Hell's Half Acre

by Will Christopher Baer

  Anyway, she told me to be cool and I don’t feel cool at all.

  I mutter something incoherent and totter off to look at a display case of men’s watches, as if I might buy a Rolex. And when I look around, she’s gone.

  Freak out. Phineas gonna freak out.

  I don’t function so well in these high-dollar department stores. The problem is comprehension, identity, sensory deprivation. I have muddy vision. Brown beige gray black. Everyone in the store is narrowly focused on some unseen prize. Everyone is looking for salvation. If they find the right pair of shoes or the perfect new raincoat they will be saved for an hour, for a day. I can’t see the big picture and so I walk in circles. I get lost. I’m fearful of the salespeople. They lean against marble columns, mute and faceless, pods recharging and when they lay eyes on me they will detach themselves from their stations and come forward with teeth bared.

  Can I help you can I help you? Are you okay? they say.

  No, I say. I’m only looking. I’m looking for something but I don’t know what.

  I don’t understand the layout of the fucking store. The clothes are arranged without regard to season or function. The prices are hidden from sight and it’s certainly shameful to ask. There are too many shoes by far and the suits just frighten me. I contemplate a new pair of pants but can’t bear to try them on. I’m afraid someone will come to the dressing room door while I’m wriggling out of my old pants, sweating, fumbling with a knot in my shoelaces.

  The polite knock, the hushed voice. Are you quite all right in there, sir?

  It’s brutal. The dressing rooms have become these new world torture chambers. I like to ride the escalators, though. The slow freefall, the mirrors. The escalators go up and down, up and down. I have these childlike fantasies that I am secretly a rubber-limbed superhero who can slide through keyholes and I don’t have to get off the escalator, that I can disappear in the crack between escalator and marble floor and get a brief glimpse of the afterlife below that resembles the dark, stinking hold of a slave ship. I try not to stare at anyone and I successfully disembark before security decides I’m a nutbag.

  Eventually I break down and ask someone where women’s shoes might be.

  seven.

  JUDE SITS IN A BLACK LEATHER CHAIR WITH CHROME ARMRESTS. Legs crossed. She is thin as a spider and she has taken her boots off, her socks. Her naked left foot bouncing. I see a yellow flower in the rain. I lean against a far wall between opposing racks of jackets and watch her. She flashes from psychotic to fragile so fast it’s like watching a strobe light. I don’t know what to do about her, honestly.

  Follow her, play the game.

  Or walk away and pretend I don’t know her. Tell myself I never loved her.

  I stare at her like I want to take her skull off. I put out a fearsome sexual vibe but she doesn’t seem to notice. A salesman with red bowtie and receding hair approaches her, his face faintly flushed. Four shoeboxes in hand. He kneels like a zealot and takes her foot in his hand. Jude’s lips move but I can’t read them. The salesman touches the curve of her foot, the instep. Her eyebrows twitch and from across the room I can see the man’s hands are shaking. I imagine she has said something innocent about male pattern baldness, about men who wear bowties in public and how such men secretly want to be whipped by a woman in leather. She may have said something about his chapped lips or the sorry hygiene of his fingernails. She may have offered to suck his cock. Whatever it was, she touched a bone. Jude loves to touch a bone. The salesman fits her with a pair of green velvet stilettos and Jude stands, she turns a circle and takes a few experimental steps. She’s looking for a mirror and she walks right past me, her right hand brushing against my thigh. I close my eyes and now I hear a man’s voice, a voice full of smoke and money.

  Very nice, he says. You have beautiful feet.

  I open my eyes. Jude is standing before one of those low mirrors, her legs cut off at the knee. Her legs float away from her body and the green shoes seem to sparkle. She does have beautiful feet and a lifetime ago, I spent a lot of time biting and sucking at them. Jude ignores the man who spoke to her but I take a good long look at him. White male, thoroughbred. Expensive education, manicured face and hands. He holds a long black umbrella in his right hand. He has an arrogant mouth and I’m sure his teeth are perfect. Probably in his middle forties and he looks better than me. He wears a charcoal suit, elegantly cut. Dark gray shirt buttoned to the throat and no tie. Fine black hair shining like metal. Bright blue eyes. I saw this guy’s photo on Jude’s bathroom wall just an hour ago. According to Jude’s notes, this is John Ransom Miller.

  Jude ignores him. His lips curve and he blows softly on her hair.

  My stomach makes a funny noise and I chew my lip. I feel strange, jealous. On one hand I am positive that this man is about to die, that Jude is about to turn and just gut him where he stands. But on the other, I don’t think so. Jude is acting not like herself and I can see this guy has some hefty mojo, some bad juice about him, and I wonder briefly does he have some hold over my girl.

  You are very pretty, the man says. Are you a model, perhaps?

  I recoil, unnoticed. I can’t tell if he’s fucking with her, or if he simply cannot see the left side of her face from his vantage point.

  Jude turns, slowly, and shows him her whole face. That’s not funny.

  His expression doesn’t waver. I don’t mean to be funny.

  I’m an actress, she says. Or I used to be.

  Really. The man smiles. I’m sure you were very talented.

  Oh, my. I don’t know about that, she says. But thank you.

  This new Jude is packing a mean bag of tricks and now she whips out an otherworldly mixture of nubile self-consciousness and predatory voodoo. She is suddenly leaning toward the man, her lips slightly parted and I’m irritated to realize I’m getting an erection. The man looks more than a little bothered himself.

  Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?

  I would, says Jude. I really would. But I have a prior entanglement.

  Are you sure? he says.

  Yes, she says. I’m afraid so.

  Oh, well. That’s too bad.

  Jude licks her lips. Too bad, yes.

  The man stares at her and I fancy there’s a trickle of sweat along his jaw. But he’s a tough cookie, I think. He reaches into his breast pocket and produces a business card. On the ring finger of his right hand he wears a heavy fraternity ring with a dark red stone. I hear myself exhale. Jude takes the card from him as if it’s a long-stemmed rose.

  You should call me, the man says. I have a friend or two in Hollywood.

  Lucky you, says Jude.

  Are you a spiritual person? he says.

  No, she says. Not anymore.

  He smiles. I’m a Buddhist, myself.

  Jude nods, considering. You must have a great capacity for suffering, she says.

  You have no idea, he says.

  Tempting, she says. Maybe I will call you, after all.

  Yes, the man says. He stands there, rocking back on his heels as if he needs more oxygen.

  Goodbye, says Jude.

  The man stares at her, mute. Then turns to go. Jude glances down at the card he gave her.

  Wait, she says.

  The man keeps walking, his back to her.

  This is just a phone number, she says. Who shall I ask for?

  He grins at this. My name is John Miller, he says. Then steps onto the escalator and disappears.

  Jude doesn’t look at me, not yet.

  The salesman sits patiently in one of the leather chairs, his head bowed. She touches his sleeve. I love these shoes, she says. Will you box up my boots, please?

  The salesman nods, his face turning pink. Then he scurries away. I walk toward Jude, my head buzzing. The locusts in my head are getting ready to descend, and my brain is a field of wheat. Jude is glowing like she just swallowed a fistful of stardust. She stands with hands on her hips, pelvis thrust out.


  Did you not recognize him? she says.

  I stare into the mirror and see the photos in her bathroom again. I see a sideways flash of dark hair, of blue and black eyes. John Ransom Miller was one of the masked men who’d come to see us in New Orleans. He was the panty sniffer, the one I’d hammered to the floor with the toilet lid. He had lain crumpled on his side the entire time, watching as the others raped her. He barely looked at me, that day.

  Yeah. I recognized him.

  Well? she says.

  This is why you gave me the gun? I say. You want me to kill him.

  Jude shrugs. Perhaps you should rethink your ideas about fate.

  The gun is heavy in my pocket.

  Yeah, I say. Perhaps I should.

  Don’t kill him, she says. Not yet.

  Why?

  Because we need him to get to the quarterback.

  Senator Cody, I say.

  Yeah. She points at the mirror. If not for him, I’m not looking at this face.

  What then? You want me to make friends with this guy?

  If you want to hurt him, she says, bring me his finger. The one with that hideous ring.

  I stare at her.

  Go, she says. You’re going to lose him.

  I take the escalator down to menswear. Jude stands at the top of the escalator, hands on her hips and a crooked little smile on her face. I’m going to hell, of course. I turn around to face the descent and when I look back she’s gone. The escalator nears the bottom and I wait for my feet to touch solid ground. Five seconds, four. Time enough to contemplate my situation. Jude wants me to follow this man, but I am not to kill him. Thank god for that. I had an opportunity to kill Sugar Finch earlier today, and fucked it up like a rock star. I tell myself that if I love her, I will not fail her again.

  Five years have passed since Jude and I were together. The years just slip away. I take off my shoes and pause to examine my toes and two days disappear. I wander into the bathroom to brush my teeth and a week is gone. I pour myself a cup of coffee and a month floats past. The years tumble past you like bits of paper on the street and you may not even feel the breeze at your back but then something catches your eye, a twist of black hair or a dog leaping to catch a tennis ball. The splintered chorus of a stupid pop song. You turn around and another chunk of your life drifts by like unrecognized trash and it was never yours to begin with.

  But look at it this way. Jude and I had a fight once, way back when. The apartment was expanding, warping. The rooms were gelatinous and everything was curved. Our bedroom was taking the shape of an egg. The room was freaking me out and drugs were involved. They usually are. This is a natural law, like the one about gravity. If a body has physical mass, then it will fall to earth. If your hotel room is transforming into a metaphysical bubble, then drugs are probably involved.

  Anyway.

  Jude was completely nonverbal and I was crouched high atop an armoire, stuck there. I was suddenly terrified of heights. And of her, probably. I watched Jude crawl around on the floor with a knife in one hand, a long bright red dildo in the other. Jude was trying to speak. She was grunting, snorting. I was pretty sure she wanted to kill me, she wanted to fuck me to death. Her shoulders were slick with blood and snot and black grime and her brain was so shredded by coke she would not have blinked if I had spontaneously burst into flames. But that’s just another drug story, a psycho love story. The real Jude lay curled up like a cat beside me less than twenty-four hours later asking me what color she should paint her toenails. She wanted to drink cheap white wine and eat chocolate for breakfast. She wanted me to stay in bed all day and watch MTV with her. Jude put her head in my lap and asked me in a destroyed voice if I still liked her. Jude is composed of claws and teeth and unblinking eyes but she is vulnerable, perhaps now more than ever. She is a wolf but like anybody else she’s afraid to grow old, she’s afraid that one day she will walk into a room and no one will look at her.

  I touched her hair and whispered yes, I like you.

  There is an obscure musical instrument called the theremin that produces sound without ever being touched. The player moves his hands in a slow circular motion between twin antennae thin as ghosts, calling forth eerie underwater noises akin to whalespeak. Brian Wilson was particularly fond of the theremin. He used it sparingly on the Pet Sounds album, I believe. Anyway, Jude and I have always managed to extract sound from each other, without ever touching the skin. And I think that’s love, or something like it.

  John Ransom Miller is nowhere to be seen and I hear Jude’s voice in my head.

  Do you believe in fate, she says. Or not?

  I want to go back to that hotel room and I might need to bring her a strange man’s severed finger to gain entry. It sounds like a bad joke but now I’m anxious that I’ve lost him. I have lost the owner of the finger and I hurry through a demilitarized zone of postmodern Italian shoes. Gucci and friends. A green and black spaceman’s boot catches my eye and I pick it up by the laces and let it dangle. Prada. Nine hundred dollars and I laugh out loud, nervous. I don’t want to hunt this man and I don’t want to lose him, either. I want to go back to the obscene hotel room. I want to get good and drunk. I twirl the boot and stare at it until mesmerized. I feel like a monkey confronted by the miracle of a yo-yo. A salesman glares at me and I put the boot down as Miller walks right past me.

  I follow him. What the hell, right.

  John Ransom Miller doesn’t drift and meander the way I do. He knows where he’s going and he obviously expects people to get the hell out of his way. He takes the escalator two steps at a time and bullies his way past a throng of Japanese tourists, then outside. This no-nonsense attitude of his gives me a sense of purpose and I hit the street at a cool ten yards behind him. There’s a nasty wind coming off the bay and I button my coat against it. I light a cigarette and wonder grimly if I will have to ration them, as I have no cash on me. Then I start to worry that Miller will hop into a yellow cab and leave me standing on the sidewalk, a scarecrow equipped with useless skin and teeth.

  Options.

  If he does get into a cab, then I could get into the next cab and tell the driver to follow him. This maneuver probably doesn’t work outside of the movies, but who knows. I might get a driver who has seen a lot of movies and secretly wishes his life was more interesting and I can always show him my gun when the subject of money comes up. But I don’t like this plan. It has been my experience that big-city cabdrivers are not to be fucked with and you never know when you will meet the one who has his backseat boobytrapped with poison gas and spring-loaded spikes and is in fact driving around all day just hoping to encounter someone like me, a stupid asshole with a gun.

  I keep one eye glued to the back of Miller’s head and scan the street with the other. A half block away I see a stout, middle-aged guy buying coffee at an outdoor espresso hut. The guy wears gray pants, a dark blue blazer. Bright red suspenders under the jacket, white shirt. He wears glasses and his hair is long and wispy. The man is distracted and soft. I watch as he pays for the coffee and receives his change.

  He puts his wallet into the left breast pocket of his jacket and proceeds toward me. I take a breath. I have done this more times than I can count, with mixed results. But this guy looks like an easy mark. He takes a drink of his coffee and cringes as if he has burned his tongue. He’s perfect. I look ahead to be sure that Miller is still in sight, then lower my head and stumble directly into the guy with red suspenders and that hot coffee pretty much explodes all over his white shirt and now I see that it’s not actually coffee but some kind of giant mocha with whipped cream, which of course not only burns him but makes a fine mess. The poor bastard yelps and nearly falls over, which is not at all what I want. A good pickpocket is fluid and graceful and easily forgotten. He doesn’t cause a scene.

  Jesus, I say. I am so fucking sorry.

  The guy is sputtering and I catch him by the lapels, as if to help him up. The mocha is dripping down the front of his pants in little chocola
te rivulets and the guy moans in despair. No one pays us any attention and I glance up the street to see that Miller is disappearing around a corner. I apologize loudly and use my right hand to smear the whipped cream around on my guy’s chest and slip my left hand into his breast pocket, palming his wallet.

  My favorite shirt, the guy says. My favorite shirt is ruined.

  It’s not ruined, I say. Take it to your dry cleaner and it’s good as new.

  I can’t, he says. I’m a communist.

  What?

  I don’t believe in dry cleaners. They are servants of the ruling class.

  How about that. I just mugged a communist and I will eat my hat if his wallet is not empty. The last time I looked at a newspaper, the Russian government was running vodka into Canada and selling used office furniture for pennies. This guy has probably got moths in his pockets. I give his collar a brutal tug and he flails weakly at me. He is so mournful that I’m tempted to slap him around but I don’t have time for such indulgences.

  You motherfucker. What kind of communist drinks a mocha with whipped cream?

  The guy moans. I can’t help it, he says. I’m a victim of advertising. I walk past a Starbucks and I become a robot. Their mochas are divine.

  The gods are laughing at me. I can hear them up there.

  You’re a class traitor, I say.

  The communist goes limp in my arms and I drop him like a sack of compost. He immediately curls up on the sidewalk and I imagine he will lie there until the stormtroopers come for him.

  eight.

  I RUN LIKE THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN IS BEHIND ME and come around the corner in time to see Miller walk into a drugstore maybe a block away. I take a breather and fade into the shadowy mouth of an alley to inspect the comrade’s sticky wallet.