American Monster Read online

  Bunny said, The Grimeys, they got this oral history thing going on.

  – Oral my ass, the barman snorted and Norma glared at him.

  Bunny continued, They make up stories to pass the time. Some even go to the trouble of recording them. Writing all that shit down, making up more shit to explain it.

  The bartender dragged his cloth lazily back and forth along the bar.

  – You ever heard the Grimey story about the dog’s heart?

  – Dog’s heart, said Norma.

  – You don’t want to know, said Bunny.

  The bartender moved away to serve a customer.

  Her old man runs some kind of toy museum, said Bunny. Reportedly off his gourd: thinks he’s Michael Jackson or someone. He needs meds so she does what she can for him. Or so I heard, but it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s a lie with the Grimeys. It could be her old man that’s sick. Maybe he’s not her old man. I don’t know. Could be her pimp.

  On a sudden impulse, Norma reached over and dropped the wig on Bunny’s head, adjusted it and drew a curl away from his face. He looked at her, some of the shine back in his blue eyes.

  – What about you? She said. What are you doing here?

  – If by here you mean Spill City, I’m making a living, he said. I’m from Iowa. I trained as a dancer, worked as a masseuse with the Fairfield Ballet. I got a dancer pregnant. We moved out west. I drove a thukker in LA. We got married. We got divorced. She and Jake were shopping one day in the supermarket on Sepulveda, the big Vons. You know it? The earthquake hit. Freeways waved like ribbons in the flames. A semi fell from the sky and hit the Vons. She was in the cereal aisle. She’d given Jake a coupon for shampoo and told him to go get it and meet her at the checkout. They pulled Jake out of a pile of rubble. He’s been in a wheelchair ever since. Fourteen year old kid in diapers.

  His face blurred and swam. It was as if someone had smeared Vaseline across the bar, the tank with its exotic marine life, the dark dancers smeared with the grease of life across Norma’s vision, inner and outer, inseparable now without doing great damage to the truth. She blinked.

  When they pulled him out, said Bunny, picking up the Head and Shoulders coupon and folding it back into his wallet. He was still holding this.

  After he put away his wallet, Bunny reached for her arm and wrote something on it in his eyeliner—an address.

  – Burn after reading, he said. Augustine’s coming to collect. Maybe now, maybe later. But he’s coming. You know that, right?

  The barman rejoined them, There’s some bad shit going around with the freak crowd. Someone’s lacing the gear or something. Roidheads dropping like flies.

  – Good, said Bunny, taking both Norma’s hands in his furry paws, fake fingernails catching the light. I hate those dipshits. But it doesn’t matter if she won fair and square. No wrath like a Roidhead scorned. He’s going to use the girl to get to you. The best thing you can do is to get her out of Spill City. Her and her old man.

  Norma watched a black man in a Superman costume come up behind Bunny.

  – Time, said Superman.

  Bunny sighed and gave Norma a wink. He shook out the wig and by the time he’d stood up off the stool, he was in character. She envied him a little—at least he knew when to be what. He strode away after Superman without looking back. One of his red boots was split above the heel and it made Norma sadder than she thought anything could.

  The androgens’ tank had been wheeled off while they were talking and the curtains opened onto Superman at the front of the stage with his codpiece slightly askew. His eyes were opiate-red and he danced sluggishly to the Superman song. The song cut and Superman walked off to a spattering of boos. Norma got up to go but then the Wonder Woman theme song (remixed) played to thundering applause. The curtain reopened and Bunny fell from the top of the stage onto the floor in perfect splits.

  To applause and wild cheers, Bunny went through his routine, dancing like the sidelined pro he was. His head held high and his arms wide and straight in the turns. The long hair of his wig bounced, his mouth was fixed in a defiant smile.

  Norma left just before the end. She tipped the bartender and made a mental note to buy Bunny some new boots next time she was at the markets.

  Jesus was waiting at the door. Rain lashed and the wind flung her against him. She breathed in his musk, felt his horn hard against her hip. She was no more than the sum of her parts after all. Chosen for her appetites and her stamina, not her willpower. Jesus kissed her and got her around to the side of the building under the eaves. He pressed her down onto a stack of pallets, undoing his buckle and she was wriggling her jeans down and took him into her, her nails digging into his ass, the activator at her throat flashing white heat. He wasn’t the guy, but he would do, Jesus, her thighs around his hips, her hands on his ass pulling him to her, this winking eye of Jesus mooning Mommy through the rain.

  20//: vantage

  Her obsession with another troubles all her dreams. The road is a velvet cleft selvaged by moonlit thistle. At one end is the dentata and at the other looms the bulk of a barn with a ’possum skull nailed above the door. The skull glows creamy in the moonlight. She can taste it. The ringing of boots on the dirt path troubles her because her own boots, trialled by the Bihar Guerrillas in the 2029 uprising, are designed to be soundless. When she turns around the road behind and before her is empty, so she knows that her eyes, like everything else in the dream, deceive her. She feels weightless, nothing but empty night. On her shoulder, she hefts the preacher from the building site. He is absurdly heavy—ego always is. Her vision blurs and slides like a channel being changed—cut to entering the barn where there are imprints of rock n roll boots in the straw. She’d like to have a closer look at the prints but the room is spinning. And around the barn lie many more men like the preacher, the walls spinning like a zoetrope, a merry-go-round of horrors. She slides the preacher’s broken body down off her shoulders and it flops in the dust, limp as a scarecrow, its hat rolling off the bald patch ringed by wild hair, eyes blazing up at the stars visible through a hole in the barn roof. Yes, this is what evil wants to be—a view point and nothing more.

  The preacher is left there with the others. As long as she wears the dentata there will be more. The barn door is unlocked but the sinners couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

  21//: sanctuary

  The address Bunny wrote on her arm was Swami Self-Realization Center Youth Sanctuary, Arcadia Beach, Highway 101. Bunny had even drawn her a little map on her wrist with his eyeliner. The Sanctuary itself wasn’t technically on the grounds of the original Center, but was situated half a block along the road, above a Cash Attack thrift store. The sun had set but the sky was still pink—the tarnished dome and ruined pagoda on the cliff had taken on a pewter cast. Norma had been to Swami’s only once before. Just after her arrival in Spill City from LA, Bunny wanted their fortunes told, but the psychic known as the Doctor had left the building.

  The Center’s marble bath, cliffside pagodas and meditation stand were in ruins. The amphitheater where the Swami had once given his lectures and held his mass ceremonies was now a sump, swimming in run-off and toxins. The grounds, which had once graced magazine covers and travel websites, were a wilderness of cactus and fescue, rampant sea oat and erupted tree roots. A great chunk of the headland had fallen into the Pacific and lay buried beneath the slick.

  Rumor had it that the Swami had gone back to Jersey. Or Hawaii. Some even claimed that he was Er, the illusive Consortium. In his absence, the Self-Realization center struggled to retain its essence of collective enlightenment. The atmosphere of the community that had sprung up in the sect’s absence was festive, almost carnivalesque. Along with the usual tamale stands and tent-sprawls, the settlement seemed to attract more than its share of witches and acrobats and geisha-faced mimics who moved mutely through the crowd. Remnants remained of the famous Halloween parties that were once held there. Scattered holographic r
eproductions of the winning jack-o’-lanterns from their annual contest—a three-headed monster, an elaborate Chumash totem pole and a big orange Elvis. The community had its own cemetery and ran tours. There was a shooting gallery set up in a meditation stand, and you could even buy corn dogs after a fashion—phallic concoctions made out of battered tempeh and dipped in artificial ketchup. There had been something startling about all those people wandering around munching on what looked to Norma like bleeding horns, and she’d not been keen to come back.

  Among the many charitable works undertaken by the Swami in his heyday had been the shelters he set up for the addicted or afflicted young. The Franciscans had taken over the Sanctuary during the Catastrophic period, after the Swami had gone to ground. They shared security detail with the Cartel because of the big Cash Attack store on the ground floor. A Cartel front, it was the leading collateral lender in Spill City. The Cash Attack at the Sanctuary was especially luxe because it did a good trade in vintage surfboards, Les Paul guitars and replica Tech Zens, the official handgun of the Consortium, which had once flooded the black market and then was acquired in bulk by the Cartels.

  The building faced onto Highway 101. By the time Norma finally came in the back way after stopping by Una’s, it was after seven and the store was closed. The Sanctuary itself was in lockdown. Moths ticked on the glowing cage lights. Behind the grille, the curly-haired guard eating his Subway in front of the surveillance monitor seemed particularly concerned with inputting porn from his phone onto his console or vice versa.

  Norma headed up the back stairs and twisted the security camera slightly off-kilter. She was getting good at this. She reached up then and taped a stiff strip of cardboard over the door frame. She pressed the buzzer and went back downstairs, waited behind the guard’s Flyer.

  Someone pushed open the door to the Sanctuary and said, That you, Lester?

  Complaining about Lester who always forgot his damn key, they let it shut behind them. Norma a fleet shadow up the steel steps and slipping through the closing door. She untaped the cardboard and stood on the threshold.

  She listened for him, the other. The Guy from the building site, who she sees in dreams of barns. She felt him near, sometimes near enough to touch, cramping her belly and filling her nose with his sour, sweet musk. She zipped up her jacket and the sensation receded. It wasn’t much of a shield between her and Mommy, but it was all she had. For now. She entered the Sanctuary.

  At the end of a dark hallway was a light over a bulletin board. Pinned to it were sheets of paper on which were typed emergency numbers, meal times, exercise classes. Above the bulletin board was a hovering holo of St. Francis. Norma kept walking, her boots silent along a cobalt blue rug. To her left was an open door to a kitchen where a Crock-Pot cooled on the counter. Norma recoiled and wrinkled her nose at the sour smell emanating from it. She moved out of the kitchen, silent on her preloved guerrilla boots, and went down another hallway. A door opened to a common room with a window overlooking the street. A half dozen filthy kids were sitting around consoles, phones, or the TV. Their hairstyles were elaborate concoctions of spikes and dreadlocks and ’hawks, shaved skulls tattooed, studded and scarified. Their limbs were pallid and their bodies were lumpy. Their clothes: overalls, denim skirts and tights, loose undershirts and grimy t-bars showing above waistbands, bruises visible through gaping straps and sleeves. They exuded a maniacal exhaustion, chronic filth and habitual self-harm. A sepia holo of a friar, like the ones up at San Miguel, flickered on a plinth. A camera whirred. Norma located it up in a corner and took care to stay out of its reach.

  There hung over the room a hush of unease, an outer eye not in sync with an inner that looked into the next moment, to the person one could have been, in a band maybe, or on the softball team, an underground legend in the graffiti arts, yeah, or having just scored. Norma scanned the room for the urchin and finally spotted her sitting in a straight-backed chair. She was playing a game on a console, her arms hugging her knees and thumbing a controller. She didn’t acknowledge Norma, her thumbs a blur, but her pupils dilated and Norma knew she’d been seen. Norma put a finger over her mouth—should she smile? Is that what kids like? The girl ignored her. Her eyes were an unusual blue, very dark and very bright at once with dark lashes that stood out on milky skin. In the game she was playing, a dwarf and a butterfly were engaged in some kind of battle. She froze the projection, unfurled her legs and got up. She left the room through another door that also opened up into the hallway. Norma caught up and followed the girl into a low-ceilinged bunk room.

  There were six bunks in three sets of two. The walls were decorated with curling posters of game stars and a drawing of the Archangel lording it over a stricken Satan. A TV, a console and a music dock were chained to steel brackets bolted to the walls. A row of lockers plastered with stickers. The bunks were strewn with clothing, sleeping bags. A door was ajar against the end wall and through it Norma saw more bunks in a similar arrangement.

  Wordlessly, the urchin led Norma to a bottom bunk against the wall. The ceiling was low enough for Norma to brush with her fingertips, encrusted with spitballs and crude drawings of cocks and balls. The girl’s bunk was spread with a sleeping bag and a had a moth-eaten teddy bear in a corner. She sat down. She clasped her shaking hands between bare knees. Her toes were painted in a metallic blue varnish that almost matched her eyes, in which Norma saw fear but also a question.

  The urchin said, What?

  A week ago, Norma had broken a man’s spine with her bare hands. She stood six and a half foot in her socks, grew tusks at will and carried around her neck a chunk of stellar dust that could bring a grown man to his knees. And here she was so scared of a little girl with dirty hair that she could hardly talk.

  She pulled out the wad of bills.

  – This would be yours.

  The girl looked at the money. Looked back up at Norma.

  – How’s that?

  – You won it. You came back with the knife. So you won the bet.

  The girl took it and counted it.

  – This the book that douche Augustine made on my fall? You didn’t take your cut, she said.

  Norma hadn’t expected that. She should have. No one did or got anything for nothing in Spill City. They were the rules.

  – Well, she said. When I was in the Baked Bean Bombshells, the manager took sixty percent.

  The girl said slowly, The what?

  – It was a fight team I was in up in Bakersfield. The pit was an empty spa pool behind a burnt-out motel with no name. The manager looted the beans out in pallets from the Costco out on Rosedale. We wrestled in our bikinis except we had hunting knives, broken bottles and the like stuffed where the sun don’t shine.

  – I bet you were the odds-on favorite, said Raye.

  Norma nodded. Most nights she was, and that’s how she figured it out, how the punters weren’t betting on her to win as much as they were betting on the other bombshells to lose, hard girls with names like Shayne and Lou-Anne. What the odds were on was the chance to get what the punter came for, to stare it in the face, get a little wet. Taste the Silence and live to talk about it.

  – After that, said Norma. I saw it everywhere. Men with the lights to nowhere and back in their eyes.

  The girl counted forty dollars from the roll and thrust it back at Norma. Baked beans are gross, she said.

  There was something in the girl’s manner, not so much a recklessness as a reasoned defiance so self-sustaining that Norma was afraid she would be told to leave if she didn’t play along. She took her cut.

  – How’d you find me? the girl said.

  – A friend.

  – The drag queen works at the Wang?

  Outside, on the street a Flyer chain clanged against a post. Norma nodded. Raye nodded back. For a moment it was a nodding contest.

  – Figures. He told me you were friends, Raye said. I mean before I knew it was you he just said some big chick with crazy eyes he was hanging with.
Sorry. Bunny, right? He’s okay. He brings me food sometimes from that place at the border he works at. His kid’s a cripple. Don’t tell him I said. Bunny’s working to make the deposit on a liver donor from Coahuila, but it’s a big risk.

  – The operation?

  The girl shook her head. Her tawny bangs swung stiffly back and forth across a wide pale brow.

  – The operation’s a piece of cake compared to the risk of cutting out the Cartels when it comes to spare parts.

  Well, said Norma. They seemed to have run out of things to say. She looked at her boots, thought about Bunny and how he was good with kids and how Gene was good with wolves. Both men sidelined and diminished by their own species.

  – That was some fall you took, she said. Why’d you do it?

  – Same reason you wrestled naked body-mod freaks covered in pork and beans, said the urchin. I was hungry. Besides, like my daddy says, a fool and his money are easily parted.

  Finally, Norma saw a point of entry into the purpose for her visit. Behind which lay the main reason, which hovered on the periphery of her consciousness, off-radar, where Mommy couldn’t access it.

  – Augustine’s no fool, said Norma. A sociopathic bully, okay. But he’s not a fool.

  – A sociopathic bully minus one testicle, said the urchin. What’s your point?

  – Well, said Norma. If I were you—

  – What’s that? said the urchin, pointing.

  Norma looked down at the paper bag by her boots. She’d forgotten about the schnitzel she brought from Una’s. Trying to keep her movements slow and smooth, she took the takeout box she’d got from Little Barry and put it on a crate beside the bunk. Next to it she put a bottle of diet Pepsi she picked up at the 7-Eleven on the corner. The girl’s brow was unfurrowed, her eyes did not waver, finding Norma in their oceanic fathoms and all but drowning her there.

  Norma tried to muster a largesse she felt was expected of her, From Una.