American Monster Page 14

  His soul.

  – Oh, he said. It’s you.

  Wacko-Jacko’s drained blood smile. Norma tried to back away, but Raye was behind her. Pushed her forward with childish yet tensile fingers at the small of Norma’s back.

  – Don’t worry, Raye said. He says that to everybody.

  – I can’t find them, he said in a soft falsetto. I can hear them but I can’t see them.

  Raye pulled Norma down to whisper in her ear.

  – He hears voices, she said.

  Norma nodded and straightened.You think? she hissed.

  – Daddy, said Raye. Norma saved my life. I thought you should know. I fell but she picked me up—it’s complicated. Thing is she needs to find some guy she has to give something important to. Card player, ex-military, maybe. Came in on the Surfliner before Christmas. Unusual boots. Metal heels, probably Ti from up north. Blond hair, pale eyes. I told her you’d know. Least I could do.

  Mac peered into the monitor and flicked the screens.

  – You did, didn’t you, Daddy? You saw him.

  Raye pushed forward and turned triumphantly to Norma.

  – You saw this guy, sir? Norma said.

  He shrugged, muttered something, furnace-eyed sprite who lived in the approximate and perpetual shadow of another. Norma clawed at her throat. The man was a danger, she was certain, but whether just to himself or also to his daughter, she couldn’t decide. What was certain was that somewhere along the line, between the permanent eyeliner and the jaw reconstruction, he’d created a psychic shield so impenetrable that anything could hide there. Anything. Norma swayed but felt nailed to the floor. Her arms floated out, finding nothing but space. Where the hell was Raye?

  – Make him talk, Daddy. Make Freddy talk.

  Norma wheeled around but couldn’t see where Raye’s voice came from. She turned back to Mac, craned her neck to see what he saw on the monitor. A ghostly image of his daughter waving at them from beside a listing mannequin of Freddy Krueger. They were through an adjoining door, a storeroom or anteroom but when Norma turned to peer through the doorway, all she could see was darkness.

  Mac sighed and pushed some buttons on a console beside the PA system. There was a dread whirring. Norma recoiled, slipping over that soft rubbery thing underfoot and flailing.

  One-two Freddy’s coming for you, said Freddy.

  On the monitor, Raye squealed with delight. Norma heard the sound coming both from the monitor and from the other room and there was a delay between them.

  I’m your boyfriend now, spluttered the dummy.

  – Yah, said Raye. More, Daddy, more!

  The sound echoed, one-two, I’m coming for you.

  Freddy raised a jerky glove with cut-throat blades for fingers. This is God, he said. A plastic blade dropped off and clunked to the floor. Something popped, as if the fall had set off a fire cracker. Raye’s wild laughter reverberated off the walls and from the speakers. Musty pages flapped, gears whirred, battery acid pooled.

  – The hell, Norma said under her breath.

  – Who’s there? said Mac. The alarm in his voice was real this time and at its true register, not that of the actor or the character, just a lonely guy unused to strangers.

  – Tell him, said Raye, abruptly there beside Norma again. What you want. About your ex.

  – Another time, maybe, said Norma.

  – And how you caught me when I fell. I fell, Daddy. I climbed high and fell hard. Like you said I would. See Norma’s jacket, Daddy, see? She’s ex-com. She backed me and I made it. We earned three hundred bucks, and I brought you some more medicine.

  Raye shoved a plastic pill bottle under the glass. Her pallor radioactive in the weird light from the cage, the burned-out LEDs and photo-luminous plastic. Her tawny hair was wild around her head. She’d broken out in a greasy sweat.

  – Easy, said Norma.

  – Tell him, said Raye in shrill tones. She turned to Norma and her eyes were like broken glass.

  – Okay, sir. So this Guy. Kind of Western-looking gentleman.

  – Guy? said Mac. When?

  – Well, said Norma. Hoping you could tell me. Very blond hair. Piercings. Sir.

  The words floated off into the darkness like bubbles around Norma’s head. Her shoulders had begun to throb, the skin straining. Raye was crying. Mac bent down below the counter, clouds of dust billowed up as he rummaged around on a shelf. He sat back up with a swathe of clippings in his hand and passed them under the glass to Norma.

  Spill City collector sitting on a gold mine; Michael Jackson impersonator wows them at the Valley Vista Plaza.

  The clippings were soft with age or grease or sweat or tears. Another read:

  Mr. Mac ‘Daddy’ McCarthy, who more than a decade ago, had the first surgical procedure to remake his face in the image of his deceased idol, Michael Jackson, said that there are more than three million objects crammed into his tiny Arcadia store. ‘I’ve been called upon to round up all the old toys in the world,’ he said of his obsession with playtime arcana. A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, says his fascination grew out of a childhood deprived of love and toys as a ward of the state in Oregon.

  – I can feel him, said Mac.

  – Who? said Norma.

  – Mo Joe, said Mac. Coming in from all directions.

  He leant forward and that’s when she felt it again. The soft give between her boots, somewhere between a crunch and a squish. She bent down and knew as soon as her hand found it what it was. She slowly straightened. The devil puppet.

  – Where’d you get this? she said, holding it by its faded flapping dress.

  – Ten bucks, said Mac. A rare piece.

  – Who brought this in? she said. When?

  But Mac only shrugged, lost again in the tangled paths of his paranoia. He peered into the screen, panned from frame to frame, always searching, always seeing.

  She looked at the puppet with its chewed up horn and chipped red eyes and she put it gently on the shelf around the glass cage.

  – Pass, she said.

  Mac giggled and turned back to the monitor. The room had become unbearably hot. He blotted his forehead with a snowy white cloth he pulled from his belt. From somewhere in the shop there was a furious pop-pop-pop, a cap gun going off.

  – What you hear is not a test, said Mac. Memento mori, mori mento. For evil only good, hip hop the yippie.

  – I’ll be on my way. See you, Raye.

  – Soul is dead said the man in the mirror, Mac’s voice sounded croaky, a strange drawl creeping in. Pass it on.

  Raye yelped.

  – Don’t leave her here, Mac said, returning to the sibilant tones of his idol. It’s not safe.

  – Daddy? said Raye.

  – Don’t come back, said Mac.

  Norma yelled, Safe from what?

  He was still staring fixedly at the mirror, a single tear rolling down the ruined parchment of his face. He said, Me, or him?

  – Who? said Norma through clenched teeth.

  – The guy, lisped Mac. I can hear him but I can’t see him.

  – It’s just the voices, Daddy. screamed Raye. There is no guy! He’s just—I just. God I forgot. That other guy.

  Norma turned to Raye and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  – Don’t, she said. Forget it.

  Mac said, Man is a wolf to man. Pop da pop da pop dibbie dibbie, he said. Pass it on.

  – Fuck you, Daddy, Raye said, and bolted. Norma heard her crashing through the store, the front door opening and slamming shut. Cold air sweeping through.

  Mac looked up, brightening again.

  – Rayette, honey? Is that you?

  – She’s gone, Sir, snapped Norma. You just missed her.

  – Happy Birthday, the melody whispered out of Mac, sibilant and off-key. To Rayeeee. Happy Birthday to you.

  26//: cherry

  Norma found Raye waiting outside the Laundromat down the road from her old man’s little shop of horrors. She wa
s staring in through the window at the spinning machines. Reflected in the glass, the big yellow talk-to-the-hand from the traffic light across the street. Clear mucus ran from Raye’s nose and she wiped it away with a snotty sleeve.

  Norma stood beside her, drawing breath. Her own hulking reflection, wild-haired with sunglasses askew stood beside that of the child in her ratty parka. A defective screen above the row of washing machines played footage of the ongoing rebellion in North India. Graffitied drains from which spilled the dead and dying.

  – What now? said Norma.

  Raye shivered in her parka. I’m so hungry, she said dully. I could eat the cock off a dead Secessionist.

  – Okay.

  Neither of them moved. The rain had eased and the stars were still pale against the lavender sky, but down on the streets, it was already night. Raye’s tremors were getting worse. The whole parka shook, motherless child in its filthy depths. When Norma closed her eyes she saw the devil puppet lying discarded on the floor, and when she opened them she had a plan. There was a diner set up in shipping container on the corner and Norma started walking toward it. Raye followed as if tethered to her. They went in and sat at a booth in a dim corner and Norma ordered cheeseburgers and Cokes while Raye stared out of the window. The pale faces of the supper-time customers scattered like petals in the dark glass. Raye’s shoulders convulsed in a harsh sob.

  – She okay? said the waitress.

  Norma unclenched her fists and lay her hands flat on the table. Exhaled.

  – She’s fine, she said. It’s her birthday.

  – Bless, said the waitress and moved off.

  Raye’s eyes were puffy slits. Her nose was red and raw and she chewed her tear-slick lips. Norma pulled out a wad of napkins from the dispenser and shoved them at her. Raye wiped her face and blew her nose but it didn’t make much difference. Norma reached up and removed the sunglasses the musician had given her, leaned across as he had done and with both hands slid the sunglasses over Raye’s eyes. They sat like goggles on the girl’s small puffy face. She looked half-submerged in the parka, doomed and wingless pupa. Norma had never seen so many tears. They flowed down the contours of the girl’s face and onto the food.

  – That went well, Norma said.

  Raye managed a sulky shrug and went back to her food. Her appetite strangely unaffected. Norma put down her knife and fork. She wiped hamburger grease off her mouth with a napkin, pushed away her uneaten meal. She watched Raye slurp down the Coke, blow her nose on the napkin, dump sugar into her coffee until gradually the tears stopped flowing and the burger was gone and most of the fries too, and there was a smear of grease on one of her lenses.

  – I told you, Raye said between hiccoughs. He’d have the intel on your guy. Daddy knows people. People talk to him, tell him things.

  – Not real people, Norma said. In case you hadn’t noticed. What does he mean, pass it on?

  Raye began to draw pictures on the edge of her plate with a ketchup-dipped fry. Norma watched the lines form shapes, bloody hieroglyphs that made no sense, or none that she could see. She clenched her jaw and her fists too to stop herself from pulling the fry out of the girl’s fingers, was glad that they were in a booth at the back of the coffee shop, mostly hidden from view.

  – How about that raggedy old puppet? Raye said. Like he needs another piece of junk. Someone else’s memory. Someone else’s life.

  Norma’s jacket was zipped up over the bioswitch. The dentata cramped up at the mention of the puppet. There could be only one. Gene had left her a clue. A crumb.

  – Pass it on, she said again very slowly. What the hell does it mean?

  She raised her eyes to meet Norma’s glare, lowered them again.

  – Okay. Okay. You never played Telephone as a kid?

  – I had a deprived childhood.

  – Clearly. It used to be his favorite game. You sit in a circle and someone whispers something, a story or a joke or whatever, to the person next to them and that person whispers it to the next person and so on. By the time it gets to the last person, they have to say it out loud and the end result is totally different.

  – And?

  – And nothing. That’s it. The gag is that what comes out is nothing like what goes in.

  Norma said, I don’t get it.

  Raye looked down and was fry-doodling in the ketchup again. The huge sunglasses swung down so Norma could see the tears still stuck to her eyelashes. Raye abruptly hiccoughed and the glasses fell off and into the fries. She picked them out and slid them back on again crusted with crumbs and grease. Norma shook her head, remembering what the musician said about charity long ago on this terrible day.

  – Maybe you’re not the only one with a deprived childhood, said Raye. Mac too, I doubt they played too many games of Telephone in juvie. Everything he did was like wish fulfillment for a time that didn’t exist. Like that saying you never know what you’ve got till it’s gone? He always knew. The life he never lived. Never would. So he made it up. Played along.

  – Human communication approximating a dance of death, said Norma.

  – A metaphor. I get it. You going to finish that?

  Norma pushed her plate across and watched the girl tuck into her uneaten burger and talk between mouthfuls and leftover sobs.

  – So anyway, he sat us all in a circle and the first person (that was always Daddy because he was the best liar) would make up a story as complicated as hell and whisper it to the next ‘person’—she wiggled her fingers in the air—which was usually just Raggedy Ann or Buzz Lightyear or Barbie or Elvis—

  – How could you make toys—things—listen, said Norma, completely dumbfounded. Much less ‘pass it on’? Now it was her turn to wiggle her fingers in the air.

  – You can make a toy, a thing, do anything you want. Like software except your imagination’s the code.

  – Like that big Freddy thing in your father’s store?

  The door blew open bringing with it the smell of ash and the faraway crash of the surf and they both shivered simultaneously and finally smiled at each other across the table, across the ruins of the day, across hungry Mommies and bad daddies and cruddy sunglasses and random charities—because that was the key.

  – Freddy’s just got an ordinary old voice box, Raye said. That’s someone else’s imagination. Better when it’s your own. But sometimes we played with real people, the retard neighbor or Granddad sometimes too, yeah, when we were back in Portland. I liked the toys better though. They didn’t cheat.

  – Well.

  – So there’s that. And every time you whispered something you had to say, Brrring. Brrring. And that person would have to pass on the story exactly as they heard it.

  – Bring bring?

  Raye sighed in mock despair.

  – Remember when the landlines made a comeback because of the tumor scares? That was the sound they made. Like a ringtone. Brrrrringgg, Brrrringgg.

  Norma pressed fingers against her temples.

  – So you weren’t really telling the truth. You were bringing it. Over and over again until it wasn’t even the truth anymore.

  Raye thought about it.

  – Not the same truth, anyway.

  – How many are there? said Norma.

  But Raye’s eyes were glassy and fixed on Norma. She said, Let’s play.

  – Another time, said Norma. Her eyes flicked to the emptying diner. People silently staring into their reflections in the windows or working their consoles. The hiss of the frier, the chatter of the TV above the counter.

  – I go: when my dog died I ate its heart. And you being fourth in line hear something about a what, a car that doesn’t start and a, a pie, you might just say, um, I wanted to take the car out to get some pie but it wouldn’t start, and the next person hears bar and sump night, they’d say, There’s this guy drinks at my local bar’s got to drain a sump tomorrow night.

  – And I hear rain and fart and jump and ride.

  – And I hear pain an
d heart and sky.

  Norma said, Pass it on.

  Raye whispered, It’s already gone. Look.

  She had drawn some kind of map or constellation in the ketchup. Crumpled napkins lay in balls around the plate like meteors or stars. There were crumbs in the girl’s hair and on the filthy blue collar of her parka.

  – Sorry, Raye said hoarsely and hiccoughed again. I really thought he could help you.

  A few people looked around and over the backs of booths. Raye abruptly grinned through her tears and pointed a bloody fry at Norma.

  – What about Freddy, yeah? You should have seen your face. Like you’d seen a ghost. Wish I had a camera.

  – You can watch the replay.

  – ‘I’m your boyfriend now,’ I think you screamed.

  Norma’s jacket was zipped up over the bioswitch. But her head was fuzzy and she knew Mommy was trying to get in. The bioswitch burned.

  – Why Michael, anyway? What’s the big deal? said Norma. Wasn’t Blanket the real star? I see his holo everywhere.

  Raye laughed raggedly, Not a conversation you want to have with Mac. I mean musically, okay. The guy was a genius. But to lose it in front of the whole world—

  – Lose what? His genius?

  – No. Yes. Everything. Where you end the world begins. That place, that place where it’s just you. Free as a bird. Scary free. Put your hands in the air cuz you just don’t care.

  The time on the holoscreen said two a.m. Delirium creeping into Raye’s speech and her face as white as paper.

  – When’s the last time you saw him? Before today.

  – Michael Jackson or my dad because they’re pretty much the same thing.

  Norma sighed. I get that, she said.

  – I tried at Christmas. But he hides sometimes. Hides from everyone. Where, I don’t know.

  Customers pushed out the door, bringing with them the grind of drones, laughter. Saturday night noises.