by Lisa Teasley
“Pound?”
“Don’t pound on me,” he says, working his spit.
“Simmer down there John Paul,” the white one says.
“You say to me, ‘Stay out of other people’s shit,’ and that’s exactly what I’ve done tonight,” Pup says, both palms slamming the counter.
“What the hell is he talking about?” the dread says, expanding her chest.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t rape her,” he says, shaking from the gut, his eyes flooding.
“Jesus Christ …” the dread says.
“I ‘stayed out of other people’s shit,’ and maybe she’s dead because of it.” His shakes moving up to the shoulders. “I stayed out of it. We hear the girl screaming, we wait, then see the mutha’fuckahs running, and when we get there, we see her, torn up, raw and bleeding. And what do we do? Zasu man, what do we do? We walk the fuck away!” Pup begins knocking himself with the heels of his palms, first the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, the chin, then he holds his own throat, bares down until someone tries pulling his hands away.
“Take it outside, come on, calm yourself down,” somebody says.
“Hold on a minute,” he thinks the white one says. He hears the mumbling and the rumbling, he tries shutting them up, cutting them off.
“That’s right, you heard me exactly right!” Pup says, snapping with his teeth, breathing in hard to keep the snot from running with the tears. He feels the hands again, firm on his biceps, trying to lift him. “Who knows if we’d stayed … who knows, man, I mean how many minutes it takes. Worrying about our own asses. Around there, mutha’ fuckahs hacking up people with machetes for whatever kind of shit …”
He hears the girls, then the hands let him go. Someone moves out of the way.
“But it was some dumb-as-fuck and just as guilty piece-of-shit that did the same thing with Pace, just walked away, like I did from that girl, and now Pace is dead,” Pup finishes, now only his jaw shaking, his breathing finding a steadier rhythm as he holds onto the counter, then tries squeezing it from his head. Images curdle his brain. He feels his father holding him from behind, not hearing what comes out of the priest’s mouth, then he sees Millie throwing a handful of dirt into Pace’s grave. Then Millie scooping up more dirt and throwing it all around, some of it hitting Pup in the face. He sees them holding onto Millie as she’s trying to knock everybody down, then he registers what is actually in front of him, the open mouth of the dread looking frantic, and the white one leaning into him, about to touch him, an expression of confusion on her face.
“Who, John Paul, is Pace?” she calmly asks.
Pup gets up, kicks his stool over, hears the growling behind and the rumble as he shoves open the aluminum door. As he jumps the three steps in one outside to fresh air, the Christmas lights in the bar remain in his head. Suddenly they turn into fireflies, swoop up, circle, then finally get away.
Wanting Girlfriend with the Pink Hair
Every morning, same thing, waking up to his sister Emerald’s nose in his ass because she loves the smell, it’s easy for her, he naked and always ending up on stomach, spread eagle, and like a cat Emerald is up first, in his bed, her nose in his ass, perhaps in tribute to their mother who, laughing, used to wake them up this same way, sometimes grabbing his balls, Emerald’s buds, and saying, “My precious stones,” that’s why he changed his name, because of their mother, her obsession with precious stones, naming him Zinc, which he changed to Cy, short for Cyrus, but Emerald holding onto Emerald, as Cy’ll call her Emery, short for Emery Bored, though she is nothing of either kind.
“What’s this Cy? Two pimples on your ass.”
“Get off of me,” Cy answers, as always, into the pillow.
“Oh, lemme at ‘em.”
Too late, he’s kicked her to the floor, quickly gets up, scratching his head, cupping his balls, heading for the head. Emerald is on her first Mint Julep of the morning, the drink of the week, always a new drink of the week every morning since the opening of the bar, almost a year ago.
“What in the world could that line be for?” Emerald calls from the window overlooking the Public Theater on Lafayette, but Cy doesn’t answer since he hasn’t seen it yet.
“You can’t tell from this crowd,” she says, scratching her head, licking the sugar from her lips. “You can never tell anymore from these crowds, can you? Cy? Come over here, and talk to me.”
“Too sweet, really,” he says, giving the drink back to her. “It’s a wonder I let you do any mixing, a wonder anyone ever comes back to the bar.”
Cy digs his foot into one of the many scarves on the floor, one of the hundreds of pieces of material Emerald finds, swearing she’ll sew some outfit together, but mostly buying everything she passes on the street she fancies and can barely afford. Cy sits down to the baby grand, begins the Bach piece he’s been working out for the past few weeks, as Emerald grinds the beans, puts his coffee on.
“I thought that puppet thing was starting this week. That couldn’t be the line for the puppet thing, could it? Cy?”
His eyes are closed. She opens the window, sticks her head out, her pink hair shining strangely gray in the morning light, her finger in her ear, plugging out his music, digging for wax.
“What?” she asks, as if he had said anything to her. “Cy? Come over here a minute, would you?”
Emerald spins around, pulls the end of her T-shirt down to cover her thigh, measures with her fingers the distance of its limits from her knee.
“My legs are too short, really. They are much too short. Why couldn’t I have gotten your legs? Cy. Or only your lips, even. I’d take your spider lashes, and be happy, really. Don’t understand how anyone thinks we look alike. We look nothing alike, you’re all Mom, really, gorgeous Mom with the symmetrical everything, and here I am, lopsided, with these crazy knock knees. I can’t stand them. Cy. Cy? When you get a chance, I want to go over the books, when you get the chance, we got to go over the books already, I told you, I keep telling you everyday, already, when you finish that damn piece, let’s get to it, now, Cy. Your coffee’s ready, and I’m not getting it.”
The buzzer sounds, Emerald in the bathroom, Cy’s eyes closed, foot pedaling, fingers hummingbird wings, and the buzzer sounds again.
“Cy? Get it! I’m on the toilet. Could you possibly?”
Emerald runs from the bathroom, hits OPEN for the door, she knows it’s Tim, she runs back to the bathroom to flush, brush her teeth, dab a little Vaseline on her lashes, pinch her cheeks, open her eyes wide, check for veins, drop the stuff from Paris all the girls used when she was modeling but couldn’t make it because she was a tad too short, at the time, a tad too ethnic or else not ethnic enough.
“Okay. Let’s get it together, Princess, what’s this? Not dressed yet? What time d’l tell you I’d be here, huh?” Tim says, his dyed-black coif preceding him as he pulls Emerald into him, licks her squared jaw, Cy squeezing his eyes, head splitting.
“Can’t leave yet until we’ve gone over these books, I keep telling him, Tim, he won’t talk to me this morning, really, and I’m not leaving until we get the books straight, and—”
“I’m not going in today.” Fingers stop.
“What do you mean, not going in? It’s Fri-day, Cy, we can’t swing it just Burt and I, what do you mean?
“Not going in. Just swing it. I haven’t had a Friday off for a year, and I’m not going in. Simple as that.”
“You spoiled little motherfucker,” Emerald says, heading for the coffee.
“Oh shit,” Tim says, running after her. Too late, she’s hurled the hot liquid on her brother.
“Hold on there, girl, you just simmer down there, Missy,” Tim says, grabbing her arm as Cy flings the liquid from his fingers to the floor, shakes like a dog, heads for the head, not looking at her once.
“Can’t take this shit anymore, really,” Emerald says, coffee pot still in hand, Tim holding onto her arms from behind. “He gets everything he wants, he walks around, ever
yone handing everything right over to him, really, and if that’s not enough, he finds money on the street, you know, he walks down the street, finds sixty dollars here, sixty dollars there, and then two thousand dollars in a public bathroom, for godssake, and men all over the place just lining up to give him whatever he wants, lining up to back the bar, or whatever in fact he wants, and Mom, why even bother to discuss her, when it comes to him, and then there’s me, knocking my head against the wall, trying to scrap a buck, running this godforsaken bar by myself, really, and there’s Cy, from the day he was born, just handed all to him on a goddamn baroque and golden diamond in-laid platter!”
“Simmer down, will you there girl? What is it with you two anyway? I wonder. Just what is it that would keep a grown girl living with her grown brother? What is this sick crap between you two anyway? I’m sick of it, now, Missy, you just get yourself cleaned up and let’s get the fuck out of here. I’m hungry.”
“Cy?” Emerald yanks herself away from Tim, puts her lips to the bathroom door. “Cy, get out of there already, will you? Come out here and talk to me, will you? You haven’t spoken to me, really, in weeks. I’m sorry, okay? But you’re getting to me already, here, Cy. Cy?”
“Well, girl, if you don’t get yourself cleaned up right now, there Missy, I’m leaving. I need some pancakes and some eggs right now, and I’m sick of all this sick shit with your brother, all right? Are you sleeping with me, or are you sleeping with him?” Tim breathes hard, his forehead pale white and shining with a pimple, his top pink pink lip fluttering.
“Cy?”
“How old are you anyway, girl? If you start crying now, I’ve had it with you, I’m telling you. Are you coming or not?”
“Do I look dressed to you!” Emerald’s head snaps around, Exorcist-like. Door still closed to her, shower goes on.
“Baby,” Tim says softly now, holding onto her again, rubbing into her bare behind with the cold buckle clasped over his jeans. “Baby girl, get your head together now, okay, Princess? Your brother’s cleaning up now, you drenched him in hot coffee, he’s entitled to his shower, and tonight you’ll be just fine with Burt, he’s a big fellow, there, nothing will go wrong, and I’ll even drop by tonight. So let’s get out of here, now, Honey, what do you say?”
“Fuck off, Tim.”
“Have it your way,” he says, with his hands in the air, surrender-like, “just have it your way. I just don’t understand what happened to that Japanese gene in you, Missy. The black is there, all right, here it is jerking us all around here and there, over your white one, but where in the hell is that Japanese gene, baby?”
Too late, the shower off now, the door bangs open, Cy wet and the towel hurling in front of him, Emerald out of his way, because she doesn’t have to defend herself now. Never ever mention Japanese to Cy, although Emerald can sometimes take it, but don’t mention it near Cy because it was the father they never met, much less knew, and he was only a trick, this Japanese guy, to their mother when she was in Hawaii, which was after St. Louis where she was born. But this Japanese trick was her lover for two babies, so he wasn’t in fact a trick at all, but she refers to him always as the trick, Your father the trick, she used to say to them in New Mexico which was after Hawaii, and then in LA they were old enough to have an opinion of their own. By that time they were dealing with the black in them which is barely in view to anyone since their mother is half white and half black, the former overtaking the latter. Their blackness was never an issue to anyone looking who might call them, say, a younger, more tender version, male and female, of Yul Brenner. Still Cy takes issue with this father, this Japanese father, whom he tried to reach very very much in vain.
Tim on the floor, Cy’s chest pulsating, Emerald does nothing since she would have done this if Cy wasn’t first and utmost on her mind. Tim is a shiny shiny pale thing looking up with wide eyes at Emerald, as if this might extract an apology from her. Finally Emerald offers up her hand, since she decided against spitting upon him.
“Get your redneck ass out of here,” Cy speaks first.
“Calm down now Cy, Tim you just give me your hand already, really, and I’ll be dressed, and I’ll take you down. Okay?”
“I’m not going in tonight, Emery, so get his comic book redneck ass out of here now.”
“I should kick your ass right now, faggot.”
“Tim.”
“That’s what I should do, but out of respect for your sister, I’ll walk out now, pretend this never happened,” he says, letting go of Emerald and he’s up, flicking his wrists as if there were bugs crawling on his hands. “I’ll wait for you outside there, Emerald. Don’t be too long.” The door slams behind.
“Cy,” she says softly, holding onto him as he approaches the piano. “Why do you have to go and mention the comic book thing, really? You know, it would be like putting down your music, or something. That’s his life, you know, Cy. Be reasonable, after all. Here he is finally making something of his life, doing what he loves, being paid to write comic books, and you have to go and put it down. It’s more than you could say for you and me, really. Look at this bar, where’s it getting us with what we want, after all? Have you ever been paid, Cy, for your music? Have I ever been paid, Cy, for my clothes? Have—”
“Why do you think I’m not going into the bar tonight, Em-er-ald, huh? Just get out of here. I don’t give a fuck about the books now, so just go, go on now to your Southern redneck dick.”
“That’s enough, now Cy. Give me a break, will you please, really? Tim never means it. He just got impatient. It’s his way of joking, his way of jerking around.”
Fingers hummingbird wings, Emerald turns her back to him and the piano, looks at the floor, the many scarves, silks, satins, swatches of linens on the floor, all the materials gathering together in her head, the colors swift and light as birds’ wings, and they take off in flight. Her forehead smoothes, her palms together now as she blinks quickly, trying to call up the roof tearing off, but her brows furrow, Cy’s music gets in her way, even though it is beautiful, it is Cy getting in her way, even though he is very beautiful and everything to her, it seems to her at times, but he’s getting in the way now of the roof coming off, tearing off, as she wants more than anything else for her problems to take to the sky, and she displaces this with missing a love in LA, missing another love, and then there are the streets she begins missing, her mother now moving in, the image of her hands brushing her ears, nervously the way she does, then turning her head because she didn’t want Cy to move away from her, it isn’t Emerald at all she ever misses, when she calls it’s always Cy she asks for, How is Cy doing? her mother asks confidentially, as if Emerald would ever tell. Her mother thinking it their fault he’s a manic-depressive, when who knows, it could have been the trick who gave it to him after all.
“Cy? Talk to me, please.”
The door is banging, since they forgot about Tim.
“Hold on there, will you, Tim!? I’ll be ready in minutes! …
Cy?”
From the floor, Emerald picks up a large yellow scarf with black Aztec-like lines running through it. She ties it around her waist for a skirt, then finds her shoes in the small defined kitchen. Her bracelet is on the piano, and she leans there, watching hummingbird fingers, then she looks at his closed eyes, the spider lashes fluttering, she touches his hair shaved close to his head, the mole near his eye, above the top of his cheekbone, he breathes in, and she listens to his feet on the pedals, she touches his neck still wet from the shower.
“Cy? It’s okay, you need a break from the bar. It’ll be fine, Burt and I will be fine, don’t worry.” Emerald smiles to him, hoping he’ll look but he never opens his eyes. Suddenly it occurs to her there is something altogether different in his air. The thing she reacted to at first, his spoiled nature, seemed the usual, as the usual jumping into his bed every morning to wake him like a cat. But he seems different, at peace, even though he knocked Tim to the floor, and his anger did make her feel better, b
ut then this peacefulness of not talking to her really, not looking at her as he often doesn’t, still seems altogether different in this air.
“Cy?” she whispers.
“Yes, go on now.”
“Okay. Don’t forget the pills, will you, Grandma?”
“Yes, go on.” Emerald stops for a moment because he didn’t laugh.
“Grandma?”
“Go on.”
“You won’t forget the pills.” Her nostrils flare in concern. Cy opens his eyes.
“Get out of here, and go eat, before you throw anything else.”
“Okay.”
Emerald is at the door, now ajar, Tim tapping the first stair with his scuffed boots, she closes the door again, runs back to the piano, whispers. “Cy. I love you. Don’t go tumbling down through it today, promise me? I’ll kill you if you do something stu-pid”
Cy smiles, she kisses his nose, leaves finally.
Emerald takes with her the scent of coconut, Cy says to himself, his thoughts clipping his finger wings, and it’s not like she’s been around much anymore at all. There have been two, three, four even five mornings the past few weeks she hasn’t been there in his bed like a cat, as always, that she hasn’t been there with her nose, cool wet like a puppy, not there with her buds, warm, pointed and hard. Emerald keeps from him when she goes, days of rolling summer dirt New Mexico, like when they were young, rolling haze of hills, Emerald laughing, their mother running out, flicking her hands like a neon sign, and she’d say, Let’s surf some dirt, ‘kay? and they’d get up, catching dirt waves, arms flying, and they were truly trying to find the balance of the wave, on the hill, their mother kicking the dirt, kicking it flying, until they were screaming in laughter, yelling, Dirt’s up, dudes, until they’d fall right on top of each other. No more holding his stomach in pain from too much laughter, no one would know he’d spent so much time like that as a child. Cy’s been lonely, so lonely, no one knows what it feels like, to get up and fall back down in bed because you didn’t want to see artificial light much less sun.