Lust Demented (8 page)

“A
BSURD
HOW SOMEBODY CAN TAKE
credit for something as large as finding the new world.” Kiko was staring up at the monument in Columbus Circle as if she was watching a fleet of ships enter the harbor.

“Nobody finds a new world alone.” Pitch black night dissolves into the foggy glow of midtown. Somehow my little girl would have to lead me to her. I didn’t know where to start. The world felt huge and we were just ants on the steps of a marble tomb.

“Don’t take it the wrong way Farrow, but Hawaii’s story sounds like bullshit. I’m not sure any of this even happened.” Fountains percussively pour onto marble. Skaters grind their trucks and slide their tails. Strollers roll and nannies squawk.

“It’s overwhelming.” The fountains paused for a brief silence.

The vase shattered. Roses and shards of glass all over the floor. Missy swung what was left of it at me. The top, uneven and jagged. She hadn’t committed to doing any real harm with the first few swings. Just trying to back me off into the bottomless pit.

“Missy there’s a baby inside you.” I held my ground. Hands up defensively.

“You do this to me.”

“This fucking weather…” Shoes off in the shallow fountain, Kiko read me up and down. Cyanide in my eyes, I wanted to believe it was true. I couldn’t believe anything, but.

“Whether it’s true or not, you don’t have to do anything.”

“Just the fact that it may be true...” Nobody handed me a tissue for my tears. Their faces were all glowing in their electronic tablets. The world around them muted and sonically replaced by pairs upon pairs of ear bud headphones.

“That’s the upgrade. Can I see…” Kiko charmed a tablet into her hands. The scruffy techie was initially reluctant, but too disembodied in possession to fight back. He pulled at it a few times turned off by the physical action, fidgeting impatiently.

“Take it easy! I won’t drop your baby.” And she started reading. By the way the words seized her eyes, I knew it was necromancy. Kiko mouthed the unreal into the absurd and then she just came out with it. “Farrow, you won’t believe this.”

“Lars.” The lucky bastard’s writing was never hard to find. If someone was reading something - anything - my first guess was that Wildman channeled it. The arcane beauty was the fact that Lars fell frenzy to the same mystic voice that we all did.

“It’s good Farrow. It may be his best yet.” Kiko wisely chose to stay in the netherworld.

The techie made a grab for the tablet forcing Kiko to take off through the fountains. I stood at the steps of the monument watching them circle around me.

“It’s not waterproof.” The techie mutated ablaze with anger. Wrath got the better of him. His screams vehemently rose to the peak of the Time Warner Center. Fearing for her life, Kiko tugged her weight up the stone angel’s body, grasping the globe while waving the tablet.

“I’m a fast reader.” Kiko pleaded while climbing the vine of brass reliefs, naming each ship as she fought her way up to Cristoforo’s granite shoes. “Nina…Pinta…Santa Maria.” Kiko hugged the totem pole. Her legs seemed strong enough to straddle an ancient pharaoh for a thousand hours as mother earth got slurped up by metafictional quicksand.

“Kiko is it the same as his other stuff or did Lars finally transce…?” I had to know if it was possible, but she wouldn’t tell me. Her eyes popped from their sockets. Her body language had to mean something, but I couldn’t settle on what. A bit of drool dropped down on the techie’s feathered fedora.

“Kiko. Kiko.” Her ears just didn’t wanna hear me. The best way for the techie to deal with his loss was to blame it on yours truly. Forsaken blue marble burnt through my soul. I started climbing Columbus reaching for Kiko’s flexing pasty thighs. Up and over the grey angel with the matching planet tugging down on her robe. As I was making it to the top, Kiko was already on her way down. We passed each other in silence similar to what we shared in the Rockaway sand with bullets flying over our heads. I didn’t watch Kiko hit the ground, but I could hear that her footsteps weren’t only hers. Every step was as much Percy’s, Gloom’s, Lars’s, or even Missy’s. A lion’s feet sounds the same, whether tearing through Columbus Circle, Queens Boulevard, or Calvary Cemetery.

T
HE
ONLY THING WORSE THAN
being alone: Is to never be alone. Columbus Circle lit up with squad cars, firetrucks, and ambulances. I hung on for life at the top of the sculptor’s solid nationalist erection.

“Get off of me!” A Taino spirit was screaming at Columbus.

“I never liked Percy.” Missy admitted rubbing my back in an attempt to coax some sort of agreement out of me.

“Uh.” I said. It wasn’t uh-huh or uh-no. Nothing more than the slight recognition that I heard what she said: The grunt of a caveman that spent his life painting on walls while society was off on their hunt.

“Asshole what’s your name?” An officer was already on the megaphone.

“People usually call me Farrow.”

“The sociopath? The writer?”

“Yeah?” Nobody clapped. I kept waiting, just in case.

“Everybody move away from the area.” The police got organized, pushing people off to the side, but there was nowhere to go. They just all stood around circling the fountain: Staring up at the crackpot writer, drinking their cocoaccinos, yapping on their plastic phones. Cars honking. Sirens whirling. Lips smacking.

“I’m coming down.” My grip was slipping. The drop was enough to maim me, but probably wouldn’t do me in. Lars had to be paying detailed attention from the other realm. Most likely he wrote this scene sipping on milk from a goddess’s breast while scarfing down tarts filled with ambrosia.

“Sir, don’t move. Stay right where you are.”

“Help me.” Not even the three steel boats could stop the slide. I hit each one with an ascending grunt missing NYPD’s finest trampoline by a couple feet. Concrete I knew better than dirt. Somewhere along the line I learned the right way to take a fall.

“K
EEP
THE ICE ON YOUR
head.” A woman was leaning over me with an ice pack. Her voice was a honey sweet purr that could reveal the most sadistic crimes against humanity as nothing more than nature’s empty-headiness. Her voluptuousness threatened to escape the trappings of her white blouse and formal skirt.

“What happened?”

“You fell off the Columbus monument.” She steadied herself in brown boots with matching big brown eyes kept growing until she swallowed me with her smile.

“From the top?”

“No from the bottom, but you didn’t land right.”

“Everybody died.”

“Nobody died.”

“Not even me?”

“No. Not yet.”

“…hmmm…” My mind was always deserting me. I was always falling. It couldn’t be healthy, but I wasn’t the only one. People were dropping all over. Their markets were crashing. Their parachutes weren’t opening. They were listening to mp3s instead of the cab blowing the red light. They were reading the pill bottles upside down and forgetting how to wake up. They were telling the guy jabbing their spine with the pistol to “Fuck off.” Giving up minutes before the grim reaper realized she couldn’t hold it in any longer and had to piss on everything in sight.

“Are you Michele Giacomo Aurelio Faro?” A smooth diversion. It sounded too official. A funny way for a girl with such heaving boobs to talk. She pronounced the Italian name with a Medellin accent, but it felt nice to have another identity. So close, yet so far from my penname.

“Yeah by birth, but I go by Mikey or Farrow, that’s what most people seem to call me.”

“I’ve been seeking you out. I’m Adelora Rosario, Mr. Wildman’s lawyer and the executor of his estate. Mr. Wildman wanted me to contact you immediately.” Adelora stayed a whispers distance from me. I suspected the good news only lingered to soften me up for the creeping horrors.

“You’re a lawyer?”

“Yes. I’m here as a provision of his will. Lars inherited Featherton publishing from his father and in turn left it to you. He told me that he could forsee his own demise.”

“Ahh… yes… demise.” I gargled, spitting up the East River. Veins overflowed ink. Ears whirled in an empirical pool of psychosis. Heart gushed ocular. The city emptied, snorting the entire stash of sewer steam until it was frozen wasteland falling back into its own echo.

A
DRAPE OF SILENCE DESCENDED
upon us. There was more she wanted to divulge. Adelora stopped traffic leading me across Central Park South into the lobby of a time portal to a classier era.

“Miss Rosario you have a package.” The porter couldn’t help, but be pleased to see her.

“Oh I do Diego?”

Adelora balanced the package between her melons, jabbing at the translucent circle until the elevator light lit up. She seemed to be going through a to-do list in her mind.

“There used to be an elevator guy, but the building’s cutting back lately. Touch economic waters we’re wading through.” Adelora mumbled dressed in a hodge-podge of Dior, D&G, and Yamamoto.

“I wade through them regardless. Once you get used to it.”

“Don’t get too used to it. Already slipped your mind what you inherited?”

“A punji pit of paperwork. I don’t forsee myself sitting in the boardroom anytime soon.”

“With that attitude it’s hard to believe you didn’t experience success much sooner.” Adelora rolled her eyes at me as the elevator opened to an empty hallway. Once again balancing the package in her bosom, she fished a magnetic card key out of her purse, and unlocked the door. The apartment door opened to a breathtaking southern view of Central Park and a minimalist modern décor.

“Now that’s something to wake up to.” I stared in her big brown eyes forgetting the park.

“You should see it at night. This is my favorite direction to look at the park from. It makes you feel like you own the entire city.” Adelora motioned to a painting on the wall. “Lars also left me something priceless that Percy Featherton once owned.” The painting was of a woman dressed only in a white blouse sitting on the floor. You had a better view of the hair on her pussy than her face. She was leaning against a bed that was blocking an unlit fireplace. A rectangle of light was on the floor. She apparently chose not to sit in the light, although a few of her toes seemed to sneak into it.

“It’s called Summer Inferior by Ed Hopper. Something about the woman’s isolation makes me uneasy.”

“Yeah. I usually have that effect on women. As soon as I leave she’ll feel better.”

“But I’ll miss you.” Adelora stretched and crinkled her toes, letting down her hair.

“Lars was one of the few that understood me. It really fucks me up that he’s gone.”

“I feel the same way. Despite his primitive womanizing, crazy artist bullshit, and the fact he was only a tad bit older than me… Lars played a fatherly role in my life. Strange thing is I don’t even have anything from my own father after he passed. My uncle tells me that he was so proud that I was going to be a lawyer until he realized that I was practicing corporate law. Supposedly, he always introduced himself to everyone as a communist. Second thing I heard he did was show off his Patek Phillipe watch. One of the richest communists you’ll ever meet. Your best friend and I had similar feelings about our fathers, except my mother never allowed me to meet mine.”

A buzz at the door. Diego seems stressed. Something’s wrong.

“Excuse me Ms. Rosario. The police are waiting downstairs for your friend.”

“Farrow. Be a good father.” Teflon for the gunfight. Adelora pulled me close, laying a deep kiss on me, before sending me down with Diego.

“
I hate that look on you face like a dog searching for food.”

“It’s all in your imagination.”

“Am I in your imagination? Is our baby growing inside just a dream?”

“The girl in the elevator.”

“The girl in the elevator?”

The elevator had a strong chemical smell. I felt a panic coming on, wondering what would happen if the elevator got stuck between floors and how long it would take before the toxic fumes dropped us on the floor.

“I saw you on the news.”

“Did I look guilty?”

“Yes. To me you look very guilty. What does it feel like to kill someone?”

“I don’t know who you are anymore.” Missy seemed to really believe in the words.

The elevator opened to Sgt. Bethany Powers putting on a last touch of lipstick. Twisting the cap closed, she retrieved a plastic bag clenched between her legs.

“We found Missy.”

“I’ve heard you say that before.”

“Don’t miss your last chance to look her in the eyes and say goodbye.”

“I’m not going this time. Let me have my book back.”

“Which one…” My book dangled in the evidence bag like a squid she just reeled up from a pier.

“The one you stole from my apartment. The one in your hands.” I grabbed my book in the evidence bag allowing Sgt. Bethany Powers to use it as a leash to steer me outside.

“Hop on Farrow. We’re burning daylight.” Detective Anderson posed ten feet above the ground sitting on solid brown muscle. The giant cop waved his pistol, saving every bullet. The police horse neighed raising his snout at me, both nostrils flaring.

H
OOVES
ON COBBLESTONES OR MAYBE
just cracked cement and torn road. Bucking up a cruel storm, Detective Anderson and his trusty steer locked in on the 6th Avenue entrance leading into Central Park. I was just a tick on their back. A tick they didn’t care to tear off until it was goddamn certain the fangs wouldn’t stay in their skin.

“Sometimes I’m convinced that it was you, Farrow.”

“Percy or Gloom?”