Crawlspace

by Lonni Lees

  I’d guessed she bought my line, blind to the wheels turning behind those baby blues.

  I always underestimated broads, even the dumb ones.

  They always meant trouble.

  But every time they get me in the sack I forget every lesson I’d ever learned. I think with my dick. It’s just my nature.

  “Anything you say, baby,” she said.

  And like I said, she was easy.

  She rose to leave and leaned forward until her face touched the glass. She opened her mouth as if to kiss me, then ran her tongue up the length of the barrier as if it were my cock. The paper thin dress fabric between her and the glass wiped up the dampness as she rose. Wet spittle outlined one perfect nipple. Gloria could tease a man to torment. She turned, tossing her bottle-blonde hair as she wiggled that tight ass of hers toward the exit. Every guard and inmate within sight of her had a hard-on, but mine ached beyond belief.

  * * * *

  I stood outside the gates, the barbed wire fences and bad food behind me, fifty bucks in the pocket of my cheap prison-issue suit. I took a deep breath as I got onto the bus, inhaling the morning air and bus fumes. Simple things become precious when you don’t have them. Air, good eats, simple freedom. I hadn’t seen Gloria in a month and was heading straight for her house. She wasn’t the only loose end I’d left when the cops snatched me from her porch, threw me in the squad car, and drove me straight to hell.

  The bus pulled into the train station, brakes screeching like a two-year-old brat in a shopping cart. I got off and bought a ticket to that shit-hole town in Nebraska where Gloria would greet me with open arms and an open door. She’d stir up a home cooked meal like some frenzied June Cleaver on crack. She was my ideal and my whore all wrapped into one steamy package. It was gonna be a long ride, so I picked up a magazine to see how the world had changed, had kept spinning while I’d rotted in limbo. It wasn’t fair. It was hard not to hold a grudge, so I held it tight against my heart. I nurtured it and let it grow like black mold on old cheese.

  * * * *

  The train sped through the darkness, a cold steel snake, it’s forlorn whistle cutting through the night like a sharp blade through soft flesh. The vibrations and jerks of wheel against track were hypnotic and sensual, taking me to those places every man goes who’s been alone too long. I placed the magazine discreetly across my lap. I ached for Gloria’s touch against my aching joint, erasing five years of fantasy stoked by imagination and memory—and my own hand. Hours later, I awoke to the moan of metal grinding against metal as the train pulled into the station. It was that eerie time of morning when darkness and day fight their battle of lights and shadows. The sun was hunkered down just below the horizon, a hungry cat ready to pounce. I never bought into that new day, new beginning crap. There was no such thing as a day that didn’t get fucked up. God, if there was a god, got off on playing practical jokes. He laughed a lot. They say laughter is good for your health, so if he’s up there he’s gonna be there for a long, long time.

  Anyway, it was six a.m. in the boondocks—the beginning of my first full day of freedom. I was feeling optimistic, all things considered.

  I walked through the station carrying my small brown bag and my magazine. They hand you back your stuff when you leave prison. I had my toothbrush and the prison-issued clothes on my back. I tossed the magazine to the floor and walked through the door to the dusty street. It was a three mile walk to Gloria’s place. In less than a mile the cheap shoes raised heel blisters and some stranger offered a lift as I limped along. He pulled his pickup to the shoulder. Lucky day. I stood at the end of Gloria’s driveway in no time.

  Damn, I was excited. Good shit comes to he who waits, right?

  The closer I got to the door the more I got that feeling, like worms with sharp teeth gnawing at my stomach lining. It felt familiar and I didn’t like it. The prison shrink called it panic attacks, but he’d never give me any happy pills to make it go away. On the outside some good “Irish” burning down my throat always helped some. As a kid, my mother called those knots my guilty conscience, but all she ever gave me for it was a hard swat up side the head. She’d say it was for one of the things I didn’t get caught for. And there was plenty. There ain’t nobody can see through a kid like his mother. I’d sneak into her whisky stash when I could and drink myself stupid. Self-medication is the stuff of the angels. I guess this time those nasty knots triggered when I saw the unfamiliar car parked out front. Things change in five years, maybe she’d bought a new one, but it didn’t feel right. I was going to barge right in, catch her in the act—maybe beat up some poor jerk before I slapped her around, then forgave her. Stuff like that helped the gut knots go away. And Gloria got off on the drama. It made her hot—we fed off each other—the perfect match. Damn, I’d missed her. Ordinarily I don’t like confrontation this early in the morning. It’s something you gotta work up to, you know?

  The door was locked.

  So I knocked.

  Really hard.

  The guy that opened the door stood there in his bathrobe and looked at me like a tattered question mark, probably trying to place my face in his memory bank.

  “Where’s Gloria?” I bellowed, trying to push through him and past him.

  He was strong for an old guy and was on me like a toad’s tongue on a swamp fly before I knew what hit me. It was his fist. But it hurt his hand as much as it hurt my jaw, so I landed a good one below his rib cage while he paused to shake his aching hand. I lost my balance—landed on the hardwood floor with an undignified thud. That pissed me off, as you can imagine. He dove after me and I managed to trip him. He fell to the floor. I got myself upright before he could. Then I lost it. I kicked the holy shit out of him. He cowered in a fetal position and I didn’t stop until he stopped moving. My stomach felt better already. He was still breathing as he looked up at me. He groaned something so muffled I could barely hear him.

  The words finally registered.

  “I bought this place a month ago,” he’d said, then passed out.

  That’s when I went totally bug-shit.

  I ran out the front door to the side of the house, kicked the lattice away and wiggled into the crawlspace, through the dust and spider webs and empty, rusting paint cans. I hate to say I was bordering on frantic, but that’s what I was and there isn’t a better word for it. I was so frantic that I dug in the dirt until my fingers bled. I was still digging long after I knew that the loot I’d hid was just as gone as Gloria. I’d never told Gloria I’d really done it. A guy has gotta cover his bases, right? But, even dumb as she was, she must have figured things out back when I told her not to sell the house. She’d probably gone through every square inch of the place until she found it. Female greed and pure determination won out. In my mind, I saw her on some tropical island, drinking something sweet and strong with a little pink umbrella in it, boasting a tan and laughing at me.

  She was probably getting serviced by some gigolo with a moustache—named Julio or Enrique or something like that.

  The heartless bitch.

  I didn’t like being laughed at.

  Everything that happened, up to that and after that, was all Gloria’s fault. I’ve got nobody to blame but her.

  My bloody fingers were still digging through dirt when the cops pulled up. I froze in my hiding place, stopped breathing, but eventually they spotted me. They pulled me out kicking and screaming and babbling, covered in spiders and sweat and dirt and my own piss, devoid of all dignity.

  One more trip in the back of one more squad car. Hell, it was probably the same one. The scenario was getting too familiar. Like I said, there’s no such thing as a perfect day. Seems the guy I’d roughed up came to long enough to dial 911 before he passed out again. Just my luck, right?

  They grilled me for three days and nights. The dumbest question, the one that drove them nuts, was what the hell was I doing digging in the crawlspace? Damned if I would tell them. Then they’d know I was like every other con who’d swo
re he was innocent. It was the mantra of the incarcerated. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of telling them the loot had been under their big, flat feet all the time. Of course, if they hadn’t figured I was guilty from the get-go, I wouldn’t have been put away for that robbery in the first place. The snakes were squirming around in my stomach again and I had no way to let off steam. My thought processes were starting to fog. Interrogations do that.

  The morning of day four it hit the fan. The bastard I’d beaten up had died from his injuries. Things got fucking serious after that. The son of a bitch, I didn’t hit him that hard.

  Anyway, I’ll spare you the details of the trial, the ankle chains, the long, boring ride to the penitentiary. For me it was just business as usual.

  God sure as hell gave me the middle finger this time.

  Thanks a lot, Gloria.

  So, here I sit in a smaller cell in a bigger prison, reading the same old crap and sleeping with one eye open so I don’t get it from behind, if you know what I mean. I’ve got lots of time to think. The rest of my life. Some things I still don’t have quite right in my head. I wonder sometimes what I really miss the most—losing the loot—losing my freedom—or losing Gloria.

  Damn, I just don’t know.

  But I sure as hell miss her visits.

  DEAD MAN’S DANCE

  Land’s End, Cornwall 1649

  High upon the cliff, overlooking the wild Cornish sea, the event unfolded in a mood as vacillating as the gray morning sky. The small crowd gathered like the overhead clouds, giggling, muttering, then silent, as shards of sunlight strangled in the thickening fog. The fingers of mist clung to the cliff-side as if they feared the churning sea below, then moved like tendrils around the half-obscured gnarl of twisted oak.

  There was laughter, as if they’d gathered for a Sunday picnic, their voices muffled by the roar of waves crashing against solid rock. The sea spewed its vengeance upward toward the restless, hostile sky, its spray sifting downward to baptize the assemblage. They stood in a circle, and in the center of the circle stood he, tall and ominous, cloaked in black, stoic and still.

  Waves of agitation rippled through the crowd as two men secured a rope on a high, sturdy branch of the old oak. One of them spoke to the other as he tightened the knot:

  “Would’a be fittin’ if the witch finder Matthew Hopkins were here for to find the rest of ’em heathens.”

  “Twenty shillings saved, for he’m be dead as salted mackerel, my dear Michael. An’ besides, we don’t be needing a furriner in our midst—bein’ privy to business better handled by our own.”

  Michael fashioned a noose, then said, “We shoulda killed his wicked father before he spawned the divil by that disease-ridden wench—and better yet to have killed his father before him. But what of the others?”

  “Eff the divil finally be dead they’m be getting back to the business o’ healin’ instead o’ cursin’ I should think.”

  “O’ course, o’ course,” said Michael, but his voice held no conviction. His eyes glanced at the man in black as he lowered himself to the damp ground.

  The wind gusted as the men reentered the crowd. The man was turned over to them, his hands tied behind his back. They held firmly to his arms, as if unsure the bindings could confine him, and pushed him beneath the oak. The man held his head high as he ascended the makeshift ladder, smiling at the gathering storm clouds. The wind caught the hem of his cloak, lifting it. It rose, billowing in a sensual dance around his tall, gaunt form. His face was chiseled, handsome; his eyes cold and gray as the slate cliffs, scanned the crowd.

  To the back, a green eyed woman watched in silence. Her eyes met his, her secret lover, the man about to die. She looked down, expressionless as Michael slid the noose around his neck. The wind whipped her auburn hair across her face. A muscle twitched, distorting her features. She raised her head, muttered silently to the heavens, smiled. Her smile was radiant, the glaze in her eyes spoke of vile, obscene secrets.

  The man in black tossed back his head and laughed.

  Michael kicked the stool out from under him.

  “The last generation of evil be gone.” Someone screamed.

  Then all was silent but for the moan of the wind and the steady creak, creak, creak of the oak’s burdened branch.

  Again the wind caught his cloak, whipped it around him as he spun madly, kicking and twitching, then fighting no more. As if hypnotized, they watched the dead man... dancing, dancing, dancing in a macabre circle.

  “So be it,” said Michael.

  “We be doin’ it like in other lands,” bellowed the second man with authority, met with applause by the crowd. “A hangin’ followed by a burnin’ an’ then that be the end of it.”

  One by one the people broke their trance, gathered twigs and piled them beneath the dead man’s swaying form.

  “This be for corrupting my sweet Mary” said a woman as she placed a branch on the heap.

  “And for killing the wee newborn,” whispered a young lad. “The poor little cheel.”

  “Let not a witch live,” yelled Michael, stirring the crowd to frenzy.

  As the other man knelt to light the funeral pyre there was a discernible depression in the atmosphere. The sky grew dark. The rain, which had been soft and teasing, pelleted down at an angry slant, extinguishing the flames. He relit it, fanned it with his large hands as the crowd chanted.

  Again, the rain smothered it. The dense fog that blanketed the cliff-side was torn free by a violent gust of wind that howled eerily as the hounds of hell. People clung to each other to maintain their balance against the gale-force blast as the storm became a violent, unyielding flagh.

  All eyes turned upward, following the groans and creaks from above their heads. The oak’s branch cracked, then snapped, hurling its gnarled arm and the hanged man over the cliff.

  Michael held his breath, watched as the body bounced against the granite rocks, then into the sea below. He watched as the waves swallowed the man, hungrily gulping at the floating black cloak until nothing remained but the fear in Michael’s heart.

  “The divil’s work,” he gasped as he stared down at the cold, wet grave.

  “No, no, it be fittin’ don’t you see?” The other man said in a strained, shrill voice. “’Tis an omen surely. He’m were put to cliff by the hand of God, like the bastard dog he were.”

  “’Tis true,” someone muttered as the crowd huddled at cliff’s edge.

  “So be it.”

  “Amen.”

  The crowd dispersed, heading down-hill to the village of Petherick, back to the safety of their cottages. At the head of the procession the green eyed woman swayed as she danced and babbled a lunatic song. Her hand stroked her belly, just starting to swell with child. Sheets of cold rain lashed at her face, gusts of wind tore at her ragged shawl as she twirled about, singing, laughing—muttering words that held the key to dark and ancient knowledge.

  THE ONE-EYED BELLY DANCER

  Her name wasn’t Ahsin when she’d clawed her way out of the gutters and alleys of Nogales on the shit side of the border. The ten-year-old whore got streetwise fast and figured out men, and her version of life, early on. The nights were eternal, a diseased vision of the Day of the Dead, filled with skeletons and shadows, druggies, drunks, and starving, desperate mongrels. The other poquito putas wore out by fifteen. Hunger had been her only conscious sensation—she learned how to keep her stomach full. The trade-off was in black eyes, scars, bruises, humiliation. From her pimp. From customers. Sharp as a machete and twice as lethal, she wised up quickly.

  “Pimps are for fools,” she’d said to Sánchez, stepping over his fat body as he bled out on the dirty floor. She clenched the gun in her hand like a hot ticket to paradise. Getting across the border was easy. In Bisbee an old guy took her in, passed her off as his granddaughter. She got pretty clothes, an education, dance classes, anything she wanted. All she had to do was give him a blow job or thirty-second sex when he could get it up. The
segue from used to user was as smooth as farting through silk pajamas.

  When she’d taken what she could, she moved on and never looked back. Tucson was a far cry from Bisbee, with buildings taller than saguaros and opportunities for the taking. She wanted to dance. At the Eastern Oasis. But they had a dancer. A good one. The dancer crossed paths with Ahsin in the alley one night. An unfortunate accident, but the random corpse was common as cholla in this end of town. Ahsin walked into the job she wanted.

  * * * *

  Ahsin spotted Raúl at his favorite back table, as expected. Handsome, rich, cool Raúl. A half-smile crossed her lips as painted fingers ran through her long, raven hair. Dark eyes and writhing hips mesmerized the audience. And Raúl. A small café in a Tucson strip mall, the Eastern Oasis was surrounded by run-down bodegas, bars, and fast food joints. But once inside one was enveloped by exotic spices, the reverberation of primitive instruments and drums—and Ahsin. Ahsin, Arabic for beauty. She was magic and mystery, conjuring lust and filling the cashbox with every twist of her hips. She was her best invention.

  Raúl felt she danced for him alone. She felt the drum vibration between her legs as she danced, wove through the tables, stood where Raúl sat with his wife. Twenty years ago the wife might have been attractive, but to Ahsin she’d committed the one unforgivable sin—she was old. The woman wore an intricate diamond necklace, the sparkles dripping down her flat chest like leaves fluttering from a mesquite tree, while Ahsin flaunted the most glorious breasts money could buy. The diamonds shone in bright contrast to the weak reflections from Ahsin’s sequined eye patch. For the four months of their affair, Ahsin puzzled why he lavished jewels on this woman. But that would change. She owned his body, but wanted his soul. And his bankroll.