“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. He is.
She isn’t. The redhead’s focus is taken hostage one more time.
“What the fuck?” she says.
She lifts a tattered and mud-colored bath towel from whatever it drapes. It’s a display case, a cabinet of three wooden shelves and a glass door, meant to be hung on a wall but leaning instead against one. Practically hidden, intentionally so.
Holly lifts the case and props it on a table. Dust billows. Dust settles. Holly peers in. The Minotaur waits. That’s the point.
“Ha!” she says. “They’re shitting! Look!”
The Minotaur looks. It’s true. The cabinet shelves hold a dozen or so figurines, all squatting with pants down or skirts hiked, all hovering over tiny brown coils. Holly is so excited she can barely contain herself.
“There’s the pope!” she says. “And Betty Boop. And Jesus. Michael Jackson. Darth Vader!”
True. They are all there, squatting and defecating.
“That’s Marilyn Monroe, I think,” Holly says. “But who’s that? And that? And that?”
A little brass plaque is tacked to the case’s top edge. Holly licks her thumb and wipes the tag.
“El Ca-ga-ner,” she reads, then again. “El Caganer.”
“I wonder . . . ,” she says.
“People are so weird,” she says.
“God love a freak,” she says.
“We might have to come back for this,” she says.
Okay. The Minotaur will come and go as often as she asks.
“Okay,” Holly says, and winks. “Stop your dillydallying.”
She points to the fitting rooms, three stalls lining the far wall. The dividing panels don’t quite reach the floor and leave substantial gaps at the ceiling, but they provide a modicum of privacy. How much more is needed? The door to the first stall stands ajar.
“In you go,” she says.
In he goes. Narrow benches span both of the side walls. A cloudy mirror hangs opposite the door; half a dozen wire hangers rattle on a hook when she closes it. Everything is pale white except for her toes. The Minotaur can see them, in all their celestial glory, poking beneath the door. He wonders if she can see his horns overtop.
“Give ’em up,” she says, one lean and freckled arm reaching over the door panel.
“Unngh?”
“Your pants,” she says. “Give me your pants.”
The stall is tight, corral-like. But the Minotaur’s balance is good. He drapes the torn trousers over the door.
“These first,” she says.
To accommodate the span of his horns the Minotaur stands sideways in the stall. Even so, it is a small balancing act to get them on. He grunts into the task, and as soon as he tugs the zipper up she opens the door.
“Let me see,” she says.
The Minotaur stands as still as possible.
“No,” she says. “You look like an old man.”
She closes the door, and they make another exchange.
“Nope,” she says. “Boy Scout if I ever saw one.”
The third try gets close. The Minotaur opens the door to the stall himself, clutching at the waistline.
“Not bad,” she says, “but way too saggy. Hang on for minute, I’ll get you a . . .”
Holly speaks as she leaves the room, so the Minotaur doesn’t hear what it is she’s gone in search of. He is hopeful. Expectant, even. And a little disappointed when she returns with just a belt. A leather belt. He buckles it.
“Oh, no,” she says. “Now you look like a really old-man Boy Scout. Give them to me.”
When the door is closed the Minotaur strips down again.
“Wait there,” she says through the panel.
Where would he go? The Minotaur is not ashamed of his human side, his man half. But walking around in his underwear, socks, and shoes seems unwise. The Minotaur sits on one of the benches and lets his heavy head lean back against the dividing wall. He hears laughter out in the store; he’s pretty sure it’s Holly. He sits. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He worries briefly about Tookus at the gates of hell. He sits still. He sits. Still. Until Holly returns.
The Minotaur expects a pair of blue pants to appear overtop. But she shoves open the stall door, laughing.
“I love this place,” she says. “Let’s stay here forever.”
“Mmmnn, okay.”
“Look!” Holly says with unfettered glee. “I found the best stuff.”
Holly comes into the stall where the Minotaur sits. The stall cannot possibly contain her big energy, her real body, all motion and scent. There is no room for the Minotaur to breathe. He drowns willingly. She stands facing him, puts a shopping basket on the opposite bench. Her leg brushes the Minotaur’s bare thighs.
“Ta-da,” she says, reaching into the basket, pulling out a hand puppet. “It’s Picasso! Tooky loves puppets.”
Holly parts the puppet’s fabric orifice, squints, peers inside. She blows two hard puffs into the opening.
“Oooo,” Holly says in a strange accent of dubious origin. “Meester Pablo likes it when you do that.”
She puts the puppet on her hand, oohing and cooing in the voice.
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, not sure how best to participate in the charade.
“Well, hello there, big boy,” the puppet says. “Pablo likes your horns. Much much. Very much.”
She reaches out. The little puppet hands stroke the Minotaur’s horns from base to tip. First one, then the other. Then again. The Minotaur sits very still, watches her toes, watches the soft paunch of her belly shift beneath her white shirt. Picasso gives him a quick peck on the snout, then gets impaled fully onto a horn.
“Perfect,” Holly says, adjusting the puppet’s face. “Perfect. And for my next trick . . .”
This time, she has a shiny black sphere and another affected voice.
“The Magic 8 Ball knows all, tells all. Quick, think of a question, but don’t tell me.”
She upends the plastic ball, and they both watch the die float to the little round window, its answer bobbing gently in the ink-black liquid: REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.
“Hmmm,” she says. “Very mysterious.”
But there was no question. The girl moved too fast for the Minotaur.
“My turn,” she says.
She doesn’t tell him the question, nor does she share the answer, but she laughs loudly and looks hard at the Minotaur. Holly sets the Magic 8 Ball on the bench opposite him.
“Are you ready for the next?” Holly asks.
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
She reaches into the shopping basket. Hesitates.
“Are you really ready?”
The Minotaur has every intention of answering. He wonders what the Magic 8 Ball would say. He wonders how many freckles her body carries. He wonders when she last bathed.
“Are you?” she asks. “Guess what it is.”
The Minotaur is not good at guessing.
“No,” she says. “Don’t guess. Close your eyes.”
The Minotaur is good at closing his eyes.
But the Minotaur is slow, and Holly is eager in her command. She is already unbuttoning and pulling her pants down before she finishes speaking. “Don’t guess” comes as the pants are somewhere down her long thighs, their apple white flesh. By “Close your eyes,” the Minotaur sees, without meaning to, the absence of panties, the thatch of red hair bursting from between her legs, nothing less than a conflagration. The Minotaur is good at closing his eyes. He does so.
Rustle, rustle.
“Now,” she says. “Now you can look.”
The Minotaur is okay at looking.
She stands before him in full nun’s regalia. White coif, holy habit, the scapular. She stands, palms up and out, fingers cocked precisely in the gesture of wonder.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” she says in her Picasso voice. “Something about fruits and wombs.”
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
&n
bsp; “One at a time!” another voice says, from outside the stall. “That’s the rule! Only one at a time!”
The Minotaur sees the thick-soled black shoes of the Goodwill employee beneath the door.
“We got rules,” she says.
Her wide splay-footed stance makes the Minotaur want to be nice. To follow the rules.
“Holy Mary, mother of God,” the girl says, trying hard not to laugh.
“Let me beat you with my rod.”
“We got rules,” the employee says. “Only one at a time!”
The Minotaur starts to speak, but Holly puts her fingers to his lips. The gesture of declamation.
“My boyfriend,” she says, cocking her head upward, speaking over the partition. “My boyfriend’s crippled. My boyfriend, he’s blind.”
They hear the employee grunt. She stays just outside the stall door.
“He’s a soldier,” Holly says. “A veteran of war. The things he’s sacri ficed for this country . . . You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The woman harrumphs. “We got rules,” she says, but she says it on the way out of the room.
“Shhh,” the girl says to the Minotaur. “I think she’s gone.”
She takes up the Magic 8 Ball, consults it again, and once again keeps the results to herself. But she seems both surprised and pleased.
“One more,” she says. “I’ve saved the best for last.”
“Close your eyes,” she says. “Don’t look.”
The Minotaur listens to nun’s habit come off and pool on the floor. He knows those long legs are there, and the rest of her body. Naked and right there. The Minotaur will not look without permission.
“Mind your p’s and q’s,” she says.
“Forgive us, Father, for we have . . .” She laughs. “Shhh.”
The stall door opens, then closes quickly. The Minotaur hears her chuckle, rustling into the next incarnation.
“Don’t look,” she says.
The Minotaur feels her hand under his chin. She lifts his head, his long snout. She steps close. She steps between his open legs, but it is not her naked flesh against his bare thighs. She steps closer, takes him gently by both horns, pulls his face into her body. But it is not her naked breasts that he nuzzles. Then she steps back, out of his touch.
“Now,” she says. “Look.”
It’s a fur coat. Long and brown. Mottled and splotchy. But her red hair, the finch eggs, those green eyes, painted toenails, the body whole, contained by the coat: the beast is stunning.
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
“They’ve got rules here,” the redhead says, smiling. “Forgive us our trespasses.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “Don’t look.”
The Minotaur hears her sit on the opposite bench. Feels her still more. The space is cramped. Tight. The Minotaur’s eyes are closed. He does not see the fur coat fall open. Does not see her breasts fall into their softness, nor the nipples reach. He does not see her legs part.
“Don’t look,” Holly says. “They’ve got rules here.”
He feels one bare foot come to rest at his side, then the other bare foot at his other side. The Minotaur will not look at her spread legs. Spread. Him between. Heat and musk, between him and the girl. Her musk, her heat, just there, and everywhere. She presses the soles of her feet against the partition.
“Don’t look,” she says.
And the Minotaur will not see the wild red hair, the bush burning, swirling, glistening. Will not see her palm ride up the swell of her ribcage, lift and squeeze the breast.
“Ummh,” she says.
“Don’t look,” she says.
And she knows he will not. And he knows, without looking, what business the hands are about.
“Don’t look,” she says.
It becomes a mantra, a pacesetter. A syllabic coxswain.
“Don’t look,” she says slowly when the fingers trace the lips, part the folds.
The Minotaur knows this unseen thing. This sweet mutt. A thing both flora and fauna, there, out of sight, so close. He could name it if he had to.
“Don’t,” she says, “look,” when the fingers dip in, tips first, then fully, to find her most private flesh.
“Don’tlookdon’tlookdon’tlook,” she says when those two favorite and slick fingertips circle and circle and circle, now right above, now a little lower.
She stops. She stills. The Minotaur wonders if something is wrong, if she heard something, someone. No, she is in motion again.
“Don’t look,” she says.
The Minotaur hears her stickiness. Hears her inside herself. Holly inside of Holly. The Minotaur feels her fingers at his mouth before he smells, before he tastes. This is what the redhead tastes like. Root and stem, soil and stamen. She tastes of the plow and the rut. Of cloud. Sun and moon. Day and night. The redhead, her pussy, it tastes like the universe. Her fingers there, then gone. The tastes linger. Here, the pussy. Her pussy. There, the still more earthy backside. He knows this. Knows now the taste of her.
“Don’t look,” she says. “Don’t look. Don’t . . . don’t . . . don’t . . . look.”
The Minotaur feels the surge as the muscles in her legs contract and spasm. The bird takes flight, the fish breeches, the bull bucks and heaves, everything drips. The Minotaur is drowning. The Minotaur is man enough. He cannot help what rises between his pinioned legs. The redhead kicks at the fitting-room stall, her breath a staccato utterance, a hymn to flesh and blood and bone. Something falls to the floor. The Minotaur hears it roll away. The Magic 8 Ball. It rolls to a stop against a far wall. Aftershocks of her orgasm jolt her body and, through it, the Minotaur’s.
Holly sits splayed, recovering, until her breath comes to order. She leans into him, her forehead against the bony expanse between his closed eyes. She kisses the Minotaur lightly on the snout.
“Don’t look,” she says.
She pulls her legs from around him. The Minotaur listens to her breathe deeply, consciously.
“Don’t look,” she says, almost whispering.
She stands. The fur coat drops from her body. He listens. She gathers up her own clothing, returns to herself. No longer naked. The Minotaur listens. Every sound drips with her, what? He doesn’t know how to name it.
“Don’t look,” she says so softly that it contains almost no sound.
“Don’t look.”
The Minotaur hears the hinges protest just a little when the stall door opens, then shuts. The Minotaur sits with his eyes closed. He’s okay, there in the dark. He hasn’t been given permission to look. He’s content enough with the things he can smell and feel and taste. The sweat from her calves along his thighs. Her viscosity, her sweet filth, on his tongue, in the black wells of his nostrils. A pair of crows argues outside. The Minotaur doesn’t have to see. Doesn’t have to look. The fitting-room mirror bore witness. The Minotaur sits on the bench in his underwear, his modest cock still hopeful. Petulant, even. The Picasso puppet dangles from his horn tip. On the floor the mottled fur rests atop the nun’s habit. No longer Holly. A beast in its own right. Asleep or waiting. On the bench where she sat Holly left a puddle of herself. He doesn’t have to see it. The Minotaur wonders if he can open his eyes yet. The Magic 8 Ball, having rolled window up in the corner, has the answer bobbing plainly, clearly, in its murk.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE MINOTAUR TAKES HIS TIME. Sweet time.
When he steps back out into the day, the day has wreaked havoc on the earth. All is charred black. The gibbous moon, in a hissy fit, has upended and poured its moony gall over everything. The Minotaur runs naked—nay, gallops—through the smoldering ash and stump world. Bellowing.
No. That’s not it at all. Things have changed.
The Minotaur steps back into the day. The skirmish line. Route. Flank. Retreat. The Minotaur steps into the dog and pony show. The cock-a-doodle-doo swung round and round and round, the tarot deck, th
e chopping block. There is no difference between the prie-dieu and her scapula.
No. Too much. The Minotaur knows. This is too much.
The Minotaur knows the furnace, the smelter, the bellows.
The Minotaur knows Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. The titty-twister.
The Minotaur knows the solipsistic eye of Copernicus. Knows pomp and circumstance.
The Minotaur knows the travesty of orbits and gravity, the muckrakers of the universe.
The Minotaur knows a girl made of fire. Of fire. Echo.
The Minotaur remembers that thing. She never did.
The Minotaur stands in the strum hollow. In the wash of the treble drone.
The Minotaur stands on the mountaintop.
The Minotaur always finds himself standing on the goddamn mountaintop.
One goddamnable mountaintop after another. The tide of histories (plural) roiling in the valleys below. Giddy. Giddy-up. The Minotaur stands on the mountain and, with his horn tips, stitches himself to the cloud-heavy sky. The running stitch. The hemming stitch. The basting stitch. The slip stitch. The catch stitch. The backstitch. The invisible stitch.
Maybe the heart is both. Vessel and whole note. Sintered, as he is, by her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE MINOTAUR TAKES HIS TIME, there in the changing room stall of the Goodwill, a late April afternoon. The Minotaur lingers. In the Goodwill, in the goodwill of Holly’s tastes and smells. Her presence and absence. He sits in his underwear, his horn tips pressed against the wall panel. One ear twitches. He taps at his brass buttons. He reaches into the coat and rubs at his seam. It’s on the move now. Surely. He’s half convinced that she’ll be gone when he leaves the store. That she was, maybe, never even there.
“Closing!”
The voice breaks the Minotaur’s reverie. No matter. It is still his.
A door squeaks. Footsteps. The voice calls out again. “Closing!”
The Minotaur sees her shoes, the thick black soles worn lopsided from her unending drudgery.
“Mmmnn, okay,” he says.
He would like to tell her not to worry. He would like to step out of the changing-room stall and put his arms around the woman and hug. But the Minotaur hasn’t changed that much. The pants-less bull-man would surely terrify the Goodwill employee.
The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Page 24
