by Alan Russell
When his Diane was young it was a popular name. He remembered at her nursery school there had been two other Dianes. But now the name wasn’t in vogue. It was going the way of Barbara and Betty and Martha, names that had been popular when he was a boy. The fashionable names these days sounded like cosmetic counter offerings. When he drove by elementary schools he heard girls calling out names like Ashley and Taylor and Tiffany and Brianna and Lauren. And, he considered, Caitlin.
Odd, how Helen had chosen that name so long ago. It wouldn’t have been popular back then, would have been quite unusual. Cheever wondered how she had selected that name. An Irish folktale? An ancestral name? Maybe the shrink knew why.
Cheever walked up the path to his house, knew the way well enough so that he didn’t have to use his foot like a tapping cane. A plaintive wail came from the house. It wasn’t like the cat didn’t have a cat door and enough dry food to last her for days, but she still wanted to complain.
The cat demanded to be fed first. Cheever flipped a pop-top for her, then one for himself. As he dropped her can he noticed its label: 9Lives. He took a long gulp of beer, reached for a second can, then made his way to the living room where he lay down on the worn sofa, fitting into its hollow perfectly. Like Cinderella’s slipper, he thought. Too many times lately he had fallen asleep on the sofa and paid the price the next morning with a stiff back. A sign of age. Who said that with age came wisdom? Aches, that’s what came with it.
It didn’t take long for the cat to work her way over to him. Sometimes Cheever still referred to Gumshoe as “he.” The first time Cheever had taken her to the vet, he had explained, “He’s got this rash.”
“She,” said the vet, who had only given the cat one perfunctory glance.
“What?”
“She,” he insisted.
“How do you know?”
“She’s a tricolor. I’ve yet to meet a male calico, although statistically I suppose it’s possible.”
The vet was in his sixties, had no doubt seen his share of calico cats. He picked up Gumshoe, did some looking that Cheever had never attempted, then said definitively, “She.”
She. It still didn’t sound quite right.
Gumshoe jumped up on the sofa. She was one of the original heat-seeking missiles. “You know,” said Cheever, not for the first time, “I’m a dog person.
“Male dog,” he added.
His revelation spurred the cat to nestle a little closer and purr a little louder. “I got a waif instead of a wife, didn’t I?” Cheever said, using his index finger to scratch Gumshoe under the chin. Her redoubled purrs told him he still had the touch.
The murderer had never confessed, but they had reconstructed what had happened. He had killed the dogs first, two pugs, had used a club on them. His original intent had been to just burgle the house. But that had changed. When the mother had arrived home they struggled, and when their altercation ended, the burglar was a murderer. The daughter came home shortly after that and became the last victim. The murderer had tried to cover up what he had done by setting the house afire. Gumshoe had smelled like smoke for weeks.
The team was used to calling animal control to take pets of homicide victims, but the cat slipped through the cracks. Cheever first noticed the cat at the homicide scene the day after the fire. She had kept nosing around the ashes, kept looking for her home that wasn’t there.
His work had brought him to the crime scene a third day, and the cat was still hanging around. She didn’t seem quite so wary as she had before. At first she just watched Cheever while he worked, then she gradually approached, and finally she rubbed up against him. He remembered a tuna fish sandwich he had in the car. That day the cat ate most of it.
Cheever’s intention was to make a call and have the cat picked up, but he knew there wasn’t much of a call for middle-aged neutered (Cheever didn’t see any balls and was already calling the feline “he”) cats. They were considered about as cute and cuddly and desirable as middle-aged cops. He had hoped one of the neighbors would weaken and take in the animal, but by the fourth day that hadn’t happened. Cheever was the one who weakened. He learned the cat was named “Gummy Bear.” Cheever figured he did the animal a favor by renaming her Gumshoe.
He scratched her in that special spot just behind her left ear. So intense was Gumshoe’s pleasure she started kneading him with her paws, her sharp nails moving in and out. Cheever gently removed her from him, placing the cat at his side so she could rend the sofa instead of his chest. Gumshoe’s pleasure was voiceless. Her evocative wordlessness reminded Cheever of another one of Helen’s personalities. By her silence, Pandora had made herself heard.
“Pandora was the first woman,” Cheever told the cat. “Her name translates to the all-gifted, because the gods provided her with everything. Looks and wisdom and curiosity. Especially that. So imagine what happened when they entrusted a special box to her, one they told her never to open. You know something about curiosity, cat?”
She did. Cheever reached for a nearby paper bag and opened it. Gumshoe became alert. It was a favorite game of hers. She hopped down from the sofa to be nearer to the bag.
“Human nature was established early,” Cheever said. He started rattling the end of the bag slightly, using a hanger. He’d learned not to use his own fingers.
“Pandora couldn’t resist the temptation of the box,” he said, “and when she opened it, all the ills of the world emerged. Hate and disease and discord flew out, along with greed, sloth, envy, jealousy, and everything terrible.”
Gumshoe’s body was tensed and poised. With each crinkle of the bag, with each movement, she readied herself for the attack.
Cheever talked softly while poking the bag. “Pandora shut the cursed box, but too late. All the evils were out, and never to be contained again. But there was one voice left in the box that asked to be set free. Pandora was afraid, but relented and released the last prisoner inside, and out emerged hope with a palliative for all the evils that had been released.”
He tapped the bag. “What do you hear, cat? Is that hope calling from inside of here? Or some gremlin?”
Gumshoe charged the bag. Even though Cheever was expecting the attack, he was always surprised at the quickness and ferocity of her lunge. When the cat emerged from the sack, it was slightly the worse for wear. But she came out proudly, having once again vanquished the dragons.
Cheever looked inside the sack. Like Pandora’s box, it was empty. Maybe, just maybe, hope had escaped again.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Into the night with only one rule: boredom is death. She had the controls now. Not the wimp. Not the kid. Not that hopeless romantic. Not any of them. Just her.
Holly had popped out earlier and stopped to shower and change and take care of the mutt, but now it was her time. Jumping into the VW Bug, she turned on the engine and announced to an audience she knew only too well, “This is Captain Eris speaking. We are currently flying not nearly high enough and traveling not nearly fast enough, but all of that will be remedied.”
The vibes were right, she decided, for the Dead Club in Ocean Beach, a place where most of the living didn’t fit in. It was the alternative to alternative clubs, a hangout for nightly gatherings of punkers, grungers, metal heads, ravers, zine-sceners, artists, hip-hoppers, bikers, exhibitionists, and the leather and S&M crowd.
It only took her thirteen minutes to get from downtown to Ocean Beach. San Diego’s freeways weren’t like LA’s, not yet at least. OB still felt like home to her. She had lived there for three years, had reluctantly moved when faced with ever smaller work spaces and ever greater rent. The artists in her didn’t like bonsai art, didn’t like to have their work limited by their living space. Eris couldn’t care less about art; she just liked having room enough to play.
Parking was always tight in OB. She was lucky to find a spot in an alleyway just two blocks away from the club. Even from there, she could hear and feel the beat of the music. Cultural P
erversity was playing, and the walls couldn’t contain their metal sounds. There was a line outside, but not everybody was waiting to get in. Show-and-tell was going on. The cover charge was five dollars, but it was Nipple Piercing Night; anyone flashing pierced nips got in for free. For those who wanted to beat the cover charge, and come away with a mutilated body part to boot, there was a booth set up inside for the piercing. It cost fifty bucks, but participants got to keep the nipple ring and had the pleasure of hundreds of people watching their pain. A few even looked at their tits.
Some in the line shouted to her, calling out different names. Here she was accepted. Here was where people tried to be different. She didn’t have to try, and that made her a club star. There were those who attempted to copy her, who regularly changed their names, looks, and behavior just like she did, but they were a zircon set that couldn’t quite cut it, glass or otherwise.
She walked by the bouncers. They didn’t call out for her to get in line or to pay the cover. Even they were in her thrall, trying to catch her eye, to have her recognize their steroided existence, but she was above them, above everyone. There was that saying, “To err is human, but to forgive is divine.” She liked the abbreviation: To Eris Divine.
It was still too early for things to be really happening, so Eris high-stepped over to the bar. She had the kind of walk, the kind of juice that opened up a space for her at the bar. A bartender with a dark goatee and long ponytail made his fastest approach of the night, ignoring all the others trying to call out their drink orders.
“Haven’t seen you lately,” he said.
Eris ignored his pleasantry. “I need some rocket juice,” she said. “You got a special drink?”
The Dead Club wasn’t the type of place where barkeeps labored over specialty drinks. “I make a margarita that’s got a kick to it like a nuclear bomb,” he said.
“I could use some meltdown,” she said.
He free-poured a six count of Cuervo Gold, added Cointreau, Triple Sec, some Grand Marnier, and a dash of Midori, then hand-squeezed some lime juice and shook the concoction.
“Salt or no salt?”
“Who can turn down spice?” she asked.
The bartender grabbed a glass, flipped it in the air, kissed its lip along the salt, filled it with ice, and with a strainer poured out the drink. He dropped a napkin from shoulder level, waited for it to find the counter, then placed the margarita atop it.
After watching her take a long gulp of the drink, he asked, “What do you think?”
In answer, Eris tilted the glass back a second time and finished what was there. “I think,” she said, “it’s a good start.”
“Another?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
He cleared her glass, quickly prepared her refill, then served it up with a flourish. Raising it up, she took a healthy gulp and said, “La chaim.”
“You Jewish?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Early Greek Orthodox.”
Several men drifted over, as they always did, and her drinks were paid for, as they always were. Voices got louder, the men wanting her attention. They acted like a troop of chimps, vying with each other to get her look, her smile, her nod, any token of her approval. She accepted their worship. Each of them thought they were clever asking for her telephone number when the others weren’t noticing. She gave all three the number of an SOB who owed her for some art. She hoped they would call him in the middle of the night drunk and horny, and then call again thinking they had misdialed. “I want Eris,” they would say, and he would hear their longing. He’d wonder who was haunting them and do some vicarious longing of his own. The bastard better pay up, she thought, or I’ll give out his address next. I’ll have them howling on his steps.
One of her rules was never to announce when she was leaving, but to just disappear. This time the music called to her, and took her, as music should. She walked away from the bar, only pausing once on her way to the dance floor. “You,” she said, tapping on a shoulder. She continued to the dance floor, knowing he would follow. Eris took her rightful place at the center of the floor, the way opening for her. Her chosen consort had to fight and struggle to get through.
It wasn’t only the music that moved her. The strobe lights offered a pace, a rhythm. She followed the sunbursts, imagined herself a plant unrooted, stretching for the light, reaching greedily, not worried about gravity or sunburn. The pulses came faster, in short machine-gun bursts, washing her in paparazzi flashes. For a time there was only the music and the lights, and when she awakened it was to her partner asking if she wanted a drink. He was perspiring heavily and panting. How long had they been out there? His hair was dyed black, and he was wearing too much eye makeup, but that was the point.
“Wine, lots of wine,” she said.
The followers of Bacchus always wanted wine. They could, and did, drink bottles of the stuff whenever they were given the chance. Eris never cared what she drank, so long as it gave her a buzz, but the other personalities were more particular. When everything was popping, so were the personalities. Every minute she’d be different. The bartenders never knew whether she wanted wine, beer, vodka, bourbon, the nightly drink special, or apple juice. They drew the line at grape Kool-Aid, Caitlin’s drink of choice. When Caitlin popped out she usually had to settle for a Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers, but it was rare that she emerged during a clubbing, which was good, because the strange characters usually scared her into running off. The kid showed unusually good sense.
Mixing drinks never made her sick. It was as if all the alcohol went into different bodies. If one of her personalities was drinking heavily, then only that personality got drunk. Either Pandora or Eurydice always drove home. They were teetotalers.
Her dance partner brought a liter of wine, and with it out popped the Maenads. She grabbed the container and said, “Wine.” Three gulps later she said, “Fine.” Then another voice announced, “All mine,” and finished the wine. Her dance date looked on with amazement.
The wine charged up the Maenads. She pulled her thirsty partner onto the dance floor, but he wasn’t enough for her women. She stepped into the crowd and reached with her hands for two more men, running her nails up and down their shirts before leading them forward. “Boy toys,” she announced, lining her drones up. Then the music grabbed her, and the Maenads screeched and howled and took over the floor. Everyone crowded to take in her show. Though her boy toys tried, they couldn’t keep up with her, with them. She licked their sweat and cried the sound of the hunt in their ears, corralling them into her madness. She hopped from one to another and they desperately tried to follow her rhythm. Almost, this was enough, the music, the twirling, the frenzy, but there was something pulling at her, something more than her collective parts. The moment wasn’t enough.
The art was calling. Damn it. The Maenads tried to overcome its urge, tried to dance through it, but they knew the hook was too deep. The muse pulled persistently, slowly gaining the advantage in the tug-of-war contest. Maybe that’s why she’d only had her ears pierced thus far (seven in one ear, six in the other). Rings were for yanking.
The switch stopped her in midstep. Pandora backed away from the three men, the three strangers. She ducked under arms and slid between bodies, moving off the dance floor. Behind her she could hear the men yelling. She felt like Cinderella on a pumpkin-time deadline.
She ran to her car, popped the clutch, and then took off. Pandora raced through OB and Point Loma, picked up the Pacific Coast Highway, then sailed into downtown San Diego.
Her loft was supposed to be work space, not a living area, but she wasn’t the only one who violated that rule, even if she was the only one with a dog. Though she parked a block away from the loft, she could still hear Cerberus barking for her. Which was louder, the Bug’s failing muffler or his bark? Another switch, and it was Holly running to her building. She unlocked the doorway and raced up the three flights of stairs. By the time she opened the door, Cerberus wa
s threatening to rip it off the hinges. He greeted her effusively, and his affection was returned, if not quite lick for lick. The rottweiler didn’t have three heads like his namesake, but he understood better than anyone the different people inhabiting her body. Cerberus had his own ways of responding to the personalities; some he avoided, others he was lukewarm to, most he adored. The mythical Cerberus had protected the entryway to Hades. Depending on whether she had cleaned or not, her fourth-story loft could have been mistaken for that underworld.
She grabbed his walking equipment, a leash, a sandbox shovel, and a plastic bag, and before she could even say, “Let’s go for a walk,” Cerberus raced by her in a mad dash for the stairs, his nails clicking loudly on the old wooden floors. He moved up and down the flights, running forward, then back to her, hurrying her along. She felt guilty for not having spent much time with the dog lately, but she had been out of her mind.
Once she had forgotten about him for three days. He hadn’t condemned her, had greeted her return with a tired, if persistent, thumping of his tail, but she had been beside herself. It was bad enough that she couldn’t take care of herself, but she felt it was criminal to fail her animal. But instead of giving him away, she had enlisted others to watch out for him. Her loft neighbor had a key and he was supposed to check on the dog whenever he noticed she wasn’t around. One time she had walked in and found them eating ice cream together. The solution might not have been perfect, but she had refused to run away from the problem. She knew that multiple personalities were wonderful escapists. With Dr. Stern’s help, she was trying to change that behavior, to clean up after herself.
