by David Gordon
The pain in my mouth had receded to a low, steady throb, like a bass line, more soul than funk, and there was less blood than before. I figured they intended to interrogate me now, and I quickly reassessed my obligation to Lonsky and the cause of justice in general. I decided to take a quick shot at lying and then talk. John calmly set her gun down and removed her fanny pack, while her sidekick languidly aimed his gun at my lap. He leaned back against the fresh mural.
“Careble,” I said, lisping through my fat lips. “Baint’s web!”
Joel frowned at me.
“Webaint!” I said. “Webaint!”
“You shut your face up!” The boy barked in a thick Russian brogue, waving his machine pistol at me. I flinched and ducked automatically, although of course I couldn’t move. A howl came from the next room. “Whada buck is dat?” I blurted, straining against the bungee cords. “If dat Nic?”
“Let me check,” John said and looked into the next room. “Yes it is.” She glanced at her companion and they both giggled. “Our friend has a fetish for nipples and your lady has pleasant ones.”
“Thass unef… You don affa do dat!” I sputtered, blood spraying through the gap where my tooth had been. John unzipped her pack, rummaging in it calmly like she was looking for her lipstick, then crossed to the table behind me.
“Liffen,” I said. “I fink we got awff to a bad shtart. Maybe you hab the wong idea. I’m only here becauf I ga a note fum a shrange hombre, bery shrange…” I was straining to the left as I spoke, toward where I thought she was, but John appeared on my right, and before I could register what was happening, she leaned over my hand, where it was lashed to the arm of the chair, and wielding a small, sharp pair of gardening shears, the kind with a spring between the handles, she grasped my right pinky finger, and neatly chopped it off, just below the joint. My finger jumped away, like a snipped twig.
Stunned and numb, I found myself staring at the little stump for an endless second before blood and searing pain began to flow. Then I screamed, so loud and high I shocked myself. The terrible wail seemed to come from far off, perhaps from a small animal caught in a steel trap. My hand too seemed a mile away, pumping blood like a faucet someone forgot to turn off. Tears flooded my eyes and my vision burned. I was crying. Then I felt the left pinky go. I entered a new realm of pain. Both hands seemed to be like torches, blazing.
“I wuz gomma talk,” I whimpered. “I wuz gomma talk…” I fought the urge to faint. My vision cleared slightly and she appeared before me, holding my two little pinkies in her palm.
“OK, now,” she said, delicately sliding a pinky, nail first, into my right nostril. Joel snickered. She slid in the left, also up to the first knuckle so it stuck. “I want you to listen very careful. Are you listening?”
I nodded. “Yef.” I had to gasp air through my wounded mouth.
“Good,” she said, lifting the shears again, and showing them to me, the hook-nosed blades now caked with blood. “Because I am only going to ask you eight more times…”
“No,” I howled, screaming like a child, now too frantic even to spill my guts, stuttering, bubbling, squirming, and crying. Joel laughed uproariously. John snapped the shears like a hungry red beak before me. I shook my head and a pinky flew out. Joel guffawed even louder, pointing at me with glee. He noticed his arm was blue from wet sky. Looking down, he realized that he’d smeared his clothes with paint, smudging the mural behind him. He began to curse madly in Russian while John pointed at him and laughed merrily. Furious, he pointed his gun at me.
“Fuck you off, you fuck!”
I shook my head. He took careful aim at my face. I held my breath. Then his skull exploded. I heard the shot, breaking glass, and a whistle past my ear. His brain matter sprayed over the mural and, as John and I both stared, his eyes rolled up and he fell, revealing a back covered in a muddy rainbow of paint. As he hit the ground another shot rang out, chipping out a chunk of the bull’s flank and revealing white plaster beneath it.
John reacted, diving like a swimmer across the room to the table where her gun lay and snatching it up as the table, cluttered with paints and brushes, collapsed beneath her. I twisted in my chair, unable to see the shooter behind me. As several more shots cracked the air, John sprang back up like a jack-in-the box, gun in hand, and unleashed an ear-splitting barrage. I tipped my chair violently sideways and went down as smoke and fire danced around the mouth of her gun. More glass shattered, I heard a grunt, and, like a deer, John dashed from the room.
I lay on my side in the sudden stillness, though I could hear voices and scattered shots beyond the walls. I craned my neck to see behind me. Uncle Coffee and Donuts lay dead in the patio door, eyes wide, chest soaked in red, a pistol still clenched in his fist. His upturned cowboy hat sat nearby, like an empty bowl. The fall had loosened the cord on my right leg and I could feel that the flimsy arm of the old chair was shaky too. Twisting myself as I never could in yoga, I managed to get my right foot on the floor and then to stand, crouched low like an ancient hermit, the chair still strapped to my back like a skeleton I was taking for a ride. I hobbled up to the room’s remaining table and leaned the chair’s right arm (and my own, still tied) against the table’s edge. I took a deep breath, and before I could reconsider, jumped up, bringing the chair down on the rim of the table with all my weight. The chair’s arm broke, loosing the cord and freeing my own arm as it also freed a new spurt of blood from my hand. Hissing through my teeth, I wriggled out of my trap, undoing the cords from my left arm and leg. I felt like shit, but even gimping around on numb, twisted legs and trailing fat drops of blood from both missing pinkies, I was desperate to escape that room. Fear and adrenaline kept me moving. The pop and boom of gunfire came from next door like the night’s storm crackling over the sea. I picked up Joel’s gun from where it lay alongside his paint-smeared body, clutching it awkwardly between my crippled hands. The mural was cracked, as if the desert had broken open, revealing the void beneath it. The bull was split down the side. Mona had a bullet in her mouth. Ducking low, I crept up to the door and peeked into the living room.
John and Billy, her other muscle boy, were crouched behind toppled furniture, firing out onto the patio through the holes that had once been glass doors, while random shots from beyond blasted the room to bits. In the midst of it was Nic, crouched in a corner like a terrified animal, shaking like I’d seen mice and bunnies shake. Her top was ripped and her breasts bare, but from what I could see her nipples were intact. I leaned against the doorframe. Shock had really set in now, and I was in less pain, but numbness was spreading through my hands. Finger by finger, they seemed to fan like fronds, and the loss of blood was blurring my mind. The walls were swimming and the paintings swelled, images of Mona palpitating into life, fattening and flattening, dancing and flowing along the edges of my eyes. I struggled to aim the gun. My hands were trembling, slippery with blood and oddly unbalanced without their pinkies. Nic saw me and released a small choked cry, like a single swallow fluttering away. The muscle dude looked over first, saw me propping my gun up, weak legs bent, and he laughed, calling to John in Russian. She turned to me, smiled, and raised her gun.
I shot her. My aim wasn’t much, and my hands shook, and the power of the gun threw me, but it didn’t matter. I squeezed the trigger and the gun spat and a row of huge red tears opened in her flesh, belly, chest, face, and she fell back, dead. The boy went to fire but I squeezed my trigger again, wheeling in his general direction. This time I didn’t aim at all and I was low, but the line of bullets cut across his thighs and he went down on his knees, firing his own gun up into the ceiling. He grunted—“Kafka,” it sounded like—staring at me with big dark eyes. “Kafka,” he coughed again, softly. By now my head was spinning and my ears rang. Steadying myself against the wall, I raised my gun carefully and shot again, a full burst right into his chest. He fell on his side. “Beckett,” he whispered as blood flowed from his lips. The room was quiet. Nic and I both stayed where we were, she curled
and staring, me against the wall, gun in both hands, leaking blood. I felt as though I were on the deck of a ship at sea, riding the high tide of my own wavering consciousness and feeling the house slide away beneath my feet. Ramón appeared in the doorway, holding his pistol. He rushed to Nic first, and checked her quickly. Blind Uncle stepped in, calm as ever, holding a rifle, which seemed to be pointed at me. Ramón called to him in Spanish, wrapping his jean jacket around Nic. Then he came to me.
“OK, amigo, it’s over now.” I nodded and let him take the gun. “We’re going to bring you to the hospital.”
“Glate,” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly calm and yet odd, as if it were coming from someone else, another guy just off to my left. “I fink I’m gomma pass ow now.”
“Good idea, go ahead,” Ramón said.
“Pleab done forged my fingerth,” I added, or imagined I added, as everything went dark.
81
I MISSED MOST OF THE NEXT twelve hours, so I will just report the highlights as they were related to me. Ramón and the Blind Uncle somehow got me to the car, where they propped me in the back along with poor Uncle Coffee and Donuts, whom they hid under a blanket. Nic found my fingers. She dropped them in a ziplock bag and put that in a cup of ice, having heard somewhere that it was the thing to do. They rushed me to the closest large hospital, in Puerto Vallarta, and my fingers were reattached while my armed protectors sat outside. Nic paid in cash. They brought in a dentist to patch up my tooth as well. When I awoke my fingers were like two small portions of cotton candy, wads of white cotton over gauze, held in place with tape. They told me to change the dressings daily and to see a doctor in LA right away. Nic told me she’d called Lonsky while I was out.
“Great. What did he say?”
“He said your injuries were unfortunate but that our overall conduct was most suitable.”
“That’s it? Did you tell him about my wife?”
She patted my shoulder. “Of course. He said don’t worry and that we would figure it all out together. Everything will be fine.”
“Right. Just tell me what he really said.”
She frowned. “He said interesting, but that he had to get off the line because his breakfast was ready.”
“That fat bastard. What about Zed being alive? And the movie?”
“He just said return to America. He said to call your friend the cinephile, whoever that is, and see if he’ll meet us with a projector.”
“Milo? Lonsky wants him to come to the house?”
“No. We’re picking Solar up and going right out to the desert to get the film from that bank. He said not to tarry.”
“He’s coming? To Twentynine Palms?”
“Yup.”
“That is serious. We’d better get going.” Determined, I pushed away the covers and stood up. My bare feet hit the linoleum. “Um, can you help me put on my pants?”
Ramón called a fellow taxi driver to take us to the airport and then returned to Tepic to organize another funeral for his uncle. The Blind Uncle gave us tight hugs. Ramón said he’d spoken to the owner of the white house, and the bodies we’d left behind would disappear. He shrugged.
“I am sorry to say that this is easily done in Mexico.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I don’t know what I can do to repay you.”
He smiled. “That is easy, cabrón. You can find the man who is responsible for my uncle, and my cousin too. And then you can kill him.”
82
I HID MY HANDS under an airline blanket to avoid stares on the plane. “How’s my tooth look?” I asked Nic.
“Fine. Just let it rest,” she said, tucking me in and opening a magazine. We had not discussed the events of the previous night, except to ask each other, in an overly caring way, every time the flight attendant brought apple juice or we buckled our seat belts, Are you OK? But something between us had shifted. We sat close, shoulders and thighs touching, as if that were a normal thing. We lapsed into long silences and then picked up the strands of unfinished discussions. We were a couple. It was as if we had lived out a long, rocky relationship in a few days. And like many couples, we had a secret drama, those others who both joined and split us: Mona, a woman neither of us knew, but who had brought us together. And that other shadow, my wife, who had disappeared, only to return as a stranger, arriving out of a past grown so mysterious, it loomed before me now, imminent and impenetrable, like the future.
83
WE LANDED IN SAN DIEGO and picked up the car. Nic drove. As soon as my phone found a signal, I tried my wife’s number. A recording told me that the subscriber was not accepting calls. And if she never did, how would I really feel? Hadn’t some part of me wished for exactly this? I was free. I glanced at my blond companion coolly changing lanes. She noticed my stare and smiled.
“Why don’t you try to nap?” she asked.
“I can’t,” I said and shut my eyes, certain I was too distraught to sleep. When I opened them I was outside the Lonsky residence and I felt almost normal.
Roz answered the door. Fine and snow-pure, her hair was like a halo, the pink of her skull shining through. She wore a powder-blue pantsuit, with nothing under the jacket but her bra.
“Oh, it’s you. Nice tooth.”
“What? Oh, is it noticeable?” I smiled and tested it with my tongue. “Thanks. It’s from Mexico.”
“Yeah, it looks Mexican.”
“It does? Huh. And you can tell which one is new?”
Nic stepped between us. “Is Solar around?”
“Yeah,” Roz said, lighting a 100. “And I hope you’ve come to talk him out of this nonsense. The fool hasn’t been anywhere except the nuthouse in a decade.”
“Kornberg! Kornberg!” I heard his bellow issue from the study and went in, trailed by Nic and Roz. The big man was dressing. He wore the pants and vest of a summer suit in white linen, a pale pink shirt, and black suspenders. He was knotting a deep blue tie, while his jacket enveloped the back of his chair. Mrs. Moon flustered about, adding items to a huge old leather suitcase that looked like something Charlie Chaplin might stow away inside.
“Ah, there you are,” he said. “I’m almost ready to depart. Your friend Milo called and he obtained the projector. He’s meeting us at the hotel.” He slipped on his jacket and began to fold a silk hanky that matched the blue of his tie. “Nice tooth.”
Nic shook her head. “Solar…” she began.
“You can tell too?” I said. “Funny, it doesn’t hurt at all. I can’t even remember which it is.”
“Just remember it’s the gold one,” Lonksy suggested.
“Gold?” I asked. “What? Where’s a mirror?”
“Next door.” Solar waved a distracted hand.
“Wait…” Nic said. I rushed next door to the bathroom mirror. My upper left canine gleamed. Gold. Nic put her hand on my shoulder.
“I was going to tell you. I just wanted you to relax a bit first.”
“I look ridiculous,” I said, staring into my mouth.
“Not really. It looks kind of cool. Anyway, you can have it changed.” She kissed my cheek. “It’s sexy. I promise. Now let me change those dressings while we’re here.”
She opened her bag and began pulling out supplies. She looked in the medicine cabinet and found a small scissors, then shut it, causing my face to reappear. I practiced different expressions, trying to talk and smile without showing my tooth. Nic snipped away the tape and unwound the wrapping from my pinkies as if opening a prize. They were fat and turgid, like swollen tongues or blind purple grubs, stitched together with black thread.
“They look good,” Nic said, not very convincingly. “I mean considering.”
Lonsky loomed in the door. “We should leave,” he said, finalizing his tie in the mirror. “I’m packed and ready, and I want to arrive before dinner. And by the way, you’re pinkies are transposed.”
“They’re what?” I asked, holding them out like odd accessories I was considering r
eturning to a store.
“Is that the word I want?” he said. “Reversed? They attached the severed appendages to the wrong stumps.”
“No.” I stared hard at them. “That’s impossible. How do you know?”
“Because your right pinky, the old right, had a spot of psoriasis on the outside. And your left was a bit bent, perhaps from a childhood accident.”
“What?” I remembered the psoriasis, and the jammed finger when I fell off my bike at twelve, my last bad injury till now. “Holy fuck, you’re right. Jesus, what did those monsters do to me while I was unconscious?”
Nic patted my arm. “It looks fine, no one can tell.”
“Fine? They maimed me. Weren’t you watching?”
“I was in shock. That man was pinching my nipples. They’re really sore.”
“Yeah well, at least they’re still attached. And to the right tits.”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Lonsky said. “They are merely pinkies after all. The least of the digits. Thumbs would be another matter. Or ears. Anyway, perhaps they can be corrected at a later date, but we really must go now if we’re going to make dinner. I reserved a table.”
“Solar,” I said. “Fuck dinner.” I slipped away from Nic and stood in the doorway, gauze trailing from my hands. “I want to know right now before we go anywhere. What do you know about my wife?”
“No more than you,” he said, straightening his collar. “I don’t even know the woman.”
“I’m serious. I want to know what’s going on. This can’t be a coincidence.”
He turned to regard me from his great eminence. He was as wide as the door. I felt I was staring up at a monument.
“No it cannot,” he told me. “I have always said so. And now, if you indeed want to know the truth, which people rarely do, then I suggest we suspend debate, wrap your mismatched appendages, and proceed.”
