Burn, Beautiful Soul

by William J. Donahue

  Melody’s eyes scan the restaurant, and he wonders if she’s looking for the exit.

  “Let me back up,” he insists. “If I see a she-demon, I simply take her by the back of her neck, bend her over the nearest rock. There isn’t any force involved, no violence. Usually.”

  She dabs the corners of her mouth with a napkin.

  “How’s the crab cake?” he asks.

  “Disgusting.”

  “Send it back.”

  “I’m not talking about the crab cake.”

  She looks anywhere but directly at him. Her tongue glides across the edges of her eggshell-colored teeth.

  “Look,” he pleads, “it’s just the way it is down there.”

  “Aren’t you in charge? Aren’t you the one who makes the rules?”

  He does not answer. Of course he is in charge, but he cannot turn the world upside down, cannot upset the natural order. Other demons—most of them, anyway—have no humanity in them. They respect only one thing: power. Yes, he has committed horrible crimes, but only because he had to, because not committing them would have invited more death, more pain, more chaos. Yes, he would rather live peacefully, quietly, but so few others of his kind share his desire. He would rather wander, free from the fear of taking a blade to the throat, decapitated and dismembered, his limbs hung at every outpost as proof of the king’s demise. But how can he lead a life of peace in such a rotten place? How can he possibly undo a system that has thrived for as long as it has solely because of its abject brutality?

  “You’re the chairman and CEO of Sex Assault Central,” she adds. “You should have that printed on your business cards, you’re so damned proud of the fact.”

  “Catchy,” he says.

  “Consider it my gift to you.”

  Based on the hardness of her stare, she wants nothing more than to gouge out his eyes, maybe castrate him for good measure.

  “I’ve been doing all the talking—to my peril, apparently,” he says. “Tell me about you.”

  She sighs and says, “I’m an open book.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Herbert must have told you everything you need to know.”

  “Herbert’s locked up even tighter than you are.”

  “Aw, poor Herbert. I feel bad for him.”

  “He’ll find his way.” Basil pauses before blurting, “He’s different, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” she whispers. “I’m surprised he told you.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything. I just know he’s not like me. Gay, possibly, or maybe asexual.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me, but it sure does to him. I don’t think he wants to admit whatever he is. He should. He would live more happily.”

  “I think he’s waiting for his father to die.”

  “Do you two know each other just from workplace proximity?”

  “If you want to get technical, I guess he’s a client.”

  “Good thing for client-attorney privilege.”

  “Maybe we should talk about something else.” She waits a beat. “So you’re a copywriter?”

  “I prefer to think of myself as a poet who has been relegated to writing ad copy.”

  “We’re all relegated to doing something we don’t love. Otherwise we’d all be artists or entertainers or animal cuddlers of some sort.”

  “Yes! And the world would be better because of it. Let’s say you’re an artist. What is your medium of choice?”

  “Me? I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. My art, if you want to call it that, is my business. In my little world of helping corporate douchebags negotiate salaries and retirement benefits, I’m Monet, Hopper and Botticelli all wrapped into one.”

  “Bah. You just haven’t found your calling yet.”

  He slathers his filet with Béarnaise butter and consumes the steak in three swift bites.

  “Honestly, I don’t have much of an interest in that kind of stuff, other than the most basic sense,” she says. “Music, I like a good beat. Art, I can appreciate a Cezanne or a Renoir. Sculpture, I’m a sucker for Rodin. But I would rather work than put pen to paper or try to paint another pointless still life, and I’m fine with that.”

  Basil’s lower jaw hangs, his mouth agape. He hears her words, but he can’t fathom a life without the joys she so callously disregards as ephemera, as throwaways.

  “Even in Our Fiery Home we have music, in a sense,” he says. “It’s mostly guttural sounds and bone-on-rock percussion, but art flourishes even in the shadows of the underworld. We sing. We tattoo our flesh. We write, or I do, at least. My words line the walls of my chamber. Without them I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I have.”

  “So let’s hear it, Yeats. Blow me away with one of your heart-rending poems.”

  “I couldn’t. I shouldn’t.”

  “You’re not leaving this table without sharing.”

  He wants to, and he knows he will, but he must show modesty, however false. He contorts his face, pretending to struggle with the idea of sharing his precious words. In truth, he already knows exactly which poem he will have her hear—one of his most recent. He stands and, shielding his crotch with a napkin, breathes deeply.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Reciting a poem, like you asked.”

  “Well, sit down and do it, numbskull,” she says, laughing.

  He complies and clears his throat.

  I will go

  As the daylight goes

  The stars at dawn, the receding tide

  I will go

  As the soft breeze blows

  Impermanent, impertinent, irrelevant

  I will go as Earth’s moon goes

  A chalk-white marble in a puddle of tar

  Sinking, stinking, suffocating

  A speck of dust

  A grain of sand

  A mote of a mite on the corpse of Colossus

  We will go

  As the seasons go

  One by one till only one remains

  Till all things go gray and still

  Till only the architecture of time remembers

  Till that too comes crashing down

  She brings her hands together and mock claps, adding, “I liked it.”

  Her reaction leaves Basil feeling as though his precious words have made no impression. So he retreats somewhere safer.

  “How well do you know Bulcavage?”

  “Well enough to know he’s a prick,” she says. “Honestly, I’ve had only a handful of interactions with him—maybe a dozen in the three years I’ve had an office in that building—but not one of those interactions has been pleasant. My office is right beneath his, so usually it’s me banging on my ceiling—his floor—begging him to stop stamping around up there. It seems like every week he’s having another one of his hissy fits. Such a prick.”

  “He insinuated you two used to be close, so to speak.”

  “He wishes. Isn’t he married to some breed of Siberian beauty queen?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “He doesn’t like me because I’m the enemy. Herbert came to me the day he got the job offer, asking me if it was a good deal. It wasn’t. So I drew up a contract, filled it with all kinds of perks, bonuses, term clauses, and basically forced Bulcavage to sign it. Now Herbert’s practically bulletproof. If he were a spiteful person, Herbert could walk out the door with every client in the Savage bullpen and there’s nothing Bulcavage could do about it.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Willpower. I’ve never trusted Bulcavage, like I don’t trust most men, so when Herbert came to me, I was thrilled to make sure Bulcavage knew exactly what I was doing and why. I wanted him to see me fuck him in the ass right to his face. Let’s just say it’s my little way of giving back. I imagine you negotiated a nice package for yourself.”

  “I just got my first paycheck today, actually.”

  She cringes.

  “Well, then,” she says. “We’
ll just have to see Mister Bulcavage around campus and let him know that’s not acceptable.”

  Basil waves a clawed hand, dismissing the idea. He turns toward the window and notices the setting sun, about halfway through its nightly chore of sinking into the western horizon. The colors still amaze him—reds, purples and blues, giving life to the clouds.

  “As a woman, as a human being, I would never waste my time with an asshole like Bulcavage,” she continues. “Like I said, I don’t have time for anything but my business, so I can’t afford to get emotional. I like it that way.”

  “Tell me about it.” He leans forward, his chin cupped in one of his palms.

  “I always wanted to be a lawyer, even when I was young. All through high school and college, and then law school, my plans didn’t change. Of course things never turn out exactly as you expect. Once I passed the bar, I started with a firm in Lincoln that practiced almost exclusively in family law—divorce after divorce after divorce—so every day I counseled hurt and miserable people fighting over dollars and cents and real estate and custody of the family dog.”

  “How bloody.”

  “Right. It was nothing but bloodlust and pettiness all the time, all to prove a goddamned point, all to punish someone your client used to care about. And nobody was whole afterward, so nobody got whatever it was they thought they wanted at the outset. It was pointless. And I was pointless. I stopped practicing family law a few years ago—five, maybe six at this point. Now I mostly help business owners and executives stay out of trouble and plan for the future. Succession planning, some business transactions—that kind of stuff.”

  “Making the rich richer?”

  “How else can you make an honest buck these days? I used to have an office in Lincoln, but after I got out of the divorce racket, I guess you could say I retreated here, back to where my parents raised me. I retained a fair number of clients from my time in Lincoln, and it’s all either phone work or filling in the blanks on contracts, so I rarely have to see people face to face. I can’t remember the last time I stepped foot in a courtroom.”

  “I think that’s the first thing of substance I’ve learned about you,” he tells her. “It’s nice to see you’re flesh and blood after all. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

  He half-expects her to douse him with her drink and stab him in the forehead with the business end of a shrimp-laden cocktail fork. Instead, she laughs.

  “Fair enough.” She smiles, letting him in a little. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Anything about you—not your business, not your clients, not how much of a prick you think I am or my boss is. Tell me something about you.”

  “I have two cats, Jackson and Jefferson—Jack and Jeff, when they’re not in trouble for something. I have a sister who lives in Rhode Island with her husband and their twenty-seven kids. I like loud, fast cars—red, preferably—expensive shoes—again, red—and polar bears. And I’m a sucker for black-and-white horror films from the Fifties.”

  “Your sister has twenty-seven kids?”

  “Hyperbole. I think she has three now. Maybe four, actually.”

  “You two must be close.”

  She cocks her head and smiles.

  “That wasn’t so hard,” he says.

  “I sort of want to crawl under the table right now.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, you know.”

  “No kidding.”

  He tamps down the beast within, the one that wants to utter the warning: You have no say in the matter.

  “Tell me something about you I don’t know,” she says.

  “I’ve already told you so much.”

  “Actually, you’ve told me almost nothing. I know you have a pet kraken. I know you’d make a shitty Boy Scout.”

  “I don’t like the dark,” he says.

  “What?”

  He dips his head and smiles in return.

  “It’s true. Until I came here, darkness was foreign to me. I can’t stand it, the way it feels on my skin.”

  “But you live underground. As far as I know, the sun doesn’t shine there.”

  “Yes, but the fires always burn. Dark places, dark corners—I veer from them both, because of what lurks there, waiting. Tongues of fire follow me at my command. If the flames were to burn out, my end would soon follow.”

  She says nothing, offering a break in the conversation. He quickly steps in to fill the silence with a thought he had misplaced.

  “It hurts to get hurt, I know,” he says. “I haven’t forgotten the feeling. Down there, in Our Fiery Home, I’m constantly wandering, mumbling to myself, having conversations in my head that I know I will never have. Trust me, I’m a train wreck too.”

  “Not me,” she says. “I’m always in control. I’m not giving anyone any ammunition—no information that someone else can use against me.”

  “Where’s the fun in that? No one likes a robot.”

  “No one fucks with a robot either.”

  “What’s life without the pleasures of another’s company?”

  “You would know. All that rape.”

  As quickly as she let him enter the garden, she expels him.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says.

  “Look, Basil. I’ve had a nice time tonight. Honestly, I have. But you’ve got to know that this—whatever this is here, between us—this is going absolutely nowhere. I can promise you that much. You want someone to talk to? Maybe I can be a friend. Maybe. But other than a cup of coffee, there’s nothing here for you. Nothing.”

  “You have more to offer me than you can imagine. You remind me of someone.”

  He envisions the faceless woman from his dream. A dull pain flowers in his chest.

  “This world is a better place because of you,” he tells her.

  “I’ve been hearing hollow gestures like that all my life. Maybe not exactly like that, but close enough. You hear them from just about every guy who wants something from you and then disappears once he’s gotten it.”

  “I do wish humans were more honest. Their behavior confuses me.”

  “Hunters and prey,” she says. “That’s the difference between your world and mine. Where you come from, you know the hunters. Up here, they’re all chameleons. I wish I’d learned that lesson sooner. I’d be a different person today.”

  Basil nods.

  “Can we get out of here?” she says.

  His eyes turn away from hers—suddenly watery, hinting at some hidden-away grief the conversation has unwrapped—and scour the restaurant for someone who can fetch the check.

  Chapter 21

  The Reptile’s Quest for Love and Meaning

  Melody’s curious perfume lingers. Basil remembers their awkward goodbye in the restaurant parking lot, the electricity of their bodies pressing gently together. He replays her parting words to him—“You’re a sweetheart”—before she stood on her tiptoes, him bending to meet her, her moist lips leaving their cherry-hued imprint on his left cheek.

  He straddles his noisemaker, the Harley, taking the ghost of Melody’s perfume with him. He considers his options for how to spend the rest of his night. It’s barely nine thirty. Chester will likely be expecting him, as they have spent just about every evening together since Basil moved in, discussing the ways of the world and knocking back obscene amounts of alcohol.

  Not tonight, Basil decides. He craves a companion of a different sort.

  He fires up the motorcycle and departs into the night. The bike’s sole headlight illuminates the barren strip of asphalt, his mind consumed with the sights, smells and essence of Melody K. Mulroney, Esquire. Pinpricks of light twinkle on the horizon—hints of civilization amid the nothingness—matched by pinpricks of light twinkling overhead. He briefly considers the possibility of other civilizations out there, above, light-years away.

  He pores over every aspect of their dinner, the way she challenged him, and, more than anything, the way she looked at him, like she hated him but
couldn’t help but like him just a little. Maybe more than a little. She shared so much with just the briefest glimpse of those icy blue eyes.

  “There’s something between us,” he hollers over the rumble of the engine, just to hear the words aloud, “no matter what you say.”

  On the horizon, a blare of neon eats away at the black night. A long, squat building appears out of the darkness. The sign out front—Cheeky’s Midnight Roadhouse—suggests this is the sort of destination his body craves. A shabby road sign advertises “$2 Buds, $1 Hotdogs, free T&A” in black lettering, though a blood-red S stands in for the second dollar sign.

  This particular den of iniquity will have to do.

  As he guides the Harley into the lot, tire treads bite into the wet gravel. He makes a wide berth around a phalanx of pickup trucks, tractors and at least one mud-spattered ATV. Instinct leads him toward the building’s rear, away from the melee. The noisemaker comes to a dead stop at the edge of the lot, where the gravel meets an unkempt patch of grass and, beyond that, a modest stand of woods. The swollen gland between his legs leads him across the parking lot, a hound sniffing out a dying rabbit. He opens the building’s fiberboard door and, with a deep sigh, steps inside. A haze of cigarette smoke greets him, followed by a curtain of acid-strong perfume that instantly spikes his libido.

  The animal within him takes over. His lower lip trembles with unease.

  The low lights reveal silhouettes of men in ball caps, maybe a woman or two, seated around a two-foot-tall stage with five fire poles that stretch from floor to ceiling and a raised, rounded platform at its center. A thick redhead dances atop the platform, her hands cupping her heavy breasts—shiny, cherry-red fingernails against alabaster flesh—as her hips sway to Foreigner’s “Urgent.”

  Skirting a row of chairs beyond the blare of the spotlights, Basil studies the dancer—the slow rotation of her ample hips, the roundness of her over-full breasts, the rubberlike muscle of her thighs—as she leaves the platform and steps onto the greenback-littered stage. He settles into an undisturbed corner where he can let his imagination do its job. His hand grips the pulsing thing between his legs. The dancer drops to her knees and leans forward. Her pendulous breasts sweep the dollar bills into a loose pile.