Dermaphoria (17 page)

“A lot of people seem to think so,” I say.

“Of course you can wait here, sugardrop.” Donna steps aside and, much to my relief, Jack steps in first.

“Jackie doesn’t trust me with you,” Donna says.

“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have come here,” says Jack, taking a seat on the lone chair inside, which leaves the bed to me and Donna.

Donna rolls her eyes. She speaks to me in a stage whisper, “He is so smart. Did you know he’s got a doctorate?”

“Donna, please,” says Jack.

“And sugardrop here,” she juts her massive jaw toward Beanstalk, “he’s read every book in the library. Every one. He started at ‘A’ when he was just a little boy and read all the way to ‘Z.’”

“Donna, we need to get him inside. You can work your charms once he’s out of sight.”

I convince myself I can stand in one place for an hour. I step forward, but Donna blocks my way, standing more than a whole head higher than me.

“Nobody rides for free, sugardrop.” She hasn’t let go of my hand. She leans into me and I’m too scared to recoil.

“I’m not gay.”

“Neither am I, sugardrop.”

Her lips envelop mine, soft and pillowy, tasting of cherry lip gloss or bubble gum residue. Her tongue flits once, grazing my upper lip. Her breath is like cinnamon, her hands are like my father’s. Her kiss is nothing like yours. I still see your flaming hair that they tell me never existed, and I try to remember what you smell like but it’s choked in sweet cherry, cinnamon and bootleg perfume.

“Somebody’s in love,” Donna says. “It’s all over you.”

“The worst kind,” says Jack.

Donna takes me into her room, closes the door and slides two deadbolts shut, then sits me down on the bed beside her. She wears a purple tube top beneath a pink velour sweat jacket, unzipped to flaunt her chemically enhanced cleavage. Above her sweatpants, a wedge of belly shows muscle that could only have come from doing crunches in her sleep, and her pants themselves are loose enough to camouflage whatever the electrical tape couldn’t.

“The worst kind,” she repeats, removing her socks. She begins filing her toenails and says, “Jackie means the kind you can’t fulfill.” She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Am I right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Something like that.”

“Your baby in jail? Or did she run away?” She puts the nail file down and takes a bag of cotton balls from her makeshift nightstand, stuffing them between her toes. “Or,” she says, “she just somebody you made up?”

“Donna,” says Jack. His metronome voice doesn’t change, but there’s a silent shift in the pitch, some dog vowel that I can’t hear but I know is there, and it’s as stern as I’ve ever heard him. “Are we intruding?”

“Not at all, Jackie.”

“Because if we’re inconveniencing you at all, we can be on our way.”

Donna’s shaking a bottle of nail polish but puts it aside for the moment to look me in the eye, once more taking my hand into her oversized palm.

“I’m sorry, sugardrop. I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t get many visitors. At least not the kind who just want to visit. I forget my manners, sometimes.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s no problem.”

I’ve been so distracted by her that I didn’t notice Beanstalk isn’t with us.

“He’s keeping watch,” Jack says, before Donna even lets go of my hand.

“Outside?”

“No, he’s on the sixth floor. As soon as they come knocking for you, he’ll be down. When you don’t answer and they can’t open the door, That’s when they’ll assume the worst. The cage man will scramble for his key and when it doesn’t work, he’ll call for help and all eyes will be on 621. By the time the ambulance, SWAT team, or whoever else has arrived and your door’s been kicked open, you’ll be gone. I’m assuming you’re going to the bus station.”

“I suppose. But they’ll be looking for me there.”

“Not until they realize you’re gone.”

Donna passes the time painting her toenails and regaling us with stories about shoe shopping and jail. When both of her feet are done she says, “Blow on ’em for me sugardrop, just a little. Don’t worry, I’ll
behave.” I cup my palm under her heel, raising her toes slightly, and her foot is the size of a small swim fin. I blow gently, and Donna moans softly. “Shame. All of the good ones are spoken for.” She picks up a hamster pipe from her crate-and-plank vanity setup, taking a long, luxurious hit, and the hissing blue flame from her butane lighter sounds like a faraway tornado tearing up the horizon. I think. I’m not sure if I know what that really sounds like. She offers the pipe to me but I decline, then passes it to Jack.

“So tell me what’s wrong, sugardrop. Who’s after you? What did you do that’s so bad?”

I don’t want to go into it, not here, not with what could very well be my own product being vaporized in front of me, but something tells me I should at least try for some recognition, throw out a line and see if my delusions run deeper than I already know.

“You ever tried Desiree?” I ask. Saying your name out loud makes my heart beat faster and the metal taste of electricity burn my tongue.

“I told you I don’t swing that way,” says Donna.

“That’s not what he means,” says Jack.

I extract one of the blue pills from my jacket pocket, careful not to tip my hand by showing how much I’m holding.

“I mean these,” I say. “Desiree, Cradle, Skin.” I drop the glossy tablet into Donna’s massive palm.

“Oh yes. Yes I have, but I heard they’re real scarce, all of a sudden. You holding any more?”

I look to Jack, who shakes his head, no thank you, but I’m not sure what to say to Donna.

“In exchange for my hospitality,” she says.

I hand her four more, and she wraps them into a tissue, tucking it down her cleavage.

“Why do you ask?”

“What if I told you I invented it?” There’s a pause before Donna starts laughing, a deep, raspy laughter that doesn’t match her sugary, bubble-gum girl voice. She gives me a dismissive wave with her painted and glittery fingernails, and fires up the glass pipe once more.

“Somebody had to,” Jack says. “And that somebody is local, that much we all know.”

“So, you believe me?” I ask.

“Do you?” he asks back. Fair question.

Someone knocks.

“Right on schedule,” says Jack.

Donna wants one last grope, but Jack is feeling expedient and steps between us, pushing me out her door as Beanstalk steps inside. Beanstalk remains behind, presumably spooning and sharing the glass pipe with Donna.

“There you are.” Jack is standing with me at the end of the hallway, in front of the fire exit. If there’s any commotion three floors above, it’s not loud enough to hear. “The bus station is close. Halfway to the theater, make a right. You’d be wise to move quickly.”

“What about the fire alarm? It’ll sound when you open the door.”

“Please,” says Jack, “a little faith.” He pushes open the door to nothing but the sound of the afternoon traffic. “I’m terrible with good-byes,” he says.

“Listen, Jack. Thank you.” I’m not sure what to say. “You’ve done more than—”

Jack closes the door with neither ceremony nor parting sentiment before I’m halfway finished. I stare at the gray metal door, my pillowcase of clothes in hand for a few moments, with no company but the sounds of car horns below and flapping pigeons above. I don’t hear any sirens, helicopters, pounding doors or my name being shouted three floors above but somewhere, this very moment, a dispatcher is relaying
the warden’s frantic call to the authorities, and the authorities are on Hoyle’s payroll. I hurry down the stairs and head for the bus station.

The man at the ticket counter is at least eighty years old. He wears a bolo tie with a blue cowboy shirt, and a strip of feathery, ash-colored hair rings his liver spotted head. He can’t stop trembling.

“Good evening, sir. Where are you headed?”

They don’t know I’m gone. My trial is adjourned and I can still go back tomorrow.

“Littlerock,” I say. “Highway 138, toward Nevada. Anything going that direction?”

“Yes sir,” he says. “Most folks go
through
there, not
to
there. But you’re in luck. We’ve got one bus leaving shortly.”

After I have my ticket, I take my pillowcase to the gift shop inside the bus terminal where I find a cheap, canvas beach bag with “Hollywood” silk screened on the side, and use it to carry my belongings instead. At a liquor store across from the terminal, I pick up bottled water and fruit juice, knowing a long walk in the desert heat is waiting for me. I eat a deli sandwich, chase it with a carton of milk and four painkillers. The fire is returning to my back, so I pick up a quart of whiskey for good measure.

The bus terminal is empty except for me and the ticket vendor. My bus number is nowhere to be seen, and there’s no announcement for my platform number or any other.

“Help you, sir?” He wears a military-pressed, navy blue driver’s uniform and cap, straight out of a vintage safety film.

“I can’t find my platform,” I say.

He asks politely to see my ticket.

“That’s my bus.” He punches my boarding card and makes a note
on the envelope. “Your lucky day. You got the whole coach to yourself. Luggage?”

“No. Just my bag.”

“Down the ramp, outside to your right. We’ll be departing in three minutes.”

It’s still not too late. I can pay for the lock on my room and check back into the Firebird to finish out my trial. There’s a chance, however slim, that I’ll be granted a mistrial, or the judge will throw out more evidence. I’m doing nothing but taunting myself with a half day of freedom.

I make my way down the ramp.

A lone bus waits around the corner. It looks as though it had been built fifty years ago but never used, the kind on display at automotive museums or used on movie sets. The brilliant chrome flares in the setting sunlight and, from the open door, I smell brand new leather from the seats, as though the whole vehicle was dropped out of the sky through a hole in time. I have it all to myself. One last look around, but I see nobody watching me, nor anybody trying too hard to look as though they’re not. The terminal is empty but for one bus, one driver, and one passenger. I sling my bag over my shoulder and approach the platform. Before I step aboard, I catch the destination placard above the front windshield, giant block capitals, white on black. It reads, P
EARBLOSSOM
H
IGHWAY
.

W
HAT
I
THINK
I
REMEMBER HAS CHANGED, BUT WHAT
I
WANT TO REMEMBER
has not. The names, numbers, directions, times and formulas, these details slip from beneath my memory like dots of mercury. The movement of one changes the symphony of them all. I remember impressions. I remember sound, color, smells and most of all, touch. I shook Anslinger’s hand, but not Morrel’s. I shook Jack’s hand but never Beanstalk’s, though they were always together. I never shook White’s hand but his son carried me once, though none of those sensations ever came back to me on my bed at the Firebird. You did, your hands did, every time. I never doubted you were real, and I’ve never had cause to prove as much to myself or anyone else.

I awaken to a barren stretch of highway in the middle of a barren stretch of nowhere. The view from my window could be familiar if there were anything to remember among the shrubs, cacti and power lines. If anyone boarded the bus while I slept, they left before I woke. We stop where no other bus has in decades, on a dirt turnout marked by a pair of half-submerged tires.

“Have a pleasant evening, sir.” The driver tips his cap to me as I depart.

“You do the same.”

The door closes and the bus pulls away empty, as clean as it was when I boarded and shining in the setting sun. My back to the highway,
I’m standing at the white tire markers and though I stole a glance at the building behind me as the bus stopped, I’m afraid to turn around just yet. I run my fingers over one of the tires, cracked with age and warm to the touch, and scoop a handful of dirt that I let trickle through my fingers. I remember stopping here before, my red Galaxie shining in the sunlight.

Across the highway, the remains of a concrete dinosaur stand guard in front of an empty swimming pool and condemned hotel, adjacent to an abandoned gas station. I approach the dinosaur and the rebar is still hot from its day in the desert sun. Running my fingers over its chipped, green skin, I feel happy for the first time since I remembered your face.

This is the first time the world outside my head has matched the world outside. I met White four miles from here. This is where I last saw Otto and this is where last spoke with you.

It’s getting dark and the painkillers are fading. My skin cracks when I move. My lips are splitting at the corners and there’s not enough water in the oceans to fill me up. My back is bleeding. I have an infection and a fever.

Most every room of the motel is locked and boarded up. The few that aren’t stink of mold and stagnant water, their furniture shredded by nesting animals. On the second floor, room 229 has a gap in the plywood where I can reach through and unlock the door. Inside, the room is sparse but prey to nothing worse than dust and neglect. I close the door and prop a chair beneath the knob. Biting into a clean sock, I dump whiskey over my back, then use what little remains in the bottle to chase the last of my painkillers and I pray for sleep.

E
VERY SECOND OF MY LIFE THAT IS WITHOUT WITNESS IS A SECOND THAT
never ticked. Every witness to my life prior to my awakening in jail has either been erased by an eight-second black hole or conjured from the smoking remains of my brain, to be dispersed into nothing. Everything prior to this second is a blank that I’ve filled in with you, and you taught me how to fill in those blanks. I don’t know whether I invented the drug that invented you or if I invented you first and the drug came second. I do know that I fell in love with the moment of falling in love and I wanted to keep that moment alive forever, at the expense of all those moments to follow. If I made you from nothing, then maybe I am God, and because I want More, maybe I’m the Devil.

The phone booth looks exactly as it did in my memory, new glass and polished chrome as though it had been built this morning. There’s a dial tone and, several quarters later, a ring.

“Anslinger.”

“Detective.”

He hears my voice then speaks to the room without covering his receiver and says, “He’s on the line.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“For what?”

“Not treating me like an idiot, like I’m crazy. You’re supposed to play it casual, act pleasantly surprised while you signal your crew to run a trace, send a tapeworm burrowing into my ear.”

“I know you’re crazy, Eric. But I also know you’re most certainly no idiot.”

“But you’re tracing the call anyway.”

“Yes, I am. You feel like saving me the trouble?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re making it worse,” he says. “You skipped out on your trial. The judge made a guilty ruling in absentia.”

“If I said where I’m calling from, Detective, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Muffled voices in the background and a rustle of paper. Anslinger murmurs a thank you to someone on his end.

“I already know,” he says.

Time.

“So, you also know you lied to me.”

“I never lie.”

“You said this phone was out of order.”

“I said the line was dead. You weren’t exactly at your best when you last tried to dial out of there.”

The desert sun burns bright overhead, but the storm clouds are moving in from the distance, a black sheet that will cover Pearblossom Highway come sunset.

“You need to come back, Eric. Or are you going to make me come get you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Blood symphonies play in my ears, thoughts form and I dictate the music of my memory, note for note.

“Toe Tag is real.”

“It’s too late for that, Eric.”

“Come get me and you’ll see for yourself.”

“He’s there?”

“Not yet. He’ll be coming with his father. I owe them something I can’t deliver and they won’t risk keeping me around if I’m empty-handed. You’re probably the last person I’ll ever speak with.”

“That’s how you want it? How about waiting until we get there?”

“They can’t know you’re coming. You need to see them.”

“I believe you, Eric.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Eric.”

“I killed someone,” I say. I feel like I’ve been punched in the neck. The moment I’ve said the words, I don’t care who arrives first, the cops or the chain. Confessional relief floods from my heart and through my eyes, down my hands and all over the receiver. The last puzzle piece falls into place.

I love you, Dee.

“I wasn’t parked here when I started the fire,” I say. “White brought me back for my last week at the lab.”

“What was your car doing there?”

“I lent it,” the punch to my neck again. I press the receiver to my shoulder and breathe, forcing my throat open. “I lent it to someone. She was coming for me.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say her name.”

“Try.”

“I can’t.”

“We searched everything, Eric. There were no traces of anyone else there. Just the dog, Otto.”

“And it was hot enough to melt the sand too. Otto belonged to her.
She had my car and she drove out to get us. I heard her outside and thought I was being raided. I lit the fire myself.”

“You just confessed, Eric. Not that it matters now, but I’m recording this call.”

“I just confessed to a murder.”

“Eric, stay there. We’re coming for you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The black sheet is closer, the desert floor below it almost as dark.

“Detective.”

“I’m still here, Eric.”

“Detective, I’m sorry about what I said. About your daughter.”

“I’d forgotten all about it.”

“One last thing. You’re going to get here and find White and his son. They’re dangerous, so bring as many men as you can. White drove me here. He’s real. She followed with my car. She was real. You’ll believe me when you get here.”

“I will. Now, stay where you are, Eric.”

“I have to get inside. There’s a storm coming. The roads might be flooded, Detective. Tell your men to be careful.”

“I appreciate that, Eric.”

“Time.” I hung up. Old habit.

I dialed information and had the operator connect me with Ford’s. Lou answered. No mistaking his voice.

“Manhattan White.”

“Who is this?”

“That’s not important. I need you to relay a message to Manhattan White.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have Desiree. And his money.”

Silence, but for the music in the background.

“I have your attention now,” I say.

“I’ll pass your message along. Where are you?”

“Tell Manhattan White I’m at the hotel across from the abandoned gas station, down the road from Oz.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell him to hurry.”

If I choose to believe that Skin was my creation, and is thus proof that I drew breath for a lifetime, then I believe I have swallowed all that was left from the Glass Stripper, which might mean I have swallowed all that was left anywhere. Nothing to do now but to wait for the opposing witnesses to my life, Anslinger and Manhattan White, to arrive and stand witness to one another. If I’m still conscious to face the consequences of my actions, then at the very least I will know that my actions were real, that they indeed had consequences, though my lone life will amount to less than a single click of static in the symphony of the big bang. If my actions were real, then so were my memories, and if those were real, the things I’ve done have allowed me to see God and I’m not afraid of following my life down that eight-second black rabbit hole.

The approaching swarm of silent helicopters pushes a wall of wind across the desert, blowing great clouds of sand into the air and I hear each grain colliding with the other, culminating in a storm of static as the memories I’ve conjured forth drag the others with them back to the desert with me. The bleeding shadows from the phone booth and the dinosaur flicker red and blue in the light of the distant lightning. Their shadows jump and I count,
one thousand, two thousand, three thousand
, and onward, but the stormtrooper angels are still some distance away. The red and blue lighting flashes without ceasing, silent but for the coyotes’ siren howl carried on the billowing dirt clouds.

I see your face, twisted in pain like I saw it each time I hurt you, but this time it’s twisted in the last split moment of pain before your flaming hair erupted for real and your dying breath turned your lungs to plastic.

The smell of rain hits the warm asphalt below, the sound of it pounding in sheets on the roof of the motel like a billion locusts descending at once. They crash onto the gravel rooftop and scurry for a vantage point, searching the cracks for signs of me, and this time, they’re not moving on the edge of my vision. They’re swarming in plain sight across the parking lot lit by the incessant red and blue lightning, legions of them, taller than me in their black bug armor and telescopic eyes. Peering through a crack in the plywood, I don’t see Anslinger or White, yet, but I step away from the window because the bugmen will find me soon enough and I’d rather spend these last minutes with you instead of them.

The last time I heard thunder, it was you hammering on the door of Oz, looking for Otto and me. I thought you were God and I overreacted. I’d been alone and awake for days, and my last human contact had been the cold, quiet drive with Manhattan White, who left me marooned at Oz until I finished the job at hand. If I’d walked to the top of the stairs, opened the front door and stepped into the imaginary storm, I would have instead stepped into your arms with Otto and none of this would have happened. We would have driven away in the Galaxie and you’d still be alive.

This time, it’s God, I know because the motel is rumbling like the house did when I was a boy, the windowpanes rattling from the thunder of angels storming the walkways. The red and blue lightning is flashing too rapidly to bother counting, but I try.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand
, and a blast of thunder sends a door on the floor below me crashing to the ground. I know
that sound all too well. I hear my name amid the cacophony of shouting, then a second door and a third blow from their frames and my room shakes with the fury of these angels. The cellar door held them at bay a long time ago, but the doors of this condemned motel couldn’t even to hold back a squatter like me.

Your dry fingers lace with mine, knuckle to knuckle and the waterfall of fire from your hair drapes over my shoulder, spilling down my chest and back as your breath grazes my collarbone and your skin fuses with mine, our beating hearts brushing one another. I hear 223 blown from it’s hinges by an angel’s boot heel and I don’t think it could possibly get any louder, but then the thunder sounds again and 225 explodes, and it is louder. They’re close, so close the fireflies are swarming through the cracks in the walls and the plywood covering the windows, the little red dots flicker in and out of my line of sight but they haven’t seen me yet.

Your breasts are against my back, your lips buried in my neck and your open palms spread across my stomach. You were real, and if I could make you unreal and spare you the pain that I caused you, I would. The angels break down door 227 and I swear they must have kicked it to the back of the room because I hear it hit the bathroom mirror. I’m waiting for the next tall-tale rumble but it’s lost in the white noise of the storm and then in an instant the fist of God comes through my room, glass from the bathroom window explodes and a shimmering firefly dances on the wall in front of me, leaving a red needle tracer in the cloud of dust and debris in the air and then the door, my door, with the sound I’ve been dreading since I woke up so many days ago, flies away and from out of a rushing wall of smoke and rain and noise, burst the black-armored bugmen—angels, call them what you will—dripping wet from the storm clouds they’ve just dropped through, hurling a
swarm of fireflies into my room and this time the swarm converges on me and stays. In my last second, the last of the evidence hits my bloodstream and in the moment before the angels turn off my universe, God’s own clock quicksand slows to an ice whisper quiet and I could sit here beside you and watch the sunlight wither for days on end.