by Chase Novak
Catchpole may be a little short-tempered for this line of work. Shaking off the spittle, he goes after Salami, not with the catchpole’s leather harness but with the pole itself. He brings it down with hard fury on Salami’s shaved head, and the boy yelps and cries.
“Take it easy, take it easy,” Dennis murmurs.
But Catchpole is having none of it. Over and over, he slams Salami with the steel pole, until blood oozes out of the boy’s skull like juice out of an overripe orange. Salami makes a few futile swipes at Catchpole and, also futilely, tries to protect himself. But he is trapped, defenseless. His eyes go from furious to blank and finally roll slowly up into his head as the once-wild but now-vanquished boy loses consciousness.
Dennis unlocks the three kids, and in short order they are all dragged into receiving. Many times before, Dennis made an effort to follow his bounty in and see where they were brought, how they were processed, what happened next. But each time, he was prohibited from stepping foot in the building, and now he has stopped making any attempts. It’s maddening enough to be bossed around by the smocks and the pencil pushers, but to be muscled by these stiffs in security and receiving—that is intolerable.
The metal doors slam. All is silence. Dennis stands there with his van, now empty.
Oh. Not quite.
Three vials of blood have gotten lodged between the corrugated floor and the side of the van. Dennis picks one up and inspects it. He shakes it. Sniffs it. And drops it into his breast pocket. It feels warm against his heart. Curious, his excitement growing, he pockets the other two as well. And then his eyes light up. There is a brown canvas backpack shoved into the corner. He reaches for it and hears the tinkle of countless vials. He’s struck it rich!
“Nice place you got here,” the prostitute says looking around Dennis’s one-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor of a 1950s apartment house on Ocean Parkway in the middle of Brooklyn. She is a bit heavy but seems not to be self-conscious about it—she wears a short leather skirt and a tight, scoop-neck top. Her voice is derisive; her brightly painted, surgically enhanced lips curl into a sneer. She tosses her head, and her platinum pageboy, sprayed and lacquered into petrification, barely budges. Dennis, who may not be expert in improving his life situation but is more than adept at sensing anything remotely resembling a low opinion of his person, his intellect, or his lifestyle, can see the humid hovel he calls home through the prostitute’s eyes. What did the escort service say her name was? Burgundy? Bree? It didn’t matter.
And Dennis’s name, as far as this woman and the escort service that sent her is concerned, is Carl Ravenswood. He totally loves using that name. His nom de screw. And it’s the name on his lease too. The name on his buzzer downstairs. He would like one day to write his old friends and say, Try living under an assumed name, you’ll be surprised how relaxing it is.
He sees his paid guest taking in the fourteen-year-old GE air conditioner, inherited from the previous tenant, who probably got it from the tenant before him; the sofa dragged out of a nearby Covenant House after a kitchen fire; the leaning tower of pizza boxes in the corner, which Dennis has been accumulating over the past three months, because he is playing a game with himself to see how high he can stack them before they collapse and another game to see how long he can stand having them here before he completely loses his mind—she’s taking it all in and deciding Dennis is the kind of threadbare customer who has to dig deep in order to pay for his repulsive little nude romps and who will not be able to add a tip to her fee. And here’s another thing that Dennis knows, or at least assumes: Bree, or whatever the hell name she is claiming, does not want to be here—none of the so-called girls want to travel to Brooklyn, and the fact that she has been sent means she is a second- or third-tier “provider.”
Yet despite it all, Dennis is excited to have her here.
He reaches into his back pocket and hands her four fifty-dollar bills, fresh from Salami’s pocket.
She steps back as if from a hot flame.
“Put it in an envelope and put the envelope over there,” she says.
But he does not want to take instructions from a prostitute. He grabs her wrist and slaps the money into her open hand. She is not about to let it drop to the floor. She turns her back and puts the money into her purse.
“Ever see one of these?” Dennis asks her when she turns around again. He is holding one of the vials that Salami must have dropped.
“What is that? Zoom?” Everything she says sounds pissed off.
“Zoom?” Dennis asks. “Is that what people are calling it?”
“Zoom, Doom. All kinds of shit. That stuff is fucking evil. I heard it was blood.”
“It is,” Dennis says. He refuses to react to her cursing. It makes him sick but does not surprise him. It’s not as if he were expecting someone with morals or manners.
“You should put it away,” she says. “I don’t even want to see that shit.”
A feeling of pleasure is going through him as he senses her fear of the little vial standing on the tip of his thumb, held in place by his first finger. “It is definitely blood.”
“That’s ill shit. You on it?”
“What if I am?”
“Are you?” Her tone takes on a bit of uncertainty.
Dennis knows it’s not exactly PC and feminist and everything, but sensing a woman’s wariness and even her fear is kind of an aphrodisiac for him. “Well, my dear,” he says in his debonair voice, picked up from long afternoons watching black-and-white movies while warehoused at his tipsy grandmother’s house in Rock Island, “I propose we make a party of it and each partake of the fabled Zoom.” He takes another vial out of his shirt pocket.
“If you touch one fucking drop of that shit, I’m leaving.” She glares at him, and when she notices no particular change in his expression, she adds, “And I’m keeping a hundred for my travel and time.”
“Ah, my fair damsel,” Dennis says. “You cut me to the quick!” He has no idea where this kind of talk is coming from, but he is amused by this new identity and cannot imagine that it is anything less than irresistible.
“You got to be nuts using that stuff,” she says.
“You’ve partaken of the mighty red, then, I presume?” Dennis says.
“No fucking way. Two of the other girls.” She shakes her head. “The warning’s out on that shit. Some freaks up from Mexico are bringing it into the city. Anyhow, that’s what I hear.”
“Really?” All her swears are like fingernails on a blackboard to Dennis. “That’s what you believe in your infinite wisdom?” He grins at her—and if smiles were display cases, this one would be showing Phi Beta Kappa keys, degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, and a family tree of accomplished ancestors reaching back to the Magna Carta. “And what other valuable information do your confidants share with you, pray tell?”
“Oh, you’re a funny guy. Well, there’s nothing that funny about getting the shit fucked out of you and coming out with scratches all over. This old Canadian guy staying at the Hilton took a chunk out of Mirabella’s earlobe. And swallowed the diamond stud her boyfriend gave her.” Bree shakes her head.
“Well, then, we’ll have none of this,” Dennis says, dropping the vials back into his shirt pocket. His smile broadens. She said just what he predicted she would say. It’s all going exactly according to plan…
Believing Dennis is cooperating with her, she relaxes a bit; her voice softens. “You oughta be careful with that stuff, sweetie,” she says. “You ain’t a teenager.” She pokes his soft stomach. “That shit’ll mess you up, swear to God.”
“Well, let’s have a drink anyhow,” Dennis says. He indicates with a wave two glasses on the cluttered coffee table. Though each of them contains a vial of Zoom—the former Zoom vials themselves had been refilled with V8 juice—they look like well-made Bloody Marys, each with a wedge of lime notched on the rim, and a celery stalk standing in the center. “I didn’t add the vodka yet, in case you don’t drink.”<
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She looks at her watch. “Oh, I guess I can have a little vitamin V.”
“Vitamin V, I like that,” says Dennis. There is a bottle of off-brand vodka on the table—he can afford one of the fashionable brands, but he is sure they are for pretentious idiots. He unscrews the cap, pours a generous splash into each glass. He hands one to Bree and takes one for himself.
“To us,” he says, clinking her glass.
“Cheers,” she says.
She brings the glass up to her lips but then hesitates, seeing that Dennis has not lifted his glass. He seems balky and uncertain.
“What about you?” she says.
“Just taking in your beauty, my dear.”
“You’re not drinking?”
“Sure I am. Undoubtedly.”
“How about we trade glasses,” she says.
“Really? I…this is sort of my favorite glass.”
“I say we trade. How about it? Be a good boy.”
“If it will make you feel better, of course,” says Dennis. He hands her his glass, takes hers in exchange. He gives her a look that says, Now, are you happy?
“It’s a little early for me,” she says.
“Oh, come on. It’s later than it’s ever ever ever been.” He gives her glass another clink, this one with an edge of admonishment in it.
They drink. Dennis steels himself against the taste, which he assumes will be greasy and gross. But it’s not half bad—the V8, the horseradish, and the hot sauce have done their job disguising the taste of those children’s blood.
“Oooh, salty,” Bree says. But she’s drunk deeply; half the glass is empty. The ice cubes, coated pale red, are visible now.
“Sorry about that,” says Dennis. “I’m actually a trained chemist. But apparently not much of a mixologist.”
“I have to watch my sodium intake,” Bree says.
“Oh, come on. Anyhow, didn’t you hear me? Weren’t you even listening to what I said? I’m a trained chemist. PhD, the best schools, you name it.” He sees her eyes move; she is once again taking in the penny-pinched squalor of this shitbox apartment. “Trust me,” he says, hurrying now. “There’s very little salt in your drink. And we’re also—you should keep this to yourself—we’re in the process of disproving all this low-sodium, salt-free-diet stuff. According to the work we’re doing in the lab, there’s nothing to it.”
“Whatever,” Bree says, putting the drink down on the table.
“Ah, dear damsel, you cut me to the quick,” Dennis says.
“You already said that,” Bree says. She is frowning. She has a strange look on her face, as if she hears someone very, very far away calling her name.
“Well, I just don’t see why you won’t finish your drink. Watch how Professor Daddy does it.” He drains his glass. Professor Daddy! That’s who I am, that’s who I will be!
“I’m good,” she says.
Oh no, you’re not, thinks Dennis. You’re actually bad. You are a whore. How can you say you’re good?
“Sure?” He is playing it cool.
He can.
He has outthought this woman three times over. He knew she might react badly to the sight of the vials and that’s why he emptied them of Zoom and put the good stuff in the drinks. He knew she would see him hesitate to drink, and because she has a comic-book mind and is far more predictable than the weather, he knew that she would think there was something wrong with her drink. And that is why, of the three vials he portioned off for today’s playtime, two and a half were poured into the drink she ended up with. And so even if she wants to be a pain in the behind and refuse to drain her glass like a good little whore, she has already consumed more than enough to make what comes next a most excellent adventure.
Bree now is licking her lips and swallowing her mouth’s moisture in gulps, as if consuming dollops of cold mashed potatoes. She pats her breastbone, and her eyes go through a series of transformations: concern, followed by fear, followed by fascination, and ending up in a kind of animalistic blankness—the eyes go from being windows to the soul to being windows on pure appetite.
Dennis is feeling quite a bit of appetite himself—it’s amazing how quickly that Zoom starts zooming. How long has it been? Ten seconds? It’s difficult for him to stand still. He finds himself marching in place, but his demeanor is hardly soldierly. He is rotating his shoulders, flexing his fingers, sniffing and snuffling. All of his systems are in overdrive. His mind repeats the question: What do I do, what do I do? He wants to look out the window, lock the door. He wants to urinate, defecate, eat, drink, procreate. But having given himself a 50 percent dose, he is able to keep these surging desires in check.
The same cannot be said for Burgundy/Bree etc. etc. She was given the megadose, so what is a surfable wave to Dennis is a tsunami to her. She is helpless to resist. In fact, the word she might not even apply to her, since, grammatically speaking, it implies a certain specificity, and most of the traits, memories, and goals that form the core of who she is in the world and how she sees herself have been washed away as the Zoom courses through her like a marauding army of Visigoths charging through an undefended village, obliterating everything in its path.
“Hi, sweetie,” she fairly shouts. She has no idea why she said this. It could be she is curious if she is still capable of human speech. She steps toward Dennis, cups his business, gives it a shake, and then, her eyes widening, she takes a deep, deep breath, squats on the floor, leans her shoulder against the arm of the sofa, hikes up her skirt, yanks her undies to one side, and lets loose a powerful stream of urine.
I’m going to pee-pee too! thinks Dennis. He is erect and it’s something of a struggle to get his prick out of his pants but a moment or two later he is standing next to the woman and covering her urine with his own. The odor is amazing. It’s like the best meal he’s ever had combined with suddenly understanding exactly how everything in the world is connected.
He pushes himself into her mouth. She doesn’t seem to mind, but she doesn’t do what he would call a professional job. Her eyes momentarily roll back in her head and then reappear again, no more expressive than two blueberries in a slot machine.
She loses her balance and now she is on her back, oblivious to the fact that her carefully lacquered hair, not to mention her head, is in the dark circle of wet the two of them left on the carpet. Dennis pushes her skirt up higher, until it is around her ample waist, like a thick carpenter’s belt minus the tools. He attempts next to pull her underpants off, but she is twisting, perhaps writhing, from side to side, and it’s too difficult, so he does what any God-fearing gentleman would do in his position—he tears them to shreds. The elastic band requires special effort, but soon she is fully available to him.
“In, in, in, in, in,” she chants, and her tongue lolls out of her mouth and she pants like a dog waiting to be fed.
When Dennis was in high school, there was a student production of Raisin in the Sun—an all-white production, as it happened. He had a small role, but he took it to heart, and the poem from which the play took its title—What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?—has haunted him ever since. As someone whose life has been a series of frustrations, he has had to struggle not to lose heart. He has had many dreams deferred, but none of them, as far as he can tell, have dried up. And one of his deferred dreams—to have a woman begging for it, spreading her down-there lips and just completely fricking begging for it—is right now finally coming true. And it is no little desiccated raisin in the sun. It is a big juicy grape; it is, in fact, an entire vineyard at the peak of gushing ripeness…
That’s the good news.
The bad news is everything that happens next.
Chapter 15
Below her is a pit of despair; she can smell it, she can taste it, and Cynthia hangs above it from a thin, fraying rope. And all that rope is made of is two brief text messages, one from Alice that says We’re okay, and the other from Adam, typically more expressive, thoug
h in this case only marginally so, that says See you soon, Mom. The rope is tied around her ankle and she is upside down, turning slowly, facing and smelling the foul pit of hopelessness and grief, and everything else in life—eating, sleeping, shopping, thinking—is either undoable or irrelevant.
I can’t call the police, she writes in her journal. What if the kids are up to some mischief—or worse? Those poor babies. What if they are taken away from me? Can they do that? I don’t even know what my rights are. I don’t know anything. Just this, these two things: Adam. Alice. I love them. And they need me.
She sits in the middle of her bed. It is ten at night, and she is dressed, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The door to the bedroom is open wide. She scrambles up, pulls the door shut, and locks it.
She has been doing this for the past hour. Closing the door to the bedroom and locking it. Unlocking it and opening it. Closing, opening, locking, unlocking. It is a state worse than indecision. One moment she feels safer locked away, and three minutes later it hits her that nothing could be more dangerous than a closed, locked door—she must be able to hear what (if anything) is happening in the rest of the house. But then the sight of that wide-open door and the thought of some beast, some intruder, a swarm of rats, a flying phalanx of bats pouring in—it’s as if the person who left the door open must have been out of her mind, and she slams it shut, bolts it, only to open it again in a few minutes.
Now that the door is closed, the house emits more inexplicable noises. A thud. A creak. A bang. A squeak. She pictures the house. Why, oh why, oh why did she ever want to live in a large house? She remembers the first time she stepped foot in this place, not long after Leslie and Alex were engaged. How dazzled she was, how thrilled, moved as if by the sudden sound of overwhelmingly beautiful music—she had never been a guest in such a magnificent dwelling, let alone lived in such a place. Everything about it filled her with awe. Here was the source! For years she had been selling early American antiques, and walking through these rooms for the first time, she felt as if she were visiting the birthplace of all the fine furniture—the end tables, the paintings, the chairs, the sofas, the andirons, the pokers and tongs, the carpets, the lamps and chandeliers, the pewter serving trays, the immemorial gravy boats—all gathered together in their natural habitat. She had felt like a lover of animals who finally gets to see her beloved lions and giraffes on the Serengeti Plain.