AS I WAS CUTTING and other nastinesses
by
L.V. Rautenbaumgrabner
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Raves for As I Was Cutting
“Think essence of gross: the Marquis de Sade meets the female Frankenstein in American Hell—our nation’s sleezy underside exposed. Rautenbaumgrabner goes for pure, unadulterated thuggery. You can’t get nastier than this!”
— Marilyn Krysl, author of How To Accommodate Men and Dinner with Osama
“I don’t know who this Rautenbaumgrabner guy is, but whoever is guarding his padded cell should be sure to give him plenty of ink, typewriter ribbon, human blood or whatever the hell he writes with. Because holy crap can he spin a fucked up tale.”
— Chris Genoa, author of Foop! and Lick Your Neighbor
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PUBLISHED BY:
New Pulp Press on Smashwords
As I Was Cutting
Copyright © 2009 by L.V.Rautenbaumgrabner
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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AS I WAS CUTTING
And OTher nastinesses
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THE PRACTICE OF BUSINESS TAKES PRACTICE
Marco was hustling down the street, all 350 pounds of him, as fast as the fat fuck’s legs could propel him, as fast as the fat fuck’s lungs and heart could generate fuel for those obscene thighs to pump. As fast as this huge intrusion of space known as “Marco” could insert itself among passersby, knocking them out of the way with his flailing arms, the huge torso. As the air surrounding him advanced ahead, thousands of years of evolution made his fellow striders inspect the bottoms of their shoes knowing instinctively that such fetidness must represent something that had separated from a body—nothing that awful could remain attached.
But they were wrong.
The stink was pure Marco—his essence. You know how sometimes you take a piece of meat from the refrigerator that you had meant to cook a few days earlier, maybe even a week earlier? And you sniff it and it’s not bad enough to throw away, though perhaps something more than meat is present? So you cook it, but as the fat starts to heat up, the smell becomes overwhelming and no matter how hungry and obviously lazy you are, you have to toss it out and look elsewhere for repast? It is the heating of rancid fat that warns you away from future intestinal mischief. So it was with Marco. The hot humid day made each of his many ounces emit hot smell molecules that assaulted strangers on the sidewalk, made them contract their noses, hold their breath, and hope the wind direction would change.
Know what Marco would have said to these pussies? What argument he would have made? Not in whining excuse, but simple explication to these assholes about why he was in such a hurry? Well, first he would have said, “Fuck you!” which, coming from someone with his mass, usually carried the day. If further rejoinder was required, he would have said, “It’s hot, motherfucker. That’s what you do on a hot day, you sweat. Don’t you sweat too? Ah, you motherfuckers make me sick.”
Now, both of these parries would have been spoken with due belligerence, the mark of a bully: “I’ll hurt you up good if you disagree.” But the third reason would have been uttered slyly, making Marco’s puffy face take on the aspect of a simpering hamster. Against this tack there could be no counter. This third convincer would go, “Boss Paul sent for me. I’m trying to get there on time.” And after you heard this, Marco knew, your complaint would be silenced, for no one controverts a whim or desire of Boss Paul.
Marco had never actually been in the same room as Boss Paul, though he had labored decades for both him and his father before him. Because he wasn’t very bright, Marco was assigned jobs which merely required strength and lack of imagination. If any decisions were to be made, someone else went with him to dictate instructions. Like, “Now, Marco, now. No one’s around. Get out of the car, knock him down, pluck out an eye.” Or remove a testicle, or shatter a knee, or any like bit of Spanish Inquisitional recriminatory behavior to convince someone they had erred. Should they not have understood and continued to tread this mistaken path, there was no further warning, merely a cessation of everything.
The call had come from Ronnie C. It was terse. “Marco, you stupid fuck, Boss Paul wants to see you. Tomorrow. Three o’clock.”
Nota bene: Ronnie did not ask if this was convenient, did not inquire if Marco would be available, or provide details on where this meeting was to take place. All this was assumed, and rightly so. Boss Paul ran the only neighborhood left on the South Side not taken over by niggers and spics. He had matched the Columbians’ outrageous cruelty for outrageous cruelty. He was a man to be regarded highly.
Marco was a loyal employee and this was now being acknowledged at the very top. That little mistake a few weeks ago, leaving the shovel behind after he had buried some asshole in a toxic waste dump, was all in the past. Alberto the Carrion, Marco’s mentor that night, had picked the spot and supervised the grave digging while smoking underneath a tree. It was because he did not pay proper attention to the details (although he paid final homage by pissing on the grave), that Alberto had lost an ear in reprimand. But nothing was done to Marco, and all this had happened weeks ago. The organization recognized years of fealty. Perhaps he would even be promoted. Maybe he, Marco, would look after someone else, someone even dumber than himself, though he couldn’t think who that might be or whether such were even possible.
Everyone knew where Boss Paul’s office was. He owned the fucking building, for Christ’s sake. They made Marco walk up three flights of stairs. They wouldn’t let him take the elevator because they didn’t want to stand in the same enclosure with him. One of them accompanied him up the steps, knocked on a door and waited with his ear against the door till he heard a response, then opened it to let Marco inside.
Such a big office, like a lawyer’s—plush, everything first class. Dark leather, thick rugs, the smell of fine cigars. And there he was, Boss Paul himself. Marco had seen him outside funeral homes, had watched him being escorted into limousines at family gatherings and testifying in court. The same class, the same suavity his father had displayed. A pleasure to work for such a man.
“Marco, thank you for your punctuality. This will be quick. Please, don’t sit down. We might have to fumigate the chair, and it’s hard to remove odor from real Corinthian leather.”
Would he feel bad having to stand in Boss Paul’s office? Fucking kidding me? Grateful merely to be in the presence of such a giant. He would stand here for days if so requested.
“Marco, this man sitting next to me is Yevgeny. He was in the Russian secret service. He has access to new weapons, Marco, and is trying to sell me a powerful new pistol he says will evade monitors at airports. We just tested one of them and that is true, though we have not yet assessed its force. We have a chance to pounce on this market before others.... Ahh, waste of time. You aren’t following any of this, are you?”
Marco smiled at Boss Paul for confiding company secrets. He smiled at the Russian too—a bald headed man with an earring. Now see, if Marco had been in the room alone with a man with an earring, he would have kicked the shit out of him for being a faggot—as you are supposed to do if you are a real man. Boss Paul wanted something else from the Russian and was waiting to first get this something. Then he would direct Marco to beat up the Russian faggot. This was why he summoned Marco to his office. Boss Paul himself was going to be Marco’s guide today. An honor.
Yevgeny handed Boss Paul a very tiny pistol, like a derringer women used to carry in their purses when they went to the opera. Boss Paul fired it twice into Marco’s stomach. Because the bullets had been purposely scarred in ways that made them fragment when they emerged from their target, whole chunks of Marco plastered against the back wall of the office. Volumes of bodily fluids flowed from the exit wounds onto the floor. Marco (or what was left of Marco) remained standing, an expression of idiot surprise on his face.
“Well, Yevgeny,” Boss Paul was saying, “it’s certainly powerful. I aimed at the very thickest part of this fat fuck’s body. Are you a gambling man, my friend? Care to place a wager on how many seconds before he falls splat onto the carpet? Ah, too late. Well, Yevgeny, I think we have a deal.”
MELBA’S OPIUM
My girl friend, name o’ Melba, wears this godawful smelling perfume called Opium when she’s hustling this rich kid we’re putting the grift to. Kid’s got some kind of sinus condition, so she has to pour it on, practically bathe in it. The brand’s his favorite, thinks it’s sophisticated, what mature women wear. Melba is indeed a woman, over 40, more than twenty years older than the kid. ’Nother disparity; I’m that same number of years older than Melba.
So, here’s her standard operating procedure. She dresses up nice, goes to Niemann-Marcus, other fancy stores, hangs out at the men’s suit department. Smiles friendly, but not flirty, at whatever guy’s trying on clothes doesn’t have a wife or girlfriend with him. One of them comes up to her, asks how this new suit looks on him. She knows they’ve got dough else they wouldn’t be shopping there. They engage in conversation. Gets her hook into him, gets him to buy her expensive things, which she sells. Eventually she leaves him and begins again with someone else. Nifty, eh?
It’s how we met a few months ago, and later, how she met the kid. Now me, I’m a grifter, too. Oh, I’ve been doing scams, tricks for decades. I told that to Melba soon as I figured out her play. We both laughed, became partners. The kid, he’s gaga over her. Way it’s been, she’s hitting him up for one, two thousand dollars worth of merchandise last few weeks. Brings the cash back to me, tells me to put it into my own private account, not into her bank, not into any joint account. Shows her trust. Also, and I point this out to her, she often underestimates how much is there. Says, “Here’s $1300. You put this into your account. Never counted it. I trust the fence.” But of course I trust no one, not after all these years, so I count it. It’s never less than what she said it was and usually more. The innocent.
Well, not so innocent. She’s been staying out nights now. Comes home and even over the stench of her perfume I can smell sex on her. Says she doesn’t want to hide by showering it off before coming back. Says she wants to be honest with me, wants me to know what she’s doing with the kid, part of her plan. I’m a grown up man, I understand Melba’s been with men before me, lots of them probably—we don’t talk about that. Maybe some she liked and some was for business. It’s a tough world. I don’t complain. I move over to kiss her but pull back right away because she’s wearing that terrible Opium, nearly makes me sick.
So, the sting is on. It’s a big one. The kid’s father’s one of those investment bankers, a bit shady, ain’t we all, about to do some insider trading. Knows a company going public, stock will increase in value immediately. I’ve withdrawn all the money from my account, every cent, gave it to Melba. The deal she’s worked out with the kid is he’s going to invest our money plus another five times that much in this soon-to-be stock the day it appears on the Exchange. Then he’ll sell it and give all of it back to Melba. Kid doesn’t need the money, his father’s filthy rich.
Now, to make sure the kid trusts her, Melba’s going to bring him here to our hotel room to meet me, claim I’m her father. She’s handcuffed me to this here table, one leg of mine to a leg of the table, my left arm to another table leg, right arm’s free. This is to show the kid her sincerity in needing the money right away, soon as the stock sells. She’ll say she got the money over my parental objections and returning the money will soothe me. Then I won’t complain when she and the kid go off somewhere together. That’s the idea.
She’s made me comfortable. Arranged pillows around my head so I can lean against the bed, made sure to use handcuffs big enough around my ankles and wrist so my skin won’t chafe. Forgot to leave me water though, but did leave several bottles of Opium. It tasted pretty awful when I first drank some ’cause I was so thirsty, but after a few sips I’ve kind of adapted to it just like she said I would. Don’t really smell it no more.
Looked at my watch just now. It’s got the day of the week on it. A bit hard to read though, the letters look blurry, but I think it said “Tuesday.” Melba left here on Sunday, should sell the stock on Monday, be back here then. Oh well, maybe things took longer than she planned. She’ll be here any minute. Just have me a few more sips of this here Opium. It’s not so bad after a while. You should try yourself some. I’ll wait right here, don’t really have a choice, take another taste now and then.
FATHERS AND SONS, A TRADITION
The white van pulled up to the cul-de-sac and stopped, its sign emblazoned “Patterson and Son, Roofers” in red and blue to complete the patriotic color scheme. The father, always an educator, lectured Dennis before they commenced activities, pointing in turn to each of the four large houses in the development.
“Now, most of your fathers, they would look at these giant homes and talk dollars and cents, equity earnings, or square feet, acreage. Not me. I’ve taught you computer hacking, most important skill a man can have in this new age of ours. Let me reiterate these people’s histories to emphasize the rightness of our mission.
“The white one on the left, that’s the Al-Hakims, Saudi Arabians. They’s the only inhabitants listed, but we know about the maid they bought from Sri Lanka two years ago; don’t remember her name, lots of syllables though. She’s their slave. Never saw a penny in pay, never been outside the house. The husband rapes her, wife beats her, keeps her in the basement chained to a radiator at night. Oh, there’ve been inquiries, but seems her family, the wife’s, got ties to Saudis the Bush’s know, and that’s delaying any court actions. Might never be none, keep matters in the hands of lawyers while the ‘maid’ conveniently disappears. Lesson in what politics is.
“Second house, another childless couple. Haggertys. Ancient folk, wrinkles in their faces so deep make you think of raisins. Hard-looking people, they never smile, either of them. All the pictures I seen they look mean like they eat puppies for breakfast. He, too, is cheating the law. Owns a savings and loan bank, stealing from it, stocking money away in Caribbean island banks. Who for? Only is the two of them, no kids, no siblings. Haggertys don’t have any friends. This money they stealing, lots of people going to be ruined. For what? So the Haggertys fill up Spanish banks like other misers have cash in coffee cans around kitchens. I picture them spending whole days counting they loot and cackling like vultures.
“Next house in, the one with the apple trees in the front yard, belong to the Saunders. Man’s an alderman, brightest smile you ever seen. Beautiful wife, beautiful kids, three of them, ten-year old twin girls and an eight-year old boy. All of them except the father got this curly blonde hair like in movies. Prettiest people in the world. ’Cept he molests the kids. I don’t know how often. Nightly? Way to spend Saturday night? Wife is so drugged for imaginary ailments she don’t know what those ghostly moans in the middle of the night are, what’s real and what ain’t. Perps and victims, no one gets out alive. No such thing as a real victim anyhow. You know these people brought it on theyselves. Take the eight-year old boy. Think someone that beautiful can be completely innocent? Reminds me how you used to be. Father looks at the boy and of course lust pollutes his soul and he has to commit heinous acts. See the arid Haggertys, you know instantly what you got. But the Saunders? They a lie; pretty but living in a house of pure evil.
“Last house, worst of the bunch. Olivers, young couple, second owners. Now I looked up the Olivers using different programs. I called old employers, checked their schools, their friends. What I find? Nothing, that’s what, not any single thing. Know what most fathers say to their sons ’bout the Olivers? Well, this couple okay then, they ain’t done nothing wrong, no crimes committed here. I ain’t most fathers. They seem so innocent, must be plenty guilt here. My imagination runs wild thinking what those sins might be. They belong to a church all right, but not the right sort of church, don’t do total immersions, don’t prepare to meet the Lord with proper respect. They the worst. We begin with them. Here.”
The dad handed Dennis a pistol equipped with a hand-made silencer identical to his own, he being an expert handyman. The plan was for them to go house to house, gaining entrance with free roofing offers, and then dispatch the evildoers therein. Get any blood or gore on their white overalls, they had fresh clothes ready in the back of the van to put on before visiting the next house. God smiled on their quest too, bit of sunset to hide them, bit o’ rain so folks couldn’t very well keep them outside, would let them in even if they had no interest in free roofing. Him by hisself, maybe they keep out, but see a fine Christian boy like Dennis here and even the flintiest Haggerty would invite them inside.
After they loaded their guns and the father was about to step from the van, Dennis shot him just below and to the right of his belly button, the bullet exiting above the left hip. Though silenced, a loud clicking sound muffled his father’s quiet “Oh.” The smell of freed colonic contents filled the air of the van and Dennis wrinkled his nose.
The father and his gun slowly swiveled around to face his son, but Dennis gently pushed his barrel against the side of his father’s so that it pointed towards the dashboard, then removed the gun from his father’s hand. His second shot entered under his father’s chin, blasting off the back of his head.
Dennis’s father had taken him hunting many times and one lesson was to make sure your kill was actually dead. However severe the wound or obvious the lack of life in a deer, put your gun a few inches in front of where the heart had till recently beat and blast away. This he now did to his father, though the part of his father’s head affixed to the top of the ceiling was strong indication that life had already departed.
Dennis carefully laid his gun on the floor next to his father’s, removed the keys from the ignition, and de-vanned. After locking the door on his side, he went around to the driver’s side and pushed his father’s body down onto the seat so it couldn’t be seen from outside. Dennis didn’t want to scare any little kids walking around or even grown-ups who might get a glimpse of the partially headless man.
He opened the back of the van to change his overalls because couldn’t be sure whether any of his father had splattered and he wanted to appear presentable at the police station. He started to walk back to town, which would likely take him a few hours. Dennis would have loved to simply drive there, but he was only fifteen. He had a driver’s permit but not a real license and needed an adult with him. Now the regulations in the rule book did not explicitly state the adult must be alive, but Dennis was pretty sure the sack of meat that was now his father wouldn’t qualify, and he didn’t want to get into trouble with the authorities.
EYEING MY CEASAR
God bless the food courts of America! What I mean? Most places have lunch hours, then shut down till dinner. Not our food courts, no sir. Open all the time, same as their parent, the mall. Man wants to eat off-hours, what’s he going to do? So, you come here. They’re glad to see you at this still time. Healthy’s is a chain; trust them. They make a mistake, you complain, and the franchise gets itself a new manager. They don’t put up with shit. You know what you’re getting when you order, same all over the Midwest. Ordered me up a Ceasar—doc says there’s more pounds of me than should be. Salad for lunch, even this late lunch, but boy, the beef I’ll have me at dinner. Reading a novel now—man’s companion when you dine alone. A Grisham. They’re all alike, too.
Reading, turning pages, whittling down my garden repast. Barely looking in the bowl, looking at the book instead, yet I notice something odd in there. Croutons are square; this thing is round. Croutons are yellow or brown; this thing is blue. Nearly stab it with my fork but hold off in time. Pausing, I take a good look at what I was about to eat. An eye. Fucking eye in my salad.
“I got an eye in this here Ceasar,” I yell.
I look around. Just me and some fat kid eating a burger, or what looks to be a stack of burgers, one on top of another. Must of got it from Barry’s Buxom Burgers right next to Healthy’s. He’s got him five pieces of roll encasing three patties and a gooey coleslaw layer, bacon and cheese top of each patty. Whole thing’s a single samwich. And the kid is not messing around; he’s doing yeoman’s work, eating steady. Has to kind of tip his head and tackle it in stages, can’t fit all that height into his mouth at once. I trust this kid to put it all away eventually, what accounts for the kid’s girth. Not putting him down or anything like that, no sir, appreciate the kid’s ambition and endurance. My kind of kid. Took me nearly half a century to create this thing tumbling over my belt. Kid’s only in his mid-teens, outdone me already. Hat’s off to you, kid. He hears me yelling something about an eye. Looks at me, curious. Hears the word “Ceasar,” interest curtailed, keeps munching.
I grab the salad and run to the Healthy’s counter, screaming at the wall behind the empty counter. “Got an eye here. I want to see the manager. I want to see the cook. I got an eye here. Ain’t supposed to be an eye in your salad. Don’t say on the menu, ‘Want an eye with that?’ Don’t say that at all. I don’t appreciate this here extra side. What you doing putting eyes in people’s salads? Launching a new gourmet trend? ’Stead of anchovies, have yourself an eye?”
Guy comes running out of the kitchen, whirls around the cash register at the corner of the counter, stops short, facing me. Guy’s smaller than I am, Hispanic looking, hair in a ponytail wrapped in a goofy hairnet, wearing one of those ribbed tee shirts with straps ’stead of shoulders. Has tattoos all over hisself, on his shoulders, down his arms, around his neck. Ugly sumbitch.
“Give me salad. I get you new one.”
“What the fuck’s an eye doing in my salad? Whose eye is this?”
“I give you fresh salad, no charge, Don’t charge whatever you ate from this salad. You getting two salads or one salad and half of another salad for price of single salad. Is good deal. Give me salad with the eye.”
I back away, still holding onto my bowl, suspicious. Police got to look at this eye, find out where it came from. Cook’s too anxious to reclaim the eye. Backing out of the food court now, but the guy stalks after me looking real pissed. I turn and start to run through the mall.
“Call 9-11,” I yell. I forget that it’s called ‘9-1-1,’ not ‘9-11’ like in the Trade Center plane thing a few years back. “9-11, 9-11,” I’m shouting. People look at me like I’m nuts.
I run to the up-escalator, holding the salad bowl with one hand, keeping my other over the top so the eye don’t fall out. Tattooed man chases me.
“Get a cop!” I yell. “Security guard! Security guard!”
I’m lucky. A guard was in the john just to the side of a jewelry shop. Comes out adjusting his belt. I run over to him. “Look. An eye. In my Ceasar. From Healthy’s. That guy . . .” and I point to the cook who is just now coming up to us, malevolent bastard, giving us a really hard look. You don’t expect to see hard looks in the afternoon in a shopping mall. On a street, maybe, some tough street in a big city at night, near a bar, in a dirty alley maybe, but not here in front of “The Gap” and “Pine Creek Collectibles” and “Barbara and Company.” You just don’t expect to see such looks.
Tattooed man reaches us, me and the guard. Tries to grab the bowl away from me, but I keep it out of his reach. The guard is a big guy, bigger than me and the tattooed man put together, even though I do have this extra weight I’m trying to get rid of. He grabs the cook’s wrist, holds it firm.
“Just what you doing here, boy?” he asks, in southern sheriff talk, like in the movies. I don’t know if that’s where he picked it up or that’s how security guards talk. Never talked to one before.
“Consuela,” the tattooed man moans. “I kill her. My Consuela.” He starts confessing to the guard. I listen in. I’ll translate, put it into your real American English:
Four games into the season, local college team hasn’t won even once. Local professional team? Two games, not a single touchdown. Just one fucking field goal for three points. Three points in two games. How’s a man supposed to feel like a man, all your teams losing, acting like pussies. Gets you down, shrivels your dick. Then your wife, Consuela, who claims she likes football but doesn’t, not really, not like you, acts like nothing’s wrong, like everything’s okay. You try to explain to her what a bad thing this is, how hard it is to get through the week, how you’re scared when Saturday comes and the college team loses again. Then the very next day, these big guys with their million dollar salaries can’t cross the goal line even once. That’s their whole job right there, millions of dollars they get for playing ball while you chop lettuce, add oil to cheese, make fucking salads for these fucking shoppers.
You lose your temper. You start chopping her, your wife, Consuela, before she lets you out of the car this morning to go work at Healthy’s. You chop her with a butcher knife you borrowed the night before, cook you some carne at home. Then you realize what you have done and you cry. You tell the parts that used to be your wife, the parts scattered over your car, how sorry you are, but none of the parts can hear you. You don’t know what to do. You’re scared. You put a blanket over the mess in the front seat. You go to the trunk, get out a tarp, spread that over the mess in the back seat and floor. You take off your scarf and rub some of the blood off the window, then leave everything in the parking lot till after work when you can figure out what to do. You go to Healthy’s kitchen, chop lettuce for salads. One of her eyes must have been in your shirtsleeve, falls into a salad. This gringo gets that salad, causes a fuss. You just want the eye back. It belongs to you, it’s part of your wife. Consuela. Ah, you love her, loved her. So confused right now.
Tattooed man cries. Guard has called other mall cops for backup, 9-1-1, not 9-11. I hand him the bowl with the eye and start to leave the mall, but I’m still hungry. I got to eat something. I go back to the food court, see the fat kid licking his fingers. He stares at me. I stare back. I go over to the Barry’s Buxom Burger counter this time and order two 38DDs. I intend to give the kid one, eat one myself. But by the time they bring them out, he’s left. I know I can eat one, but not two. I’ll have to leave part of the second one.
I’m about to begin my feast, figuring out how to attack a six-inch thick samwich. Then, discretion grabs me. I peel apart each layer to inspect it, folding over each piece of roll. Is Healthy’s kitchen separate from Barry’s or do all the kitchens converge in a cluster back there into one big open kitchen? Maybe more than just a single eye got stuck to the tattooed man’s clothes. Maybe other pieces of Consuela were flying around the open kitchen when he chopped lettuce. I peel and you peer, very carefully; make sure I ain’t eating no Consuelaburger here, no sir.
HAS THE SEX TRAIN PASSED OLD GIRL BY?
The bed was a king, ample room for the three of them. Karl had positioned Gertrud along one edge; the tiny woman didn’t occupy much space. He gently placed one of her hands over her pubis, and folded the other into her crotch. He was quite certain she couldn’t move them at all, but if somehow she became aroused he wanted her to be able to twitch a muscle, move a finger, or push a palm downward slightly to exert pressure in case any of her pleasure centers still had working connections. He tilted her head towards the center of the bed and opened her eyes that she might note tonight’s agenda.
Karl had paid Ypifanee (‘epiphany’ with the ‘e’ and the ‘y’ juxtaposed; mama just liked this arrangement better and you didn’t argue with mama) double her asking price, two times $25 plus two Happy Meals. Ypifanee hadn’t eaten that day or the one previous. Her beat was in front of one of the downtown McDonalds so any new client started his session watching her consumption of onioned burgers before pursuing other pleasures. The price had escalated to ensure her acquiescence to his unusual requests. He let her know that he was in mourning for his wife, whom he referred to fondly as “Old Girl.” Their tryst would be more romantic if he could shout out her name to spur himself on. Don’t matter shit what you call me, long as your thing is covered with unbroken plastic and you don’t take too long messing ’roun.
The other request almost brought a third Happy Meal into the negotiations but she assented, though she warned him not to do nothing too funny ’cause even though I be skinny, I got hidden strengths you don’t want to come across. Ypifanee was to wear a blindfold during the proceedings. That way, he told her, he wouldn’t be so distracted by her pretty face, the better to think strictly of Old Girl during the buildup and at the Moment Of Ultimate Joy.
Just as he had carefully arranged Gertrud, so now did Karl lead Ypifanee to bed, placing her away from Gertrud. He asked her to lie pretty still and not flail around much, as his wife had been a passive participant to the Act Of Love, leaving matters up to him. Again, just to set matters straight, Gertud had actually been a passionate sort, spasmodically scrabbling around the bed like a chimpanzee, bed linens a’tangle, continuing long after he had returned to flaccidity, rubbing against him again and again, taking her own route to bliss. Ypifanee said you ain’t much to look at anyways. I won’t feel nothing nohow. I’m tired and would be happy to remain still. Mid-cavort, his head turned towards Gertrud and he murmured, “I love you, Old Girl,” and “Thanks for this, Old Girl,” and a bit louder, “Here I come now, Old Girl!”
This cry cued Gertrud’s sisters to silently sashay into the room dressed like cheerleaders. Helga, the very large one, and Sara, more petite, had sewn facsimiles of Helga’s daughter’s uniform from many years ago. At the top, their thin grey hair was tied with big red bows. Under fluffy white sweaters were short plaid skirts, Helga’s easily capable of covering a small couch. Helga’s feet were ensconced in white tennis shoes, but Sara’s were frail and needed the strong support of nurse’s shoes. Helga held up a placard urging “Go, Karl, Go.” Sara’s read “Work it, Old Girl.” They stood side by side near the loving couple, holding their messages aloft.
Ypifanee didn’t hear them at first entrance, but Helga swayed into a night stand knocking over a lamp. Ypifanee whipped off the mask, stared thoughtfully at the pair, and inquired what’s dis, clowns? No one said nothing ’bout clowns. Audiences is extra. More Happy Meals gotta be paid.
The trio could barely penetrate her accent but sensed concern. Ypifanee then glimpsed Gertrud and commenced to scream, but they had prepared for such a turn. Helga retrieved a large knife Karl had set on the floor near the bed, and with all her might plunged it deep into Ypifanee’s chest. Thin bones broke, lacerating the lungs, and the heart purged body’s blood away. At least her little belly had been packed with two Happy Meals. At death she had overcome her nemesis, hunger.
Sara ran from the room as she did every single time. She hated these anniversaries of her sister’s death but was not strong enough to thwart them or even refrain from participation. Tonight’s event was fourth in the series. After stuffing the tiny body into a large lawn bag, Helga began to scour diligently with mop and cleanser and sturdy brushes. Karl walked over to Gertrud’s side of the bed, feeling no immodesty about his nakedness in front of Helga; shared murders will do that for you. He had to admit, these finales were stimulating.
Karl lifted Gertud’s head onto his lap, closed her eyelids with his fingers, and affectionately patted her hair. He was a taxidermist, Gertrud his greatest achievement. She was still in great shape. Oh, occasionally he would divine a leak but would then inject a bit more formaldehyde after sewing up the tear. He kept her in a closet downstairs in case of visitors, but brought her out to keep him company while he watched TV. Sex, him doing, her watching or at least facing in that direction, along with the sisters’ attempt to enliven things as far as possible, was a fitting tribute to his love. Gertrud was never completely out of Karl’s picture. Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you.
MY MAIN MAN, MAD MAYSE
OK, so maybe Mayse was an imbecile, but he was one genuinely happy fella.’ I don’t know how old he was, thirties, maybe even forties, hard to tell with them big-headed, flat-faced folks, but definitely older than me. He liked me, always made a fuss when he saw me, liked to light up my day. But he would make mistakes when they let him outside, which wasn’t all that often, maybe a few times a month. He’d take things out of a store, shiny things that caught his eye. Or, he’d touch a girl, and she’d yell and he’d get scared and run away. Then Sheriff would come to his house and his parents would have to placate the girl and her parents, and Mayse would stay inside another long spell. Nice guy though, never meant any real harm, till he fucked up good.
It was the end of August, and I was getting a blowjob from Lily Gill, Billy Gill’s sister, back of their house. We were by the bushes, her kneeling on the grass, me standing there, head back, eyes shut, enjoying the work of a real expert. I don’t know who taught her, maybe Billy or their dad, Lester, but she gave forth the sweetest suck there ever could have been. You’d imagine yourself married to her, her doing that to you all night long, every night. A man can dream.
As I say, my eyes were closed in quiet contemplation, so I didn’t see Mayse appear, didn’t hear him walk up to us. I somehow felt his presence, though, and opened my eyes just in time to see him pressing his daddy’s gun to the side of Lily’s eye. Before I could say or do anything, he pulled the trigger and her head exploded but good. A piece of her skull cut my nose. I was lucky Lily in her surprise didn’t bite down on me, but I was able to get my pecker out of the bloody mess that used to be her head with the dang thing intact. She was a true professional even at the end. Then the remainder of Lily slumped over and fell away.
Mayse was all shaken up. He began to cry. “You all looked so happy,” he said. “I wanted her to do that to me, too. I thought I’d make another hole in her head that I could put my doowhacker into, and then we could both be happy. Didn’t mean to hurt her none. Didn’t mean for her head to disappear.”
“Idiot!” I screamed. “You could have shot my pecker off. Why didn’t you wait your turn?”
“I fucked up,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. You fucked up big-time. They gonna hurt you now, no escaping that.”
He still had the gun, a fuckin’ monster. I took it away from him, holding it by the warm barrel.
“You go home now, Mayse,” I said to the little fellow. “I’ll go to Sheriff, tell him what happened so he can get to you before Billy and Lester do. You go home and wait for him.”
Mayse was still crying. “I fucked up bad,” he kept saying.
“Yes, you did, but I know you didn’t mean nothing by it. Sheriff will know that, too. You go home and wait. I’ll be seeing you around.”
He walked away, his heavy head bent down, body shaking. I walked back to my house, still carrying the gun by its barrel. I didn’t want to touch the grip, just in case there was any question about who done it. My mom’s car was gone, so I had to walk into town, only was a mile or so.
Sheriff wasn’t in his office when I got there. No one was, not even Mrs. Sidey, his secretary and girl friend, if you believe what everybody says. They was probably off together somewhere. It’s a small town and not much happens, so that would usually be okay, but it wasn’t right now.
I didn’t know what to do. If I told Billy or Lester, it would go bad for Mayse. But if I just waited around, I could get in trouble with them myself and I sure didn’t want that to happen.
So, I walked over to Tuttle’s Bar and Grille. That’s where Billy was most afternoons. He’s a year younger than me, but we’s completely different. He don’t go to school no more, quit a year before it was legal, but everyone around here is so scared of Billy, even the sheriff, that no one is going to say anything about it.
It was dark in Tuttle’s. Only time it wasn’t dark was at night when Tuttle turned the lights on, so the bar was kind of on an opposite cycle of day and night. Billy was at a table, drinking alone. They say he can put away a half a bottle of Jack a day and you’d never know it. Doesn’t seem to affect him. Doesn’t make him meaner ’cause he’s mean as you can get. Doesn’t make him slur his words or fall over sick. He always looks at you quiet. No smiles, no scowls.
I walked up to him and stood there till he motioned towards a chair with his head that I should sit down. Didn’t offer me a drink, just waited for me to say why I was here. He knew it was important or I’d of never approached him.
He pointed to the bag. “What’s in there?”
I pulled out Mayse’s father’s gun and lay it flat on the table. “Don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it. There’s been an accident. Mayse had his daddy’s gun and shot Lily by mistake. I’m real sorry to tell you this, Billy, but Lily’s dead. She’s lyin’ back of your house.”
All the time I was talking, Billy’s expression never changed. He picked up the gun, holding it by the handle, and sniffed at the barrel. He looked at me. “Dead, you say?”
I nodded.
“Where’d he shoot her?”
“In the head,” I answered.
“Your nose is cut. That be from part of her head?”
“Yes, Billy. Her head was like a bomb, pieces going everywhere.”
He stared right through me. “But you didn’t have anything to do with it?”
“No, Billy, I didn’t. I don’t know why Mayse shot her. Maybe he didn’t know the gun was loaded, just fooling around some. Liked to try to scare her. You know how he can be a crazy character sometimes.”
“My daddy, the damn fool, thinks she’s a national treasure. He had plans for her to blow the President, thinks they’d carve her face with her mouth open into that mountain in Dakota.
“Yeah, he’s going to be real mad,” he went on. “He’s gonna hurt the ’tard, want to hurt you too. Tell you what. I know you. I know you’d never hurt Lily.”
I bobbed my head up and down, glad Billy was reasonable.
“My daddy might not think the same as me, though. My mamma and me, we was nothing to him. Lily was his life work, his only achievement. All gone now. Here’s what you going to do. I know you supposed to be smart, go to college someday. You go now. Tonight. Drive up to Memphis. Stay away a while. We see how daddy be then, maybe he let you back in town. You check with folks. They tell you when you can return. Don’t let him see you before you know it’s okay.”
I nodded again. God, I was lucky he was in a good mood.
“You tell the sheriff, yet?”
I shook my head.
“’Tard’s back in his own house?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’d best go now.”
I jumped up and ran out of there, ran all the way home. I told my mother what happened. She agreed I should get the hell out of here. She knew Lester Gill and wasn’t going to mess with him.
Sunset, I pulled the Dodge out of our driveway and drove through town—town only has a few streets. As I drove down Main Street, I saw Lester’s pick-up parked in front of Tuttle’s. On a hunch, I pulled up alongside and walked to the back of it. I heard a sound coming from the trunk bed, like a dog whimpering. I climbed up and saw Mayse. His hands were tied behind his back and his legs bound together at the ankles. His face was a bloody mess. He was shaking.
“Mayse,” I whispered. “It’s me.”
He stopped moaning and tilted his head towards me. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed or whether they was so covered up by blood he couldn’t see, or whether he still had eyes.
“I fucked up bad,” he whispered.
“Yes, you did, partner. Look, they gonna hurt you some more, maybe, but they’ll stop eventually and you’ll be okay. I got to go before they see me. You a wild man, Mayse. I be seeing you around.”
A friend of mine, name o’ Otis, told me what went down soon after I drove away. I’m glad I didn’t see it.
While Mayse was in the trunk bed, Billy and Lester drank in Tuttle’s till Lester could barely walk. Billy didn’t say nothing all the time they were drinking. Lester wailed and swore. Then he become quiet a spell like Billy. Then he started to scream again.
They went out to the pick-up and sat in the cab for some time. No one else drove along Main Street. Everyone in town knew what had happened, what was going to happen next, and that it couldn’t be stopped. Some people didn’t watch, some did. Otis did.
They came back out, walked down the alley next to Tuttle’s, and hauled out a garbage can full of empty bottles. They broke each bottle on the street, one by one. Billy tossed them high into the air and watched ’em break when they landed. Lester hit each one hard against the pavement. If it broke clean with no nasty edges, he broke that piece again so it was jagged. Both his hands bled. If one of Billy’s bottles landed intact, Lester picked it up and broke it hisself.
They kept this up till there was a mound of glass shards in the middle of the street. Lester took off his shoes and walked to the back of the pick-up over the glass, both his feet and hands bleeding like he was Jesus himself. And maybe he was.
They hauled poor Mayse out and stripped off his clothes. Then they lay him face down in the street and tied one of his ankles to the back bumper. They got into the truck and drove real slow over the broken glass. After the first pass, you couldn’t hear Mayse’s crying anymore. Two of the tires blew out, poked open by glass, but they kept going. Then they turned the truck around and passed over the glass again. Mayse’s body now was completely red, and you could see red paths over the glass pile. Another tire went, but they kept driving.
Third pass the last tire went flat and they were now driving on tire rims. The weight of the truck on the rims made a creaking, whining wail. People heard the sounds of the tire rims that night said they’d never forget it.
They continued for over an hour. Finally, Lester got out, walked up to Mayse in his bloody bare feet, and shoved more broken glass into his face, but he was surely dead by this time and couldn’t feel it. Likely died during the first or second run over the glass, no skin left on him, all scraped off. Lester pulled out a fishing knife and cut the rope holding Mayse’s ankle. Then he jumped into the driver’s seat and they took off.
Sheriff waited several minutes after the truck was long gone before he come out, barely glancing at the body. He yelled at Tuttle to sweep up the glass and get some tarps they could put the body onto to drag it to his office. Tuttle did a satisfactory job. After a while, all you could see were the red paths.
THE EARS HAVE IT
Schooner Speer’s very large ears accounted in large part for his rueful childhood. His father’s thoughtless nickname, given in the nursery upon first sight of the protuberant accessories, stuck. No such marker was needed if your eyes worked. The great things seemed to move with the wind, guiding the head in its directionality, rather than the other way around.
But Schooner’s auditory gigantism did not begin and end externally. Unbeknownst to himself, his negligent father, or his too acquiescent mom, Schooner was double-cochlear. Inside his skull an extra pair of ear bones were laid down during a mischievous ontogenesis, an entire doubling of the auditory apparatus, unheard of, so to speak, in modern, or any other vintage of medicine. The architectural circuitry amplified sound perhaps tenfold. The Schooner could hear the proverbial pin drop next door! While this may have been of some value if his future vocation leaned towards the private investigatory or spy trades, this acuity only enhanced his boyhood misery. He heard not only the uncouth barbs perpetually hurled by the churlish, but also the more subtle whispers, words hushed into cupped hands as polite discourtesies, directed at his outsize whoppers.
As a child, of course, he didn’t understand that he was unique in his ocular physiology, save for his wind-ridden sailing sheets. But following several queries made to his parents of “Did you hear that?” all met with irritable negations, he came to realize that the world funneled many sounds only to him. Ironically, this did not prevent but rather enforced the walling off of him from it.
After enduring several years of his wife’s beseeching, the father relented and Schooner underwent the subtractive plastic surgery that consigned him into the ranks of the outwardly normal. Now he possessed only the inner singularity and this remained secret. He heard it all, he processed it all, but did not let on that he did, and his journey towards an ever more interior existence continued unabated.
Schooner followed his natural instincts to the concert hall. His father’s mysteriously violent, untimely death caused the family fortune to pass on to him. With it he purchased Gotterdamerung Hall, a musical theater whose heyday was centuries earlier. Now the only sounds echoing were the noises of bats, of timbers groaning when winds ripped through disabled ceilings and ruined walls. Music to the Schoonster’s ears. He would rebuild it as a monument to acoustics, where a pianissimo would have the power of a kettle drum, the squeaking of a string blasting like a cannonade.
He enjoined sound engineers from around the world, entrenched masters and younger guns brimming with new ideas who employed instruments honed at NASA and CERN. All this to waft music in its purity, to loosen and separate individual waves of sound and then let them nudge each other, at first a slight jostle, an unbidden encounter, and then a gradual melding, an interweaving, until the tapestry was tight and all permutations of coincident tones could fade and rejoin to enrapture a listener’s ears.
And after it was completed, after the gilt was inlaid, the chandeliers put up, the thick dark carpets put down, in a blending of old and new, of wood for class and steel for an assertion of modern structure, all subserving the God of Sound, never overwhelming it, but acting otherwise as a footstool to the royal, after the invitations went out and came back all properly RSVP’d by what passes for crowned heads in lieu of the real thing, the fashion monarchs and the gnomes of Brussels, the transiently famous, whose pictures you see in glossy magazines not knowing whom they be even with captioned identification unless the pursuit of trivia is your life’s work, all ready to don finery and appear en group to spend an evening in each other’s presence, accustomed to opening buildings and participating in galas, not a rented tux in the crowd, after all was ready and about to begin, Schooner said, “Let’s just wait just a goddamned minute here.” Inner Earman had decried a fault while walking around the empty hall during practice, a place near the back of the second balcony where the sound mix was flawed. Engineers had missed this dampened pocket directly above seat number 22. Perhaps they hadn’t checked everywhere. But Schooner did and he said, “Fix it.”
The show was postponed, the bejeweled necks and boutonnières wended their way to other manors with just a hint of annoyance, and were replaced by computers and flowcharts, electronic tuning forks and glittering dials. As a result, two additional baffles were added to the ceiling and one fluted panel was turned slightly to the left. The muted air disappeared, all was lush. The musicians and revelers were recalled. Now it happened. And everyone marveled at the quality of the sound.
Except of course, Schooner. While the great unwashed heard music only, Schooner heard music admixed with rustles, with program pages flipping against each other, clothes crinkling, seat squirmings, a cough, a fart; even the rich pass gas. All this was the aural equivalent of invisibility to the crowd, but not to Schooner. The hall was perfect, the audience was not. This too he would fix.
To avoid scandal, Schooner advertised the next performance as an unusual circumstance, a happening, a cool thing that only really cool people could participate in, broadly hinting that a lack of appreciation would mean permanent exclusion from all future soirées deemed exclusive, thereby ensuring thunderous participation. It was not to be viewed as an indignity, but as an amusing aside, to be undertaken with barely an acknowledgement, good breeding rising above inconvenience. Before entering the hall, the guests were courteously instructed to remove all their clothing which would be returned at performance’s end. People submitted to the rigors of the Enema Room to prevent any gastrointestinal disturbances. They had their nasal and oral passages anesthetized to abrogate the cough, sneeze, and sniffle. The construction workers had ripped out the plush leather seating, replacing it with iron chairs bedecked with leg and head straps. Each participant was led to his or her seat and strapped in, legs, arms and chest, so that they were immobile. Around each neck was fitted a hard leather collar to deter vigorous vocal cord movements. The room was set at a perfect temperature so neither shivering from the cold nor the trickle of sweat from body parts onto the floor could happen.
Schooner paced in specially created shoes, air-enhanced suction-free soles, listening, listening. The audience heard the music but not each other. Each member could have been alone in the great structure save for the performers.
But still Schooner wasn’t satisfied. These arrangements had not eliminated the inherent sound of coursing blood: the harsh contraction of ventricles and the sucking up by the auricles, the turbulent arterial splash against the arteriolar dam, the release into interstitial cavities and the murmured lapping into venules, pooling into veins, and gravitational onslaught back to the heart. To Schooner, these were as waterfalls, churning rivers, and peaceful brooks, babbling asynchronously before, during, and after each beat of sound coming from onstage.
Something further would have to be done. Schooner paid off all the ushers, hatcheck girls, and Enema Room attendants to leave before the performance was over. He didn’t want to do this but could think of no other resolution. With a machete, always a fixture in the ticket drawer of a good theater, he methodically exsanguinated his audience one by one. Mercifully there was no anticipatory suffering because their heads were held fixedly forward by the restraints. No one knew that his or her neighbor had just passed over to join the celestial choir, and soon the deed was done.
Schooner waited for the dripping to cease, his cutting arm mightily tired. Then, just as the blind alpine yodelers were about to disperse after completing their songspiel, he kindly redirected them to begin again. This they were glad to do, yodeling remaining a pursuit ever out of favor. A performance must have an audience, the tone-deaf Schooner happily thought; it’s the social thing to do.
TAMEEKA AND THE SKWAYMUSH METAPLAZHA
Early afternoon, and the twins, Vigyna and Euteris, were beating up bad the Jew bookstore owner for having so few bills in his cash drawer. Tameeka wasn’t needed, each twin outweighing the old man by nearly a hundred pounds. She had espied a shopping cart at the back of the store and was gleefully tumbling books down from the shelves to fill it up, not bothering about titles, making sure she would come away from this fuck-up with something. Trouble was, one of the cart’s back wheels didn’t move. Even after she tossed the top layer of books onto the floor to lighten the load, it still took all three of them to jerkily push the damn thing down the sidewalk the few blocks to her house, the girls cussing non-stop at the unreliable conveyance. People on the street stared at this incongruous sight: these girls with books. The twins urged Tameeka to leave this old shit behind, but it was her bounty. She didn’t care about the few dollars they stole. The twins could keep all that; she could always steal more. But, these things, these books, were special. She would make fine use of them. So, it was worth the struggle. Carry on.