Good, said the Deutscher.
Okay, let’s get this over with, said Shantelle, and out they went. He liked that; he liked anyone who did business straight up—unlike, say, Judy, the lesbian and me, who kept compliantly trying to swallow down whatever had been predicted for us.
But now once more he had to fight off Neva’s glamor, allure, or whatever the hell it was; she almost offered the sad young eyes and smooth young skin of Judy Garland. His Judy was right; there was something about her, some cheap magic or power that he wished he could smash. Once he knew for sure that she would never come on to him, and he could forget all about everything except what he had been put on earth to do, he got over his disappointment and almost liked her; she was attractive enough, except that he hated vaginas.
He stood up on his squishy aching feet and marched into her light.
Hi, she said.
You don’t fool me, Karen Strand.
I’m sorry, said the lesbian.
Why did you change your name?
Whether it is true that beauty brings sadness, that look in the retired policeman’s face, that pitiless cruelty glaring out through his weakly watering eyes, was nothing if not sad. It was as simple and gruesome as a promontory of black bones.
The lesbian said: I never liked the name Karen.
He grunted, staring at her.
I think you’re J. D., she said.
That makes you a regular private detective.
I have a favor to ask you, she said. Will you step outside with me?
He reveled in their faces. Francine’s had gone waxlike, and Victoria’s was openly envious.
Sure.
Finishing his drink in one go, he held the door for her ironically. As soon as they reached the corner she asked: Could we please talk about Judy?
Said the retired policeman: You read my mind.
33
He had expected some confession whose purpose would be to weaken his possession of Judy, but she now said, with the air less of a guilty defendant than of a witness trying to remember whether or not a light happened to be shining through a certain bathroom window on a certain night: I’m wondering if she needs help.
Yeah, baby! What she needs is for you to leave her the fuck alone.
Not yet, said the lesbian.
Rage blossomed happily in his heart.—Then I won’t leave you alone, he said. Karen, or Neva, or whatever your name is . . .
She said nothing. Why did her expression refuse to change?
And I wanna see this women’s mark of yours.
The lesbian pulled up her blouse.—It’s here but you can’t see it.
But Judy could. What bullshit.
She could.
I said what fuckin’ bullshit!
She let her blouse back down, trying to smile at him.
Pulling out the snapshot of the braided woman at Stanford, he asked: Who’s this?
Oh! said the lesbian. I guess Judy—
I told her to. Trying to get dirt on you. You want it back?
Would you like to have it?
How about this one? Who’s this old bag? I’ll bet she was more than your bellydancing teacher.
She smiled.—That person was dear to me. Keep it if you like.
So she’s dead?
Yes, some time ago.
You were bellydancing professionally?
Just for fun.
Where was this?
On an island.
Are you lying to me, Karen?
Do you want me to? I will if you—
Will you shoot Judy in the head?
No.
Will you leave her the fuck alone?
If she asks me to.
Here; take your goddamn pictures.
Thank you, said the lesbian.
Last but not least, he snarled, thrusting in her face the black-and-white photo of the beautiful woman playing pool.
The lesbian kept smiling, but he thought he saw her twitch.
Well?
She was someone else I loved.
Is she dead?
I don’t know.
Well, cut my dick off. Anyway, what’s your opinion of Judy now?
That I love her.
She stole from you and—
Because she loves you, and you told her to.
How does that make you feel?
I want people to love each other, said the lesbian.
I’ll just bet you do. Fuckin’ freak!
Now could I ask you something?
Let me guess. Do I hit Judy? Better yet, why do I hit Judy? I’ll tell you something, bitch. The stupidest call I ever took was when the husband was beating the wife and she was screaming; soon as they came out we had ’em drunk in public and then I said, asshole, you like to beat up women; try a man! . . .—and then the wife started shouting, don’t bother my husband! They deserved each other, they were in paradise. Well, that’s my fuckin’ paradise. Do you get it? I said, do you fuckin’ get it, cunt?
Yes, said the lesbian.
Was that what you wanted to know?
The lesbian nodded.
No, I won’t punch you out, he said. You’re not my type. I don’t hit women until they beg me. And I’m pretty sure you’re not Karen Strand. Or let’s say you’re like Shakespeare: Someone else wrote those plays, but he happened to have the same name.
Or not, said the lesbian, trying to smile at him.
You’d better not say you love me.
Okay.
Look, he said, rolling his tongue inside his cheeks. What happened to Karen once you assumed her identity? Did you kill her?
She smiled at him.—Is that what you want me to say?
No. I want the truth. But I don’t expect to get it from you, since you’re a liar. Who are you?
Karen Strand and Neva.
You’re telling me that you’re the same person who graduated from Vallejo High in 1982?
The same, she said calmly.
You look almost the same. But you can’t. How old are you?
I lost those years . . .
You’re fifty-one and you look to be under twenty-five. How do you explain that?
You won’t believe it. Witch magic—
Oh, please.
And you won’t believe this: I love Judy, and I—
What do you mean, you fuckin’ love her? I can hardly wait to watch her get dumped! By you, Karen. Stop holding your nose and take a whiff of Judy. Then you’ll fuckin’ . . . It’s gonna be the laugh of the season.
I love her.
You love everyone, I hear.
Oh yes, she replied.
As I said, you’re a freak. You make me sick. You’re like a crapper that anyone can use. I’d rather use my own goddamn toilet. It’s more private, with less risk of disease.
I understand.
Don’t you ever get angry?
When you need me to I will.
What the fuck! he shouted.
J. D., Judy’s in trouble—
Because you’re feeding her false hopes, and you won’t put a stop to it. Now listen. I don’t care who you are and what you’ve done. All I want is for you to lay off her. Do that, and I’ll leave you alone.
That’s up to Judy, said the lesbian.
Then he did crave to punch that beautiful face of hers into bleeding ruins. He said: I don’t know what you are, but once I find out, I’m going to get you.
I love you, she repeated. He didn’t buy it.
He was already striding away when she called his name, at which he turned back toward her with doubled fists. She said: The place where they made me Neva is an island. You could go there, and if you took Judy—
I don’t get it, he said.
I can sho
w you on a map. And if Judy—
Shut the fuck up about Judy, he told her, at which she looked very sad.
34
The transwoman actually was in trouble. Huge-eyed and open-mouthed, she attended to another of Sandra’s on-request stories of her childhood: I remember reading this book, The Plains of Passage, the fourth book in the Clan of the Cave Bear series . . .
Involuntarily Judy was licking her lips. She had a shiner on her left eye, and there were bruise marks on her throat. She imagined her tongue crawling up and down between Sandra’s legs, drinking in Sandra’s mermaid womanliness so that she, Judy, could become more female.
And by the time that book came out, said Sandra, I was physically mature, and I—
Oh, please don’t stop telling me! You started doing something . . . !
You see, Judy, there was a lot of sex in it, but I didn’t understand all that. But by the time that book came out I was a little older, and I remember reading these incredibly graphic descriptions of sex, and that was the first time I had heard of oral sex at all. I actually thought it was a really bad book; all they did for seven hundred pages was travel across these plains and stop to have sex. But I remember getting a physical feeling from reading them.
So you touched yourself! I knew it! How were you feeling? Right now I want to . . . Francine, you should really listen in, because, oh, my God.
No thanks, said Francine while serving me a rum and sodapop. I crooked my finger at her, and when she bent toward me I whispered an interrogative about Judy’s love marks. In answer she touched my shoulder. Then she started washing glasses.
I think it was two feelings, said Sandra. One was curiosity and another was horror that it would happen, being repulsed by it, but all these descriptions, yes, I also did feel a sort of tingling between my legs, so I kept reading. But I still didn’t know how to intensify that feeling. I didn’t understand the idea of masturbation; I didn’t realize that if I touched myself, that feeling would intensify—
Well, I figured that out when I was little. But my Daddy would come in to beat me. If they’d walked in on you—
But they didn’t, said Sandra. They didn’t care about me.
If you were my mother and I was snuggling you and then I started touching myself, would you hold me tight?
Would you be a boy or a girl?
A girl! No, a boy, I guess. And I’d turn into a girl when you slid your hand—
Not if I were your mother. I remember when my friend Harriet, when her son Lincoln was masturbating when he was only four years old, and he had no real reason to stop. She was talking to him and she was trying to explain that this is something you do by yourself, and it’s not bad, but you should do it in your bed and not mine.
Judy interrupted: Well, Neva was willing!
Willing to do what?
Last week I asked her if we could play the incest game. You know, mother and daughter. And she was like, whatever.
Was it nice?
You know Neva’s the best!
Was she smiling?
Well, for a minute she looked kind of sad, but, you know, Neva has to do whatever we want, because—
Judy, how can you say that? That’s not nice!
Well, you know I’m just nasty. I’m no good, because—
Blushing, maybe because the peach schnapps was going to her head, Sandra patted the transwoman’s hand. Then she said: Honey, are you all right? What happened to your eye?
35
In the bar called Ladykiller’s, grimacing over a tallish watered-down beer and (because they were out of Old Crow) a watered-down shot of Black Vulture, the retired policeman waited for a person of interest to tire of trolling the burlesque clubs of Broadway—not that any of them, even Foxy’s, whose chorus of whispering singing girls was currently assisted by synthesizer and drums to underscore their fake urgencies, could begin to imitate the crystalline flashing of a school of anchovies, which was why the retired policeman preferred to save his money for drinking alone, baiting Neva, jawboning with Francine, giving me life lessons or else dating the transwoman, so why the fuck did Johnny keep spending his money there and not here? Eleven-o’-clock, and finally a motorized wheelchair groaned slowly in, with a backpack hanging behind it, accompanied by a trailing brightcolored fetish: a chain of bras and panties. Sitting back on the long worn black naugahyde couch that wrapped around the back wall, the retired policeman watched Johnny roll up to the bar. On one television screen was news; on another, an assassination thriller, and on the third, a glowing advertisement for Mardi Gras.
I’ll have a draft, said Johnny.
Evenly smiling, pouring watered-down drinks, the young bartender asked where Johnny was from.
Right here.
I don’t remember seeing you before. Six dollars.
The retired policeman stood up, which hurt. Checking his pocket for his wallet, he waved to the man in the wheelchair.
All right, said Johnny. You pay.
The retired policeman dragged his two drinks over. His ankles ached even though the compression socks were so tight that his feet were going numb and cold. Each step he took made him feel as if razorblades were slicing into his arches and cigarette lighters were burning his heels. When he stood still, it felt as if a long scalpel had sliced sideways into each foot from just above the arch. Grunting with pain, he counted out eight one-dollar bills on the counter. Then he sat down next to Johnny.
Thanks, said the bartender.
Well, said Johnny, how you been?
Great.
You don’t look it.
Neither do you.
At least I don’t lie about it. Actually, maybe you are doing great. I heard great news about you. Heard you’re actually dating Judy.
That’s right.
And that’s why you asked me—
You hit the bull’s eye, Sherlock.
Where did you meet her?
At the Doughnut Hole.
You’re shittin’ me! They closed that place down ten years ago!
Four.
What do you mean, four? Couldn’t have been under six. I’ll bet you busted her and she did whatever in your stinkin’ squad car—
Four years, Johnny. Vice closed it down.
Who else? Was it you that dropped that dime?
Off duty I never called in on anybody except for violence, and you know it. Now what are you pissy about? I didn’t take her away from you.
You said it. I fired the bitch. And now you’re dating her. That stinking he-she bitch. Judy don’t deserve to live. Got into my wallet and . . . And you’re getting it from him. Guess what that says about you?
Johnny, my friend, if you weren’t a cripple I’d pour that beer over your head and kick your teeth right out your ass.
You truly met her at the Doughnut Hole? I would have sworn, not even Judy—
So do you have what I asked you for or would you rather fuckin’ goad me until I do kick you in the teeth?
I heard her door open at about two in the morning, I should say.
At the Rosebud Motel?
Oh, no. This was Judy’s place.
And you just happened to be there.
Well, you know how I like to listen, for old times’ sake. So my check came in, and I said to the clerk, I said, gimme the room next to hers, just for tonight. And there was some fellow—
This was Tuesday or Wednesday?
Wednesday. It wasn’t Al or any of her regulars. He was talking loudly to her right outside, but I couldn’t catch what she was answering, because she kept her voice down. And then the man went in, and the door closed real soft but firm, you know what I’m sayin’? She keeps her bed right up against my wall, so, well, sound travels. That’s my meat. And it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before that bed was creaking and creaking against my
wall, about as fast and hard as I’ve ever heard it go. Then it just stopped. I counted three. And then I heard the scream, definitely a female scream, at least as female as Judy gets, and it kept going on until something heavy hit the wall, and then it stopped.
How long did this go on?
They started doing their business right past two, I would say. He must have conked her ten minutes later; it was for sure less than fifteen. So then I heard the door open. I waited till it had closed, and I could hear him pass my room; I should say he was moving pretty quick, like he didn’t want to be found after what he’d just done. Here’s a memory stick showing him on the lobby video; you’ll see he’s—
How much?
Oh, whatever, J. D. For old times’ sake. I mean, you and I were fuckin’ the same goddamn—
36
So what happened to you? he said.
I was having fun.
You look like hell. Are you sure it was all fun?
I promise, she said.
Well, Johnny was next door wanking off. He said you got hurt—
He was listening? How embarrassing, she said with a happy smile.
He’s one of us, said her lover. He don’t care how fake the pussy is.
37
This is what he looks like, he said, laying down a pixelated printout, then looking discreetly away from it, across the next table at the glazed look in a young man’s eyes as he stared across the top of another man’s head at the naked girl who kicked playfully back at him, rapidly opening and closing her buttocks. Then her next song began, and she somehow hooked her buttocks over her ear.
Why ask me? said Shantelle, so thirsty to be loved. I’m not a killer; I’m just a hardass niggah bitch. You wanna killer, you better get a big strong man.
You can do it, brown sugar. You’re hard and fast and mean. Just fuck him up a little.
For what?
For Judy. He choked her and punched her, so I want revenge.
I don’t care shit about her.
Sometimes you do.
What do I get?
Twenty years in Folsom Prison.
That’s a good one, J. D. I said, that’s a motherfuckin’ good one!
The Lucky Star Page 36