by Matthew Crow
That is not to say I am without my reservations. People are not generally good Jonah, unfortunately I have come to find this out the hard way, and how easy it must be to take advantage of a lonely man with a good heart in a strange town. Aimee seems like the sort of girl who could be trouble. Beware lonely women Jonah. Their intentions are seldom noble. For what it’s worth my advice is to stay far from her and her ilk, though I’d be the first to admit that my recent coterie would perhaps call to question my authority on associates.
Secondly, and before I forget, thank you. Your carving is beautiful and now takes pride of place on my bedside table. The jewellery box you sent me was left decapitated and dismembered on my bedroom floor, the throat of its chime severed mid sentence. I would still have taken it were it not for the pool of blood in which it lay. This, however, is more than an apt substitute, and is the first step towards what I believe they call ‘nesting’ in this barren womb of a space.
Did you ever collect as a child? I did. When I think of my youth it is not necessarily the obvious which strikes a chord; the endless summers or comfort foods that others describe with such precision you wonder if they happened at all. I think of my groups, my anthologies and assortments, which I acquired and documented almost religiously. There were the living things, my ants first, which were forgotten conveniently by my mother as we moved to another base, then my saplings, ordered initially by size then eventually by hue – the intensity of green moving from the glittering right to the pallid left. My worm collection lasted only until I was informed of their want to grow into two separate entities were they ever chopped in half. The detail now seems admirable to me - stoic and steadfast, almost romantic - but at the time filled me with such dread at the thought of a species able to multiply of its own accord that I took them as far as my legs would carry me and threw them in a writhing comet across the ravine. After that there were others. The glass shards I’d find on the railway lines as I walked home from another school, pebbles of obscure shape and size, shells when lucky, candles, bus stubs, lottery tickets, matchsticks, candy wrappers, tyre caps. All of my memories made flesh, lined like cavalry and displayed for my own pacification.
I remember, too, the weight of anxiety that each new collection would bring. These little traps I’d set myself. Each time the burden of responsibility would override any childish whimsy until I became physically sick with worry. Aged seven I was kept from school for three weeks with a fever which to this day I swear was caused by issues of or relating to my bottle caps.
Funny what you remember. I found myself thinking about that today.
For some reason there has been a more customer-friendly approach from the staff of this hotel, no doubt spurred by my delivery of a roll of banknotes to the front desk and a polite request to remain in the same room as long as it would afford me, after which I would happily re-feed my meter. So now sometimes twice a day my stocks are being replenished. Individual servings of alcohol and sodas, of sanitary products, of sewing kits and shoe polish (?) delivered with a smile and a nod from one of the unbearably gorgeous Hispanic maids. The individuality pleases and mystifies me in equal measures. Having made it so clear I intend to stay for the duration surely human-sized portions would be a better investment on the part of the establishment? Though there is something oddly satisfying about being given just what you need, no more no less, especially when you know that extra is but a phone call away.
The point being that I have become a hoarder of my packaging. Lilliput bottles, soap boxes, shower cap covers. Even the thread I unravel and hide so that the little plastic drums are mine to keep. I’ve arranged them into some variation of a house on the small coffee table beneath the window where I write to you. I have informed the maids - whom I am coming to know by name - never to discard anything they find on the table itself. They seemed to understand, though as I have not left my room in seven days and have no intention of doing so for the foreseeable future I envision no problems on that front.
I’m rambling. I know. And I can’t put it off forever. It’s just that I don’t know exactly where to start. I think of Eve, of The Iguana Den, of the gold and glitter and the guns and the money that have made my life what it is today, and it all seems so obvious in hindsight. Like dog shit: so easy to step over when you realise it was there. But I didn’t. I trod straight through it entirely of my own accord. And relaying the stupidity of my actions to you seems harder than everything that has gone before.
To pinpoint the exact moment I began to unravel so spectacularly would be like trying to retrace an earthquake. But I suppose that when pushed, the genesis of my quandary is undoubtedly J.
J wasn’t his real name. It wasn’t even his real initial. This fact remained hidden for the duration of our courtship. I suppose I never thought to ask. A person tells you their name and you take it as given. Though he was not the sole advocate of deceit. I came to play my fair share of the game, and so in some ways we were both as bad as one another. Bad, that is, within the confines of our relationship. Out there in real life he undoubtedly surpassed me in terms of sheer wickedness. There was no evil in J. Evil is innate. It could almost elicit pity if you thought long and hard about it. He chose his path. There was a moment where he hit the forked road between right and wrong, between life and death. He seldom chose wisely and within two months went from stranger to lover to murderer.
How’s that for a shift in circumstance?
He caught my eye at the diner, which seems so remote on the horizon of my history that I can barely make out its shape. He caught my eye there, though how long before that I caught his I cannot say.
“Sunny side up, sugar?” I asked, moving to the farthest edge of the counter.
The weather never changes here. They say that about a lot of places. It’s never true. Here it is though; the sand absorbs the warmth of the sun and magnifies it into a constant heat; forever pressing like a soldering vice around your head and ankles. Everyone feels heavy and leaden. No shirt unstained. It makes the days lap over one another like waves until before you know it years have passed by and you wonder how long you’ve been standing so still.
“Surprise me,” he said.
I laughed and nodded, leaning over to look at the notepad in which he scribbled. He seemed amused at my interest though equally adamant to keep whatever he was writing out of view. His suit marked him out as an oddity. His hat pulled low over his face. That face. Jagged and gnarled, though noticeably young. He was gaunt in a healthy way, and as I would come to find out could shave at breakfast and be in possession of the most immaculate stubble before lunch.
In the distance two vultures shriek at one another over the same decaying carcass. I wipe my brow and fill the almost empty cups for the lizards and cacti that line the same stretch of counter day in, day out. Some are men. Some are women. It changes with the light. Some have wives. Some have children. Some have sheer silk suspenders clinging to their thighs beneath those battered 501s. None of them a question. None of them an answer. They simply hover until they are moved. Myself, I enjoyed the variation. The combination of the regular and the obscure. Mostly I liked the fact that it all stopped mattering the moment the door closed behind me. Jobs like that never followed you home. Never swirled around your head while you were in the queue at the grocery story, or filling up your car with gas. They never rang you five times a day. Never wanted to cuddle afterwards. Jobs like that disappear the moment you take off your name badge. I don’t know why every girl in the world doesn’t have a job like that.
J notices me playing with a child’s puzzle that I found discarded in one of the booths as I wait for his bacon to crisp. “Simple things please great minds,” he says, not quite smiling. “That’s what they say.”
“They have a tendency to be wrong,” I reply, with an equally ambiguous hint of amusement. Funny, the one thing I remember about what has come to be known as Day One is that, at this very moment, all I could think of as I stifled my smile was ‘so cool Verity,
you’ve never played it so cool in your life... ’
“Aint that the truth, darling,” he adds, closing his pocket book and placing it in the lining of his jacket. I place his breakfast in front of him and am granted the donation of a slight smile.
“So, what brings you to this part of town?” I ask eventually. The majority of customers have left by this point and we are near enough alone.
“I got some business that needs fixing,” he says. A gruff voice, each word a painful gift as though they were organs being donated for your survival.
“Well aren’t you just the man of mystery. And unusually coiffed for these parts.”
“Something - ” he says, locating a tricky piece of bacon from his tooth with the fork of his tongue “ - was taken from me. I’m here to oversee its rightful return.”
“The plot thickens,” I lean back against the hob and try to get a better look at him. Attraction is a funny thing. It can happen despite you. It was only at that moment that I was able to take in the overall package - the quirks and idiosyncrasies of his face and shape. I was impressed, Jonah, no two ways about it. And what’s more I could tell that in some small way he felt the same.
“You don’t know the half of it, darling,” he says, standing up. His breakfast remains half eaten. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Came for the eggs, stayed for the service,” I say, taking his plate and the cash he has left on the counter.
He laughs, nods, and leaves.
I walk back with the thought of him playing like music. I go home and slump on my bed and feel the four walls of my house bob up and down like it’s nodding in agreement. I take a shower. Drink some beer straight from the can. Enjoy a cigarette in front of the mirror because I like the way the smoke curls and disappears like secrets from my lips. I lie on my stomach and imagine an entire lifetime spent with a stranger I have shared barely three sentences with. By the time I come to my senses the sheets are saturated and my wrist cramps painfully beneath my weight. I try three kinds of nail varnish whilst slightly drunk - one on top of the other - until the colour blends into a new, ugly shade somewhere between brown and green but with a sleek gloss finish. Then I shake my hair into a form not far from sexy and breathe out loudly while I spray it in place. Time for round two. Welcome to The Iguana Den.
What exactly The Iguana Den is I still can’t say. Even once I became part of its insatiable mechanism I was not sure how or why it came to be. Initially I knew it as a legend. Then as a patron. Finally I became one of its most treasured possessions, as profitable as the watered down beer that they served by the pitcher.
Some nights I’d be so bored, Jonah, so bored and tired of life that I would dress myself up for no reason whatsoever, just to see myself change. Then I became more daring in my role. Dolled up in my finery I would stroll out into the night. Feeling the dark on my skin, the night air ripe with potential as I waited patiently for my knight in shining armour, knowing that I was at least dressed the part should some magnificent situation ever arise. Nine times out of ten I ended up dressed like some fallen debutante eating pie in the twenty-four hour cafe across from the Rialto. Tired. Alone.
This changed the night I met J.
It doesn’t take much to alter you completely. And a brief encounter with a handsome mystery filled me with an emotion that I cannot quite put into words even now. It was somewhere between curiosity and fearlessness. As though I was unable to stop until I hit upon a change. So I walked past the town, past the familiar streets and the ordered traffic system. The road changed beneath my feet from asphalt to dirt track. My heels sunk and twisted. My shoulders flayed by the dancing sands. Far away, in the growing void, three men surrounded a tin can of burning garbage. I walked for miles and miles before I saw it. A blue streak, like a mirage. It flashed and disappeared before my eyes. I became transfixed and followed its taste, its sound, until I was standing outside a living legend.
It was everything I had heard the men describe in hushed voices across the counter and then some: a neon light in the dark. A ticking beat that moves round and round like a spider in tap shoes. Blood red smiles. All fours. Upside down. Blonde on blonde.
‘Hey baby I can see your roots!’
‘Then you aint looking right, precious.’
They drool. The living dolls.
It takes me ten minutes and two cigarettes outside those big double doors before I build up the courage to step inside. The nicotine and downtime enable me to slip into fantasy once more as to J’s etiquette in such instances. Our arrival at any function would mark the beginning of the evening. We’d be the sort of glittering couple you always dreamt of being friends with: shimmering, assured, glorious.
I stub out my cigarette, breathe in deeply, and open the door.
An intricate web of red velvet and black lace disguise the fact that you’re in a building at all. To enter The Iguana Den feels like stepping into the mind of some oversexed dandy, where you yourself become the fantasy.
I found myself in a small vestibule manned by an attractive woman wearing suspenders and little else. She greeted me as Miss and offered to take my coat. I obliged and handed her the garment.
“Twenty dollars entry,” she said without wincing.
“There’s nothing free these days,” I said semi seriously.
“Nothing worth having,” she said as she hung my coat on a padded hook.
I reached into my back pocket and produced a well-used bill. The main entrance led to a series of warrens and boltholes which held little interest amongst the majority of customers, most of whom were happily girded within a large room to my left. From where I stood I could see shadows float past seemingly devoid of bodies. Scattered applause and the occasional wolf whistle pierced the foggy atmosphere like the beam of a lighthouse. In the distance an old man pressed his lips firmly into the throat of a slender young thing who managed to open the door on which she leant and slip both of them inside in a pleasingly fluid manoeuvre. Initially I felt flustered and oddly too hot, but then the music from the main room began to take on a more rhythmic shape as my brain eased into its new environment the way you slip into a scalding bath. I felt comfortable, almost lethargic, and found my body moving to that distant beat which seemed to be playing from inside of me, guiding my every move.
“Welcome to The Iguana Den,” said the lady on the door. I thanked her and began slowly walking towards the pulsing main room.
Along the corridor the chipped red paint held decaying photographs in gilded frames. Women in various states of undress glide up and down lubricated poles. Proud looking men grip young flesh in their papery hands. A larger lady - huge, in fact, almost the size of a cathedral - features in many. Her skirts are many and layered into an elaborate dessert of a garment. Her basque bulging across the weight of her generous and decorated chest and hair pinned tightly in an archaic nod to propriety.
The beat grew louder until it felt like it would pour from my mouth if I was so much as to attempt to breathe in. I stepped through the heavy velvet of the curtains and into the main room.
The tables are circular and the floor scuffed, somewhat at odds with the opulence of the entrance. The lights shine and flicker at orchestrated intervals in deep, primary colours making everything seem somehow tamer, as though you would be able to step from this room and dismiss everything you saw as a mere hallucination. Across the wall a long bar is manned by uniformed professionals who, as the saying goes, see all but relay nothing. Doors lead from every angle though no-one seems to go in or out. Suited gentlemen and plainclothes cops pick fruit at the machines that dot the empty space. Each table is occupied. Most sit alone. The stage takes the mantle at the front of the room; a round expanse speared with poles, from which two catwalks stretch like tentacles and are lined by the most expensive tables in the house.
I walked over to the first empty fruit machine and sat hard on the flat leather of the barstool. I dropped a dime and tugged lightly and the bandit’s flimsy arm. The ligh
ts flashed and the pretend fanfare mounted as the salad spun before stopping with a jerk. Two apples and a cherry. Better luck next time. The lights turned out as I rooted in my pocket for a second coin.
“You play these games as much as I do you’re bound to hit oil eventually,” came a man’s voice, light and inflected with a southern twang not dissimilar to my own.
“I play these games as much as you it’ll take more than the one jackpot before I break even,” I said to the slight gentleman in the bad toupee whose tux seemed over the top even in the most theatrical surroundings.
“Allow me - ” he said, placing a penny into my slot, “ - call it an icebreaker.”
I pulled the arm of the bandit again and watched fortune spin out into another curious bubblegum flavour.
“Two plums and a banana. Why, sugar you’re nothing more than an out and out tease. It’s enough to drive an old dog wild,” he said, riding his hand up the side of my skirt. “Now how much would it cost for a private view, my dearest?” he went on as his hand attempted to operate me like a glove puppet.
“More than a dime. That’s given there’s enough liquor behind that bar. Which I severely doubt there is,” I snapped, pulling a coin from my pocket and slamming it onto the ridge of his machine. “That’s for your troubles,” I yelled, turning from him.
“And what are your troubles worth, sweetness?” he asked, placing the penny in the slot and pulling the bandit’s arm. There were three pinging noise as the light of the machine pulsed whiter and whiter before the tin clank of coin fell cascading into the metal tray. “Looks like I’m in luck, darling. Care to taste my winning fruits?” he laughed.
“Quit jerking Carter and give me your seat,” came a woman’s voice.
The man stood up and presented his seat to the girl before walking off with pockets bulging with coins.
