a bottle of vodka and a .22 caliber pocket pistol instead of a rifle. No, that’s probably not the truth of it, but his face does look like something a grizzly’s been gnawing at.

  “You got the goods?” he asks, and I have the impression I’m watching Quasimodo quoting old Jimmy Cagney gangster films. I hold up the briefcase and he nods and puffs his cigarette.

  “But I am curious as hell why you went and switched the drop date,” I say, wondering if it’s really me talking this trash to the Czech, or if maybe the lucky greens have hijacked the speech centers of my brain and are determined to get me shot in the face. “I might have had plans, you know. And El Diamante usually sticks to the script.”

  “What El Diamante does, that ain’t none of your business, and that ain’t my business, neither. Now, didn’t I say zip it?” And then he jabs a thumb at a second metal folding chair, a few feet in front of the card table, and he tells me to give him the case and sit the fuck down. Which is what I do. Maybe the greens have decided to give me a break, after all. Or maybe they just want to draw this out as long as possible. The Czech dials the three-digit combination and opens the aluminum briefcase. He has a long look inside. Then he grunts and shuts it again. And that’s when I notice something shimmering on the toe of his left shoe. It looks a lot like a few drops of spilled mercury. This is the second time I see silver.

  03.

  This is hours later, and I’m back in Philly, trying to forget all about the woman on the train and the Czech’s shoes and whatever might have been in the briefcase I delivered. The sun’s been down for hours. The city is dark and cold, and there’s supposed to be snow before the sun comes up again. I’m lying in the bed I share with Eli, just lying there on my right side watching him read. There are things I want to tell him, but I know full fucking well that I won’t. I won’t because some of those things might get him killed if a deal ever goes wrong somewhere down the line (and it’s only a matter of time) or if I should fall from grace with Her Majesty Madam Adrianne and all the powers that be and keep the axels upon which the world spins greased up and relatively friction free. And other things I will not tell him because maybe it was only the pills, or maybe it’s stress, or maybe I’m losing my goddamn mind, and if it’s the latter, I’d rather keep that morsel to myself as long as possible, pretty please and thank you.

  Eli turns a page and shifts slightly, to better take advantage of the reading lamp on the little table beside the bed. I scan the spine of the hardback, the words printed on the dust jacket, like I don’t already know it by heart. Eli reads books, and I read their dust jackets. Catch me in just the right mood, I might read the flap copy.

  “I thought you were asleep,” Eli says without bothering to look at me.

  “Maybe later, chica,” I reply, and Eli nods the way he does when he’s far more interested in whatever he’s reading than in talking to me. So, I read the spine again, aloud this time, purposefully mispronouncing the Korean author’s name. Which is enough to get Eli to glance my way. Eli’s eyes are emeralds, crossed with some less precious stone. Agate maybe. Eli’s eyes are emerald and agate, cut and polished to precision, flawed in ways that only make them more perfect.

  “Go to sleep,” he tells me, pretending to frown. “You look exhausted.”

  “Yeah, sure, but I got this fucking hard on like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Last time I checked, you also had two good hands and a more than adequate knowledge of how they work.”

  “That’s cold,” I say. “That is some cold shit to say to someone who had to go spend the day in Jersey.”

  Eli snorts, and his emerald and agate eyes, which might pass for only hazel-green if you haven’t lived with them as long as I have lived with them, they drift back to the printed page.

  “The lube warms up just fine,” he says, “you hold it a minute or so first.” He doesn’t laugh, but I do, and then I roll over to stare at the wall instead of watching Eli read. The wall is flat and dull, and sometimes it makes me sleepy. I’d take something, but after the lucky greens, it’s probably best if I forego the cocktail of pot and prescription benzodiazepines I usually rely on to beat my insomnia into submission. I don’t masturbate, because, boner from hell or not, I’m not in the right frame of mind to give myself a hj. So, I lie and stare at the wall and listen to the soft sounds of Eli reading his biography of South Korean astronaut Yi So-Yeon, who I do recall, and without having to read the book, was the first Korean in space. She might also have been the second Asian woman to slip the surly fucking bonds of Earth and dance the skies or what the hell ever.

  “Why don’t you take something if you can’t sleep,” Eli says after maybe half an hour of me lying there.

  “I don’t think so, chica. My brain’s still rocking and rolling from the breath mints you been buying off that mick cocksucker you call a dealer. Me, I think he’s using drain cleaner again.”

  “No way,” Eli says, and I can tell from the tone of his voice he’s only half interested, at best, in whether or not the mad chemist holed up in Devil’s Pocket is using Drano to cut his shit. “Donncha’s merchandise is clean.”

  “Maybe Mr. Clean,” I reply, and Eli smacks me lightly on the back of the head with his book. He tells me to jack off and go to sleep. I tell him to blow me. We spar with the age-old poetry of true love’s tin-eared wit. Then he goes back to reading, and I go back to staring at the bedroom wall.

  Eli is the only guy I’ve ever been with more than a month, and here we are going on two years. I found him waiting tables in a noodle and sushi joint over on Race Street. Most of the waiters in the place were either drag queens or trannies, dressed up like geisha whores from some sort of post-apocalyptic Yakuza flick. He was wearing so much makeup, and I was so drunk on Sapporo Black Label and saki, I didn’t even realize he was every bit gai-ko as me. That first night, back at Eli’s old apartment not far from the noodle shop, we screwed liked goddamn bunnies on crank. I must have walked funny for a week.

  I started eating in that place every night, and almost every one of those nights, we’d wind up in bed to
gether, and that’s probably the happiest I’ve ever been or ever will be. Sure, the sex was absolute supremo, standout – state of the fucking art of fucking – but it never would have been enough to keep things going after a few weeks. I don’t care how sweet the cock, sooner or later, if that’s all there is interest wanes and I start to drift. I used to think maybe my libido had ADD or something, or I’d convinced myself that commitment meant I might miss out on something better. What matters, though, there was more, and four months later Eli packed up his shit and moved in with me. He never asked what I do to pay the rent, and I’ve never felt compelled to volunteer that piece of intel.

  “You’re still awake,” Eli says, and I hear him toss his book onto the table beside the bed. I hear him reach for a pill bottle.

  “Yeah, I’m still awake.”

  “Good, ’cause there’s something I meant to tell you earlier, and I almost forgot.”

  “And what is that, pray tell?” I ask, listening as he rattles a few milligrams of this or that out into his palm.

  “This woman in the restaurant. It was the weirdest thing. I mean, I’d think maybe I was hallucinating or imagining crap, only Jules saw it, too. Think it scared her, to tell you the truth.”

  Jules is the noodle shop’s post-op hostess, who sometimes comes over to play, when Eli and I find ourselves inclined for takeout of that particular variety. It happens. But, point here is, Eli says these words, words that ought to be nothing more than a passing fleck of conversation peering in on the edge of my not getting to sleep, and I get goddamn goose bumps and my stomach does some sort of roll like it just discovered the pommel horse. Because I know what he’s going to say. Not exactly, no, but close enough that I want to tell him to please shut the fuck up and turn off the light and never mind what it is he thinks he saw.