In Extremis

by John Shirley

  “I guess you’re looking at my skin—” she began.

  “No no no! It’s fine. Fine.” His voice sounded like it was coming through a little tube from the next room. He smiled at her. He had nice teeth.

  “It’s okay to notice it,” Brandy said. “My . . . my sister has this crazy Siamese cat. You know how the little fuh—” Watch your language, she told herself. “You know how they are. I bent over to pet him and he jumped up and scratched me . . .”

  Ross nodded. He seemed to buy it. Maybe where he was from they didn’t have a lot of hubba-heads picking at their skin all the time.

  “There was a cat,” he said absently, “who scared me, at the mission. Big and fat and mean.” He scowled and muttered something else in his munchkin voice she couldn’t quite make out.

  “It’s nice of you to buy me dinner,” Brandy said. A fucking Denny’s, she thought. Well, maybe it was like he said, it was just the nearest one and he was hungry. But she’d pictured some really fancy place . . .

  The waitress brought their order, steak for Brandy—who knew if this was going to work out? Get what you can now—and a milkshake and fries for the little guy, which was kind of a funny dinner, Brandy thought. The waitress had done a double take when she’d first come to take their order; now she didn’t look at Ross directly. But she stared at Brandy when she thought Brandy wouldn’t notice.

  Fuck you, bitch, you think I’m sick for kickin’ with the little dude.

  “You really do look nice,” Ross said, as the waitress walked away. Like he was trying to convince himself.

  She’d done her best. Her hair was almost naturally blond, that was good, but it was a little thin and dry from all the crack and when she’d washed it with that shitty hand soap that was all Delbert had, it’d frizzed out, so she’d had to corn-row it. She’d hand-washed her dress and borrowed Carmen’s pumps and ripped off a pair of new pantyhose and some makeup from the Walgreen’s. Getting the bus down here was harder, but she’d conned a guy at the San Francisco station into helping her out, and then she’d ditched him at the LA station when he’d gone to the men’s room. She’d got twelve dollars for the guy’s luggage, so it was beginning to click.

  Ross started to cough. “Are you choking on something?” she asked, dreading it, because she didn’t want to attract even more attention.

  “No—my asthma.” He was fishing in his pocket with one of his little doll hands. He found an inhaler, and sucked at it.

  “Just rest a bit, you don’t have to talk or nothin’,” she said, smiling at him.

  So his health was not that great. It wouldn’t seem too weird or anything, then, if he died, or something.

  “You just swept me off my feet, I guess,” Brandy said. “I thought you were hella cute at the wedding. I was surprised you didn’t have your manager over to be, like, best man or something.”

  “We had to be married first, because I know what he would say, he doesn’t want me to get married till he checks everyone out, you know. But he has lots of girls. Come on in, come on in, this is our room, our own room . . .”

  “Wow, it even has a kitchen! Anyway, look it’s got a bar and a microwave and a little refrigerator . . .” She noticed that the microwave oven wasn’t bolted to the wall. It was pretty old, though—she probably couldn’t get much for it.

  “I do like this refrigerator,” he was saying, “this little refrigerator by the floor. When we get a big house we’ll have a real kitchen!”

  “Yeah? Uhhh . . . When do you think—”

  He interrupted her with a nervous dance of excitement, spreading his arms to gesture at the whole place. “You like this place? Las Vegas. It’s so beautiful, everything’s like a palace, all lit up, so much money, everything’s like in a treasure chest.”

  “Uh huh.” She started to sit on the edge of the bed, then noticed his eyes got all round and buggy when he saw her there. She moved over to the vinyl sofa, and sat down, kicked off her shoes. “It would’ve been nice if we coulda stayed in the Golden Nugget or one of them places—this Lucky Jack’s is okay, but they don’t got their own casino, they don’t got room service . . .”

  “Oh—we’ll stay in the best, when Benny finds some work for me in Hollywood.”

  He toddled toward her, unbuttoning his coat. What did he think he was going to do?

  She wondered where you got crack in Vegas. She knew there’d be a place. Maybe the edge of town out by the airport. She could find it. She needed more cash first . . .

  And then it hit her, and she stood up, sharply. He took several sudden steps back, almost stumbling. She looked down at him, feeling unreal.

  Had she been hustled by this little creature? “Did you say, when Benny finds you some work? What do you mean?”

  She felt the tightening in her gut, the tease of imagined taste in her mouth: the taste of vaporized cocaine and the other shit they put in it. She could almost feel the glass pipe in her hand; see the white smoke swirling in the glass tube. Her heart started pounding, hands twitching, fuck, going on a tweak with no dope to hit, one hand jerking at a scab on the back of her left forearm.

  The little guy was chattering something. “Oh, I’m working in Hollywood! He actually puffed out his chest. “I’m going to star in a movie with The Rock!”

  She blinked. Rock? “With . . . ?”

  “Dwayne Johnson, The Rock!”

  “Oh him. Okay. How much did you get paid?”

  He fiddled with a lamp cord. “I don’t have the check yet. It’s not negotiated.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  He gaped at her with his mouth so round and red and wet it looked like it had been punched in his head with a tool. “That is a blasphemy! That is taking the Lord’s name! I can’t have my wife talking like that!”

  “Sure, I just forgot about your religious thing. Look—we’re married now. We share everything right? How much we got to share? I need some cash, lover—for one thing, we didn’t get a ring yet, you said we’d get a diamond ring—”

  Ross was pacing back and forth, looking like a small child waiting for the men’s room, trying not to wet his pants. “I don’t have very much money now—thirty dollars—”

  “Thirty dollars! Jesus fuh . . . that’s a kick in the butt. What about credit cards?”

  He wrung his little hands. Made her think of a squirrel messing with a peanut. “I’m paying with American Express for the airplane and hotel—Benny will stop the card!”

  “American Express? Can you draw cash on the card?”

  He stopped scuttling around and blinked up at her. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, we’re gonna find out. We’re going out.”

  “But we’re ‘Just Married’!”

  “It’s not even dark out yet, Ross. Hold your horses, okay? First things first. We can’t do anything without a ring, can we? We’re gonna do something, don’t worry. I’m hella horny. But we can’t do it without a ring. A honeymoon without a wedding ring—that’d be hella weird, don’t you think?”

  When she came in, the little guy was sitting in the middle of the bed, with his legs crossed Indian style, in a pair of red silk pajamas. There was a Saint Christopher’s medal around his neck. Probably couldn’t pawn that for much either.

  It was after midnight, sometime. The dwarf had the overhead lights dialed down low, and the tall floor lamp in the corner was unplugged. In the dimness he looked like a doll somebody had left on the bed, some stuffed toy, till he leaned back on the pillow in a pose he’d probably seen on the Playboy Channel.

  They’d got the limit for the account, three hundred cash on the American Express Card. They’d endured all the stares in the American Express office, and she’d kept her temper with the giggly fat guy who thought they were performing at Circus Circus, but the hard part had been making Ross swallow the amazingly bullshit story about how it was a tradition in California for the girl to go shopping for the ring alone . . .

  She’d had to cuddle him and stroke hi
s crotch a few times, before going out—his dick was a hard little thing like a pen-knife blade. Then she’d left him here with a bottle of pink Andre champagne, watching some shit about big-tit girls shooting each other with Uzis. He’d made kissy faces at her as she left.

  Now she was back, stoned on some pretty good shit, she thought maybe she could give him a blow job or something if she closed her eyes. But she’d burned through two hundred fifty dollars in hubba, her mouth was dry as a baked potato skin from hitting the pipe.

  “Let me see the beautiful ring on the beautiful girl,” he said, his voice slurred from the cheap champagne. He said something else she couldn’t make out as she crossed the room to him and sat on the bed, just out of reach.

  “Hey, you know what?—Whoa, slow down, not so fast compadre,” she said, fending his clammy little hands away.

  She pointed at the girl on the wall-mounted TV screen; a girl in lavender lingerie. “How’d you like me to dress up like that, huh? I need something like that. I’d look hella good, just hella sexy in that. I know where I can get some, there’s an adult bookstore that’s got some lingerie, they’re open all night, you can go in and look at movies and I’ll—”

  “No!” His voice was unexpectedly low. “I need you now!”

  “Hey cool off—what I’m saying you could call Benny and ask him to wire you some money. We need some things. He could send it to the all-night check-cashing place on Las Vegas Boulevard, they got Western Union—” She picked up her purse and went unsteadily toward the bathroom. The room looked warped; crack always did weird shit to her vision.

  “Where you going?”

  “Just to the bathroom, do some lady’s business.” I could tell him I’m on my period, Latin guys will steer clear from that, she thought. Maybe get another girl in here, give her a twenty to keep him occupied. “Why don’t you call Benny while I’m in here, ask for some money, we need some stuff, hon!” She called, as she closed the bathroom door and fumbled through her purse with trembling fingers. Found the pipe, found the torn piece of copper scrubbing pad she was using for a pipe-screen, found the lighter. Her thumb was already blackened and calloused from flicking. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she took the yellowish white dove of crack from the inner pocket of the purse, broke it in half with a thumbnail, dropped it the pipe howl, melted it down with the lighter . . .

  There was a pounding on the door—near her knee. She stared at the lower part of the door, holding the smoke in for a moment, then slowly exhaled. Her vision shrank and expanded, shrank and expanded, and then she heard his piping voice say, “You get out here and be with your husband!” Trying to make his voice all gravelly. She had to laugh. She took another hit. It wasn’t getting her off much now. And she was feeling on the edge of that plunge into depression, that around the corner of the high; she felt the tweaky paranoia jab her with its hot icepick.

  Someone was going to hear him yell; they were going to come in and see the pipe and she’d be busted in a Vegas jail . . .

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP, ROSS!” she bellowed. Then thought: Oh great, that’s even worse. She hissed: “Be quiet! I don’t want anybody to come in here—”

  “They were here, to bring towels, and they told me women don’t go for the ring alone! That’s not any kind of tradition! You come on out, no more little jokes!”

  “You’re a fucking little joke!” she yelled, as he started kicking the door. She turned the knob and slammed the door outward. Felt him bounce off it on the other side. Heard him slide across the rug, stop against the bed frame. A wail, then a shout of rage.

  She thought again about a will. He might have more money stashed someplace, or some coming. But there was no way this thing was going to last out the night and she couldn’t get him to a lawyer tonight and he was already suspicious. She’d have to just get his gold wrist watch and his thirty bucks—twenty some now after the champagne—and maybe those little pajamas, sell that shit, no first get—

  She paused to hit the pipe again. Part of her, tweaking, listened intensely for the hotel’s manager or the cops.

  —get that call through to his manager, make him give the manager dude some bullshit story, have him send the most cash possible. Maybe hustle a thousand bucks. Or maybe the little guy could be sold, himself—somewhere, Circus Circus or some place, or to some kind of pervert. No, too hard to handle. Just make the call and then . . . he should get a “heart attack”. He deserved it, he’d hustled her, telling her he had money, he was a big star, but all the time he wasn’t doing shit, getting her to marry him under false pretenses, fucking little parasite, kick his miniature ass . . .

  A pounding low on the bathroom door again. Angrier now. The door was partly open. Little fucker was scared to put a limb through, but he stood to one side and peered in at her. “What is that? What is that in your hands? Drugs! Shit, you’re going to get us put in jail and you’re going to ruin my career! It’ll be a big scandal and The Rock won’t want to be in a picture with me and—!” He had to break off for wheezing, and she heard him puff a couple of times on his inhaler, which was funny, how it was like her pipe.

  She kicked the door open. He jumped back, narrowly avoiding its swishing arc, falling on his little butt. For a moment she felt bad because he looked so much like one of her kids, like he was going to cry, and then for some reason that made her even madder, and she stepped out, pipe in one hand and lighter in the other, and kicked at him, clipping him on the side of the head with her heel. He spun, and blood spattered the yellow bedspread.

  She paused to hit the pipe, melting another rock. Her mouth was starting to taste like the pipe filter more than coke, she wasn’t getting good hits, she needed cash, get some cash and get a cab.

  He was up on his feet, scuttling toward the door to the hall. He was just tall enough to operate the knob. There was no way she could let the little fucker go, and no way she was going to let the rollers get her in Vegas, fuck that. She crossed the room in three strides, exhaling as she went, trailing smoke like a locomotive, doing an end run around him, turning to block the door. He backed away, his face in darkness. He was making an ugly hiccupping noise. He didn’t look like a human being now, in the dimness and through the dope; he looked like some kind of gnome, or like one of those creatures in that old movie Gremlins—some sneaky little thing going to run around in the dark spots and pull shit on you.

  Maybe the microwave. If you didn’t dial the thing up too high it just sort of boiled things inside, end up looking like he’d had a stroke. She had persuaded him to check in without her, they didn’t know she was here. Unless he’d told the girl with the towels.

  “You tell anybody I was here?”

  He didn’t answer. Probably, Brandy decided, he wouldn’t have told much to some cheap hotel maid. So there was nothing stopping it.

  He turned and scrambled under the bed. “That ain’t gonna do you no good, you little fucker,” she whispered.

  Ross heard her moving around up there. He pictured her in a nun’s habit. The nuns, when they were mad at him, would hunt him through the mission; he would hide like a rodent in some closet till they found him.

  The dust under the bed was furring his throat, his lungs. He wheezed with asthma. She was going to get him into a corner, and kick him. She’d kick him and kick him with those hard, pointy shoes until his ribs stove in and he spit up blood. He tried to shout for help, but it came out a coarse whisper between wheezes. He sobbed and prayed in Spanish to the Virgin and Saint Jude.

  He heard her muttering to herself, moving purposefully, now, to a corner of the room. He heard glass break. What was she doing? What had she broken?

  “Little hustlin’ tight-ass motherfucker,” she hissed, down on her knees now, somewhere behind him. Something scraped across the rug; he squirmed about to see. It was the tall floor lamp. She’d broken the top of it, broken the bulb, and now she was wielding it like an old widow with a broom handle trying to get at a rat, sliding it under the bed, shoving the long brass
pole of it at him.

  It was still plugged in. A cluster of blue sparks jumped from the jags broken off in the socket as she shoved it at his face.

  He tried to scream and rolled aside. The lopsided king’s crown of glass swung to follow him, sparking. He could smell shreds of rug burning. He thought he could feel his heart bruising against his breastbone. She shoved the thing at him again, forcing him back farther . . . Then it stopped moving. She had moved away. Giggling.

  Moving around the bed—

  Ross felt her fingers close around his ankle. Felt himself dragged backwards, his face burning in the dusty rug, the back of his head smacking against the bed slats. He gave out a wail that tightened into a shriek of frustration, as she jerked him out from under the bed.

  He clawed and kicked at her. She was just a great blur, a strange medicinal smell, big slapping hands. One of the hands connected hard and his head rang with it. He began to gag, and found himself unable to lift his arms. Like one of those dreams where you are trapped by a great beast, you want to run but your limbs won’t work. She was carrying him somewhere, clasped against her, trapped in her arms like a dog to be washed.

  He gagged again. Heard her say, from somewhere above, “Don’t you fucking puke on me, you little freak.”

  His eyes cleared. He saw she was carrying him toward a big box, open on this side. The place had an old, used, cheap microwave oven. The early ones had been rather big.

  “Bennnnyyyyyyyy!” But the cry never quite made it out of his throat.

  In less than a second she had crammed him inside it. He could feel his arms and legs again, feel the glass lining of the microwave oven against the skin of his hands and face; his head crammed into a corner, his cheek smashed up against the cold glass. He found some strength and kicked and she swore at him and grabbed his ankles in both her hands. She stuffed his legs in far enough so she could press against his feet with the closing door. He could feel her whole weight against the door.