Velocities

by Kathe Koja

  • • •

  Q:You have a new show opening soon?

  A:I’m not— Yeah. I guess. I don’t know the dates, you better ask Mary.

  Q:It’s titled The Erl King, is that right?

  A:Yeah. Mary doesn’t like it, the title, but that’s just too fucking bad. I know what I’m doing.

  Q:Mr. Vukovich, you— Would you rather not continue today? You seem very—

  A:I don’t seem like anything. I am. You would be too. Maybe you will be. He doesn’t like me to talk to you, you know. So I was up all fucking night last night, listening to him crawl through the pipes—I was afraid to, to take a shit, you know? Because what if he decided to crawl inside me? I wouldn’t put it past him. I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  Q:Perhaps we ought to reschedule our—

  A:Perhaps you ought to shut the fuck up and listen to what I’m telling you . . . listen . . . did you hear that?

  Q:Hear what? I didn’t—

  A:Oh yes you did. You wanted to know all about my art, my homage to his suicide or whatever you called it—

  Q:I—

  A:—like it’s some weird Oedipal thing, but the fact is, I just have to keep doing it, you know, until it sticks. Until it works. Man, you think I like to keep doing the same piece over and over? Think I like hurting myself? breaking my arm? and my shin, and my fucking heel bone, which still hurts, they never did set it right— But I have to. I don’t need that guy at the bike shop, I can order anything I want, they don’t even have to know it’s me. Because if he’s in the pipes today, where will he be tomorrow? Huh? Up my ass, that’s where, and crawling out of my mouth! You think I need that? I’d rather break my neck on a bike! I’d rather—

  Q:Mr. Vukovich, you’re very upset. We’d better stop this now, we’d better just—

  A:You see this gun?

  Q:I—oh my God. Look, I’m, I’m leaving now. I can’t—

  A:No, take it. Take it! And hold it on me. Like this. Like this! Hold it! . . . that’s right. You sit there and you hold it. And if he crawls out of my mouth, you shoot him. Hear me? Shoot the motherfucker in the head.

  • • •

  Because of the way the Red House is constructed, because of its placement on the grounds, and the arrangement of the trees and shrubs around it, it owns a peculiar radiance in the early evening sun, a deep and affecting glow as if the house were lit from within, like fire in the depths of a jewel. Visitors are not always aware of this phenomenon, and are sometimes confused by the house’s name, seeing only its gunmetal-gray-and-glass exterior. But if one arrives at almanac sundown, the house will indeed be glowing, as hot and red and chambered as a beating heart.

  DOWNTOWN

  CLUBS

  In Lisi’s bathroom: whorling shells on the shower curtain, pink shower curtain, pink cosmetic smell, and she had, she said, done nothing but perms all day, nothing but put rods in hair and take them out again, stiff and juicy, and now those chapped hands surgeon—deft, swabbing and dipping, and “What’re you doing,” I said, perched on the toilet to watch her, talking just to say something, make some noise. “What’re you—”

  “I’m putting on my face, what’s it look like I’m doing?” Long nails: a wrapped and lacquered caucasian beige, half were real and half were not; I could always tell the fakes, they broke off in bed, stuck brittle in the pillowcase, in my hair for spoor and souvenir although we didn’t spend much time in bed anymore, Lisi and me; I was her chew toy now, club buddy, confidant; I was not there to replace Martin or even act as if I could.

  “So where are we going?” I said; she didn’t answer. “You want to try Foxhunt’s?”

  “I don’t care,” which was a lie; the itinerary was always hers, this other was just a dance we did, something else done to please her: not possible because she could not be pleased, not by me: it was Martin she wanted, Martin or nobody, and I was nobody now. So we did the club thing together, six nights a week and Sundays off for good behavior: Foxhunt’s and the Tunnel, BillyAnne or Panixx, the night mapped to her configurations, and I was pretty much just along for the ride, to pay for drinks and cabs, window-dressing boyfriend if she needed to get rid of somebody, some other nobody come sniffing for her blonde hair and her crotch. Sometimes—not often but often enough—she got rid of me, ersatz escort but always very nicely, very discreetly, tugging me by the sleeve, and “Listen,” she’d say, her lips to my ear, “listen, I think I’m going to stick around,” my signal to get lost and I usually did, although once in a while I’d say “Sure, go ahead,” then stay just to tease her, just to watch the other guy’s face when he caught me lurking at the bar or pissing purposefully in the men’s room like I just had to drain off this last half-liter before I came out to kick his ass. Although—and to my credit, I think; I hope—I never seriously cramped her style; if she wanted to get laid by some asshole in leather jeans, some other non-Martin, why not? At bedrock it was nothing and nothing was what she wanted.

  And afterwards the spiel, the dish, tell me all about it in the morning, some ratbag cafe two doors down from her place and she’d buy me New Orleans-style pastries, beignets, and “He was a wild man,” she’d say, laughing, mouth white with powdered sugar, ghost lips, or “Dead meat” with a frown, a manufactured pout, but how be angry when it all proved to her what she already knew, wanted to know? and my function then was to listen and make little comments, laugh if it was funny; sometimes it was; even Martin had been one of the funny ones. At first. A lot of things that happened to Lisi were funny at first.

  Now: “How about Shadowbox?” and her shrug at my suggestion, wiping at her eyelids, her throat, head tilted to show the line, chin-tip to nipple, smooth and clean; and she had gained back most of the weight lost on her special diet, speedball-and-cigarette purge learned at work, one of the other stylists whose boyfriend was a bike messenger, winged death: 90 pounds and chronic cramps, her hair coming out in clumps before I stopped her, made her stand in front of a mirror: “You look like shit,” I said to her careless shrug. “You look thirty-five,” and “I do not,” but it got her attention, got her to start eating again: fruit shakes mostly, and soup, I brought her lots of carryout wonton and czarnina, she couldn’t keep anything else down. Wrapped in her pink patchwork quilt, sucking on a straw: I’m cold, she kept saying, isn’t it cold in here? Looking at me like a refugee, no makeup, clutching her cup of soup; like taking care of my grandma, my auntie on crutches, those same claw hands. Isn’t it cold in here?

  “Anyway,” flicking on mascara, too close to the mirror, “Shadowbox is dead on Fridays. What about,” and that sideways look, I knew what she was going to say and she knew I knew, knew what I thought, too, but said it anyway: “What about Punch’n’Julie’s?”

  Silence: my shrug unsuccessful because what was it to me anyway? and finally “All right,” I said, “sure, if that’s what you want,” and off into the bedroom then, closet-door noises, drawers opening to close, and me still on the toilet, ankles crossed and resigned, and “Okay,” she said, “okay, I’m ready.” Short black skirt, black shirt buttoned decorous to the neck, stirrup boots. “Let’s go.”

  “You look pretty,” I said. “Really hot.”

  That long lipstick curve: did she believe me? “Martin says—used to say,” as if he had died, “that compliments undermine a person’s self-confidence, that you shouldn’t need someone else to tell you, you should just know when you look good.”

  “Really?” I said. “What utter bullshit,” but her face closed, the wrong thing to say even though it was true. In the cab she tried to give me some pills: really cool, she said, like speed but without the crash, but “Without the crash,” I said, “it’s not speed. Anyway you’re not supposed to be taking any kind of speed, right? That’s what made that hole in your belly, right?”

  Sullen, one shoulder hitched high to make a wall, keep me out, shut me up. “This isn’t
the same shit. Besides, if you can’t be happy sometimes why even bother?”

  No answer to that, or none I knew, and so I said nothing at all, sat watching out the window, traffic lurch and crawl and two guys arguing at a red light, one waving a magazine in the other’s face, waving and shouting, and closer we could hear “Asshole! Asshole!” The cabbie changed the radio station, blurry reggae to Cuban pop and “Go that way,” I called through the shield, pointing to the right. “That way, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said without looking either at me or in the direction I’d pointed. Lisi dry-swallowed the pills. The Cuban pop turned to news and the cabbie shut it off.

  • • •

  Barely ten o’clock and a line already, inside a line at the bar, all the tables were full but “Tommy, hey,” pinwheeling her arm, “hey Tommy,” and there he was, Tommy-from-work, blond curls and baggy tweed shorts, and it turned out he’d saved us seats, ringside view right below the giant sign: WELCOME TO PUNCH’N’JULIE’S! in day-glo letters, beneath which capered a stylized raccoon in bike helmet and boxing gloves, club mascot, someone’s idea of a joke. A stupid joke. It used to be called SQUARED CIRCLE which was at least a better name, but last year some kind of lawsuit, blood and thunder and the place changed hands, changed signs, new waivers and a new paint job—yellow and aqua, gag—but the ring was still there, bright lights and regulation ropes and, now, ringside sports fan, heavy better, take two people—anybody, men or women though it was mostly women now—and stick them in that ring, the crowd around them, staring and shouting and banging their bottles, betting under the tables, in the pisser, strictly cash: two-to-one, ten-to-one, even odds. Now give those two in the ring—who stand sweating, smiling, or pretending to smile, pretending they can see their friends yelling like ten-year-olds from the dark, past the overhead dazzle—give them cheap orange bike helmets and foam-rubber aluminum-cored bats, and start the clock running for a three-minute bout. Score points for every hit, double points for a knockdown and offer a cash prize for the winner, two hundred dollars and the loser gets a free drink. One drink.

  Anyone can play.

  Video screens showing clips of old prize fights, snippets of boxing movies to an all-purpose Top 40 soundtrack, bass-heavy and too loud, and why did she even bother asking me where I wanted to go, why not just say we’re meeting someone at Punch’n’Julie’s? Because she knew I knew? Because even she was embarrassed, to be following Martin around, hanging out at his hangouts, peeking through the crowd to see if he was there? and “Hey hey,” Tommy’s atonal cry, he always sounded like his head was either hollow or too full. “Lisi, hey. Have a seat.” Half a pitcher of beer on the table, dark beer. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Your beer,” I said. “Got a glass?” but he pretended as if he hadn’t heard me, couldn’t see me, poured his own glass full, and Lisi ordered from the barmaid, double shot of Black Ice and for me a beer, any beer, cheap and flat and yellow, and I watched her, just very openly watched her, because I knew she couldn’t help herself, she had to look, she had to see: head swiveling like a turret, cheap toy, is he here? Is he? and Tommy said something, lost in the speaking as a bell rang, sharp through the music, and at once the cheers as into the ring came a short dark woman in a green spandex getup, spill of braids elaborate beneath the cheesy orange helmet, and behind her a puffy blonde in thigh-cut shorts and running bra, smile of dopey glee, and “Let’s welcome tonight’s first sluggers,” the hooting female PA voice, “Marva-and-Andrea!” and the cheering escalated, Tommy on his feet and waving, Lisi facing away from the action, where is he? and in the ring they were getting the Marquis-of-Queensberry spiel, thirty-second lecture on the rules from a bored-looking guy in a raccoon T-shirt: the dark woman, Marva, standing head-cocked and listening, bright green bat on her shoulder, while blonde Andrea seemed to be hearing instructions from the voices in her head. “She’s fucked up,” Tommy howled, “look at her”—until another bell, louder still, past louder screams, and the countdown time begun: 3:00 on the ringside clock, Andrea turning to wave at the crowd as Marva in one fierce pivot hit her right in the belly with the bat.

  And Tommy’s bellow: “Fuck!” but in beginning it was already over, Andrea dazed and battered at leisure from one end of the ring to the other by Marva and her day-glo bat, who was aiming, I saw, for points rather than damage: fifty, a hundred, two-fifty, and as the clock timed out, she even pulled her last blow, sent it wheeling harmless over Andrea’s head, Andrea who by now was bent at the waist, clutching herself and: “—winner of Round One—” shouted over the PA as Andrea took two half-steps toward her corner then paused to turn, like a step in a dance, to spray vomit all over, gouts and spatters toward the tables like a fireman spraying a blaze.

  She didn’t get her free drink, either.

  • • •

  “What a farce,” Tommy moody with his beer. “She never even hit her.”

  “Why don’t you try it?” I said. Lisi had gone from the table; to the ladies’ room, she said. With a detour around the club, make the circuit, get a clue. “Get on up there and show us how it’s done.”

  “Oh, no,” shaking his head, reaching for cigarettes, Lisi’s cigarettes. “No, I don’t believe in it, any of it. It’s a ritualized violence thing, and I’m not into that at all, I don’t even play sports . . . Anyway the whole thing’s just a metaphor,” as if I might not be smart enough to get the joke. “It’s a substitute for all the shit that goes on out there,” two fingers flicking toward not the club around us, would-be competitors, bat-jockeys in jerk helmets, but presumably the street beyond it, the city. “Just a way to let off some steam.”

  “Otherwise we’d all be roaming the streets with foam-rubber bats, huh?”

  “Right, you’re right,” as solemnly as if I was, and what if I was, what if we both were, so what? It was still stupid, he was still stupid, and I still wanted to go home: “I’m going to take off,” said to Lisi, returned, big eyes open at me, and “Why?” she said as if she cared. Why? Because this is stupid. Because Tommy is stupid. Because you— “I’m tired,” I said, and “See you for coffee?” more than half-distracted, less than half a smile, because she didn’t need me now and close to five the next morning, jerked from sleep by the buzz of the phone: Lisi drunk, exceedingly drunk and wanting me to guess who had come to the club that night, who had showed up after I left, who had had the nerve to stroll in with some stupid overdressed bimbo slut, and “Martin,” I said, but she didn’t hear me, didn’t want to hear, only wanted to talk: “No, it was Martin!” and into the rant expected, how much she hated him, hated to see him and then something else, something about a comment he’d made, some stupid crack, and “So I did it,” she said, “I signed up. I just fucking well signed myself up, so he can just shut his fucking little mouth.”

  “For what?” Outside somebody was yelling, rhythmic as the sound of a barking dog: hey hey hey. Police siren. I had to be up in three hours. “What’d you—”

  “To play,” she said, and started laughing. “I signed up to play.”

  • • •

  At first I said I wouldn’t go, it was stupid as well as ugly, she was only doing it for Martin’s sake which was the worst reason in the world, and “No no no,” earnestly, “you have it all backwards, I’m doing it to spite him, see, he thinks I can’t—”: the same thing completely but she didn’t see it, couldn’t see it; if I had stayed, that night, stayed to stop her, but “At least get a better helmet,” I said, “at least you can—”

  “Tommy’s getting me one,” and Tommy of course witness to the confrontation, Tommy who apparently thought the whole thing was a great idea, and I spent the next week working to convince her it was not: at Dixie’s and the Foxhunt, Club Jitters and Po’ Boy and Planet Automatic, buying her gin-and-juices, arguing with her in cabs and on foot, all the way home from her job: pink-and-black storefront, broken glass a brown glitter before the door, and maybe Tommy was right,
maybe it would be cathartic, but “Maybe you’ll get your head knocked off,” I said, hooking arms with her, pushing past two guys with broken tambourines and a sign that said GULF WAR VETS. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “Don’t be a pessimist.”

  “I’m not. I’m just being realistic,” but she wasn’t listening, she didn’t care and so: gin and juice and diatribes on Martin, she was going to kick some ass, she kept saying it, going to kick some ass and from my weariness I thought, Why not; let her because she was past listening, had never listened much to me anyway and why should she? Non-man, non-Martin, and so: see her now in Tommy’s black and silver bike helmet, storm trooper chin strap, and his wrist guards, too, black leotard getup, and “She looks hot,” Tommy yelled in my ear, yelled past the cheers and whistles, drunk guys calling Hey baby! and “Don’t you think she looks hot?” but she wasn’t looking at me, was scanning the club, squint in the dazzle and pour of the lights, and I had tried, all the way there, gin in the cab and three of the pills, speed growling like gears in her belly, but look at her, look at her now: head back, chin up, Miss Babe Ruth next to some health-club bitch with a buzzcut and the PA sounding her name: “—sluggers, Donna and Lisa!” and “It’s Lisi,” Tommy’s howl, “you assholes it’s LISI!” but they didn’t hear because no one could hear, no one was listening, and see her look, see that scan dart and stop, stop dead, and I turned as if caught on the string of her vision, pulled taut and unwilling to see what I knew I would see: Martin there at the back, by the bar, Martin with some woman in black and white, and the briefest nod, wry salute to Lisi in the ring who pretended not to notice but whose body grew noticeably tighter, muscle and bone, gladiator arch, and “Good luck!” Tommy cried as the bell rang, “Lisi good luck!” and I turned, helpless proxy to watch Martin take a long and thoughtful drink, then turn his head to watch his girlfriend, bored already, make her way across the bar.