Hell's Half Acre

by Will Christopher Baer

  Jude is asleep, however. Or pretending to be.

  I grope through the tangle of sheets and find under my pillow a small tube of Astroglide, a substance originally designed for the slippery purpose of getting astronauts in and out of their spacesuits. To my mind, space travel is an accurate but ultimately gruesome metaphor for fucking. There is no air pressure in space, no gravity. For one breathless moment you are a feather in the void and the brain is on holiday. The dead weight of soul and ego are cast adrift and you are nothing but blood. Then you achieve orgasm. You notice the tiny hole in your spacesuit and now your guts are spilling out of your ears like pudding.

  Curious George, I say. It all goes back to the man in the yellow hat.

  Jude pushes two fingers into my mouth and tells me to shut up. Her fingers taste of salt. I nibble at them and the bed heaves and she is on her feet, breathing like a fighter. The shadow bends, as if to kiss me. Her hands find my throat and I tell myself not to fight and abruptly she kisses me. The taste of her mouth is like chewing on rose petals sweet with mint, with poison and I want to kiss her again but she dodges away and now one of her hands slithers over my ribs and across my belly and down. I try not to think of monkeys and in another minute I’m inside her.

  Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood and so on.

  It’s okay, she says. I’m right here.

  But I can’t see you.

  Violence and whispered apologies. Detachment of self. The eyes wander and drift, as if searching for something never seen, something that hides in the dark under bone.

  What’s wrong with my eyes?

  Hush, she says. Nothing is wrong with your eyes.

  How long? I say.

  How long what? she says.

  How long have we been crashing around in the dark.

  Two days, she says. Maybe three.

  Jude and I have returned effortlessly to form. Immediately after I evicted Jeremy from the room, Jude broke out a large quantity of the excellent pink cocaine. Together, we snorted enough of it to kill a small horse. My face was completely numb. Jude picked up the phone and called John Ransom Miller. She told him that we needed some time to get reacquainted. She also told him I needed time to get into character, which made me laugh like a goddamn crazy person. Then she hung up the phone and turned off the lights, one by one. She told me to take off my clothes.

  The skin between us is destroyed, unrecognized. Dead and dying tissue between us. Visible wounds that move from one to the other and back. There’s a nasty gash down my right shoulder in the shape of California but backwards, gouged by Jude with a corkscrew. The wound is much worse than she intended. Oozing and slow to heal and soon it will be impossible to lift my arm. And perhaps was not Jude at all. Perhaps was inflicted on self. I remember how awkward the cut had been to make, how unlike the cut of a knife. The flesh unyielding, slow to give. And it happened not long ago because an echo of the pain lingers in my arm now even though the skin appears to be smooth and good as new, the wound is gone without trace but this is not possible and I worry for Jude, I worry for the body that moves with me now as if through water. I have mistaken her breathing for my own and it seems that she pushes me along even as I push at her and I have the idea that neither of us can swim and if one us fails to push then both will drown. I am aware too that I should stop thinking, that conscious thought will surely fuck things up between us but I am worried about her shoulder, I want to examine her shoulder for a wound in the shape of California and already I am losing her and now she swims ahead and it appears that if anyone is going to drown it will be me.

  Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood.

  I’m coming, says Jude.

  And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.

  What color? I say.

  Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy.

  Very nice.

  You remembered, she says.

  Jude comes in colors. How could I forget. Trembling blond orgasms that seem to piss her off and rare pink orgasms that never end. Chemical red orgasms that fill her with guilt and perfect orgasms black as fresh earth. Orgasms shadowy and gray that may or may not cause her to weep and orgasms the color of bruised skin, orgasms that fade from purple to yellow and remain visible for days.

  I want to turn on the lights.

  Please, she says. I prefer the dark.

  But the dark is making me insane.

  You’re not insane, she says.

  Thanks, I say. How do you know?

  Because insane people never think they are insane.

  I’m tired, Jude. I’m tired of sitting in the dark.

  You remind me of Pinocchio, she says.

  Before or after he became a real boy? I say.

  Did you hate your father? she says.

  No, I say. I don’t think so.

  Jude blows air through her teeth. Then it was your mother who fucked you up.

  Fuck you. What’s this bullshit about Pinocchio?

  I think it’s obvious, she says. He hated his father.

  That’s nonsense.

  One of her hands slips into my lap, cold. I flinch and she laughs.

  I could eat you, she says. Truly. I could eat your skin from the bone.

  Geppetto wouldn’t hurt a mouse and the boy adored him.

  Whatever, she says. Pinocchio was a freak. He was the little wooden Elephant Man and he would never have existed if the old man hadn’t carved him. Gepetto was like any other punchdrunk god who thinks he’s doing you a favor and then just completely shits on you.

  Then silence.

  Which is it? I say. Pinocchio or the Elephant Man.

  Jude shrugs. Both.

  Well. I can see the Pinocchio bit, I say. The donkey’s head, for instance. And his problem with telling the truth. The Elephant Man, though. He was a sweetheart. Hideous to look at and you wouldn’t want to touch him, but he was probably a nicer guy than me.

  Who do you think of? she says. When you fuck me?

  I close my eyes and try to think of a normal, well-adjusted response. My mind does tend to wander during sex. I suffer strange, inappropriate visions. I often think of Jenny, a neurotic border collie I used to have. Jenny had wings. That dog could catch a Frisbee no matter how high or far I threw it. The trouble with Jenny was that she would never give the Frisbee back unless I threatened her. Jenny would run from me, she would hide in a patch of tall grass and chew and suck at the Frisbee in a way that was manic and eerily sexual. And she could destroy a good Frisbee in five minutes.

  Do you see whores from your past? says Jude. Pale pubescent girls? Waitresses with bad skin or small hairless men?

  What was the third choice? I say.

  Jude bites my ear, hard enough to draw blood. I push her away from me.

  You haven’t come yet, she says. It’s been three days. Three days of sex and not a trickle. I try not to worry about it. I tell myself that you’re a freak. That it’s because of the drugs. That it’s not my problem.

  But you’re a liar, I say.

  Yes, she says. I need to make you come.

  What does my come taste like?

  Aluminum, she says.

  The taste of fear, I say.

  Exactly, she says.

  I grope the walls and flip the lights. The room is a horror and my dick is soft, very soft. It sleeps, meek and fleshy against my thigh and I’m sure that a soft penis is what death looks like. Loose skin and a thousand wrinkles, gray and wasted.

  I offer this comparison and Jude doesn’t smile. I offer to go down on her.

  She squints at me. Your eyes are the same blue. But exactly.

  Don’t look at them, I say.

  We have been in the dark too long. I have acquired the blue eyes of a murdered boy and I want to go outside.

  Irrational or not, the horror of space travel goes back to Curious George and his sinister companion, the man in the yellow hat. That guy was obviously not right and I instinctively hated him
as a boy. I see his face whenever I hear the word pedophile and as it happens, the only Curious George story that stuck in my head is the one in which the man in the yellow hat blackmails poor George into outer space. And there you go. If my mother had reached for a different book, I might have manifested a sexual fear of bicycles or kites.

  Four hours later, give or take.

  I wake up and the bed is empty. Jude is in the bathroom, naked and sitting on the edge of the tub, head cocked like a praying mantis and her hair falling in a mad tangle over her left shoulder. A vanity mirror between her thighs and she’s probing herself with two fingers. She looks too crazy and hostile to be masturbating and I know she hates stupid questions so I decide to pee and say nothing.

  I have an itch, says Jude.

  What kind of itch?

  A maddening itch.

  I glance over my shoulder, sympathetic but obviously trying to pee.

  There was no itch yesterday, she says.

  I’m not awake yet and to my mind yesterday is still happening. I stare at the ceiling and wonder if she’ll freak out if I mention the word imagination. There is water damage on the ceiling, a warped and dripping stain in the shape of Bob Dylan’s head. Imagination is never a popular word in these domestic situations and at four in the morning it might be deadly. The only solution is to back away from the toilet and change the subject.

  Water damage, I say. The ceiling is fucked.

  What? she says.

  It may not be safe in here, I say.

  Her eyes narrow. If you say this is my imagination, or even think it.

  Imagination? I say.

  The feet, she says. I will do something terrible to your feet.

  Do you think I afflicted you with something?

  Maybe, she says. Maybe not.

  I scratch my head, helpless. Do you want me to look at it?

  No, she says.

  Maybe it’s a spider bite.

  Jude stares at me. A spider?

  Maybe.

  What would a spider be doing in there?

  I chew on my lip.

  Careful, she says.

  Oh yes. I want to be careful with this question. I promptly discard the notion that the spider was looking for food. I like the sound of gravitational weirdness but this is perhaps too vague, too unscientific. Jude sighs, staring at the little mirror. I slide close enough to touch her shoulder, to breathe her air.

  Eucalyptus. Dandelions and salt. Opium and rainforest.

  I have no idea what her scent is called, or where it comes from. Jude uses a lot of mysterious oils and lotions and it could be any of them, none of them. It could be her blood, her internal juices coming to the surface. Her smell is always on my skin and always fading. Jude turns the mirror sideways, squinting.

  Fancy, she says.

  What? I say.

  It looks like a tiny deformed heart, she says. From a certain angle.

  I count to five. What time is it, do you think?

  Jude puts the mirror aside. Two o’clock, she says.

  Come back to bed.

  Why? she says.

  We should get some sleep.

  It’s two in the afternoon, she says.

  We could have sex, I say.

  Jude stares at me.

  Or not. What about a drink, then?

  Please. With just a drop of vodka.

  I hold out my hand and she allows me to lead her back to the bed.

  There are two empty bottles of vodka at the vanity sink. A jug of ginger ale, a fifth of Jack that we’ve barely touched. There is a carton of milk, unopened and no doubt very sour. The ice is gone and the sink is foul with gray water and mutilated limes. The refrigerator is stuffed full of drugs and cash. When Jude checked into the room, she apparently removed all of the overpriced cheeses and chocolates and white macadamia nuts and miniature bottles of liquor and Snapple and put them in the hall and told the first maid who came along that we didn’t want that shit and that she would personally hurt anyone who tried to restock the fridge. Jude can be very convincing when she promises to hurt someone and the maids have barely peeked in here since. They leave fresh linens and soap outside the door every morning but I don’t think we have changed the sheets even once.

  The vodka is gone, I say.

  Jack and ginger then, she says.

  The crushed pulp of limes. My eyes water. I consider opening the drawer to my left but don’t. I mix the drinks like a robot. Jude is watching me in the vanity mirror.

  You have a nice body, she says. For a junkie.

  I stare back at her, wary. Thank you.

  It’s not hairy, she says. And it’s almost perfectly symmetrical.

  I regard myself in the mirror and decide that I am malnourished and freakishly pale, considering that I spent the last few years living on the edge of my imaginary desert. I’m no ghost but three days in this room and I have started to fade rapidly, to disappear. Jude is brown as deerskin.

  Fuck it.

  I move out of her line of sight, then open the drawer to my left. There is a brief, contemplative silence. I turn on the cold water tap and hope that Jude will think I am brushing my teeth, that she will not register the sound of an otherwise intelligent man snorting a bump of cheap brown heroin that may or may not be poison. Jude has forbidden me to touch it because yesterday, when she was taking an endless bubble bath I got restless and snorted too much of it. Jude came out of the bathroom with a towel around her head and found me nodding and drooling and grunting like a monkey that can’t decide where he wants to lie down and die and soon I was feverish and hallucinating and spewing a grim yellow substance from my mouth and ass.

  The heroin has turned me into jelly. I carefully give Jude her drink, then float backwards into a chair and spill my own drink all over myself. It feels nice, actually.

  Bananafish, I say. Let’s go fishing for bananafish.

  Jude sips her drink, staring at me. Her eyes are sharp as nails and I can feel them poking through to the back of my head.

  You opened the drawer, she says.

  Oh that’s true.

  She stands on the bed, naked and very tall. I peer up at her from my sunken position, Jack and ginger pooling in my bellybutton. She drains her glass and I watch as her face shrinks through the bottom of it. I’m sure I have a stupid expression on my face but there’s nothing I can do about it and now Jude throws the glass over my head. She throws it sidearm like a shortstop and it curves slowly past my line of sight to crash into the wall.

  I told you to stay out of that drawer for a while.

  Ummm.

  Jude pulls on underpants, staring at me. She takes a big black gun from beneath her pillow, one I had not known was there. Looks to be a Glock 37, a serious fucking weapon. I wonder how many guns she’s got hidden around this room like deadly Easter eggs and now that I think about it, I’ve lost track of that Walther she gave me the other day. I’ve a bad habit of misplacing weapons when I’m high. Jude checks the clip, glances down the sight at me. I’m fairly confident that she won’t shoot me because our relationship has evolved. Now she hops on the bed and bounces up and down, rising like a dead leaf caught in a warm updraft. The room has low gravity.

  You need to get dressed, she says.

  Why?

  Because we have a meeting.

  I don’t understand.

  A meeting, she says. It’s when two or more humans sit down together and talk.

  Oh, I say. That sounds horrible.

  Too bad, she says. It’s been three days and Miller is getting clinical. I told him we would meet him for cocktails at six.

  What does he want?

  What do you think he wants? To discuss the film.

  I shake my head, violently. Fuck that, I say.

  Please, she says. Pull yourself together.

  No, I say. Not gonna do it.

  I want her to stop bouncing and I’m about to say so when she springs across the gap between bed and chair and lands in my lap. Jude is v
ery light on her feet and somehow I don’t start hemorrhaging upon impact. Now she sinks her teeth into my nose and my peripheral vision disappears.

  Get dressed, she says.

  Yes. Why not.

  A walk sounds fine. The legs are functioning like never before. Brilliant glowing hole where my face used to be but that’s no trouble. Personal supernova. I rumble around the room, negotiating with my clothes. Black jeans and black T shirt and brown leather jacket. Feeling colorful, yes. I dress myself without difficulty and I’m confident it’s a pretty rapid process but when I finish lacing my boots, Jude is smoking maybe her ninth cigarette and gazing at me with disgust. I see that she is wearing a much more complicated outfit than mine. Pale silver boots that buckle up to the knees and a black skirt with steel zippers up the sides, a transparent orange shirt and some kind of black nylon vest that looks to be painted on. She has applied immaculate lipstick and she still holds that gun, I notice.

  On your feet, she says.

  She takes my outstretched hand and drags me over to the vanity area. Taps the mirror with a short blunt fingernail. The mirror ripples like water but does not break.

  Look, she says.

  I look in the mirror and I see what she sees. My hair is dirty but not so short and frightening now that I have stopped cutting it myself. I could use a shave, but none of my clothes are inside out. Probably I have looked worse in the past, a lot worse. Jude looks great, though. She looks like she should be with some other guy, someone much younger and cooler and altogether more hygienic than me.

  You’re staring, she says.

  I like to look at you.

  Jude hands me a pink CD jewel case that previously held a mysterious software called Darkstar. Jude has a slick new laptop and lately she likes to disappear online when I become dull or impotent. I was sure she would spend most of her time hitting porn sites but was somehow not surprised to learn that she is in fact a compulsive day trader. Jude has changed since I saw her last. She has become infinitely more competent and dangerous than even before. There are two fat lines of coke chopped onto the pink plastic case. I reach for a red cocktail straw and snort them without hesitation.