American Monster Page 8

  Yet she’d seen him. Felt him. Here in Spill City. And that was enough.

  Her heart still pounding with unreasonable hope, feeling swollen in her parts and desperate for relief, she went back to the trailer park. The twins cringed beneath the pine. Its candelabra branches caught the glare of the tail lights. The boy twin lay with his head in his sister’s lap, licked his lips in his sleep. Norma stuffed a couple of dollars into the coffee can and the girl blindly drew the string toward her, the can scraping on the packed earth. The boy giggled in his sleep.

  – Pray, pray, hissed the girl twin.

  Norma’s boots stomped down the path to the trailer, past an Airstream that seemed to float on a lake of neon. Her arousal flattened substantially, she ate her supper of beans from a can and stared at the roll of money that belonged to the urchin. The Grimey. Whatever. Bunny teased her about getting clucky or creepy, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t the child’s youth alone. It was her innocence that Norma had been compelled to save, and deep down, not in the dentata but in a place deeper even than that, Norma knew that wasn’t in her program. Something had changed. She finished her supper of beans and tortillas at the little table beneath the salt and sand-coated window. She poured the dregs of her coffee into the sink, looked askance at the unmade bed where the indentation left by the small body of the urchin had been overlaid with her own. Norma got up and pulled the sheets off the bed. She went once more out in the fray, pushed through the crowds to the Laundromat. She laundered the sheets and watched them tumble in the drier while she replayed the urchin’s defiant fall at Una’s over and over in her mind. And her own.

  The last time she’d seen Gene there had been a fight. Over this thing inside of her that sought out rot, sought out filth, she knew not why. It was behind the Viper Room—no relation to the thing inside her, Mommy said, hehehe—and there was this bloodless stiff in the trunk of a stripped-down taxi, a girl slit from ass to tit some months ago and all bled-out. An unholy stink. Stiff was wearing one hell of a pair of shoes. Manolos with six inch heels. Norma wrested them from the girl’s bloated, cracked feet and waved them at him, said they were the right size and all. Gene had objected.

  – What? Norma was a purring, raging ball of lust and defiance in the drunken dawn. They’re my size. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent size nine?

  – Take them off, said Gene. He swayed at the mouth of the alleyway in a slice of yellow dawn. They were both still very high.

  – But the jacket, she said. That didn’t belong to me either. What makes that alright, and this not?

  She pulled it off and waved it clumsily at him like a wounded Toreador.

  – No one died in the the jacket, Gene said.

  – What if the guy who wore it killed people, which he probably did? she said, fighting an unexpectedly encroaching sobriety.

  – Not that way, said Gene, yet refusing to look at the thing in the trunk. That is serious bad mojo and you don’t want any part of it.

  – You mean you, said Norma. You don’t want any part of it. Maybe you don’t want any part of me either?

  That’s how she saw him now, the breeze pulling at his shirt. His staunch legs and great shoulders quietly squared. She’d met her match. She flung the jacket at him and pulled off her boots, pulled on the dead girl’s Manolos and teetered in them. Matter yet wobbled off the leather straps but they’d clean up okay. Gene flinched, his face went pale. Her lips curled cruelly. She thought it was the shoes, but he wasn’t looking at her feet, no. He was staring at her hands. Norma looked down and watched the blood ooze from between her fingers, from under her nails, from the creases and pores, not enough to fall, but enough to stain and redden the very dawn it seemed, enough to send Gene backing out of the alleyway.

  – It happens, she’d yelled after him. Under stress.

  The blood on her hands. She wanted to explain it to him but couldn’t. He turned around and he never came back.

  PART II

  MEDIA REZ

  It is said that after the sun killed Kali I8 and everything else in the 236-110 system, I8 became pure sentience. A brain without a world. Throughout the eons and with the aid of configuration probes and cosmic lensing protocol, I8 attained its desire to be a Viewpoint and nothing more. After ascertaining that it was not alone in the Entirety and that the horned visitor of distant memory did or had existed and could therefore be returned to it, Kali I8 could think of nothing else. It scoped the Entirety (beings of a higher order almost impossible to find) and found a world on which there existed horned beings similar to the One Who Fled. Not identical, but similar. Kali I8’s brain was not what it was. Its memory leaked. None of the horned beasts on this faraway planet were as magnificent as the First Being was in Kali I8‘s memory, but it calculated the probability of finding a tempero-parietal match (axon density being a strong indicator of altruism and compassion in the human brain) and the odds were good. To prepare for the mission, I8 studied the blue planet and its dominant life form, which it nicknamed Slash, after the leading symbol across both its genetic and binary codes.

  I8 loved a good nickname.

  (Fascicle 437 Nilea AQn., trans. L.Shay 2656)

  14//: d-cup

  Raye needed money for the old man’s meds. He was getting wiggy again, cocking his head at voices only he could hear. Foul mouths, hidden and haunting, telling him to do bad things like pull someone’s heart right out of their chest. Things like that. Raye knew it wasn’t him talking, but the sickness, a flat black look in his eye that found her somehow and saw her, and a smirk she did not recognize and wanted to slap right off his face, slap the old man back into being, the way he was, the way things used to be. He said the meds made him feel like someone else, and she knew he threw them away when he thought she wasn’t looking, and the pills cost money and were hard to get on any market, even down at the army cordons. Even at the Factory. She all but killed herself the other night at Una’s, trying to win enough for a week’s supply of Thorazine, but wherever those winnings were now, they could stay there. Raye shivered at the thought of those freaks and she would have nothing more to do with them, not Augustine, not that wall-eyed midget Barry, or that crazy bitch talks to her Mommy and could probably use some Thorazine herself.

  Survival sex is what the social worker called it. Above Raye loomed the ruins of the Interstate—on the other side there had been a construction camp near a sprawling barrio, plenty of contractors there hot for a girl-woman hand job, buy her some time while she thought about her next move. She forgot the social worker’s name, and at least he never asked for a hand job or anything else, she’ll give him that, not even when she offered just out of pure, self-destructive force of habit. Raye moved through the barrio, shuttered for the afternoon siesta, a skeletal cat blinked at her from the basket of a Flyer. The barrio supplied day labor for the building project and provided the contractors with amenities like food, bars and sex. Even a chapel if they needed one and Raye gave the dark three-walled shrine erected from a shipping container and smelling like the inside of an unwashed neck, a wide berth. A tamale truck was parked in an alleyway. Raye made for the soft music and light that pulsed from the galley. A bald woman poked her head out.

  – Where you been, baby girl?

  – Hey D-Cup, how’s tricks?

  – I’m on late weekends at PB, the DJ said.

  – I know. I looked for you last week.

  – You okay, girl? You don’t look—

  – I fell, said Raye. Nothing major.

  – Come on down, child, got some chillin’ beats. Independence Day tomorrow. You going to the party?

  The smell of beans and corn wafted from the truck and something else, the pungent bite of the liquid silver D-Cup drank for her cancer.

  – Maybe I will.

  – Maybe you want breakfast first?

  D-Cup dangled smooth brown arms out of the window. Blue veins ridged the back of her hands; her nails were soft and rotten.

  – Maybe later. I�
�m coming back this way. You feeling good?

  D-Cup nodded and winked, clapped a silver-ringed hand over her one remaining breast.

  – D-Cup feels good. Never better, b-girl.

  Raye said, I gotta go. See how the, um, building is coming along. They nearly finished?

  D-Cup pursed her lips and shook her head with a jangle of silver. No, no. Muchacha, building stopped six months ago maybe more. Cartel got cold feet again. Paying construction cock all gone.

  D-Cup wiggled brown fingers empty of cash. Stay a while, baby girl. I give you breakfast.

  Raye peered into the afternoon glare at the raw expanse of the cleared land. In the middle of the scorched earth loomed a cluster of condos, their windows boarded up and stucco bubbled and warped.

  – Whoever won this turf war’s not planting flags, she said.

  – They don’t need to, said D-Cup and passed a hand over her smooth skull. No fly zone, child. Real bad mojo.

  D-Cup had, while talking, wrapped some leftovers in a box, and shoved them at Raye’s chest. She pointed back the way Raye came with a long finger as straight and severe as an arrow, and Raye felt the eyes of the DJ on her the whole time until she was safely through the barrio, and the one time Raye did turn to wave, D-Cup was still there with her arms folded over her chopped-up self, behind her the cluster of the empty condos dark and redolent of ruin.

  Horn: i (n) A word of European (Earth) origin meaning a pointed projection of skin typically on the head of animals, consisting of a covering of keratin and other proteins surrounding a core of living bone. Horns usually have a curved or spiral shape, can be ridged, fluted or in the case of some species a branched extension of the skull. In most species only the males have horns. Accessed Nilea AQt. 437 ii. (n) Slash slang for sexually attractive male. ii. (v). To butt or gore; to thrust oneself into the consciousness of another, iii. to argue or disagree, iv. to sexually penetrate or cuckold.

  (Saurum Nilea, AQn., trans. L.Shay 2656)

  15//: purple rain

  – So many men, so little time, Mommy said.

  Behind the shopping strip was a building site, always a contractor there in need of slick monster cooch. The shopping strip just off of the old Interstate was frozen, like so much else, in a state of arrested remodeling, the shops boarded up and the whole complex ringed in razor wire. The rain fell heavier and Norma, with an itch to scratch, moved toward a neon sign in the shape of a piece of pie. Metal heels rang faintly behind her. She smiled. Pushed open a glass door and stepped dripping into a small L-shaped diner, cracked leatherette booths and a scuffed counter. The waitress wore sneakers and was missing a front tooth. She kept her back to the stove, nervously fussed with the coffee pot as Norma made her way to the counter. She kept peering at the darkening plate glass behind Norma, as if there was someone out there.

  – Boo! Norma said.

  The waitress started and flushed and moved a piece of gum across the shattered window of her smile.

  The diner, in a disused shopping strip off of Interstate 5, was empty except for some soldiers and their girls, who tottered back and forth between the table and the bathroom brushing the tips of their noses with tattooed knuckles. Norma sat at the counter and watched the waitress take the coffee off the stove and turn around with the pot, her eyes flicking to a point behind Norma, outside at the edge of the deserted parking lot puddled with rain and pulped newspapers, a plastic shopping bag lynched to a tree branch.

  – There was a guy—the waitress said, looking out the window.

  Norma obligingly swung around to look into the dim parking lot. Nothing but some reclaimed squad cars and a souped-up hummer.

  – He’s gone now.

  – What was he like? said Norma keeping her voice even.

  – Western-looking? Crazy lizard boots? Some Mexican trash hat pulled over his face so you couldn’t see his eyes.

  Norma blew on her coffee. Waited till her voice felt steady enough to speak.

  – It’s okay, she said. He’ll be back.

  She knew it to be true. She’d felt him nearer than ever since the urchin had fled her trailer leaving her with nothing but a bloodstained pillow and a pile of ill-gotten gains on the fold-out table. Norma didn’t touch the money. She couldn’t. And there was that ringing of metal heels on the road behind her now, not always but sometimes, stopping when she stopped, and that smell, like ghosted matches, in her nostrils, not always but often enough to lead her to places like this.

  The waitress refilled her cup and Norma sipped and inhaled the sweet peppery smell. The waitress made good coffee. Strong but not bitter. Norma ordered eggs and tried to relax.

  – I’m Honey, said the waitress. I seen you here before?

  Norma looked up. In the mirror behind the counter she saw the reflection of her face with its dark hair wild around the coarse features, sharp bones. Something out of true between the left side of her face and the right. Like if Picasso and James Joyce had a love child, Bunny had told her once and she had taken it as a compliment. Honey shifted a little against the counter, stuck her hip out to one side. Her breasts strained against her blouse. She didn’t seem so tense anymore.

  – I forget, said Norma. Maybe.

  She put her coffee down and sniffed that old matchbox smell again, vaguely sulphuric, and with it that want, that tightness between her legs. Honey sniffed too. Was the cook using rancid fat again? Was that it? She looked askance at the soldiers, doing crank in the bathrooms, probably.

  – Smells like more rain, said Honey.

  – Well, said Norma.

  Honey said, Last time it rained like this was in the previous century. Turned the Valley into an inland sea.

  – No kidding.

  Honey smiled her broken smile.

  – Islands out on the estuary sank, no one ever saw them again. I learnt about it at night school. My mom sits with my kids.

  Norma said, I smell mud. Earth. Lots of it. How’s that new construction site going? She bent her head vaguely in the direction of the parking lot. Over the other side of the shopping center?

  The dentata had begun to throb. She felt so horny she could cry, yes but for what, and for whom?

  – Um, said Honey. Must have been a good while since you’ve been out here. The company pulled out about almost a year ago now. The development was meant to attract rich Mexicans and Easterners to the area now the army’s got the secessionists under control but Sacramento reneged on the contract. So they had to ditch it.

  – What’s there now?

  – Just empty lots, I’m thinking. And some condos all boarded up. Models for selling off to investors. Nothing in them but ’possums and snakes. Rain brings out the snakes. And the varmints.

  Honey shivered coyly. Across the sad expanse of scarred and peeling tables and chairs, one of the soldiers’ girls giggled.

  – Well butter my butt, said a soldier. And call me a biscuit. Varmints, y’all.

  Norma put her cup down. She rolled out her shoulders beneath her combat jacket and the arachnor weave stretched and breathed with her breaths. The soldier aimed his finger at her, pulled the trigger. Norma acted shot. Then she went back to her coffee.

  – You get that jacket here? said Honey. It looks kind of military. You military?

  – Not as such, said Norma.

  – I don’t want to know, Honey said.

  – Bingo, said Norma.

  Honey reached across the counter, suggestively pinched the material on Norma’s sleeve. She leaned back and licked her lips.

  – Waterproof all’s that matters, she said.

  – Bulletproof can’t hurt, said Norma in a voice loud enough for the soldiers to hear. She pushed shakily back from the counter. I may as well go check on that development.

  – You don’t want to go there, said Honey. Like I said, nothing but varmints and—

  – And what? Said the soldier.

  Norma looked across at him.

  – Purple Rain, said Honey. She ain’t from aroun
d here, she called across to the soldier. Can’t you tell?

  – A lot of folks here not where they ought to be, said the soldier standing up, his eyes webbed in crimson, a silver trail of mucus running from his nose.

  Norma looked from Honey to the soldier. Look, I know about Purple Rain. Purple, pink. Doesn’t make any difference.

  – Well, it might, said Honey, affronted. This new breed, you don’t want to know. After the company bailed, the development got took over by squatters and rebels and the Cartels, they just sent in the Rain and bam. The waitress smacked her hand against the counter harder than she needed to. Norma flinched. Had the place to themselves after that, real bad mojo.

  – Not so bad, said the soldier. Those kids that went missing was just Mexicans.

  Honey turned back to Norma, You ever wonder why it is that pure evil in a man is a heck of a lot easier to come by than pure good?

  Norma shook her head and smiled. No mystery, she said. Just some failure in the system.

  – It’s not a failure, said the soldier, swaying in his filthy fatigues. It’s God. He made us that way.

  Honey drew her lips across her gappy smile. So there’s that, she said.

  – Amen, said Norma. shaking her head. She put change on the counter and stood up, lifted her nose to the air again, her nostrils a quiver.

  Honey folded her arms beneath her breasts.

  – Happy Independence Day, she said.

  Norma pushed through the diner door and moved in a reckless diagonal across the wet parking lot and toward the construction site. She licked her lips. Behind her she heard the muffled ring of metal heels but when she turned around there was no one there. She felt her stomach go liquid, her knees jellied for a moment, and when she clenched her jaw, her mouth filled with blood. She turned around and kept walking. So many men, so little time, Mommy had warned. Another ridiculous saying, spat out across the cosmos. Unable to digest its subtleties, Mommy vomited out language in great chunks of plasma. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, it cried. Norma so horny she could cry. It was difficult to think of anything else. Deep within her the dentata throbbed. Had it ever been different? Her body never without a passenger, back seat driver that given time, would take the wheel, Mommy warned or promised, depending on which way you looked at it. Norma bowed her head under a sticky rain, pulled up the collar on her jacket. The palm trees flailed at the edge of the road glittering with traffic. She walked quickly past the park, past an amenities building with a hip-high hole hewn in the wall between the third and fourth stall. Norma shivered at the memory. Shadowy forms humped squealing shopping carts toward a rusty barbecue grill.