Stainless

by Todd Grimson

  So Renata knew Keith’s latest thoughts on feedback and its effects on the brain and nervous system, and the latest music-world gossip, and what was going on between the members of the band. Renata talked about what she did during her day, the art and fashion people she met and what she thought of them, what trends were in the air—and Keith was always very interested in all this, and interested to hear about how for instance navy was being used instead of black.

  Black wasn’t going anywhere, but navy looked newer. Keith loved details like that, which he would then let drop to Tania and Shawn. Or Renata might tell him about how Julia Raspberry was in withdrawal, nine months pregnant, and gave birth while sitting on a toilet bowl, Sheila, her lover, using a broken hundred-dollar bottle of Barbaresco to cut the cord.

  Renata was one-fourth Jewish. One time, she had gone to Israel, but she said she didn’t feel Jewish in that way. She had never been in a synagogue. But Hider would have seen her as a Jew. The SS would have put her on one of those trains. She had gone to Smith, flunked out, then gone to Syracuse University for about a year. She affected to despise her younger sister, Sasha, for reasons that were unclear.

  Renata arranged herself on the bed in the hotel room, in Venezuela, nude, a composition for Keith to come back and view. A picture he’d never forget. She had taken several Roxicet, a narcotic pain pill roughly equal to Percodan, and slashed both of her wrists, and then perhaps, not getting anywhere, the veins in her right elbow to much greater effect. She was left-handed. There was blood all over the sheets and on the floor, crimson and wet, attracting a half-dozen flies. The glass doors to the balcony were open, letting in a warm breeze that smelled of empanadas sold on the street.

  Gilberto, whom Renata had known briefly two years before, who still sent her flowers, birthday presents, the occasional letter—Gilberto approached Keith three days after the death, when Keith sat alone in a restaurant, trying to make himself eat.

  That night, Keith was arrested for heroin possession. They planted it in his room. In those days, the only drug he used was alcohol, and not too much of that.

  He wondered, later, if Renata had contacted Gilberto. He wondered how much of all this she had planned, beyond her actual death. She admired greatly such suicides as Sylvia Plath, Yukio Mishima, Ian Curtis, Anne Sexton. She thought people who lived on “as less than themselves” were cowards. Gilberto blamed Keith for drug taking and emotional scars which led to Renata taking her life. In the restaurant, he said, “You killed her. You drove her to it.” Keith couldn’t defend himself, not to a stranger, but he thought this was unfair.

  Guilty or not, he was punished. They broke his fingers, one by one, all ten. Then at least one of them raped him, though it hardly mattered to him by then. A month later, Tony, the band’s manager, was able to get the charges dropped, paying a large fee. Keith was a heroin addict, having taken it for the pain and to blot out all thought. A nice homosexual named Pascual had taken care of him, washing him and shooting him up. Sucking his penis now and then as a reward.

  Renata had killed herself and killed him too, like a pharaoh’s household, annihilated as a sacrifice to the holy dead. She had left him around to know about it, to remember her, to see her naked, a hand coming out of her sex.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Keith comes to meet Consuela at the gate. He is wearing a cinnamon-colored shirt, light tan or natural loose-fitting trousers, and he says, confirming her nervousness, “I’m sorry, but we’ve made other arrangements. The owner was here late last week and over the weekend, and she wants to use the same service that her brother recommends. I’m sorry … I thought it would be better to tell you in person than just call the agency, and also—here.” He hands her an envelope. “Severance pay, since this is so sudden. You don’t have to report it, mm, for your taxes.”

  He almost smiles, but not quite. Consuela is stunned; she nods, she says thank you, he nods and turns to go, wishes her luck.

  Back in her car, Consuela finds that the envelope contains three hundred dollars cash. She realizes that they know something but it’s all so puzzling. The theory in the neighborhood is that Elvis and the Rodriguez brothers were hijacked, that they stole something and had it taken from them, maybe some Vietnamese gang or something, because the killings were not in the style of the barrio, nor of the shoot-em-up Uzi overkill blacks.

  But they planned to come here, to the Durand house. Elvis actually never said when, however, so they might have been out on another job, something he never mentioned. It seems too much of a coincidence that they would just happen to fire her now, today, unless they suspect something. And if nothing happened here, what would there be to suspect?

  Consuela finds that for some reason, as she drives off, the money makes her cry, somehow it brings back the shock of finding out, the other day, that Elvis was dead. His body burned. The police won’t exactly be breaking their necks trying to find out who did it, either. Who knows? It might have been the LAPD themselves. There might have been some chance encounter, some words exchanged. That Teddy was such a hothead.

  Consuela shakes her head. She still can’t believe it. This morning, cleaning the Japanese man’s apartment, she kept thinking when am I gonna wake up? She better go to the agency, she realizes. Explain what Keith said. She’s been terminated, but it’s not her fault. He said she didn’t have to say anything about this money, didn’t he? It’s just for her and her kids.

  Big sigh. Maybe tonight she’ll call up her friend Peppa, hire a babysitter, they can go down to Richie’s cantina and get drunk. She feels the need to talk to someone about Elvis, to confess.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Feel my wounds,” says Justine, sitting in the raised bathtub, art deco carved gold feet on a floor of black-and-white checkerboard tile. Her hair is wet, so that her pierced ears show. Keith, who has been sitting on the closed toilet seat, comes over to her, hesitates, looking from her frail body up to her eyes and back down to her small white breasts and then her ribs. “Don’t be afraid,” she says, somehow amused. “Touch them. Put your finger in.”

  There’s a little circle of red, swollen flesh around each of the bullet holes. Keith touches the fast-closing central dime-shaped entry, and gently presses his right index finger into the yielding puzzle-pull, tactilely experiencing the heat generated by the healing, the gunk as hot as interplanetary soup.

  “Is it sore?” he asks, looking up to her face.

  “No,” she says. “It’s more like it’s itchy, and, I don’t know, hungry. I need more blood.”

  He nods. He thinks he understands. The tepid bathwater is a brick red swirly color, from the blackish discharge she emits when she sleeps, and which was caked in the front and back wound sites. The exit wounds are larger, yet seem to be healing just as swiftly.

  When someone is bitten by a vampire and sucked unto death, that person will turn into a vampire after two or three nights, generally, unless exposed to sunlight all day, or beheaded, burned, subjected to an autopsy, or left in water, either fresh or salt. The stake through the heart has a paralyzing effect, and can be fatal if left in for a long enough time.

  The “sugar-syrup” that Justine has injected a few times into Keith has almost entirely worn off: the telepathic link is quite faint.

  As she puts on makeup, she complains to Keith, “I don’t really feel like doing this. I can’t talk to people.”

  “You don’t have to say much,” he replies.

  When dressed, Justine takes her time, bandaging Keith’s hands in a special way she’s learned to give them support. He groans at one point, but when she looks up he nods, he says it’s fine.

  Out in the car, the Mercedes, as they come into the sea of lights Justine becomes a little excited, it amazes her, just for a moment, how much things have changed. This endless electric urban cosmic swarm of fallen stars is incomprehensible in terms of rural, fifteenth-century France.

  They drive to Santa Monica, go into Stephen’s, to reconnoitre over a glass of wine. Yes, Ju
stine will drink red wine, although only a few sips at a time. It is early, not even midnight. There are many places one can go, to find a stray. In her simple but somewhat slinky “little black dress” she would immediately be prey to adventures were she to enter a lesbian bar, and then it’s very simple. Somebody desires her, in any case an impossible desire, a desire for something that in real life does not exist. Desire that leaves them in most cases with a wound, and perhaps sometimes an indistinct memory that comes now and then in their sleep, in their dreams. On occasion the impossible desire will leave them all used up.

  Keith says, “Someone I know,” lightly touching her hand, and Justine looks up to see someone—a young woman—approaching their little table, smiling unaffectedly, and as it develops she is a doctor, she once was one of Keith’s doctors, she mentions that she hasn’t seen him now for over a year. When he begins to introduce her as “Dr. Rothschild,” she dismisses the formality, her name is Tamara, and as such she introduces herself to Justine.

  Modern medicine in general, much less women doctors—it’s all very foreign to Justine, outside of her experience, so she studies Tamara as the latter, unafraid, having been invited to sit down, soon takes the liberty of asking Keith about his hands. From her eyes, although she will not bring it up, one can see that the last she knew, Keith was back on heroin. She seems to like him, though, and not to judge him.

  Tamara is not beautiful, but she is certainly attractive, the more so perhaps for the clean gaze of intelligence without arrogance or evident vanity in her pale blue eyes. Why this should tend to provoke her, Justine does not know, all she understands is that she feels provoked.

  “Well, you look good,” Tamara says. “You look like you’re doing well.” Presumably here indirectly she’s referring to the drugs. Only now, socially, when her putative reason for sitting here, her “excuse”—Keith being a former patient whom she is interested in—only now, when this has begun to seem played out, is she a bit awkward, or shy.

  She explains that she came here with a colleague, after attending the symposium on nerve damage that’s part of a week-long conference being held at a nearby hotel.

  “So when I saw you, after you’d just dropped out of sight… I had to see how you’ve been getting along.”

  She smiles then at Justine, nonverbally apologizing for having registered her in only a rather cursory way. Justine holds her gaze, and puts something into it, and Keith notices this, possibly with alarm.

  “I have to visit the ladies room,” Tamara says, and Justine nods. “So do I.”

  On the way there, Tamara says, “All of the nurses and therapists, everyone liked Keith and wished him well.”

  “Yes,” Justine says, a bit unconnectedly. “He is very nice.”

  In the large, hypermodern bathroom, two young blondes, in dresses with cleavage, are discussing some young male actor they know, who has used steroids to overnight pump up his pecs. They have considerable makeup on, and one of them, with a huge wave of tinted hair, adds a tad more blush. “Do you have a Xanax?” the other asks, going through the contents of her purse. Yes. It is swallowed, with water, and they depart.

  Justine stands outside the cubicle, listening to the sound of Tamara’s micturition. She seems young to actually be a doctor, and not a medical student. Brown hair, modest blouse and skirt. Hardly any makeup. Earthtone lipstick. She has a fleeting awkwardness, occasionally, in how she holds her body, her head on her neck.

  When she flushes, and comes out, she is slightly nonplussed to find Justine right there, close. Really, she is too innocent. Justine asks her, Where do you live? Tamara’s eyes dilate. If she had contact lenses, or wore glasses, it would be more difficult to achieve the rapport. Is your friend gone? Good. Drive home, and wait for us in the lobby. Here, write down the address.

  Usually, when someone is bitten, the venom injected, after they have a long sleep they can act naturally, and yet function as hypnotically agreed. In this state, however, Tamara may act spacey, and the trance is something fragile, it can be broken. All Tamara has to do here is get her car back from the valet, tip him, drive home, and wait. She can accomplish these things on automatic pilot.

  Keith is unhappy when he realizes the plan. He leaves money and they follow Tamara to her apartment, making all the green lights. She is in the lobby, awaiting their arrival, her purse in her lap.

  “Justine,” Keith says, before they enter. “This is a bad idea. She’s a good person. She’s been kind to me.”

  “She won’t know anything happened. She’ll just think she had a little too much to drink. I won’t hurt her.”

  Tamara opens the front door and lets them in. She appears deep in thought, or as if concentrating on a hard important problem, oblivious to her surroundings.

  They take the elevator up to the fifth floor. It is a new building. The halls have thick plush carpeting. Tamara opens her two locks and they go in. Justine notices that Keith says nothing now in the presence of the young doctor, afraid of disturbing the spell. Not wanting her to remember any of this later on.

  He does say to Justine, “You promised. You won’t take very much.”

  Justine’s fangs are fully out now. In the bedroom, lit by the bedside lamp, she has Tamara undress. Keith leaves, or at least begins to, lingering in the living room, torn. Justine assists the somnolent one, pulling down the pantyhose. In lacy rose-beige bra and underpants, Tamara lies on her side on the bed. Justine pushes her gently onto her stomach, and bites into the good blue vein behind the right knee. It is excellent, hot blood. Speeding, secret blood.

  Justine gasps, and momentarily swoons. She is with her sister, Fleur, it is sunny out and they are in a rowboat. The rowboat moves without oars. In a big river, silent, no sound anywhere, no sound of water lapping or wind blowing, they come to an island and debark. Off in the distance, there are people sunbathing on the sand. Some of them may have wings.

  The main feature of this island in the big river is a hill. Justine and Fleur set off on the road that winds around the hill. Out of sunlight into cool, refreshing shade. Fleur carries a box. They are going to bury this small box. Around the spiral, they come upon an old car, maybe a Packard, a Stutz-Bearcat, a convertible, and there is a man sitting behind the wheel of this car. Justine seizes this man. She and Fleur overpower him, and leave him lying by the side of this dirt road. They take his car, and the car takes them away. The ascension along the curve of the spiral inexplicably turns into a descent. They drive down into the interior of the island, down, down, into a big cavern underneath the river.

  There is a sound. What is it? A tortured rooster? A dog? A man, screaming at the top of his lungs? Winged creatures—are they angels?—approach Justine and Fleur. Around them, in the deep black dirt, tiny frogs are hopping, little ducklings hatch forth from eggs. There are children, mournful children with grotesque fully adult growths of dark pubic hair, adult penises and testes, vulvas developing like sticky plant mouths, sped-up flowers blossoming, now a black penis, wet, on a white angelic child with wings who suddenly smiles a disturbing smile. The strange box is dropped to the ground. What is inside?

  Tamara groans. Justine, leaning back against the wall, viewing the room in a kind of strobe effect, shudders, oh she feels it, as Keith sadly, mercilessly, slashes with a knife to connect the bite marks into one cut. He dabs at the blood. The sugar-syrup venom has a clotting effect. The purple wound-mouth swells. Tamara pulls away, turns more fully onto her side, knees coming up into fetal position, warm body, intimate, revealed. Eyes shut, she says, “Ow. Ow.” Justine drools blood. Keith rises, turns, comes to her. He wipes her mouth on his sleeve. She breathes.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Keith wakes up at 2:30 or so in the afternoon. He’d like to sleep longer, but he cannot. It seems a drag, to wash, to perform these ordinary ablutions, it’s always somewhat difficult and slow because of his hands. When he was a junkie, he often stayed dirty for days. He didn’t care. Or rather: it was an experiment, seeing how it felt
. His hands were worse back then. Something like washing his hair, or shaving, was slow. You have the bottle of shampoo in your right hand, and your hair is wet, under the shower; you squirt out an appropriate amount onto the palm of your left hand, and rub this into your scalp. You have to use your left hand as simply a way station, and slap it on top of your head. Then use the right to do the rest. Just little things. Minor inconveniences. Things slipping out of his hands. He could not, for instance, carry a plate and glass out of the kitchen, to have his dinner in front of the TV. His left hand was out of the question, it was too weak for a plate with food, and if it held a glass—he’d start out okay, then just be unable to hold it, his hand would disobey his will and let it go. Buttons, shoelaces, carrying a sack back from the store. It was different. He’d reach out for something and fumble it, or drop it—he was weak.

  He had junkie friends. One couple in particular. David and Lorene. Sometimes Lorene danced nude, in a club, but she never seemed to hang on to a job. They were very nice to Keith, in their way. They made money off him, but he didn’t mind. They helped him deal with the tougher, more paranoid pushers, who didn’t want to sell to anyone they didn’t know. Usually Hispanics, but sometimes white or black. One black one named Ricky was very scary, Ricky’d been awake for three nights and he had a gun, he was in the backseat of the car and he pulled out this gun. He asked Keith … did he like The Cure?

  Later, Lorene said that Ricky had supposedly raped another dancer she knew, he was going to deliver some heroin up to her room after she got off work and he just did it… and then didn’t charge her for the stuff. He’d only been out of prison for a month. The police were already sort of looking for him, ‘cause he hadn’t been in to see his parole officer since the first time. The p.o. would be able to tell he was fucked-up.